Economy Size Geek

New Version
I meant to post this last night - but here you go!

• Cleaned up the code some more - renamed some functions, broke some stuff down. The main loop is now readable even if you can’t program.
• Props out to Jay Talbot - He submitted code to make it easier to add new authorized emails and helped with testing
• Posting to multiple categories from a single post is now supported - look at the features page for how it works
• Bittercrash suggessted a new feature I added - you can now just put the first part of a category name to post to it. If I put [Wor] in my subject line it would post to this cateogyr “Word Press Modifications” - which should make it easier to moblog into specific categories
• Bittercrash also helped trouble shoot timing issues. I’m hoping this is now completely fixed.
• I was able to replicate the application/stream problem with a jpg. This should now be fixed.

This works with WP 1.5.1.3.

As always if you have problems follow the instructions and I’ll do what I can. If you have feature ideas send them in. I won’t promise that I’ll do it - but I definitly never will if you don’t suggest it.

Original Source is here WP-Mail 0.312

Ok I found a theme I actually liked. And since I figure I’m sticking with WP I might as well fully move in. Only one small problem - the theme was originally in german. So if you spot any that I missed let me know :)

IF it has a problem you hold a phone up to this speaker and it will generate a message they can use to trouble shoot it.

Test driving a $600 Dyson ball vacuum cleaner

I don’t have a floppy drive. (Not absolutely true - I mean there is one somewhere in my lab - but I can’t find it - and it’s the only one I have).

I admit I kicked the floppy habit thanks to Steve Jobs. My Wallstreet Powerbook didn’t come with one standard and I didn’t bother to buy one. Turned out I never really needed it.

Times have certainly changed - there was a time when the floppy was an incredibly important transfer device. But alas -it’s gone - replaced by optical and usb media.

This wouldn’t bother me much - it’s not like anyone ships floppies any more right?

That would almost be true - except for bios updates :( On my home workstation they finally released a tool so I can do the upgrade under windows (Which is not a big deal since that machine actually has windows on it)

Recently I dusted off my mini-itx box. (I’ll post about that project once it really gets going). As part of the process I found out that it is running a bios that is about 2 years behind the current one. I figure it’s probably a good idea to make it current. The problem - well they recommend making a boot floppy - and as I said - I can’t find my drive…

There is another option - bootable cdrom. I’m liking the sound of that. I ended up using a mixture of linux and windows to do this - though you could actually do it purely under linux if you have a burner in your linux box (which I didn’t - hence the switching)

First get a bootdisk for dos - where do you get such a thing - bootdisk.com of course. If you go to the bottom of the list you can find images for non-windows platforms - which is what you want. The windows platform ones are programs that expect - you guessed it - a floppy disk to write thier image onto.

Once you have your dos boot disk image on your linux box - mount it with

mkdir disk
mount -oloop,rw disk.img disk


This lets you modify the contents of the disk image - important because you basically need to put the flash software and the new bios on to the disk image. You have to delete some stuff - I recommend starting with qbasic.*.

Copy your flash program and the firmware onto the image. Umount the disk image. Now if you have a burner in your Linux now is when you would burn a cd image using this image as the floppy portion for booting. (You see bootable cdroms sort of cheat by keeping a fake floppy image as part of their structure so when you boot from cdrom you are technically booting from floppy first - AFAIK)

In my case I downloaded my new dos image to a windows box with a burner and fired up a cd burning tool - told it - make a bootable cd - pointed to my image as the floppy image for booting and burned it. It’s truly amazing how fast you can burn 1.4MB of data onto a cdrom. (Also funny is that cdr media is so cheap it doesn’t even bother me that I’m making a cd I’m probably only going to use once in my life)

Put that cd you just burned in your machine and tell bios to boot off of it - and away you go.

My mini-itx is now happily upgraded and ready to for the project.

WordPress 1.5.1.3
by Dougal Campbell - Wed, Jun 29th 2005 09:01 PDT

Changes: An important security issue which requires an update for users was discovered. You should update your blog as soon as possible to 1.5.1.3. If you are unable to do the upgrade in the short-term, you may protect yourself by deleting the xmlrpc.php file from your WordPress directory.

OK I’ll admit that “reality” tv isn’t really my bag. From time to time there have been hooks that got me in (The Joe Schmo Show was awesome) and since Annie likes them - I end up watching them and in some case getting hooked in the process.

I understand that they are cheaper to produce than a normal show because you don’t have to pay writers and there are probably no residuals (Though I’m not sure they make any money in syndication - I mean is anyone dieing to see that first season of survivor?) but there was something that never quiet made sense - they don’t last very long.

A standard TV show needs about 24 episodes to make a full season. It doesn’t always work out that way because now they re-run epsiodes from the same season even before the season is over. But that’s a lot of episodes. Sone reality shows make it that far but a lot of the most insane ones don’t.

Now it all comes together. It’s ok that they don’t last for very long. They get to make a 5-10 episode reality show - if it is a hit they make a ton of money in the process and if it is a dud - no big deal another one is going to be coming along shortly. Plus since you can make a bunch of them all at the same time - you can add new content over the summer when it is mostly re-run time - which worked fine in the old days - but people watch TV year round now.

So reality shows end up being a huge windfall for the networks as they continually attract new viewers -especially when you stumble onto a hot concept, the creators make a ton off of schulbs who we love to watch, and we the viewing public love it because we get to see “real” human emotions - who needs acting when you can see people say and do things that you would never believe if you knew an actual writer was involved.

Does that mean that the plot driven serial - or feature film is going to go the way of the dodo - it’s probably more likely that we’ll all stop reading books before that happens - but unfortunatly - unless the economics of tv show making change - reality shows are going to be with us for a long long time.

Collateral (2004)

You know I wanted to see this and then I didn’t. I got it from Netflix and didn’t watch it. I recorded it on the Replay and almost deleted it.

With all the TomKat/Tom 2.0 stuff I end up reading on Defamer - I’m not sure I really want to see a Tom Cruise movie for a while (Yes I mean you War of the Worlds)

I ended up watcing this with my brother since he was up for it.

This movie is very character driven. There are two main characters Vincent(Cruise) and Max (Jamie Foxx). The film takes place in a single night and follows both thru it. I don’t consider this a spoiler - but if you don’t already know it - Vincent is a hit man.

The interesting thing about the movie is the way it largely unfolds in Max’s cab. Both men reveal what they are by what they do. In Vincent’s case that means killing people he doesn’t know because he is paid to do that. If you get in his way - he will kill you.

Max on the other hand is a cabbie in denial. He is saving up for something bigger - he’s only a cabbie temporarily for 12 years.

This is relaly the crux of the whole thing - One is a sociapath - who does what he does because he is good at it and he doesn’t care about anyone. The other is cares about people - even strangers - but doesn’t really do anything.

In the writing books this is an absolutely classical story arc - and that isn’t meant as a put down - quite the contrary. It’s classic because it works so well -it’s what we go to see movies for.

I also have to say that although there were a couple of cliches in the film - they avoided a number of them - like when you are moving to avoid the killer don’t step on something that makes noise.

So in the end i”m glad I watched it. Cruise was oddly believable as the heartless killing machine.

Bottom Line: If you can handle the killing, it turns out to be a pretty good movie. Just remember that Cruise is a heartless bastard and it will all be ok.

the joys of medicine

From the bloglines site:

Hi, I’m the Bloglines Plumber. Bloglines is having a little database problem. We’ll now be back at 9 Pm Pacific Time. Bloglines will be all better when I’m done with it. Thanks, The Bloglines Plumber