Google banned rae.tnir.org

Posted by rae in Reid, the Net, web site
at 10:17 am on Thursday, 28 August 2008

Well, I think it’s more of a combination of Google and Firefox.

My site was hacked via a Wordpress exploit. I’ve updated to the latest (I was at 2.5, now at 2.6.1), which should fix the issue.

I’ve applied to Google to get rae.tnir.org re-evaluated. But their form for re-evaluation says it will take “several weeks”! So until then, my site will be red-eye-banned by all Firefox users.

Ye gods.

2008-09-18 13:05 Update:
Found out that Google is in cahoots with stopbadware.org, and applied to them to get my blog reviewed. Their turnaround was significantly faster than that of Google (which hasn’t done anything yet). I got this email reply from them a day or two after I asked them for a review:

We have received and processed your request for review of your website, rae.tnir.org/. Google’s most recent test of your website found no badware behaviors on the site. As such, the Google warning page for your site has either already been removed or should be removed shortly. In addition, if your site has been listed in our Badware Website Clearinghouse, we will remove your site from the Clearinghouse list.

Sometimes website owners are confused about why Google placed a warning in the search results for their site. In many cases, a website run by an innocent site owner has been hacked by a malicious third party, causing the site to distribute badware without the site owner’s knowledge. If your site was distributing badware because it has been hacked, then simply removing the bad code from your site is not enough to keep your site clean in the future. You will also need to work with your hosting provider to fix all security vulnerabilities associated with your site.

Please note that we will be retesting your website at periodic intervals in order to monitor that it remains free from badware. If we find that you are hosting or distributing badware in the future, the reviews process may take considerably longer than the original review.

Answers to commonly asked questions from site owners who are the subject of Google warnings can be found at: http://stopbadware.org/home/faq#partnerwarnings For tips on keeping your website clean and secure, please visit: http://stopbadware.org/home/security

The StopBadware Team

So with any luck, this blog will be out from under Googles Red Screen of Death sometime soon.

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Ow

Posted by rae in Reid, family, gaming, travel
at 9:31 am on Monday, 11 August 2008

I did something to my leg. No idea how. Maybe the long-ish bike rider over the weekend?

Whatever the reason, it’s now hard to walk. I may have to take time off work to let it heal, or something.

Sat around all weekend at Tony’s cottage up near Minden feeling about as useful as a doorstop. Managed to get 2/3 of the way through “The Bourne Identity” though. The book is very different from the movie. And still good!

I was amazed that I actually managed to get an EDGE internet connection up there.

Ronnie starts D&D camp at the ROM today. He’s loaded to bear with his Warcraft III Monster Manual and bag o’ dice (my bag o’ dice, actually).

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Apple TV Hacking: success!

Posted by rae in Reid, entertainment, hardware, homeowner, software
at 2:11 am on Tuesday, 25 March 2008

I managed to get ssh working at last. And then I tried to enable USB storage, but that was a mistake. I thought it meant I could plug in a USB drive and the Apple TV would play content off of it. But no, it meant rebuilding the kernel so that any USB drive plugged in to the Apple TV would have its main disk copied to it.

The idea is that this external, much larger disk will be the new boot volume. But that’s not what I wanted at all. So the Apple TV got stuck, so .. I reset to factory settings (that’s a brilliant option, btw).

So, I know I can do it now. The scripts “out there” are pretty rough and tumble. I’m thinking I may create a Mac OS X 10.4.9 partition on my Mac Pro, just so that I can copy over all the missing frameworks and libraries so that I can get things like wget to work..

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Apple TV

Posted by rae in Reid, entertainment, family, hardware
at 3:44 pm on Thursday, 28 February 2008

I just popped out to the Apple Store in the Eaton Centre and bought myself an Apple TV (take two).

I got the smaller model since Apple charges over $100 for 120 GB more storage. For $143 I can get a 210 GB more storage from Canada Computers.

Many thanks to Iain, who pointed me at appletvhacks.net. It needs to be hacked, to add support for other codecs like DivX, XviD, and mkv (Merikovian? Merovincian?)

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Chandler layoffs

Posted by rae in Reid, work
at 1:49 am on Thursday, 10 January 2008

Chandler Project

OSAF announced that they’re cutting almost â…” of their staff (from 28 to 10), and I’m one of those cuts. We were told in a meeting on Monday, and the blog post went up Tuesday.

I was surprised by the abruptness of the move, and its timing. Previous guidance had been given that funding would go to the end of the year. But now it sounds like the funds for 2008 will be drastically less than those for 2007.

Alas.

So now Chandler has to get itself set up to make some money. I’m guessing by incorporating some sort of Google technology into the product. Or perhaps on the server side. But these are just guesses on my part. Finding grants and similar endowments might be another strategy.

For me, personally, it means returning to looking for contract work. I’ve already had a few nibbles, so it looks like all will be well. I may be doing some work with Qt.

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Alias get-together, and music

Posted by rae in Reid, entertainment, friends, music, work
at 12:35 pm on Friday, 4 January 2008

cest what
Lisa, me, Bob, Tom and Moira

I went downtown to ¿C’est What? last night to meet up with Maria and several other Alias folk. Since Alias was swallowed whole by Autodesk a while back, I guess we were all ex-Alians..

While talking about what people are doing, someone mentioned Chris and Anita’s catamaran, which led to finding their web page about their year-long journey: www.summatrix.com/padma.

It would be cool to do an video iChat with Chris and Anita from ¿C’est What? some time..

Then today I ran across a haunting song that I’m sure I’ve heard before and like very, very much:


It’s CC licensed, which is cool, and probably why I’ve heard it before. I think it was used as the soundtrack to a YouTube video or something similar that I saw.

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BGG Con

Posted by rae in Reid, family, friends, gaming, travel
at 12:08 am on Thursday, 15 November 2007

BGG Con
BoardGameGeek Con!

Michael and I are headed down to Fort Worth, Texas for the 2007 BGG Con!

We leave on a 1:45pm flight tomorrow and return Sunday night. Jeff and Scott left this morning, and we’ll meet up with them there.

Last year Jeff and John went and came back with some excellent games. Hopefully something similar will happen this year.

Also, with the 91¢ US dollar, we can go shopping at Fry’s Electronics!

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Way Cool Chandler T-Shirts

Posted by rae in Reid, friends, work
at 1:17 am on Friday, 5 October 2007

The Chandler team got cool new T-shirts to celebrate the 0.7 release of Chandler:

t-shirt front t-shirt back

Enter the Reid school of design, where T-Shirts are Meant To Be Seen! Or, “how I would have designed the T-shirts” :-)

t-shirt front t-shirt back

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Airport Fun

Posted by rae in Reid, travel, work
at 11:58 am on Sunday, 23 September 2007

Gate 134
Waiting at Gate 134

boingo wireless
“Boingo”? Did Cory start up an ISP?

I’m sitting here at gate 134, with no WiFi because it’s provied by “Boingo Wireless”, and the minimum you can buy is 24 hours for $10. If they sold 1- or 2-hour chunks for $5 they would be rolling in it, the idiots.

10 bucks a day
Wow $10 for 24 hours!
But I only want 1 hour

For the first time, I got pulled aside at US Customs. I think my guy was alarmed when I said I was going on business and I would be attending a week of meetings. He gave me an orange clipboard, and I went into the people-we-think-are-working-illegally waiting room. Well, it wasn’t called that, but that’s what it felt like.

The lady at the front asked me to put my two index fingers against a biometric fingerprint scanner, took my passport and boarding pass and asked me to sit down and wait for my name to be called. She kept the documents, which alarmed me almost as much as taking my fingerprints. I wonder if there is a mechanism by which I can get my fingerprints expunged. I doubt it. “Foreigners” have pretty much zero rights in the U.S.

When my name was called I talked to a guy who was clearly zeroing in on my being a salaried employee. But when I told him that (a) I worked in Toronto, and (b) was incorporated, he calmed way the fuck down. He said it would be easier if I got a typewritten letter next time clearly delineating the relationship between myself and OSAF. I dunno, this is the first time it was a hassle of any kind.

So now I am waiting at gate 134 for my flight to San Fran, after having a modest lunch of tuna sushi and a diet coke. I have a couple of bags of Skittles for the plane, and I found an outlet into which I’ve plugged my laptop, so I’m good to go.

Or sit and wait until 1pm, as it were.

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Visiting Fry’s next week

Posted by rae in Reid, hardware
at 11:18 am on Friday, 21 September 2007

So while I’m in San Francisco next week, I want to go visit a Fry’s Electronics to both pick up a new phone for home (the Panasonic KX-TG1034s with an extra handset), and to just browse. There is no store near Toronto like Fry’s. It’s like Canada Computers on steroids.

On the other hand, maybe there is an electronics place in San Francisco that sells the handsets at the same price and would be much easier to get to. In order to go to Fry’s I’ll have to take the CalTrain (very similar to Toronto’s GO Trains) to Palo Alto and then either walk or take a cab for two miles.

If anyone has advice about electronics stores in San Francisco, I would gladly appreciate it!

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