Massive Blog Spam

I, and probably the rest of the world as well, am being hit with spam in the comments at this moment. Over 100 comments a day are intercepted by Akismet.

It seems that all the spamjerks have found a way of creating userprofiles on public websites/forums/blogs and are referring to those in the spam. Below are some examples URL's which were active at the time of me writing this:

• http://www.lonelyplanet.com/thorntree/profile.jspa?editMode=true&userID=678271
• http://mu.wordpress.org/forums/profile.php?id=699061

I send an e-mai lto Lonely Planet descibing their problem. Let's hope that they fix it soon.

In the mean time; All hail Akismet!!!!

Nikon D300 Firmware Update v1.03

Nikon released a new firmware update (v1.03) for their D300 DSLR. The new firmware should fix certain battery related issues.

• Windows version
• Mac/OSX version

Be sure to get it.

New York City 2008

Last monday was the day of my return from the Big Apple a.k.a. New York. It was a 7 day (5 nights) trip the the wonderful city of New York. The weather was great, and the company was even better :-P .

The holiday had a bit of a slow start, because we missed the plane (my bad), but, with a four hour delay, we finally got underway. As usual, plane trips suck bigtime. Cramped seats, and no sleep.

When we arrived we got our NY City Passes + 3 day bus tickets. This way, we got discounts (or even free entrance) at sightseeing. After all, we're still Dutch ;-) .

During the 6 days we saw it all (well, almost....);

• Empire State Building
• Central Park
• The Financial District (Lower Manhattan)
• Rockefeller Center
• Fifth Avenue
• China Town
• Little Italy
• Brooklyn Bridge
• Brooklyn
• Chrysler Building
• Grand Central Station
• Tudor City
• United Nations Building
• B&H Photo and Video :-P
• Saint Patrick's Cathedral
• Saint Thomes Church
• Trinity Church
• New York Police Museum

We even visited the theater on Broadway. The show we saw was a comedy (not a musical!!!) on 48th street called 'The 39 Steps'. A play by 4 actors playing over 150 characters.

During this stay I shot nearly 500 photographs. Some of those can be found on my flickr page.

Rent a Lens

For my trip to New York City I need a (zoom)lens with a wide angle. My current 24-70 (which is a great lens) doesn't give me the wide angle I need on a crop-camera. So I was looking for a zoom lens with a bit more wide angle.

The 17-55mm f/2.8 AF-S DX (etc) would suit my needs. Enough wide angle and a bit of zoom. No need for 100* zoom lenses because it's New York. Everything is cramped on top of each other. If I need zoom, I can always get a 1.7TC @ Adorama or B&H Photo in New York.

The 17-55 is bit on the expensive side (>1000 euros), so I rented it for the week @ Kamera-Express. Not that expensive, and now I got a decent lens for exploring New York. I just hope that the lens isn't that good, otherwise I need to have it ;-).

Nokia N95

The Nokia E61i is old. Well, ever since I got a Nokia N95 from my boss. So no longer a privately owned phone (with a company SIM), but a new shiny N95 :).

First impression; plastic fantastic, but a fast plastic fantastic phone. A faster CPU, HSDPA instead of 'regular' UMTS, and a 'normal' keypad instead of a QWERTY keyboard (which is not an improvement!!)

The OS (Symbian S60) is the same as the OS on the E61i, so no real surprises on that part. Even the backup with Nokia Phone Manager restored on the N95. New features were also included;

• upload images to Flickr
• nokia maps
• built-in GPS

The only real bummer is the lame Nokia Phone Manager software. That application just won't work properly (it could also be that the crappy Windows OS is helping a hand).

Laptop Heatstroke

It could have been a regular Monday. My work laptop doesn't feel like working and stopped. Probably caused by overheating. Just when there are deadlines to be kept. Well, it's all in a days work.

Full Disk Encryption for the Mac

Checkpoint acquired a company called PointSec a while ago. This company made full hard disk encryption software for Windows. Now, Checkpoint has released a hard disk encryption version for the Mac. I guess they are taking OSX seriously.

Disk encryption is available today for the Mac (TrueCrypt, PGP), but these aren't able to encrypt the boot partition. Only partitions are by the use of containers. This type of software was available to Windows only primarily.

Now that the 'trick' has been done, I guess more will follow.

I do wonder if it's still possible to use SuperDuper for cloning a bootdisk....

SymCAImport Donators, Thank You

The Certificate Import Tool for Symbian S60 (and other) phones was created on a lousy Sunday afternoon. Mainly, because I was frustrated with the lack of documentation AND support from Nokia on the issue. Nevertheless, it seems that really lots of people are using it (approx 300 a week), and every now and then I receive a donation through PayPal (just click on the donate button).

So to all the donators (you know who you are);

thanks for showing your appreciation!

Symcaimport Safety

No matter what you do, there are always social rejects (and this is saying it nice) trying to sabotage you. I've been getting various virus alerts on my CA import tool for mobile phones. Every on of them seems to be an attempt to upload a trojan. Thankfully, the AV software intercepts them.

 Just to reassure you all; each upload is given a unique name (8 characters). If such a filename already exists, it will be overwritten. So the chance of you getting someone else's file is (almost) zero. Just make sure that you use the correct name / URL when you're trying to download the certificate on your phone.