So, having had a fantastic night out last night (well, fantastic AFTER I left the stupid work pub quiz) that was filled with many friends and many fantastic cocktails today is destined to be one of those days curled up in bed around my laptop investigating tools and technology that I’m not yet familiar with but perhaps would like to be.

Things like wordpress (which with I’m not yet familiar, shock horror) and CMS solutions like SilverStripe.

Anyway, it has come to my attention that the more involved you get with these free, open source tools, the more random the comments found within the code.

For example, this was stored at the bottom of the css file for the default wordpress theme, Kubrick:

/* “Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I’m half crazy all for the love of you.
It won’t be a stylish marriage, I can’t afford a carriage.
But you’ll look sweet upon the seat of a bicycle built for two.” */

Wiki tells me it is from a song called Daisy Bell, which was released in 1892 by Harry Dacre.

[edit] It has come to my attention that I haven’t seen the movie 2001 Space Odyssey, and therefore missed the joke embedded in the lyrics. It also apparently explains this piece of code found in footer.php:

/* “Just what do you think you’re doing Dave?” */

Ah Pop Culture references, how very very amusing . . . [/edit]

Have you come across any cute nuggets of awesome in your travels?

As it would turn out I am stuck in the city, while my usual snow buddy is currently down at Mt Ruapehu. He’s currently staying in a some random place that doesn’t have a fax machine and so has taken to txting me every morning to get the snow report and to do a little bit of ribbing about how he is at the snow and how I am not.

It’s a very frustrating situation, as I do SO VERY MUCH WISH I WAS AT THE SNOW!

Instead, feel my pain:

This was taken at the top of the High Traverse, which drops into my favorite run of the moment Mackenzie’s Mistake.

Don’t you wish you were there too?

I have recently entered into a new circle of friends. Well, not new exactly; there are four of us, and each pair in the four are all quite GOOD friends, and have been for a while now. However, we’ve only recently discovered that *collectively* we all get on fabulously. We have bonded, and now refer to ourselves quite happily as ‘The Square’.

As each of the pairs within The Square have different histories it has become apparent that PARTS of these histories may, er, disrupt this fantastic new arrangement. We all agreed that as such, certain things should not be done in case the balance of The Square is disrupted. The idea was that The Square’s harmony is more important than the individual pairs relationships (the sum is greater than its parts and all that).

Well THAT train of thought lasted all of a week because ONE pair stepped over the line and flirted with disaster. We were lucky, though – it was shrugged off and no harm was done (The Square is apparently indestructible and oblivious to such carnage). But then three of the four committed other such dubious acts on a random night out, which resulted in facebook status messages such as ‘I’m watching parts of my square spoon – it’s hot!’. Luckily, purely through acceptance and contentment within The Square, The Square’s harmony held out strong and all was okay.

ANYWAY, as a joke the concept of ‘Free Passes’ was created: The first dubious act between any one pair is given a free pass. Almost like getting it out of your system (which in some formations of the pair is almost absurd and hilariously funny). We all had a bit of a giggle about it, and then, before you know it, all our Facebook Status’s changed throughout the day:

The Second Quarter is contemplating his remaining free passes.
The First Quarter is also contemplating The Second Quarter’s use of his remaining free passes.
The Fourth Quarter; there are no more free passes.
The Third Quarter suggests that the passes not be free.. they be EARNT.
The First Quarter says no no, they must be free. The Second Quarter and I already used ours . . . and if they aren’t free, then, well, I want to give my free pass back!
The Second Quarter says no no they’re free as in you get off scot-free
The Fourth Quarter; free passes can be cashed collectively.
The First Quarter would like to cash in her remaining free passes

Facebook Status Messages and in jokes: Providing The Squares entertainment all day long.

:)

So, Quinn turned one over the weekend – he’s gotten so big and changed so much!

Yay :)

Rachel Papo is an Israeli photographer, who after serving her own compulsory two years went back to photograph the lives of 18 year old Israel girls serving mandatory military duty.

Living in New Zealand where there is no such thing as mandatory military duty it was surreal to look through these images and see such young girls with guns slung casually across their shoulders. And it was odd to occasionally see these subjects do something I had done at that age.

You can view her collection, titled after her own experience Serial# 3817131, and be weirded out all by yourself at serialno3817131.com

After reading multiple articles (the latest titled ‘How I Stole Somone’s Identity’ where the author asked some of his acquaintances for permission to break into their online banking accounts via email hacking, found here) it appears that the internet is less than friendly place.

Even MORE so now that Mike Perry, a reverse engineer from San Francisco, announced his intention to release his Gmail Account Hacking Tool.

But the problem seems not that the internet is a less than friendly place, but that perhaps its a little TOO friendly! And after asking around it seems to be that people just aren’t AWARE of how easy it can be to break into your internet banking accounts. Read that article, you’ll see.

There are a couple basic things you can do to protect yourself, if you have a gmail account, change your settings to ‘Always use https’, which is a handy new feature Google have recently implemented. This will encrypt ALL of the data between you and Google’s mail server, instead of just the login handshake.

The second is be aware of how easy it is to guess your passwords – don’t create passwords that are can be easily guessed or discovered. Is your birthday on an internet networking site? Mentioned your pets name on your blog? Can I find out where you live from an old archived CV? The same goes for password retrieval questions.

When creating passwords or password retrieval questions, be smart. Use things only you would know, or things that can’t be found from your myspace page or the internet.

The last piece of advise is just be smart. Be wary of emails that appear to come from banks, credit card or other trusted companies, or that ask you to update your security information. Bin your spam; don’t believe promises of big profits, risk-free investments, easy credit, or valuable prizes. If an email offer sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Be smart, and the internet won’t seem so bad. Promise!

These cards care of Shinebox Print are for all those times you couldn’t say what you wanted to.

More amusing cards right here.

. . . is trying on all the ridiculous (and the ridiculously expensive) dresses that you’d never actually wear anywhere.

Fantastic, right?