A large march, much more impressive than the few poor souls I photographed last time just passed in front of the office. I managed to capture some video.
Queretaro
One of the perks of being an engineer is that you get to constantly travel to remote and exotic locations.
Ok,that’s a lie. But last week I did get to spend a few days working in Queretaro, Mexico. I even got to check out the city a little bit. Here are a few photos and a couple of videos from the trip. I am quite pleased with their quality, given that they were taken with a cell phone.
Some kind of Folkloric dance:
Energetic street dancing (using performance enhancement drugs?)
Hacked!
Shit.
The MKX® along with several sister sites (The MKX® Photo Central, La Polla América, etc.) were all hacked sometime in the last two days.
It looks like it was done through a security flaw in tinymce, a WYSIWYG text editor used by zenPHOTO, the photo gallery software I use extensively. Google blacklisted me (the horror!) but after I cleaned things up (or rather, Moi did) I can be visited again without raising any flags.
The extent of the damage is still unknown. So far I know that
- The hack occurred on 2011-11-07 at 18:48.
- Every .htaccess in my sites were injected with malicious redirects. Moi got rid of them. Here’s one sample .htaccess file (as text).
- A malicious file class.images.php with obfuscated code was created somewhere inside the zenPhoto installation. I have no desire to reverse engineer it. Here’s the link to the file (as text).
- An empty index.php file was created next to it.
Looks like I have quite a bit of work ahead of me. Those damn russian hackers! More info here.
Photo of the day #37: Tax dollars at work
I snapped this photo in San Francisco a few days ago:
It’s nice to see my tax dollars at work, even if it wasn’t enough to buy an extra “N”.
Messi’s first 202 goals with Barcelona
This may very well be the most beautiful video you can find on all of YouTube.
Sharing links from Google Reader
Those who know me are aware that I am addicted to the anything-reading efficiency of Google Reader (204 feed subscriptions and counting). It’s great. If you are one of those people who still open a few websites every morning in order to read news, then you really need to look into this.
We all hate the recent Google Reader redesign. One of the coolest features it had was the ability of sharing a link, so that anything you “share” shows up in your friend’s Google Reader. In their desperate attempts to fight Facebook, Google cut this feature and replaced it with Google+ integration.
I’ve seen a lot of complains about it online, and even a pretty crazy workaround. Here’s mine:
Use the granddaddy of link sharing services: Web 2.0 pioneer Delicious. You can post things on Delicious directly from the Google Reader interface (you need to enable this in the Google Reader Settings).
Let me know if you create a Delicious account, and I may just add your feed to my Google Reader account. Here’s mine. Or you can just subscribe to The MKX® Super Feed, which aggregates Delicious, Flickr, The MKX®, The MKX® Photo Central, Twitter and YouTube in a single, convenient feed.
Why I bought a Kindle
I finally broke down and bought a Kindle. I have an iPad, so why did I buy a Kindle?
Amazon would like you to believe it’s all about the screen. Truth be told, I’ve been reading about E-ink since the mid nineties, fascinated by the prospect of a screen that uses almost no power and looks like a printed page. It took many years until I saw one live and I loved it. And it took another few years until I owned one (this Kindle). But no, reading in direct sunlight is not a huge selling point for an ultra-white Mexican who’s respectful of the Sun’s ultraviolet rays.
I actually really like the iPad’s LCD screen for reading. My eyes don’t get tired, and it’s great to be in bed at night, in total darkness, reading on the perfectly illuminated screen – brightness turned all the way down. Battery life is more than fine as well: I never read for more than 11 hours straight at a time without access to a power outlet. I’ve read several books on my iPad and I’ve enjoyed immensely.
Then Amazon released 3 new Kindles:
- Kindle Fire: Ultra-cheap media-viewing subsidized tablet ($200)
- Kindle Keyboard (a.k.a Kindle 3): ($99)
- Kindle Touch: E-ink with a touch screen ($99)
- Kindle: E-ink, no keyboard ($79)
I always thought that the keyboard on the Kindle was stupid. It takes up a third of the device’s space for something you only use once a month for a minute! On the other hand, the new Kindle’s lack of keyboard and touchscreen make it unbearably painful to type, whenever it is you need to. So why would anyone buy the Kindle when for $20 more you can buy a Kindle with a touchscreen keyboard?
And why would Marcos spend money on a dedicated reading device that limits you to a single store for buying books?
This is why:
- iPad 2: 21.28 oz
- Kindle Fire: 14.6 oz
- Kindle keyboard: 8.5 oz
- Kindle touch: 7.5 oz
- Kindle: 5.98 oz
When you are holding something up for hours, every ounce counts. This new Kindle is tiny, super light, and at $80 well not impulse buy territory. And I can still pick up in whatever page I was at on my iPad when in total darkness, or on my iPhone when I have a few minutes to read and I’m away from the larger toys.
Unlocked iPhone 4S: Great success!
Response (Joe R.) 10/24/2011 09:11 PM
Thank you for your email, iPhones<sic> are locked and are not being unlocked.Joe R
SWW Dept.
This is the heart-breaking response I received last week when I asked whether I can use a Telcel micro-SIM on my iPhone 4S when in Mexico.
It’s now even more evident that Sprint does not yet have it’s <deleted> together when it comes to these kind of details regarding their iPhone 4S.
I went to a Telcel store today. I patiently stood in line for half an hour. I gambled all of $150 pesos (about $11.50 USD in today’s rate) on a prepaid “Amigo” micro-SIM card. Popped it in and voilà! It works: I have my own local phone number.
So here it is: if you bought an early Sprint iPhone 4S, I can guarantee that at least for me:
- AT&T micro-SIM did not work.
- Telcel (Mexico) micro-SIM works like a charm.
This agrees with other reports I’ve read online. I’d love to hear about your experiences, as YMMV.
The logic of the terrorist
A few days ago:
The group claimed responsibility for the rocket salvos, which came in response to the killing of five of its operatives who were gunned down by the IAF earlier on Saturday as they prepared to launch a Grad rocket at Israel. (link)
Which can also be read as:
We are shooting at you because you shot at us in order to prevent us from shooting at you.
Hit the link if the video embedded below does not work for you.
Paul Martin
Last Thursday I went to what was the most interesting talk I’ve heard in a long time.
Paul Martin is a British journalist who has the “honor” of being the first (and still only) foreign journalist ever arrested by Hamas.
He narrated his story:
He had been working on a documentary about Mohammed Abu Muaileq, a Palestinian man who used to be part of the Abu Rish Brigades and would launch rockets against Israeli civilian populations, and later changed his mind about these tactics after befriending an Israeli over the Internet.
Abu Muaileq was accused of collaborating with Israel (death sentence) and asked Martin to testify. Martin flew to Gaza and was arrested on the spot. Obviously he made it out, but this was all but uncertain to him at the time.
He tried to show footage of his in-work documentary but there were several techinalc glitches (the ancient Windows XP laptop playing the clips ran out of battery). In spite of this, the talk was fascinating. I’m really looking forward to seeing a full documentary or reading a book once it is finished.