Joe Szilagyi

I just noticed this on my site…

I’ve been amazingly lame this October, in not updating the site so much. I think after actually keeping up with it, I’d simply gotten burned out on keeping up with it. This is pretty normal for me, though, with going at the site in waves. I’ll pick it back up in frequency soon, I’m sure. Winters are always more interesting, and October has been a generally quiet month anyway. Nothing major to report, good or bad, it’s just been a happily sleepy month more or less.

The only thing I really have to report is that we saw in Target last night that there is a MacGyver box set now, that includes all seven seasons and all the TV movies in one collection. 111 hours of Richard Dean Anderson’s hair and Swiss Army Knife.

I need to buy it.

As time permits I’ve been trying to go through my blog to categorize all the uncategorized posts. I’ve noticed my HTML code output on the site in some areas is starting to get rather fugly. I should do something about that…

A method to update your wordpress blog, using a plugin that will upgrade your blog automatically to the latest version.

read more | digg story

Like I mentioned, I’d been fighting with a stupid CSS issue on my header to make a shadow image show up on the bottom of my header image. Well, w00t, last night I nailed it. First I added this to my style sheet:

#mast-container {
position: relative;
top: -2px;
}

The “top: -2px” was the key. Then I added this to my header:

div id="mast-container"
img src="/images/mastshadow.jpg" height="17" width="780"
/div

(that second code sample is broken on purpose without < wrappers > so you can see the raw code)

So, my problem image gets wrapped in a new container, and I just tell the container to move “up” on the page a negative value. I never knew you could do a negative value until last night. That nailed it, and got rid of the stray spacing. Go look! That’s so awesome. I’m almost tempted to start really tweaking the CSS even more now with this knowledge…

I’m totally stuck on a .css fine point, would you guys mind taking a look at my site really quick? This is the style sheet I’m currently using.

I tried to add a shadowed image under the header image/mast, which worked fine, but now in the .css I’m damned if I can figure out where that 5-7 pixel dead white space is coming from. I’m going to leave it up for the time being (this is my second or third try at this) in case one of you can point out and show where the code is barfing. I want the mastshadow.png file to be “flush” under the image in the header that says joeszilagyi.com, but I can’t seem to nail it. I have a feeling it’s something really stupid and easy, but .css has never been my strong suit.

Help! This is what it looks like now, in it’s broken state:

Posting mainly for myself for reference, since I want to snarf up a few of these, but they’re just damn useful for a lot of people: “Firefox has cool add-ons which make the job of website designers and developers much easier. Here is our list of 30+ excellent Firefox add-ons that every web developer and designer should know about.”

read more | digg story

This is too rich. I almost wish I got a halfway decent volume of crap comments, to make me want to install it: “We created a tool just for those rare instances where some idiot posts a comment on your blog. It’s a simple and straight forward plugin for Wordpress, called Douche Bag. When you add the tag to the beginning of a comment, our plugin will automatically insert the Douche Bag icon to their comment.”

read more | digg story

I noticed today that I was getting a ton of hits (by my standards, a ton) for an image of Hayden Panettiere, who plays Claire Bennett on Heroes. I couldn’t figure out where on Earth they were all coming from, until I just ran a Google Images search for her, which you can see here. As of now it still shows my site as the last entry on the first page. The funny thing is, until this post, I never had a picture of Hayden or Claire on this site. I do have my Livejournal Image Randomizer, which links off of each page, and on the top right of each page loads the most recent image on each reload. It’s not really technically random–Livejournal publishes an RSS feed of all the images linked inline on every recent LJ post, and the PHP scripts I borrowed and tweaked from other sites just trawls the last 1 or 10 entries, depending on where I use it.

Anyway, this is the page on my site that they were ending up on from Google Images. It’s specifically this page, the June 29, 2006 archive, in case that long Google URL goes dead. The actual picture of Hayden was probably linked from the Livejournal feed at the exact moment that Google crawled that page, and voila! People are coming looking for hottie pictures of Claire and find me grumbling about holes in socks, and my review of Superman Returns. This is the picture they were after…

A Web developer’s life is hard enough without having to be constantly on the hunt for good web-dev resources. After using these, you may still have 99 problems, but developing ain’t gonna be one.

read more | digg story

EDIT: Submitted to Digg. Click here to Digg this post!

A summary of what happened:

HD-DVD, also known as Blu Ray discs, have had a supposedly high level of encryption on them, in the form of digital rights management. Earlier this month, someone had cracked the system. They posted the magic hex code that apparently lets you copy the HD-DVD discs on a message board called Doom9. Like the earlier cracking of the DeCSS code, it would have gotten press, notice, screams and threats of DMCA crackdowns, and the usual nonsense. Then it would have trailed off, and no one would have given a damn about it. However, this situation feels different for a key reason. The HD-DVD hack/crack/whatever you want to call it, in the form of the value “09 F9…”, came out weeks ago. It was quiet. Then the Motion Picture Associate of American stepped in. In their usual feathery touch and approach, they made things absolutely worse for themselves.

How? By coming off with the authority of The Law, they begin issuing DMCA take down notices left and right, making a generally indignant and righteous stink. This led to Slashdot and Digg coverage. Again… it would have trailed off. It would have eventually gone into the background. The code was out, perhaps, for much longer it soon turned out than weeks ago. It may have been uncovered months ago. The Blu Ray encryption thus was a lost cause in it’s current form. The people that wanted to crack it would have, and the general public would have had whatever reaction was forthcoming, and then it would have all been relegated to the sub-sub forum of the Information technology cosmos this exists on. Thanks to the overzealous Digg.com moderators, administrators, and management, however, that’s not going to be the case.

Digg.com is a website where people can “Digg” or tag a page on a given website, drawing tremendous attention and traffic to it. Digg is tremendously popular, and influential these days. People began linking and Digging in earnest to various 09 F9/hex code related stories. Digg, in turn, began to crush them all; deleting them all. The Digg users, upset, ramped it up. For everyone deleted, two more would appear. They would go, and more Digg users posted more. Then they began to hide the hex value. The Digged images that contained the hex. MySpace pages with the hex. Then the Digg admins apparently began to edit the Digg values themselves to devalue these links, while removing others. They locked out ‘repeat offender’ users. Then Digg users began to Digg articles and stories about Digg censoring the numbers, a roundabout way around the Digg restriction. Victory, for the virtual masses, was in sight. Digg.com then locked down all new Digg submissions. Keep in mind, that Digg is in part sponsored by HD-DVD, not so ironically. Finally, in a complete turnaround, Digg posted that they’d support their users and would not attempt to restrict things anymore.

Personally, I think that Digg did this on purpose. They trolled their own userbase to seriously rile the masses, and to cause the HD-DVD hex code to spread like literal wildfire. Then, when “hope seemed lost”, they reversed course, and now look like heroes: They’re standing up to the horrible MPAA and the evil DMCA! It’s become some sort of nerdy Bastille.

Let the series of tubes eat hex code cake.

I think that if this actually comes to a head, and the MPAA actually tries to take on Digg over this messy situation, that it could be the first potential serious threat to the strength of the DMCA. If the MPAA lost in court, imagine the consequences…

This is what I’d posted so far:

Part 1: Digital Rights Management, anyone? Read this, and this. A blow in the name of justice, if you ask me. These numbers are almost better than 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42.

Part 2: Holy leaked information! Because of This blog search about links back to the Doom9 forum, I suddenly got over a hundred hits. In just over an hour. Yow. There’s a Slashdot article on this now, as well, over the release of the AACS Code Leak hex I posted about. I can’t see how the MPAA can possibly keep this under control, now. It’s over, and the information will be on thousands of websites within another day, if not more.

Part 3: Censorship in action: Digg.com admins are censoring (and getting overwhelmed–as of now the front page of Digg is flooded with 09 F9 crap) the hex code that was released on Doom9, as noted here. Apparently Digg admins are even resetting “Diggs”, screwing with things further, and even apparently editing/changing Diggs about complaints aobut the editing oversight. It’s like the Digg Civil War. Even Wikipedia’s article on HD DVD is now locked down with the obnoxious message of, “This page is currently protected from editing because inappropriate content was being repeatedly added.” Classy. There’s not even a reference about the leak of the hex code, which is a major developing news story.

Part 4: Digg.com has now apparently backed down on the release and Digging of HD DVD hex code information via the Doom9 forum (the Digg suppression story even got picked up by Slashdot yesterday). One of the Digg founders wrote in their blog:

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

Awesome… morals on that level of the corporate media stage? Impressive! Even more so since HD DVD is actually a sponsor of Digg.

Part 5: You’re reading it! Scroll up for my summary.

Part 6: The AACS has responded to “reports” of their hex code being broken apart on the Doom9 forums. Read this slowly, methodically, and carefully. Try to spot the portions of what they are saying that falls into “Big Brother” side of things.

RESPONSE TO REPORTS OF ATTACKS ON AACS TECHNOLOGY

April 16, 2007 – AACS LA Announces Security Updates (Updated URLs)

In response to attacks against certain PC-based applications for playing HD DVD and Blu-ray movie discs, Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator, LLC (“AACS LA”) announces that it has taken action, in cooperation with relevant manufacturers, to expire the encryption keys associated with the specific implementations of AACS-enabled software.

Consumers can continue to enjoy content that is protected by the AACS technology by refreshing the encryption keys associated with their HD DVD and Blu-ray software players. This refresh process is accomplished via a straightforward online update.

Through this online update process, manufacturers are also able to see that consumers update their player implementations prior to distribution of encryption key expiration information via new movie discs.

Consumers are advised to check with the manufacturer of their AACS-enabled Blu-ray or HD DVD PC-based player to make sure you have installed the latest version. The following manufacturers have provided links to provide relevant information and facilitate consumer updating of their players…

Part 7: Spotted on ICANHASCHEEZBURGER.com. From Doom9 to mass media attention to jumping the shark cat in under 72 hours?

Part 8:

Bloggers “crossed the line” when they posted a software key that could break the encryption on some HD-DVDs, the AACS copy protection body has said.

According to the BBC, anyway. The article has one great quote in it:

Michael Ayers, chair of the AACS business group, said it had received “good cooperation from most folk” in preventing the leak of the key.

Er, yeah. Keep up the good work. Last time I checked a full Google search for the hex code it was up to 720,000, from the original one on Doom9.

EDIT: Summary post/article here on all this.

Holy leaked information! Because of This blog search about links back to the Doom9 forum, I suddenly got over a hundred hits. In just over an hour. Yow. There’s a Slashdot article on this now, as well, over the release of the AACS Code Leak hex I posted about. I can’t see how the MPAA can possibly keep this under control, now. It’s over, and the information will be on thousands of websites within another day, if not more.

A while back my wife and I started a blog on Seattleology, which was going to be about… well, Seattle. It never really panned out, due to boredom, or who knows what. Anyway, it occurred to me that I still wanted to something Seattle-related, and it occurred to me as well that all the link directories specifically “about” Seattle largely sucked. So… voila!

Yes, it’s a straight-up links directory, and a bit barren as of yet aside from the beginnings of a solid category tree, but everything has to start somewhere. I was figuring on adding more stuff, later on, content-wise.

What a pain to get sorted. I’m completely out of practice for Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). This was the magic code:

…as seen here. For my next magic trick I need to figure out why the Sitemeter on this site keeps vanishing/not working, while the Extreme Tracker shows fine. Bizarre.

EDIT: Renaming the post, so that Google eventually picks it up. It was a pain for me to find this, may as well help make it easier for the next guy.

For some reason, on Internet Explorer, the design of my site is looking horrible. It looks fine on Firefox, but on IE it looks horrible. My .css file is here, and the direct link to the site is here. The specific screw-up is that oddly the first posts on each page when seen on IE are pushed down phenominally far in the page, leaving a massive white space. I can’t seem to be able to tell why–could someone possibly give me a clue? I will be forever in your debt.

EDIT: Thanks to Sig, all is well now. Some copies of IE seemed to hate the top Google ads being within the first div class, but not others. Very odd. I moved it to a dead area between div classes and it seems to be fine now on both IE and Firefox. Thanks, Sig.

I’d noticed that Brian Wood was successfully cross-posting between Wordpress and Livejournal, so I asked him, “What tool are you using for that? All mine seem to be suxx0r.” And he says, “This one,” to which I thought, “No wai, that one pwned me with transport errors.” Oddly, reinstalling it seemed to have simply fixed it. Or else, Livejournal was just being pedantic and stupid during every single one of my previous testing attempts. If this holds, then, I just need to work out a scheme to integrate all the previous content from all my previous formatted blogs into this. Nice. Thanks, Bri.

Apparently, Livejournal cross-posting is full of fear and loathing toward me. I’ll have to try to fix it later. I think I will actually pull in all the old content. Why not? I wrote all that time… I just need to go through and comb over all the old archives, and suddenly I’ll have hundreds of posts!

I’ve been doing one of these silly things since before they were trendy and cool. I was editing my own one by hand using Pico back in like… late 1998? 1999? Granted, I was super-infrequent: 2-5 posts after I did my quarterly website redesign, in days, then nothing. Then came a Movable Type-based site around 2000 or so, which made it to 2001, at which point I went to Livejournal in 2002. Of course, then I got married in 2002, and we tried our hand at a joint blog for about… a year or so. Then we got bored with that after updating it furiously, and went back to our Livejournal ways irregularly. Then I tried to resurrect the blog again, when it was Trendy, but our own apathy got in the way of that one. Livejournal, meanwhile, puttered along. Which brings us back to this here. Version 6.0.

NOTE: If you’re reading this on my Livejournal, I hopefully didn’t frak up the cross-posting script that I think Katie Turtle uses. And, if you’re reading it on my LJ, that’ll explain why I’m talking about Livejournal in an odd external sense.

NOTE 2: I hope I don’t get bored of this.

Because I figured why not, on our own site:

Some pics obviously not work safe. Harvests and shows you the last 50 images posted to LJ. Enjoy!

Page will stay up till you destroy web server or I get complaints about imminent destruction.

Looking for this Hayden image?

Click here.

Backdating this post from August 2007 since so many people are apparently searching for this page for the image. Click on that link.