MavEtJu's Distorted View of the World - 2006-08

Posted on 2006-08-21 10:18:23, modified on 2006-08-21 10:22:48
Tags: Spam Faxes - Hall of Shame

The commercial was for PrinterWorkz (02 9723 7120), and the provider was NewsNet (02 9220 7500). The people from printerworkz.com.au were unable to remove more than one number from their list, but the girl from NewsNet was efficient in noting down our number ranges and removing them from their list. At least that is the plan.

Posted on 2006-08-21 10:14:13, modified on 2006-08-21 10:25:01
Tags: Spam Faxes - Hall of Shame

After throwing away another fax with spam, I decided to keep a list of companies which use fax spammers, with as much information about them as possible.

The best way to get their provider is to call the person the fax came from, and the say that you're interested in sending faxes like that. You'll get the phone number, google for it and you'll know the provider.

Posted on 2006-08-19 20:55:45, modified on 2006-08-19 21:36:18
Tags: FreeBSD, RSS

I became a little bit tired of giving out the same URLs to everybody each time somebody asked for a list with podcasts/vodcasts etc related to FreeBSD. So I made the FreeBSD Multimedia Resources list. See http://www.mavetju.org/unix/multimedia.php for more information, and there is an RSS feed for it too!

Posted on 2006-08-16 11:21:20, modified on 2006-08-16 11:22:44
Tags: Happiness

After an unexpected reboot of our webserver, the postgresql database didn't want to restart. It complained that the process in its PID file, #441, already existed. When checking this with ps xauw, it showed up as the mysql database!

Posted on 2006-08-14 19:29:54, modified on 2006-08-14 19:35:59
Tags: Broken software

One of the jobs I have at this moment is the parsing of PDF files. Very easy... convert PDF to HTML, convert HTML to text and then parse it. Only sometimes the PDF files are protected:

[~] edwin@k7>pdftohtml 3798b854f6245a5b98ec0344aefd44b1.pdf
Error: Copying of text from this document is not allowed.

Luckely there is an easy solution for this:

[~] edwin@k7>pdf2ps 3798b854f6245a5b98ec0344aefd44b1.pdf 
[~] edwin@k7>ps2pdf 3798b854f6245a5b98ec0344aefd44b1.ps 
[~] edwin@k7>pdftohtml 3798b854f6245a5b98ec0344aefd44b1.pdf
Page-1
Page-2

Mission accomplished! :-P

Posted on 2006-08-09 16:58:34, modified on 2006-08-10 00:21:28
Tags: Movies, Films, Reviews

The movies in the "Tremors" series are of the kind you expect friday or saturday late at night when nobody is watching television anymore, but since you're still awake and there is nowhere you are going to tomorrow you watch them. Low budget, predictable, bad scripted and a nice level of gun shooting, explosions and bodyparts flying around.

The first movie starts in a little town in the middle of nowhere (hot, dry, mountains) with the two main characters finding out there is mysterious disappearance of people and indeed, they find out it's caused by big worms which cause little earthquakes. Back to town, safely on the roof, trying to find a way out while the town get demolished by these big worms. Walking out is impossible because the worms sense the vibration in the ground and use that to track them. The escape finishes halfway when the worms disable their escape vehicle and they end up on a rock in the middle of nowhere. Luckely enough they manage to lure the worms into a canyon and the movie ends with a nice splatter of the worm into the ground.

In the second movie, "Aftershock", two of the main characters return with more sophisticated equipment to track the worms and with more explosives to blow them up. That seems to be the standard in sequels of bad movies: more gore, more explosives. This time the main characters (only one of the main character of the original movie came along, and one side character of the original movie but he's not a main character here neither) are hired to clean an area of these worms. The hunted have become hunters. The worms in this movie are have evolved from worms into some kind of big turkey creatures so they're not limited to underground anymore. And instead of feeling the vibrations when people walk, they now see the heath people generate. As in the first movie, there is a stand-off in which the situation gets worse and worse, specially when the turkeys start to learn to climb on top of each other and reach our heros. Luckely all the turkeys get blown up into one last big explosion and the world is safe again.

Movie number three, "Back to perfection", the turkeys still haven't been extinquished. And main character from the first and second movies is back, one still happily killing turkeys, while the new other main character running a themepark in the area of the original movie, trying to make a quick buck out of the tremor hype. And as suspected, the worms are back in the area. This time it's not a shoot-out against them, because the government joins in and wants to study them. But luckely they get killed as one of the first ones, while the now-third-movie main character manages to survive the inside of one of the big worms. Back to the good old shooting, but the turkeys have developed wings and some kind of fart-jet-exhaust so they can fly high, far and fast. Then a stand-off, and a blast which is bigger than the ones in the previous movies combined. Unfortunately for the characters in the movie, the blast was going only half-way the movie and there are still four of these flying fart-jet turkeys around. Improvise McGuyver style on the local junkyard to make an arsenal of small weapons: Less or more! And after a strange final fight, the world is safe again. Except for the themepark which now has a fart-jet turkey and a tame worm which follows the main character.

Movie four, called "The Legend Begins", takes place during the Wild West period in Northern America. No explosions, and only little guns. A little town called Rejection, with a mine which is closed because too many people didn't come back out of it. The owner of the mine comes to inspect it himself, hires a gun slinger and gets him killed. The owner wants to sell the mine and never come back, but he changes his mind after the people in the next town laugh at their telegraph messages for help. Gunshooting, blood and gore. And at the end the world is safe again.

Having watched them all, I think that the last one is the best. Not that the first one was bad (number two and three were not really my favourite, too much explosions), but the monsters made sense in that era when the West was still wild and that there where still monsters luring in the mines.

Anyway, enough time wasted on these movies!