Ever since I created a Rock Paper Scissors [morerpscaptcha, rpscaptchasandwich, rpscaptcha] validation game to combat comment spam, the amount of comment spam on this blog has dropped quite a bit. The exceptions have been little flurries that happen every 8 hours or so. The spams always choose the same answer to Rock Paper Scissors, so if they choose an answer, they basically have a 1-in-3 chance of winning and successfully posting a spam.
I need to change how I present Rock Paper Scissors. Currently, I present a challenge choice in English text ("I choose ROCK"), then require the poster to select an answer by choosing an image. I think I'll remove a lot of the "luck" if I reverse this: Present the challenge as an image, and require the answer to be typed in. For a non-spammer, this won't be any more of a challenge, but I hope spammers won't bother with the hassle.
But first…
Looking a the logs, I realized the spammers not only always choose the same answer, but they always choose either the first or last answer in the list. I suspect this is because the posts are automated from zombie apps residing on unsuspecting computers around the world (the IP addresses are from Indonesia, Israel, Portugal, etc.). So I tried an experiment: I added completely invalid choices to the Rock Paper Scissors game. In addition to the three valid answers of Rock, Paper, or Scissors, the first answer is now a picture of a sandwich, and the last choice is a picture of JarJar Binks.
I've been hit with two flurries of comment spam since I put the experiment online. All of their "winning choices" in a game of Rock Paper Scissors?
Sandwich! 
Update 03/10/06: 60 spam attempts since I added the "Sandwich / JarJar" decoy, and all failed to successfully post a spam.
If you read this blog via Bloglines [bloglinesplummer, bloglines, bloglinesfeedfixed], you may not have seen any posts from me in the past two months. I emailed the plumber a few times, and they determined it was a problem on the Bloglines side. Their support was responsive, and it appears that they managed to get the feed fixed.
Although crunch mode [crunchmodelifestats, crunchmode3] prevented me from posting much, my recent posts, if you missed them, are here:
December 2005: http://www.mikeyp.com/weblog/2005/12/index.html
January 2006: http://www.mikeyp.com/weblog/2006/01/index.html
February 2006: http://www.mikeyp.com/weblog/2006/02/index.html
The old iOpener [iopenerbbs, iopenerupdate] that we have on the kitchen counter was starting to act really flaky recently. I more or less decided that I was going to trash it in favor of a more modern computer, but I figured I'd see if there was any way I could bring it back to life on the cheap first. Sure enough, I was able to do it.
After I originally hacked the thing back in 2000, I never bothered to keep track of later developments in the iOpener hacker community. It turns out that they made a few great discoveries and optimizations, and thanks to the perseverance of the old I-Appliance BBS, those hacks are still documented.
Here's what I did to bring my iOpener back up to snuff:
Win98 is still an excellent desktop OS for old computers, especially because you can run Internet Explorer in "kiosk mode" by pressing F11. I optimized Win98 by changing the swap file from being "managed by Windows" to being a fixed 2GB.
I bought a 40GB Samsung Spinpoint MP0402H from Newegg for about $60. It is extremely quiet, and is an order of magnitude faster than the old 1GB IBM drive was using before. I used the excellent utility Image for Windows to copy the contents of the old drive to the new one using a USB IDE Cable on my WinXP machine.
The original hacking crew had a tough time finding RAM that would work in the iOpener, so I guess I got lucky. A 128MB PC133 144-Pin Laptop SODIMM (16X64NB133-N) from CompGeeks for $17 works just fine, and much better than the original 32MB.
I updated the BIOS to match the new drive and RAM. In particular, I set the IDE mode to PIO Mode 4, and set the DRAM Timings from SDRAM 10ns to Turbo.
Thanks to posts from Georgie, I increased the hard drive performance by 3X and fixed an extremely nasty USB bug that was crippling my WiFi performance. The details are here and here, but in summary, I downloaded the PCI utility from John Fine's site, stuck it in the PATH, and added these lines to autoexec.bat:
rem fix USB
c:\util\pci r75=a3 r40,7,2=2
rem fix PCI IDE
c:\util\pci r43,7,1=1a r44,7,1=8 r4c,7,1=3f r53,7,1=1 r4b,7,1=10
I update the core chipset drivers to the "Retro" version 4.35 from here. It improved the hard drive performance as well as fixed the LCD backlight when the screen is turned off.
Along with a new cheapo compact keyboard and a trackball mouse, we've got a nicely usable counter-top web terminal again. Uhh, what do we use it for? To look up recipes for cocktails, of course!
I decided it was time to replace my ancient cross-trainers with some dedicated, modern running shoes. Instead of doing tons of online research like I usually do, I just popped into La Foot in Berkeley. These folks know a lot about shoes and feet. They even have a machine that will scan your foot and mill a custom shaped insole.
When I told the saleslady what kind of running / jogging I do, she brought out a half-dozen pairs of shoes. When it comes to fitness shoes, I'm not concerned about style at all, so I tried on each pair in order and ran up and down the street outside the shop. My final choice: the Saucony Men's Grid Omni 5.
It wasn't until I paid for the shoes that I realized what they looked like. The suckers have a big-ass shiny gold lighting bolt on the sides. Wha?
![[B000BBGR1E]](http://www.mikeyp.com/css/external.gif)
I think I need to get a matching Velour Hoody for my next workout.
Years ago, when the dot-com boom produced the cheap and hackable iOpener web terminal, a large community gathered to share iOpener tips and tricks at the I-Appliance BBS hosted by Linux-Hacker.net.
We still use an iOpener as a counter top web terminal in our kitchen. I decided to replace the ancient hard drive today, but I couldn't remember how to access the BIOS. I did a quick search, and incredibly, the old BBS is still alive! I even found the original thread I used as a hacking reference, including my own circa-Y2K replies. Cool!
If you use My Yahoo, you may have noticed new icons next to the titles of your news feeds today. Nice to see Yahoo support this!
You can add MikeyP.com to your My Yahoo page by clicking below:
In case you don't recognize the icon for MikeyP.com, the favicon I use is a picture of a Boss DS-1 guitar distortion pedal, created by Hide Itoh. Check out his other icons and software at http://www.pixture.com.
I've moved MikeyP.com's Technorati link from the sidebar to this blog post.
Technorati blogs that link to MikeyP.com
The channel Universal HD was quietly added to our local Comcast HD lineup yesterday. Finally, we get to watch Battlestar Galactica in Hi-Def (instead of the grainy analog SciFi channel).
Alas, season 2 of Galactica ended last week, so it appears that Universal will be showing only reruns for the time being.
Side note: Does it seem like Battlestar Galactica suddenly switched from a space opera to a soap opera this season?
It never struck me that I could/should upgrade the firmware in my digital camera. I bought a Canon SD100 right when it first came out, and sure enough, there is a firmware upgrade available on Canon's web site.
I remember having a problem with a Sandisk 512MB SD card and the SD100. If I used the card in both a PC memcard reader and the camera, eventually the camera would think the card was corrupted. Since the camera has its own USB interface, I shrugged off the problem and stopped using the memcard reader. Looks like the new firmware fixes this issue, as well as adds support for 2GB cards and PictBridge .
The update process was painless and straightforward. The new firmware is version 2.0.1.0. My camera's firmware? Version 1.0.0.0. 
Glad to have the upgrade.
As much as a like my Samsung HL-R4667W HDTV [samsung1080i, samsunghlr4667wservicemenu, samsunghlr4667w, samsungpronto, samsunghlr4667wsettings, exchangesamsung], a few months ago, I noticed a problem with the picture. Darker colors were "collapsing" into a single color. Basically, dark color shades would become one color, revealing some ugly banding artifacts as well as making Anakin Skywalker look rather sunburned.
I found that I could fix this by going in to the service menu and changing the default value of SEQ SELECT from 5 to 0. As long as I didn't turn off the set when exiting the menu, this setting would stick and the picture would look fine. However, if I turned the set off completely, the picture quality problems would reappear then next time I turned the set on.
I had a Best Buy service guy come out to see the problem, and he decided to replace the "digital board". The new board didn't solve the problem, so another service guy decided to replace the "light engine." (It turns out that Samsung doesn't want service guys futzing around with any of the circuitry. Instead, they simply replace one of 3 major assemblies: the "digital board", the "light engine", and the "light bulb".) After 6 weeks, the new light engine failed to arrive, so I called the Best Buy warranty folks and they agreed to replace the set with a new one.
I sure was bummed to see my replacement set look even worse than my first one! Not only did it have the color problem, but vertically straight lines had a jaggy sawtooth pattern to them (likely a problem with wobulation ).
After contemplating a refund, I had them exchange the set one more time. I was totally relieved to see that my new replacement set looked perfect. Out of the box, my new Samsung HL-R4667W had an outstanding picture that I could only achieve via the service menu on my original set.
I wrote down the firmware date as displayed in the service menu for all of the sets I had. My original set, the replacement digital board, as well as the first replacement set all had the date May 2005. My current set (the second replacement) has the date July 2005.
Here are as couple of tips I've learned from this experience:
Was it me, or was the Dolby Digital 5.1 audio mix for today's Super Bowl out of balance? I have a nicely calibrated system, but the center channel audio from Al Michaels and John Madden was much quieter than the ambient crowd noise. The crowd noise itself was quite loud from the rear channels. ABC's Monday Night Football usually sounds much more balanced on my system.
Some folks on AVSForum think it might have been an issue with the local affiliates. That would be KGO-TV, in my case.
Update: I watched the game via antenna, which delivers a better picture than the Comcast DVR [superbowlcomcastdvr, comcastdvrwar, comcastdvrdst, newcomcastdvr, comcastdvrdead, comcastdvrdelete, comcastdvravsforum, comcastdvrcodes]. Folks on the Yahoo HDTV SFBay group noted that the sound was fine over Comcast, but bad via OTA.
What's up with web sites suddenly changing their URLs without notifying users? First it was Wired News, and now Mainichi Daily Japan News has moved. The old URL simply gives a 404 error . I wonder if these sites measured the amount of traffic they lost by not forwarding readers to their new locations?
