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My earliest memories

I wrote this post you are reading now because I was commenting on a post by John Scalzi, a very good science fiction writer who also maintains the “Whatever“, a blog since before it was cool to blog.

In one of his posts, he gave 10 childhood nuggets, and the comments all went some way towards what are your earliest memories. Reading all these comments made me recollect what I still could.

This is what I wrote there :

My earliest memories are when I was somewhere around two years old : sitting on my little red plastic tractor and rolling down the neighbours driveway, again and again and again. I think my dad was mowing the lawn.

Also playing with something (a toy windup robot ?) on a (glass?) table with my dad sitting in the background reading his newspaper. That’s a precious memory for me, as my parents separated not long after and I never saw him again in real life. I just have this sense of this calming presence of his in a chair.

Oh and one other, although of this one I’m not too sure if I constructed it from hearing about it from my mother : being in the shower with him, having these long legs next to me, and reaching up and yanking on his apparatus and asking what it was for.

There are a few more memories since then that I can remember, of riding in the car to the airport, then sitting on his lap in front of the big steering wheel of our Citroen car, his arms guiding my arms. Never a face, but always a sense of being.

Lots of my posts here are non-specific or about technical things, but I figured that if I could post it there, I could post it here as well, for posterity. I imagine my sons reading this or other stuff later on perhaps. I find it becomes important for me that my sons get a feeling on how I became what I am now.

My dad died in Australia of a heart attack when I was 18. I had just sent him a letter that I was coming over to visit him. He never got it.

And damn straight I’m carrying some emotional baggage with me because of that. But that’s for me to carry.

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iPhone replacement headphones

My original iPhone headphone set is wearing out after one year of daily use. They still work, but some of the rubber is starting to peal off around the headphones. Nothing major, but enough to start looking out for other iphone-compatible headphones.

The local shops in Brussels don’t seem to stock replacement iPhone headphone sets, only for the iPod. So I hit the webs, and found the v-moda duo headphones. I also found out that the local shops are charging a lot more (109 € at the time of writing) than when you order them direct from the States.

These look damn good on the V-Moda site, which, by the way, has quite a few good music samples playing on it’s website. And for a limited time, it’s only 5$ to send them (non-express).

I’ll let you know how they sound once they arrive…

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Ronald Jenkees' cool music !

This is very cool music – this has been on repeat for quite a while this weekend ! By the way, the intro starts out a bit naff, but just wait 10 seconds and the beat gets gooooooing !

You can buy his music either in iTunes or on his site.

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WordPress automatic upgrade plugin – security hole ?

I just found out about a new plugin for WordPress that allows you to upgrade your wordpress installation semi-automatically.

The plugin is a regular wordpress plugin that you need to install into the plugins directory in your WordPress installation, and can then be used either completely automatically or semi-automatic (by clicking on “next” for each step) to upgrade your wordpress to the latest version.

It is still in beta, but it seems to do the trick.

However, a glaring security loophole is that it will backup your current wordpress installation files and your database and copy them all in a folder in the root directory (called wpau-backup). It’s up to you to clean them afterwards by clicking a “clean” button.

If you do not do this or something goes wrong, a file containing all your sql data, plus the config files of your server are all there for the taking of anybody searching for it !!!

I can understand for the plugin to provide you with a backup, but the folder should be either automatically emptied at the end of upgrade, or not done at all. This certainly leaves a trace that this plugin is installed, even if the folder is empty and Google is also indexing these folders.

An alternative would be to zip up these backups with a password that the user must give when activating the backup. It would provide a least a measure of security, and zipped files at least won’t be so easy to read without the password. Also the plugin could set the directory to not to be indexed by Google.

A quick Google search for the words “wpau-backup” in blogs shows up a disturbing amount of sites that have this folder in their root path. Also a few messages about peope being linked to from these backup folders, leading them to question if either the plugin or the backup had been hacked.

Also, quite a few of those have apparently either been hacked or have badly configured their apache webserver, as you can simply click on parent directory and go up to the root of the server.

I’m thinking hacked, because I find pieces of wordpress installations all over, but nothing like any index.php file. A few of them have heaps of directories that link to other servers or other dns names, that seem to want to show you adverts.

I’m quite happy that my NoScript plugin was working, I don’t trust any of these sites…

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Blog News Hardware

Kiss DP-558 power supply error message

A year or 3 ago I bought an advanced hard disk recorder from Kiss-Technologies (a danish firm, since then bought by Linksys who in turn have been bought by Cisco). It can do things most recorders nowadays still won’t do, and do it quietly.

  • Electronic Program Guide (EPG) when connected to the internet. For this, normally you would need a digital tv decoder and the flexview or whatever it is called. I can just select on the tv screen what I or the wife want recorded and voila! it is set. No more entering start and end times.
  • FTP access : I can store other media like avi’s or mp3 on the copious 200GB hard disk.
  • Plays DVD’s too.

All the above can be found, but usually you need to buy both a dvd player and a media player to get that functionality.

The problem of those marvellous machines however, is that they are no longer made (which is a damn shame), and the power supply was custom made, and used bad transistors. It is stated that within 3 years of purchase, the psu will fail. Most of the time, it’s just the power supply.

This was wat happened to us 10 days or so ago. It would just display ‘KISS DVD’ on bootup and no longer allow me to eject the cd.

I scoured the MPCC bulletin board, which specialises in media players or all kinds and found out that this message is the sign the psu has broken down.

Lucky for me, I found a reference to a small website called osCommerce run by Kim Tapdrup that specialises in repairing KISS DP power supplies. Either you can ask them to sent you the transistors and you do it yourself, or you can sent it to them for repair (they no longer sell the original power supplies, since those are out of stock). A repair costs around 40 to 50 euros post and packin included.

So I figured : what the heck, why not try it, and I paid for the repair and sent him the power supply from the DP-558 securely wrapped (it’s real easy to remove, since it is installed on a separate print plate).

And today a priority package from Danmark arrived ! I installed the psu again and lo! and behold! our beloved KISS DP-558 is working again. I’m hoping those new transistors will keep it humming for quite some more years !

So a big thanks to Kim Tapdrup for still running these repair services after all these years and being so prompt in repairing it !

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Running update September 2008

The problem with running is that you stress your muscles more than when you are just walking around.
That means that you discover problems with your body that you thought you didn’t have. In fact, I thought everything was hunky dory until then. Compare it to a car that is always driven at 40 an hour. When you speed it up to 80, you’ll find out that it can’t take the strain without something giving.

I still run regularly about 4 kilometers once a week (hoping to find the time to bring it up to two times a week) but I need a knee bandage on my right knee. With the support of this I can run without any problem. Without it I can run short distances.

I’m hoping that this situation remains stable, or even improved (although I doubt it).

One of the alternatives I’m looking into now is finding a not-too-expensive fitness center where I can go run on the threadmill. I’ve noticed that this is much, much softer on your feet and knees that the actual road. Trouble is that nowadays almost all fitness centra work with an all-in formula, where you can do everything and anything you want, but you pay quite a large sum for it. I’m hoping to find a small old-skool one, where you can just select what you want to pay for.

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Kuifje in Brussels

I saw a famous person walking in Brussels…

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Blog News

Excellent day at Plopsaland

We were very lucky yesterday and had an excellent day at plopsaland. The one day in the week it didn’t rain.

Today was a typical seaside day – RAINY ! 🙁

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Blog News

Found.

There’s a crack in Everything.
That’s how the light gets in.

This nice saying found @ Tomorrow Polly comes who got it from Leonard Cohen. I like it. A lot.

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Blog News

How to make a foxhole radio (no batteries required!)

This is soo cool – this is a way to make a radio, similar to what the GI’s in WWII did. It requires no batteries, and you just need some wire, a razorblade, some pencil lead and a few safety pins.

What amazes me the most is this : IT DOES NOT NEED BATTERIES ! It’s exclusively powered by the radio waves.

Here are some other links :
Bizarre labs : The history of foxhole radios
Bizarre labs : how to build them (with schematics)