The word of the week is gregarious.
Feb 20 – Hacking Receipts?
Now, this is the way to hack
old-school: do no harm.
It seems that earlier this month, an ethical hacker decided to educate people on the dangers
of leaving their Internet connected devices unprotected.
How? By printing out messages on the
devices, like this one:
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Love the message AND the mech!
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Unlike modern-day hackers, who
are all in it for the money they can make by digging into unprotected
systems, this hack harkens back to the early days of hacking when hackers just
did it for kicks or, in rarer cases, to educate those they hacked about the
dangers of what could happen if electronic doors are left unlocked.
Makes me want to shake his hand,
when it comes down to it....
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| I'm eating a minimum of one of these a day, plus 5 veggie portions... |
Speaking of hacking, I have to
figure out a way to gain some healthy weight. I'm still 15 lbs
down from where I was before Christmas, and I don't feel that's good - at all.
I feel... stretched out, like butter spread over too much
bread, to paraphrase Bilbo Baggins. People at work have commented on how I look skinny,
and not in a "Hey, I see that diet's working for you!" kinda way. Not
having any fat whatsoever on me means that I'm even more sensitive to being
cold, which also isn't good.
Time for some more research... which
is time away from writing, damn it.
Feb 21 – All Good Things 3D
I do so love interactive CGI... it's
just meant for spaceships!
And what better spaceship to display
than the Enterprise-D? Have a gander at the version of the
ship from the last episode of the ST:TNG TV series:
on Sketchfab
I love that the
artist has so patently re-created not only the exact dimensions of the ship,
but also has lovingly added all the circus details that really make the ship
stand out. If you manipulate the controls, you can also push the
camera into the interior, for an unusual inside-out view.
Feb 22 –Traveling by Proxy
How about a guest blog this week?
A local writer friend of mine has
been traveling the world for some months now, documenting her experiences
rather thoroughly, to my delight. She's not afraid to go places and see things
off the beaten path, which is wonderful to see... and she's certainly more
adventurous than I am:
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| Looks like a doggone good time to me! |
She also gets to see parts the world
that few of us would willingly venture into, such as the recycling zones of the African continent, where
scenes like this are commonplace as discarded North American items are reused
or recycled for parts:
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| Agbogbloshie - where you tech goes to die and live again |
After checking in on her blog, and
as I'm writing my own blog, I am reminded that everyone's life is an adventure.
Some of us are more inwardly focused, while others kick caution to the wind and
let it take them wherever it leads in our wonderful world.
I'm quite happy to
watch from the couch, at least for now.
Feb 23 – Shaking Quakes
This week, we had several
earthquakes happen nearby.
There were three magnitude four quakes this week in
the areas around Vancouver island, which are strong enough to make walls creak
and move loose objects around on surfaces:
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| Too close for comfort... |
It's just another reminder that the
area where I live isn't exactly stable, like the massive
plates of bedrock that underlay most of North America. Pressure is always
building along the fault lines on the West Coast, and at some point in the next
50 years there's going to be a massive quake.
What's worrying is that a recent
study shows that almost one in three of Victoria's buildings are likely
to suffer enough damage during earthquake that they would need
to be demolished, which is rather shocking in my mind. I live in an older wood
framed 4-storey building, which current building codes do not require to be
siesmacally upgraded by the property owners... and the cost of that would
be extraordinarily expensive as it stands anyway.
In the meantime, I've yet again
looked into setting aside money for earthquake preparedness. At a minimum, will
need to have a decent medical kit, as well as enough supplies to survive at
least 72 hours, the minimum recommended time before substantial organized help
will arrive from other areas of the country. As I've estimated the costs at
around $300 for survival goods, it's going to take a while to assemble these by
piece.
However, peace of mind is something
that you can't really buy when it comes earthquakes.
Feb 24 – Y not?
After a friend and I had breakfast
today( my day off! )we went to the Y.
It wasn't to work out, but just to
have a look at the place, which I've walked past on my way to work for the last
few years but haven't really thought about getting a membership at, until my
friend talked to me today about the possibility.
We were given a tour of the facility
by a friendly staffer, who took us everywhere within the
building, including some locations by the back ways. I got to see the
gymnasium, the various weight rooms, exercise machines such as the elliptical
and Cycling arms and even yoga areas and the hard-to-find boxing room.
In the main, though, it's the pool
that interests me most.
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If only this were the pool at the Y ...
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At the moment, I really need to get
some low impact flexibility exercises going, and the easiest way I can think of
making that happen is to do so while swimming. I made sure to test the
temperature of the pool water on the tour, and it was more than warm enough,
which is a big factor considering how sensitive I am to the cold right now,
being underweight and lacking body fat.
However, I think I'm going to wait
at least another 2 months before getting a membership, in order to cut down on
the possibility of catching a bug from the pool water.
Peak flu season generally runs from December to April each year, and anyone who
is sick only has to take a swim to spread the germs throughout the pool. If I'm
there at the same time, the chlorine may not act quickly enough and I can't
risk that given my current lack of good health.
Which is a shame, as a warm daily
swim in the winter sounds wonderful right now...
Feb 25 – Smoking New Cell!
As most of you well know by now,
secondhand smoke is an issue that bothers me greatly. Living next to a neighbor
for the last three years who is a heavy smoker hasn't been all that pleasant,
but they're entitled to their choices as much as I am, despite
the constant leakage of fumes from their apartment into the surrounding spaces
which I feel that's an imposition on the health of other tenants.
However, a proposed change in smoking laws aims
to change that dynamic in Canada:
Personally, I'm all for making rentals smoke-free, as the onus is on the tenants to meet the legal requirements that the Landlords are operating departments under. As for those people who own their own condos, it makes sense that it would still be the choice of the property owner whether they want to smoke or not, and if that bothers her neighbors then it would be a legal matter to take up with the strata board. Health Canada will happily take your feedback on the subject here until April 2017, several major voice heard, for yea or nay.
Personally, I'm all for making rentals smoke-free, as the onus is on the tenants to meet the legal requirements that the Landlords are operating departments under. As for those people who own their own condos, it makes sense that it would still be the choice of the property owner whether they want to smoke or not, and if that bothers her neighbors then it would be a legal matter to take up with the strata board. Health Canada will happily take your feedback on the subject here until April 2017, several major voice heard, for yea or nay.
On an unrelated note, I finally
caved in and ordered a new cell phone. My OnePlus One keeps losing
the cell tower signals, and despite two factory reset this month
it's still got other issues, so I'm throwing in the towel for this shiny new cell:
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| For $253 CAD shipped, it's better than what I have now, with good reviews! |
I've been searching for the last 6 months for a cell I can live with AND actually afford, and I finally found one this week after waiting patiently. As you can see above, the phone is comparable
to my current one, but for a far better price compared to the $475 I scraped
together in 2014. It's an upgrade in terms of the CPU / speed, as well as a
better screen and more RAM. Best of all I don't have to subsidize it with a
2-year contract( never again! )through Telus: it's my phone
outright.
Mind you, it's doesn't exactly cost 50 bucks either, but with little help from my family this Chinese cell should be
here in a month or so to replace my current Chinese cell and so alleviate the
many little frustrations that I'm enduring daily with my phone.
Feb 26 – Crash, Loop and Boot?
Ah, tech: capable of such irony...
Thinking ahead, I installed a new
backup program today, called Acronis True Image, to make better and more
regular copies of my system in case of trouble.
Then, after rebooting, my Windows10
drive wouldn't work. At all.
( insert colourful cursing
here )
After spending a fruitless hour at
repairs, I took time off and went out to a friend's for the afternoon to play a
new game: Joking Hazard. Made by the good folks who put out
the comi Cyanide and Happiness, it's a card game with a simple premise: make
the funniest / most awful 3-frame comic and so win the round. Like so:
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| That's one of the LEAST offensive card combos... |
As you can imagine, it's a ton of
fun, and quite similar to the popular Cards Against Humanity, but with the
difference that it has both visuals AND text. I played happily for a few hours,
then visited my girlfriend at her poetry critique group over at Wild Cafe
before heading home again... to deal with the ganked PC.
After another two hours of struggle,
I happened upon several YouTube videos that suggested some processes to try
that I hadn't heard before. Lo and behold, one of them works and my main
computer booted up as though nothing untoward had happened -YES!
I immediately got to work on my blog
and once I was done, I initiated a few different manual backups to ensure that
should it happen again before I have a chance to do something more thorough,
I'll still be able to recover the PC.
Whatta pain my tech's being this
week... but I still rely on it. Onwards!
It was a pretty good week: work was
busy but not crazy and I didn't have anything happen health-wise that I
couldn't handle; even my digestion was untroubled, though I had a few
after-meal moments that I think were related to rice of all things... so I'll have
to eat less of that at a go.
