Wednesday, July 26, 2006

I hate spam

At work my email address is on one of our websites so I get a lot of spam. I get about 100 spam emails a day and for me that seems like a lot. Lately it seems to be mostly about stock insider tips and of course there is the usual stuff about free software and enlarging my penis. I know how to use bit torrent and my penis is large enough thank you very much.

I had been using Norton's antispam and I wasn't very happy with it. I deal with suppliers in china and customers all over the world so I do get many strange emails that I actually need and Norton wasn't able to distinguish those from the spam messages. I was getting too many false positives and this was pissing me off.

I found my solution a while ago but I thought I would share it with you. My solution is a program called spambayes. It is an open source program, we all know how much I like free stuff, and it works amazingly well. It does take a bit of time to get going as you have to train it to reconize spam from ham but once it is going it is almost perfect. I would guesstimate that it catches 98% or more of the spam with less than 0.1% false positives.

There are a couple of catches with this program.

- You pretty much need to be running Outlook, not outlook express or Thunderbird. This is not to say you can't use it if you aren't useing outlook, but it is the easiest way.
- If you don't have a large amount of spam and ham available to train it the training takes a lot longer

Now I use Outlook so spambayes was easy to install and it is easy to use. If you don't use outlook you have to install it so that it sits between(logically) your email client and your email server. I haven't done this but I'm sure it isn't too hard. The other thing you want to do before installing it is to make sure you have lots of email and lots of spam saved up to train it. When you install it, it will ask you for the location of your good email(ham) and bad email(spam) then it will go through and learn what it is you consider spam. If you don't have this it will put almost all your email in a "suspected spam" folder and you have to go through and tell it what is and isn't spam. It is easier than it sounds.

After its been trained it pretty much runs hands off. I can fire up outlook and watch as my email is automatically sorted between spam and ham without worrying that there is something screwed up. Most of the time I don't even look at my spam folder before I empty it. That is the best part.

So if you get lots of spam, use outlook, are cheap, and lazy this is the answer you were looking for.

Monday, July 17, 2006

ITS DONE!

After 3 days of screwing around I finally got the camping post finished. Look down, way down and I'll call rusty.

VLC

Hey guys I'm back from camping but I can't post about it because blogger keeps f$#king up and won't let me post images. Its very frustrating, I've been trying for two days and it will let me do one a day. Damn shit.

Keep your eyes open for those but in the mean time I want to talk about VLC. VLC is an opensource media player that will play anything you can throw at it, well pretty much anything. If you have a file that is damaged and windows media player won't play it try VLC, it probably will. It also doesn't require extra codecs for the most part so if you have a video that you don't know what it is try playing it here first. Another tip on that one is G-spot. Now get your mind out of the gutter and pay attention. If you've ever had a video that won't play and you don't know what codec it is using, open it in g-spot. It will tell you what video and audio codecs the video needs and whether you have them installed. Its great.

Anyways, back to VLC. I was told that it was good at streaming video and I thought that would be perfect for my torrent downloading. I like to download shows and then play them through my TV on my laptop but I have to transfer them to it first and that takes time. Now with VLC I can just stream the video to it and all is well. Did I mention that my laptop is an iBook? Well VLC runs on almost everything. Windows, OSX, Linux, Unix, you name it. Good stuff.

A little local news for you


Saskatoon Man Faces Internet Child Exploitation Charges

2006-07-14
Author: Lindsay Rabyj- CJWW News


A Saskatoon man facing charges of Internet child exploitation made a court appearance Friday.

33 year old David Hubbard was arrested Thursday night after allegedly making contact with a 12 year old girl though a web chatroom and setting up a face-to-face meeting to engage in sexual activity.

Police intervened before the incident could take place and the man was arrested.

He's been remanded in custody and will make another court appearance July 17.


Now why would I put this on my blog? Because I know this guy and he lives down the block from me. This does not surprise me at all. This guy used to be a customer of mine at LD and he was very annoying. He would always come in with strange questions about hardware that he bought somewhere else or software questions that were too vague to answer. He was always kinda shifty looking and just seemed too weird. An example would be that he always wore a leather jacket no matter what the weather. I saw him a week ago walking home in 30C+ in his black leather jacket. Something is not right. I guess I shouldn't bash people too much as I am a bit strange myself but I had to yell at my tv when I saw him on there. It was me telling my brain, "I knew there was something strange about that guy". The absolute funniest part about this was what happened a month ago. I was in LD talking to one of my former co-workers when I saw this guy working there. I almost shit my pants but I was soon calmed down by them letting me know he was only a work-ed student or something. I couldn't find a picture for you guys, not that blogger would let me post it anyways, but if you've watched the news the last couple of days you've seen him. You also saw Pete my land lord as he also manages the building that David lived in.

Just thought I'd let you know that it is a small scary little world out there.

Saturday, July 15, 2006

Back from camping

As I mentioned in the last post we went to Moose Mountain Provincial park to do some camping. Here is the link to google maps. The green arrow on the map is pointing at the resort town of Kenosee Lake. I couldn't get google maps to show the campground. To the left of the town is the campground. We were staying between the large lake (Kenosee lake) and the smaller one to the left. That smaller lake is little Kenosee lake. It is amazing how many smaller lakes there are around there. They were left behind when the glaciers receded.

Day 1:

Make the long drive. It is around 500kms to get to Moose Mountain from Saskatoon and it took us 5 hours. Most of the way is good highways. Leaving here you drive to Regina and then take the trans-Canada for a while. There is only about 50kms on the #9, which wasn't that bad really. We got there about 3 in the afternoon and set up camp.




Now being the gadget freak that I am I had to try to see if I could pick anything up on my weather radio.

We didn't do too much that evening. Finished setting up camp and cooked up some smokies for supper on the fire. After supper we got a bit bored and went for a walk. Not too far from our camp was a nature trail that went though the woods along little Kenosee lake. We saw a deer when we were on the walk but we didn't bring the camera along. We were able to get within 25-30 feet of the deer without a problem. Then something spooked her and the flag was up and she was gone. Other than the deer there was a lot of wild life around. This is the resident squirrel that hung around our camp site cleaning up after my messy peanut eating. He would come by quite often and would even fight off the other squirrels that were trying to move in on his territory. He ate quite good while we were there. As well as the peanuts he got raw carrots and potatoes and cooked carrots and potatoes. I don't know if squirrels will eat those but atleast they will decompose on their own. There was also a rabbit that frequented the campsite but neither of us could get a picture of it as it was quite skiddish. It was usually sniffing around in the morning, perhaps knowing that the squirrel was smaller than him.

Day 2:

This was our exploring day. We started it off with a swim at the beach.




We drove around the park and went into the village. I found some cheap micro brewed beer there that was quite good. I was going to bring some home but I drank it all and forgot to buy more. 500ml for 2.25 isn't bad for beer that doesn't suck. While driving around the park we found a great look out point above Kenosee lake.




We also made the trip into Carlyle because we read in a local news paper that the Carlyle Bakery's cinnamon buns kicked ass and they were good. A dozen for 3 bucks. Not too shabby considering that they were great and didn't have any raisins! I hate raisins. The trip to Carlyle took us through the White Bear First Nation and we found some odd Road signs. When you enter the white bear territory there is a sign that welcomes you and shows off the attractions like the casino etc. and right behind that is a sign that reads "Watch for pedestrians Next 10 KMs" and then you get one of these signs every 2 kms through the reserve. They appear on both sides of the road but only inside the reserve. I cannot figure this out. Why is there all this pedestrian traffic in this area? Do the natives not own vehicles or do they have some death wish and insist on walking on the highway? It baffles the mind. By now the whole day was pretty much done so we went back to camp and ate some cinnamon buns and made the supper fire.

Day 3:

Time for the slides! I didn't get any pictures of the Kenosee Super Slides but you can visit their website. I didn't want to take my camera in there and leave it unattended and risk getting it wet so you'll have to use your imagination as you read. I apologize if my writing sucks but I'm not a writer so too bad.

The good:
The free fall was a blast. 80 feet straight down and it only takes 3 seconds! Now when I first saw it I didn't think it was that bad. From the ground it looked pretty tame but when I got up there I had to lean out to see the slide. The first 20ft is actually vertical. You fall for the first 20 ft and then the slide catches you. The fun begins after that because you start to go faster than the water and I kicked up a huge bow wave/spray. It must have been over 6 feet high. You also get a monster wedgie from it.

There is a nice slow canal you can float around in on tubes to relax and recharge. This is nice but it does not replace having a pool.

The other slides are good if a bit violent. I hurt my elbow on the tube slides and Lindsay hurt her shoulder on the bonsai. The Bonsai was a fun one for me though as you go fast enough to get air but if you aren't prepared the landing can hurt. Lindsay hurt her shoulder and the first time I went I hurt my ass. Still fun somehow.

The other slides are pretty normal.

The bad:

The paths to the slides are concrete that was brushed to make it non-slip. This also turns it into a cheese grater for soft pink feet. I had to give up before I was completely exhausted because it hurt too much to walk to the top. Speaking of walking that sucked all the fun out the free fall. You walk way up this hill for a 3 second ride down it. Atleast the tube rides took long enough that you didn't feel ripped off.

No pool sucked on a hot day. There was a shallow canal and a hot tub. The canal was fun but it was hard to cool off in. Also you have to rent the tubes to float around the canal for $5. I'm already paying $20 a head to get in I think the tubes should be free.

Overall I would give this park a 7. They were no where near as fun as the Atlantis waterslides in Vernon BC.

Needless to say we were pretty tired after that so we just hung around the campsite most of the afternoon. After supper that night we went back to the nature trail in search of that deer. This time we were armed with my camera. We did not see the deer but we got some awesome shots of Little Kenosee lake at dusk.





Later that night it decided to storm on us. It started off as some nice distant lightning but soon moved upon us and sent us into the tent. Lindsay was afraid the tent was going to blow down but I assured her that with my fat ass in it the tent wasn't going anywhere. It rained on and off all night but thankfully it stopped in time for us to pack up. All that was left was the drive home and that was pretty uneventful.

Would I go back to Moose Mountain? Probably not. I'm glad that we went and that we experience one of Saskatchewan's oldest provincial parks but I didn't really like it that much. When we went to Green Water we didn't start the car for 3 days because we could walk everywhere. At Moose Mountain the store and beach were 5km's away from the campground so it seemed like everytime we wanted to do something we had to start the car and plan our trip. The slides were outside the park and down the highway, definitely not in walking distance. I guess this all made everything feel less relaxing and more rushed. Even with that I had a ton of fun and I think Lindsay did too.

Thursday, July 06, 2006

Sweet Zombie Jesus

It has been hot and busy around here lately. The apartment was 33 last night when we got home from my final tux fitting. From that you can probably infer that Kerri's wedding is on the weekend. We have the rehersal tomorrow night, the wedding saturday and the gift opening Sunday. On top of that I've got holidays next week so we are trying to get our shit together for camping and I'm trying to get work ready for me to leave. We had our freezer delivered on tuesday and got our bbq tuesday eveing, so it has been a busy week.

Where are you going camping?

Ah I'm glad that someone is interested in knowing. We are going to Moose Mountain Provincial park. Hopefully we will be there from monday evening to thursday sometime. The only thing that sucks a bit is the drive. It is a 6 hour drive give or take a bit. Atleast it is on good roads. We go through Regina then follow the #1 for a while and have to drive on a secondary highway for ~50kms. One of the reasons we are going is the Kenosee Superslides

I can't wait to be there with a beer, a fire and my lantern. I'm still deciding which one to take but I may take more than one if there is room in the car. 3 days with no phones, no computers, no people and no cares. Well Lindsay will be there but I'm kinda used to her being around ;)

Other than that there is not too much going on around here. It seems like I am busy but nothing exciting is happening. I guess its a case of regular life.


Here are a couple video's for you. WARNING these are NSFW, NSFYC (not safe for young children) and NSFPW (not safe for pregnant women)

http://www.nailmaster.ru/fuck.html

http://home.pacbell.net/diana_do/knowjack.htm