Blue Scream of Jeff: April 2012

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

A girl and her TARDIS...

This video is by no means new, but I still can’t get over how awesome it is.

Or rather how awesome its creator is.

Going by the Youtube handle of Sillysparrowness, this “Doctor Who” fan from Germany decided to build her own TARDIS.

And not just any TARDIS.

She built one that she can knockdown, move about her home and reassemble on a whim.

Just because.

She’s had it “appear” in her garden, in her living room and even in her bathroom!

How awesome is that?

I’m not sure if she just made up her plans on her own or got them from somewhere else, but they are pure genius. She made foldable front, back and side panels that lock into four upright rails which in turn attach to a square base section with some wooden pegs. The roof with her home-made lantern light on top locks the whole thing together. Four long rectangular “POLICE BOX” signs that hang just beneath the roof add the finishing touch. Her system requires no tools for assembly/disassembly.

Her obvious love of the long-running BBC science-fiction show about a mysterious time traveler and his oddly shaped time machine may make her a geek, but she’s my kind of geek. She is smart and incredibly witty with an excellent problem solving skills and despite her self-deprecating humor, possesses some pretty mean DYI skills.

To me that’s just an awesome combination. Smart, geeky and a woodworker? I’m in love!

About the only thing I didn’t like about her project was the way she used her table saw (she calls it a circular saw in the video). Her freehand crosscuts without the use of a miter gage and with no blade guard made me cringe. As a woodworker myself who has had a one or two close calls using a table saw even with the proper safety equipment, I cannot stress how dangerous that was. Making freehand cuts is just a recipe for kickback which could have resulted in her hand being thrown into the moving blade. So if you are reading this Silly, please, please NEVER DO THAT AGAIN! Either stick with your jigsaw or contact me and I’d be happy to give you a few lessons on how to safely use a table saw. (I’ll trade you the lessons for your TARDIS plans).

Now you might think that most people droning on for 17-minutes about how they built a prop from their favorite TV show would make a boring video. And you’d be right.

Luckily for us, Sillysparrowness isn’t most people.

She’s several people.

Or rather several people who represent different sides of her own personality. And these other “selves” not only talk to us, the viewer, they talk – and sometimes even argue – among themselves. It’s a gimmick she uses to great effect not only in this video but in several of her other video blogs as well. I really like the interplay between all her different “selves” in her “Why I didn't make a 10,000 subscribers video.”

It’s a technique that doesn’t get old, because she doesn’t use it all the time. In some of her blogs she just examines the usage of language in her favorite poem or discusses why she thinks Schrödinger's Cat makes for the worst of metaphors. But then again, she’s what we’d call a “language arts” teacher, (she teaches German to German students, so I can’t really call her an “English teacher”) so what would you expect? But even in these non-“Doctor Who” videos, her intelligence and wit shine through. Makes me wish I had had more teachers as cool and as awesome as her when I was in junior high school.

But perhaps the thing I find most awesome about Sillysparrowness is that her real name is Astrid – which if you rearrange the letters spell out TARDIS!

You can subscribe to Silly’s video blogs here: http://www.youtube.com/user/sillysparrowness or friend her on Facebook here: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100002668942390 And if you happen to know anybody at the BBC props department, please, please have them send her a copy of the light that belongs on the top of the TARDIS. It’s the least they can do for such an awesome lady! Or if you are a friend of current “Doctor Who” show runner Steven Moffat, please make sure he sees this video and beg him to give her a cameo on the show!

Because she is that awesome.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Through hell and high water

Staff and volunteers help put up a banner proclaiming the Academy’s return home and grand re-opening.

The folks over at The Bucks County Academy of Fencing have literally been through hell and high water.

Late last August, flood waters brought on by Hurricane Irene smashed through the front wall of their Lambertville, New Jersey home and flooded the entire 10,000 square foot complex with three feet of mud and water before a back wall finally gave way and let the water out.

The blown-out front wall of the building which runs over
Coryell Creek. This stream runs down from a mountain
across the street of the academy

The damage to the academy was quite extensive with all the wood floors ripped up and many of the building’s contents washed out into the Delaware and Raritan Canal which runs behind the old Laceworks mill building the fencing academy occupies.

It was the third time in a handful of years that floods along the Delaware River had threated to put them out of business. But after eight months of looking for a new location, battling with their insurance company, reconstruction and having to run their operation from a temporary space in a church school basement, The Bucks County Academy of Fencing is back home.

"We're so happy to be back in our 'home' space,” said Mark Holbrow, BCAF’s founder and head fencing master. “It's uniquely suited for a fencing club, and gives the BCAF some of its special character. What surprised me was how anxious our KIDS were to get back. They really love it!"

Volunteers put the finishing touches on Mary Bryson’s
fencers in silhouette mural along the academy’s far walls.

I finally got a chance to fence in the “new/old” space last night and can confirm it was good to be back, though it was a little disconcerting. It was like coming back to the family home after being away at college only to find your parents have rearranged all the furniture!

But in this case all the changes are for the better. Mark and his staff have vastly improved the dressing/changing area and even have added a shower. And now instead of just a soda machine in a corner they have made a kitchenette or wet bar area with sink and a nice cabinet. There is still a lot more work to be done, but I look forward to all those improvements.

Fencing is certainly fun and while I’ll never be able swashbuckle with the likes of D'Artagnan, Zorro or Inigo Montoya, it is nice to have such a fine facility with such excellent instructors to train in.

If you’ve never tried your hand at fencing, you should. It’s almost a sport custom made for us geeks. If you live in the Mercer or Hunterdon county area of New Jersey or the Bucks or Montgomery county areas of Pennsylvania, BCAF offers a “Taste Of Fencing” class several times throughout the year. These three, one-hour, once-a-week classes allow you to try fencing out without making a long term commitment or costly investment in equipment. To sign up, contact Lisa Martini or the academy at Bucks County Academy of Fencing, 287 South Main Street, Lambertville, NJ 08530-1830, 215-862-6112.

If you live elsewhere in the United States, you can find a club here.

Thursday, April 12, 2012

Calling Dick Tracy, calling Dick Tracy!

I guess it was only a matter of time before someone put all the functionality of a smart phone into a wrist watch, and frankly I’m surprised that someone hadn’t done it sooner. It seems like a no-brainer to me.

But now Sony is coming out with what it’s calling a “SmartWatch” a wristwatch that can display your text messages, e-mails and calendar reminders; let you follow your Twitter and Facebook pals; help you manage your cell phone calls; and play music.

The device is based on the same Android operating system which powers many phones and tablets and connects to your cellphone via Bluetooth. It comes with a USB charger, watchband adapter and your choice of colored rubber watchbands: black (standard), gray, white, a reddish-pink, a mint green and blue.

It currently works with several of Sony’s Xperia phones as well as the HTC Desire S, HTCEvo 3D/Shooter, HTC Sensation, HTC Wildfire, HTC Wildfire S, Motorola Defy, Motorola Droid 2/Milestone 2, Motorola RAZR, Orange San Fransisco, Samsung Galaxy 5, Samsung Galaxy Ace, Samsung Galaxy Fit, Samsung Galaxy Gio, Samsung Galaxy Mini, Samsung Galaxy S II and Samsung Galaxy SL.

According to Sony’s website, under “typical usage” the watch will only have to be charged every three or four days. Heavy users, it says, will have to charge it every night, and I suspect that’s what most people will have to do.

A quick Google search revealed that the SmartWatch is selling for $119 to $149. Now I like cool gadgets as much as the next geek. But Sony forgot the one thing that would have made this a must-have for me.

No web cam.

I mean how much room would it really have taken to insert a tiny web cam above (or below) the 1.3-inch, color organic LED, multi-touch display? With it you could have made Skype video calls to your friends.

Sure a web-cam would have probably eaten too much power or not really be practical, but gosh darn-it! It has been 81 years since Dick Tracy made his comics debut in the Detroit Mirror and we are STILL waiting for our two-way wrist radio!

Here's the minute and 10 second video Sony produced to introduce its latest creation to the public. Give it a watch and let me know what you think and if this is something you would find useful.

Friday, April 6, 2012

Trojan takes a byte out of Apple

UPDATE:

A week after it was announced that Flashback Trojan had infected about one percent of the world’s Macintosh computers, Apple has finally released a tool designed to remove the malware from infected systems.

Released yesterday (April 12), the software is part of a security update to Java and comes two days after the Cupertino, Calif.-based computer maker announced it was working on an automated way for users to remove the infection.

According to Apple’s website the patch “removes the most common variants of the Flashback malware” and “also configures the Java web plug-in to disable the automatic execution of Java applets.”

If you have an infected Mac, you can download the Java update and integrated tool here:

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1516

Looks like Apple is going to have to eat some humble pie.

After years of bashing Microsoft over how insecure and prone Windows was to malware infections, it appears that Mac computers have now been struck by virus – a variant of the Flashback Trojan that uses Javascript code to infect machines. Russian security company, Doctor Web recently announced that more than 600,000 Macs have been infected. Half those computers are located here in the U.S., and according to the company, 274 of those machines were located in Cupertino, Calif. where Apple has its headquarters. As of this morning, that number had dropped to 194 said Mikko Hypponen, a research officer with antivirus maker F-Secure, via his Twitter feed.

With an install base of about 45 million Macs, that means about one percent of all Macs have been infected by this virus, Hypponen said, which is makes this virus “roughly as common for Mac as Conficker was for Windows.”

However, not everyone thinks all 600,000 infections are from Macs. Aleks Gostev, chief security expert for the Global Research and Analysis Team at Kaspersky Lab, another antivirus maker, tweeted this morning: “We are not sure that all 500k #Flashback bots are Mac users. I have some suspicions that probably bot for Windows also presented [it].”

Regardless of how many Macs are truly infected, all Mac users should make sure their systems are fully patched by visiting Apple and downloading the latest patches.

To find out if your Mac is infected go to your Terminal.app and run:

cat ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist

and

codesign -v /Applications/Safari.app

If you get anything about "DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES" on the first and/or "code or signagure modified" on the second, then you are infected. Any other responses (including none) means you're fine.

If you are infected with the Flashback Trojan, here’s a link that details how remove it:

http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/trojan-downloader_osx_flashback_k.shtml

As always if you feel uncomfortable following any of these directions, feel free to contact me and I will be glad to help you remove this infection from your computer.

For more information about the Flashback Trojan, see the following links: