Pretty much every celebrity photo — save for the unflattering ones on gossip sites — is so heavily touched up nowadays that this bit of adbusting from Germany is freaking genius as far as I’m concerned. And I don’t know about you, but all the detail that they put into this (like the layer list) really makes me wish that I’d see stuff like this pop up in the US more often.
I consulted VW’s RoutanBabymaker3000, and it seems to think that we’d have great looking kids. Don’t believe me? Take a look for yourself:
Now I know you’ve got a thing for quirky bearded dudes. Well, you might. For all I know, that was just a phase. Hopefully it wasn’t tho — because I’m way into college educated actresses with published research papers who aren’t afraid to shave their heads for a role.
Anyhow, now that you know what our offspring would look like, you should drop me an email. We don’t have to make babies right away, but maybe we can go record shopping or talk about Israel. You know, just getting to know one another. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?
Okay, it’d probably be nicer for me than it would be for you. But I swear that I’m a nice guy and not really that weird. I mean, I might be weird enough to run your photo thru a website, but I’ll never send you a sweater made of my hair or anything. That’s just bizarre…
I told myself that I was going to wait for the reviews before I rushed out and bought myself a pair of Nixon Nomadic headphones. Sure, the product page made them look dead sexy — but could they possibly live up to the marketing hype?
2 weeks on, my patience was wearing thin. Not a single word had surfaced and I was getting antsy. No. I wasn’t going to give in. If they were good, I’d hear about it eventually. Patience is a virtue, and I was going to stick to my original plan.
A week later, I had them in my grubby paws. Fuck patience. My want overruled any plans I might have had. And while I might be weak, at least I had a shiny new way to listen to music.
So how are they? Surprisingly good, actually. The first handful of tracks that I listened to had the right amount of punch along with just enough nuance. Even the audiobook that I’m currently consuming sounded great.
On top of that, they’re solidly built. The ball and socket joints manage to swivel freely while not getting too squirrelly and the memory foam ear pads contour quite nicely. The fact that the headphone cable detaches for easy packing and the right ear has an independent volume control built-in are just icing on the cake.
Oh, did I mention these were iPhone compatible? No? Well, they are. And the mic, I’ve been told, sounds fantastic. Like a heavy one-inch button, there’s really no fumbling for it to change tracks or answer calls. Your hand just sort of gravitates to it.
Other than feeling just a little tight on my Charlie Brown sized head, these are pretty much flawless. They’re seriously my new favorite headphones — and well worth the $120 I shelled out for them. If you’ve got the cash to burn, I highly recommend them.
As I posted to Twitter earlier, I’ve decided to join the fray and shrug off new year’s resolutions by instead adopting a theme word for 2009. My choice was:
follow-through
Why? Well, to be honest, when it comes to follow-through, I’ve historically been sort of selective. Get me working on something that I’m passionate about and I’ll concentrate on it almost purely. But other things fall by the wayside while my OCD kicks in — and that’s a problem.
I’ve become lethargic, unhealthy and chained to my desk.
I’m letting relationships and friendships fall by the wayside while I concentrate on building a legacy.
There are places that I wanted to see and things that I have wanted to do long before I managed to get this old.
I’ve got laundry that is in dire need of attention.
So with another step into my thirties a mere month away, I find myself at an interesting crossroads. I can either stay on my present course or temper myself and make sweeping changes in the way that I do things. But resolving to change one’s ways is always a slippery slope. Old habits do die hard, after all. This is where the idea of a theme word comes in tho.
By choosing something as simple as “follow-through”, I can allow myself to see the things that need doing thru the year and work at them. Hopefully, using that hyphenated mission statement as a mantra, it’ll keep me on task enough to make this year better than any previous one.
So, what’s your theme word?
It might be a time for a trim when, after the company holiday party, your boss wanders into your office and says:
Jason, it’s great to see you upright with your head on straight. [long pause] Your hair still must be drunk tho…
Oh hat head, I hate you so.
While hacked sites happen, the hacks are fairly benign. Normally, folks with hacked sites see a few spam links at the bottom of their pages. That sort of thing can normally be cleaned up with an upgrade. When I have to deal with them, it also involves a rap on the knuckles and a lecture on the importance of staying on top of upgrades.
I’ve never seen a hack crop up with the tenacity of “remv.php” tho. Seriously, it’s kind of scary.
I haven’t really had time to go over what all the “remv.php” script does, but I do know that it can be harnessed to send out DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks to unsuspecting sites. How do I know this? Well, about an hour after tossing in “They Live“, I hear Kitchen typing furiously and ask him what’s going on.
There’s a site’s getting DDoS’ed — but the attack is coming from predominately from our own servers.
Shit. Was it a nasty 0-day worm? Not so much. Just a bunch of zombie blogs banging away at this poor bastard’s site. And what did all those blogs have in common? “remv.php” was hanging out in their “wp-content/themes” directory.
So in the interest of spreading the word, I’ve got a quick and dirty guide to dealing with sites infected with this nasty little script.
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'myoldpassword');If it seems like a lot of crap to go thru, just remember that this wouldn’t be an issue if you kept on top of security patches and made sure your plugins were up to date. If you really want to avoid doing this again, subscribe to the WordPress Development Blog‘s feed and check it religiously.
If you have any more info on “remv.php”, let me know in the comments and I’ll do what I can to keep this entry up to date.
Update: It looks like “remv.php” is phpRemoteView. Apparently, it’s pretty popular with the script kiddies, but it’s not the actual exploit that’s being used. Still, it’s a bad thing that needs to be removed if you find it in your WordPress install. If you’re interested in getting the gist of what the script is capable of, check out this page translation.
Last night’s rain gave way to beautiful, puffy clouds and a vibrant blue sky. The mood at my local polling place was great and everyone seemed excited to make their opinions heard. Even the people who had to file a provisional ballot didn’t complain at the extra hoops they needed to jump thru.
If you haven’t voted yet, I hope that you will. I also hope that you’ll encourage your friends and family to get out there too. Today’s going to be a big day — and I don’t know about you, but I’d rather help make history than sit on the sidelines.
I like Obama for a lot of reasons — but when it really comes down to it, I’ll always be for a candidate who has a firm pro taco stance.
This Gnarls Barkley cover of Radiohead’s “Reckoner” totally manages to make up for the fact that I didn’t really care for “The Odd Couple”.