Cap'n Bob & the Damsel

Bad Behavior

logo-ghostIf you tried to comment here and got a weird message about “Your Internet Protocol address is listed on a blacklist of addresses involved in malicious or illegal activity,” please disregard the message.

We were using a plug-in called “Bad Behavior” which was supposed to protect us from spam bots and the like. Well, apparently the plug-in was compromised and started living up to it’s name by sending that message whenever any management functions were invoked, including comments and even posting blogs or managing the links list.

Quite frustrating until I found out what was causing it. The plug-in has been removed and all should be OK now. We also upgraded to the latest WordPress version.

Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Update: John A. reported more about the problem on Steve McIntyre’s Climate Report Blog:

All users should update to Bad Behavior 2.0.11 immediately to prevent being blocked from your own site.

Within the past two days users have found themselves blocked from their own sites while using recent versions of Bad Behavior. A third party blacklist which Bad Behavior queries recently began sending false positives for any IP address queried, causing everyone using Bad Behavior to be blocked. This issue is fixed in Bad Behavior 2.0.11.

06 Dec 2007 by Blogosphere Cyberspace Technobabble

Extreme Solar Images

NASA’s SOHO Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) scientific instrument has captured a complete solar cycle in the ultraviolet (extremely short wavelength light waves) spectrum. This remarkable collage demonstrates the extent to which the Sun changes over its cycle. Solar cycles have been documented for several hundred years, but never with so much detailed information as over this past cycle.

solar cycle

Every eleven years, our Sun goes through a solar cycle. A complete solar cycle has now been imaged by the sun-orbiting SOHO spacecraft, celebrating the 12th anniversary of its launch yesterday. A solar cycle is caused by the changing magnetic field of the Sun, and varies from solar maximum, when sunspot, coronal mass ejection, and flare phenomena are most frequent, to solar minimum, when such activity is relatively infrequent. Solar minimums occurred in 1996 and 2007, while the last solar maximum occurred in 2001 Pictured above is a SOHO image of the Sun in extreme ultraviolet light for each year of the last solar cycle, with images picked to illustrate the relative activity of the Sun.

Image, story courtesy SOHO – EIT Consortium, ESA, NASA & Astronomy Picture of the Day.

Please read our previous post about what the Sun is and what it does. Also read about how Solar activity can be correlated with global climate fluctuations. Then please refer to our Global Warming Resources page.

Educate yourselves – don’t trust good-intentioned but misinformed sources, and be wary of political opportunists whose goal is not to save mankind, but to cripple free enterprise and democracy.

03 Dec 2007 by Aerospace Global Warming Rocket Science

Breakwater

After a rainy day yesterday, we drove to San Pedro to seek out any photo ops. We got plenty. It was difficult picking one of over two hundred images, but this one had plenty of action. The surf was up a little and was crashing against the Los Angeles Harbor breakwater, occasionally sending waves over the top. This shot taken from Cabrillo Beach in San Pedro. Click on the image for a bigger view.

breakwater

01 Dec 2007 by California Environment Photography

The Great Crash of November ’07

The Great Crash of November ’07 is where we had two computers die within a few days of each other. First, the laptop stopped working and a couple of nights later, the power supply in my old desktop computer went out. This made me wonder what could be next. My question was answered the night before last when the big 36″ TV croaked with a loud snap and burnt smell right after. I’m not asking about anything else for fear of another self-fulfilling prophecy.

The hard drive in the old laptop started making noises that sounded just like somebody was doing something bad to a cat. It completely died shortly thereafter. I’m going to try and see if there is a way to recover the data from it, but if not, then it’s not going to be a big deal. Last year, I started backing up all our photos and other files to one of those monster external hard drives. We might lose some data, but at least it’s minimized.

Dell 1721 NotebookThe old Dell desktop didn’t lose any data – it just stopped working. I removed the hard disk from it and installed it into another desktop that we use upstairs. The upstairs computer is now downstairs to fill the gap caused by the failure. All of my old files are there although there are some problems activating some of the software I use. Also not a biggie since I can reinstall the software.

Moving the computer downstairs was the only the start of our recovery. The next step is shown in the image (click for a large view). The new Dell 1721 Notebook arrived yesterday as an early Christmas Present.

Now to figure out which flat-screen HDTV is going to replace the old smelly CRT-type TV.

29 Nov 2007 by Blogosphere Cyberspace Technobabble

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