MyBlogLog used for surgery

(Surgical blogging?)

Isn't it funny how tools for bloggers can save costly and risky procedures in our offline lives these days?

I was talking with a friend from MyBlogLog the other day about some topics that I don't usually cover on this blog. But I noticed that her profile


contains some rather interesting characteristics. Not only is she a blogger, but apparently she is also about to put a number of people in the medical community out of a job.


Look closely at that profile. Check out the tools that she has available to her:




Isn't that impressive? No more do we need to worry about chemotherapy or radiation treatments. No more risks that come with surgery, just click on that link!



How about it? Does anyone else have any blogging tools they find useful in offline life? If so, leave a comment and tell us.

Boston "terrorized" by government

As I'm sure you have all heard by now, the city of Boston, Massachusetts was terrorized by it's own government the other day. Well, you certainly can't say the inanimate Lite-Brite-like boards, with LEDs and a couple of electronics were out there actively terrorizing anyone, can you? Particularly since they were there for a couple of weeks, flipping people the bird, without any such incident.

Now, you've never seen me link to CNN on here before, and actually, that still hasn't changed, but take a look at the the link below.

Six more weeks of terrorism indeed. But who will guarantee that the government will stop trying to terrorize us after only six more weeks?

Happy Groundhogs Day on Flickr

Be sure to read the story under the (original) photo. Did you know CNN had a sense of humour like this?

How to verify GnuPG 1.4.3 (and Gpg4win 1.0.0)

Obviously, when you see something like
GnuPG 1.4.3 released
you will want to verify that what you just downloaded is the real thing, before you trust it. Here is how.

gpg --verify gnupg-1.4.3.tar.bz2.sig

This checks whether the signature file matches the source file. You should see a message indicating that the signature is good and made by that signing key. Make sure that you have the right key, either by checking the fingerprint of that key with other sources or by checking that the key has been signed by a trustworthy other key.

Note, that you can retrieve the signing key using the command
finger wk@g10code.com
or using a keyserver like
gpg --recv-key 1CE0C630

The distribution key 1CE0C630 is signed by the well known key 5B0358A2. If you get an key expired message, you should retrieve a fresh copy as the expiration date might have been prolonged. NEVER USE A GNUPG VERSION YOU JUST DOWNLOADED TO CHECK THE INTEGRITY OF THE SOURCE - USE AN EXISTING GNUPG INSTALLATION!

* If you are not able to use an old version of GnuPG, you have to verify the SHA-1 checksum. Assuming you downloaded the file gnupg-1.4.3.tar.bz2, you would run the sha1sum command like this: sha1sum gnupg-1.4.3.tar.bz2
and check that the output matches the first line from the following list:

9e96b36e4f4d1e8bc5028c99fac674482cbdb370 gnupg-1.4.3.tar.bz2 7c0f5db594bed9a901d9be43c31f6c80c6080141 gnupg-1.4.3.tar.gz 5477211551e96ad689c7618ee39a2b9c186721ef gnupg-1.4.2.2-1.4.3.diff.bz2 abf49fa5dc71e291144780d47f2811d83ae5e1ba gnupg-w32cli-1.4.3.exe


And of course, the announcement:

"After struggling for 6 month with Windows pecularities, we are finally pleased to announce the *first stable release of Gpg4win*, version 1.0.0! (located here: Gpg4win 1.0.0 released)"

should lead you to do similar verification.

Regarding Gpg4win, if you are stuck on such a platform:

The *ready to use installer* is available at:

http://ftp.gpg4win.org/gpg4win-1.0.0.exe (6.8M) http://ftp.gpg4win.org/gpg4win-1.0.0.exe.sig

SHA1 and MD5 checksums are given below.

SHA1 checksum:
c0ccd90c9aec23447bcd883cfd0602712967cfc6 gpg4win-1.0.0.exe
MD5 checksum:
299fa8567a484ea32706b11d318dbe9a gpg4win-1.0.0.exe

Building the installer is not possible on Windows machines and works best on current Debian GNU/Linux systems (we use the mingw32 package from Sid).

It is of course "interesting" that you can not build the installer on that platform.

Migraine

I had an important meeting earlier.

Instead of being in attendance, I was incapacitated by agonizing head pain. This is very disappointing to me. I hope things like this do not happen often. (Ever again!)


ElGamal: 2048g/D7293928 800F 1C24 CE3B 978A D3B6 664E A01A 4164 B1D9 1163

Google is broken?

400 Bad Request

Google
Error

Bad Request

Your client has issued a malformed or illegal request.





That's what lynx http://google.com/ gives.

That's what lynx http://google.com gives.

That's what lynx http://google.ca/ gives.

That's what lynx http://google.ca gives.

That's what lynx http://google.com/ig/ gives.

That's what lynx http://google.com/ig gives.

That's what lynx http://mail.google.com/ gives.

That's what lynx http://mail.google.com gives.

Are you noticing a pattern yet? Even omitting the trailing slash, google seems rather broken. If I could access google.com, perhaps I could look up an email address to write and complain, but obviously not even gmail is accessable.

Google should get their act together and fix this ASAP.

Someone who can reach them, please write them and tell them this. Point them to this post, if you like. You would think someone the size of google would know how to run a site without breaking it.

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