Brian Hampson - Life and Other Things

From http://www.electoral-vote.com/

Electoral Vote Predictor 2004:   Kerry 243 Bush 280

Strong Kerry (8
Weak Kerry (103)
Barely Kerry (52)

Exactly tied (15)

Barely Bush (62)
Weak Bush (71)
Strong Bush (147)

Needed to win: 270

Come on people in the US PLEASE, PLEASE get out and vote for Kerry.   Bush HAS to lose! The WORLD, and YOU need him to lose.  Please!

Think about it….do you remember pre-9/11?  Perhaps we might all get back closer to that, if we can get rid of this group of idiots that he keeps for company.  You CAN make a difference with your one vote….even if you aren’t in a “battleground” state.  Who cares if your state shows overwhelmingly “Bush” - Get out and vote against him…let him know that there are people out there that actually CARE about what happens in their country, and want their country to regain their image as a peacemaker, not war maker.  None of this will happen if you don’t get out an VOTE. 

From your neighbor to the north, I ask plead with you to “Do the Right Thing”.

Over at Slate, there is an excellent opinion piece that if the US had gone in, back in 2003, when they knew that Zarqawi was at a camp in Iraq, making Ricin, and training terrorists, that we wouldn’t have beheadings as daily news items.  Shame on Mr. Bush

Interesting to see Osama Stumping for Kerry in the US election..

Because he can

They still haven’t got him.  Who?  Oh yeah, the guy that actually hit the US…not that guy in Iraq with the WMD’s

From Yahoo! News:

He accused President Bush of “misleading” the American people since the 2001 suicide airline hijackings that hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon .

Later….

Dave Winer agrees as well.

Further reading elsewhere indicates that this might fall in Bush’s favour.  “We have to re-elect Bush, so that he can continue to hunt down this ruthless killer”.  “His appearance helped me understand why we have our freedoms curtailed…Go get ‘em dubya!”  That kind of thing might just start welling up - heaven forbid.

Like anything popular, GMail has been banged about and attacked by the hacker community. It looks like someone finally found a chink in the armor.

The Register is reporting a vulnerability that could be exploited allowing others access to your mailbox.

Originally reported by Nana - an Israeli news site.

Google knows about it.  Let’s hope they’re fixing it.  In the mean time…don’t go to bad places on the ‘Net (of course, you’d NEVER do that - would you?)

2004-11-03 Google reports bug fixed.

Over at PoliticalCompass.org (terribly original name) they have a “Political Compass” test.  Here’s my result:

The Political Compass

Economic Left/Right: -6.12
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -2.82

I appear to line up close to Nelson Mandela - Definitely could be with worse company

Where does your compass point?

From Netcraft:

The official campaign web site for U.S. President George W. Bush appears to be rejecting visitors from most points outside the United States, while allowing access from U.S. locations.

Netcraft monitors web site response times from seven locations, including four within the United States and three in other countries. Since Monday morning, requests to GeorgeWBush.com from stations in London, Amsterdam and Sydney, Australia have failed, while the four U.S. monitoring stations show no performance problems. Web users in Canada report they are able to visit the site.

You know - after they prohibited us from bidding on rebuilding contracts for Iraq, and they continue to thwart any softwood lumber agreement, they’ve been awfully nice to us Canadians now that they want our Flu vaccine

What about those Americans that are living overseas - I guess they can’t find out the good things about Dubya.  So, I suppose it’s only logical that they vote for Kerry, who’s site they CAN get to see.

Allerca is taking reservations for delivery of hypo-allergenic kittens.  Delivered for the mere price of $3500USD.  Obviously for those that have a fixation with having a cat - no matter what the cost (including GM’ing the cat!)

Here - let me save you some money - if you’re allergic to cats - with this HOT tip!  Don’t buy a cat!  Save $3500 and buy some other pet.  Life won’t end if you don’t get the cat.  Plus some cat isn’t going to get GM’ed.

More about the online Extortion thing.  Yahoo! has an article about online gambling, and the amount of money that these extortionists are asking.  Clean up your PC’s people!

Endgaget posted about a new device from Ximeta.  It’s a 802.11g router/WAP with a 160GB disk built in called a NetDisk Wireless.  It will be good, if they use something like FTP, MS F&P, but as long as they stick with their proprietary NDAS drivers….it’s likely to suck big time.

My take on this (as I posted in the engadget comments):

I’ve got one of the ethernet/USB drives, and the only way to CONSISTENTLY, RELIABLY connect to it is via USB.  The Ethernet attached part HUNG, when transferring 1GB, requiring a reboot to my PC.  The drive just sat there, half copied file and all

Unless they fix this stupid NDAS driver thing, I’d say “Stay as far away from this thing as you can”

Three teachers were tossed out of a Bush rally in Jackson County Oregon for having “Obscene T-Shirts”.  They said “Protect our Civil Liberties”

That’s right.  That’s all.  No Rally for you!  So much for that.  Yeah, they really look like an obscene bunch

At the age of 52, Doug Bennet, died after time in a coma, in Foothills hospital, Calgary.   I’ll miss his music.  Doug and the Slugs made “Fun” music.

Some favorite tunes of mine:

She’s Looking at Me
Tom Cat Prowl

Thanks Doug - you gave me some good tunes to make it through High School and University.

Someone has put together a little animated video ala Schoolhouse Rock, helping explain why what’s going on in the world is a little twisted.   Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz would be well advised to realise that SOME people are onto them.

Thanks Metafilter for the link.

This site seems to indicate “YES” - However….my thoughts, from hearing the audio:  No WAY that could be real…too funny!  You decide!

2004-10-29  Salon ran an article today. (subscription or free day pass) about this, and had the following words:

Dr. Robert M. Nelson, however, was not laughing. He knew the president was not telling the truth. And Nelson is neither conspiracy theorist nor midnight blogger. He’s a senior research scientist for NASA and for Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and an international authority on image analysis.

What if he was also a midnight blogger?  Would that have hurt his cred?  Mainstream media needs to stop dismissing bloggers as a group that can get information out quickly, and often accurately!  (Often MORE accurately than they can!)

One of the nicest Vancouver Webcams I’ve seen is the Katkam.  They use an actual digital camera, rather than some pissy webcam.  The quality of the photos are EXCELLENT. The picture below will likely be different from time to time, it’s a direct link to the cam’s pic.  They say they are selling the application that does the photo capture.  I’ve done some photo capture in C#.  There are examples all over the ‘Net - it’s not rocket science.  But, I suppose it will support the effort to keep this nice feed up.

Enjoy the view of Vancouver’s Burrard Street Bridge.

I wish I could do this!

The artist was paid $40K to do a tile artwork with names of famous people.  Very artsy.  Upon completion, it was realised that she had made ELEVEN spelling mistakes, including an extra “A” in Michelangelo.  So, to make amends, she charges the city council $6000 to fly her back,  also more to put her up, while she fixes her mistakes! 

Then, after the local populace write about her boneheadedness, she says “I’m not going to go, where the people are mean”.  The people are mean, because she’s stupid!  She should have flown back in on her OWN dime, and fixed her problem.  It was HER mistake.

See also:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/10/08/MNGEO95U381.DTL

Thanks to Dave Barry’s Blog for the heads up.

Further to this…..She IS going to fix it up!

Johnvey has done a nice job with hacking the GMail API.  His app (Gmail Agent) allows you to check multiple GMail accounts using one notifier, which is perfect.

Google, of course, has changed the layout a bit, so things broke a bit with 0.6, but I’m sure there will be a 0.7 out Real Soon Now

Also, for the hackers out there, if you have a proxy set in your IE settings,  but don’t have the box checked, .NET apps don’t clue in to the fact that you don’t want to use it.  You have have to tell them via GlobalProxySelection.GetEmptyWebProxy(); or they try to use that set, but unchecked proxy

The tool is cool, and I’m happy…I can check two or more GMail addresses at once!

Thanks for making the source available..Without it I would never have gotten it to work.

See the Google Group where this is being discussed.

Lot’s of cool pics of the recent Mt. Saint Helens steam and rock spewing with links to Large, and HUGE versions of the pics.  thanks USGS (and FurryGoat for blogging about it before me)

The Casacades Volcano observatory page is located here, including references to BC’s own Mt. Garilbaldi

Their entire library of St. Helens pics here

It appears that more and more people are using the underground tunnels and catacombs of Paris to “get around”.  They even have gone so far as to create an underground cinema. Much to the dismay of the Paris police.

Our Cub pack spent a day out near Squamish BC, learning about fire safety, and how to lay and light an effective fire.  We also went out into the tree farm up there, and learned about emergency shelters, and safety near water.  Afterwards we went back to the Cub hall and had pizza, watched movies, and slept over. 

We had a great time, and our new cubs are now ready for investiture.

Pictures from the weekend can be found here:

http://www.slacker.ca/brian/Webpics/Showpix.aspx?200410Cubs