Mental note: buy UPS.
Server went down today because of a power failure (maybe the cat stumbled on the power cord).
Seriously, don’t know why I still don’t have one: they’re cheap and a no matter how short their capacity is, it should be enough for a controlled shutdown. The filesystem appreciates things like that.
Always a good read, and a book that always comes up in my thoughts in these times of irrational fear of terrorism.
> Orwell maintained that the book was written with the explicit intention “to alter other people’s idea of the kind of society they should strive after.”
Perhaps I’m too pessimistic today, but it seems that with each attack the mesh around us tightens a little further. It’s a [urban myth](http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/frogboil.htm), and a false one too, but sometimes it seems we’re all sitting ducks (oops, frogs) in a big pan of warm water that keeps getting hotter.
Microsoft not only manages to market a new [product](http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx) to patch a problem they should solve elsewhere (non-admin accounts by default and fixing IE’s braindead auto-installation feature), but they’re now [minimizing the warnings](http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/11/0644245&tid=158&tid=109&tid=218) for their “partners”.
Really…. Claria is high on my crap-o-meter after having to clean so many zombie PCs, and something like this is akin to Michelin having a faulty tire and instead of fixing the damn problem, they sell a new type of adhesive patch. God, how I like to use Macs.
Following the trend at [Planeta *](http://asterisco.paradigma.pt), here follows my machines’ names.
- Garfield - Desktop, old Duron 800, not used much. Sleeps all day, now that I think of it, making the name even more fitting.
- Jon - Linux home server, some P2-450 box I got second hand.
- Nermal - my old iBook G3, because it’s small and cute, (now belongs to my brother)
- Pooky - my new 12″ Powerbook G4, because it’s even smaller (and cuter)
- Odie (another PC box).
Notice [something](http://www.garfield.com/) in common? Perhaps you’d like to do [this test](http://test.tombraidergirl.net/garfield/) then.
All were scattered between my home in Aveiro and my former house in Viseu. Now some of them are safely stored in some carton boxes in the garage, and the only one I use here in Lisbon is Pooky. As the room I’m living in here in Lisbon is smaller than most dressing rooms at clothing stores, I barely have room for myself.
[PHP Beautifier](http://www.bierkandt.org/beautify/), because just as its site says:
**Who needs it:**
- people, who get PHP code from other coders and are slightly confused
- people, who can’t read their own PHP code anymore
- people, who want to share their PHP code