December 30, 2003
CentOS - "Free" RedHat Enterprise Linux
"CentOS is a community-based release of Enterprise Linux. Each version is based on open sources and is fully compatible with versions produced by Red Hat, Inc. Extra packages are made available by the community to augment the original release. The releases are not restricted by per seat licensing in any way. Centos-3 is based on Enterprise Linux version 3 and Centos-2 is based on Advanced Server 2.1."
December 29, 2003
FabricLive 14: DJ Spinbad Mix CD
Looking forward to this: Fabriclive 14 featuring DJ Spinbad
popjustice top singles of 2003
No Good Advice better than Crazy in Love? I THINK NOT. And what are "Good" Charlotte doing making the top 5?
XBox Live, Custom Soundtracks and CDDB
It would be a very good idea if Microsoft allowed the ripping of custom soundtracks to use CDDB via XBox Live for the titling, saving the effor of entering a load of bloody text via a keypad (and the crap Music Mixer software is not worth bothering with).
December 23, 2003
GBA Afterburner installation
ElectricBirdland do Gameboy Afterburner installation for £34...
Mick Godfrey
In these days of over-produced flash websites, it's nice to see one that looks absolutely shite
December 22, 2003
December 21, 2003
Fly the Copter
Fly the Copter - addictive little game, my current high score is rather pathetic though
December 19, 2003
The Very Best of David Hasselhoff
Some classic reviews for Hasselhoff on Amazon
A genuis at work, 2 April, 2003
Reviewer: Mr Mark Harrison from Litlington, England
It starts with a revving car engine. It ends with a tender German ballad. It's brilliant. What more can i say?
The album starts with 'Highway to your heart' a real old time rocker. You acn imagine David cruising in his convertible, teeth gleaming and finely coiffed hair and medallion fluttering in the breeze. After that masterpiece follows 'Dance Dance D'amour' which is, i'm sure you'll agree, a fantastic title for a song. When this dance turns out actually to be a 'sweet bossonova' on what sounds like a casio organ it's enough to soften the hardest of hearts. Next is one of my favourites 'everybody sunshine (everybody funtime)' a rousing call to unite the children of the world regardless of colour or creed. There's a wurlitzer on this one!. 'Do the limbo dance' is as good as it sounds, as David gets in touch with his Jamaican soul with a cod-reggae number and Frank Bruno on backing vocals. To be honest, the album lulls slightly over the next two ballads although who cares when the next song is.....
'Looking for Freedom' - The song that united a nation. It's a classic German Anthem and you can imagine thousands of moustached Germans in leather jackets punching the air to this one. It's a stirring piece of music, a real stormer. The hard rock theme continues with the baywatch tune (not really my cup of tea) before the mood is brought down for the ladies with the gentle ballad 'Best is yet to come'. HOWEVER, brace yourself, the next track is the best song i've ever heard in my entire life. It's called 'Je t'aime means i love you' and unfortunately no words could possibly do it justice. Imagine David singing desperately 'Just say Oui!' to his french lady on the Champs Elysee and that's all you need to know. Magic, 100% Magic. How can one man be so talented that he can use English AND French in the same song? Halfway through the song is a fine instrumental where you can imagine David shrieking 'Break it down!' and doing some crazy dancing.
As we reach the end of the album, David shows his mastery of Country and Western in 'Yesterdays love' before 'Flying on the Wings of Tenderness', taking flight to a dodgy 80's synth track. 'Crazy for You' is superb, sounding like YMCA and letting you imagine 10,000 Germans going crazy as David shouts 'Sing!'. Keeping up the raucousness is 'Hot Shot City', many peoples favourite Hasselhoff number. Rocking like a wild animal this one's got a great riff, 'You look so good in those jeans, Ahhhh' says David. 'But not as good as i look in my leather jacket' he undoubtedly thinks though. The last two songs are aimed at the German market that first took David to their collective hearts. 'Aller Monana mi ceillo' could be sung in a German Bierkeller by lederhosen clad men from the Rhineland while 'Du' is probably very good. However, being in German i cannot understand a word of it but i'm sure the lyrics are as profound as all the other songs.
This album is a real gem. A classic in fact and i think i'd even go so far as to say it's the greatest record ever made. Beatles and the Stones? Rubbish! Hasselhoff is the man.
December 18, 2003
December 17, 2003
ISA Brochures sent free
Get ISA / PEP Brochures from isabrochures.co.uk
Apache security by obscurity
Put this in your apache httpd.conf
ServerTokens ProductOnly
and instead of telling the world the version of Apache & every module you have loaded in, they'll just get
Server: Apache
Buttoned Down Stripesco
Spot the night where Buttoned Down Disco doesn't have someone in an 80s stripey top
December 15, 2003
Secondhand books
abebooks - 45 million secondhand books
The greatest Xmas gift you can give
What's the greatest Christmas gift you can give?
a 20gb ipod of course! Don't bother with the 10gb because you don't get the dock, case or remote, and forget the 40gb because it's heavier, chunkier and costs another £100... (and you'll never use all that space)
Incidentally, while you are out Xmas shopping, take part in the new game of iPod Spotting. iPod wearers are very secretive with their iPods, but unless they've bought some better headphones you can always recognise them by their white earphones. I reckon I've seen about 5 in a day.
Dad jokes
Some cracking dad jokes on b3ta. Just one sample: "As an impending dad I'm trying to remember all the crap my own dear papa came out with. Most of them weren't jokes, just outright lies. Sadly, being a gullible child I told my history teacher all about how my grandad was a caveman and ate dinosaurs etc. How we all laughed."
December 12, 2003
threadless.com t-shirts
threadless.com - design t-shirts, upload them and vote on other designs. Best ones get made and sold!
Giana Worlds
Giana Worlds - Great Giana Sisters for Windows.
December 11, 2003
December 10, 2003
December 09, 2003
Pixel Tees
Pixel Tees - draw and sell your own pixellated t-shirts (also look here)
Procmail book
and here is my procmail recipe for integration with spamassassin (and amavis incidentally). Use in .procmailrc with INCLUDERC=$PMDIR/rc.spam
#-------------------------------------------------------
# rc.spam KILL THAT SPAM!
# pipe through spamassassin if not already put through amavis
# only check files < 512K - also use lock file
:0fw
* !^X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd-new
* < 512000
| /usr/local/bin/spamassassin -a
# 16+ score, /dev/null it
:0
* ^X-Spam-Level: \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*
/dev/null
:0
* ^X-Spam-Flag: YES
.saved.spam/
#-------------------------------------------------------
December 08, 2003
Whiskey Sour
How to make a Whiskey Sour:
Ingredients:
1 ea Lemon; juiced
2 oz Blended whiskey
1/2 ts Powdered sugar
Preparation:
Shake with ice and strain into sour glass. Optionally decorate with a half-slice of lemon and a cherry.
Serves: 1
(For an even easier method: mix some of this margarita mix with some bourbon whiskey and ice).
add email addresses to mutt's addressbook
mail2muttalias - scans your mutt messages for email addresses, and interactively adds them to your mutt aliases.
December 07, 2003
Piccadilly Records
Piccadilly Records - nice online record store with 12"s, t-shirts, magazines etc...
December 05, 2003
Bloody hell! The Queen's not looking miserable!
Ananova - Queen laughs at boy's record royal bow
December 04, 2003
bid_monkey patch
A patch for bid_monkey to allow it to store your eBay password in a conf file.
December 03, 2003
Template Toolkit O'Reilly Book
oooh, a book is 
coming out on the Template Toolkit - written by the author of TT, Dave Cross and some other geezer.
December 02, 2003
PopDirt
PopDirt - another music site (hopefully they don't believe S Club Juniors to be the saviours of music like popjustice.com).
GameTrac
GameTrac - nice looking GBA rival, but will it get any software support. More info here
December 01, 2003
Microdirect are spamming idiots
Ahh, a new totally irrelevant comment posted on "camera watches":
A new comment has been posted on your blog Shazbot Blog, on entry #145
(Camera Watch).
http://jamespo.org.uk/blog/archives/000145.html
IP Address: 213.2.21.191
Name: David Smith
Email Address: Wolf4231@hotmail.com
URL:
Comments:
www.Microdirect.co.uk
These guys are awesome on cheap computer componenents and excellent customer services.
If they're so good, why do they need to spam people's weblogs (and can't spell components)?
bash-2.05a# traceroute 213.2.21.191
traceroute to 213.2.21.191 (213.2.21.191), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
1 195.82.114.1 (195.82.114.1) 1.002 ms 0.802 ms 0.710 ms
2 bdr1.lon-th1.mailbox.net.uk (195.82.97.226) 1.322 ms 1.123 ms 1.183 ms
3 mfnx-gw-a.lonap.net (193.203.5.16) 1.564 ms 1.563 ms 1.900 ms
4 213-152-230-26.vianw.net (213.152.230.26) 1.962 ms 1.414 ms 1.906 ms
5 rt001thl.uk.vianw.net (213.2.253.6) 2.719 ms 2.294 ms 1.696 ms
6 rt001war.uk.vianw.net (195.102.254.53) 8.941 ms 8.955 ms 9.836 ms
7 sw001war.uk.vianw.net (195.102.254.206) 9.259 ms 9.688 ms 8.724 ms
8 rt902war.uk.vianw.net (195.102.240.12) 9.581 ms 23.546 ms 9.054 ms
9 217.32.57.109 (217.32.57.109) 17.040 ms 14.990 ms 15.713 ms
10 217.32.57.3 (217.32.57.3) 15.230 ms 14.092 ms 16.637 ms
11 213.2.21.191 (213.2.21.191) 35.337 ms 36.550 ms 35.469 ms
bash-2.05a# whois microdirect.co.uk@whois.nic.uk
[whois.nic.uk]
Domain Name:
microdirect.co.uk
Registrant:
Micro Direct Ltd
Administrative Contact's Address:
Micro Direct Ltd
341 Kingsway
Burnage
Manchester
M19 1NQ
Registrant's Agent:
VIA NET.WORKS UK LTD [Tag = VIANW-UK]
URL: http://www.u-net.net
Relevant Dates:
Registered on: 18-Aug-1996
Renewal Date: 18-Aug-2004
Last updated: 28-Feb-2003
Registration Status:
Registered until renewal date.
Name servers listed in order:
ns0.hs0.u-net.net 194.119.128.70
ns1.hs0.u-net.net 194.119.128.71
dir.mcc.ac.uk 130.88.200.4
WHOIS database last updated at 09:05:00 30-Nov-2003
Hmmm...
UPDATE: a concerned samaritan has spotted this post! Do you know I really believe he was researching MicroDirect and not just checking for mentions of his company? Furthermore I am convinced that "Magic Man" is his real name. If "Magic Man" were to look more closely, he'd see that I merely commented on the coincidence of the original spammer having an IP belonging COINCIDENTALLY to some obscure outfit called Via Networks, who also registered the MicroDirect domain. What are the chances of that?
Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2005 23:45:04 +0100
From: Magic Man
Subject: U Muppet
Hi
I was doing some research on the net about Micro Direct and their
customer services etc.... I can across an old page on your blog site
about them spamming peoples blogs
I just noticed that you had completely got it wrong and are unable to
properly query WHOIS. If you had bothered to even do an DNS query
against the microdirect domain, you would have seen that their IP
address range doesn't include the IP address 195.102.240.12 as quoted
on your site
Not that I'm really bothered but I dont like seeing people getting a
bad name through somebody elses stupidity
Ta
MM