Rubenerd

Returning from a university-induced Gurren Lagann hiatus, Gainax gave me an opportune summary clip show to refresh my memory! While most people seemingly hated this episode, I revelled in seeing some of the studio concept art, my favourite of which I included here :)

• Underground village
• Day after day…
• …he digs through the dirt
• His parents are dead.
• Somewhere that isn’t here…
• … there’s a wide open world.
• He’s tough, kind, and big.
• I want to be like my Bro.
• He was still a child

• His father is back
• He takes over…
• … an enemy Gunmen!
• A dangerous woman.
• A new companion.
• A powerful rival…
• A showdown at high noon.
• Who do you think you are, having two faces!?
• Royal Capital

• Spiral King
• Take over Dai-Gunzan!
• You’re gonna do it!
• I can’t do it.
• I can never be like you bro…
• The Spiral King’s Daughter…
• … Nia
• A meeting amidst despair.
• Enemy pursuit.

• Termination orders.
• Your father says he has grown tired of you.
• The valley of discarded princesses.
• Simon will protect me.
• He won’t lose to the likes of you.
• Sorry I took so long.
• Believe in yourself!
• The invincible drill.
• The power of the spiral.

• Reawakened humans…
• … go on the offensive.
• A rout.
• Towards the final battle…
• The Spiral King, Lordgenome.
• The royal capital Teppelin…
• … falls.
• Humanity…
• … has broken through the heavens.

• And beyond it lies…

Yesterday I finally received shipment of my KDE shirt from FreeWear!

The shower

Picture the scene if you will. My resurgent interest in KDE after several years of isolation lead me to desiring some form of KDE advertising device for my laptop. A sticker, for example. Alas, I resigned myself to the fact that anywhere that offered KDE stickers had to charge more for the shipping than the actual merchandise.

Which got me thinking… what could I purchase affordably but could still justify having shipped? The answer came to me in the shower, of all places: a shirt. The question was, where to get it?

The advocacy pages on the KDE website were surprisingly unhelpful, and while I got excited at this article on Dot KDE, I quickly noticed the publication date. Other sites such as Zazzle had people selling KDE shirts, but I couldn't find anywhere on their pages that KDE would see any of their proceeds, which seemed a bit dodgy.

After searching for what seemed like an eternity, I laid eyes on the FreeWear.org site. Enamoured with their delicious pun, I ordered a shirt!

The shirt

FreeWear had several different KDE shirts, but I'm a sucker for this shade of blue, so I had very little choice but to get this one! Pantone 229 is the second best colour after purple.

The shirt is emblazoned (can I employ heraldic language here?) with white KDE letters and the KDE gear logo along the front right hand side, and with a smaller KDE gear logo on the back. The shirt is in my second favourite colour (after purple of course!) and for something a little different, the collar and ends of the sleeves are white.

The quality is amazing. So often I've bought shirts printed in that fashion that feel like they'll crack up after being folded once or put through the wash, but the silk screening on this shirt is sharp and solid. That was [almost] some pretty spiffy apparel related alliteration there.

As an added bonus, they even shipped me four circular KDE stickers for free! I've had free stickers from sites like Threadless before, but from a small site like this it was a pleasant surprise!

The company

FreeWear.org is a small operation based out of Spain that silk screens prints for various different free/open source projects by hand; they have photos on their site showing how they do it.

Most importantly, some of the proceeds from the sale of each item go towards the project you're choosing to advertise as you walk around. In my case, they made a €3 donation to the KDE e.V. in Germany.

Now all I need to do is wait for the weather to warm up a little so I can wear it to uni and blow the minds of some of those crusty old professors who are probably still on CDE ;D

Symantec has highlighted in a blog post a website masquerading as an official one by using fake trust seals. Where have we seen this before?

I seal what you did there

I don't remember exactly when it started, but in the Web 1.0 days I started noticing email from certain friends of mine contained something akin to this in their footers. The footers of the email, not the friends.

This email was scanned by Ultra Duper AntiVirus and was found clean.

Now that I think about it, I think it was Hotmail that started doing this first, particularly if you had attachments. I could be wrong though (it wouldn't be the first time) so don't quote me on that.

Needless to say, while these glowingly reassuring messages looked good in email and surely Julian Assuaged the fears of many a light internet user, those of us who'd been around the bush a few times were less that convinced. Without a cryptographic signature or any other uniquely identifying mark anywhere in this footer message, we had absolutely no idea whether the assurance from Ultra Duper AntiVirus was authentic or not. In other words, there was no way of telling whether the footer message really did come from an anti-virus product, or whether the plain text had just been appended.

Why is this important? Well say I were a virus writer (cough) and I wanted to infect as many machines as I could. There are far more efficient methods than email thesedays, but for the sake of the argument I decided to attach my payload or include a malicious link to a well crafted email containing "New season of Kaleido Star!" as a signature. What better thing to do that insert a fake anti-virus assurance message? Sure it wouldn't convince Hillary Clinton's techno-experts, but as long as it convinced just a few then we'd get our payment.

Being kissed by a rose sounds painful

So now we come to the idea of site trust seals. Site trust seals were originally simply images embedded onto web pages that assured their visitors that their site had been scanned by an anti-virus product, vetted by a security firm, or they'd paid their mafia protection racket and as such you were guaranteed to be left alone. Problem is, as with those silly anti-virus footer messages, there was no way of knowing if the images were legitimate or not, which defeated their whole purpose of trust!

At some point (affording myself of my highly accurate timeline information here once more), security companies finally cottoned onto this, and began employing seals that linked to unique IDs on a third party site. By doing this, the image could be demonstrably verified by a third party which is tougher to spoof unless you can compromise said third party. In this day and age, I honestly wouldn't put it past some people.

The problem site Symantec highlighted in their blog employed a rather crude workaround. Instead of breaking the site trust seal chain of trust itself, the malicious site simply included this in the site trust seal's link:

http://www.[software security company].com.[fake domain].com

I suppose while it wouldn't have worked on all people, it still honls true to the "fooling just enough people to make money" rule.

These terrible seal puns doing anything for you?

Though not as much as email footers claiming they're super duper dandy just fine safe secure and fabulous, I'm skeptical of site trust seals as well, and for this reason. Just as most people ignore site certificates let alone go through the process of verifying them, the few people who would be reassured at the sight of a site trust seal are probably also not the kind of people who would click on them and study their destinations closely before proceeding.

As for seals themselves, I think they're adorable creatures :).

This originally appeared on the Annexe, back when I recorded daily puzzles.

Presumably to satisfy some warped sense of humour, my lecturers set this week as the due date for a dizzying number of assignments and class tests. As a result, I've had far less time to write blog posts, including my Gurren Lagann reviews. By Wednesday this week I'll be free again, and rather exhausted!

I belabour this to say I took a quick study break to Webify myself. Aside from the car magazine instead of a Linux Journal or similar (see what I did there?), I'm liking it!

The super talented and friendly independent musician extraordinaire Marian Call is taking signed preorders for her new album Something Fierce. As a bonus to those who order, you can download several bonus tracks as MP3, AAC and even FLAC files!

I was not paid for this post, just a fan trying to spread the love. I've got my copy, and you should too! :)

Awwwwwwww! Episode 15 of Gurren Lagann.

Plot: Having set the wheels in motion for the destruction of The Capital, the giant cylindrical buildings that bear a striking resemblance to the Peachtree tower in Atlanta begin falling from the sky and Tepellin is revealed in its true form.

Art: The explosions and weapons fire were little more than lines of colour and circles of pale yellow, presumably to save on production costs as they’re simple to animate. Still, they put on quite the light show.

Tactics: Initially I was horrified at seeing how they mutilated and destroyed large swaths of Dai Gurren, before Yoko reminded us in her narration role on the bridge (again) that defeating the Spiral King and forcing him to confront the daughter he cast away were the entire reason for the mission. Had they been more cautious, they most likely would have failed. Are there life lessons in this anime?

Pride: That (seemingly false) modesty imposed by the four generals so as to not dignify these petty humans with too much of their time and firepower? Seems as though the Spiral King wasn’t going to make the same mistake, launching a barrage of ships.

Graphics: Starfleet ships have LCARS (a version of which I posted about earlier today, ironically enough!), and Dai-Gurren is equipped with icons from various warning and emergency exit signs. I’ve got to say, the latter makes far more sense!

Expectations: Every single episode I’ve thought Simon and Kamina, then Team Gurren Lagann, then Team Dai-Gurren would be toast, and every time I was proven thoroughly wrong due to a combination of advantageous circumstances, strategy, strong teamwork, and Gunmen devices that seem to defy virtually all laws of physics. This time I was almost certain they wouldn’t make it, again.

Metaphors: Namely, drills. They’re what give Simon the strength and physical capability to do his job in his subterranean village way back in episode 01, they give him the ability to pilot his Gunmen Lagann with such dexterity and skill, and they’re even the source of the King’s power. Ultimately, a simple one is responsible for his downfall.

Heart tugging: When Nia sits on Simon’s lap so they could go see her father. When she and Simon sit together during the battle with their eyes ablaze. When Simon is potentially in his final throes and she exclaims she believes in him with all her heart. When the battle is over and Simon places his hand on her shoulder, then cuddles her close while they see their allies and friends coming to them. I’m a fan of this stuff, I’m unashamed!

Relativity: When Nia confronts her father again and exclaims her horror at what she perceives to be his lack of morals. I get the feeling we’re going to learn the issue isn’t as black and white as what we’re being lead to believe at this point, but for now you can understand where she’s coming from… well, where they’re all coming from.

Unanswered questions: Who/what were inside all those buildings they just destroyed? Were they buildings? Why would such a powerful Spiral King be so unkempt, surely he would have access to excellent grooming facilities?

Conclusion: After coming all this way, and with all the obstacles and pessimism in the world, they made it to the capital and had took care of business, with their flag emblazoned with the late Kamina's sunglasses. There's jubilation, and optimism! The world is finally theirs!

Still, why do I get the feeling they've just opened the proverbial can of worms with this?

Links shared from del.icio.us today:

ペルソナ４アニメーション 公式サイト

Persona4 is going to be made into an anime?

(categories: anime p4)

Wickedly Smart

The JPEG artefacting and Comic Sans are what sell me.

(categories: software programming blogs design)

Improvements in Windows Explorer – Building Windows 8 – Site Home – MSDN Blogs

"For love of Pete. How come Microsoft always ends up making their core apps look like the cockpit of an airplane?"

(categories: fail design microsoft windows usability ui)

Sembawang, Singapore

Ever wanted to know what the tides were in 1970?

(categories: data maps geodata singapore)

Tenshi-no-Sumika in LA Blog » Blog Archive » Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann Dollfie Dream Pre-Order Now!

Oh well, two years late!

(categories: anime gurrenlagann shopping)

Good Morning Yesterday: Wisma Indonesia (in the mid-1960’s)

I arrived in the mid 1990s, so Wisma Atria was there already.

(categories: singapore nostalgia history photos)

File:Thiruvananthapuram Green Road.jpg – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The roads in Kerala are better than in Sydney!

(categories: photos transport roads india asiapacific)

OSA milestones: 1967-1974 – OSA GmbH & Co. KG

They might want to update their photo of Singapore ;)

(categories: singapore photos business, bidness)

1:400 : Dragon Wings : DW55466 : Singapore Airlines : BAe / Aerospatiale Concorde – DA.C

Most people don't realise Singapore Airlines had a Concorde. Kinda.

(categories: aviation concorde singaporeairlines sia retro)

Interactive Marketing, Campaign Management, Web Analytics – Unica

MRM software.

(categories: mrm ibm commerce business bidness uts)

File:BA New Club World seat.jpg – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hey, that's my machine! :D

(categories: macbookpro hardware aeroplanes photos wikimediacommons wikipedia travel)

With an auspicious 42 days of life left in the J-Walk blog before he says goodbye, I decided to pick an article at random to discuss.

import j-walk.util.random

Round and round the random number generator goes, where it stops nobody knows!

Here’s Miss Cellania’s Tribute to the Grilled Cheese Sandwich.
I’d take this spinach pesto sammich.

From his Grilled Cheese Tribute post from the first of September. Suffice to say, his included image looks good. Really good. Which reminds me, I haven't even had breakfast yet.

I went through my own grilled cheese sandwich obsession here on Rubenerd.com several years ago; I used it in all my examples and name dropped them everywhere. I'm going to pretend J-Walk posted about it on this 42nd last day on purpose, just for me.

That’s a lot of posts

For those unfamiliar, John Walkenbach is probably best known as a Microsoft Excel ninja with dozens of books to his credit that are sold around the world, including places overseas I've lived. Pointing this out earned me my own blog post on his site in 2008!

Rubenerd combines three topics into a single blog post: On Google Reader, the iPhone and J-Walkyness.

By the way, if you’re ever in a bookstore, go to the spreadsheet books section and adjust the display such that my books are facing out. Even if you have to move some of the other books to the Religion section to make room. I do it, Rebenerd does it, and you should do it.

The beginning of the end

The J-Walk blog has for many years been a curated cornucopia of coolness, a lovingly updated list of material from around the net. In a world now of mass news aggregation sites and social networks, John continued to post what he found interesting on his own site instead, which inspired me to keep doing so here too.

With all the upheaval in the world and in my own life over the last decade, the J-Walk blog has been one of the few happy constants. I was reading this in high school, during breaks at my first 9-5, my first years of university, during The Schade Family Medical Troubles, and now again in the lecture halls of UTS.

Needless to say, I'll be sad to see it go, and will be reading it (for want of a better word) religiously while I still can.