Carbonized Blog

I have just read the news that two spammers who had been abusing MySpace to send out spam messages for various things from selling ringtones to porn sites failed to turn up in court and were fined $234,000,000 (about £119.5 million) in their absence! Read full story.

If anyone actually visited this site this morning you would of seen a notice saying my account had been suspended. This was because I made a script to demonstrate how realistic fake login pages can look and how easy they are to make. You can see the page in question here (page design changed. See more recent entry). As you can see it even says it’s a fake login at the bottom. All the script does is display the details you have submitted. I suppose I should add a few more hints that it’s a fake login. Thankfully I had informed a member of staff at my hosts about the script when I made it and he helped sort the mess out.

Ok for some installing Linux along side Windows and dual booting between them is easy to do. For most of us it’s something we have never done before and so is beyond us. Anyway along comes Wubi that does all the hard work for you. Wubi is a downloader and installer for Ubuntu.

Basically you download Wubi and run it. Wui creates a virtual partition on the drive of your choice and you can even specify the size for the virtual partition. On running Wubi it will ask you what drive to put the virtual partition on, how much space to use for it, what language to use, which type of Ubuntu to install (Gnome, KDE, KDE 4 remix, or Xfce but I suggest Gnome for people new to Linux), and for a username and password. It then downloads the Ubuntu you have selected and installs it. Once installed you can reboot your computer and at start up you will get a screen asking if you want to boot into Windows or Ubuntu (if you do nothing it will automatically start Windows after 30 seconds). And that’s it. No damage to your Windows installation, no loss of file and if you want to un-install it just boot inWindows and run Wubi again.

I’ve been using this for a coupe of weeks now and mostly find myself using Ubuntu. The Gnome version (which is Ubuntu, KDE version being Kubuntu and Xfce version being Xubuntu) comes with Firefox 3 (web browser), Open Office 2.4 (office suite like MS office), Evolution (Outlook like program with mail and calendar), GIMP (graphics editor), an audio/video player, loads of games, cd/dvd burner etc. It does not come with avi playback nor mp3 playback but when you go to play one of these files it will tell you it needs the codec then offer to install it.

I personally don’t use the default programs and instead I have instaled Amarok for listening to music, VLC for watching films and Thunderbird for reading email. Software is easily installed by using the Synaptics package manager which lists all available software and you just tick what you want to install (or untick if you have it installed and want to remove it) and click apply. it’s that easy.

Went to see Iron Man this weekend and was very impressed. Film was far better than I expected it to be. It is over two hours long but at no point does it feel like it. If you do go to see it you have to stay to see the bit after the credits. It's a doozy.

Ok not really but close. Someone saw a picture of the variable star V838 Monocerotis and noticed how much it looked like the Firefox logo. Have a look for yourself.

Just seen Cloverfield and wasn’t that impressed. The hype promised a lot but the film delivered little. And even worse was the in your face product placement for a certain mobile phone manufacturer. During the party someone starts filming the speech on one of the manufacturers phones and holds it up in front of the camera. The camera then ‘accidentally’ zooms in on the phone when trying to zoom in on the speaker. Later on the main characters phone battery dies so he goes into a electronics store that’s being looted and goes and grabs a battery off a display full of this manufacturer’s accessories (do new batteries even come charged?). And then in the subway station there is a huge poster for this manufacturer on the wall and is nearly every shot. At one point a character is stood in front of it whilst giving a speech but enough to the side as to not obstruct the companies name. There is also another blatant product placement for an American drink (Mountain Dew) where there is a vending machine in the room they are in and it is in most shots.

It’s a shame because this film promised a lot but then again most of it was via viral marketing.

I have just been helping a guy out with a problem he had with my Lazarus guestbook script. Anyway once solved he showed me his work which I found very impressive. I’ll let his own words explain

Hello, My name is David, I live in a tiny whaling village 200 miles above the Arctic circle in a village of only 750 Inupiaq Eskimos. Point Hope Alaska.
The oldest continually inhabited settlement or village in all of North America.
Life can accurately be traced back some 3,000 years, to this one spot of land.

I am originally from Boston Mass. I moved to Alaska to work on the Trans – Alaska Pipeline in 1977. I fell in love with the Arctic and Alaska needless to say, when I had to return to Boston, I cried, I didn’t want to leave, In 1981 I returned to Alaska. I was working in Anchorage as an electrican in the I.B.E.W , I was sent to this village for just three weeks, when the job finished, I quit the company and stayed, that was 27 years ago. I am still here.

Come learn from the comfort of your home or office the Eskimo way of living, High in the Arctic, Eskimo!

You can see some of his photos and read some of his stories on the Ozzu Forums under the title Home Sweet Home @ 50 below zero and you can also read his Blog of ICE.

I just read on Engadget that MS has offered to buy Yahoo! for $31 a share which works out around $44.6 Billion. Wonder what that willmean for those of us who use Yahoo! on a regular basis. I mean Yahoo! messenger and MSN (Windows Live) messenger can already talk to each other. You can read the Microsoft press release here and the Engadget article here.

I went to my local supermarket today (no names, no advertising) and they have already got the bloody Easter stuff on the shelves. I mean damn it's only January 6th and they already have chocolate eggs for sale. And they wonder why people get fed up of the holidays.