nuxx.net
Making, baking, and (un-)breaking things in Southeast Michigan.

Detroit Historical Museum and Belle Isle

February 13, 2006


Inside of the ship’s bridge which overhands the Detroit River at the Dossin Great Lakes Museum.
(Click for more…)

Back at the end of December 2005, , , and I went to the Detroit Historical Museum, the Dossin Great Lakes Museum, the Anna Scripps Whitcomb Conservatory, the Scott Memorial Fountain, and a few other places on Belle Isle.

I finally got around to captioning the photos today, and they are available by either clicking on the photo above, or this link: Detroit Historical Museum, the Dossin Great Lakes Museum, the Anna Scripps Whitcomb Conservatory, the Scott Memorial Fountain, and a few other places on Belle Isle (photo gallery retired).

No, I’m not going to write much about them right now… Hopefully you’ll enjoy them, though.

Oh, and yes, I know the pictures are mostly crap. This was the first day I took my new camera out to actually give it a try. I’ve become a lot more familiar with it since then, and thusly the photos have gotten considerably better.

moved from livejournaloutdoorstravel

More AdSense Banners

February 13, 2006

Well, I just went ahead and created a new Gallery theme called ‘nuxx’ and modified it to serve AdSense banners in the left hand column. You can see the result in any of my photo gallery pages.

I really don’t think it looks too bad, and it’s fairly inobtrusive. Again, though, I’ll leave it for a while and see how much it brings in before deciding whether or not to pull it.

I had originally tried to use image banners, but it seems that Google doesn’t have a very wide range of AdSense images, so I kept getting non-profit or not-very-accurate banners. The text ones — while still ads — are much more accurate… Some I’d even consider clicking on, were I not at my own site.

Anyway, I think this is good for now.

moved from livejournalnuxx.net

AdSense

February 10, 2006

Well, I just got done adding Google AdSense banners to all static pages on nuxx.net.

While they aren’t especially obtrusive, they do look a bit odd on the main page. That’s probably okay, though, because most of my hits come into various pages which actually contain information.

Despite their not looking too bad, I can’t help but feel like a bit of a whore. I’ll have to keep an eye on how much it brings in… If it’s not much, I’ll just pull the ads.

moved from livejournalnuxx.net

Canon EP-EX15

February 10, 2006

For any of you who may have a Canon EOS body (Digital Rebel, XT, 20D, 5D, whatever) and wear glasses, I suggest that you check out the Canon EP-EX15 Eyepiece Extender. I picked one up today for $14.99 from Camera Mart in Pontiac, and after putting it on my camera, all I can say is “wow”.

While the camera is great to use without glasses, one has to press the glasses a bit closer to their eye in order to see the whole viewfinder. With the EP-EX15 installed, the image size is reduced by 30% and moved out from the body by 15mm. This has the effect of both allowing one to keep the viewfinder a little further from the eye (glasses-length away) and it keeps one’s nose from pressing against the screen of the camera.

I will have to see how it works out in the long run, but for now it seems like it was definitely worth adding on to the camera. Especially for only $15.

I still would like to get the Canon Angle Finder C because I’d rather gotten in the habit of taking waist-level photos using the flip-out screen on my Coolpix 5400, but at $179.95 it’ll have to wait a while.

acquired thingsmoved from livejournal

eBay Phishing Scheme

February 9, 2006

Upon sitting down at my desk just now it appeared that I had email from an eBay user named ‘yuki668’ asking simply “Hello,do you accept PayPal?”. This seemed a bit fishy, so I decided to dig into it a little bit.

Come to find out, it’s the best made phishing scheme that I’d not yet seen. It appears to look like valid email from eBay, takes you to a look-alike login page, allows one to compose a reply, and even appears to send the message, then offering to redirect the user to My eBay and various other pages.

Here are some screenshots of this message and the hosted false pages:

· Original email from ‘yuki668’ asking a ‘question’.
· Fake eBay login page.
· Fake message composition page.
· Fake sent message confirmation.

I have to say, with my actively selling something on eBay, this almost fooled me. The way I knew it not to be right, is the original email message was sent, it didn’t say that it was a question about a particular item…

Anyway, here is the full header if the email, if you are curious: Clicky Clicky

computersmoved from livejournal

Pummelo!

February 8, 2006

Mmm… Pummelo!

That’s part of my snack from tonight. Within 45 seconds of taking this image I grabbed this piece and popped it into my mouth. Mmm… It’s almost like a mild grapefruit.

Also, it seems I’m not the only one who has taken an interesting picture of a pummelo: http://justinsomnia.org/images/pummelo.jpg

That one has a bit more squick to it, and my pummelo wasn’t nearly as fleshy-colored. But I still like my photo….

Although I did screw up and leave the ISO at 400, resulting in a loss of a good bit of detail. Ah well. I still think it came out okay…

foodmoved from livejournal

MovableType

February 7, 2006

Movable Type is pretty nifty once you get past the hurdles of getting the damn thing installed. It’s poorly documented and requires a lot of CPAN modules.

Ah well, at least it’s working. (No, not for me, although I may start to use it at some point.)

Also, I wish whoever was working on the AdSense module for Gallery 2.0 would finish it. I’d love to be able to allow people to add banners there. It might also finally prompt me to caption my photos properly and with keywords and such.

computersmoved from livejournalnuxx.net

Food.

February 6, 2006

That’s a good part of tonight’s dinner. Here is all of it. Yes, roasted crimini mushrooms on a baguette with extra sharp cheddar, Downey’s Potato Chips (made in Waterford!), and Bell’s Wheat Love Ale.

Here are some of the mushrooms before they were roasted.

Uhh, my beer is also coming along nicely. And I don’t feel like writing much tonight.

I did take this cool split-second photo of a bubble racing through the airlock when playing around with my macro lens and the camera, though.

beerfoodmoved from livejournal