This cool animation is a double bonus as my little girl loves to draw and make things.

The boy? He’s currently into WW II tanks, planes, submarines… You get the idea.

Thanks to the Mary Sue for posting this.

I really enjoyed the original version because you had to sneak around and keep relocating. If the enemy in the game found you and you didn’t have time to prepare booby traps then you were toast. There were scenes when it was mass mayhem, but if you played it as all guns and glory then you didn’t get very far.

I’m pretty sure I’m going to disable the X-Ray kill cam. The bullet speeding through the air in bullet time is always cool, but seeing a graphic in the head view of what happens when the bullet hits? I can pass on that level of detail.

You would need to know something about using the Olympus Trip 35 to get why I like this T-shirt. I ordered 2 from a seller in the UK via eBay.

Think I'll have a problem at the airport?

I like film photography and use up a lot of film. I also needed a new key chain as my old one was made out of leather and was falling apart.

Light bulb! I take my film to the local Costco and Lily is on friendly terms with the people behind the counter. So I asked them if they could spare the old used 135 film cartridges.

Boy, could they. I got about a dozen and picked out some different color ones. I got some 1″ key rings from Home Depot, Dad has a drill press in his work room and in a few minutes I had new key chains.

Lily always goes with us to the Easter Sunday mass and afterwards we head to breakfast.

Before we headed out she was wearing a nice outfit but it looked like she was heading to a dinner. I mentioned that it looks too fancy for church (I did say I’m fashioned challenged, right?) and she added one piece of clothing.

She was transformed by just adding that one thing. Literally, she changed the whole tone of the outfit and went from evening attire to Sunday church.

Of course, I wore jeans and sneakers, but I’m not even a little bit fashion conscious. But I did insist on posting about it and here we are. My amazement remains intact.

Last year I purchased another Olympus Trip 35 for 2 reasons. The first reason was to replace the camera that had taken a hit and stopped working. The second reason is that I wanted to try to re-skin one. Since the replacement camera cost less than $40 on eBay why not?

No turning back now

Back in December I went online and ordered a Cobalt Kid Skin (Goat) for my camera from Cameraleather.com. They have quality products but are really backed up. I received my order about 60 days later.

That’s not a complaint and I really am happy with what I received, but keep that in mind if you want to order from them.

Removing the old leatherette was not difficult and I started with the back. I pulled out my old Swiss army knife and began peeling the edge up in no time at all. Yes, yes I did.

Oh yeah, don’t do that. You’ll just scratch the metal underneath and tear the old cover. Instead use your thumbnail and lift up the edge. With a little effort it will come right off as long as you proceed slow and smoothly.

On the back I didn’t do that and later on I had to remove the scraps. The front pieces came cleanly off with just my fingers and some patience.

Applying the new skin was very simple and straight forward. I had originally gotten some Purell so that I could use the wet method but I eventually went with just applying the new cover directly on.

Future Film Camera enthusiast

It worked. The pieces lined up and I now have a Cobalt Blue colored Olympus Trip 35. Looks cool! My only concern is that I have 4 Olympus Trip 35 cameras lying around. But that’s alright for now.

Here’s a gallery of the newly re-covered camera.

I included a photo of my Nikon for size comparison. Compared to the compact camera it’s huge.

This was a fun thing to do and took hardly anytime at all. But unless one of my cameras gets broken (again!) odds are I won’t do this again soon.

It’s like a blog within a blog and I’m going to have fun with it.

Monday Day 1

Wife flies to India on business. Son is up all night tossing his cookies. Coincidence? _I_don’t_think_so_. #conspiracy #whatwillidonow #fb

— Jan Dembowski (@jan_dembowski) March 12, 2012

That didn’t go very well.

Last night my son had some sort of bug and was tossing his cookies all night long. Fortunately I had help but I was in no condition to go to work today.

The children are cooperating and I’m really pleased. They’re doing their home work, eating their meals, and peacefully playing with each other. It’s actually kind of nice and quiet.

I could get used to this. I do miss my wife, but this extra alone time with the kids is a welcome change.

Tuesday Day 2

Second day of being left to my own devices. The natives have noticed a change of authority but, with luck and perseverance, I’ll be OK. #fb

— Jan Dembowski (@jan_dembowski) March 13, 2012

Sigh, the kids are acting up.

It’s only little things but they’ve learned to repeat phrases like “Mom would let us do that” and “That’s not what Mom said”.

At what age did I become contrary like that?

They are being very disrespectful and I’m patiently explaining that

1. that’s not true about Mom and
2. I’m the one in charge.

Nothing to get excited about, just kids being kids.

Wednesday Day 3

Day 3 of being left to my own devices. Once again I caught the 2nd train with seconds to spare. By next week I’ll get the right train. #fb

— Jan Dembowski (@jan_dembowski) March 14, 2012

Without meaning to I’m sleeping later in the morning. This has lead to my parking the car and running like a madman to the train.

I don’t get it. It’s like I’m getting up a full 30 minutes later.

The kids are acting odd. It’s like they are taking turns testing me and how I’ll react. They don’t do it at the same time but it’s like one will wait in the wings while the other tests my defenses. That’s weird!

It’s probably nothing. I’m tired from a lack of sleep.

Thursday Day 4

Day 4 of home exile. I have discovered why I am always 30 minutes late. She set my alarm for 6 AM from 5:30 AM.Well played wife. #fb

— Jan Dembowski (@jan_dembowski) March 15, 2012

The alarm was set to 30 minutes later!

At first I thought it was Lily’s doing but now I’m not sure. The kids are acting so strange.

They’re planning something and I think they somehow resent that I’m in charge. It’s a struggle to get them to do things.

I’m not sleeping too well, I never do when the wife is away.

Friday Day 5

Day 5 – Alarm set correctly. Sure is quiet at 5:30 AM. #fb

— Jan Dembowski (@jan_dembowski) March 16, 2012

I made to the right train today!

I had to get up really early (why is the alarm set to 5:15 AM? doesn’t matter) but I was on time.

My co-workers have been teasing me about being by myself without adult supervision. Also they’ve notice that I’ve not shaved my beard this whole week.

Lily doesn’t like me with a beard but she’s in Mumbai. So there.

I’m still not sleeping well. It’s making me a little disorientated.

Saturday Day 6

Day 6 of abandonment. These natives are referred to as “Children” but I believe that is merely a clever ruse to get me to lower my guard.

— Jan Dembowski (@jan_dembowski) March 17, 2012

Where am I? How did I get here?

I seem to be in charge of some sort of military camp. My two underlings aren’t like me; I think they’re part of the local native population.

The resentment that these “children” are harboring for me is intense. They can’t seem to be able to follow instructions and keep asking for the previous Administrator.

I keep telling them “I’m in charge and that’s that!” but it’s just not placating them.

I may need to implement a more strenuous process and procedure.

At work we are trained that with the correct process documentation anything is possible. And with that process a lack of accountability is successfully achieved.

That must be true, that’s what the compliance and audit people say.

Sunday Day 7

Day 7. Wife still in Mumbai. I think the natives are conspiring against my administration and may need evidence of the conspiracy. #fb

— Jan Dembowski (@jan_dembowski) March 18, 2012

I’ve begun to gather evidence of the crimes being perpetuated against my lawful administration. At the moment it’s all circumstantial but as I am the judge and jury of the court I don’t expect any problems.

The natives are almost in full revolt. They keep complaining about the tasks that they are asked to do, something about “child labor laws”. I just don’t get it. They’re 8 and 10 years old and all I’m asking them to do is a little factory work.

Children have been working in factories for over 100 years. Everyone her has to pull their own weight and I see nothing wrong with these people working till midnight to help pay the bills.

This great nation of ours doesn’t run on good wishes you know. How can I run a benign dictatorship without money?

It’s all very distracting and just adds to my lack of rest. I feel like I haven’t slept in days.

Some other day later

Day… I’ve lost track of the days. These native children are in full rebellion mode! Wife gets home tomorrow afternoon… #fb

— Jan Dembowski (@jan_dembowski) March 19, 2012

I think it’s Monday. Yes, that’s right. 1,2,3,4… 8. It’s the 8th day.

I’ve been speaking with the natives and have brought up my “issues” with them.

THEY NOTHING EXCEPT CONFUSE THE ISSUE AND ATTACK ME!
AT LEAST

I narrowed down the problem somewhat

AND THEY? -CONTRIBUTED NOTHING EXCEPT EMPTY WORDS -NOTHING! ARE YOU BLOWING REALLY HARD ON YOUR KEYBOARD TO PRESS THE KEYS?

I must calm down. That’s not me speaking, that’s just the result of the sleep deprivation. But-

Foot Stomping RAGE!! I WANT MY ADMINISTRATION FIXED NOW NOW NOW -NOW.

Tuesday Day 9

Last day of self-exile! Wife arrives today from Mumbai! #fb

— Jan Dembowski (@jan_dembowski) March 20, 2012

It’s amazing what some sleep can do to your mood. I was afraid I was losing it a little there for a while.

But it’s all better now and I’ve come to terms with the disintegration of This Just and Divine Administration of mine.

You see, it’s not my fault.

The blame lies at the feet of my followers. They didn’t believe strongly enough and-

THEY ARE COMING FOR ME NOW.

She’s at JFK now. All is right in the world. #thatwasalong9days

— Jan Dembowski (@jan_dembowski) March 20, 2012

Hello? This is Lily speaking.

Jan is a little bit tired and will be taking some time off. Nothing to worry about. With some rest and relaxation he will be fine.

The children are also well. They keep snickering about something but I am not sure what they are talking about.

Thank you for your continued support. It is good to be home.

MSN-001A1 Delta Plus Gundam figurine not included

I collect old parts for a junk pile cameras and today I found an old Sunpak Auto 121C flash at the thrift shop.

When it comes to cameras, the local thrift shop isn’t often a good place to go picking. They’re like a magnet for all sorts of broken junk, most of which are really cheap plastic 35mm toys.

Occasionally you will find some decent Olympus consumer film cameras, but that’s because they don’t know what they have. Once I even found a Olympus Trip 35 only it wasn’t passing the red flag test and looked like it needed a lot of work.

Today the kids and I were there and while they searched for inexpensive toys, I saw the flash. The batteries inside had leaked but somehow hadn’t corroded anything on the inside. It was $9 so I took a chance and took it home. Success! I put a fresh pair of double AA batteries and the flash fires.

Compared to modern camera flashes, it’s a simple no frills model. But my film cameras are at least 37 years old, so it’s exactly what I wanted. With a little elbow grease it cleaned up really well.

This was a good find. The flash is small and works so I plan to take it to get-togethers and shoot off at least one roll of film.

Me: You should post articles about what you are doing or topics you like. It’s fun.

Her: Okay.

Me: *blinks*

Her: That looks new. Do you know where I can find good technical support?

Right now she’s on a plane to India on a business trip and she wants to blog about the experience. It’s her second trip and I hope she takes lots of pictures.

Naturally I’m running her blog as part of my multisite installation. Picking a theme was tricky so once she gets the hang of WordPress I’ll encourage her to find one she likes.

You can take a look at her blog at http://lily.dembowski.net/

She’s going to be away for 10 whole days. To commemorate this event our son thought it would be appropriate to spend all night hurling. As a result of those shenanigans I’m mostly sleep deprived today and am amazed that I can even form complete sentences.

Although run-on sentences don’t seem to be a problem for me right now.

10 days. This maybe a good time to order a Olympus 35 RC or XA rangefinder camera…

——————————–

Part of my professional life is to think about topics like data leakage. That’s when you do something and, without realizing it, you transmit information that you hadn’t intended to.

For example, my company may have an internal web page with this URL:

And on that page is a link to a NY Times DealBook blog posting as a reference. One of the readers in my company clicks on that link without hesitation. Why wouldn’t they click? That’s what the link is there for.

When Dealbook processes their web access logs, they’ll see a URL as the HTTP referer (I’m spelling it correctly after this) that the company or person who clicked that link may not want them to see.

How to prevent sensitive referrers from being sent from your WordPress blog?

1. Install and configure YOURLS (svn revision 703). Get that working with a short domain, it’s easy to do.
2. Install and activate my short Force Javascript Redirection YOURLS plugin. [download id="1"]The useful bit is only one line.
3. Install my WordPress Convert Links to Yourls plugin but don’t activate it yet.[download id="3"]
4. Modify two lines in that WordPress plugin for your  configuration. Sorry, I’m not up to making an options page (yet).
5. Active that WordPress plugin.

And poof! the Tin Foil Hat is in place. Any links in your post content or comment text will have their links sent to your very own link shortner and the remote site will only see the short link as the referrer.

Read on to see how it works.

How does the YOURLS part work again?

When you visit a web page your web browser transmits the originating web page where you linked as the HTTP referrer. The browser is programed so if you visit a site that redirects you via a 301 or 302 HTTP status code, the referrer gets transmitted again by your web browser to the new web server.

That’s why when you use YOURLS and have a short link on your web page, the ultimate destination still sees the original HTTP referrer URL.

That link shortener uses a 301 status code to forward your browser to the correct long link. It only redirects via JavaScript is the headers were not successfully sent. That 301 code means the target web server see’s where you came from.

But if the JavaScript method is used, then the status code is 200. The web browser goes to the short URL, the JavaScript send you to the target URL and the short URL is now the referrer that the destination sees.

That’s what my YOURLS plugin does. It uses a filter and tells YOURLS  “Don’t figure it out, just use the JavaScript method for redirection”.

That will obscure the destination web server from seeing the original referrer link. All they’ll see is the short link and who cares if they see that?

To install my YOURLS plugin, extract the zip file to the YOURLS user/plugins directory and activate it in the YOURLS admin page.

Okay, so what about that WordPress plugin?

I’m thinking of two areas in WordPress that could contain links and that’s the post content and the comment text. Both of those are easy to filter in WordPress and I’ve created a plugin that does the following:

1. Finds all the links in the post and comments and pop them into an array.
2. Send each one of those links to YOURLS to get the short link.
3. Substitutes each of the original links with the corresponding short link.
4. Returns the modified output as the post or comment.

If you don’t have it already, you will need to add the PHP cURL extension to your web server.

This plugin doesn’t modify the links in the database, it just processes them via a filter. That way the HTML for the links sent to the readers web browser gets the short links.

When the someone clicks any of the short links they are sent to the YOURLS web server which then uses JavaScript to redirect them. Again, the target web server sees that short link as the referrer and not the original post.

How do you configure the WordPress plugin?

Install the Convert Links to YOURLS plugin and modify the two variables around line 51 of convert-links-yourls.php:

$mh_api_url = 'http://yyy.yy/yourls-api.php';
$mh_signature = 'XXXXXXXXXX';

Update those two with the information from your own YOURLS configuration.

If you don’t update it, or somethings is wrong with your YOURLS setup then you won’t get the URLs substituted and the original URLs will remain intact. You won’t get an error message either so make sure your settings are correct.

So what’s the catch?

I don’t store the result of the URL shortening so each time the post/comment field is to be displayed, each URL gets sent to the shortner again. That’s not very efficient and results in your link shortner getting a request every time the link is filtered.

For a small WordPress site, that’s not a problem. Small installations don’t generate enough traffic to make your web server break a sweat.

But for web sites that create their own Slashdot effect (and you know who you are), it would compound the number of hits on your server. That would be bad during a self made DoS. Using a caching plugin will probably reduce those requests but I haven’t really checked to see.

The first time links are shortened this adds a small but noticeable lag while the URLs are being processed. Once the links are in the YOURLS database then the web pages zip like before.

On the link shortener side, if the URL is not in the database then it get’s added and the short URL is returned.

If the URL already exists in the database then that old short link is sent back without creating a duplicate short link.

Or more accurately, that’s what happened up to YOURLS 1.5.1-gamma svn revision 703 and prior. With 704 and up when the link is already shortened then the YOURLS server is returned without the short link URL.

Between the 703 and current (as of this writing) 712 revisions not that many files have been updated so I’ll report the issue on the wiki.

You can get the 703 revision using this command

$ cd yourls-root
$ svn co -r 703 http://yourls.googlecode.com/svn/trunk .

DUDE. Seriously, you worry about this stuff?

No, not particularly.

Data leakage via HTTP referrers really isn’t a problem for me and if I were really concerned I would run all manner of privacy plugins and use Tor. This is really just an exercise and it was an interesting problem.

In figuring out this one solution (there are others) I was able to learn about a cool regex, how to populate that regex result into an array (using the same command) and learn more about the link shortner software that I use.

I not only got to write a small WordPress plugin but also see how Ozh’s sample plugins work. That’s some serious Cool Beans there and I’m having a great time.

Download the code and take a look, it’s all GPL 2. Later on I’ll add the license and readme.txt files. It’s not complicated and I’m always looking to make improvements and get feedback. It’s a great way to learn new things.

But now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go visit the super market. They have a sale on Reynolds Wrap and I want to re-line one of my baseball caps.

You can never really know when a good Tin Foil Hat can come in handy.