taint.org: Justin Mason’s Weblog

TV: I’ve taken a little time to throw up my PVR build log.

If you’re hacking on one yourself, or curious about what it takes, or just like reading cut-and-pasted UNIX command lines — go take a look!

Tags: command, look, pvr, reading, time, tv, unix

Spam: Before xmas, I received a copy of Brian McWilliams‘ new book, Spam Kings.

It’s a great book — full of behind-the-scenes details on how the spammers operate, how they get away with it on the sending end, how they try to evade filters on the receiving end, and how they’re fundamentally running the usual simple scams that have been around since before email spam came into existence. Well worth reading.

In addition, Brian’s continuing to write about spam and spammers at the Spam Kings weblog, and will be giving a talk at this year’s MIT Spam Conference, tomorrow.

Anyway, pick up a copy if you’re interested in the spam problem — this is one of the best books I’ve read on the subject, and this kind of information is essential for an understanding of the people we’re up against.

Tags: anti-spam, books, brian-mcwilliams, oreilly, reading, recommended, spam, spam-kings, spammers

Reading: Both jim winstead and Nelson Minar have praised Earth Abides , a 1949 post-apocalyptic novel where ‘all but a handful of people die from a mystery disease’, and the ensuing narrative ‘follows one man’s attempt to rebuild something like a society.’ It seems a tip from original happy mutant Mark Frauenfelder was the pointer for both of ‘em.

I’m a huge fan of the genre; I think it’s something about our age group, growing up in the shadow of Reagan’s ‘Evil Empire’ speeches, Threads and (much less terrifying) The Day After.

Given that, it looks like Earth Abides goes straight into the wishlist. However, I should make another couple of reading tips while I’m at it, in the same genre:

First off, Jack London’s short story
The Scarlet Plague (1912) is a clear antecedent to Earth Abides. In this story, too, a plague hits the planet and wipes out most of civilization; an old man talks to children who’ve known nothing but the post-apocalypse period. It’s pretty short and well worth a read.

But my main recommendation is Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Wild Shore (1984), first book of his Three Calfornias trilogy, and his debut novel.

It takes place in 2047, 60 years after a massive nuclear attack on the US, by Russian infiltrators (pretty dated, eh ;). The narrator is a teenager in a primitive agrarian community on the coast of southern Orange County. His group are farmers, living far away from the previously built-up areas; the people who live amongst those ruins are shunned, and the different tribes meet only occasionally to trade. Disposable butane lighters are a treasured commodity.

He gradually discovers that the US was once a superpower, and that they are now being kept in a virtually stone-age state by outside powers. The interesting factor here is that most sci-fi authors, at this point, would embark on a jingoistic, militaristic armed struggle; it initially seems that’s what’s happening, but Robinson takes a very interesting tack, in his own style, and this really makes the book something special.

(I won’t go too far into it, but if you really want to know and don’t mind spoilers, this site thoroughly spills the beans.)

Tags: abides, earth, genre, group, handful, man, novel, reading, something, story, winstead

Food: So I’m reading Fast Food Nation, which looked well set to put me off burgers and beef products for life.

Then I get to the epilogue, and find a glowing write-up for In-N-Out Burger, our local chain; they provide healthcare for their workers, use quality-assured beef, and have received top marks in food quality and cleanliness for years! Hooray! And they even have a secret menu (although the 4×4 seems a bit Elvis, if you ask me).

Beef’s back on the menu!

Society: The Age: They are afraid, very afraid: ‘it would seem that terrorists have
succeeded in frightening a nation. They may be aided by several decades of over-reaction to the social malaise that is endemic to the poorer and disenfranchised parts of America. It seems that at least one generation has already grown up in the grip of largely irrational fears.’

Misc: some snippets:

• When showing visitors around, watch out for the electric fence
• Why .biz is the Spam TLD
• Mountain lion attacks bikers in Orange County, body found . Yikes.
• For Nishad, Your Band Sucks: Indie’s Sacred Cows

Tags: beef, burger, epilogue, fast, food, in, life, menu, nation, reading

Weblogs: Great — now I can figure out who my political neighbours are in blog-space. No wonder I like reading Crooked Timber – they’re fellow ( -8–6.01 , -8–6.01 )-ers! (Catchy.)

Tags: catchy, crooked, fellow, great, reading, timber, weblogs, wonder

2 history lessons today: Dervala writes about the Brehon Laws of ancient Ireland. Dervala’s weblog has become a great source of smart reading material, and is firmly on my daily list.

History: The Electronic Telegraph: Code-breaker reveals a diarist to rival Pepys (via forteana). Not quite as saucy as old Sam, though; he was a Puritan. Shame.

Food: The World’s Worst Food, courtesy of Joe McNally via NTK. A bit short of the traditional brain/tongue/tripe dishes however. (Relevant: low grade meat products, urgh.)

SCOvEveryone: Economist interview with Darl McBride of SCO. Interestingly, it notes ‘in 1998, Mr McBride himself won what he calls a ’seven-figure settlement’ by suing his employer at the time, IKON Office Solutions (who, he says, had breached contract by urging him to move to an office outside Utah).’ Nice! However, the SCO management page doesn’t mention that, for some reason… (Link)

Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2003 09:45:13 +0100
From: “Martin Adamson” (spam-protected)
To: (spam-protected)
Subject: Code-breaker reveals a diarist to rival Pepys

The Electronic Telegraph: Code-breaker reveals a diarist to rival Pepys

(Filed: 29/08/2003)

A Puritan’s journal written in cryptic shorthand to foil the King’s men paints a vivid picture of 1600s London, reports Will Bennett

A remarkable million-word account of life in late 17th century England which is as vivid as Samuel Pepys’s diary has been transcribed by experts after lying largely forgotten for more than three centuries.

A specialist code-breaker was brought in to crack the shorthand that Roger Morrice, a Puritan minister turned political journalist, used in part of the diary to stop the King’s agents reading it.

While Pepys’s often hedonistic diary was long regarded as the most detailed record of life in Restoration England, Morrice’s more strait-laced Entring Book gathered dust in a little-known British library.

The Entring Book was acquired by Dr Williams’s Library in London, which specialises in the history of English Nonconformist churches, in the early 18th century and it remained there until a few years ago.

Then a team of academics based at Cambridge University launched a project to transcribe the diary, which covers the years 1677 to 1691 and presents an entirely different view of late 17th century England from that of Pepys.

Now the transcription has been completed and six volumes of Morrice’s well-informed account of a turbulent period during which England was ruled by three different monarchs will be published in 2005.

About 40,000 words of the diary were in code and the team, led by the Cambridge academic Dr Mark Goldie, brought in an expert in 17th century shorthand to reveal for the first time what Morrice had written.

“At that time you could be arrested for sending newsletters and information around the country and so he did not want Charles II’s and James II’s agents to see what he had written,” said Dr Goldie.

The shorthand expert, Dr Frances Henderson, from Oxford, not only cracked the code but discovered the names of some of Morrice’s contacts, whose names he had written in cipher to protect their identities.

Then, as now, journalists had government sources, and Dr Henderson found that Morrice got much of his information from a man called Collins, an official at the Privy Council who was prepared to leak information to him.

As a convinced Puritan, Morrice was extremely critical of what he saw as the moral laxity of Restoration England. He described Tunbridge Wells, then a fashionable spa patronised by royalty, as “the most debauched town in the kingdom”.

With evident approval, he reported the reaction of Ben Haddi Mor, the Moroccan ambassador to London, when some Englishmen urged the diplomat to “receive a whore into his bed”.

“He said to our great rebuke and shame, ‘My religion forbids whores, does not yours?’,” wrote Morrice. “He said ‘that when I come home I shall then be counted a liar in my own country for my master will not believe me that so many ladies came open-faced with bare breasts to see me’.”

In the winter of 1683-84 the Thames froze so hard that coaches travelled across the ice, an ox was roasted and bullbaiting and other sports were held on the river’s surface.

“The concourse and all manner of debauchery upon the Thames continued upon Lord’s day and Monday the 3rd and 4th of this instant,” wrote Morrice disapprovingly.

Morrice used one of his sources to get information about the birth of James Stuart, the Catholic heir to James II and later the Old Pretender.

“The child was a large full child in the head and the upper parts but not suitably proportioned in the lower parts,” wrote Morris scathingly, appalled by the prospect of another Catholic monarch.

However, just a few months later Prince William of Orange’s troops marched into London and installed the Protestant Dutchman as William III.

Morrice wrote that women “shook his soldiers by the hand as they came by and cried, ‘Welcome, welcome, God bless you, you came to redeem our religion, laws, liberties and lives’ “.

Tags: code-breaker, dervala, diarist, diary, food, history, office, puritan, reading, sco

The NY weblogs have really come through with incredible street-level views of the blackout. Highlights:

• CamWorld

• WorldNewYork

• FTrain: As Brooklyn Slowly Drunkened

• Amy LAngfield, stuck in the subway

Fantastic reading. It actually sounds like fun to me — shades of ‘no school due to bad weather’ days when I was a kid ;)

Tags: blackout, brooklyn, camworld, drunkened, fantastic, ftrain, reading, slowly, subway, worldnewyork

Maciej covers some ground I’ve been wondering about, comparing his experiences with the French state system and that here. Definitely worth reading, and I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s.

Oops! NZ channel ‘TV3 has apologised after a graphic labelling US President George W. Bush a ‘professional fascist’ flashed up during its primetime news.’

Henry Farrell writes about homesickness, quoting Dante. It’s such a great quote, I’m going to just reproduce it here:

These are of course silly things to get worked up about; but it’s a universal experience for expatriates to miss the little things as much (if not more than) the greater ones. Dante, who was exiled from Florence, speaks of how

You shall leave everything you love most dearly:
this is the arrow that the bow of exile
shoots first. You are to know the bitter taste
of others’ bread, how salt it is, and know
how hard a path it is for one who goes
descending and ascending others’ stairs.

He’s talking about two things here. First, as an exiled Florentine, he doesn’t like salty bread. Florentines don’t use salt when baking (the result, as far as I remember, of an extended period when the Pisans cut off their salt supplies), so that their bread tastes like blotting paper to non-natives (I lived in Florence three years: my advice to outsiders is to order pane Pugliese in the local bake shops when possible). Second, spiral staircases in Florence tend to curve around the opposite way from staircases elsewhere. Dante’s main point is unassailable; as an exile, you feel longing for the small and unexceptional parts of daily life in your home country, and a quite extraordinary degree of comfort whenever you find them again. Which is why my fridge is now stocked up with Kerrygold.

Tags: bread, definitely, exile, ground, oops, reading, salt, state, system, tomorrow