Chris Heschong Approves

3 Hour Tour

2007-05-25T14:23:00.000-04:00

As promised, pics are now available from my vacation to Tokyo and Taipei last week:

Tokyo, Japan (plus Nicole's pics)

Taipei, Taiwan (plus Nicole's pics)

My 2 month old niece, Emily

And then if you hadn't had enough abuse and are still bored, Nicole's got videos online, including Sumo wrestling, etc.

Low Latency

2007-05-15T08:29:00.000-04:00

I'm over 7,000 miles from home, and Internet connectivity is surprisingly fast. Not fast enough to upload our hundreds of photos, but great for e-mail and web surfing. This contradicts my experience so far in dealing with overseas connectivity at work, which makes me wonder a little. Either way, expect a boatload of pics when we get back.

CRUST

2007-05-05T12:31:00.000-04:00

My first CPAN module got published today: WebService::CRUST lets you talk to XML based web services easier.

Pants

2007-05-04T17:07:00.001-04:00

Today is No Pants Day.

One Convenient Location

2007-04-21T22:48:00.001-04:00

I'm in Atlanta this weekend, and while Nicole was out, I stopped by the Atlanta Comics Expo. It was only three blocks away, so after walking about 15 blocks to find it (I went the wrong way), my feet were sore enough that all I wanted to do was sit down and have lunch.

But once lunch was out of the way, I went on over and looked around. Never been to any sort of comic show before, but I ended up walking out with 65 comics. Lots were $0.50-$1.00 each, so I bought whole runs of a few things, and got some old comics I had vague memories of from when I was a kid. Like the Human Fly and the Invaders, both from the late '70s. Still not sure how I got back to the hotel with that many comics in tow, or when I'm going to read them all.

RegisterFly TRO

2007-04-19T15:46:00.001-04:00

ICANN gets a TRO against RegisterFly. Of all the companies out there on the Internet, RegisterFly has caused me and everyone I know who has used them (like Jason) more problems than I ever thought possible, so the demise of RegisterFly is good news for anyone lucky enough to have gotten out in time. A lot of the details of how the Internet works are still based on good faith relationships. This isn't a bad thing, but sometimes it seems like it is when things like this happen.

Sorry, I know this is boring, but I do DNS for a living, so what can you expect?

I am a machine vastly superior to humans

2007-04-19T15:19:00.001-04:00

Colossus: The Forbin Project is a terrifying tale about free will and what it means to be Human. Nicole of course, thinks the computer is awesome and people shouldn't make their own decisions. Sort of an "I for one welcome our new computational overlords" thing. I think that she espouses this viewpoint just to get a rise out of me, but regardless, she will be thrilled to know that Brian Grazer is slated to produce a Colossus remake.

What I didn't know is that the author wrote a follow-up book, called "Colossus: The Fall of Colossus" which never got made into a movie. Can a movie re-make have an original sequel? Will they change the Russian computer to a Chinese one? Will it suck (note: probably)? Will they use an iPhone to hack into W.O.P.R. (hint, the password is "Joshua")... oops, wrong movie.

I'll know it when I see it

2007-04-16T16:48:00.000-04:00

Anyone who's worked with me extensively (Andy, Brandon, Nicole, etc) knows that I often resemble the little cartoon shown on this post at LifeHacker.

"Now make it look like it's made of chrome.... no, that's not it either. Try making it round. No, the other kind of round!"

I owe Uncle Sam

2007-04-15T14:27:00.000-04:00

Taxes filed. Thanks to Nicole's Prius tax credit we only owe a crappy amount instead of a monstrous amount. <sarcasm>Freelance work is great!</sarcasm>

A minor event

2007-04-14T13:00:00.000-04:00

Last.fm added an events section that is really nice if you don't have someone cool making a great list up for you like those lucky bastards in Chattanooga.

Speaking of events, Signal - The Southeast Electronic Music Festival starts next Thursday (April 26). I'll be in Ft Lauderdale, Florida on business, but it looks like it will be amazing. Ernie mentioned that Negativland will be there(!!), so I'm kinda bummed I'll be gone.

I Think I Need A New Bookmark Manager

2007-04-13T22:49:00.000-04:00

Recommended - Ma.gnolia and the Social Bookmarks plugin for quicksilver, especially since OmniWeb bookmark syncing sucks. Now my bookmarks are synced and tagged and always available. I wish the search functionality was better.

Completely unrelated: I just saw a Cesar Dog Food ad (in High Definition no less), where "I Think I Need A New Heart" by The Magnetic Fields was playing in the background. At first I thought it was a Target commercial. Probably old news, but it was still crazy.

Hi

2007-04-13T22:35:00.000-04:00

'Sup.

Deep troubleshooting

2006-08-01T00:47:00.000-04:00

Because somewhere, someone will need this information:

If your mac mini has a CD stuck in it that is keeping it from booting (say, a Microsoft keyboard driver CD!!!), you might think to try a couple of things. Resetting the PRAM, resetting the PMU, resetting the SMC, holding the eject button, booting into Open Firmware, etc. But no matter what you do, you're still just stuck at a blank white screen. Not even an apple logo will show up. As a last ditch effort, before you box it back up and hurl it with great vigor from a position of great vigor, you decide to see what booting the it up in Firewire Target disk mode will do (Hold down T after you hear the startup sound).

Behold! Connecting the mini as a target firewire system lets you... EJECT the CD! From the controlling Macintosh.

Project Mac-Mini-Replaces-Tivo commences!

Electric Sheep

2006-06-03T15:18:00.000-04:00

During our recent trip to New York, Beth told me that there was a way for your Xbox 360 to blog. Like for you. So I looked around, and sure enough... now my 360 is blogging by itself. It probably doesn't have a lot to say since Beth also got me addicted to WOW.

Experimental Music Love

2006-05-20T17:29:00.000-04:00

There are a lot of pretty Mac apps out there. CoverFlow is definitely one of them. Album art may be a lost artform, but it's still amazing to see it in massive doses. I'm one of those obsessed people who has all their music loaded onto their computer, all the artist and album and track names entered, and all the album artwork associated. Minus a few live albums or compilations, I have album artwork associated with every album I have on my computer. I usually have the last few albums I've bought laying around on my desktop, using Clutter, another one of those great little apps that make using your computer fun again.

last.fm has also scored a place in my toolbar lately. It tracks your listening habits, lets you stream music in custom "radio stations" (a lifesaver if you forget to take your ipod into work), and suggests new music based on collaborative filters. It's a little strange seeing my musical choices right up there in real time. I've even caught myself skipping some "guilty pleasure" tracks, worried that people might discover I'm secretly playing Mandy Moore tracks on the weekends. One night I played all the Love, Execution Style albums a few times in a row just so I could be the top fan for a week or two. Ultimately, it all balances out, I guess. Oh, and that image of recently played tracks above is updated in real-time by the last.fm servers.

Someone said cheese

2006-04-24T00:57:00.000-04:00

I've moved all my pics over to flickr. Feel free to enjoy the various sets... I'm pretty much caught up on the last several years of photos at this point, including our wedding pics (thanks to Murray), pictures of my new nephew, and tons of dog and vacation photos, which I'm sure you can't wait to wade through.

Spamalot, less

2005-09-08T00:00:00.000-04:00

Until last night, spam had become a real problem for me. Through combinations of SpamAssassin and various other mail filters, I was filtering out about 850 messages/day. Then around 30 more that slipped through the filters that I would mark as spam manually. Then, for the last few days I've been topping 1,000 spams per day. Ouch.

Part of the problem is that I refuse to try to hide my e-mail address, the same one I've been using for over 10 years now. Mostly out of stubbornness, but also because I don't think I should have to. I always give out my legit e-mail address when I sign up for new stuff, I stick mailto links on every web page I have just about, and I have multiple e-mail addresses that go to the same mailbox.

Needless to say, I'm on a few lists.

To make it more complicated, I don't believe in blacklists. I think they are unfair and unreasonable, and I've found myself on the wrong end of spam vigilantism more than once (you mat remember when my server and all the sites on it got knocked off the net for several days). I had to find a better solution, one that didn't involve any work on anyone else's part when they wanted to e-mail me.

So last night I grabbed the latest version of qpsmtpd, a drop-in replacement for the SMTP server that comes with Qmail. I've been running it for a little while, but haven't really delved too deeply into the plugins before. Except for the plugin that I wrote that is. Turns out there are a WEALTH of useful spam-fighting plugins in the distribution. And the good ones fight spam not by blacklisting (which is evil), but by either enforcing or exploiting ACTUAL STANDARDS.

For instance, the SMTP specs say that a mail client should connect to the remote server and wait for a banner message before starting the conversation. Spammers often ignore this, so the check_earlytalker plugin waits a second before displaying the banner. When a spam-cannon hits the server and starts talking before it should, we drop the connection.

Enforcing standards really cleans up a lot of wayward e-mail. Requiring the remote host to accept bounces, as defined in RFC 821 takes out a chunk of spam. Requiring a hostname that actually exists in the From: address takes out another chunk. Verifying originating mail servers via their SPF records takes care of even more.

But the coolest plugin is called greylisting. Basically the idea is that the first time a mail server connects to mine, I tell them I'm too busy to talk to them and to try again later. I keep doing this for some duration (I have it set to 20 minutes), and if they try again after the initial 20 minute trial period but before another 3 or 4 hours go by, then I allow future messages to arrive with no delay. Since a large majority of spam engines are based on zombie botnets or some custom message sending system, the very first denial is enough for them to not try again. Imagine a telemarketer that weeds out everyone who had voicemail, and you always screen calls from people you don't recognize. (Note: this means that if you haven't sent me e-mail in a while, the first time you send a message to me it may take half an hour for me to receive it. And this applies to all messages coming into balance, not just those to me. Also, IMAP, POP3, and SMTP can now all work via SSL if anyone cares).

The result? In the last 24 hours, my spam mailbox has gone from more than 1,000 messages in my one-day-of-spam queue to a grand total of 88 received spams (3 of which were not caught by SA). With no vigilante-style blacklists. Will it last? For a while, unless the practice becomes widespread. But for a 90% reduction in spam volume I'm ready to try it out for a while at least.

This hasn't always been here?

2005-08-30T08:26:00.000-04:00

So yes, as Dante (for president) and others have noted in the comments, I did decide to start a new-fangled weblog. The goal here is only to post positive stuff, rather than complaining or posting about how I lost my wallet or found my keys. For instance:

You probably forgot how much you love chocolate milk! I sure did, so go out and buy a carton now!

At least, that's the idea. Maybe one day Andy will set up the domain he owns and I can set up a counter-point weblog there.

(Edit: guess he doesn't own it anymore).

Capitalism++

2005-08-30T00:30:00.000-04:00

Safety First! As of yesterday, I heartily approve of zipping up your laptop bag. Upsidedown, unzipped laptop bags give metal powerbooks the amazing ability to exercise the laws of gravity, fall to the ground, and make a surprisingly sickening "plink!" sound on the pavement. Dents only, no major damage.

Also on this week's approval list: Comparison shopping!

On the travel front, both Kayak.com and SideStep have an interesting interface, although I don't know if they actually save any money over my regular favorite. And SkyScanner is one of the greatest air travel sites of all time, despite the fact that it only has European flights. Check out the the Month-view which lets you see the rates compared to pick out the best day to hop from one place to the next.

Along the same lines is FatLens, a site that lets you find overpriced tickets to events you don't want to see. DVD comparison site BargainFlix is also nice until you notice that the top result is always from one particular site anyway.

I have Africa all over my hand.

2005-08-14T22:04:00.000-04:00

Today's Moment of Movie Brilliance: During the chaotic, climactic argument at the end of A Shot In The Dark, Peter Sellers suddenly turns around to look directly into the camera, exasperated. Genius.