mmmm, beer III

The beer has been ready to drink for several days now. Last night, I had some people over for an official taste testing. Unless everyone was wanking my chain, the beer was a hit. I'll be making another batch this week. I was thinking of making another porter and keeping a few from this batch to compare after I correct the mistakes I made but I might just make something different like an India Pale Ale, a Pilsner, or maybe even something like a Hop Devil clone. I'll go to the brew store later this week and decide then. Meanwhile, I'll enjoy the fruits of my labor.

Firefox

The Mozilla Foundation recently announced that Firefox has been downloaded 75 million times. For those who think that I.E. is the only web browser, I feel bad that they are using something with virtually no features and a myriad of security problems.

When I show people Firefox (I have the installer on my usb drive - 1 download but maybe 20-30 installs from that one) the two things I show them first are tabbed browsing and RSS feeds/live bookmarks. They are always amazed and, sometimes, I almost forget to tell them about the pop-up blocker (it's turned on by default). I.E. recently added a pop-up blocker but you need XPSP2 to have it; thus, Microsoft seems to think that in order to browse the web, you need the latest version of Windows. The truth is in order to browse the web, you need to use a browser other than I.E. Other browsers like Opera, Netscape, and Mozilla have had a pop-up blocker for several years. Even tabbed browsing is several years old. Quick FYI: Mozilla evolved from Netscape and Firefox is the stand-alone browser that is now the hallmark of the Mozilla Foundation. Mozilla used to offer a suite which was a browser and email client and Netscape still offers that. Netscape was a great browser and was my browser of choice until I switched to the Mozilla suite. I never took the bait and used I.E. Even when I had a dialup connection I found it more palpable to download Netscape and wait the 90 minutes for the download than to use that rickety, ugly, and featureless browser offered by Microsoft. Once I switched to Linux, I didn't have to worry about even looking at that ugly blue e anymore.

Anyway, back to Firefox. Telling someone about RSS or tabs isn't nearly as effective as showing them. You, the reader, I recommend downloading Firefox (link on right) and trying it yourself. The Windows installer is about 5 MB so even with a dialup connection it shouldn't take too long.

After you install, open it up. For tabs, just type Control-T and you'll see another tab open up. From there, the benefit of tabs should be obvious. For RSS/live bookmarks, a default install of Firefox will have one on your bookmarks toolbar folder called "Latest Headlines." Click on it and you see a list of headlines from the BBC News web site. To add live bookmarks (most news sites and most blogs have them now), look on the bottom right of this blog or go to a site like www.eweek.com and look in the bottom right corner of the browser - you'll see an orange thing. Move you mouse over it and it should say "Subscribe to ..." or "add live bookmark." Do this, then add to your bookmarks toolbar folder. Go to your favorite news site or blog and see if they have a live feed and then add them yourself.

There are many other features of Firefox called extensions. The only one I use is bugmenot which allows you to bypass registration for news sites by either logging you in automatically or allowing you to look up a user/pass that someone has created for general use. I don't use adblock because I block advertising sites through my router or in a hosts file.

With Firefox, Flash and Java are not included with the download. You'll need to do that yourself but it isn't too hard. Usually, Firefox will prompt you if you are missing a plugin and guide you to installing it. For those of you still on AOL, sorry. AOL's browser is based on I.E. You can use Firefox but it won't have all your AOL bloat, er, I mean stuff, integrated. The ironic thing is that AOL owns Netscape which spawned Mozilla. I think Mozilla is independent of Time-Warner (AOL's parent) now.

So, remember, If you want to browse the web with cool features like RSS and tabs, you can wait until late 2006 and buy Windows Vista so you can use I.E. 7 or you could just download and use Firefox today.

Phishing

I've received several emails lately that have been phishing attempts. They've said that I need to log in to my Ebay or PayPal account in order to prevent from being suspended. Of course, I new it was fake but a recent news report says that many people have never heard of phishing; thus, greatly increasing the chance that the attempt to get you to divulge personal information will succeed.

Here's the message header from one attempt:

From - Mon Jul 25 19:42:22 2005
X-Account-Key: account2
X-UIDL: 1104651933.3670
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000
Return-Path:  Received: from mr07.mrf.mail.-----.net (EHLO mr07.mrf.mail.-----.net)
(207.---.-.--)
by ms06.mrf.mail.-----.net (MOS 3.5.6-GR FastPath queued)
with ESMTP id JMU20933;
Mon, 25 Jul 2005 18:57:18 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from mx23.mrf.mail.-----.net (mx23.mrf.mail.-----.net [207.---.-.---])
by mr07.mrf.mail.-----.net (MOS 3.5.7-GR)
with ESMTP id EKL70686;
Mon, 25 Jul 2005 18:57:17 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from unknown (HELO mx23.mrf.mail.-----.net) ([10.255.5.102])
by mx23.mrf.mail.-----.net with ESMTP; 25 Jul 2005 18:57:17 -0400
Received: from 160-85-112.adsl.terra.cl ([200.112.85.160])
by mx23.mrf.mail.-----.net with SMTP; 25 Jul 2005 18:57:13 -0400
Message-Id: <46t8li$7319u3@mx23.mrf.mail.-----.net>
X-IronPort-AV: i="3.95,141,1120449600";d="gif'147?scan'147,208,217,147";
a="238069699:sNHT39143222"
FCC: mailbox://supprefnum1422@ebay.com/Sent
X-Identity-Key: id1
Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2005 08:03:45 +0600
From: eBay 
X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: --------@-----.com
Subject: eBay - Account Update [Wed, 27 Jul 2005 06:00:45 +0400]
Content-Type: multipart/related;
boundary="------------070404050706000909030005"
X-Junkmail-Whitelist: YES (by domain whitelist at mr07.mrf.mail.-----.net)
This is a multi-part message in MIME format.



--------------070404050706000909030005



Content-Type: text/html; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit



what's the matter not at all in 1935 Sony Entertainment 
--------------0704040507060009090300



Content-Type: image/gif;
name="murderous.GIF"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-ID: 
Content-Disposition: inline;
filename="murderous.GIF"

_______________________________________


The entire body of the email was a GIF image named by someone with a sense of humor. I don't know how it got through, either, as I have Thunderbird set to block images. Clicking anywhere on the email and not just on the link takes you to this site: http://218.9.7.188/.../e3b/. Arin.net Identifies that IP address as being registered in Australia. If you type that IP in you get something copied right from Ebay's website. As for the email itself, the source IP (200.112.85.160) is registered in Uruguay yet the domain *.cl is Chile. All that can be spoofed so who knows where this is coming from. One thing for sure is that it's not coming from Ebay. I have no idea what that line about Sony Entertainment means but it was at the bottom of the email.

Keep in mind, Ebay, PayPal, your bank, et al, will not contact you asking you to update or sign in order to confirm something or keep your account active. They could care less. They only care when you sign in and proceed to do something. If something doesn't seem right, chances are it isn't. With phishing become more and more common, it's less likely some entity you deal with is going to send you an email asking you to confirm something.

Fishing

Today I went fishing. My father in-law chartered a boat and about 29 of us took to the Atlantic waters aboard the Tampa VII in search of bluefish. I am not a big fisherman per se, but I enjoy deep sea fishing. Maybe it's being able to have beer and potato chips for breakfast without anyone looking at you funny. Lunch was more normal as I had a hoagie and a Black & Tan.

As for the fishing: after we went out about 14 miles and stopped and were told we could drop our lines, we waited. After about ten minutes I had one - the first of the day for the boat. Of course, we only had a "biggest fish" pool and not a "first fish" pool. Just my luck. A few others caught some right after that and I thought we were going to be reeling them in. It didn't happen. It soon died down and for the rest of the day it was spotty; maybe 80-90 total blues caught and I guesstimate that the most anyone caught was six or seven. Anyway, I had a good time and look forward to going again.

The Past is Alive

General Westmoreland isn't even buried yet and the press just loves to point out that we "lost" the Vietnam War. That debate is too long to discuss here but, even if it was a "loss" it was not a conventional loss. We did not have to surrender any land to anyone. We did not have to disarm. We did not falter economically and need other nations to help build us back up. We weren't forced to rewrite our Constitution. Yes, we lost 59,000 men and that is not trivial. All told, estimates say the Vietnamese (all sides) lost around 2,000,000. Fourteen years after we left Vietnam, the Berlin Wall fell. Vietnam may have been a tactical loss, but it wasn't a strategic loss. I think our commitment to Vietnam - showing that we will die for a cause - helped facilitate the fall of the USSR.

The press will use Westmoreland's death as an excuse to bring the Vietnam War into the daily news in order to stoke the "Iraq is Vietnam" prattle again. The press will compare Vietnam to Iraq and, instead of fostering debate and pointing out differences between the war against Communism and the War against Terror, they will do so with the preconception that Iraq is already a loss.

Telescreens

As I predicted on July 7, a photograph taken by a surveillance camera has been released to the press that shows the terrorists who attacked London's mass transit system. Boy, aren't these cameras doing a good job at making the public safe?

mmmm, beer II

Well, I finally bottled the beer the other day. After a fortnight of fermenting, I pried off the lid and proceeded with the bottling process. I observed a few good signs: 1), it smelled like beer and 2) it tasted like flat beer. Once bottled I have to let it carbonate for a week or three. Recommendation seems to be to pop one open after a week and taste and then go from there.

I botched two things during the bottling process. First, I boiled the bottle caps. The majority opinion seems to be not do this but, rather, simply soak them in a sanitizing solution. Boiling may ruin the part of the cap that makes the seal. It's my fault for only using one source for that part. Second, I don't think I let the priming sugar cool down to 80 degrees F before adding it to the bottling bucket. Well, there's nothing I can do now other than let it carbonate and then make the proper changes during the next batch.

FC4

I had been running FC2 as my desktop OS for about a month. Then, yesterday, X crashed and I was unable to get an X session going again. So, I copied all my files onto another machine then proceeded with a clean install of another OS. At first, I thought was the video card but it wasn't as I was able to install FreeBSD 4.11 and get KDE running with no problems. But, I really wanted to try FC4 so the BSD install lasted as long as it took me to download the ISO's and burn them. Plus, I already have FreeBSD running on another machine.

Fedora Core 4 installed without a hitch and even X worked fine from the start. I don't know why FC2/X took a dump on me but it was no big deal as I didn't lose anything and I was looking for a motive to install FC4.

I got most of the secondary stuff installed and configured like the Flashplayer and Java plugins for Firefox. I also installed XMMS with MP3 support as that does not come with Fedora. I even got MPlayer with all the codecs going too. I still need to get the MPlayer plugin for Firefox installed but everything else is pretty much set up how I like it. I also like the new theme - Clearlooks - more than the old Bluecurve theme.

Doing Stuff

Since we got home from CHOP I've been busy. I needed to cut the lawn so I did what I could Saturday night and finished up Sunday morning. Then, I needed to trim some trees and then chop the limbs into manageable pieces with a chainsaw. Once I was done with that I loaded up the truck and even took the neighbor's wood to the township's yard waste center - $5 for a pickup truck load; best $5 spent anywhere. After all that, I washed my truck.

Once I was finished outside I had some inside stuff to do. Ever since I put the new motherboard in my wife's PC (W98), it doesn't print. I've uninstalled and reinstalled the printer several times. It prints fine from my PC (Fedora Core 2). While messing with that, I decided to install FreeBSD 4.11 on a spare system. I'm installing it with X which may be a bit much for it considering it only has 80MB of RAM and a 133 Pentium. It's worth a try. I'll bet that if I hook that printer up to the FreeBSD machine it'll work fine, just like it does under Fedora. That's all for now.

The News Today

I'm just sitting here at CHOP casually checking in with the news and following the bombings today in London. I am just wondering why this happened in a city that has been consistently adding closed-circuit cameras all over the place. I thought these cameras were supposed to cut down on crime and keep people safe. Looks like they work as well in London as they do in the U.S. Maybe some of the myriad of cameras got some pictures of who did this - just like that great picture a security camera took of Thug #1 boarding an airplane at 5:45 am one Tuesday morning a few years ago. Somebody better tell those in power that spying in people doesn't seem to be a good way to keep them safe.

mmmm, beer

I have ventured into homebrewing. On Monday, I bought the equipment I needed - two separate kits - one contained the hardware and one contained the beer ingredients; I opted for a porter. The bottles were separate and I bought two cases of 12 oz. bottles yesterday.

On Wednesday, I made the wort. It's pretty easy and really just involves some boiling, some near boiling, a lot of sanitizing, and a few hours of time. Once the wort is done, I followed the directions and added water - to five gallons - then the yeast. After about 12 hours I saw the wort was fermenting. They say I should let this ferment for 14 days. After that, I can bottle them - then wait another week (I think, I need to read up on that when the time comes) . The batch I'm making should yield around 53 12 oz bottles.