MD5 Broken

This is absolutely huge and devastating news. A weakness in the MD5 hashing algorithm presented today allows for spoofing hashes by creating a “collision”, ie a different message that hashes to the same thing as a target message. What does that mean to you and me? That means that this weakness can allow SSL certificates [...]

Popularity: 16% [?]

New Frugal Nation

I don’t want to demean or dismiss America’s new found love affair with frugality. I think it is good that people have arrived at this point, where preserving their cash seems more important than owning as much flashy crap as can be accumulated. I have to feel a sense of smugness at this. I was [...]

Popularity: 15% [?]

The Spirit Movie from an Alternate Reality

I am dreading the film version of The Spirit. Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to go see it in the theater. Whatever problems it has, they won’t get better on the smaller screen. It’s just that I fear it will be miserable experience. Everything about it that I’ve seen so far makes it look [...]

Popularity: 27% [?]

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Saul Griffith on the Wattage of a Lifestyle and Energy Literacy

Perhaps my favorite presentation ever on IT Conversations is this session from ETech with Saul Griffith (presentation hardcopy here). He discusses some assumptions on how carbon dioxide levels could be stabilized at non-catastrophic levels and then what the energy requirements of the maximum average lifestyle would be. Interestingly, he analyzes his own lifestyle in terms [...]

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San Francisco Trip Recap

I suck at trip reports. The fact that I have yet to complete mine from Dragon*Con in August points to that fact. I’ll make one quick hit at the San Francisco trip and be done with it.
We flew out Sunday the 14th. For the first time in recent memory, none of the 4 flight legs [...]

Popularity: 24% [?]

Hack an Instamatic

I really like this project for converting instamatic cameras into trippy psychedelic photo takers (also to use 35 mm film for easier availability.) I think these sorts of projects are perfect for those of you looking to get kids involved in making. Find a bit of outdated but still highly available (and cheap) technology, and [...]

Popularity: 26% [?]

Winding it Down in SF

Our San Francisco trip is almost over. We have just one ugly early flight out to make and it is all over. I’ll make a big linky summation later, I don’t have the energy to assemble it all right now. It turns out this length of stay was just about perfect. We did everything we [...]

Popularity: 30% [?]

The Return of Where’s George

For years and years, I was a devoted user of Where’s George. I georged pretty much every bill I could, and I tried to keep them separate in my change so I knew which bill was which for date entry since I liked to enter the venue from which I received it in the notes. [...]

Popularity: 42% [?]

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US Airways Explores New Ways to Annoy

One of the big downsides of residing in the Myrtle Beach area is that most of the air flight out of MYR is handled by US Airways. This flight, at least, we left on time and so far have been without incident. However, I’m not particularly happy about paying for a ticket for a flight [...]

Popularity: 40% [?]

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Gravatars Engaged

For no real reason other than that I felt like it, I added the single line of code to my Wordpress theme to make gravatars show up. I’ve had an account at Gravatar.com for a long time but I’ve really been underutilizing it. In fact, although I had uploaded my logo as my avatar, I [...]

Popularity: 41% [?]

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Dollhouse Paper Dolls

I’m weird about Joss Whedon. I loved Serenity/Firefly and I really don’t like Buffy/Angel. I did enjoy Dr Horrible, so if that’s the tie breaker then I’m willing to give him a little more slack. When Dollhouse hits TV, I’ll watch it and see how I like it. I did decide to be a geek [...]

Popularity: 51% [?]

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Wordpress 2.7

I upgraded this blog to Wordpress 2.7 tonight. It took me literally 3 minutes, and that includes downloading the backup files. I was using the Wordpress Automatic Updater plugin, but apparently this is the last time I’ll need that because the functionality has been rolled into Wordpress itself. This is all to the good. It’s [...]

Popularity: 63% [?]

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Tina Fey in Vanity Fair

My wife pointed to me out this Vanity Fair article on Tina Fey. I really enjoyed the thing. I hadn’t intended to spend most of my lunch hour reading it but I did. What I enjoy about Fey’s success is that it brings up something that occurred to me a long time ago - smart [...]

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Evil Genius Chronicles Podcast for December 7, 2008 - “Gentle Readers Fiesta”

Here is the direct MP3 download for the EGC clambake for December 7, 2008. I play songs from my friends the Gentle Readers, and then I do it again and again until the clock runs out. Really, that’s enough.
You can subscribe to this podcast feed via RSS. To sponsor the show, contact BackBeat Media. Don’t [...]

 
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Popularity: 50% [?]

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Ballast

The other day listening to The Treatment with Elvis Mitchell, I heard his interview with the director of the independent movie Ballast. Between the interview and seeing the trailer, I am sold. This seems exactly like the kind of movie I like. One of the downsides of living in Myrtle Beach is that even last [...]

Popularity: 58% [?]

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How I Would Have Merged Twitter and I Want Sandy

I’m not a brilliant internet entrepreneur or much of any kind of entrepreneur, really. I’m not a strategist or business expert or pundit or guru. All I have is guesswork and barely healed stubbed toes and a general feeling around of my way in this online world. However, even with my lack of chops it [...]

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Tor.Com On the Thermals

I’ve liked the Thermals for some time, ever since the first time some of their music came down the Sub Pop rss feed. I’ve played them on this podcast several times now, and I’m sure I’ll do it again. Much for the same reason as I like Camper Van Beethoven’s “New Roman Times”, I really [...]

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Lessons I Learned about Hyperlocal Coverage

My coverage of the Conway SC mayoral election continues. Yesterday I posted at Grand Strand Bloggers the video of the mayoral debate. Today I emailed every newspaper and TV station that covers this area to let them know about its existence, as well as all four candidates. I’m desperately trying to figure out what else [...]

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Hyperlocal Coverage is Hard

I went to the Conway SC mayoral debate earlier this evening. I videotaped the whole event with the plan to put it online as quickly as I could. The problem is that the sound is kind of janky, and unfortunately in a way that makes two candidates much quieter than the other two. That’s enough [...]

Popularity: 40% [?]