STRAY neuron

The key here is using Location (instead of Directory) for your Deny directive (otherwise your JkUnmount’d calls will not be blocked)

  SetEnvIfNoCase User-Agent "Firefox" bad_bot

  <Location "/">
    Deny from env=bad_bot
  </Location>

So damn funny, yet so damn true.

My oldest kid, a 2nd grader, has started taking some (group) piano classes on a trial basis.

She seems to enjoy it a lot, so I bought her a 5-octave keyboard, a stand and a seat - a $300+ investment.

As it happens, I played piano for 11 years as a kid, so this has also provided the motivation for me pick it up again.

I’ve been YouTube’ing a lot for some good riffs to play and I ran into this video - while I can’t even imagine attempting to play the piece, watching one of the greatest pianists in history, Oscar Peterson, is still a phenomenal and inspiring experience.

Found in Apache logs…on a domain that doesn’t even have MySQL installed…

85.17.155.21 “GET /phpmyadmin/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /admin/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /myadmin/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /phpMyAdmin/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /PMA/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /admin/phpmyadmin/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /admin/phpMyAdmin/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /admin/sysadmin/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /admin/sqladmin/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /admin/db/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /admin/web/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /admin/pMA/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /admin/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /admin/mysql/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /admin/myadmin/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /admin/webadmin/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /admin/mysqladmin/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /admin/phpmyadmin2/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /admin/phpMyAdmin-2.2.3/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /admin/phpMyAdmin-2.2.6/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /admin/phpMyAdmin-2.5.1/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /admin/phpMyAdmin-2.5.4/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /admin/phpMyAdmin-2.5.6/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /admin/phpMyAdmin-2.6.0/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /admin/phpMyAdmin-2.6.0-pl1/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /admin/phpMyAdmin-2.6.2-rc1/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /admin/phpMyAdmin-2.6.3/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /admin/phpMyAdmin-2.6.3-pl1/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /admin/phpMyAdmin-2.6.3-rc1/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /db/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /web/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /PMA/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /admin/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /mysql/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /myadmin/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /mysqladmin/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /mysql-admin/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /phpmyadmin2/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /phpMyAdmin-2.2.3/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /phpMyAdmin-2.2.6/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /phpMyAdmin-2.5.1/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /phpMyAdmin-2.5.4/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /phpMyAdmin-2.5.6/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /phpMyAdmin-2.6.0/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /phpMyAdmin-2.6.0-pl1/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /phpMyAdmin-2.6.2-rc1/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /phpMyAdmin-2.6.3/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /phpMyAdmin-2.6.3-pl1/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”
85.17.155.21 “GET /phpMyAdmin-2.6.3-rc1/main.php HTTP/1.0″ 404 - “-” “-”

Argued about it at work today…here’s my list…in no particular order…

These are the men at the top of their game (therefore Pacino, Nicholson and DeNiro are not present)

• Leonardo DiCaprio
• Christian Bale
• Sean Penn
• Russell Crowe
• Philip Seymour Hoffman
• Brad Pitt
• Forest Whitaker
• Paul Giamatti
• Johnny Depp
• Jude Law
 

I tried out a new video mixing service, Animoto, tonight.

I have it to give it very high marks for ease of use, because even my first video (created during “So You Think You Can Dance” commercials) came out way better than I expected.

Most brilliant work from Microsoft in years…

UPDATE (6/2/07): The Register questions whether all this hype about Surface Computing is more “smoke and mirrors” than actual breakthrough. Good reading.

Little know seq (sequence) utility is a great way to loop on a range of numbers in Linux. It came in very handy today and will hopefully stick in my brain in the future.

for i in `seq 1 10`
do
..
done

Amusing use of the ternary from our codebase..

log.debug( ( randomize ? "R" : "Not r" ) + "andomizing content" );

:)

Great car TV show on the planet - TopGear - presents an incredibly enthralling clip of the fastest car on the planet - Bugatti Veyron.

Watching clips of “Top Gear” makes you wonder why the show is nowhere to be seen in US. Come on Discovery, buy rights to this damn thing instead of spending money on bikers in tight shorts!

UPDATE: I thought about embedding this, but decided it to link it instead - DailyMotion’s viewer is much bigger than the embedded one and you want size to experience this.

Here it is: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x157l2_bugatti-veyron-at-top-speed

UPDATE #2: If you love the first clip, check out this (even more unbelievable) one by TopGear (linked by Roy in the comments). Awesome stuff. I’m adding Atom to my shopping list for my 45th b-day.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=WaWoo82zNUA

Facebook development team has open-sourced their light-weight, cross-language development platform, Thrift.

I played around it with it for a while and it looks interesting enough, but I don’t have an immediate need for it.

Check it out if you have a cross-language environment Thrift currently supports C++, Java, Ruby, Python and PHP - a list that should satisfy most everyone.

A POSIX-compliant *NIX system is a requirement, but I’d be curious if it’s possible to get it up n’ running inside of Cygwin (as a development-only exercise, of course).

Great article from The Guardian about Linfen, China puts a spotlight on some of the world’s scariest places to live.

Blacksmith Institute has a full list of world’s most polluted places here.