Kapt Kaos

Archive for the ‘Tech’ Category

Just received an email directing me to this great bit about a different way to look at data retention and databases.

Just as it’s impossible for the Internet to scourge itself of Paris Hilton’s terrible genitals, it is likewise impossible that the personal information hemorrhaged by the likes of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (25 million records!) will ever go away. This information is like a nuclear disaster, immortal and terrible in its consequence.

Read the full article…

I upgrade wordpress from a older version to 2.3.2. This broke a few things but has given me an over all better/safer site. I made the mistake of not backing up my theme before I upgraded and have lost what I had. So, I am playing with a few new themes. Some of them have some new features that I am interested in adding to other sites as well. I will try to post about my experience with the upgrade shortly in more detail, as I have this upgrade to do on a few of my sites.

I just received a phishing attack that looks like it came from PayPal. Being as I work for a very large virus/security company, I have seen lots of this kind of attack. The email looks like it could be valid. This issue is PayPal or for that matter anyone with a little bit of security knowledge, will not send out an email and provide a like to make changes to your account.

Do not ever follow link like this. Your account will be stolen!

Here is the email:

Dear valued PayPal member,

Thank You.
PayPal Update Team

(Austin, TX) The Austin Time Exchange Network (ATEN) helps people trade an hour of work for another hour of work within a community. Instead of bartering between just two people and placing different values on the service, our network allows equal sharing of an hour for an hour within the whole community.

The idea is to build community assets and to match unmet resources with unmet needs. I can mow someone’s lawn for an hour and then have that hour to spend on a service from anyone else in the community. That service can include services as varied as dog walking, housecleaning, massage, violin lessons or C++ program development. If you feel your service is very intensive, you also can cap how many hours or participants a month you’re willing to give for that particular service.
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Newswise — The University of Texas at San Antonio Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering will host the 2nd Annual Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers System of Systems international conference April 15-18 at the Holiday Inn Riverwalk Hotel in San Antonio.

More than 200 attendees representing 15 countries including Australia, Germany, France, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, India, Japan and the United States are expected to attend. Conference highlights include tours and demonstrations from the research facilities at UTSA and Southwest Research Institute (SwRI).

System of systems technology involves organizational and industrial sectors working together efficiently to solve problems by integrating independent operational resources. The aerospace and defense industries have already embraced the technology which allows the integration of independent operational systems to create large “super systems” to complete a task.

“We will also announce a new national consortium that will bring military, industry and academia together to network to pursue large governmental contracts,” said Mo Jamshidi, System of Systems Conference founder and UTSA Lutcher Brown Endowed Chaired Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

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Well I have been working with a LOT of themes this week. I looks a several sites for themes but found two that stood out above the rest. Alex King’s Theme Browser was by far the best site for viewing and downloading themes. The issue was being able to tell if any of these themes supported widgets or how many columns each supported. The WordPress Theme View ended up being the one that I found what I was looking for. With this site you are able to select a number of options to narrow your search down. I selected 3 column and widget support and sorted by number of downloads. Got a list of 13 pages with 15 themes per page. Of that I downloaded and install about 20.

I have narrowed this down from 20 to 2 themes, Mandigo 1.15 and Munch 1.0. I plan on doing some customization on each before I make up my mind which one to use.

Keep checking back to see which one wins.

OK, it was suggested to me that I should sign up with Technorati.com. To finish the signup I needed to create a new blog entry that includes a small bit of HTML. So the link below is that bit of code.

Technorati Profile

So, today I decided to install a few new themes. You can expect to see the look and feel of the site change a lot over the next several weeks as I play with these different themes. I am going to be working on tweaking each theme some to see what I can do. Also trying to learn as much about theming as I can during this time. I will find a plug-in that will allow you to switch between a final list of themes that I have decided on. Once I have the list ready I will install and activate the plug-in.

Wanted to try linking one of my photos from picasoweb to this site.
Should see a photo of my and a parrot. This was taken in Key West Nov, 2006.

I am trying out different blogging/CMS software. Right now I am looking at WordPress, this site, as well as Serendipity, kenkilgore.com. I have had few weeks more to work with WorkdPress so, do not judge the sites just yet. I am posting what I find about both software packages as I use them.

So, if you want to know about about WordPress keep your eyes focused here. If you would like to know about serendipity keep you focused on kenkilgore.com.

I will also be testing some other blog/CMS software as I find things I want to try. This will be a new thing for me as I have never blogged much before. So, if you find my dribble of interest, keep coming back. Post comments to either or both sites if you feel so inclined.

As I come up with new software packages to test I will produce new sites for them. Which I will link to off of this site for all of them as well as kenkilgore.com.

Keep checking things out as I work my way down to one site and one software package.