Maybe I Work It Too Hard

September 21, 2005 by Eric Richardson

I've found out lately that there are any number of things you can do to crash a Sony Ericsson s710a. For instance, you can go into the pictures and use 'Select Multiple' to choose like twenty pictures you want to delete, while at the same time listening to mp3s. Or you can be listening to music and try to attach four or five images to an email.

Maybe the phone's just trying to tell me it's not a computer.

Getting Ready for New Spam Filters

September 21, 2005 by Eric Richardson

I've been doing some backend eThreads work lately in preparation for again changing up my spam blocking solution. I'm fed up with false positives in lists like the DSBL (a dynamic IP that had an open SOCKS proxy in 2003 likely doesn't now). Heavy handed blocking has made my stats a lot cleaner, but it's also led to legit people getting blocked and spam's starting to sneak around anyway.

I wanted to put this code into eThreads as plugins and keep the core code cleaner, but to do so I needed a way for plugins to hook into the posting process. That's now in the code, so it's time for the actual plugin development. Hopefully I'll have that up and going within the next few days.

All of this has made me realize that someday I should release a new version. eThreads 1.2 came out in 2000. The whole codebase has been torn down, rewritten, torn down, and rewritten again since then.

Fun With Batteries

September 19, 2005 by Eric Richardson

My laptop battery appears to be giving up on life. It properly runs from 100% to 50% or so, and then just instantly drops to 2% capacity. So basically I'm getting just a bit over an hour out of it. Very odd. I've got another one back at the apartment. I may have to switch it in.

USC Football's Popularity Showing Major Deficiencies in Event Planning

September 18, 2005 by Eric Richardson

Yesterday USC opened its 2005 home football schedule at the Coliseum against Arkansas. The game itself was a blow-out; USC won 70-17. That makes 24 straight victories, and 22 straight at home.

This is my fifth year at USC, just as it is Pete Carroll's. The team went 6-6 his (and my) first season, and has progressed rapidly since then. That's certainly made the games a lot more fun, but it's also made them a lot more crowded. Perhaps the place you feel that most is in the student section, where it's now increasingly hard to find a good seat and can almost be dangerous trying to get in when the gates open. — Continue Reading...

Wrong Way? More Like Wrong Code

September 16, 2005 by Eric Richardson

So on my way to Long Beach this morning I got a ticket. It was an MTA Sheriff's officer (I guess... the ticket has MTA on it), and I was on my bike pulling into the San Pedro Blue Line station.

Now it doesn't surprise me overly much to get a ticket while biking. Some of the things I do on a bike probably aren't 100% legal, though I'm a very safe rider and would never do anything crazy. But in the course of the day there are things you do, like making a left turn onto a crosswalk when transitioning from riding as a vehicle to riding as a pedestrian, that are perfectly safe but probably violate some law. — Continue Reading...