the almighty helmet

Recently, I have been spammed by Christian fanatics. Spreading the word of God and all that crap. They tried and actually did bypass the spam filter by chumming up with me by sending my pictures of the Pope at some mass in Washington and even more of a Mount, a religious memorial of some sort. And NO, I am not gonna show those pictures here. I’d only take it as a challenge. Who can sue whom over what but I guess I am too lazy to sue over such baloney.

Father Ziegler, how gracious of you to send me 8 unsolicited, boring pictures (each of 1,7 MB) but, with all due respect, go f*** yourself. Oh, and yes, I checked your email address. It belonged to True Vine, a Christian ISP and online directory. Who needs filtered high speed DSL? Did I miss something? I always believed the reason why ISPs are complaining a lot is streaming media, p2p and illegal downloads, meaning evil TV shows and porn. Maybe, Christian fanatics have found other purposes for broadband; if so, that’s what I call true innovation. Well, you cannot accuse them of not copying what already worked in the real (virtual) world. They have gone Web 2.0ish with their MySpace clone MyPraize.com. It has as much visual appeal as those fake Russian dating sites; just like MySpace but with less individuality, of course.

And don’t forget to check out GodTube. This is what I love most about ranting about the bad internet: Quotations. Their featured video “A Man Fell in a Hole” reads in the subtext

A modern parable, this insightful clip examines the life of a man searching through the false promises of other religions and finding his salvation in Christ.”

It excruciatingly reminded me of the time two Mormons tried to proselytize me by arguing if I wouldn’t join their sect my soul would be damned forever because only they were entitled to eternity in heaven. I can’t recall exactly how they distinguished between the various Christian believe clusters but some of them might also be going to hell. I honestly don’t care. Before spending eternity with these lame suckers in heaven, purgatory here I come!

This is the True Vine directory homepage (commented):

I took a look at the source code of the site. Wow, these people really live in the early ages! Inline styles, impressive:

<tr align=”center”>
<td colspan=”6″
style=”vertical-align: top; background-color: rgb(51, 0, 153);”><big><span
style=”color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-weight: bold;”>General Web
Directory</span></big><br>
</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td
style=”vertical-align: top; text-align: left;”><small><font
face=”Arial,Helvetica”><a
href=”http://truevine.net/odp/odp/index.cgi?/Arts/”>Arts</a></font></small></td>
<td
style=”vertical-align: top; text-align: center;”><font
face=”Arial,Helvetica” size=”-1″><a
href=”http://truevine.net/addiction-recovery.html”>Addiction</a></font>

And I then found this strange thing:

<script language=”javascript” src=”rss.php”></script>

Even after bothering Google with src=”rss.php” (only seven hits!!!): Nothing. Just to make sure I am not the idiot, I checked Feedburner. No feed available. Maybe they have heard there’s fancy new technology called syndication and that people can subscribe to what is going on on a website. Help me out, I am speechless.

Mal einen Eintrag für das deutsche Internet. Dies ist ein Auszug aus dem golem.de-Forum, aus einem Thread über eine Photoshop-Tastaturauflage.

na prima
Datum: 25.01.07 - 09:11
Autor: haha
da hat man schon ein idioten(sicheres)betriebssystem und dann auch noch sowas! bekommt man da auch ein “zum kacken bitte hinsetzen”-tshirt dazu? macfanboyism ist lachhaft…überteuerter designschnickschnack für weltfremde computerfritzen. wenn der strom
und das netz ausgeht könnt ihr ja mal versuchen das book zu fressen bzw. es einem plünderer in die fresse zu hauen…good luck!

Re: na prima
Datum: 25.01.07 - 09:22
Autor: ~Steve~
Schlecht geschlafen?

Re: na prima
Datum: 25.01.07 - 09:39
Autor: haha
geht dich das was an?

Re: na prima
Datum: 25.01.07 - 09:24
Autor: hoho
heute morgen probleme auf der toilette gehabt? oder doch mal wieder probleme mit deiner freundin?

Re: na prima
Datum: 25.01.07 - 09:41
Autor: haha
nein..mit dir! dein arsch war heute nacht sooo eng..habe kaum die migthyMouse reinbekommen…hoffe es hat nicht zu arg weh getan!

Re: na prima
Datum: 25.01.07 - 10:10
Autor: hoho
entschuldige, dann korrigiere ich… “mal wieder probleme mit deinem freund gehabt” :-)

Re: na prima
Datum: 25.01.07 - 10:24
Autor: deus-ex
Ich glaube er hat nix gespürt. Denn dein bestes Stück existiert nach dem Prinzip “Lang ist er nicht nicht, aber unwahrscheinlich dünn …”

Unterstützt meine These, dass sich Menschen lieber siezen sollten, um Unhöflichkeiten zu vermeiden.

According to George Carlin’s definition of old people (aka. himself), John McCain obviously is an Old Fuck. Or an Old Man? Maybe ask Georgie!

Carlin turned seventy last year. Unlike an old man which is a point of view, a way looking at things — and some people are old men while being in their twenties —, an old fuck is just some jackass turning old. And unlike an Old Fart who is a imbecile, moronic, old man drooling himself.

When getting old you are not expected to remember things and held responsible for your shenanigans. As to Carlin, you can even shit in your pants. Driving this to ridiculous heights, electing someone over seventy might trigger the risk of having a president who will not be accountable for his actions. Just like now with George W.

Now, what is more hazardous to a country: Being governed by a mean old fuck who is taking advantage of his age or an old man who did not change his mind in a couple of centuries?

Apparently, the creator of the website www.thingsyoungerthanmccain.com would agree with me.

Also, check out their video:

Today, I updated my WordPress installation to version 2.5.1 and I gotta say: It was a breeze!

At first, not all plugins worked the way they were supposed to but with a little tweaking and twitching everything is back to normal. Especially my painfully customized frontpage needed some extra convincing. That’s the price you have to pay when you want something different from all the typical blogger themes.

I also implemented the now integrated Gravatar support into the code and CSS.

Switching from UTW (Ultimate Tagging Warrior) to Amaury Balmer’s Simple Tags wasn’t so easy, though. First, make sure you download Simple Tags and not its predecessor Simple Tagging or it will not recognize the .htaccess rules and wont submit any queries to the WordPress system. If you are using the k2 theme, take a good look at this guide and eradicate all of the former UTW code from your (probably customized) template files. I guess, the problems I ran in to were mostly version and k2 related but still a pain.

All in all, I am very happy with the new Dashboard, the plugin and especially the new tagging system. Great work WordPress team, Amaury, Scott Reilly for CPL, and the other plugin devs.

Like many other users I’ve noticed that with the introduction of iTunes 7 the iTunes-LAME, the best MP3 encoding software by Blacktree Inc., no longer shows up in the scripts menu.
There is, however, a very easy workaround for this minor annoyance:

1. Move the iTunes-LAME app into the Applications folder (contrary to the recommendation by the software author)
2. Open the Script Editor and insert the following line of code

tell me
activate
do shell script “open -a iTunes-LAME“
end tell

3. Save as a script (e.g. Start iTunes-LAME.scpt) in /Library/iTunes/Scripts/
4. Now open iTunes and you will find the Start iTunes-LAME script. Et voilà!

Explanation: What the script does it call the Terminal and execute the open application command. As long as there is an app in the main applications folder by the name iTunes-LAME this will work.

For all you lazy bums here is the script for download.

Don’t ask me why I searched images.google.de for the German word for macaque “Makak”. But it revealed -beside 6300 hits- a funny guy from a Polish radio station. And take into account that he comes up on page 1. Lucky bastard!

Unfortunately, the same search does not work on the Google mother ship.

Visit www.antyradio.pl for confirmation how damn funny it is being a Polish radio host.

Out of boredom and maybe pedantry I created a replacement frame for the Gallery2 module Imageframe. It looks almost perfect. One downer, though, is a little shadow irregularity within the frame images no one is probably ever gonna notice.

UPDATE: It’s 3:13h in the morning now and eight hours ago I was wanting to get pizza. Well, I am still hungry but those glitches are gone.

The frame theme comes in two sizes. I’d recommend the smaller version for use with the WPG2 Sidebar or Sidebar Block. In Gallery2 I use the larger version as my Photo Frame and the smaller for Item and Album Frame. Since I use the WordPress plugin WPG2 I paid extra attention to the compatibility with WordPress.

Download the real_polaroids. (more…)

A picture I discovered a very long time ago. Nothing fancy, just your regular Joe trying to pull something off. Only this specimen has a hat. Again, nothing fancy. Just a hat. With a message. C’mon, damnit, read the hat.

hello internet,

as my previous website www.sushismaze.com has been taken over by greedy domain grabbers, I refused to buy in and registered this incredibly unique domain.

The final design will be ready in a while. More to come in the near future…

~Helmet