aubreyturner.org

Better leave your cell phone and PDA at home if you’re planning to visit Canneto di Caronia in Sicily.

The gate at the entrance to this tiny Sicilian village has come off its hinges and swings in the wind as cats wander into homes abandoned after a series of mystery fires.

Spontaneous fires started in mid-January in the town of Canneto di Caronia, in about 20 houses. After a brief respite last month, the almost daily fires have flared up again—even though electricity to the village was cut off.

…

Three-legged instruments to monitor geomagnetic, meteorological, electromagnetic and electrostatic indicators sit in apartments and next to lemon trees in the gardens. Colored markings on the street indicate the presence of volcano experts.

Police ruled out a possible prankster or pyromaniac after they saw wires burst into flames.

The hypotheses now range from a buildup of electrical energy caused by grounding wires running off the railway to a rare “natural phenomenon” in which surges of electricity rise from the earth’s core.

The fires have even consumed unplugged lamps and an entire apartment. Black scorch marks still scar the apartment walls.

Italy’s big utility, Enel, cut off electricity to the town and hooked it up to a generator—but that caught fire as well.

More recently, cellular phones and cars have also been acting up, with lock and alarm systems being set off without any apparent reason.

Given the fact that unpowered equipment as well as battery powered items are having problems, it would seem to point to an unusually high EM field in the area.  Those all sound like symptoms of current being induced into the equipment from an outside source.

Given that Sicily is a volcanically active area, I wouldn’t be surprised if that turned out to be the answer.  Volcanoes have been known to generate huge electrical charges (although this is during eruptions).

Here is another site that examines some possible theories and has some observations about the area.

Link via Slashdot.

Advertisers don’t seem to have any boundaries when it comes to getting their “message” out there.

Backers of a new model hope to tap one of the last ad-free frontiers of the Internet—the text of articles and message boards—in what they bill as the ultimate contextual advertising play.

But the IntelliTXT system, which rolls out today, is drawing the ire of journalists and others who say it not only blurs the line between advertising and editorial, it erases it.

Vibrant Media is betting Web surfers will get accustomed to seeing green, double-underlined words sprinkled throughout articles and message board posts. Scroll over one of the green IntelliTXT links on a 17-inch monitor and up pops a green-tinted 2-by-4-inch ad that looks like one of the ads in the right-hand column of a Google results page. Clicking on the link takes surfers to the advertiser’s splash page. IntelliTXT tested since last year in about 100 online publications, including Hearst’s Popular Mechanics and several technology, gaming and automotive sites.

I did some looking around and found an example of what one of these ads looks like:

I did a little analysis of the page and there are very few changes to the actual body of the HTML.  The only thing I could find in the source was that the body was contained in a <div id=“intelliTxt”> tag and a single <script> entity was added, which loaded dynamically generated JavaScript from an ASP script on ‘itxt.vibrantmedia.com’.  The JavaScript code is somewhat obfuscated, but from what I can see it scans the text of the ‘intelliTxt’ division and adds the pop-up text based on a list of keywords that it knows about.

Since this scheme relies on getting the JavaScript code from a server, the simple solution to removing it is to make the server inaccessible from the client.  If the JavaScript code isn’t downloaded you’ll end up with the original content sans the keyword popups.  An old trick a lot of people have been using is to add the offending server to their local ‘hosts’ file with an IP address of 127.0.0.1, which is the loopback address (i.e. any traffic to 127.0.0.1 doesn’t go anywhere outside of the local machine).  People usually put doubleclick.com and some other obnoxious ad servers in there.  I have verified that this trick works with IntelliTXT as well.

If you’re a Windows user (NT, 2000, or XP), add the following line to the file windowssystem32driversetchosts (95/98/ME users have a hosts file, but I don’t remember if it’s in the same location):

127.0.0.1    itxt.vibrantmedia.com

I should note that I’m not opposed to advertising in general.  It costs money to run a website.  Further, the technology itself isn’t necessarily bad.  Some sites use similar technology to show definitions for certain keywords, which is useful.  However, there’s something that just feels slimy about hooking advertising to the basic text of an article.  Or in the case of Off-Road.com, the advertisting is added to the message boards, which means that text entered by users conversing with one another is subject to these ads.  It’s kind of like having someone else pervert your words to use in their marketing efforts.

Someone calling themselves “maybenot” left the following in the comments to the previous entry, concerning Monday’s troll incident.

Um, did you really call the L.I.S.D.? Becuase you really scared my friend, if that’s what you were going for, scaring middle schoolers, you should be proud of yourself. Good job.

This steamed me a bit, so here’s my response:

Maybenot,

Yes, I did call Leander ISD. I will not tolerate people spewing crap on my weblog, regardless of their age. Given that your illiterate little friend called me a “fagish com. geek” in the comments on my own website, then tried to put someone else’s email and phone number on this site, a little scare isn’t a big deal. Maybe it’s what he needed.

Quite frankly, the very idea that I should be ashamed of myself for reporting this says more about you than it does about me.

The very attitude that I should somehow be ashamed of this really irked me.  It reflects an attitude that he should be entitled to come on my weblog and spew garbage towards me and act like some kind of online vandal. 

While websites and weblogs didn’t exist when I was that age, I know that if I’d done the equivalent my butt would have been heated by the principal’s paddle (or my dad’s belt).  Unfortunately, that’s an effective method of discipline, so it has of course been removed from schools. 

Coddling kids and excusing their bad behavior will not serve us well in the long run. 

But what do I know, I’m just surly curmudgeon who’s starting to feel more disconnected from the current generation every day.  I’m not sure where the cutoff occurred, but it probably won’t be long until I’m yelling at the neighborhood kids.

<old man voice>
Damn kids!  Get off my lawn.
</old man voice>

I’ve upgraded the site to Movable Type 2.661 and installed the CloseComments plugin.  From this point forward I will be automatically closing comments on all posts that are more than 30 days old.  Hopefully this will cut down on some of the comment spam that is coming in on year-old posts.

I saw this post on Right Thinking the other day about the Navy’s experimental ship the Swift.  Here’s more information about some of the systems on board.

I think these guys may have just a little too much time on their hands.  It’s either that or they’re insane.  They created a double-horn subwoofer under the floor of an audio room.  The excavation for the enclosure was 60 cubic meters in volume.  Each horn is 9.5 meters long and the subwoofer has the ability to output full power at 10 Hz (most modern stereo equipment doesn’t go below 20 Hz because CDs can go lower than this).

This is one of those cases where someone just kept plugging at the problem until one day inspiration struck.

Some engineering problems take longer to solve than others. Inventors struggled for decades to find the right filament material, before Thomas Edison tried carbon and made a practical light bulb.

Toshikatsu Kuwahata, an engineer at the audio factory of JVC (Victor Company of Japan Ltd.), in Yokohama, is no stranger to such lengthy struggles. He wrestled for more than 20 years with his own personal challenge—making a speaker cone that could be manufactured in quantity out of wood.

Why would anyone want to use wood to make a speaker cone?  It turns out that wood’s natural properties include the ability to propogate sound very quickly and its natural internal dampening effect leads to smoother frequency response.  The problem is that wood has to be deformed radically to make a speaker cone.  He tried several approaches, but either the wood cracked or the process was too expensive for mass production.

So, how did this inspiration come about?  At a restaurant:

Then, five years ago, a colleague, Satoshi Imamura, was dining at one of his favorite restaurants. Imamura contemplated the texture and malleability of the dried squid he was chewing. He asked the waiter how it had been prepared, and the waiter explained that the squid had been soaked in sake.

Imamura and Kuwahata tried soaking the speaker wood in sake. It worked! (They also tried Suntory whiskey; it didn’t. Imamura isn’t sure why, but he theorizes that there is something unique about the acids in sake, which is simply fermented, as opposed to those in whiskey, which is distilled after fermentation.)

The sake makes the wood sheets malleable but—crucially—without affecting their strength. The sheets are then infused with resin and a mold-release agent. The resin prevents the wood from absorbing moisture, helping it to retain its shape in high temperature and humidity long after it’s been molded into the shape of a speaker cone.

It just proves that you never know where you’ll find a solution for a thorny problem.

Late last week I received several comments on an old post from last year under the name “Victoria Redmayne” that listed “MarthaEXXXXXX@hotmail.com” (last name redacted—see below) as the email address.  These comments came from 66.141.49.243, which is a DSL IP in the Austin area (adsl-66-141-49-243.dsl.austtx.swbell.net).  The first comment was rather obnoxious (the text consisted solely of the poorly formed sentence “you r so gay u fagish com. geek fuck u!”), so I deleted it and the one that followed (”.anyone who whant to get it on with me just call me at 260XXXX” (phone number redacted—see below) and banned the IP from posting further comments.

Today I received another comment in one of last week’s posts from this same person (or at least someone using the same name and email address) that consisted solely of the text “my# is 512259XXXX”.  This post came from 204.57.104.6, which turns out to be ce1.leanderisd.org.

I’m coming to suspect that this is a young teenager (the piss-poor texting style of the first post would also have been a dead giveaway) who is trying to perform the web version of the old bathroom wall theme.  I suspect that the phone number belongs to some poor girl who probably rejected this loser. 

Anyhow, I called the Leander school district and talked to someone at their technology helpdesk to give them the relevant info.  Hopefully it will only be a matter of time before they track down the PC from which this was sent.  Whether that will reveal the identity of the culprit is another matter, though.

But remember this: everything you do on the Internet leaves traces behind.

While I don’t require a valid email address or name to post here, the IP address of every comment is logged.  Even with dynamically assigned IPs (like with dialup), it is often possible to find the identity of the user (most ISPs have DHCP server logs that could be used to identify the dial-up caller that got the address; the same holds true for DSL and cable modems).

Update: The troll has changed his name to “viciredkillyou” (Is this a threat?) and is still posting from school.  Instead of banning him I’m changing all his comments to say something else.  We’ll see how long this goes on.

It’s too bad that it’s illegal to shoot the bastards who did this:

A gasp of disbelief, a sad shake of the head and a feeling of general disgust.

That’s how San Marcos residents reacted Saturday morning at the sight of graffiti spray-painted on the still under construction Hays County Veterans Memorial.

Sometime overnight, someone used yellow spray paint to write “Kill Bush” on a section of the memorial where names of local veterans are displayed on a sloping wall. The same slogan, along with others, was repeated on the back of the memorial.

“It’s very disgusting,” said Robert Guerrero, who served in Germany during the Vietnam era. “I have a lot of friends right there who gave their lives for this country,” he added, pointing to the portion of the monument where the names of soldiers killed in action – which wasn’t vandalized – are displayed. “It’s just disgusting.”

Comments of some others who stopped by the memorial Saturday morning are unfit for publishing in a family newspaper.

This memorial is being funded through donations and it isn’t yet finished.

Donations to help complete the marker can still be made, and are indeed more crucial now as clean-up will add to the overall cost. Contributions can be mailed to: Hays County Veterans Memorial, P.O. Box 1503, San Marcos, TX, 78667-1503.

For general information, visit www.sanmarcos.net/veteransmemorial or contact Cruz at (512) 245-2502 or (512) 393-8400.

My online bill payment service will send a check in the mail on my behalf, which makes this as simple as entering their name and address and entering an amount, so I sent them a few dollars to help them along.

As usual, I went into a store yesterday with the intent of doing something small and came out with a lot more than I intended.  I had originally gone into the Cingular store to inquire about changing my rate plan (I probably could have done the rate plan change over the phone, but since the Cingular store is just a couple of blocks away I decided it would be best to go in person).  When I went to Minnesota last month I forgot that I was on the Texas-regional plan and I ended up with around $50.00 in roaming and airtime minutes.  After that I went to the Cingular website and I found that I could get almost the same number of minutes for the same monthly fee on the national plan.  For some reason, though, the Cingular account management website wouldn’t let me change my rate plan online (although it does have options to do so).

After talking to the rep in the store, I learned why.  It turns out that when I bought the Nokia 6340i last April that while it’s a dual-mode phone (GSM/TDSM), with Cingular it functions on their GAIT network, which isn’t the same as the true GSM.  Apparently they were in the midst of a transition when I got my phone.

The GAIT plans weren’t as good as the GSM plans in cost or minutes, so I started leaning towards getting a new phone.  The rate plan alone wasn’t the only reason for this, though.  While I’d originally been pleased with the 6340i’s features, I’d come to be disappointed with its sound quality after using it for almost a year. 

So, I ended up getting a Motorola V400 camera phone.  So far, the sound quality is better than the old Nokia and I’m liking the flip phone form factor.  The only problem is that I haven’t been able to make the wireless internet feature work yet.  I think I know why and I’m going to go back to the store tomorrow to straighten it out.  The store rep suggested that it would be better to have the new rate plan take effect on April 15th, since that is the normal billing date for my account.  Unfortunately, that means that the new features don’t take effect until then, either.  Since I’m planning to go to Pittsburgh on the 16th, I’d rather have to deal with the pro-rated bills and have everything working than have faith that things will just start working on the 15th (which is the last-minute before my trip starts).