Author: Jan Dembowski (page 34 of 96)

January 10, 2010

Village Idiot wants to punish the Newark Scare guy

Here we go.

“He’s really an unwelcome guest,” Lautenberg told The Record of Bergen County. “He should be returned to his homeland.”

via Controversy swirls over graduate student who breached security at Newark Airport | New Jersey Real-Time News – – NJ.com.

This translates into

“I’m 85 years old but may want to get re-elected anyway. So I’m going to speak pointlessly and try to make the government looks less-than-idiotic. Hey, did I mention how important a Senator is?”

Later on the Senator toned down the rhetoric but honestly.

A little proportion here. This Great Security Threat walked around an unguarded exit. The big security control was a fabric fence meant for guiding a line. Why doesn’t the airport just install one way revolving doors like you have in the New York subway system? People with wheelchairs can use a locked door that only opens from a security operator, and in case of a fire the doors would open automatically. This is not new technology, the answer has been around for years. It would be inconvenient but what is the TSA trying to accomplish anyway?

The argument against that is probably “that costs too much money” but how much did it cost to shut down the airport for all of those hours? And does anyone actually believe that the bad guys are not aware of this before all the commotion?

I am positive that the Great Government Security Theater will get this poor guy deported just to cover themselves. That really would be a shame but that is just how the system works. Don’t solve any problems just go after anyone who reveals them.

January 10, 2010

Mad Moxxi’s Underdome single player really is pointless

The PC version of Mad Moxxi’s Underdome Riot DLC is out. It’s like those arena challenges in Borderlands except you have to win the round 4 or 5 consecutive times per arena. I can’t recall the exact number because of the catch: when you die on a level you need to start the whole thing over again.

That irks me to no end. I understand that this is really a multi-player game and that more than one player is really needed but this makes the game virtually impossible to beat single player. I got extremely close in one sitting but died at the last minute. This put me in the penalty box where I was declared defeated and needed to start over from scratch.

That sucks and just makes the game needlessly frustrating. Single player on this DLC is just pointless. The graphics and game play are good, and listening to Moxxi do the showman thing is great fun (while trying not to get killed). But if you don’t have any buddies to play online with you’re screwed.

January 9, 2010

Woo, they got the Newark Scare Guy

Nice to see Senator Lautenberg still goes for the sound bite. Is he up for re-election?

“This was a terrible deed in its outcome — it wasn’t some prank that didn’t do any harm — it did a lot of harm because it sent out an alert that people can get away with something like this,” Lautenberg said.

via Police arrest man in Newark security breach – Airliner security- msnbc.com.

My children sometimes see my blog so I’m not going to type what I really think.

This guy went around a fabric barrier just like the ones in your bank line to see the teller. Every time I get off of an airplane and walk to the luggage area, I always think “Geez, anyone could just walk in this way”. And surprise! Someone did. And now he’s faced with a $500 fine. I’m also betting that ICE suddenly decides to deport him.

If ICE does do that, that would be very wrong. This guy’s infraction really is only worth a fine. It’s the TSA that needs to learn from this and buckle up their process. I don’t blame the TSA guard who let this happen for 2 reasons: he’s a only security guard and NOT law enforcement, and it’s not his fault that his managers can’t enforce coverage when one of their guys needs to walk away for some reason.

At Penn Station I see many TSA guards and personally I think that they’re utterly useless. What does cheer me up is that I see the same number of Amtrak police officers in the same area. I expect real law enforcement to keep me safe, I don’t expect much from overworked and low paid door guards. I don’t have a problem with TSA staff but let’s be honest about what they are and what they do.

So the Senator from New Jersey thinks that this revealed some horrible secret weakness in our airports. I’m hoping that the evil people who exploit these things have the same quality of smarts as our elected officials.

January 4, 2010

Moving WordPress again

I have been running my blog on the URL wp.dembowski.net for years. If you are familiar with WordPress then that’s an OK URL to use but most people are more comfortable with a generic name.

I did not want to use www.dembowski.net (already used for a place holder) and did not want to put move to a folder off of the web server. So I picked blog.dembowski.net and moved my WordPress install this morning.

It went very well.

I created a new virtual server for blog.dembowski.net on my server and enabled it in Apache 2 (a2ensite blog.dembowski.net) and copied all of my files from the old wp directory to the new blog directory.

I used my nightly backup script and produced a text file of my mysql database. I then ran this command on that text file:

$ cat wp-database.sql | sed -e 's/wp.dembowski.net/blog.dembowski.net/g' > new-database.sql
$ cat new-database.sql | mysql -D blogdbname -u blog-user -p

I did it that way on purpose so that I could always restore the old wp.dembowski.net setting if I messed this up. By hunting through and changing every instance of wp.dembowski.net to blog.dembowski.net in the database backup file, I guaranteed that even obscure plugin settings would get updated as well.

In my old directory I moved everything out and left a two line .htaccess file like so

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://blog.dembowski.net/$1 [R=301,L]

That way any hits to http://wp.dembowski.net/some/thing/here/ will get 301 Permanently Moved to the same URL but on http://blog.dembowski.net/.

After a little testing everything is confirmed to be working. I am in the process of updating my stats settings in Clicky and Google Analytics but so far so good.

January 3, 2010

More off camera flash

In September I fooled around with the off camera flash. Since then I have not really taken advantage of it so yesterday I intentionally used it like crazy.

The Nikon family of cameras from the D80 and up support off camera flash using CLS. This takes your pop-up flash and lets it be in commander mode. This way the pop-up flash is not used to light the scene, instead it’s used to tell the nearby flash in remote mode to go off.

The results can be fun and you get a more naturally lit photo. The above shot was taken using the ceiling as my reflector. It’s not a good example as I probably could have gotten the same results just pointing SB-800 straight up while attached to my camera but you get the idea.

During this get together I just left the flash on the table and pointed it up at the ceiling. I’m hoping with some more practice I can get better and have more fun. Lucky for me my friends and family are tolerant of the nut with the camera; I took almost a 100 pictures alone last night.

December 31, 2009

HP Nagware (DO NOT WANT)

I have not yet found where to turn off this annoying HP nagware. Anyone know where it lives? You’ll note that the two options are

Bug me to death later.
Activate the trial that you don’t want.

Seriously HP and Norton, can’t you just get the hint? I am fine with losing all my data.

Update: After bugging me a couple more times, it puts an option to stop asking me. Thanks HP, you get an E for effort.

December 30, 2009

Well that would sure end Democracy

No matter what risk to passengers, Unions Must Be STOPPED!

DeMint said Wednesday that he is concerned that Southers would let TSA screeners join a labor union.

via GOP Senator Says Dems Trying to Rush TSA Nominee – NYTimes.com.

Laughable. It must be nice being in the Party of No, not really much to do just complain and vote no on everything. Christmas Day and after demonstrated that the TSA is flying blind and still does not have a clue.

This is a great time to hold up the nomination of a former FBI agent and police detective as head of the TSA. The objection is not about his qualifications in law enforcement, it’s about if he’ll oppose those pinko commie you-n-yuns.

December 29, 2009

Life after Borderlands

I’ve now completed Borderlands 5 times. Twice with the Hunter character and twice with the Siren. And I completed the Isle of Dr. Ned too.

I have resisted the urge to get MW2 for one simple reason: I’m not thrilled about the story line. The first MW was gritty and depressing but it played well. All of the CoD games are very episodic and has to be played in order.

What I liked about Borderlands, FarCry (both versions), and Crysis was that most of the game was all over the map. You could go after each mission in sequence but how you approached the bad guys was flexible.

So for my current game I fell back to an old reliable source. I purchased Wolfenstein via Steam. It is visually different than the other Wolfenstein games (Blazkowicz isn’t blond?) and the play is odd so far. It’s like an updated RtCW but plays about the same. There is a new supernatural element to the game play, but so far the games is not very entertaining.

I’ll keep at it and see if I like it. I’m of Polish descent so there is always the appeal of playing any WWII anti-nazi game. 🙂

December 26, 2009

1:10 scale Saturn V liftoff

Sometime you do find fun things on Reddit.

Yesterday was fun as the family did the Christmas day trip to my brother’s house. We had a great time but I’m coming down with a serious nose cold. I think I only got two hours of sleep last night. Good thing I’m off all next week, I’d really hate to get sick at work…

December 20, 2009

Amazing stuff this “gasoline”

So this morning I attacked the pile of snow in my driveway. The gas from last year became no good so the snow thrower was stalling like crazy. Crazy as in every minute or so. This is not news to me, I had just thought that the power of positive thinking would make the old gas more combustible.

When that was a bust, Lily and I took the gas container and filled it up. For our troubles we narrowly missed getting slammed by another SUV. The poor lady missed us and said “my brakes didn’t work”.

Funny thing that Isaac Newton and his laws. If only she watched Mythbusters then she’d understand better. I stepped on the accelerator and she passed behind me so it was all good. When I got home and put in fresh gas the snow thrower worked fine. Now the driveway is usable and I ache like nothing else.