More Cools Things About Meebo
Meebois interesting service which lets you IM from anywhere just using a web browser, I talked about in an earlier entry. I didn’t think about it until just yesterday...using this service you can get around any type of firewalls and/or restrictions on software installed on a computer. Now students using school computers and employees on work computers can IM without problem. I will state the obvious in case you’re missing the point here. School and work computers typical have restrictions that block software from being installed, and they typically have in place firewalls that block the ports used by IM software to communicate. Here’s the cool thing, with Meebo you’re only browsing the web. If you can browse the web, then you can use Meebo, then you can use IM 
Now obviously, they could block Meebo.com if they wanted to get tricky, but this requires a bit more intelligence on the part of these people, and I think we can all agree...most of the sysadmins don’t have that kind of intelligence or motivation. Also...I won’t go into here, but we all know it’s not difficult to get around sites been blocked right? 
On an entirely different note, Meebo has been doing a lot of updates as of late. They now support logging in and appearing offline. They also prompt you to verify that you in fact wanted to log off if the page tries to refresh. This service is just getting better every day. According to the developer’s blog they are planning adding in IRC, possibly VOIP, and maybe even a skype-like program. Keep an eye on this one.
Weird Webhosting Quirks
So I found a weird “quirk” related to my webhosting company this evening. In the entry about reaons it’s great to be a guy, the word c-u-r-l was included. This turns out to have triggered a nice “feature” my webhost has in place to maintain security.
If the post has “w-g-e-t” or “c-u-r-l” in it, then this was blocked by mod_security.
What is the w-g-e-t he is taking about?
GNU W-g-e-t is a free software program that implements simple and powerful content retrieval from web servers and is part of the GNU project. Its name is derived from World Wide Web and get, connotative of its primary function. It currently supports downloading via HTTP, HTTPS, and FTP protocols, the most popular TCP/IP-based protocols used for web browsing.
W-g-e-t’s features include recursive download, conversion of links for offline viewing of local HTML, support for proxies, and much more. It appeared in 1996, coinciding with the boom of popularity of the web, causing its wide use among Unix users and distribution with all major Linux distributions. Written in portable C, W-g-e-t can be easily installed on any Unix-like system and has been ported to diverse environments, including Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, and OpenVMS.
And What is the c-u-r-l he is taking about?
PHP supports libc-u-r-l, a library created by Daniel Stenberg, that allows you to connect and communicate to many different types of servers with many different types of protocols. libc-u-r-l currently supports the http, https, ftp, gopher, telnet, dict, file, and ldap protocols. libc-u-r-l also supports HTTPS certificates, HTTP POST, HTTP PUT, FTP uploading (this can also be done with PHP’s ftp extension), HTTP form based upload, proxies, cookies, and user+password authentication.
Lastly, what is mod_security?
Running public web applications may seem like playing Russian roulette. Although achieving robust security on the Web is possible in theory, there’s always a weak link in real life. It only takes one slip of the code to allow attackers unrestricted access to your data. If you have a public web application of modest complexity running, chances are good that is has some kind of security problem. Take this URL for example:
http://www.webapp.com/login.php?username=admin’;DROP%20TABLE%20users--
If your application is vulnerable to SQL injection, invoking the URL above may very well delete all user data from your application. Do you make regular database backups?
So basically mod_security checks everything going through the webserver to make sure it isn’t outputting these designated danger words/phrases that could unintentionally (or intentionally) lead to information being disclosed that one did not intent to have public. I don’t know about you...but I learned several things tonight.
100 Reasons Why It’s Great to Be a Guy
These are not my own, but they are pretty fun (and mostly true). 
100 reasons it’s great to be a guy
1. Phone conversations are over in 30 seconds flat.
2. Movie nudity is virtually always female.
3. You know stuff about tanks.
4. A five-day vacation requires only one suitcase.
5. Monday Nite Football.
6. You don’t have to monitor your friends sex lives.
7. Your bathroom lines are 80% shorter.
8. You can open all your own jars.
9. Old friends don’t give you crap if you’ve lost or gained weight.
10. Dry cleaners and haircutters don’t rob you blind.
11. When clicking through the channel, you don’t have to stall on
every shot of someone crying.
12. Your butt is never a factor in a job interview.
13. All your orgasms are real.
14. A beer gut does not make you invisible to the opposite sex.
15. Guys in hockey masks don’t attack you.
16. You don’t have to lug a bag of useful stuff around everywhere you go.
17. You understand why the movie “Stripes” is funny.
18. You can go to the bathroom without a support group.
19. Your last name stays put.
20. You can leave a hotel bed unmade.
21. When your work is critized, you don’t have to panic that everyone
secretly hates you.
22. You can kill your own food.
23. The garage is all yours.
24. You get extra credit for the slightest act of thoughtfulness.
25. You see the humor in Terms of Endearment.
26. Nobody secretly wonders if you swallow.
27. You never have to clean the toilet.
28. You can be showered and ready in 10 minutes.
29. Sex means never worrying about your reputation.
30. Wedding plans take care of themselves.
31. If someone forgets to invite you to something, he or she can still
be your friend.
32. Your underwear is $10 for a three pack.
33. The National College Cheerleading Championship
34. None of your co-workers have the power to make you cry.
35. You don’t have to shave below your neck.
36. You don’t have to c u r l up next to a hairy butt every nite.
37. If you’re 34 and single, nobody notices.
38. You can write your name in the snow.
39. You can get into a nontrivial ****ing contest.
40. Everything on your face stays its original color.
41. Chocolate is just another snack.
42. You can be president.
43. You can quietly enjoy a car ride from the passenger seat.
44. Flowers fix everything.
45. You never have to worry about other people’s feelings.
46. You get to think about sex 90% of your waking hours.
47. You can wear a white shirt to a water park.
48. Three pair of shoes are more than enough.
49. You can eat a banana in a hardware store.
Creative Zen Vision:M
There’s been a big stir lately about Creative’s new MP3/Video/Photo player. Here are a bunch of articles talking about this “iPod Killer” (such a stupid term).
Creative Zen Vision: M Launch Report
Creative Zen Vision:M Singapore launch (Cnet Asia: 8.2/10)
Features:
Capacity: 30GB
Functionality:
- Music: MP3, WMA, WAV
- Video: MPEG1/2/4-SP, WMV9, AVI, Motion-JPEG (MJPEG), DivX 4/5 (SP), XviD (SP)
- Photo: JPEG (BMP/GIF/TIFF/PNG will be converted to JPEG)
- FM tuner & recorder (ADPCM WAV)
- Voice recorder (ADPCM WAV)
Screen: 2.5”, 262,144 colours, 320x240 resolution
Video output: 640x480 NTSC/PAL
Battery: 14 hours (music), 4 hours (video)
SNR: 97dB
Zoom function for photo viewing
Vertical touch padDimensions: 62mm x 104mm x 18.6mm / 2.44” x 4.09” x 0.732”
Weight: 164g / 5.78ozBundled Accessories:
- Power adapter (with interchangeable plugs)
- Sync adapter
- Earphones
- USB2.0 cable
- pouchOptional Accessories:
- Docking station (pictured above)
- screen protector
- AV out cable
- Wired remote
- Car charger
- FM transmitter
- leather pouchZen Vision:M Colours:
America: White, black, green, blue, pink
Europe: White, black
Asia: White, black, greenRRP: US$329.99 / S$598.00
Official Launch: 9 Dec, 2005
Wow I definitely want to get one of these…
Update 1:I was thinking about it, for anyone out there (read: Apple-Fan Boys) who even want to attempt to scream “What a rip off of the iPod interface!!”...please read this and then promptly shut up.
I guess it’s about time for something about me…
I guess it’s been a while since I last said anything about myself on this. Well here it goes. It’s just about that Christmas time. Why do I like Christmas? About 5% of it has anything to do with the presents. Obviously, they are nice, but that not nearly that important. So why do I like Christmas? I like the warm family feeling. I like how everyone wants to be there (usually). So what is Christmas about? It’s about family, it’s about good food, a blazing fire burning all day long, and it’s about catching up with those who are close to us. That all being said I want to be spending Christmas with you. You are a very large part of who is special to me, who I care about, and who make me happy. I wish there wouldn’t be all kinds of death and fire raining from the sky if I was to go to Norway for Christmas, but as my mother pointed out, this is likely the last Christmas we may have together for a while. My brother quite likely will end up somewhere like Denver as of next year which isn’t the other side of the world, but it’s still a lot more difficult to make it home for holidays. So, I guess the whole point of this post is this: even though we may not be together this christmas, I hope it’ll be the last one apart.