parahuman

Chess in Harvard Square

Christefano — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 03:57:00 +0000

There's a place in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where humans, birds and wooden horses can be seen fighting for their lives. Chess players gather together in a small, outdoor courtyard with their sandwiches, cigarettes and cups of coffee, and engage one another in frequently fought battles while the birds feed off the crumbs the humans leave behind. The tensions in the square lower a bit at the end of each game, and tensions raise again with the arrival of a regular in the courtyard, who is sometimes armed with a chess set, and perhaps, a water pistol to keep the birds away.

I love chess. Whenever I get the chance these days, I head over to the Harvard Square courtyard with my chess set (I like the birds and leave my water pistol at home) and set up shop for the afternoon. Temperature permitting, that is. If it's too cold to play outside, there are usually tables available inside Au Bon Pain, the shop which immediately faces the courtyard. Sundays are the best days to go. Parking in Harvard Square is free on Sundays, and I have had one parking ticket too many.

From the time I was 9 or ten years old, the world of chess to me seemed strange but inviting. Filled with passionate players and positions and strategies with colorful names like King's Gambit and the Nimzo-Indian Defense, the game intrigued me with its seemingly infinite variations and combinations, its mathematical beauty and its global culture. As a youngster, I also felt comfort in knowing that the rules of of the game are absolute and unbreakable. It didn't matter if my partner was more experienced than I was. All that mattered to me was that I knew the rules and could play the game with anyone. It was a thrill when I won; it was educational when I lost; and nearly every time, win or lose, the next thing to do was to set up the board and play again. I was never afraid to lose.

Another aspect of the game that I love is being able to add the dimension of time by using a chess clock. During the game the clock tracks how much time each player uses (the older, analog clocks would physically signal the end of the countdown by dropping a small flag), but the clock also places a finite limit on the time available for thought, which would otherwise be theoretically infinite. Believe me, playing without a clock with long periods between moves can sometimes feel like an eternity. In a timed game, there is less time to think between moves but the clock creates a pleasant surprise by inviting instinct and intuition to work alongside intellect.

Time itself can be a dispassionate opponent. However, if I find that I'm playing a losing game - and I can't play for a draw, where neither side wins - it's still possible to "win on time" by changing strategies. Evading, stonewalling or otherwise disrupting a player's momentum can prevail if that player's flag drops first. The clock can become a second partner as easily as a second opponent.

The years went by and I played fewer and fewer games. I still had my set and was always happy to play, but it became harder to find a partner who was both fun to play and had the same inexhaustible hunger as I did. Playing game after game until my head hurt actually felt good, and it was one of the first experiences in my life where I found I could regularly enter a state of mental flow. Chess in the square has rekindled my interest in the game and taught me several lessons.

Arriving in Harvard Square with a chess set is the key to entering a foreign and sometimes uninviting world. There are always more players than there are chess sets, so the act of bringing a set to play with is often seen as a service to everyone. Several of the regulars speak little or no English, but sharing a mental vocabulary and a love of the game crosses all kinds of barriers. Chess is a universal language and the chess board becomes a universal interface.

The knowledge of the rules, which I took so much solace in knowing during my youth, didn't prepare me for the way the game is played in Harvard Square. Some years ago, I received a rude education one afternoon when a stone-faced fellow I was playing broke into a crooked grin and brought one of his pieces down on my king like a hammer. The game was over and I had lost. I didn't move my king to safety when it was in danger, which is technically an illegal but harmless move. In any tournament or chess club I would have been chastised but would be allowed to take back my move. The square has different rules, which I had just learned. If someone moves a piece into danger, even a king, it can be taken. Not everyone in the square plays this way, but most do.

On another occasion, as the afternoon faded into evening, I was listening to a street musician and his flamenco guitar when I realized that I had lost track of time and let my flag drop. My partner, a gigantic man wearing a tuxedo, kept playing and ended up losing several pieces and consequently the game. I pointed out afterwards that I had run out of time and he had actually won, but he simply shook his head and said he had lost. I learned another rule of the square that day, that to lose on time means nothing if one's partner doesn't notice it himself during the course of the game.

These seemingly made-up rules would have been completely incomprehensible to me at an early age. The absolute, unbreakable rules I once prized are absolutely breakable? In actuality, the only rule of the square is that the rules depend on the player. That can only make it a more interesting game, to be sure.

Harvard Square is a chaotic environment, but there is beauty to find in the chaos. The twinkling of Christmas lights decorating the trees in the courtyard, together with birdsong, music from multiple street musicians and smoke from someone's pipe or European cigarettes blend together and create an unusual counterpoint to the industrial sounds of busses and honking cars. What a perfect place to play chess.

la mira di Mira (the sight of Mira)

Christefano — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 06:54:00 +0000

a few years ago, i was visiting friends in California when i received a call from my mother. she told me that Mira, a cat who was in her care, had disappeared. sure enough, Mira was nowhere to found when i returned to my mother's a month later.

Mira was always an incredible cat. i'd had her as a companion since she was two years old, and she was as close to being a familiar (in the druidic sense) as i thought possible. she moved her body as if it was inhabited by the spirit of large cat, and she certainly had the personality of one.

meanwhile, i moved to Boston a little less than a year later. thoughts of her entered my mind with less and less frequency as time went on, but she continued to have a presence in my life. i even had dreams where she would just pass through, almost like an extra in a movie.

so, why am i writing about this? well, imagine my surprise when i saw Mira last week, and not a hundred feet from the door of my apartment!

Picture of Mira, taken 17 July, 2005

i've taken some time before writing about this experience, if only to let it all sink in. after all, is it really her? how did she get here? how far is it from my mother's and where i am in Boston? (it's 800 miles ~ i looked it up.) i've talked to friends about this and they ask me the same questions. yes, i tell them, it's really her. i don't know how long it took for her to get to Boston or how she found me. in fact, one of the only things i do know is that i have a healthy amount of unanswered questions.

at first i wasn't sure it was her. what i saw were two cats in a neighbor's yard squaring off with eachother and it was as i approached that i realized that one of them was Mira. the other cat, who was clearly at a disadvantage, was slowly inching away while Mira was watching us both. waiting for them to finish, i knelt close to the ground and took in her appearance and behavior.

as soon as the other cat had gone, Mira nonchalantly walked up... and suddenly crashed her head into my outstretched hand, just as she used to do. i was overjoyed! after sitting in the sun with her for what felt like forever, she let me examine her and pick her up (she feels the same as she did three years ago and has the same distinctive markings). i took her back to the apartment, fed her some tuna, took a few pictures and counted my many blessings.

in the end i had to let her go. i don't doubt that she can take care of herself (besides, it looks like i'm in her territory), but the main reason is that i just couldn't keep her inside with Zasha, our enormous German shepherd. and she never was an indoor cat (and certainly isn't now).

i haven't yet seen her again, but i know she's nearby.

why i don't do Gmail (for now)

Christefano — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 11:49:00 +0000

i don't do Gmail. i don't block anything but spam from coming into my inbox, so i'll receive email sent from Gmail accounts, though i'm not thrilled about it and i won't write back if i can reach you another way.

this journal entry is by no means an exhaustive resource on Gmail and online privacy issues. it is, i hope, the best reason i can give you for not replying to messages sent from Gmail.

from what i and anybody else can tell, Google is a tremendously popular company with tremendously popular products. in fact, while Gmail was still under development, i spent a few hours participating in a contest at discussion forum solving chess problems just to win an invitation to use the service. okay, how geeky is that? well, it was fun, but now it doesn't seems that it worth the trouble. i eventually stopped using that account and deleted it.

the truth is that i'm not comfortable with Google having the ability to connect my web searches to my email address. while i'm not as worried as others are about Google's practice of automatically scanning your email, but i am concerned about the enormous privacy implications involving some of their other products, like Google Desktop, the Web Page Accelerator and Safe Browsing extension for Firefox. i also have the creeping suspicion that every email that's been received and sent from Gmail is (or will be) part of a growing social network database (where person A knows person B, like the "friends of" and "friends of a friend of" type of social networking found at Orkut and Dodgeball, two of Google services). i don't want anyone knowing that much about me.

while i'm not asking you to ditch Gmail ~ especially if it's your only email provider ~ i'm asking you not to send me anything from a Gmail account. if you do, don't worry. i'll read it. i probably just won't reply to it. besides, there are plenty of ways to reach me other than email.

if you think i'm being paranoid, consider this: somewhere near thirty privacy and civil liberties organizations have asked Google to put Gmail on hold until its serious privacy issues are resolved. more and more people are questioning Google's motives. even Dan Gillmor, an outspoken advocate of civil and privacy "cyber-rights," has said he wouldn't even consider using Gmail.

i hope Google updates and discloses their data retention and correlation policies sometime soon. what are they actually intending to do with all that data? there are lots of theories, but not much is publicly known. in the meantime, all they'll say are ominous things like "We are moving to a Google that knows more about you," and "If it's useful, we'll hold onto it." i believe these statements could indeed include every email that's ever been received or sent from Gmail. i mean, Google actually discourages users of Gmail from deleting messages in their account... for years there wasn't a delete button!

so, what is there to do? the Electronic Frontier Foundation recommends using a second web browser exclusively for using Gmail (yikes!), and EPIC, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, has some fantastic information on protecting your privacy if you still decide to use both Google and Gmail.

update: a follow-up to this entry, more on Gmail and your privacy, has been posted to the journal.

freenigma: convenience vs. security

Christefano — Sat, 26 Aug 2006 08:38:00 +0000

freenigma is a new service from g10 Code and freiheit.com, two German companies i'd never heard of before yesterday. it works as a server-client combination: a central server that handles all the encryption keys and a Firefox extension (support for Internet Explorer and Safari is forthcoming) that does all the encrypting and decrypting. once installed, freenigma makes it possible to encrypt one's webmail by adding new "encrypt" and "send enrypted" buttons in the compose screen to Gmail, Hotmail and Yahoo Mail.

i signed up in case I ever decide to use it (or a friend or client using Gmail, Hotmail, etc. wants to encrypt something before sending it to me). it looks like this might just be crypto that's easy enough for non-geeks to use. does it really matter if keys are public or private, or if encryption is symmetric or asymmetric? yes, of course it does¹, but freenigma solves all the usability problems many users have by simply adding "encrypt" and "decrypt" buttons and then doing all the tough stuff behind the scenes. brilliant! this makes me feel all happy and bubbly and i'll definitely be keeping my eyes and ears focused on freenigma. however...

am i the only person concerned about a centralized third party organization you've probably never heard of ~ in a country with a history of backdooring crypto ² ~ having exclusive access to the private keys of its users? public keys are another story (my public key, for example, is available right here and i'd love for you to have a copy), but the first rule in PKI (public key infrastructure) is to never give out your private key.

the freenigma questions and answers (FAQ) page mentions "private data," and i think they mean the contents of your emails. to the crypto community, though, private keys are also considered "private data." you see, anyone with your private key can decrypt your data or, even worse, give your private key to another party.

this is a case of convenience vs. security. freenigma is light years ahead of everything else i've seen when it comes to leveraging strong encryption with issues of ease-of-use, but why do they go out of their way to avoid talking about private keys? freenigma's FAQ currently asks, "why should I trust the webmail providers?" but i wonder, "why should we trust freenigma?"

i hope that these questions about private keys and ownership are addressed by the folks at g10 Code and freiheit.com (either "yes, we have your private keys" or "no, Christefano is a dimwit" would be fine). i'm also looking forward to seeing interoperability with freenigma and other PGP / GnuPG / OpenPGP software.

until then, i'll be using other crypto software (Mac GnuPG and Enigmail) with the assurance that i'm the only person with access to my private keys. the freenigma extension is installed but disabled for now.

although i play one on TV, i'm not an expert on public key encryption.
fortunately, this backdoor was later closed.

28 August 2006 update: Ben Laurie, who know more about internet security than i do, takes a hard look at freenigma in his post, Big Brother Comes to Firefox.

one of the things he says is, "freenigma can decrypt my mails (and anyone else they care to give the session key to). What’s more, it looks like they have your private key, too, so they can impersonate you." ending on a positive note, he adds, "now we need a Firefox extension that does this properly, more than ever. If someone wants to do it, I’d be more than happy to help."

an open letter to Michael Robertson: my negative experience with SIPphone

Christefano — Mon, 29 Aug 2005 07:41:00 +0000

Dear Michael,

i recently became a SIPphone customer and i wanted to write to you about my negative experience with your company. i've noticed that you've helped your customers in the past in the SIPphone discussion forums, and my hope here is that you'll see this letter and listen to my story.

after several weeks of trying to get SIPphone working on my mobile device, i have finally given up. i use a Zaurus, which is a world-class PDA running OpenZaurus (a full version of Linux that also runs on devices like the iPaq) and KPhone, an open source VoIP client.

(as an aside, this is the exact same hardware and software that the MIT Media Lab uses as a development platform for applications like the Jerk-O-Meter. i recommend to anyone who considers themself a VoIP enthusiast to take a close look at their exciting research.)

after configuring KPhone to use my SIPphone account, i'm able to make SIP to SIP calls. i can also receive calls from traditional PSTN phones to the virtual number i purchased from SIPphone. i cannot, however, place calls to PSTN numbers with KPhone (i've also tried tkcPhone, a commercial VoIP client for the Zaurus).

the reason i got a Zaurus in the first place was so that i could step away from the computer and still be able to use VoIP ~ and i wasn't going to resort to using a Pocket PC. i looked forward to being able to ride this exciting wave of free and near-free calls using VoIP and open standards. for this, however, SIPphone has turned out to be a disappointing dead end.

after my experience i can't easily recommend SIPphone as a VSP (voice-over-IP service provider) to anyone, and especially not to other Zaurus and OpenZaurus users. i think this is really unfortunate because i do believe SIPphone has a lot going for it. the prices and features are great, and the Gizmo Project software itself seemed like a terrific VoIP client when i used it. i also respect how you're calling Skype out with the whole open/closed argument.

so after several weeks of trying, i still can't dial out to PSTN numbers, even after checking and double-checking (and triple-checking) every setting in KPhone. the users and admins in the Gizmo Project and SIPphone discussion forums were of zero help to me. the only bit of useful information that i found was in an old post made by Digi, a SIPphone employee, that says "sorry for the trouble, however the kphone sip implementation when making a call doesn't cover the full range of options specified in the sip rfc."

this, and yet KPhone appears to be listed as a supported client at SIPphone's partner site, SIPsoftware.com.

to make matters worse, the trouble ticket that i submitted went unanswered for a week and then wasn't answered to my satisfaction (no solution for the problem was given, nor was an adequate explanation why it wouldn't work ~ i was referred instead to the developers of KPhone). it isn't a codec problem from what i can tell (KPhone supports two of the three codecs SIPphone uses, iLBC and g711u). however, the truth is that i have no idea what the problem is and nobody has been able to help me.

in the end, i created an account with Free World Dialup (FWD) on a whim, configured KPhone to use it and then dialed an 800 number ~ and it worked. it took less than 5 minutes.

while i'm still willing to use SIPphone as my VSP (more than willing actually, as my efforts during the past several weeks demonstrate), i wanted you to know that the lack of help from your support staff has forced me to turn elsewhere for now. i'll be going with FWD as soon as i find an affordable PSTN provider for outgoing calls.

although your company has lost me as a loyal customer and supporter, i do wish you the best in your endeavors. i've followed you in the media for some time and i admire your efforts in making computing and communications more open and accessible.

thank you for listening,

1 September 2006 update: today i came across a shocking response one of your employees posted in the SIPphone support forum. when asked which type of encryption Gizmo uses, sipphonephil bluntly says, "We cannot release this information." this question was asked almost exactly a year ago and that is still the only official answer in the entire forum thread!

i don't know if this question has been answered somewhere else, but this example of so-called support your company is providing is totally unacceptable. did you know that your staff is so unhelpful (others would say ignorant) and appears to be cavalier about your customers' concerns? sipphonephil, who's seems to have plenty of time and on average is posting more than twice a day, should get back in there and properly address this question.

i before e unless it's e.g. (when to use i.e. and e.g. when writing)

Christefano — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 08:11:00 +0000

someone asked me what the difference is between i.e. and e.g., and as i explained it i realized that i had no idea what the abbreviations stood for. some looking around eventually led me to Wikipedia's list of Latin phrases page:

Exempli gratia (e.g.) and id est (i.e.) are commonly confused and misused in colloquial English. The former, exempli gratia, means "for example", and is used before giving examples of something ("I have lots of favorite colors, e.g., blue, green, and hot pink"). The latter, id est, means "that is", and is used before clarifying the meaning of something, when elaborating, specifying, or explaining rather than when giving examples ("I have lots of favorite colors, i.e., I can't decide on just one").

thanks, Wikipedia (and User:EdC in particular)!

extracting email addresses from documents on Mac OS X

Christefano — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 06:24:00 +0000

one of the best standalone utilities i've found for extracting email addresses out of documents is MailJuicer, from Freshly Squeezed Software. it has, in my opinion, a lovely user interface and although it has some problems (see below), MailJuicer meets my basic criteria for what i use myself and recommend to others: simple, stable and free.

for some reason, MailJuicer simply isn't listed on Freshly Squeezed's freeware page, and their software isn't hosted anywhere but on their own servers (so i couldn't get it from MacUpdate or VersionTracker). manually rewriting the URLs at their site seemed to work, however, and until Freshly Squeezed fixes the problem you can try this link instead:

http://freshsqueeze.com/get.fss?get=MailJuicer

surprisingly, there aren't many utilities like it for Mac OS X. i did find something called JPEE that's free, but i didn't have time to figure out how it worked. Maxprog's eMail Extractor X (US$20) would probably work, and i found Url Extractor (US$45) which looks quite powerful, but as far as i could tell it doesn't recognize email address unless they're found in a mailto link.

like i said, MailJuicer isn't without problems. it crashed after extracting 3600 email addresses from a 227MB file, but my workaround was splitting my file in half and running MailJuicer on two smaller files instead of one.

switching to Opera and back again: the essential Firefox extensions and add-ons

Christefano — Tue, 20 Sep 2005 23:59:00 +0000

after test driving Opera for a few weeks (i got a free license for Opera 8 during Opera Software’s 10th anniversary party), i switched back to Mozilla Firefox. the available extensions and add-ons are simply unparalleled in any other web browser today. to put it simply, i missed them.

this is a list of the extensions and add-ons that i’m currently using in Firefox: the version for OS X that’s optimized for G4 processors (possibly nsfw link) and the Linux on PowerPC port. it isn’t intended to be an exhaustive list of so-called "must have" extensions (i’ll write about that another time). this one started as a simple list for my own use, but i’m presenting it here in case it may be helpful to others. if you have problems with Firefox after installing any of these extensions, backup your profile and try a standard diagnostic instead of of contacting me. that said, please feel welcome to throw in your two cents if you use an extension not listed here.

Add Bookmark Here adds an eponymously titled menu item to every submenu in the Bookmarks menu (like in Opera), enabling easy bookmarking in any folder.

Backgroundimage Saver enables copying of images at sites such as Flickr, Google and the IMDb, who "mask" certain images by hiding them behing a tranparent image.

BugMeNot pseudonymously bypasses the "mandatory" login screens at websites such as Salon, The New York Times and IBM DeveloperWorks.

Clipboard-Save-As is similar in concept to Opera’s useful "Download" toolbar item, and it acts on the link that’s been copied to the clipboard the same way that the “Save Link As...” command does. i use the Menu Editor extension to move the new "Save File from Clipboard" menu item from the Tools menu to the File menu.

ColorZilla adds a color picker (like the dropper tool in Photoshop) to the status bar and brings Page Zoom magnification to Firefox (the Opera feature i miss the most!). The Web Developer extension (see below) also has a Zoom function, among other things.

Context Highlight will highlight every instance of a selected word found in the current web page, making visual scanning of a page much, much easier.

Context Search adds a submenu to Firefox’s "Search Web for..." contextual popup menu that contains all of the search engines (not just Google) in Firefox’s search box.

Copy Link Name adds a similarly-titled item to the context menu, which appears when clicking on links.

Copy URL+ copies the current document’s address to the clipboard along with other useful information such as the page title. an additional extension, ChromEdit, can be used to easily extend Copy URL+ in some useful ways (including copying the current URL in HTML, Wiki or BBCode formats).

CustomizeGoogle is one of the first extensions i install. it modifies Google’s services and search results in dozens of ways, including the removing of advertisements and adding of links to other search engines, and privacy enhancements like the anonymizing the Google cookie UID and blocking Google Analytics and its link tracking.

Dictionary Tooltip displays definitions of selected words in an inline viewer right on the page (similar to Safari and other Cocoa applications in Mac OS X, and can use the same Control-Shift-D keyboard shortcut). Inline Google Definitions is a similar extension, and seems to be much faster (and a draggable window!), but Dictionary Tooltip features more than a dozen dictionaries as well as several different ways to invoke its inline window.

Fission superimposes the progress bar onto the address bar, making it much more visible.

FlashBlock prevents Flash animations from playing automatically, thereby reducing a lot of advertisements. FlashBlock displays a clickable "play" button as a placeholder, in case it’s an animation you do want to see.

FormFox gives every form’s submit button a tooltip showing the address of the server that the form will be sent to.

GreyModern isn’t an extension, but it is my Firefox theme of choice. it’s styled after Mozilla’s "Modern" theme, which is the theme i’ve been using off and on for more than five years. i’ve also taken a liking to the iFOX theme, which is a minimalist design copied from the Safari bromser.

GreaseMonkey uses userscripts to modify web pages so that they function or appear differently than originally intended. i could devote an entire page to Greasemonkey (indeed, there’s even a book about it), but some of the userscripts i use are:

Apple Buttons Fix turns the buttons on Apple’s video sites that look like buttons (but are really QuickTime movies) into real buttons.
ArsTechica Multipage Viewer combines the pages of ArsTechnica articles into one page.
ALT Tooltips creates tooltips for images that have ALT tags but don’t have title tags. perfect!
Boston Public Library adds ISBN, Author and Title search links to the book pages on Amazon (there are plenty of userscripts that work with other libraries, too, such as the University of Colorado, the Seatle Public Library and the NIST)
eBay Auction Enhancer adds a live countdown timer to auction pages, mimicking the live counters on Yahoo! Auctions but without using a Java applet. an additional extension, Live HTTP Headers, helps makes eBay Auction Enhancer’s countdown much more accurate.
Exchequer converts almost any price into your currency of choice by displaying tooltips containing the current exchange rate. clicking the price rotates through different currencies, which is a nice touch.
Google Video Getter and iFilm Video Link each make it easier to download movies rather than viewing them in the browser.
Wikipedia Inline Article Viewer adds a button on Wikipedia pages wherever links to internal articles are found. Clicking on the button displays the article in an inline viewer (similar to what the Dictionary Tooltip and Inline Google Definitions extensions do).

History Menu helps me avoid a trip to the sidebar by displaying the last 10 visited pages as well as submenus for each day’s browsing history ("Today," "Yesterday," "2 days ago," etc.). it’s actually a drop-in replacement for the original "Go" menu, and i’m trying to figure out how to modify my copy so that the menu is called "History" instead. any ideas?

JavaScript Options restores advanced JavaScript handling options found in previous versions of Mozilla, returning user control over how pages move and resize windows, open popups, use the status bar and so on.

Mycroft can add any of dozens of new search engines to the Search bar (like OneLook, Wikipedia, MacUpdate, Firefox Extensions and the IMDb), and Search Engine Ordering makes it easy to organize or remove them.

Mr Tech Local Install enables dozens of new features, including a new "Restart Firefox" menu item and the ability to install incompatible extensions.

Options Menu adds an "Extension Options" submenu to the Tools menu, providing quick access to all the extensions with configurable settings.

PDF Download offers the choice of viewing PDF documents inside Firefox as PDF or HTML in addition to downloading them.

ReloadEvery enables automatic reloading of selected websites (at intervals you determine) by adding a submenu to the Reload button.

Reveal features an attractive, interactive slideshow of all the open tabs with live previews of each page. it also displays miniature previews of the pages in the "back" and "forward" buttons’ browsing history. this is my favorite of all the tab preview-type extensions ~ and i’ve tried most of them, starting with Tab Preview, whose arrival on the Firefox extensions scene motivated me to start using Firefox 1.5 even when it was still in beta.

SearchBar AutoResizer saves a little space by shrinking the searchbar and dynamically resizing it as search terms are typed in.

SessionSaver is the extension i’d choose if i could only use one extension in this list. it’s an "install and forget" kind of extension that provides crash recovery for all open tabs when Firefox crashes (or quits) and automatically reopens them when Firefox itself is reopened. unlike the more basic Crash Recovery extension (a fine extension in its own right), SessionSaver also has a "SnapBack" feature which can reopen the 10 most recently closed tabs, and a "TextSaver" function that can capture everything you type to a TextSaver session.

Small Screen Renderer adds a new "Small Screen Rendering" item to the View menu, which can display the currently viewed page as it would appear on a cellphone screen.

SmoothScroll adds several configuration options that Firefox’s built-in smooth scrolling doesn’t have. this extension is great when used with input devices that have a scroll wheel or scrollable touchpad.

Stop-or-Reload Button mimics Safari and saves a little space in the navigation bar by combining the Stop and Reload buttons into one (the button appears as a Stop button while a page is loading and switches to a Reload button after the page has loaded).

SwitchProxy Tool comes in handy for me because i use Tor as a proxy and occasionally want to quickly disable it. although i’ve set up Firefox to get the most out of Tor, i may still open a direct connection before starting a large download, for example, or when a website like Google rejects Tor’s exit nodes (because they’ve been used by unscrupulous netizens in the past).

Tabs Menu adds, appropriately enough, a Tabs menu to Firefox’s main menu bar. This simple feature makes navigating the current window’s open tabs a lot easier, and is somewhat similar to Opera’s tab-switching function.

TabSwitcher allows you to switch between tabs with customized shortcuts.

text/plain makes it easier to open plain-text links and email addresses (as opposed to links and addresses wrapped in <a href=""> tags) by adding "Open Selection" commands to the context menu.

Uppity adds an "Up" toolbar item that can be added to the navigation toolbar (and optionally the status bar, too), and makes navigating up a website’s directory structure as easy as clicking a button or pressing Alt-Up (Option-Up on Macs).

User Agent Switcher lets Firefox masquerade as another browser and helps me identify (and remove) my own browser hits from parahuman.org webstats. it’s also useful when poorly designed websites perform browser checking and reject Firefox out of hand simply because it isn’t "mainstream.".

View Cookies adds a cookies tab to the Page Info window, showing stored cookies associated with the currently viewed page.

View Rendered Source offers a tool called HTML Charting, which interprets the source code of a web page and displays a visual representation of it. it really needs to be seen to be believed.

Web Developer does too many things to write a short paragraph about, so i’ll simply list some of the things i use it for: (1.) zoom in and out on a page using the keyboard (2.) remove the maximum length in text boxes (3.) disable referrer logging, Java, etc. and re-enable it with a mouseclick (4.) quickly delete all saved cookies or just the ones from the currently viewed website.

an explanation and an apology: i'm really not a Viagra salesman

Christefano — Wed, 05 Oct 2005 16:27:00 +0000

about two weeks ago i started getting really odd messages in my inbox. i knew something was going on but i couldn’t figure it out, and i contacted the company i was using as a mail provider and webhost.

 kkwpkwfg@parahuman.org
 Content-Type: multipart/mixed;
 boundary=“===============1593671021==”
 MIME-Version: 1.0
 Subject: 210a7d94
 To: kkwpkwfg@parahuman.org
 bcc: lIlIIlIl00lOI1II@aol.com
 From: kkwpkwfg@parahuman.org

 This is a multi-part message in MIME format.

 —===============1593671021==
 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=“us-ascii”
 MIME-Version: 1.0
 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

 xbkq
 —===============1593671021==—

after several days of getting pretty much nowhere with my the tech support at my webhost, Dixie Systems, my hosting service was abruptly cut off ~ no more email, no more website, no warning, nothing.

it turned out that an attacker had used a malicious bot and had taken over the letterbox ~ the form-to-mail text box on my contact page for anyone to quickly send me a message without switching to webmail or a mail program ~ and it sent a few thousand spam messages with it. Dixie had shut off my service because my website had become a kind of digital zombie called a "spam gateway," but unfortunately i had no way of knowing this because Dixie didn’t call or send me an email (well, if they did send an email there was no way i could retrieve it, since they shut off my service).

long story short, i don’t use Dixie anymore and i’ve also started moving my clients off of their servers.

i apologize if you tried to email me or visit the site during the switch and couldn’t, but even more, i sincerely apologize if you received any junk mail from this domain. i looked into this type of attack and learned that this is yet another battle ground in the arms race between spammers and everyone else.

i traced the attacker’s IP address, 203.199.196.53, to an ISP in India, contacted their customer and technical support (no reply yet) and blocked that entire IP range from connecting to this site. i did that by adding the following block of text to my website’s main .htaccess file:

order allow,deny
deny from 203.199.196.
allow from all

so the letterbox is back again, but i’m using a different script now instead of AnyMail. i really wish that i had heeded the warning of AnyMail’s creators, which says that it shouldn’t be considered secure. with this in mind, i’m doing what i can to spread the word about AnyMail, starting with getting together tomorrow with one of my friends (who has a website promoting his music) and help him find a replacement for AnyMail.

strangely enough, the malicious bots that the spammers are using are breaking the judicious rule, "never return to the the scene of the crime," which in this case means that the address for the AnyMail version of the letterbox is continuing to get traffic even though there was nothing there. in response to this, i quickly put a working script in its place that logs the bot’s IP address so i can contact the customer and technical support at the ISP that the spammer is using.

for good measure, i added the fake letterbox script to my robots.txt file so that any unscrupulous bot will be sure to find it. don’t go to it yourself, though ~ i’ll assume you’re a bot and contact your ISP with details of your visit!

bimble (English): the act of wandering about aimlessly or walking without urgency to a destination

boffin (British English): a Britishism for "nerd"

déjà visité (French): the sensation of having been somewhere before

déjà senti (French): the sensation of having felt something before

eristic (English): both a noun and adjective, this describes someone with a fondness of arguing, as in arguing for the sake of arguing, and perhaps a talent for making believable but false statements (this is a wonderful word to use in an argument!)

l'esprit d'escalier (French): literally "the spirit of the staircase," this is the moment when the right thing to say comes to mind, but only when it is far too late to actually say it

fika (Swedish): a Swedish social custom of taking a coffee break with friends or coworkers

gadabout (English): one who roams about, as in search of amusement or social activity

geisterfahrer (German): literally a "ghost driver," or someone who drives the wrong way up an autobahn

growlery (English): a place to go when feeling melancholy or depressed

holophrastic (English): expressing a phrase or an entire concept in a single word

jusqu’au boutiste (French): meaning "right to the edge," this is used to describe someone who is very brave, and maybe very stupid

kinderfeindlichkeit (German): an intense dislike or disregard of children, this is more often used to describe an observed cultural phenomenon in Germany (rather than the attitude of an individual)

logam (Swedish): meaning "enough, balanced, just right," this word implies perfection and expresses the national spirit of Sweden

mamihlapinatapai (Fuegian, from Tierra del Fuego): this word describes a look shared by two people with each wishing that the other will initiate something that neither one wants to start (listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as "the most succinct word")

pampiervampier (Afrikaans): literally a "paper vampire," or stapler

presque vu (French): the sensation of being on the brink of an epiphany (usually followed by the confusion that floods in after grasping for absolute truth)

sabi (Japanese): the patina of age, like the quality of warmth found in old, worn bricks

sisu (Finnish): meaning "toughness, determination, the ability to get things done," this word describes the Finnish psyche

syncretism (English): the merging of several cultures, traditions, religions, etc. that were originally separate

solastalgia (English): a neologism used to describe the feeling of sadness ~ or even homesickness ~ caused by environmental change

vorgestern and ubermorgen (German): respectively, "the day before yesterday," and "the day after tomorrow"

wabi (Japanese): a flaw that gives elegance and uniqueness to the whole

zanshin (Japanese): a relaxed alertness, like the assured, inherent state of readiness found in cats

there are, as you might imagine, entire books filled with unusual, obscure and hard to translate words, including:

They Have a Word for It: A Lighthearted Lexicon of Untranslatable Words and Phrases, by Howard Rheingold

Le Mot Juste: A Dictionary of Classical and Foreign Words and Phrases by John Buchanan-Brown

The Meaning of Tingo: And Other Extraordinary Words from Around the World by Adam Jacot de Boinod

In Other Words: A Language Lover's Guide to the Most Intriguing Words Around the World, by Christopher J. Moore and Simon Winchester

the place to go before picking up any one of those books, however, is Benjamin Zimmer's post at Language Log. several good points are made about how some words in books like Tingo and In Other Words just don't stand up to some basic research and fact-checking, and that many of the words are often unremarkable in their originating language in the first place.

more on Gmail and your privacy

Christefano — Sat, 25 Jun 2005 03:36:00 +0000

it's been on my "things to read" list for months, and i just finished reading Brad Templeton's excellent essay and analysis, Privacy Subtleties of GMail. (Brad Templeton is chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of my favorite civil rights organizations, and is also known for the free playa phone seen at Burning Man).

Brad offers several conclusions, which i'll share here:

While there has been over-reaction to GMail, there are some real issues here to be worried about.

Other webmail providers are doing, or will be doing the same things, meaning these issues apply to all of them, including MSN, Yahoo and others.

One key risk is that because GMail gets your consent to be more than an e-mail delivery service -- offering searching, storage and shopping -- your mail there may not get the legal protection [the Electronic Communications Privacy Act] gives you on E-mail.

The storage of e-mail on 3rd party servers for more than 180 days almost certainly causes the loss of those privileges.

This in turn creates a danger that we may redefine whether e-mail has the "reasonable expectation of privacy" needed for 4th amendment protection.

Correlation of search and mail has real risks.

Google and others should architect to encrypt your mail.

Even the irrational fears over the spooky aspect of advertising being associated with e-mail creates problems that must be addressed.

Brad corroborates all the the concerns about Gmail that i wrote about earlier, but now my concerns have been broadened to include other webmailers, too. Privacy Subtleties of GMail is a long read, but don't let that stop you from reading it if you're interested at all in the subject.

who's behind your website?

Christefano — Wed, 09 Nov 2005 13:00:00 +0000

it's a good question. three friends this month have asked me what's involved in putting a website together and i started wondering what i would do if i were to start all over again.

i started to question everything, from my webhost to my weblog service to the image and text editors i use. my next big project was to quit using Blogger for publishing this journal (the "what" behind my website) and migrate to WordPress, but as it would happen i ended up switching webhosts (the "who") instead.

this website used to be hosted by Dixie Systems, a bargain bin webhost that i paid about US$20 a year. it was a great deal, i thought, until two server crashes, lost data, really bad technical support and finally a mysterious suspension of service (which i've written about in an earlier entry) helped me realize that i was getting only what i paid for. so i switched, and i've begun moving my clients off of their servers, too.

parahuman is now hosted by Sustainable Marketing, a company i learned about while reading a Wired News article, This Blog is 100 Percent Solar. it's an interesting article, and i recommend it to anyone who operates a website. i've talked a few times with Sustainable Marketing's owner, Ivan Stork, and i really like what he's up to. it turns out that he and i have quite a bit in common, too, including an interest in Tuvan music.

Sustainable Marketing is "100% carbon-neutral" and offsets all of its energy use by purchasing renewable energy credits, or green tags (PDF, 236k), from their regional power utility. in Sustainable Marketing's case, the renewable energy source is wind power.

about ten years ago i read somewhere that half a pound of coal is burned in order to power all the computers involved in transfering just one megabyte (1MB!) from here to there over the internet. i dearly wish i could remember the source since this factoid has stayed in my mind for quite some time (does it sound familiar? please contact me or leave a comment below). considering that we're really doing no better today with energy efficiency ~ an increase in efficiency usually leads to a proportionate increase in energy use ~ companies like Sustainable Marketing (and others such as Whole Foods Market and Kinko's) are helping build the infrastructure of a greener energy economy by ensuring that a larger portion of the electricity flowing in national power grid is being produced cleanly from solar and wind farms. i want to support this as much as i can.

i also nominated Ivan recently as one of the people who i think is changing the world. we really need to think about the resources that are consumed by the seemingly out-of-sight and out-of-mind data centers (it's the other side of Moore's Law, where the cost of buying computers decreases but the cost of powering and cooling them increases) and how there are "green" webhosts right now like Sustainable Marketing. just take a look in Eco Business Links or the National Green Pages.

i do believe the system of using energy credits is a step in the right direction, but a small part of me wonders if this is just another way for people to feel better about themselves. it may be different from how wealthy Northerners paid a commutation fee to avoid military service during the American Civil War, but how different is this from SUV owners purchasing emissions credits to make their Hummers "pollution-free"?

these are good questions to think about. in the meantime, parahuman is "100% carbon-neutral," too.

10 things to do

Christefano — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 19:46:00 +0000

i plan to do ~ or be doing ~ these things in five years time. this is my vow.

meditate every day
make a movie
continue working with teenagers. create a safe and inviting environment free of the unreasonable restrictions of school and home, and teach them and learn from them in ways that surprise, strengthen and enlighten
travel the world and see with my own eyes and feel with my own heart the natural beauties of this world and the planet we live on
learn more about and help preserve Mongolian culture
learn several Asian languages (Mongolian, Russian, Mandarin and Japanese)
share spirit with and protect endangered species (raptors and large cats)
wear hand-made clothing every day ~ up to the point of having a 100% hand-made wardrobe
apprentice in at least one craft that involves working with my hands (glass-blowing, making musical instruments)
master at least one martial art discipline

typographical mysteries: the tailpiece symbol

Christefano — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 00:51:00 +0000

after a good deal of searching, i've finally learned what the typographical term is for the mark indicating the end of a page. it's called a tailpiece and it's commonly used in magazines to mark the end of an article.

tail·piece n. : an engraving or a design placed as an ornament at the end of a chapter or at the bottom of a page.

the sagittal symbol that i'm using is the same as the parahuman website icon (or "favicon") that i've been using for a while. it looks much like the astrological symbol for Sagittarius, but it's actually one of the alchemical symbols for iron.

switching to Dvorak and relearning to type

Christefano — Wed, 22 Jun 2005 13:20:00 +0000

this journal entry is sure to take much longer to write than any other i've written ~ or will write, for that matter. it's not because i'm distracted, or even depressed (although the soundtrack to Braveheart is playing right now...). it's because i'm relearning to type after switching to the Dvorak keyboard layout.

The Dvorak keyboard layout

it all started when i read the hilariously funny and informative web comic at DVzine.org about the early history of typewriter design and the innovations proposed by August Dvorak, an educational psychologist and professor of education. yes, it really was funny! it turns out that Dvorak really did his research ~ his keyboard layout is faster, more accurate, and safer than the standard QWERTY layout. (i mean safer by how the Dvorak keyboard layout minimizes the distance the fingers travel and therefore reduces repetitive stress injury.) i recommend that anyone who is in front of the computer a lot (or is raising kids who are) look into it.

my typing speed so far has much to be desired, but i'm faster than i was a few days ago. from what i've read, it takes anywhere from a week and a half to a month to type faster than before with QWERTY. i keep telling myself "it can only get better from here!"

of course, within a few days of switching ~ and enthusiastically rearranging the physical keys on my PowerBook's keyboard ~ i landed my first professional writing job in years. writing after switching to Dvorak felt like writing after recovering from a stroke.

i did say not too long ago that i've been thinking about writing again...

as an aside, i'm referring to the onscreen Keyboard Viewer (found in the Localization status menu) extensively during my transition to Dvorak. i find that this is a much better solution for me than the physical hard copy recommended by DVzine.org.