I managed to take this photo of Jupiter by holding my Sony DSC-T1 digicam up to the eyepiece of my Telescope. Not bad, if I do say so myself (and in comparison to my past attempts!).
If you look very closely (try clicking on the image to get the full-rez version), you can see a blurry moon (of Jupiter) to the left.
Here’s a shot of the Moon (Earth’s Moon):
I got spam from California High Speed Trains identifying me as a business leader (clearly I’m on a mailing list somewhere). The information on the website is sketchy. It’s really just trying to convince visitors that high-speed rail is a good idea.
But I’m watching a video produced by KQED Quest. From what I can gather, they are not planning to build the awesome maglev train used in Shanghai. It looks like conventional electric rail, with a supply wire hung above the track. The video also shows more conventional trains running on the same tracks. In all, pretty lame.
The Shanghai Maglev technology (developed by Transrapid) is superior in every way. The track is typically slightly elevated, preventing wildlife from having their habitats cut in half. It needs no structure above the track, making it much more attractive. It’s much quieter, because there is no mechanical contact between the train and track. For this reason, the ride is also smoother, and faster (430 km/h vs. 354 km/h for the proposed system; the maximum design speed is 550 km/h).
Japan also has a maglev train, but their approach is different. The trains must roll on wheels until reaching a critical speed, and require more power. It also requires superconducting electromagnets.
The California project is expected to require $42 billion and take 12 years to implement. It’s a pity it won’t be state-of-the-art when complete.
Earlier I discovered a post on Gizmodo telling me how to download the 2.0 release and manually install it. After a harrowing 30 minutes while I feared I was going to lose my photos and notes, and another 15 minutes syncing all my music & videos, I finally got it all back to where it was. (Note: be sure to back up your phone first. If you manually update it, the backup and restore doesn’t happen. The Backup command has moved to a contextual menu on the iPhone in the left column.)
I grabbed a couple of free iPhone apps, and installed them. Then I bought a few more apps, and when I tried to sync, iTunes reported errors like:
The application “Poker” could not be installed because the application could not be found.
Huh. I figured it was because there was not enough free room, but after deleting The Incredibles and trying again, I kept getting the same error.
I finally decided to power-cycle the phone, and quit & relaunch iTunes. As I write this, I’m watching the sync progress. It seems to be working. Not sure what the actual problem was.
I’ve decided to convert my old motorcycle to electric. This involves ripping out all the gas-related parts, and putting in an electric motor, batteries, and associated control electronics to make it all work. I’ve started a new blog for the project, go check it out:
Follow these steps (even if you seen some of this before):
Watch this:
Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.
Not all Americans suck.
I can’t believe it. Another actor I enjoy watching has stepped off the deep end of some nutjob crackpot religion. Will Smith joins Tom Cruise and Mel Gibson in this sad trend. I was going to go see Hancock, now I think I won’t.
The article says he hasn’t admitted to actually joining the church, so maybe I can rationalize it that way.
Feh.
Update: Maybe he’s okay after all, claiming not to be a Scientologist.
A couple hours ago, the Mars lander “Phoenix” landed successfully in the arctic region of Mars. They just got back the first images, and it looks like the solar panels deployed successfully, and that everything is in great shape.
See the official site for more information.
(By the way, I’m writing this entry using MarsEdit!)
I woke up this morning to find that Comcast had blocked outgoing connections on port 25 (SMTP). Their online information suggests changing to port 587, but this assumes one is using Comcast’s SMTP server, which I am not (I run my own mailserver on hardware I own at a colocation facility).
So I enter an online chat with Comcast technical support, and I am told that once I have been blocked, it is impossible to be unblocked. I am told the same thing by the second-tier support person. They refuse to escalate my request any further. They tell me to switch to port 587.
So I contact the California Public Utilities Commission, only to find out that cable service is not under their jurisdiction. They suggest I look on my Comcast statement for a number to call. Sure enough, buried in the middle of the bill, is a cryptic line with contact information in my city.
I call the number, and a very nice lady from the city supervisor’s office answers. She tells me that they only regulate Comcast cable TV, and not broadband, but she puts in a call to her Comcast government representative (Cynthia Gomez), who calls me back a little while later.
Ms. Gomez gives me the number to Comcast’s “Customer Security Assurance,” 856 317-7272. There, Edgar tells me he can remove the port 25 block, but that I should switch to port 587, and that if I am blocked again, it will not be removed. He also suggests that I check SenderScore where I can see that my IP address has been placed on a couple of blacklists, including SORBS and 510 Software Group.
It is interesting to note that they’re treating my IP address as if it were statically assigned.
I don’t use Windows, but I’m wondering if my wireless network has been compromised.
The problem with changing port numbers is that it is, at best, a temporary solution. Especially for an ISP like Comcast, with millions of subscribers, it won’t be long before the spammers determine what the new port number is (it is readily available on Comcast’s website).
The Comcast CSA tech referred me to SenderScore. SenderScore claims they have not seen enough email from my IP address to make a determination, but shows that my address is on two blacklists. According to 510 Software Group,
IP address 24.4.xxx.yyy is listed here as 24.4.79.222.comcast.net misc.spam.If you are not running a mail server on 24.4.xxx.yyy, this listing should not affect you in any way, and you should ignore whatever source told you that this might be a problem.
The misc.spam group is mostly (but not entirely) composed of entire addresses blocks that have a) sent spam here, b) have consecutive or missing reverse dns, and c) have no customer sub-delegation via either the controlling RIR (ARIN, RIPE, LACNIC, APNIC, etc) or an rwhois server referenced in the main RIR records.
In particular, 24.4.xxx.yyy has reverse dns of c-24-4-xxx-yyy.hsd1.ca.comcast.net. Since your domain name does not appear as the last components in any of those reverse dns names, that needs to be fixed first. Any email sent to the address at the top of this page will be ignored until that is fixed.
In my opinion, the following comment also applies to static ip addresses, where the provider does not actually identify the user of that ip address by domain name.
So, it appears that Comcast is using external blacklists to determine if I should be blocked, but I’m on the blacklist because of Comcast’s own misconfiguration.
More news as events warrant.
A quick entry to record an idea I had for a useful utility. A droplet application that takes the images dropped, makes a set of thumbnails, and uploads them and the originals to a server, and then puts markup on the clipboard.
It could be enhanced to pop up menus for frequent destinations, and image sizes. It could even pop up a crop editor, which could provide constraints for common aspect ratios/sizes/widths/heights. These could be set by destination.