Original ExistDifferently.com Weblog of David, a Christian Network and Systems Manager, with topics ranging from Apologetics to Worldview, and some crypto, open source, programming, opinion, and daily life thrown in between.

Sun, 2006-07-30 (Jul 30)

Google Talk now does File Transfers and more!

Filed under: Blog,chat,Google Talk,GTalk,im,In The News,Internet,Networking,Software,upgrade — David @ 16:21

Hooray! Google Talk (their instant messaging application using a jabber compatible back-end) has finally released an update that lets you do file transfers to/from other users, as well as leave voicemails if they’re offline (and you have a microphone) and display what music you’re currently listening to in your Google Talk status. The new version is numbered 1.0.0.95, which doesn’t show up unless you really look for it :-)
Only some users have gotten the update with the automatic upgrade feature (they roll out new features a few users at a time generally, and this is no different), but if you want the upgrade now, you can grab it from http://dl.google.com/googletalk/googletalk-setup-testing.exe and start transferring!

There’s a good review of the features (how to use them, how well do they work?) over at BigBlueBall.com.

Tue, 2006-07-11 (Jul 11)

Velcro Being Pulled Apart

Filed under: Flickr,Photography,Photos — David @ 09:33


Velcro Being Pulled Apart

Originally uploaded by Trazy Anderson.

This is a very cool photo on Flickr, and popular with almost 200,000 views! Plus, I really like Velcro :-)

Mon, 2006-07-10 (Jul 10)

Photo from Holland – Pizza!

Filed under: 2006,Blog,food,holland,Photography,Photos,pizza,Zoomr,Zooomr — David @ 21:16

Italian pizza while in Holland!While we were in Holland, we ate Italian two nights in a row (at the same restaurant), and this is one of my meals (minus a quarter of it :-) It was pretty good! Plus, I’m testing a new Zooomr account (similar to Flickr in many ways…but different) and they’re giving away free pro accounts to bloggers who display a photo from them in their blogs :-)

OpenDNS: interesting phishing and typo protection

Filed under: dns,In The News,Internet,OpenDNS,phishing,Spam,Tech (General),typos — David @ 11:17

The owner of EveryDNS, David Ulevich, has come out with an interesting new solution to phishing scams and domain name typos: fix it at the DNS level, which I found in an article at Wired.

The new service is free and it’s called OpenDNS.  You use it by changing the DNS server addresses on your maching, router, or wherever you get your DNS settings from to use their two DNS server IPs.  Then, they do some filtering to correct typos such as typing existdifferently.cm, which they automatically fix into existdifferently.com.  They also monitor sites that try to pull of phishing scams and block the addresses of the sites requesting your personal information, so even if you click the link in an email (such as “your PayPal account has been marked for fraud, come enter all your bank accounts, credit cards, and social security number at this link so we can rob you blind!”), if OpenDNS knows about it and you click on the link, you’ll be blocked and instead get a webpage similar to the screenshot shown here.

 Sample OpenDNS Phishing Block

Where do they make their money? Eventually, they plan on offering advertising when you type in a domain name that doesn’t exist and they can’t correct.  For now, they just give you some search results.  This is different from VeriSign’s fiasco Site Finder (see the Wired article above for details), because you’re choosing OpenDNS, it’s not being forced on all internet users worldwide at the authoritative DNS server level!

New Gmail features, just what I wanted!

Filed under: email,features,Gmail,In The News,inbox,Internet,Spam,Tech (General) — David @ 00:07

Just a few weeks ago I was cleaning out my Gmail inbox and wishing for a way to apply new filters retroactively to emails already received.  Apparently my wish has become a reality: Google Operating System reports that this is now possible!  It is enabled on my Gmail account, I just checked.  Maybe it’s available on yours, too. ZDnet’s article says another new feature is to “Delete all spam emails” in the spam folder at once, which doesn’t help me much now as I’ve never let more than a screenful of comments accumulate, but should be helpful in the future as that never lasts long on my email addresses! Not that I need to delete the spam, really, but I’m just obsessive like that…I like Monk because I see too much of him in me a lot of times :-)

Okay, really time for bed now…

Sun, 2006-07-09 (Jul 09)

eBay says Google Check”out” over it’s own PayPal

Filed under: checkout,eBay,ecommerce,Google,In The News,Internet,PayPal,Tech (General),unfair business practices — David @ 23:34

I’m a bit late on finding this out, but apparently eBay has banned Google Checkout from being used to pay for its auctions.  Something about it being “too new.”  Which is perhaps code for “we don’t want to let our PayPal have any real competition especially with Google so we came up with a lame excuse.”  I don’t actually purchase from eBay often, but next time I log in I may hit their feedback page and let them know I don’t appreciate their decision. I’m trying to get to bed now, so I’m not going to hop over there at this precise moment :-)

Thanks to Robert Accettura’s link for the story, which is also carried over at theunofficialgoogleweblog.

Back from Holland, then moved, then…

Filed under: Blog,Church,email,holland,Marriage,missions trip,monk,moving,Pregnancy,Spam — David @ 12:49

Well, we went back to Holland the first two weeks of June on a missions trip with the choir from our church. Then, four days after we got back, we moved!

Ruth and I both went to Holland on the first musical missions trip with our church two years ago, but we didn’t know each other then! We still only remember talking to each other a couple of times on that trip. But here we are, two years later, married, and we got to go on the next trip they planned back to Holland! It was an awesome trip!

We moved to an apartment closer to Ruth’s job, and farther from mine compared to where we were. My drive isn’t too much farther, and hers is a lot closer, so it’s worth it. Plus, we moved from a one bedroom to a two bedroom (for just $10 more per month!) which will be great once the baby arrives! Actually, it’s great now since it means we have an office to put the computer and other assorted “novelties” in, other than the bedroom. And we’re on the first floor now (of two) instead of the second (of three), making the move-in easier. Ruth also has a much easier time, not having to climb stairs constantly while pregnant!

We went to church early this morning to make sure the nursery check-in system my family and I spent 16 hours moving on Friday (including two hours on Saturday) was working properly (it was!), so we got home around 11:15 am which is early for us, since we usually go to the 11 am service! Ruth’s already napping since we got around 5 hours of sleep last night, and I think I’ll join her now, then eat while we watch the new episode of Monk I’m recording now.
The past hour or so I’ve been customizing my preferences over at TitanTV’s TV listings, which are very useful since we don’t have digital cable with the on-screen guide anymore (and it has fewer ads than the now-horrid tvguide.com), and also experimenting with a great service that I really like called Spam Gourmet, which is a “disposable email” service to let you register for sites without getting spam, but they have a lot of really flexible advanced options that make me think I might actually make some good use of this service!

Tue, 2006-07-04 (Jul 04)

Happy Independence Day!

Filed under: 4th of july,fireworks,food,General,parents,strawberry shortcake — David @ 15:41

It’s the 4th of July! We already set off a bunch of fireworks last night but might grab some more tonight. My parents (and Ruth’s parents, who are visiting and staying at my parents) have made enough food to last an army a week, and we’ll be heading over there as soon as Ruth wakes up from her pregnant nap. I only ate a bowl of cereal this morning (well, this afternoon, I slept until after 12:00) so I’m getting hungry, but I’m waiting for the good stuff!

We’re stopping to pick up some whipped cream on the way to top the strawberry shortcake that awaits us! Yum!

Mon, 2006-07-03 (Jul 03)

Law Enforcement Incident Maps for Indy

Filed under: General — David @ 14:08

I found an interesting site with maps containing police incidents for Marion County/Indianapolis mapped out and searchable! Not sure I wanted to know the number of incidents near our old apartment, which wasn’t terribly high but was slightly unsettling.  None in our apartment complex however, which was thankfully a blank area on the map!

You can check it out at CrimeView Community – City of Indianapolis. I wonder if similar information is available for our new location in Hendricks County?

Sat, 2006-07-01 (Jul 01)

BABY COMING!

Filed under: Blog,General,Kids,Marriage,Parenting,Personal,Pregnancy — David @ 13:56

Just wanted to announce…Ruth and I are having a baby! It’s due the end of December, and we’re going to find out the sex but the ultrasound isn’t until July 25th.

Oh yeah, and we moved in June to a new apartment, closer to Ruth’s job, and not terribly far away from mine!

Canned some Spam!

Filed under: Blog,General,Internet,Spam — David @ 13:54

Well, I’ve been spending some time deleting spam comments from this blog, which have piled up over the last year. I was doing it 20 at a time from the admin area, then I edited the .php file and told it to show me 500 at a time and did a few that way. Then I just went into the database and found the date of the last real comment, looked at the ID of that, and mass-deleted all comments newer than that comment. I’d already deleted a couple thousand manually at least, but the automatic cleanup deleted another 11,839 comments!!

There shouldn’t be a single spam comment left now, but they keep trying to post more ever minute or less so some will probably get through even though I have a ton blacklisted. I’m working on upgrading to WordPress 2.0.3 (this is 1.2.1) and we’ll see if it has better anti-spam built in. If not, I’m going to implement a Captcha solution where you type a number from an image to post a comment and see if that stops the spam, but it will be stopped, someway, somehow!

I’ll probably be doing the upgrade over the next few days, not sure when specifically (have in-laws coming over tonight though Tuesday), but this site will probably go down for a while while I complete the upgrade. Don’t worry…I’ll be back!! :-)

Married life is good, by the way…since I haven’t posted since my marriage announcement :-)

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