Spammers Defeat Gmail CAPTCHA, Recording Off an HD Tuner, A Flickr Pic

Another Google Trick

Another small Google trick (again, you can find lots of sites with these or figure them out using the Advanced search options in Google itself). Find all pages with a certain URL in the search. Example: inurl:view/index.shtml - searches only for pages with "view/index.shtml" in them.

Spammers Defeat Gmail CAPTCHA

It was bound to happen. After all, there's some pretty advanced OCR software out there, so it was about time someone created something that could recognize text through any background. I think you'll see this showing up to crack other CAPTHCHA registrations. Damn spammers.

Recording Off an HD Tuner

Surprisingly what they say is true - even if you record an HD program off an HD tuner onto a regular old-school analog VCR the picture is better. Of course, it's not HD but it is better then off an analog tuner. Quite a bit in fact.

We haven't quite decided what to do about recording things. But for now, probably until the Big Diital Switchover (cue the fanfare); we'll probably stay with a VCR. We don't want to pay every month for TIVO or the similar brand, or go through the trouble of setting up a computer with an HD tuner just to record HD. Why doesn't someone make a standalone HD-capable digital recorder? Oh, yea, the whole digital copyright thing. Yea.

A Flickr Pic

The Internet is great, isn't it? Especially blogs. If you don't like what I'm saying you don't have to read it. Or maybe you're so fascinated or disgusted you can't look away no matter what. Anyway, blogs are great, I can give you my totally amateur thoughts on a picture like the below.

Anyway...I still love Flickr.com, even though I don't have a full account there now. But I can still upload lots of pics and look at other's. In fact, I have two accounts - one for general pics and one to correspond to my OABONNY site. You can see my OABONNY pages here at Flickr. Also, if you do, check out my favs there.

Some great stuff on Flickr, some talented people have shared their photos.

Here's one of my new favs (among many at both Flickr accounts). Have to share this, click it to see it larger:

You And I Fly A Ship Seeking The Warm Unending Sky
Originally uploaded by Eric Rolph

Firstly, the title caught me. At first I wasn't sure if it completely fits the photo but I now believe that it does.

The second thing that caught my mind's eye was something that made me think of that commercial, you've probably seen it but not thought anything of it. I'm not sure what it's advertising - maybe an allergy medicine or something like that. Hiking girl, top of a hill, looking out over the distance, the perspective turning 360 as your view swings around. Somehow, even though the are somewhat different, it reminds me of this shot.

Lastly, I think it's an inspiring shot. Potential spread out before you, but with the occasional hardships along the way seen on the horizon.

You could even call it post-apocalyptic if you wanted to interpret it that way, no civilization as far as the eye can see.

Or maybe I'm just getting anxious for the summer.

Foot bridge over the Black River, messing with the camera, using Gmail & Inbox.com as spam filter

Footbridge over the Black River.

I wanted to check out the foot bridge over the Black River that was put into place to watch the kayaking competitions and such, but it was all closed off. It looks like it goes over one of the channels to the power dam, and overlooks the Black River on the other side. Kinda looks a bit discolored - possibly this bridge is "second-hand"?

BTW, at the end of the small park off Eastern Boulevard has a small display sign and large piece of equipment from the power dam (my father is leaning over it in the pic), the sign has the history of the building of the power plant with pics. Interesting.

Playing around with the camera a bit more.

Continuing to be impressed with this Canon A570 IS camera. I keep finding new options, settings, and many more manual settings to play around with. Including some pretty incredible stuff.

I've been playing with the continuous mode, which lets the camera recycle even faster. Below is a few shots in a series (thumbnailed of course); unlike my Olympus' "burst mode" this camera can take the continuous shots in full rez:

Also, the video setting is available in 640X480 and modes lesser then that and 30fps or 15fps. Very very nice. Small demo.

Using Gmail and other free mail services' spam filtering for your Pop/Imap e-Mail program.

Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome fame; for you computer nuts you'll know who he is.

There was an interesting article in one of his recent newsletters about using free e-mail services as spam filters.

Take for example Gmail (which is what his article was referring to). Gmail has some pretty good spam filtering, and it also can access external accounts e-mail through pop. And, of course, you can access Gmail via pop.

So why not use Gmail as a spam filtering service by having it get your mail from your pop accounts, spam-wash it, and then access Gmail from your e-mail program instead of your regular pop e-mail?

I've been doing the same for months now, but using Inbox.com and it works great (if I'd only thought of letting others know about it, duh).

There's a few advantages to using Inbox.com instead of Gmail (like privacy issues, Gmail's lack of more advanced spam options, and Inbox.com allows you to access the spam folder if you like, versus Gmail which doesn't) and a few disadvantages, but for the most part the two services are somewhat similar and work well for this purpose.

I just set this system up for my wife using Gmail. Her e-mail address had been in use for many years and has gathered a tremendous amount of spam. Gmail is chugging along quite nicely and filtering 99.9% of it by itself, with few false positives (which will decrease as time goes by).