Archive: July 23, 2003
Recently when my computer was broken I thought that if I had to start over, I'd consider moving to Linux. Unfortunately, there are just too many applications I "need" that only run on Windows, like Unreal Tournament 2003.  But Dean points out a neat way to try out Linux. Check out Knoppix Linux, a Linux distribution that can boot and run completely from CD.
For the best idea I've heard in a while, check out Mailinator (via Joel).
From the FAQ:
In our internet world, you often need an email address NOW. Signing up for an email service takes time - that's probably ok for most emailing, but every now and then you need a quick email address for just a single email. After that you don't care what happens to that email. Its a bit of a hassle to sign up at Yahoo or Hotmail for such a simple purpose. Instead of all that trouble, use a mailinator address - its ready and waiting. And often you need to give an email address to some site to "register" but you know that means you will be spammed in the future. It sorta sucks to give them your real email, you're asking for trouble. How about giving them a mailinator email? No need to signup ahead of time, just enter any random mailinator email address in their website, then come here and check it. It will be here.
Doesn't this open a situation where mailinator might get LOTS of email that no one cares about?
Yup. Its important you know that any email that gets sent to mailinator will only last a few hours. After that time, it will be auto-deleted.
Cool. If I don't "sign up", then how do I create an account?
A mailinator email account is created as soon as email arrives for it. Just send email to it and blammo - it will be there waiting for you.
This sounds pretty insecure. What if I send important emails with sensitive super-secret information in them to mailinator?
Then you are a stupid-head. That isn't what this is for.
Awesome. Trying it now...
Ok, it works, and it's awesome. Fantastic idea. "Mailinator: It's like flicking a BOOGER at Spam".
Also check out http://jetable.com/.
More at Simon's site, including links to Spamhole and SpamGourmet from the comments.
Personality Types: I'm definitely a traditionalist, probably a serious one, though I match the rationalist solitary profile a bit too. Ironically both of those personality types list "computer programmer" as a suitable career. When I took the temperment test I got a score of 8 Rationalist, 8 Idealist, 10 Traditionalist, and 3 Hedonist.
Maybe I'm a little bit of the conscientious type too. I am pretty obsessive compulsive...
A discussion on Roman Catholicism we had a while ago has been continued, so you may want to check it out.
Ok, here's how I broke my computer. I had previously disabled one of my hard drives, and I went to reenable it, and my computer froze. Upon rebooting, "Invalid system disk". I could have sworn I right clicked on the correct drive and cliked "enable", but I suppose it's possible I clicked on the wrong drive and clicked "disable". Actually, I just checked and it's not even possible to disable your main drive, which would make sense. So my computer just freaked on me for an unknown reason.
I called my smart friend Adam, who works in IT for Intel, and the first thing he recommended was to unplug my second hard drive, and if that didn't work try using the "repair" option on the installation CD. I opened my computer up, disconnected the power on my second drive, turned my computer on, and it worked. So Adam's a genius. That's something I never would have thought of.
Then I was able to turn the computer off, plug back in the second drive, boot, and enable it and it's working fine. Woo.
Thanks Adam!
Oops, had to reboot one more time for the drive to show up in "My Computer".
Via Simon, John Robb:
NEVER (under any circumstances) publish a weblog to a domain that you don't control.
Absolutely. That's something I've said forever, though I'd expand it to e-mail too. I've never understood the willingness of people to publish their own sites on others' domains, whether it's Advogato, Kuro5hin, radio.weblogs.com, foo.weblogs.com (lambda.weblogs.com, php.weblogs.com), blogs.gotdotnet.com, etc.
I've almost decided that I'd like to convert my weblog software to Python. This means I have to either convince Hosting Matters to support Python, or find a new host which does support Python.
I took a look at Cornerhost, and while they offer more space than I need, they don't offer enough bandwidth. I'll have to ask Michal how much extra bandwidth costs.
Any recommendations? The host would have to support PHP (mod_php), MySQL, Python (mod_python), mod_rewrite, cron jobs, provide raw log files, give a good number of subdomains and addon domains, and it would be nice if they provided secure shell access. I'd also like a host that's aggressive about upgrading to the most recent versions of software they use. All of which Hosting Matters is except for the Python support.
Den Beste points out an important part of the significance the killing of Saddam's sons has:
And it indicates the extent to which Iraqis are beginning to support the occupation, because the raid was based on a tip from someone local. That person will likely be eligible for the $30 million reward money, and it is likely that the money was a significant incentive (as, indeed, it was intended to be). But this indicates something deeper, because even $30 million is no good to a dead man.
For the first time in my life, today (Tuesday afternoon) I broke my computer. I'm not going to go into the stupid way I may have broken it, though it's so bad that I get "invalid system disk" messages on bootup So, I'll be catching up on my reading until I fix it. Since I'm really not that familiar with NT-based OS's I'm kind of at a loss, so I'm calling for help from a friend I have who works in IT for Intel. 
I'm surprisingly not that upset about it, though I'm anxious to know if my data's ok. Besides back e-mail, I can't think of anything I'll really care about if it's lost, except for that darn secret project [holds pinky to corner of mouth and raises eyebrow] I've been working on for which I will have lot most of the code, which will set me back weeks while I rewrite it.
We'll see. I've always thought that it would take some kind of data catastrophe for me to start keeping backups. I hope this won't be it, and I hope that maybe just the threat of a data catastrophe will be enough to make me change my ways.
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Wednesday, July 23, 2003
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