Posted: December 15, 2009 at 11:13 pm | Tags: bing, bing.com, contest, print, tracks
Down the Tracks
So just for kicks, I decided to submit my photo “Down the Tracks” to the Bing.com (picture on the left) facebook contest to see what will be featured on Bing.com (yes, the background of the search area).
Well, to my surprise, I got an email from Microsoft today saying that my picture is one of the finalists! I’m all kinds of excited to be able to get a photo from Mount Clemens shown to worldwide audience.
But I need your help! If you’re on Facebook then you can vote for my picture. Just click here to become a fan on Bing and it will let you vote in the contest.
To show my appreciation for helping me out and being such great supporters I’ll be giving away a couple s 8 x 10 prints of this shot (which I usually sell for $25). Just leave a comment at the bottom of this post (either at http://www.cruzweb.net/2009/12/15/i-need-your-help-down-the-tracks-is-a-finalist-for-bing-com or on the Facebook note) and I’ll draw a couple random names (yes, they will be random) and if you win I’ll send you an email or Facebook message asking for your information.
So pretty please; vote and pass this along to your friends and help me win the Home Sweet Homepage Photo Contest.
Posted: December 12, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Yah, I get the point. Damn, lay off.
Posted: July 24, 2009 at 9:38 pm | Tags: Car, cars, Ford, getaway, History, ninja, pirate, s80, security, volvo, volvo s80
Yesterday morning, I took my car in to get looked over. While the “Diagnostic Testing” was a little pricey, the upside was that they gave me a free rental car off the lot to have fun with while my 940 was under the microscope. I was pretty thrilled to be driving off the lot in a $40,000 swedish luxury sedan: The Volvo S80.
The S80 has an abundance of features that make it easy to fall in love with. And with the elegant dashboard, the blind spot warning system (aka, blinking lights), and the absurdity of putting 6×9 speakers in the front doors, it’s pretty hard not to.
As I was discovering more and more things about the car that were just common sense, I discovered an extra feature: The Personal Car Communicator (PCC).
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Posted: July 23, 2009 at 11:47 pm | Tags: chat, dating, facebook, Girls, internet, picture, Pictures, profiles, Random, relationships, speed date
The internet is a funny place in many regards. The anonymity seems to continue to disappear as people get more comfortable with their online profiles, and people are exposing the weirder sides of themselves at a rather alarming rate.
Along with this comes with the internet creeping into our every day lives. Now that social networking has brought our personal thoughts, political opinions, and the mundane details of our lives into the view of others, we’re looking at our friends in a different lights.
Somehow in the midst of all this, is the Facebook application Speed Date. Somewhere between an e-Harmony account and trolling Myspace profiles lies the logic between this application: look at a random bunch of pictures and quick profiles, see who you like, and contact them. All the while, not looking like a total creep in the process. Oddly enough, I can’t remember when or why I added this app, but I know it only started paying attention to me after I got a girlfriend and as thus, kept trying to hook me up with weird local girls.
But the weirdness doesn’t stop there. The whole point of Speed Date is to find someone to hang out with (at least), right? So it makes you wonder why some word their profiles and likes the way they do. Let’s explore some of the “matches” Speed Date has sent me and encouraged me to “send a flirt” to.
Here’s a handful of local girls that “teh interwebs” thought I might be interested in. Really.
Let’s see what’s behind door number one….
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Posted: July 4, 2009 at 12:25 pm | Tags: dell, Inspiron Mini 10v, linux, Microsoft, ubuntu, uk, Windows
Dell UK has screwed up nicely, insulting any non-windows user on the planet by advertisiting Ubuntu Linux as a Microsoft product, as an OS option on the Dell Mini 10v. Now, if it was Novell Linux, I could appreciate the humor in it. But this is just absurd. As of right not it’s still on their website. Way to fail, guys.
Microsoft Operating System: Ubuntu 8.0.4
Posted: June 24, 2009 at 5:42 pm | Tags: Clickpass, comment, Disqus, login
Due to request, I’ve changed the way people leave comments and log into Conveniently Misplaced.
The first is the comment system, which uses . This allows for a prettier display, guest posting, better conversaion / replies, and syncing up with all other blogs that use the Disqus system. So it should be fun and much more interactive for you guys, which I’m excited about.
Second is the login system, which has been integrated with Clickpass. I had openID set up for a long time but it didn’t catch on. With Clickpass you can login using an MSN, AIM, Facebook, OpenID and more. So it’ll be easier to login and connect.
Enjoy B-)
Posted: June 15, 2009 at 8:59 pm | Tags: apache, gallery, linux, PHP, script, security, updates, webserver, work
So I have all kinds of stuff that needs to get posted on here, including pictures of the half torn-down Tiger Stadium as well as the Packard Pant and whatnot. However, it’s been screwy getting in to make any updates before recently.
Here’s the story.
I’ve been working on a small freelance project where the most time consuming bit was going to be the photo gallery. So I wrote something up to show the pictures, browse directories, make image previews, etc. Instead of being ghetto-fab and just using CSS to set the width of the images, I found a nice thumbnailer script that uses PHP’s GD library and even had an image cache so that it wouldn’t be ridiculously slow every time it was run. It’s called Smart Image Resizer from Shifting Pixel. I was excited and decided to test it.
Well, the script was set up to search all directories in the folder “galleries” and take the first image from each folder and use that one as the preview image. Simple enough, right?
Well, not when it encounters an empty directory.
It tried passing something like “array index[2]: Invalid” to the PHP script as an argument for the image. This, unbeknownst to me, caused my web server’s security to freak out and give errors like the following:
2009-06-10 21:33:23 XX.XX.XX.XX /thumbnail.php?/.?width=350&height=350&cropratio=1:1ℑ=/gallery/test1/. HTTP/1.1 domain.com Access denied with code 403 (phase 2). Match of “rx (\\.(?:gif|jpg|png|bmp|jpeg)|^http://$|^[0-9]+$)” against “ARGS:image” required. [file "/usr/local/apache/conf/modsec2.user.conf"] [line "825"] [id "340161"] [rev "14"] [msg "PHP Injection protection for Image ARGS (S)"] [severity "CRITICAL"] 403
Except like I said, I had no idea that this has happened. So from where I sit, I’m just trying to FTP some files and go about my day. Then it locks me out. No big deal right? Server’s getting rebooted or something, I’ll just try again later.
Still can’t get in. I check the server from my phone, it’s fine. Eventually, I get back in, go back to testing, and get locked out again. I proceed to go down to my girlfriend’s house, assuming that it’s blocking my IP address for whatever reason, and it locks me out there.
So I’m pretty bothered and confused at this point. Keeping mind that this has happened over the course of a few days. Eventually, I get in touch with my hosting people and figure it all out. But that still won’t stop the server from kicking me off if it doesn’t like the image value to pass.
So I patch my gallery to only pass something to the script if there is a file there, and all is well again.
On top of that, I worked till almost 730 today, put in almost a full day on Sunday, had to rebuild my home network setup and have had random day to day stuff to deal with.
Updates are coming soon. Till then, there CAN be a thing as too much security .
Posted: June 7, 2009 at 3:11 pm | Tags: 4chan, Anon, facebook, Gary W. Russell, relationship, Sierra Brooke Conrad
This was anonymously posted on 4chan earlier, it’s the saga of Sierra Brooke Conrad and Gary W. Russell. Apparently the guy followed their relationship status on Facebook for over a year (creepy, yes. But that’s what Anon is for, right?)
While I usually hide the names of people when I post conversations, I don’t know these people and for them being so unbelievably dumb I don’t really care. There is no “innocent” to “protect”. It’s both amusing and sad at the same time, as we all know a “I don’t care what anybody says, I love him” girl who puts herself through hell for no reason.
Either way, enjoy. Also, If you like this, you’ll love The Disturbing world of Facebook’s “Speed Date” application. Check it out.
The saga of Sierra and Gary
If you liked this, you’ll love The Disturbing world of Facebook’s “Speed Date” application. Check it out.
