The Tao of Walking Ridge

The spammers have bots that comb the internet looking for email addresses.  Once found, you are on the list forever.  From the start, I put contact emails in the form of .jpg files.  No automatic link, but if someone wants to contact you they can.  I have received emails from these websites, and each time a real person typed in the email address.  I has cut way back on the spam I get.

My Linux webhosting, IndicHosts.net, provide me with two great options for filtering email spam.  In addition to spam assassin, you can use account level filtering by writing rules.  These days, the spammers are writing very short emails that can be hard to filter on.  But by finding word combinations unlikely to be used by desired emails (like gay in the subject and Tiger Woods in the body) you can build a set of rules to prevent the repeated variations on aggravating spam.  It takes a while to build the filter database, but I now find my rules work as well or better than automated filters that the spammers adapt to.

My buddy Proto’s 57 Speedster Replica is so open, it inspires the leather caps of old, especially to keep the ears warm in cool weather.  His fellow artist John Rios used a digital camera and photoshop to create this great pic.  Check out more of John’s work at www.grafixjam.com.  You can find more of Proto’s toys at ProtosPlayhouse.com.

Playing around with some webcam video from the Cheese program, I took a short sample that I wanted to send to a buddy imprisoned by Windows.  Cheese saves the video in an open source .ogg format.  Unable to find a program to do the conversion, well one with a GUI, I googled.  I learned of ffmpeg.  Open a trusty terminal, and type ffmpeg and file names command line style.  It does conversions more conversions than I can list.  The Linux terminal and command line interface provide even faster tools to get the job done.

As in “Say Cheese”. Cheese is a little application that can be installed into Ubuntu from the software repository. Versions are available for all Linux applications. It lets you do little snapshots like a photo booth, or video clips using your webcam. A few effects are available. I particularly like the black and white effect, which makes digital pictures much more edit friendly (I used Gimp). Valuable for checking out a webcam. Useful for taking handfuls of candid shots for one you may with to include on, say, a blog post. And just plain fun.

Life is what happens when making other plans.  As was this picture.  I was flying my KAP rig, and had the kite up around 300 feet, when I looked over at the horizon and saw the sun lighting the tops of the clouds as it set.  It looked like snow capped mountains.

When you suspend judgement, you can sometimes create a moment of inspiration effortlessly.  I took a very quick self portrait to demonstrate the color mapping tools that can be added as a plugin for Gimp, the photo editing software for Linux.  One snap with a self timer, tweak the color balance in UFRaw, then pop it into Gimp and adjust the red green and blue translation into monochromatic until the desired constrasts are achieved.  There are elements in the photo that I’d change if I were focused on creating the best portrait I could.  But as is, I liked it enough to replace the picture I was using on my Myspace page (myspace.com/zenbluesharmonica.)

If I ever get all my electronic bits fully sorted out, I’ll grab many great shots. Tonight I flew my Optio S6. This little camera does not have a timer, but will fire from an infrared remote. The sport mode works pretty well. My IR unit moved or for some reason stopped after only 4 pics, this one the only interesting one at altitude. The winds were a bit inconsistent, but with work I had the camera up to 300 feet or so. Of course, the pics stopped here, at perhaps 100 feet.

I was thumbing through the current copy of Car Kulture DeLuxe when I saw the artwork of Max Grundy. He was inspired by poster art through the ages, as am I. Described by the article as having “sick talent” I must agree. He has a unique style, and puts into practice an idea I have pondering for some time - art that works like a poster but has no lettering that is typical of the posters that inspire the art form. Max has a web site Fear is the new Beauty.  Stunning and inspring stuff.

Anyone who has email must deal with spam.  I initially tried setting up my own filters on my email, but now the spammers send emails so short, that there is little filter on.  However, it is obviously spam (the subject doesn’t match the body for example).  But when I tried Spam Assassin, I wanted the rejected emails to go to a spam folder, and using POP3, it was hard to find.
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