That’s a question I’ve been asked several times, and to be honest, I really didn’t know all the details. Till now. Read on.

Interesting news item I found

This site has several photographs and movies of NASA experiments where they pop water ballons in 0 gravity. They simulated the 0 gravity effect of being in outer space by flying an airplane in an elliptical orbit.

I just finished reading the Log4Net Introduction and FAQ and realize I’ve been missing out all these years. I won’t retrofit my current App (just yet), but I definitely need to give Log4Net a try with future projects.

Scott Hanselman asks the question Should one go to Production with a Debug build? Although I find that an intriguing question, I’m more intrigued by the fact that his company exclusively uses Log4Net exclusively.

Ok, I admit it. I’m a unit-tester-aholic. I’m compulsive about it. Sometimes going overboard:

So I was off to a running start with my ambitious new goals of contributing to several open source projects and creating a blog worth reading. But as my wife so keenly pointed out, as soon as I get an inch better, I try to take it a yard.

I thought this was a joke until I realized that it was on Yahoo news. Bush and Cheney say we attacked Iraq because Saddam COULD HAVE made weapons of mass destruction. “Could have”. Gee, well North Korea “could have” made WMDs. Should we attack them? How about India who DO have. Heck, with a bit of time, I think I have enough intelligence and skill to make a WMD. Should I expect an airstrike on my apartment sometime soon? I hope not, my wife would not be pleased.

So I keep blabbing and blabbing about my new RSS Feed. I keep imploring you to get an RSS aggregator and subscribe to my feed. What the hell am I talking about?!

My latest tech toy is an HP Scanjet 5530 Photosmart Scanner (wow that’s a mouthful). The defining feature of this scanner is the photo feeder built in. Simply add a pile of photos (around 24 max at a time) into the feeder, press a button, and go watch your Tivo’d episode of 24 while your photos scan (it doesn’t take all that long).

Stephen Wolfram’s 1000 page tome, A New Kind Of Science, is fully online. http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/

Oh my fucking lord…

This is just too funny! It’s a skit about a white family with an unfortunate last name which sounds just like a terrible racial epiteth, “Niggar”.

1. Specifications are for the weak and timid!
2. This machine is a piece of GAGH! I need dual Pentium processors if I am to do battle with this code!
3. You cannot really appreciate Dilbert unless you’ve read it in the original Klingon.
4. Indentation?! – I will show you how to indent when I indent your skull!
5. What is this talk of ‘release’? Klingons do not make software ‘releases’. Our software ‘escapes’ leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality assurance people in its wake.
6. Klingon function calls do not have ‘parameters’ – they have ‘arguments’ – and they ALWAYS WIN THEM.
7. Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Our software does not coddle the weak.
8. I have challenged the entire quality assurance team to a Bat-Leth contest. They will not concern us again.
9. A TRUE Klingon Warrior does not comment his code!
10. By filing this SPR you have challenged the honor of my family. Prepare to die!
11. You question the worthiness of my code? I should kill you where you stand!
12. Our users will know fear and cower before our software. Ship it! Ship it, and let them flee like the dogs they are!

I’ve never played Allegiance. I’ve never even heard of the game. But Microsoft is releasing the source code rather than abandoning the game. It’s a large download, but an interesting look at the full source code for a game.

I usually ignore the spam that I get (and I get a bunch), but I read one of them a bit more carefully:

We hereby inform you that your computer was scanned under the IP 194.90.37.141 . The contents of your computer were confiscated as an evidence, and you will be indicated.

Umm… I think that the author was probablyÂlooking forÂâ€inditedâ€.

Quick, what’s the hex code for question mark? How about the ampersand? Since, like me, you probably don’t waste valuable space in your brain with that type of information, I have a little trick for you to quickly look up the hex encoding (or URLEncoding) for a character that doesn’t require you building an ASP or ASP.NET page and calling Server.UrlEncode().

So this kid has a dorky moment alone at school in a little studio where he films himself. Next thing you know, his friends upload the tape to Kazaa and this kid is everywhere! People all over the net are remixing the video. Here is the Original and a remix:

Port knocking is a method of establishing extra security between a networked computer and the outside world. It seems like a great idea. For hosts that are running private services that need to be connected to the net, require clients to make a specific series of connection attempts to various ports. After the correct sequence is made, the firewall opens up the port for the client. This would be very difficult to uncover via a port scan.