Ben’s Drivel

So…this post is almost a followup to my last one. After my other site twofooterowhouse.com was hacked a month or so ago, I thought I was safe. Apparently not. The site was hacked again, this time even worse.

The hackers injected javascript into every file on the site that apparently connets to wp-stats-php.info or something like that. I have NO idea how they got in, and the wordpress forums are a waste of time. Its a flame war over there.

Its probably only a matter of time until this site gets hacked, seeing as it is running the same version of wordpress. I hope I can get this worked out, otherwise, it looks like I don’t have enough free time to keep fixing the site. Not to mention that it needs to be updated occasionally.

If anyone has any insight on this, get a hold of me.

So, I don’t know if anyone reading this has noticed, but my other site that I run with Sara, twofooterowhouse.com is inaccessible to people using Firefox. Whats worse, people coming from google will get a “Badware” warning. What is all this about?

Let me try to explain it as easily as I can. Twofooterowhouse.com runs Wordpress for its content management system. Occasionally hackers find a way to mess with Wordpress sites, so if you don’t stay up-to-date on Wordpress releases, you can be found by hackers. This is apparently what happened to Twofooterowhouse. The sucky part is, there is a website called stopbadware that attempts to identify sites that can potentially harm your computer by distributing viruses, phishing, etc. Somehow, twofooterowhouse was flagged by these people as a badware site. This is all well and good because I found out that my site had actually been compromised. I would have loved to have just logged in and fixed the problem…but guess what, you can’t get to the site with Firefox(my browser of choice.) I installed Epiphany and had to use that instead, as they have ignored all the horsecrap Stopbadware nonsense. I immediately purged my WP database, upgraded my software, and did a manual scan and removed the offending files. Problem solved, right? Not really….

Now on to the really crappy part. The folks at Firefox are in bed with Google to be the internet police and protect the good citizens of netville. What this means that ANY site that is reported to Stopbadware, eg Google, is automatically added to a list and then anyone using Firefox can’t visit the website. What they are trying to do, albeit noble, is to police THE ENTIRE INTERNET! This means that for whatever percentage of people that use Firefox and visit my site, they are hijacking my domain. What the hell gives them this right? I was able to fix the problem in minutes…but here we are, days later, and my site is still unable to be visited.

I have submitted a sharp tongued request to these jerks to take my site off the list, but since they made NOT A SINGLE EFFORT to contact me before I was added, I am assuming they’ll take their sweet F’n time to take me off the list. This is all extremely frustrating to me as I have been such a huge supporter of Google and Firefox. Now, I am left with a bitter taste in my mouth as I sit here waiting for some kind of response.

I have sooo many additional words I want to write about this subject, but instead, I think I’ll spend this effort submitting people’s sites to Stopbadware so they can go through the same hell as I am. F authority. Shame on Google and Firefox. Let people have choice, after all, thats what your organizations were founded on.

So, this is normally nothing for me to brag about, since its not on the front of my mind, but today is a milestone of sorts for myself. I have been lifting weights off and on since my sophomore year of college. I obviously started doing this to impress women. But regardless of why I have started, today I will announce that I have officially flat benched 145 lbs unassisted. I did 4 reps and decided that if I didn’t want to crush myself, this was probably where I should set it down. This is the most I have ever benched in my life. Previous to that, every time I get up to being able to bench 135, something terrible happens, and I’m forced to take 6 months off of working out. A back injury, a leg injury, debilitating sickness, a monthlong bender, you name it, it has stopped me before. But no more!

Now on a more serious note, if you know me, you’ll know that I’m not at all a serious person. The reason why I work out is just to stay in relatively good shape. I’m not trying to get jacked or ripped or ripped off or anything like that. I just don’t want to die in the next few years due to my high bacon intake. That is all.

And finally, this is the coolest hack I have ever seen. I love the C64, I love Guitar Hero, and some guy has combined these into one sexy thing. Behold, Shredz64:

And part 2:

This picture is hilarious:

PS, happy new year.

So, my favorite band, The Blood Brothers, have decided to call it quits. God bless them, they’ve changed my life. I look at music through a set of different eyes now thanks to them.

I remember first hearing them open for…I think it was Glassjaw in Pittsburgh at Club Laga (back when it existed.) It was by pure accident that I heard them, but I remember the first song that they played was Cecilia and the Silhouette Saloon. Which, if you’ve heard it, is a blistering keyboard driven ballad. (You can see/hear that here, thanks to YouTube. ) When I got back to my room, I had to search and find that song, seeing as it wasn’t on the 3 song demo they were handing out (these were the pre-Burn, Piano Island, Burn days.) Their sound was so raw and untamed, it took a bit of listening to get used to, but once I did, I was hooked. They quickly became my favorite band, and I’ve seen them 6 or 7 times in the last years of their careers.

Every time I saw them live, their show was tighter and better refined. I really can’t say enough good things about them. Their lyrics are altogether hard to follow, yet they always evoke a feeling when you hear or read them. They definitely put out a very definitive imagery in their music, with their latest album, Young Machetes being the most literal. If you haven’t heard of them, or even if you have, I beg you to give them a listen and enjoy them.

I’ll sign off with a quote from probably my favorite song, off of their last cd, Crimes, its called Devastator. This is the last set of words on the CD:

The party’s over, what was your favorite gift?
Neon black future charging like a bull with a funeral bouqet ready to explode.

I was able to videotape their last show they played in Washington DC, but the quality didn’t come out quite as I had hoped. Someday, maybe, I’ll be able to polish it up and post it. Lets hope.

So, for the last month or two, I’ve been immersing myself in the SimCity series of games. I started off with playing SimCity 2000 until I had basically filled the board. This was the first game in the series to sport an isometric view of the city with multiple zoom levels (something that I consider to be key.) SimCity 2000 is, of course, playable under many OS’s thanks due to DosBox. The only real problem I have with SimCity 2000 is that the game is sort of chock full of bugs. You’re power plants are supposed to explode after 50 years, but for some reason, some of mine have survived for over 100. Not all, but some. It’s weird. The list goes on, but this set of bugs prompted me to switch it up to SimCity 3000.

SimCity 3000 is a big step up in the visuals part, and also somewhat a step up in the micromanagement part. Pollution is a much bigger concern, as they’ve added landfills and garbage incinerators. Its just the next logical step in the series. I’ve settled on playing out SimCity 3000 until I fill a map up I’d say. There aren’t any gameplay related bugs that I’ve noticed, and the game runs just fine in an older version of Wine (9.10 for the curious.)

Its weird though, none of the SimCity games have any point other than to build up a nation and run it. There is no ending, and there is no solution, just sort of a home decorating game for people that like to decorate entire cities. The soundtracks to the games are always great, but really, there isn’t anything compelling about them. Yet, I still find myself dwindling away hours I shouldn’t be able to spare with them.

For anyone interested, I’ve provided links above to play the original SimCity 2000 with DosBox. Go ahead, give it a try.

I read this article about the music industry’s failed attempt to sue people out of buying music, and it just made me feel good that they can admit how wrong their approach was. The market wanted one thing, and they didn’t listen, and it burned them. I’m at least happy to see them admit it, even though its well after the fact.

I think this article hits the nail on the ripe-with-cash head. Microsoft got very comfortable at the top, and its going to cost them. Why do they feel the need to compete with every company including Google? They OWN 95% of the desktop. Even if people only upgrade to Vista, they’d still be sitting pretty. But instead they get lazy, and launch a crap product…and now we’ll just have to see what happens. Where will people go? Linux? Macs? Who knows.

Its just a good read.