LoudTwitter is deadish.

After my laptop got stolen, I changed my passwords for almost everything, just to be on the safe side. It occurs to me that doing that broke LoudTwitter. I was going to set it up again, since I'm tweeting a lot.. so I went to the website. Apparently the server died on 01 July and the guy isn't sure if he's going to set it up again. Which is a bit of a shame, I must say.

Might have to write something myself :P I haven't been posting to LJ as much, but I have been tweeting a lot - http://twitter.com/theducks

On the subject of laptop security.. am pondering a FileVault home directory, but storing high-IO things like iTunes and iPhoto Libraries outside of the vault. Seems like it should work. But then I'd have to trust FileVault not to eat my data, and still live with the fact there is a vile fault with it anyway. Not that I'm actually too worried about people getting access to my data, but to stop the casual thief from having it.. Will have to think some more on the subject.

Damn you Apple..

Thanks for some how working out that I'm in Canada. Which locked me out of my Airport Express, because that was running on Channel 13, which is apparently not permitted here. Now, I'm not saying it was right to run it on Ch13, but I'd like to know how you decided that's where I was..

At least I'm not this guy - http://forums.mactalk.com.au/24/60414-au-macbook-wireless-card-now-set-us.html

Oh those meth-heads

So I had a bit of a chat with one of the local meth heads today. They have such wacky stories about why they need money. This guy's story was that he was Australian and he'd flown in yesterday on Air Canada and his wife had taken everything to Whistler and accidentally left him without any money or ID.

Bless his heart, he did actually have a kangaroo tattoo with "Australia" below it, which made it a bit more believable than many. Perhaps many Australians would have looked past the case of meth-mouth he had and just handed over some money. Except, I'm a bastard.

Me: "So you're Australian?"
Him: "Yup, g'day mate and all that"
Me: "So where did you live?"
Him: "Sydney"
Me: "Ok, what was your postcode there?"
Him: "I don't remember" (some ramblings about jetlag here)
Me: "Who's the current Prime Minister of Australia?"
Him: "Well it's not John Howard anymore"
Me: "Very good, no it isn't, who is it?"
Him: "umm"
Me: "So you flew here with Air Canada yesterday from Sydney via Hawaii?"
Him: "Yes"
Me: "What was the flight number?"
Him: "Umm AC27950"
Me: "No, try again"
Him: "No, that was the number!"
Me: "Unfortunately I know Air Canada's flight number for that flight, and that isn't it"
Me: "What's your Australian passport number?"
Him: "P98375691"
Me: "Oooh, too many digits and all the P-series passports have all expired. But I'll give you points for effort. You stand here, I'll walk two metres away, then come back and give you all the coins in my pocket"

Unfortunately for him that only came to about 70c. You win some, you lose some.

flic.kr URL shortening

As part of their twitter integration, flickr have launched a URL shortening service for their photos, so instead of linking to http://www.flickr.com/photos/theducks/3677511038/ , you can link to http://flic.kr/p/6AYcUJ

All well and good. Except, they don't give you any tools to easily shorten URLs, except going to "Blog this", choosing a twitter account, and copying it from there.

So I wrote a nifty little hack to do it.

First you get your flickr photo's URL, like the long one above, and go to http://theducks.org/flic.kr and paste it in.

Or, you can stick "theducks.org/flic.kr/" in front of the address, like http://theducks.org/flic.kr/http://www.flickr.com/photos/23900566@N05/3686283705/

It will then work out the shortened URL, and redirect to a page with an address to this format: "http://theducks.org/flic.kr/p/6BKaHB" .. from where you can just copy the "flic.kr/p/6BKaHB" bit, which is your shortened URL. It also displays the address on the page, so can just copy and paste it from there.

The UI isn't great, but meh.

It came and went from Wasilia..

Play her off, Keyboard cat, play her off.