blog of jonathan watmough

Washinton Post Botnet Article - Dump Internet Explorer Now!

2006-02-18T10:07:00.000-08:00

You know when your computer suddenly slows down? You ever wonder what's happening? You ever have to reinstall windows, or run a spyware remover?

Most people would answer 'Yes' to at least one of the above.

This article in the Washington Post tells you what's happening at the other end. A hacker is being paid $7000 a *month* to install adware/spyware/crapware on *your* machine. These programs install themselves though Internet Explorer (the Internet) when you browse. They can do almost anything on your machine. However, like a parasite, they may not damage your data, though they have the potential to, they can and do spy on your surfing habits and online user accounts.

Chances are if you have strange windows popping up on your machine, it is infected. Your passwords, kids details, names, addresses could all have been sucked back to guys like this.

Dump Internet Explorer, maybe dump Windows entirely, and switch to a computer system or browsing software such as Mozilla Firefox, that makes this harder for the hackers.

3d Real Time FFT Analysis Software

2006-02-16T20:33:00.000-08:00

I have a decent pre-Alpha version of my audio analysis software running. It displays a real-time FFT plot from any supported audio input source. Pre-Alpha in this case means non-feature complete, but fairly solid, crash and leak free. The pic shows data being displayed on a labelled plot with the settings window up and displaying the current settings. Through the magic of Cocoa, changes to the sliders adjust the plot in real-time allowing easy setup for different sound sources. I have kinda written this software before, but in assembler on a Commodore Amiga. Luckily the Mac OS comes with a built in vector processing lib and though my G4 is hardly a Cray, it does a pretty good job from Objective-C using threads to bury the sound capture, and regular old events to perform data analysis and screen plotting. Any enquiries about this software can be directed to Highland Innovation Centre Limited in Scotland.

Re-enacting The Dodge "I Smell a Hemi Ad"

2006-02-16T19:15:00.000-08:00

Remember the ad ... guy goes "I smell a Hemi!" then jumps out of his car to look under the dustsheet covering a dodge on a transporter ...

Yeah, you guessed it, I managed to reenact the part of the ad where the dustsheet catches on the windshield of the moving car and the guy can't see.

Yep, it was a big piece of plastic and I managed to drive right into it at 70 mph on the Houston Beltway driving to work. Sucks. It was really scary because there was a slap of plastic and the entire windshield just went opaque. Slap! Just like that! And it really covered the whole windshield. I swore, panicked for half a second, then wound the window down and drove for a mile with my head out the window. Managed to pull the mess off my windshield at the toll plaza at Westheimer.

Scary!

Paris Vacation Pictures - Reprocessed

2006-02-12T13:43:00.000-08:00

I reprocessed my Paris vacation pictures to be a bit brighter. Fixed the 'Made with a Mac' logo also.

Click on Paris Vacation Pictures to go directly to the new pictures. You might want to hit 'refresh' to clear out your cache if you already looked at the previous upload.

2006-02-05T14:54:00.000-08:00

p a r i s v a c a t i o n 2 0 0 6

Travel day, and First Day in Paris

Notre Dame Cathedral and Eiffel Tower

Cemetery Pere Lachaise and Musee d'Orsay

Invalides and the Louvre

La Madeleine and St Chapel

Sacre Coeur and Montmartre

Catacombs, St Sulpice and St Germain

All these destinations a photographed at my paris vacation pages on my website.

Paris Vacation Day 4 - Pictures are up

2006-02-04T21:55:00.000-08:00

We visited Invalides and the Louvre. Pictures are up here.

Hope you like them.

My Paris Vacation Pictures

2006-02-04T13:28:00.000-08:00

The first three days of my Paris Vacation are posted on my web-site. Click on www.jonathanwatmough.com and follow the portfolio link on the lefthand side of the page, then click Paris Vacation.

The remaining pages are in progress.

New Web Page at Jonathan Watmough.com

2006-02-02T18:48:00.000-08:00

Finally, I fixed up my old 1990's era web page into something a bit more contemporary looking. The old page, above, has become the new page below.

Back in Texas

2006-01-29T16:53:00.000-08:00

Safely back in Houston after a lonnnnggggg, lonnnnngggg 10 hour+ flight from Paris. Had a great time apart from getting sick with a bad cold/cough for the last few days, but still managed to go out despite that. Even though I was generally trashed by the afternoon.

Pictures will be up somewhere, soon. ;-)

RSS - What is it ?

2006-01-20T21:27:00.000-08:00

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.

Instead of relying on users to browse to the page and look for new content, RSS uses a feed of links, called an RSS Feed to identify when new content has been added to a web-site.

This allows a new breed of slim-line web browser called a News Reader. A great example is shown in the picture. NewsFire is a brilliant little application that allows users to subscribe to RSS Feeds and to continuously track when new stories become available.

For web-sites like Slashdot and Digg, which are used by many people, and have fairly unpredictable posting frequencies, a news reader allows you to read the stories when they appear, rather than fruitlessly rescanning Slashdot every 5 minutes, like some of ... errrr, scratch that!!

Google PageRank

2006-01-20T19:52:00.000-08:00

Here's a great post about how Google PageRank works.

In summary, the number of pages on a site adds up and gets distributed to the pages that the page links point at. So, I just contributed a small amount of page rank to web workshop. Cool.

Things you can do to improve your page rank, which governs how high your web-site appears in Google results, include planning the way you link carefully, and having plenty of content ... the kind of content that other people link to.

New Intel Core Duo iMac - Reviewed by Walt Mossberg

2006-01-18T20:32:00.000-08:00

Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal has reviewed the new Intel Core Duo-based iMacs.

His conclusion is that the iMac is by far the best available computer for the average user. The convenience and reliability of Mac OS X, and the brilliant design of the Apple / Intel hardware make this a machine that's a pleasure both to own and to use.

Damn Speed Channel

2006-01-18T19:01:00.000-08:00

Will I hope the tobacco-chewin', duct-tapin', gear-jammin' hillbillies of Numb... sorry NASCAR are happy. My highly enjoyable 'Legends of Motorsport' on Speed was pre-empted again. The upcoming schedule looks great, with the Alpine Rally, Niarobi Rally, Le Mans all coming on.

For those who haven't watched it, the program features a varied set of archive footage with either updated commentary or the commentary of the day. many times the old commentary is absolutely hilarious. My favourite so far has been a deadpan Tony Pond racing a Nissan against the much more powerful cars of larger factory teams.

When interviewed and asked whether, like the other drivers, he would be off to warm baths and masseurs, the laconic Pond merely replied that he just 'fancied a cup of tea'. Understated by highly able guy.

TCU Horned Frogs vs Iowa State Cyclones

2005-12-31T15:57:00.000-08:00

Thanks to BW3 and a local radio station, I won free tickets to the TCU Horned Frogs game against Iowa State at Reliant Stadium here in Houston. Had a pretty good time. The game when I left it was 24 - 24 in the 4th quarter.

Here's a shot of a horn frog going down right near to getting a touchdown.

Universal Remote

2005-12-29T14:34:00.000-08:00

I just managed to replace 3 of our remotes with a RadioShack universal remote. The universal remote has a cool light-up screen that lights/shimmers the appropriate selected device, and allows key functions to be controlled. It's trial and error to program, since you have to try a bunch of codes from the manual for each device. So far, the Phillips TV, the satellite receiver and the Panasonic DVD player are working. I couldn't find a code for the Phillips DVD player, or the HDTV tuner, but I think these can be programmed by recording the actual remote controls.

But dumping three remotes (so far) for one (cooler) remote is a pretty good start. This is a great piece of hardware.

Leaf Day

2005-12-29T12:32:00.000-08:00

I proclaim today leaf day !!

We spent the morning raking leaves from the huge tree over the backyard. Then we ended up with huge leaf piles all over the lawn. Most of the effort was spent putting the leaves into bags, the second picture shows the 22 or so trash bags full of leaves that we collected.

Back Garden Nature Photography with Nikon D70 and Nikkor 80-200/4 AI

2005-12-18T10:24:00.000-08:00

The attached pics on this post are of a squirrel that the cat was attempting to stalk. The 80-200/4 is an AI lens, so it was manual focus and non-metering on the camera. However, with the instant feedback of having a digital camera, it was easy to home in on f4 and 1/400 sec for these exposures. Since the light didn't change, I stuck with the same exposure for all the shots.

Winter In Dearborn, Michigan

2005-12-15T17:30:00.000-08:00

Duckpond at Fairlane Woods

View across to the Trees

Working in Detroit this week, and experiencing quite a lot of snow. I went out this evening and took a few pictures in the last dying of evening.

Houston Downtown Aquarium

2005-12-12T19:04:00.000-08:00

Spent Sunday morning at Houston's downtown aquarium. This is a pretty cool attraction. Here are some of my pictures:

Tokina 12-24/4 Lens for Nikon D70

2005-12-12T18:21:00.000-08:00

I have the Tokina 12-24mm/4 ultra wide angle lens for my Nikon D70. I'm not sure about the color rendition though.

This picture was shot at 1600 sensitivity so you can see some noise, but it's still better than having no picture at all. I think I like this lens a bit more than my 18-70mm Nikkor. It's actually the first non-Nikkor I've purchased.

The big drawback for my shooting is that if you want to use fill flash, you have to zoom in to at least 20mm otherwise you will get a big shadow in the bottom of the picture. I guess I'll be able to work around this, maybe by keeping any foreground detail away from the shadow, but it's annoying if you permanently have slow/rear/-0.7ev (my fill flash settings) always in the camera. Actually this problem would be even worse with larger lenses like the 2.8 aperture lenses.

Lunch at Pei Wei - Sunday

2005-12-12T18:16:00.000-08:00

Had lunch at Pei Wei on Sunday. Haven't eaten there for a while. Quite enjoyed the coconut curry and pork.

The picture is taken with my Nikon D70 and the Nikkor 18-70/3.5-4.5 lens. I'm really enjoying this camera, and the only downspot is the fairly large (conspicuous) size and fair degree of complexity.

Looking at a New Camera

2005-11-14T16:54:00.000-08:00

I think it may be time to update to a new camera. The shiny new Nikon D200, the shiny Canon PowerShot S80 are looking pretty good compared to my old PowerShot S40.

This is as good an excuse as any to point at Amazon, and say:

Find the Perfect Holiday Gift at Amazon.com Gift Central

Detroit Airport Tunnel

2005-11-12T16:16:00.000-08:00

Detroit Metro airport has a fantastic 'light tunnel'. It also plays cool music. Here's a picture. It's a bit monochromatic looking, but I'll try and get another picture when I'm up there.

This picture was taken with my Canon Powershot S30 set on aperture priority, with about f10, to guarantee a nice blurry effect.

U-Hauling -- Good Experience

2005-10-23T17:13:00.000-07:00

Just moved the contents of my life, in crate form, to my girlfriend's place. Despite all the bad press, the natural choice for a 'cheap' move was U-Haul. I used Private Mini Storage of Sawdust Road Spring Texas, and we reserved a large truck a few days in advance, picking up on Saturday at 11am.

We arrived about 10:30am and went through some basic paperwork. My quote was $39.95 + $14 insurance + $50 mileage estimate coming out to about $120. This really is quite a lot cheaper than hiring movers, especially when moving lots and lots of small boxes which are easy but time consuming to load.

The Tiptons were couteous and business-like, and Randy pulled a 24' gas truck round the front for me. I guess they are used to people renting trucks, so there wasn't too much mollycoddling. The truck was a gas-powered 24' with AC and automatic. It had 194,000 miles on it and started up fine. As usual with any big, fairly well-used piece of equipment, there were a variety of hisses clunks and squeaks, shakes, lurches etc. But, the truck had a good vibe going, being extremely clean, and having all gauges working. I asked, and the truck was a 'one-way' truck, from Arizona. Apparently these trucks are the best maintained ones, having to do long hauls across the country.

I put 20 gallons of gas in it, since it only had about 1/8th of a tank according to the gauge, and the drive down to my apartment went fine, with 45 and beltway 8 passing beneath the big wheels at about 55-65 mph. I kept a good eye on the gauges and the truck never lost charge, or got hot, though the gas sloshing around in the 40 gallon tank (my guess) sure made the gauge go up and down.

Once down at my apartment, I loaded the entire floor of the 24' truck with boxes and plastic crates. Some of it was stacked up, but there was enough space to have most of it one layer. At least nothing was going to be falling around.

The drive back up to Spring was pretty uneventful, until the ramp onto 45, when two guys in a truck got somewhat of a scare when the wheel came off (!!!) their truck. The people in an Explorer on the 45 feeder were pretty lucky not to get killed, as I watched the wheel from the other truck just miss them.

Made it back and unloaded, then returned the truck on Sunday morning about 10:30am. Final mileage was 80 miles, so the bill was just over $150 bucks (+fuel), so I was pretty happy. Overall, if you're happy driving a big truck, that doesn't go very fast, or at least aren't scared, then go for it. It took about 6 hours to do the whole move, so I saved probably a couple hundred bucks on movers. Recommended.

Sunday Night + New Week, New Mac App

2005-10-16T21:26:00.000-07:00

That was some busy weekend. Spent a bunch of time on Saturday and Sunday packing boxes in my apartment. Actually, this time, I'm using sterilite tubs from Target, which are a lot nicer (and more expensive) than cardboard boxes. It's pretty nice to be able to see what you have in a tub though.

The picture above was cropped out of a digicam original taken in crappy lighting and enhanced using Graphic Converter. It's definitely feeling like every time I do something with this mac, I find some more cool software. GraphicConverter is like a Mac version of PaintShopPro. It supports lots of file formats and has a pretty comprehensive toolbox, and list of effects.