News

Simple Yet Overlooked Speed Cam Prank

I had one of those “Duh, why didn’t I think of that” moments this morning when I read a news story about how some teenagers have found out how to spoof license plates of their enemies and for performing pranks overall. So how does the prank work?

students duplicate the license plates by printing plate numbers on glossy photo paper, using fonts that are similar to those on Maryland license plates. They then run by a speed camera, so that those they feel have “wronged them” receive a citation in the mail.

I know speed cameras were not a welcomed edition to busy streets in and around Cleveland, Ohio but I can’t believe this prank is that easy to do. However, as was noted at the bottom of the article, someone with the technical know how created a Google Earth KML file mapping out the speed cams. Using technology to fight technology!

All Ready For The New Year

Just wanted to take a moment to update everyone regarding some changes I’ve made to the site. For starters, I’m almost finished with managing my sidebars. I’ve been assigning widgets to specific areas of the site where I think it makes sense to display them. Speaking of sidebars and widgets, you should be able to see the Jeffro2pt0 poll back on the front page. I’ve also added my link blog which is nothing more than a list of shared items from my feed reader. Last but not least, I’ve added a text widget on the about page which allows me to cut the length of the page in half.

As for the About Jeffro2pt0 and WordPress Weekly pages, I have gone through and updated them with relevant information. For the WordPress Weekly page, I have included special notes regarding where to find show notes for episodes 1-22 and 23-current. This was mentioned by Andrew Rickmann and so I’ve included directions on how to obtain those show notes. As for the About Page, I’ve revamped it keeping most of the history in tact while adding personal information to the sidebar. At the bottom of the about page, I’ve included a list of sites and podcasts for which I am working with or for. I’ll be updating the page as necessary to keep everyone up to date.

Last but not least, I’ve fixed the styling issues for the Page-Navi plugin. When you update Lester’s Page-Navi plugin, the CSS files are overwritten and thus, I lost my changes. Thank goodness for backups. I’ve also changed the header from my favorite forest look to a Winter look as we are now officially in the Winter season.

In Closing:

It’s these types of changes that if left undone for a period of time, end up amounting to a ton of grunt work. It’s usually the easiest, simplest things which are left undone. At any rate, I should be all set to start off the new year fresh on this blog. I have no idea what will happen but I do know that I plan on continuing this journey I’m on. I’ve made some incredible pit stops along the way to what I hope will be a successful career in podcasting/writing. I’ve still got plenty to learn and much to improve upon but that will come in due time. One things for sure, I know that there is a core group of people out there that really support my work and what I do. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your support (even though I’m trying to right now) but it means a lot to me.

With that said, I wish everyone a safe and happy holiday! P.S., I’m 25 years of age now, woot!

Six Apart Kills Pownce

In surprising news today, Six Apart has announced that they will be acquiring Pownce for an undisclosed amount of money but Pownce will cease to exist come December 15th. As VentureBeat points out, this looks like a move to acquire skills and people rather than the service. A quick look at the Pownce timeline showcases some unhappy users which is to be expected.

Pownce Users Not Happy

Pownce Users Not Happy

The official Pownce blog contains instructions on how to export data from a Pownce account. The tool will create an export file that can then be imported into Vox, TypePad, or WordPress. As for those who purchased pro accounts, looks like they will be receiving an email with additional information within the coming days.

I have no idea what Six Apart has in mind for the Pownce team members but it could be interesting. Also, this signifies that Twitter is the cream of the crop in terms of microblogging services. What will happen to Jaiku or Plurk? This situation is also a good opportunity to think about what would happen if Twitter ended up with the same fate. Hopefully, they would also provide export tools but considering their size, their userbase, etc. I doubt we’ll be seeing Twitter going away anytime soon.

As I conversed about this story with PatrickD on Twitter, he made a great point:
patrickd88@jeffr0 Twitter had the advantage of being first. Nobody could touch it. The only service to almost take it down was itself!

Justin.TV – Location For Streamed Suicide

I’ve always wondered if this event has happened before and if not, when it would occur. Looks like both of those questions have been answered. News has come out today via ABC News that a 19 year old Florida teen live streamed his suicide on Justin.TV. The teen had been reportedly discussing his suicide before actually going through with it. Those who were watching the stream noticed the teen didn’t appear to be breathing but only after a number of hours passed did someone contact a moderator for Justin.TV who then called local authorities. The teen was found dead at the scene.

While I’m not surprised, it turns out that some of the people who were watching the stream ended up egging the guy on to kill himself. ABC reports that things such as ‘go ahead and do it, faggot‘, were being said in the chat room. Although on the face of it, it seems as though this teen had made up his mind and he didn’t need to be egged on. However, a part of me wonders if what he read in the chatroom may have had any influence on his final decision to go through with it.

A sad story and yet another realization that the web is used by people who feel as though they can be protected by their computer screens and say anything they want without repercussion.

What To Call This Twitter Fail Picture

At about 11:20 A.M. EST, Twitter failed. The database is down and the service is not expected to come back online for another hour. However, instead of being greeted by the infamous fail whale, I was introduced to a few newcomers.

What Do We Name This Picture?

What Do We Name This Picture?

Ok, what do we call this image?

Fail Caterpillar?
Fail Cone?
Fail InchWormCream?
Fail Catercone?

I’ll take thoughts and suggestions in the comments.

New Design Is Finally Complete

If you haven’t noticed by now, particularly those who are reading this from your FeedReader, come check out the site in your favorite browser as I have finally put the finishing touches on the Jeffro2pt0 redesign. The problem with blogging for other people is that it leaves little time to do things to my own personal site. So, I spent two very long nights/days going through my theme and doing a complete redesign so that I could get the weight off my chest. The weight stems from looking around at other blogs and noticing they have a pretty good looking theme and when I look at mine, it just sucks. Also, I was sick and tired of worrying about doing the redesign when all I really want to do is publish content. Thats why I really put some elbow grease into the design and got it done as soon as possible so I wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore.

I have to thank David Peralty for launching his new blog design (BrandingDavid.com) which started my thinking process of redoing mine. His site has a minimal look to it, doesn’t fill the page with widgets or chichlets so that all he has to worry about is writing and publishing content. I wanted to travel the same road by eliminating things from my theme that I didn’t need and get back to basics. I’ve eliminated the featured post block as well as the container that held all of the categories I write about. This used to be displayed underneath the header.

With regards to the header image and the trees. The fact of the matter is, I love forests. I love forest photography and I love hiking through them so I figured I’d take something I love and put it on the blog so I can see it everyday. The great thing about this header image is that I have about 6 different scenic images that I can substitute the trees with. Once the first day of Winter arrives, I’ll be changing the header image to a picture of snowy mountains.

As for the color scheme, I’ve always enjoyed darker themes but I can never seem to get the link colors and content presentation down pat. This time however, I browsed through template monster and through the galleries presented at VandelayDesign.com as sources for inspiration in terms of text colors to use on a dark theme. The current design is definetly colorful but it falls right in line with my header logo. Also, the colors don’t make the site boring and in fact, the color scheme changes slightly from the home page to a single post page view.

I was going to use the comment threading feature found within WordPress 2.7 but I’ve found out that it’s current implementation sucks. I can’t style it and modify it’s look as easily as I could do with the old comments system. So, I’ve decided not to use the built in threaded comment feature or threaded comments in general. However, thanks to some code that was given to me via Kaspars (Konstruktors.com) commenter’s can now click on a reply link which works exactly like the link in the WP Comment Remix plugin except now I don’t have all of the extra baggage that the plugin provided. The code is not publicly available but with some coaxing, we might be able to convince him to release it.

Speaking of Kaspars, I really want to say thanks to him for all the help he provided to me. Thanks to him, I was able to finally get a styled, working version of his Tabbed Widgets plugin. Also thanks to his help, I’m able to configure specifically where widgets are displayed within the theme using his unreleased Context Widgets plugin. I’ll write about this in a future post but in a nutshell, it is an easier to configure version of Slayers Custom Widgets.

As for comments, I completely redesigned that area as well, thanks again to Kaspars. Ajax edit comment works and so does the comment luv plugin although you can not save the options for comment luv. There is some sort of incompatibility that the plugin author is aware of. I also installed the Quick Tags plugin to make it easier for you to style your comments if you choose to do so. Much better plugin than the Tiny MCE for comments.

There is plenty of other stuff to talk about including a post describing why threaded comments in WordPress 2.7 sucks. Stay tuned for that and more, including an updated list of plugins I’m using.

Famous For All The Wrong Reasons

The following is an example of how the Internet can latch on to something totally unexpected and the end result is someone who is put into a royally disastrous situation. Meet Ellie who is 22 years old. According to Ellie, she gave permission for her friend to publish the photos of her modeling next to her friends car as seen within the first page of this Neowin forum thread. The pictures showcase a young woman, dressed in model type clothes but ends up not having the prettiest face in the world. For whatever reason, the net has caught on to these particular photos and now many are publishing photoshopped images to spread the joke around. Simply put, this young girl has become Internet famous but for all the wrong reasons.

Judging by the Neowin forum thread and various conversations spread amongst the net, many people don’t seem to have anything nice to say about this girl. Ellie actually published a response to the craze on her MySpace page that explains how she doesn’t care about the situation. I think it is rather hard not to care when the web is going crazy over photos of yourself spread across the web, many of which are parodies.

This is a stark reminder that no one knows what will take off on the net and become the next sensation. While many advertisers probably wish it was their product or service, it happened to be pictures of a not so pretty face. Too bad for Ellie, she has become an Internet meme that will live in infamy.

*Note* I’ve decided not to publish any photos as there are plenty of them out on the web for you to see. Type “Girlfriend model for my car” into Google to see what I mean.

Lightning Kills 52 Cows

In a huge “bolt” of bad luck, 52 black and brown cows found themselves victims to a single lightning strike. However, how does one bolt of lightning kill 52 cows at one time? Apparently, the cows huddled near a fence during the storm to seek safety but the fence was constructed with bits of conductive wire which appears to have allowed the bolts of electricity to run its course.

The picture that is featured with the news report looks like a mass cow suicide.