Blrg

My mother was listening to the TV the other night while I had Eth over. Just as I was about to show SCO (Space Cowboy) to him, a The Brick commercial came on, and... the music was familiar. Very familiar. IRRITATINGLY familiar. I recognised it fairly fast because I quickly found it irritating in the game - it’s the ANI city theme.

So the question is: Is The Brick violating a copyright? Is SCO? Or did they both obtain a fair licence of the same music track and this is nothing but a co-incidence?

Perhaps I should record the commercial and show what I mean?

Space Cowboy!

As mentioned in my previous short post, I've been playing an MMORPG lately (*gasp!*), called Space Cowboy. Oddly enough, I'm finding it to be somewhat interesting and time consuming enough that I can jump in and come back out a few hours later feeling refreshed and without so much time (Which is an odd thing to say, but there it is.).

There's something nice about blasting things out of the sky.

Must be the the gattling thunka-thunka-thunka-thunka-BOOM...

Anyhow, this company apparently has not one, not two, but four free MMORPGs to which you can use the same account for. Interestingly, all of them claim to be free for life, which is kind of an interesting promise - not that I disbelieve it, mind you (Gunz is still alive) - and I wonder how long it'll last. GPotato (the company) does get income from these games, I imagine, given some of the paid options that are available. So far, though, it seems that these paid options are nowhere near necessary to be able to enjoy the game which is, it hopefully goes without saying, a very nice fact indeed.

I get spam!

So recently, my main e-mail address was a target for spam. At first it came slowly - an e-mail or so per week - but then it began to grow, more and more e-mails per day. Originally, I wasn't too concerned, but then I got really annoyed - I'd managed to keep all my e-mail addresses entirely spam-free. Why did this one start getting spam all of a sudden?

Eventually I remembered a bug which was spotted in my ICQ client, Miranda: Recently, for some odd reason, the "Do not publish primary e-mail address" option would always switch off, causing anyone to be able to collect your e-mail address off your profile.

I removed my e-mail address from my profile (I doubt I'll be needing to reset my password any time soon anyway.), and the spam dropped almost magically.

Server updates on forum

To give my forum some use (and I think I had decided some time ago to do this, and didn't stick to it), I'm going to post any updates relevant to the server itself only on my forum rather than cluttering my personal blog with that information.

This will be the last post on my blog in that category.

Gallery changes done

All the changes to the gallery have been done. All galleries are completely available again. I'll remind once again that some galleries and features may require registration.

Looking for an apartment

I said I was moving out last year, and I haven't yet! I'm looking for an apartment, and my future roommate Eth has spotted one near St. Laurent that might be good for the two of us.

He works in Orléans, and myself downtown, so we're looking between those two areas.

Xmas gifts

For the curious, I've updated my wishlist, showing what of it I've gotten as well as including a new thing or two that I'd like. It seems I'll have to buy the Okami soundtrack myself (and probably soon before it goes out of print). I got lots of chocolate again, but at the time of this posting, it's already all gone ;>_>

Joe's Goals - What my own goals are

I'd spoken about Joe's Goals beforehand, but I hadn't really mentioned what my goals on there are. So, without further ado:

• Chores (+1)
• Exercise (+1) - Last check 7 days ago
• Wrote (+1) - Last check 31 days ago
• Coded (+1) - Last check 11 days ago
• Blogged (+1)
• Added todo item (+1) - Strange as this item may seem, this is to encourage myself to remember things, especially things I need to do.
• Completed todo item (+1)
• Been outside for a while (+1)
• Cleaned / Cooked (+1) - Placed separately from "chores" as expansion, not chores with that description
• Filtered Mom's e-mails (+1) - This one is likely to get archived as now most of the spam in her inbox gets correctly tagged as "bulk" anyway, which her OE now has a filter (or "rule") for.
• Been to Joe's Goals (+0) - Used as a tracker
• Socialised (+1)
• Changed bed sheets (+1) - Set as valid for only one particular day (Saturday); I'm trying to get myself to do it always on that day, and not on other days, for various reasons. Mostly a question of routine.
• Ignored things to do (-1)
• Ate Out (Alone) (-1)
• Haven't been to Joe's Goals (-1)

So now you know what influences the graph, and why it doesn't go negative all that often (I think).

An amusing error message

My job requires me to keep, among other things, lists of documents up to date; Documents of all kinds that have something or other to do with situations and people in other countries. At some point I came upon some links which were no longer valid, and gave this error message:

There is an end-user problem. If you have reached this site from a web link,
- Through your internet options, adjust your privacy settings to allow cookies or
- Check your security settings and make sure this site has not been blocked or
- You are probably using a very slow link that may not work well with this application.
Otherwise you have reached this site through unauthorized means.

Seriously, considering you get this very same error message accessing their index page, can any of those really be true, including it being unauthorized, of all things?

Work's been fairly boring, unfortunately.

I've been playing Space Cowboy. Free MMORPG, and it isn't too bad.

But more on all that later.

Rogers was criticized some time ago for implementing bandwidth limits (caps) on their subscribers' connections.
However, they're at decent, reasonable limit of 60 GB (combined) which is fairly unlikely to hit (unless you're downloading and sharing, say, PS2 games).
However, Sympatico is planning on having some really stringent caps, some of them as low as 1 GB. What's worse is that the less you pay per month, the more you pay if you go over your limit.
Okay, 30 GB is a reasonable limit, but it's still half of Rogers', and it really doesn't make sense to start tightening down on users' connections now as bandwidth prices are getting lower, not higher.

I've been using this goal tracking system called Joe's Goals lately, which allows you to keep track of your daily (or weekly, or some-days-in-a-week-ly) goals - such as whether or not you've done exercise today, or whether or not you've resisted smoking.
There are four things I really like about it: it has a really simple interface, it uses AJAX, it has few (or no) ads, and Joe is constantly working on improving it.
I should also note that the reminder e-mails (configurable) are also useful.
Those of you who visit my site will notice that I now have a "badge" at the top of my blog displaying how I've been doing in terms of keeping my goals, lately. At the moment I actually have few "negative goals" (i.e. things I want to avoid doing), but I'm sure a few ideas will come along as soon as some behaviour of mine annoys me.
If you, like me, have trouble keeping to things you have to do regularly, you may be interested in using it. If not... well, give it a shot anyway -- all you have to do is visit the front page to see how it works and to tinker a bit with it ;)