May 2008

Critters in my yard.

Just thought I would share with you some pictures of some of the fauna in my yard.

Avian messaging via my owl.
(Yes, real, not a cleverly placed porcelain doo-hickey... I am mortified of heights!)

Always has to be a beatnik in the crowd.
Our local celebrity, the albino doe deer visited us recently. Yes, she is very wild, and no, we absolutely do not feed the deer. They come around because the property makes an excellent nursery, fenced in, with a cattle guard to keep the young-uns here, while the moms go off and eat and drink in peace. I believe the others to be her descendants, and with the amount of inbreeding around here (sad) I expect there to be more. Interestingly enough, I believe the white color has been a survival boon to this doe, as she is very easy to see at night on the road.

Red Squirrels, or as known around here, Tree Rats (with fluffy tails). I could say allot bad about these %@©*#&! critters, but for now, here is just a picture of them. (They are cute after all)

My cat Tasha. A great hunter, most of the time he catches little things like he has here, a short tailed mouse, or vole... but occasionally he snags one of those %@©*#&! tree rats (Good kitty!), or maybe a full grown rabbit (Bad kitty!). Whatever the case is, if we don't take it away from him, he eats it all, except for fluffy bits, and feet. He also makes quick kills and doesn't play with his food.

He was abused before we adopted him, and for the first 2 years we had him around, he wouldn't come near anyone, and lived in the barn on what he could catch and eat himself, so this is where he learned that game is not toys, but food. He is now a well adjusted housecat, lazy, fat, friendly, but he still runs from anyone but his family,

Now, what is sick is, I promised myself years ago I would never make a website with a picture of my cat, and rambling on about him. Sorry, I broke form, but it was in the interest of another article. I just got caught up in it. Please please don't think I've lost it. I'll be back at you again with all the innuendo, and entendre you have come to expect from me shortly. This was just a detour for fun.

Zap!

Forum Spam, and how to stop it cold.

Funny...

When I first started my forum, about the only posting I got was from spambots and malbots, dropping infectious links, and links to bogus drug company websites selling some magical brew to make my gonads grow to incredible lengths, or make my breasts larger.

Well, I would love to have huge 'nads... but forget the breast increase! LOL

So, I decided the way to keep them out, was develop a new CAPTCHA system, starting with the old one, and tweaking it into something that Mr. Bot's OCR couldn't see through.

I thought long and hard on this. And my solution was to forget how the eyes work, and forget how recognition works, and instead concentrate on how the interim step, the visual cortex works. Yes, bots have been able to crawl through most CAPTCHAs till now. I have "bounced" 100% of over 100 attempts out of the registration process. The solution, is optical illusion. Namely the type that antagonizes neurons in such a manner as to set up a wave function that causes a perceived letter to appear.

<= This is what the new CAPTCHA looks like to a human.

and this is what the captcha looks like in detail =>

As you can see, there is nothing there for an OCR system to lock onto. Just a 50% pixelated background no matter where you look, with 50% pixelated letters placed on it. If averaged, it gets blurred out. Contrast is also 100%, black and white, so there is no stretching the contrast to any effect. Scanning for gross detail, will show nothing, and scanning for fine detail will show allot of noise. Nope, this one is pretty much reserved for humans. And depending on some other things, I will release it to the GNU/LGPL V.2 in June, or perhaps earlier if any of you comment as such.

Head over to my forum , and try it out for yourself! :)

EDIT 5/18 : Wonderful response on it! Have fastracked it! Go HERE to get it!

Regarding prostitutes, Judges, Jesus, and Stones.

This is short, sweet, and to the point...

I do not believe the prostitute should bear the full responsibility for her crimes.

If anything she is a victim of foul men who cannot see to gratifying their urges themselves.

Jesus said "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."

Might I suggest you ladies of the evening carry a small pebble in your pocket when you go before the judge, and if he should decide you are worthy of punishment, cast the second stone back at him. Not hard, and not a large stone. Don't make it an attack. This is symbolism. This will probably strike the judge much deeper if he has a soul.

With love, and sadness over Deborah Jeane Palfrey,
Zap.

Ex-Smoker Speaking Out on Second Hand Smoke.

 Okay, let's face it, unless you are really, and truely allergic to it, the chances that second hand smoke affects your health is next to impossible. For THOUSANDS, if not closer to a MILLION years, proto-humans lived in nasty, smoky caves. Now if you are on the left, chances are you are a Darwinist, and under those auspices, you have to believe what I am about to say is correct. If you are on the religious right, well, sorry, I am a conservative libertarian and drop rhetoric for logic (may God forgive me).

 Long ago, those who would have been adversely affected by second hand smoke, have been weeded out of the gene pool. That's right, all your studies with skewed statistics, loaded goals, and biased, hand-picked samples, don't matter one whit to me. Face it, back then your choice was freezing to death, or huffing the smoke. If you were pre-disposed to problems with the smoke, you either died, froze to death, or were one tough S.O.B. and wandered outside and became a yeti. Bigfoot is a dead end species, and I feel sorry for the few that remain.

 Now, as an ex-smoker of over a year, I believe I can speak with some authority here... second hand smoke does not stink to an ex smoker (unless (s)he has become allergic to it.) To me, and many others I can trust to be honest about it, second hand smoke smells of sweet ambrosia. Yes, those first few puffs from that cigarette across the room may as well be the Woman in the Red Dress from The Matrix... distinctively attractive, distinctively deadly. That little self gratification neuron in your brain wakes up and goes "Oh yeah, I remember that. Wanna play?" It takes a stout grim resolve not to slip back into the habit. Congrats if you have come to terms with your demons, and reached a golconda (Golconda, state of enlightenment in role playing game Vampire (World of Darkness)).

 Now, if you are a non-smoker (never had it, never will) I will admit, from my memories as a child in a house with a regular, and menthol smoker, it stinks... no... it f**king reeks! It stains the walls, plugs up cooling fans in your PC, and makes the TV look fuzzy. It's a nasty habit, and I am proud to say that when I did smoke, I did do it outside, or in private areas where those who didn't like it, could avoid it. The one exception was cafes. And to this day, I still sit in the smoking section with my friends that smoke, because they are my FRIENDS and deserve not to be treated like crap for an addiction which was shoved down their throats, and is damn hard to break. (Thank you Lord for helping me break the shackles!)

 But for the rest of you ex-smokers out there, whining and fussing because you are being reminded of pleasure now forbidden, do us all a favor...

1. Shut the hell up.
2. Come to terms with an addiction you will never fully kick.
    (Recovering Alcoholics have, why not you?)
3. Remember, inside every smoker there is a human being who needs love.
4. Remember, that by pushing them away, you can't set a good example to them.
    (non-smokers cannot set an example, because they have never had the addiction)
5. Make an allowance for them, and fight for their rights to die.

A little logic, love, and a whole lot more honesty from ex-smokers might make this addiction easier to deal with, both for those in denial, and those who have come to terms with it. And you non-smokers just need to shut the hell up about second hand smoke, or go to some place that forbids smoking.

May Gay

Just a happy little poem for all you leftist bastards walking off the job today to support your communist ideals.

My gosh, it's may day,
let's go out and play!
We'll have a parade today,
all bright and gay!

Look at our boss,
Us he threatened to toss!
Oh well it's his loss,
a rolling stone gathers no moss.

Tomorrow I'll be fine,
Standing in the welfare line.
Put meself in a bind,
whining about the daily grind.

Now I'd be better off dead,
no roof over my head.
Burnt up all my cred,
a cardboard box is my bed.

Remember, communism is failing globally. Not even the Chinese can find friends outside their puppet states for a decent Olympic torch run. Cuba is now not only marginalized, it's nearly fallen off the news since Castro stepped down.

The honest truth about the left, is that it is a non-sequitur pyramid scheme of epic proportions. Those pushing the hardest, the avant garde of the movement, simply hope to place near at the top of the power pyramid when their revolution comes. The real worker, has no time for politics, gets abused as usual when the regime changes. After Scientology disbands, I hope Anonymous goes after you.

Zap!