Schinckel.net

Well, I’ve been back into WoW, including the Burning Crusade, for about a week or so now. I did the short 10-day teaser trial, but since none of my mates were on anymore, it wasn’t that good. Having people you really know to quest with makes a big difference.

Having said that, I’ve been madly levelling another toon, a Dranei Shaman. Similar in many ways to a Druid, he can take a bit more damage without having to change into a Bear, which means he can keep casting while taking a beating. Not as much as say, a Paladin, but a bit nonetheless.

I’ve also respecced Ibu to feral, meaning she does a heap of DPS in cat form, and can withstand a stack of damage in Bear form. Fun stuff. Since she lives in Outland now, I’ve also been doing a bit of PvP, which is really fun. It’s the best way to get the heart pumping, much more than just questing.

from xkcd.com, the greatest web-comic ever:

Don’t read anything into it, just laugh

I noticed an ad in my Adsense section today. At first glimpse, it looks like an advertisement from Apple for iTunes.

Version 7.5 Free Download The Latest Version. Just 99c a Song Fast Download - 100% Guaranteed.

Then I hovered over the ad, and noticed the link: iTunes-Classic.com. I followed the link, and came across the dirtiest, dodgiest site I have ever seen. Well, maybe not the worst, but it’s pretty scummy. “Download straight to your iPod” Free, written everywhere over the site. And then when you click on a link, and go to the “Join” page:

3 year Unlimited VIP Membership for only $49.95 - $11.65/year 2 Years Full & Unlimited Access for only $16.44/year 1 Year Unlimited Access for $29.88 Supercharge my Internet connection with our award winning Download Accelerator for only $14.95 and download up to 300% faster!

I’ve even hunted around this site further, and I suspect it is one site of many that do similar stuff, since there are domain names like: transaction-id.com secure.signupsecurity.com and so on, with product names and so on. My tip: they don’t offer any services, and charge $50 to allow you to download iTunes, which is free from Apple. Their FAQ even says this, but they spin some shit about making it easier for new computer users to be parted with their money find the software they are looking for.

This seems to be pretty new in iTunes (i.e., I haven’t noticed it before): if you are viewing an album in the grouped view, and you have ratings on some or all of the tracks, it displays an average rating for the album:

This is in a different set of stars to the normal rating of tracks. However, you can explicitly rate an album too, which changes it to the other type of stars:

Interestingly, if you do this to an album with tracks already rated, it will choose ratings for the tracks that haven’t been rated, so that it creates the right total rating:

This rating isn’t stored with the track, if you open the Info window for one of the hollow star rated tracks, it hasn’t actually been rated.

This is quite interesting.

In the latest firmware upgrade for Airport Extreme N servers, there is a new setting for IPv6 Firewall.

I received this in email today:

ZTMC is interested in advertising text links on schinckel.net, or other websites that you might own.

ZTMC manages a network of advertisers that range from large corporate sites to kid friendly sites.Many types of advertisers are represented in the network, with the exception of adult sites and warez (hacker/pirated software) content.Again, no warez or adult sites ads are displayed.We would like to display four links randomly on your site, ideally on every page of your site.Home page only or run of sub-section ads are also an option.Typically, the ads are placed in the footer of your site but they could also be in the header or a side bar.Payment for these ads would be upfront each month, the first month being paid once the ads are live and reviewed for proper setup.

Our monthly agreement would continue indefinitely, and we will pay you in advance based on the day of the month you began running our ads, providing your site performs as expected.

These ads are not banner ads, they are simple one line text links.You will be able to theme the links, adjusting the size and color to fit your site as you see fit, as long as they are properly visible to the users.

I hope you agree that this is an interesting way to help you grow your website and monetize your hard work.

Please contact me if this interests you.I will provide examples of these ads on existing sites and hopefully we can agree on a monthly fee that will be mutually beneficial.

Thank you for your time,

Nicole,
Marketing Manager
ZTMC, Inc.

Now, this is actually the first Spam email I’ve ever seen that might be selling a product I might be interested in. Apart from the fact that I don’t use that website anymore (although they have addressed this), and I already have an Ad system. Not that I’m really that happy with Google AdSense, but I’m close enough to actually receiving a payment after several years I can’t stand to leave.

And finally, I cannot bear to respond to a Spam email. So bad luck, Nicole, you should have chosen a more appropriate method of trying to get new business.

Well, Mail.app got worse. Instead of just downloading a few, then one message at a time, it then refused to download any messages. And when I went into the web interface, there were a heap of messages there.

I changed around some GMail settings, so that it forced it to download the messages again. All 500+. And I have to delete the duplicates.

(Actually, I changed the POP username to recent:email@domain, and there are 500 messages in the past 30 days. Much better than getting all of them…)

Grr.

The New Wild West • This Way • Jewel ★★

I didn’t really get into the new series(es?) or Dr Who. I used to watch it as a kid, since I only had two TV channels, one of which was the ABC, and this, along with The Goodies and Monkey! were staples of my afternoon/early evening viewing. Then, later on, it was time for The A Team (which, along with Monkey!, I wasn’t really allowed to watch), and the original Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers and the like.

So, I wasn’t really that interested in watching Dr Who. Except apparently there is nothing else on any of the other stations at the time it is on, which is a Saturday early evening. So, in the last month, I’ve been tuning in. It just shows you how I don’t have a social life, too.

And the episode aired last night was fantastic. Statues that are really Quantum Assassins, that turn to stone when any living creature looks at them, so they look like statues. But if you look away, then they can sneak up on you, and kill you.

And the time travel aspect was cool. Closed loops of time, effect predating time. Timey-wimey stuff.

Looks like my Saturday nights are now booked. At least 7:30 until 8:15 p.m., anyway.

Or Python3.0, as it is also known, has been released, or rather, the first alpha of it has.

It builds okay on OS X, although I’ll need to download some stuff to get it to build bsddb and readline, among other things. Since I use these two modules, I’ll get them at least.

There are lots of changes in python3.0, including integer division returning floats, and input() being what it should be (instead of having to use raw_input()). print has become a function, and a whole lot of other things have changed. In fact, programs are likely to not run under 3.0 without a rewrite.

I’ll keep 2.5 around for a while longer, methinks. Hell, I’ve still got 2.3 on here, just incase.

According to Optus, they are not using Telstra DSLAM ports for new connections, but have their own hardware installed in exchanges.

This was the reason given to a friend why her ADSL could not be connected.