Relocation to Miscellaneous

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In the early days of web building, it was considered good practice to offer your visitors free downloads like branded screensavers and desktops, to build recognition and make your site more “sticky.” That was the rationale behind the download section in my earlier sites. These days, however, such software gimmickry is better relegated to the background in favor of more compelling content — such as that provided by, oh, perhaps, a weblog.

My downloads, however, continue to attract no small number of hits from old directory listings, and as such deserve to remain somewhere on my site. Hence, I have moved the link to the download page, with its old-fashioned desktop tiles and Win9x splash screens, off the front page and into the Miscellaneous section.

(Also moved to Miscellaneous: archives of Pula.ph and the Prepaid Cards Blog. And of course, Ang Dating Daan’s Kaanib.net lives on.)

Will Ever Be, Will Ever Be, Will Ever Be

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Yesterday at choir we practiced “Thou O Jehovah Abideth Forever” from the Four Motets of Aaron Copland. Personally, I have a hard enough time just listening to Copland, so I expected the singing of his work, with all its atonal post-romantic dissonance, to be musical torture. And at first, it was. But it was kind of fun, too.

After church and practice were done, it was another one of those achingly pretty days when the sun is out and the sky is blue and the temperature is exactly 72.5°F, so I went running around the National Mall for a bit, after which I sat on the grass in front of Air and Space and had a hotdog.

A Golden Galaxy

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Souls of the Righteous in the hand of God / Nor hurt nor torment cometh them anigh / O holy hope of immortality / Souls of the Righteous in the hand of God / Souls of the Righteous in the hand of God / To eyes of men unwise, they seem to die / They are at peace, O fairest liberty / Souls of the Righteous in the hand of God / On earth as children chastened by Love’s rod / As gold in furnace tried / So now on high, they shine like stars, a golden galaxy / Souls of the Righteous in the hand of God.

“Souls of the Righteous,” T. Tertius Noble

Treasures Aplenty

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Amy came to DC this morning, with a cake and presents for an early birthday mini-celebration. We met up with my uncle, aunt, and a distant niece, then passed by Beekman, the townhouse compound on Meridian Hill which was my Washington pied-a-terre on my arrival last year.

As my uncle and aunt saw to some business, Amy and I wandered over to a nearby yard sale, where she found a fireplace duster and a little round jar, and I got a large magnifying glass and two CDs: Nathan Milstein’s 1946 LOC recital and Welsh Male Voice Choirs. All for under $8.

After a spicy lunch at Bua, the whole group sauntered over to the FBC parking lot to check out the Fall Festival, where, o joy of joys, the church library was sponsoring a giant book sale. Long after my uncle, aunt, and distant niece had left, Amy and I were scouring the tables — especially the one labeled “Free Books,” which was laden with decades-old almanacs, old National Geographic atlas inserts, and bibles and devotionals with hip 1960s covers. We went home with The First Man in Rome, The Wind in the Willows, and an encyclopedic 1971 Almanac.

Amy and I dropped off these treasures at my apartment, then walked across the Mall (I love my location!) to Air and Space to view the newly opened Wright Brothers exhibit. When we had had enough of the early days of flight, we walked back out, spread our jackets out on the grass of the Capitol Lawn near the Summer House, and watched tourists go by while we talked.

Then we had cake and tea.

It was a good day.

Wright

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The original Wright flyer, on display at a special Wright Brothers exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum. That is not, however, an original Wright Brother flying it.

Photo taken with a Palm Zire 71.

Spoofed

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(Update: The practice is called a “Joe Job.”)

It is common practice among spammers to “spoof” domains, sending their unsolicited messages with forged From: or Reply-To: fields to make email appear to be coming from a source other than the actual sender. Responses to these messages are “returned” to the forged address, and if that address happens to be that of a real person, woe upon him, as every bounced error message and angry reply is directed to his unwitting inbox.

I was such a victim last night, when a spammer sent prescription drug pitches to several AOL accounts using the brownpau.com domain, prepended with various randomized text-string user IDs. Since I forward all unrouted mail to my home address, I was met last night with dozens of “Failed Delivery” messages, each with a different spoofed header. Fortunately my host provides SpamAssassin and a full-featured email cpanel, so I managed to stem the tide and apply the necessary filters and bouncers before the deluge became unbearable.

Spammers don’t care who gets hurt in their efforts to destabilize the internet for a buck, so they must be stopped.

More info: “My Short Life as an Unintentional Spammer,” Self-Sending Spam, Slashdot discussion.

All Dogs Go To…

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Poor Laika.

The dog Laika, the first living creature to orbit the Earth, did not live nearly as long as Soviet officials led the world to believe.

The animal, launched on a one-way trip on board Sputnik 2 in November 1957, was said to have died painlessly in orbit about a week after blast-off.

Now, it has been revealed she died from overheating and panic just a few hours after the mission started.

It Burns, It Burns!

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Okay, so you’ve brought all your stuff down to the laundry room in the basement. You upend your underwear into the washer, throw in detergent and Downy Ball, set it on “Hot,” and slide in the quarters.

You’re halfway back up to your apartment before you realize that your keys were in the laundry basket — which you absentmindedly upended into the washer. Of course, by the time you’ve run back down and opened up the machine, it’s full of boiling hot water. How does one find those keys in this steaming, soapy cauldron, with no way to drain the machine short of waiting for the wash cycle to end?

Four words: Quick, Deep, Measured Plunges.