Hidden Threat: Alternate Data Streams Hmm. This is quite interesting. Under any Windows machine with an NTFS disk, you can hide applications inside other files: C:> type nasty.exe > plain.txt:nasty.exe You can then run this command with: C:> start plain.txt:nasty.exe Now, this might not seem like much, but this is virtually undetectable. You can add any file to another file, and even exerienced sysadmins probably won’t find it!
Well, Summer time is here again - although the recent weather where I had Festivus was not exactly Summery. Apparently it was the coldest Christmas on record in Melbourne, and in Hamilton, it was the coldest day of the month, and the wettest. It got up to all of 14.6°C, and the minimum was 4.4°C. There was more rain (7.4mm, more than the rest of the month combined!). We spent the day in the pub, with all of my Father’s family. That was good, since my Uncle and his family are moving to Queensland in a few weeks, so this may be the last time for a while that we all get together. I took about a thousand photos, most of them of my nephew, Jack. I’m yet to find the choice few to print out, but I’ll do this in the next few days. Robe was pretty quiet up until Christmas, and then it rapidly got very busy. I was going to write more now, but it’s getting thundery, and I want to try take some lightning photos.
Medallia20Blog3A20SmackBook20Pro20Archives This is cool. A way to have multiple desktops, and change between then by giving your laptop a bit of a thump.
I’ve started playing this game, but have hit some hardware or software issues. I keep getting system crashes, and Windows crash reporter isn’t much help. I think it’s my graphics driver, and I’m downloading an update. In the meantime it seems to have killed my Direct X installation too, so I’ve updated that. Since I installed, I haven’t been able to run WoW either, so I hope that’s just a temporary thing since the last crash, not a fuckup of the Direct X installation. Update: It gets better. Checkout this error when I try to run AOE III demo: 
Apparently, my GeForce has no memory.
I noticed a few new features in the Dashboard for Gmail for Hosted Domains. Domain alias - it’s now possible to have multiple domains using the same mailboxes. That is, you could have company.com, and company.net, and have users only have ot have one account - all mail delivered to username@company.net can be forwarded to username@company.com, and each user you set up on company.com has the .org address too. Much neater than having a heap of forwarding addresses. Better sign-in URLs - to access hosted Gmail, I had set up a redirect from http://mail.schinckel.net to http://mail.google.com/hosted/schinckel.net/, but it’s now possible to have a proper CNAME record. This works for mail, and calendar. I’ll have to set this up, as soon as I can get to my domain registrar (it’s blocked at work). Cool. Two features I like a lot.
It’s not been a good year to be a celebrity in Australia. With several high-profile Australians lives coming to abrubt ends, we also say goodbye to Belinda Emmett, who was married to Rove McManus. Rove is one of the best known faces on Australian TV, and his wife was at one stage a member of the cast of Home and Away. I’ve never seen this show, nor much of Emmett, but it’s always sad when a young person dies. I think the key difference between Belinda’s death and that of Brocky and the Crocodile Hunter was that these two popular Australians were actively doing something dangerous, which they did as a career, when they were killed. Irwin was filming underwater animals when he was struck through the chest by a stingray’s barb, whilst Brock collided with a tree when racing a motor vehicle. If you like, they chose to participate in dangerous activities, and ultimately eventually paid the price. Belinda did not have a choice. Several years ago Belinda was diagnosed with breast cancer, and had struggled with it, somewhat publicly since then. It was always sad to see her at various functions, a skeletal figure, with only a hint of her beauty still visible. Breast cancer is still a major killer of Australians (including some men, as it turns out), but unlike some other cancers, it’s hard to find a particular cause. Lung cancer is often caused by smoking, asbestos or other contaminants, but breast cancer, like leukemia, appears to strike somewhat randomly. Rove has stated he will not produce another episode of his popular variety program, Rove Live, for the forseeable future.
Just noticed Google Photos in a browser window. This is a new service, according to my reckoning, but is really just Picasa, which Google bought some time ago. New info is that you can use iPhoto to upload images, as evidenced at Mac Tools. I’m glad Google decided to use iPhoto instead of making a Mac version of Picasa. Now all I need is a version of iPhoto that doesn’t totally suck with a large library of photos. Oh, and 250Mb ain’t real big for an online photo album. I’m up to around 6Gb at home, and that’s without really trying.
It’s just mind-blowing… 
This one’s funny, in it’s own way: 
Dear Jane, My name isn’t Frank. It’s Mary.
And for Justin Timberlake fans: I’ve got a hairy back… (sung to the tune of Sexy Back). 
Due to my stupidity in renting my flat to an (alleged) wife-basher, it is now vacant again. If anyone wants to live on Marion Road, just of Henley Beach Road, leave a comment, with your email address in the right box, and I’ll get back to you. Price is $265 p.w., available now. Stainless steel kitchen, Airconditioner, Garage, Security System. Quiet group of 5, established water-wise garden. Close to public transport and late-night supermarket. No pets, or wankers, please. Please, children, no superfluous comments. I will issue detentions.
I’ve had my ADSL reconnected, and was having some issues on my PC only. I didn’t realise they weren’t affecting the Mac, until I wandered around and tried it, and the stuff worked properly first time. It seems there were some issues with having a Firewire network and the Ethernet network (only one of which is actually connected to the internet). I’m not sure exactly what the story was, but it was timing out on requests, and occasionally working. Disabling the Firewire interface has fixed it all up. So, don’t have two overlapping networks, as Windows can’t figure out where requests need to go…