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| DorkBot.html :: February 10, 2005, 12:20 pm |
I've been going to a pretty cool meeting recently called dorkbot that has some interesting and
sometimes crazy stuff going on. Its tagline is "People doing strange things
with electricity". I've seen everything from a cockroach controlled robot, to a a
guy who wants to grow an ear and attach
it to his arm (he also creates robotic exoskeletons, but I'm not sure which is more
interesting =). It's kind of a mix of electronics, computing, robotics, and art.
If you're in San Francisco the second Wednesday of the month, check it out. It's also part of a
larger network of meetings, so if you live in a big city, check out http://dorkbot.org/ to see if there is a meeting
near you. Even if there's not, they have some interesting links to check out.
They also have a mailing
list.
 taken
from conceptlabs.com
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| Stego update :: February 2, 2005, 12:44 pm |
The Great Internet Steganography Search is moving along nicely. After about a
month, stegsearch has checked ~330,000 images (around 6 gigs). I plan to start
adding a few servers for the first phase to pick up the pace a bit. The status page is getting too large to
load (~600k now), so I'll probably only report the statistics for this single
server, and remove the urls.
Because of the large number of false positives, the second phase is going to be
more intensive than I originally thought. I'm considering releasing a second
client piece, so that if people want to help try to break the stego, they can
with their extra cycles. The real problem with this will be result
verification and trust. Maybe I'll look at how some of the other projects do
this, but I don't plan to spend much time on that piece.
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| More HW problems :: February 2, 2005, 12:21 pm |
If you've sent me mail in the last week, you may need to re-send, sorry. A
combination of a bad hard drive, and bad memory caused some failures, and the
secondary MX bounced my mail because of NS caching problems.
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| Steganography :: January 13, 2005, 2:28 pm |
I wrote a small tool (stegsearch)
that will stumble through the internet looking at "random" pages looking for steganography in .jpg
images. So far I've tested about 135,000 images (2.3 gigabytes), and have found about 7,000
"interesting" images. I'll try to gather some statistics at around 1 million
images, but I figure it will take a month or two to get there. The real work in checking the actual images was done by Niels Provos, with stegdetect. If you want to check out my current status, check here.
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| Server sadness :: January 13, 2005, 6:38 pm |
I went through a much needed upgrade today that fixed some issues with data
corruption and security. The only bad part is that a lot of email bounced,
and even worse, some was received but never written to disk, =/. So, if you've
sent me mail over the last day, chances are you'll need to re-send, sorry.
3 Reboots in >4 years isn't too bad...
Update:
/dev/rd/c0d0p3 12T 12T 0 100% /mnt/new_root
Oh, how I wish this wasn't the result of wicked file corruption, 12 terabytes of diskspace would sure be dandy, =).
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| 2004 Music :: January 9, 2005, 2:30 am |
2004 gave us some great new music, so I thought I'd share some of the most
inspiring, and or interesting. These are a few of my favorites in no
particular order:
- The Postal Service
- I wouldn't normally listen to listen to a synth-pop band, but these guys
rock, don't let the genre fool you, =). The singer is co-opted from Death Cab for
Cutie, and has a similar sound, and the hooks are catchy and memorable.
- The Shins - Another band on the
Subpop label, The Shins rock hard, enough said.
- The Mars Volta - New on the
scene as a group, they have alumni from some great bands like At the Drive-in,
and Sparta. His voice might at first sound a little dated, but it fits well
with the otherwise progressive style. Their amazing energy will pound
unapologetically into your welcoming ears, check it out, you'll be happy.
- Tub Ring - My
Brother described these guys as a
hardcore version of The Aquabats, and
I'm inclined to agree. They are entertaining, and deserve a listen.
Others include the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Mindless Self Indulgence, and Modest Mouse.
All in all I'd say a great year for music. Looking forward to some good new
stuff in 2005, so far I know there is a new Mars Volta disc coming out in
March.
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| Happy Birthday to Me :: December 31, 2004, 12:39 am |
Happy Birthday to me... Happy birthday to me! If you wanted to give me a
break from doing old man things like trimming ear hair, or shaking a disapproving finger at
purported whippersnappers, you could sign my guestbook, so I have something to read, =).
We just got back from a good holiday in the seemingly arctic northwest
(Minnesota). We had lots of fun visiting the family, and playing reindeer
games (Super Monkey Ball rules in ways I wouldn't have guessed). Hopefully we
can get home a little more often in the future. You'd think after spending the
first 2/3 of my life in Minnesota I'd be used to the cold, but I still spent
half of my outdoor time double-checking whether my eyeballs were frozen solid.
Luckily it only happened twice.
Happy end of 2004 to everyone, and may
the new year bring you great things! =)
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