international geographic » misc

Creepy voicemail

chetan — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 21:41:42 +0000

I got this creepy voicemail today on an unused Vonage number that I have:

Your browser does not support the new element. You can download the file instead.

Vonage transcription: “Good morning and good morning and good more and then I’m. I’m alone. So in the shower. I am gonna be more than any card board boat races in my dreams. Swimming in the lake trip the water”

PS. this is just an excuse for me try out the new HTML5 tag, which apparently doesn’t work in Firefox 3.6.x.

Classmates.com just earned a spot on my blacklist

chetan — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 20:02:14 +0000

Just fixed another longstanding pet peeve of mine: I finally added classmates.com and cmates.com to my email server’s blacklist. How these guys have managed to stay in business for so long is beyond. They don’t even try to hide the fact that they’re spammers. They even sign all their messages with a valid domain keys signature!

DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha1; c=relaxed/simple; d=classmates.com;
     s=prod20081009.key.pem; t=1248374724; bh=PH2W8/WWF0Eq5UeHS7xrebJL9l
     g=; h=Date:from:to:Subject:Mime-Version:Content-Type:Message-Id;
     b=IMICZJvpMfW9pEWFSGX9gnScTOsQb0sI3edRgw7jHekqAK8OuJoFkmGBYcLC8IhpD
     mnoepYufrgbzzCEUWiYwpqCNSJ7PkqiyDs5n9upo4qtyEa29vgv6rXb39vQ+FjymKV+
     E39Tuzsm2MuXTTO+e0C7LlOozzqnSfh30yovIOI=

Gotta love the sheer audacity of it..

Fixing SquirrelMail’s weird reply behavior

chetan — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 18:00:44 +0000

After years of being annoyed by the fact that SquirrelMail, an otherwise fine product, doesn’t include the date and name of the sender when replying to emails like just about every other email client on the planet, I finally broke down and fixed it. Below is the simple 1 line patch against SquirrelMail 1.4.19. It will most likely work on older 1.4.x versions as well.

Download patch (squirrelmail-1.4.19-reply_body.patch)

--- squirrelmail-1.4.19/src/compose.php	2009-05-14 06:26:29.000000000 +0000
+++ squirrelmail/src/compose.php	2009-07-23 16:09:59.000000000 +0000
@@ -856,7 +856,7 @@
                 $rewrap_body = explode("\n", $body);
                 $from = (is_array($orig_header->from) && !empty($orig_header->from)) ? $orig_header->from[0] : $orig_header->from;
                 sqUnWordWrap($body);
-                $body = '';
+                $body = "\n\n\nOn " . getLongDateString( $orig_header->date, $orig_header->date_unparsed ) . " {$send_to} wrote:\n"; // MOD BY chetan
                 $cnt = count($rewrap_body);
                 for ($i=0;$i<$cnt;$i++) {
                     sqWordWrap($rewrap_body[$i], $editor_size, $default_charset);

I found a pebble in my hair

chetan — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 14:21:15 +0000

I woke up this morning and there it was. Now I know why I kept thinking something was falling on my head last night! It wasn’t just my imagination…

international indeed

chetan — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 18:50:17 +0000

11:31:48 PM chuan: funny
11:32:02 PM chuan: eating thai curry and watching tokyo drift in india

Amazon Kindle

chetan — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 05:59:49 +0000

i was close to one-clicking one tonight.

pros –
evdo (over sprint network)
web browser
buy books directly from the device
books are cheaper (max 9.99, but not as cheap as used books)
can display other file formats (txt, jpg, png, prc, doc, html)
only 10oz (book i’m reading now weighs 1.6lbs)

cons –
drm – can’t borrow/lend books
price (400$)
price of books

really the main thing stopping me, i think, is that i have a couple of books that i’ve yet to read. maybe after that i’ll buy it. or i just might end up buying it this weekend anyway..

Phase II of the experiment comes to an end. Sadly.

chetan — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 15:16:53 +0000

It had to happen eventually. I just didn’t think it would end the way that it did, with me watching from the sidelines as it came off an inch at a time til it was back where it started only 9 short months ago. I should have gone with plan B and took matters into my own hands but in the end it was a crime of opportunity and not of passion. Laziness won out above all else.

Spring reading turns to summer reading

chetan — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 01:39:42 +0000

Since my last post on the subject I’ve finished reading On The Road, Blood Meridian (or the Evening Redness in the West) by Cormac McCarthy, The Prince by Nicolo Machiavelli, and begun Life at the Extremes: The Science of Survival by Frances Ashcroft.

I’m not digging this last one too much. It’s non-fiction, which I rarely read, but more than that it’s the kind of thing that’s really very interesting until you try reading it on the subway at the end of a long day. Kinda like that Ruby on Rails book I’ve spotted Ed reading on the way to work. A book like that has it’s place — I’ll let you know if figure out what that is.

That leaves me with another problem. I’m out of books. I got Extremes from Amol along with Blood Meridian — a fantastic book; I recommend it if you like the series Deadwood on HBO — and now I’m empty handed again. I guess I’ll have to hit up B&N for some more classic SciFi from my “someday” reading list. I’m always open to donations however…

His lasers go pew pew pew

chetan — Sun, 17 Jun 2007 01:00:48 +0000

Spring reading

chetan — Wed, 16 May 2007 22:01:18 +0000

I’ve spent quite a bit of my time over the last 6 weeks or so commuting to and fro, most of which was spent reading. So far I’ve read, in order:

Burning Chrome – William Gibson – hit and miss but a few great short stories in the mix
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
Slaughterhouse V – Kurt Vonnegut – a good read. Tough to follow at first, but it picks up after a while
Monkey Business: Swinging Through the Wall Street Jungle – John Rolfe, Peter Troob – started off great but then got too deep into IB processes. Found myself wondering where all the funny anecdotes went

Right now I’m reading “On The Road” by Jack Kerouac. Not sure what’s next but I have a feeling it’ll be just as frantic as the rest.