Author: benjam

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comment spam

i stated in a post back when i switched over to this blogging software that one of the best things about it was that it automagically blocks all incoming spam.

well…  it’s still doing it and rocking it like nobody’s buisiness. last night i got about 15 emails letting me know there were comments waiting to be approved and not a single one of them was legitimate.

if i hadn’t switched to wordpress, i would have been sifting through my blog searching for all of the comment spam right now.

now all we need is a way to really piss them off when they try to spam us. by maybe freezing thier comp for a while everytime they try to send spam, so that if they hit the wrong place thier comp freezes for the rest of the day…  yeah, that would be cool.

stupid spammers. it’s not even like they’re trying to get you to buy something cool either. i mean, really, who gets a spam and think, “ya know, i’ve been meaning to have my penis enlarged, i should give these people in that third-world country a call, i bet they could do it really well.”

nope, doesn’t happen.

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rubik’s cube

guess what ?!? i solved a rubik’s cube the other day without looking at instructions or anything for the first time !!  and did it several times, just to make sure that i could.

it’s crazy how easy the thing really is when you finally figure it out. when i started playing with a cube at my friend’s house, i had to look on the internet just to get the thing solved, and because i was reading instructions or using the cube explorer, i couldn’t look at the cube to see what the various moves were doing.

but then i got the first face and the first row all figured out and had troubles with the second row (but i was pretty drunk when i was trying to do it, so don’t blame me).  then  i got the second row and it was pretty easy as well, once i figured that out, but the final row…  man that one’s tough. so i looked online at a rubik’s solution and solved a rubik’s simulator on my computer (i don’t actually own a rubik’s cube) while looking at the instructions. i solved it a few times looking at the instructions, then turned them off and tried to solve it without looking. when i got to the end, i didn’t even realize that i did it until i was sitting there looking at the cube, wondering what move to make next, then noticing that all of the sides were solid. i even turned the cube over and over to make sure i hadn’t missed somthing, it seemed so unreal. so i did it again, and again. then i met a situation i hadn’t seen before and had to consult the instructions. but i’ve done it several times since then and feel pretty confident i can solve the cube any time i want now. which is dope.

but now i need to learn how to solve the 4d magic cube.  i’ve solved up to five moves, but after that it gets all messy and i have no idea where to flip the thing. it’s tough, it’s like a rubik’s cube on steriods.

but i think the ultimate rubik’s solver is the LEGO rubik’s cube solver built by j.p. brown !  man that has got to be the coolest thing on the planet !  and it actually works, too !  i’ve seen video of it working.
it brings together everything that is geek and puts it all in a nice neat package to exclaim to the world, “I AM GEEK !!”

it uses lego’s in cunjunction with computer code and function to solve a rubik’s cube, how much more geek do you need?

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moonshine skin finished

now you have no excuses for not using my skin on your desktop.

the skin has a clock with the background of the clock being the current phase of the moon. the skin works on both light and dark backgrounds, and is super easy (no editing required) to install. so there ya go, no excuses.

you can still download rainmeter from rainy’s site: download
and you can get my new skin from here: download

here is a preview image of the clock

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moonlite skin images

i recieved an e-mail from jer, who downloaded my moonlite skin, and he had updated the images to work on both light and dark backgrounds as well as increase the size and add a nice gloss over the front and a shadow.

when i first saw it it blew me away. it looks so good. it will be added to the zip file as soon as i get a chance, but it will be worth it.

i’ll keep you posted here.

sample image:

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blog theme

well… wordpress 1.5 came out not too long ago, and i’ve upgraded the blog software as you may be noticing right now. the only thing that sucks is they changed the whole skinning process and started to use themes. i’m sure it’s a step in a positive direction, but now i’ve got to figure out how to skin the darn thing and get my old skin back (which was based on Human Condition by Ian Main)
so i’ll probably be working on that soon, and i hope that this new version is everything they say it is…

but it should be, the people over at wordpress are super cool and probably the best developers anywhere… keepin it real, just like it should be.

*UPDATE*:
as you can see, the theme is coming along nicely, i’m learning some cool things about wordpress and have implemented a few upgrades and plugins to make the iohelix blog experience even better.

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MoonFeed and Rainmeter skin FINISHED

well, i finally finished my rainmeter skin that shows you the phase of the moon on your desktop. took me long enough.

the skin is available for download on my site, and rainmeter is available for download on rainy’s site.

if you need any help setting it up, don’t hesitate to ask.

i hope people find this as interesting and informative of an addition to their desktop as i do.

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rainmeter skin and moon data feed

i’ve been working lately on a feed for astronomical data on the sun and the moon that has taken up pretty much every waking moment of mine for the past couple of weeks and it’s nearing completion !

aren’t you excited ?!?

yeah, figured you would be.

the feed was created for the sole purpose of running a rainmeter skin that i am creating to go with it that will display the moon in its correct phase on your desktop (these files will all be available on my site as soon as i am done).  so i figured, while i’m writing all this code to figure out the phase, why not do the major phase dates for the current lunation. and while i’m doing that, why not sunrise and sunset times, as well as transit times, and altitude and azimuth values for those times, and do all that for the moon, too.

needless to say, it got pretty big, and every bit of data needs to be output in several different versions, too.
for instance, decimal degrees, as well as degree, minutes, seconds; local time, universal time, julian day, modified julian day, and terrestrial time. all these different values get calculated in the process, why not output them to the user?

so anywho… i have a working prototype on my desktop that pretty much kicks all ace. i will clean it up, as well as the output of the feed, and make it available for everybody. one thing though, it will only run with rainmeter, so click the link above and get it.

i’ll keep you posted. shouldn’t be too much longer now, just some minor additions, and a little tweaking and its ready to roll out.

p.s.- i’m not a geek.

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rss feeds in your mailbox

i just discovered that, when using a compatible mail client (such as mozilla thunderbird), you can have my blog entries sent right to your inbox without having to check the site every day.

this is also true of any RSS feed.

so, what are you waiting for?  get the latest version of thunderbird and check it out !

there is also, as of the time of this writing, a Release Candidate for the 1.0 version of thunderbird.

you may want to check that out as it has many bug fixes and newer features.

now for the instructions:

to set up thunderbird to read the rss feed, click on Tools -> Account Settings…
then select ‘News & Blogs’ from the menu on the left. this will allow you to click the button labeled ‘Manage Subscriptions…’

click the button labeled ‘Add’, and in the Feed URL: box enter http://www.iohelix.net/wordpress/?feed=rss2http://www.iohelix.net/blog/feed
(this address can also be found on the main page of the blog in the box labeled “META” on the menu side of the page, as well as some other feeds, like the comments)

click ‘OK’, then ‘OK’ again, and ‘OK’ one more time.

after you have returned to the main thunderbird screen, click on ‘Get Mail’ in the upper left hand corner of the screen, and watch in wonderment as the blog posts appear automagically in your inbox.

anytime i make a new post, it will appear there all bolded and highlighted and ready for your reading pleasure.

if you wish to comment on one of my posts, just click on the link provided in the header info of the post and it will sweep you off to internet land where you can view the post on my site and add comments however you see fit.

amazing, isn’t it?

that is all…   for now…

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new blog software

this new blog software has got to be the best thing ever.

it looks pretty cool, the back end is awesome and the best thing is…  automatic comment moderation.
which means, i don’t have to sift through all of the comments any more and search for comment spam. before a comment hits the screen, it’s sent to a queue where it sits waiting for me to delete it before ever appearing on the blog.

nice.

except that i didn’t have any comment spam until i added the link to the old location of the blog…

maybe thats my fault, maybe it was inevitable, either way, i still don’t have to sift through them.

yay  =)