That SO.Big virus

Posted on August 29, 2003 by Arthur

Earlier this night, I dissected an SO.Big virus a couple times, the last time in front of my collegue-professionals, which went without real ‘accidents’.

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Posted in xsamplex | 3 Comments

2001: A Space Odyssey

Posted on August 28, 2003 by Arthur

Is it good? Is it bad? Apparantly the movie was less popular when it was just released in 1968, but during the years it has claimed its little corner in photograpic history.

Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssee” is definitely not for the impatient. There is hardly a storyline and it’s up the viewer to connect the images together to a story. Clearly the monolith is one of those major clues: where ever the monolith appears there’s apparently havoc. Kubrick’s use of ‘Blue Danube’ and ‘Also sprach Zarathustra’ mark mankinds greatests achievements, space exploration. But incidentally, the use of those tunes makes one wonder if Kubrick is merely deriding human’s obsession with technology: because every new discovery marks the end of (one’s?) life.

I think, generally speaking, this movie should be on your ‘to-see’ list, even if you don’t like science fiction. If it wasn’t for the Sixties/Seventies’ technology, then it’s for the special (photographic) effects. And for the open conclusion at the end: it’s up to you what to think of this movie.

Posted in The Chest Desire | Comments Off on 2001: A Space Odyssey

120 years of electronic music

Posted on August 28, 2003 by Arthur

Via J-Walk’s, 120 years of electronic music1: Starting with Elisha Grey’s Musical Telegraph to nowadays synthesizers.

Includes Raymond Scott’s revolutionary Clavivox2, which inspired Bob Moog to start his own (famous) synthesizer company.

1Nov 13, 2012: changed the main url to go to new domain. Thanks to Sarah Thompson for pointing this out.

2Nov 13, 2012: Second link is dead.

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How to present a presentation (and slam yourself)

Posted on August 28, 2003 by Arthur

While finishing off the slides, I was still in doubt if I was going to use one of the virus samples for the presentation. I think it’s going to depend on the number of people and if they’re interested in a live demo that shows how to deal with and how to remove virusses. As said earlier, Alfons was so kind to forward me an SOBig strain.

Naturally, I tested the virus: twice. Fun, I mean it. Until I noticed that I was still on-line. Not that there was too much harm: everytime ZoneAlarm popped up I pressed the ‘No-buzz-off, not today’-button. I think

Blame all programmers.

Posted in Truro NS | Comments Off on How to present a presentation (and slam yourself)

Virus! Virus! Alert! Wake Up! Hurry!

Posted on August 28, 2003 by Arthur

I‘m doing a presentation about virusses today, but I have not really made progress with the actual presentation. Sure, I finished the keywords but I’m still ‘in dubio’ about making slides or about providing additional documentation for the people.

Not that it’s not going to be cool. Alfons earlier provided me a couple of genuine virusses which I hope to launch at the climax of the presentation.

After all, the idea is that people learn, right?

Posted in Truro NS | Comments Off on Virus! Virus! Alert! Wake Up! Hurry!

Have your picture taken

Posted on August 27, 2003 by Arthur

The government of Canada has issued new specifications for future-to-be passport holders: when making those passport photos, you’re not supposed to be smiling anymore. To be more precise, a neutral expression and mouth closed as the images clearly demonstrate at the Passport Office website.

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Re: Am I out there???

Posted on August 27, 2003 by Arthur

Recovered from the Internet, the first communication between me and my (later to be) wife. That was 1995 and I had been on-line for a couple of months. Gayle had been tinkering with BBS-es too and decided to try the closest thing to BBS-es: UseNet.

The rest is history.

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Posted in xsamplex | 2 Comments

Dike burst

Posted on August 26, 2003 by Arthur

Alfons notes that there was a serious dike burst in the centre part of the Netherlands (link to RNW). 2,000 people were evacutated and luckily nobody was injured. However, Alfons notes something weird in a national newspaper:

   “and one of the responses of the inhabitants struck me as a sign of the time. She complained something like: It wasn’t even mentioned on TV, so I thought it wasn’t that serious.”

Nowadays, I normally think that news shown on CNN is hardly worth watching or even being mentioned.

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Tabs and categories

Posted on August 26, 2003 by Arthur

A couple of tips on what I did with the tabs and the Movie entries (as shown above/on top of this page).

Naturally, the idea is to categorize the entries you want to show as a tab, or in case of a static page, just go ahead and create it as explained before.

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Posted in Moveable-Types | 2 Comments

Hitchcock

Posted on August 26, 2003 by Arthur

Yesterday, for a change, Larry King had an interesting panel discussing an interesting person, Alfred Hitchcock (link to transcript). Pat Hitchcock (his daughter), Janet Leigh, Tippi Hedren and Eva Marie Saint reminisced on the legendary director.

Also, I find it amazing that I’m not the only person in the world who confuses Cary Grant for James Stewart (and vice versa).

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The BBC and their archives

Posted on August 25, 2003 by Arthur

You’ve probably seen this everywhere plastered on the news: the BBC is planning to put their complete TV and Radio archive online. I hope this means that they’re also going to make available the RealAudio streams of the Weill Centenary and other interesting concertos.

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Bike Trucking

Posted on August 25, 2003 by Arthur

While driving through Truro today, I noticed that very same feeling that I had before: that drivers here are not used to bikers, let alone know what to do when confronted with a cyclist that does not (I repeat: not) have the right-away. In most instances drivers stopped for me, waving that I could go on.

I guess, in a way, it’s good, but in another way, it adds to the confusion for someone who has been ‘trained’ under different circumstances. It could be worse, though: the other moment, I saw a cyclist just crossing the road on a crosswalk, without bothering to watch for any traffic. He would have been dead if he did that in Europe.

Posted in Truro NS | 8 Comments

Black-out whammy

Posted on August 25, 2003 by Arthur

CNN curled my toes today when AM’s ms. O’Brien mentioned (and showed) the great black-out picture from space. Apparantly CNN is not aware of the Snopes site (of urban legends fame), which named the very same picture a hoax.

   “The original image appears to be a composite satellite photograph of nighttime North America which someone has manipulated with an editing program to darken the northeastern area.”

.

Update 10:00am: it looks like Soledad O’Brien corrected the error, assisted by Space Shuttle Expert Reporter Miles O’Brien (apparantly not related).

Posted in Hyperlinks | 6 Comments