| Sunday, 29 September 2002, 1:32 pm Tags: Appearances, TechTV, Video |
More video from our trip to Baltimore. Here we are arriving at Arundel Mills for our first appearance. I ask Patrick, “what happened to your pants?”
I’d say there were about 500 people waiting for us as we entered the mall. Thanks for making us feel like rock stars!
The first person in line was E_B from Leoville bearing Tasty Kakes!
Four hours and 47 minutes later, we meet the last person in line afer signing well over 600 autographs.
Afterwards I went over to Books A Million and quickly signed about 50 more books – if you run over you might find one. Last night Patrick met up with friends, but the rest of us were lucky enough to score tickets to the sold out Yankees-Orioles game at Camden Yards. Ken and I had Boog’s Barbecue and I bought a laser engraved Little League bat for Henry (“Hank Laporte”). What a beautiful ballpark. We took a water taxi to Fells Point for a few drinks at Crabby Dick’s, then back to the hotel so Jennifer, Johanna, and Jane could look for Yankees.
Next stop, the Best Buy in White Marsh in about two hours. Then on to New York City for World News Now and Live with Regis and Kelly.
| Saturday, 28 September 2002, 1:32 pm Tags: Appearances, Screen Savers, TechTV, Video |
I’m also capturing a little video on the trip using my Olympus C-3040 digital camera. These are Quicktime movies encoded in MPEG-4. If you haven’t installed Quicktime 6 you will be prompted to do so. They should stream well even on a 40 kbps connection. On Friday, Mario Armstrong, the mayor’s Technology Liaison, took us on a tech tour of Baltimore, which included a visit to Bo Brooks, the classic Maryland crab house. Here Johanna Hall and Jennifer Crist from Affiliate Relations teach me how to eat a crab while producer Ken Marquis looks on:
Later in the day Ken and I went to the DC bureau so that I could be a part of the fun during the Mitnick-Wozniak version of The Screen Savers. There we met with Peter Barnes and Gary Nurenberg. We also got a gymnastics demonstration from producer Alina Mesenbourg:
Then Gary and Alina took us up to the bureau’s roof for the live shot. They have a beautiful view of DC from up there with the White House and Washington monument as a backdrop. You are supposed to call the White House when you go outside, however, so the snipers on the roof won’t pick you off. We forgot to call, but fortunately, no one shot at us:
A great day in Baltimore, despite the rain. Saturday dawned clear and bright and I’m getting ready for a trip to Arundel Mills for our first appearance. We’re hoping to take in an Os game at Camden Yards tonight.
| Friday, 27 September 2002, 12:48 pm Tags: Appearances, Audio |
Here we are in the airport with another audio blog. This one introduces producer, Ken Marquis, and Jennifer Crist from affiliate relations. Jennifer is filling me in on my schedule for Friday.
Windows Users (292 KB)
(Clicking the link should automatically start the audio stream. If one link doesn’t work try the other one. Or just type http://www.leoville.com/mt/audio/020926-1.mp3 into your browser. You must have an MP3 player configured to automatically open and play MP3 files for this to work. Windows Media Player and iTunes should both work fine. Or download Winamp.)
| Thursday, 26 September 2002, 3:46 am Tags: |
Getting ready for my trip to Baltimore. And for this trip I’m thinking of trying something new: an audio diary. My iBook has a built-in microphone. I can record short snippets along the way, then post them to the blog. It’s easier than writing, a little more intimate, and might be fun. What do you think?
Click to listen
The link above is an MP3. On most browsers a new window will open and the audio should begin streaming immediately. If not, right click the link and download the file before listening.
| Wednesday, 25 September 2002, 7:19 pm Tags: Announcements |
I’m off to Baltimore and NYC tomorrow. Patrick will follow me on Friday. That means we’ll both be gone for Friday’s show. No worries. Kevin Mitnick and Steve Wozniak have agreed to co-host The Screen Savers on Friday, September 27. Don’t miss it, it should be an AMAZING show!
| Wednesday, 25 September 2002, 2:37 pm Tags: |
Use a blog, go to jail?
One of the Leoville Town Square regulars, BEACHTechie, aka Sam, is a high school student in Virginia Beach, VA. He recently got busted by the school administration for blogging, of all things. They seem to think blogging from school is a violation of their acceptable use policies. Perhaps it is. Sammy will be blogging from home from now on. But it seems to me that instead of discouraging blogging they should encourage each student to create one. After all, most writing classes encourage their students to keep journals, and that’s exactly what a blog is.
I’ve posted a message of support in Sam’s blog, http://www.sammydman.com. I hope the school reads it.
Ignorance breeds fear. This is why I consider it so important to educate everyone on the value of computers and the Internet. I hope his school’s administrators take the time to learn about blogging. I think they’ll see that it’s no threat.
| Tuesday, 10 September 2002, 1:52 pm Tags: Blogging |
SECURITY ALERT:
If you use Windows XP your system is vulnerable to a very simple attack that could let any hacker delete all the files in any directory by embedding a short invisible command in a web page or HTML email. I’ve demonstrated the attack on The Screen Savers and it’s incredibly easy to implement and totally destructive. It’s one of the most serious security flaws I’ve ever seen.
Microsoft has remained completely silent on this, even though they’ve apparently known about it for 11 weeks. The potential for harm is so great that they and the entire computer security establishment have kept the hole a secret. It’s called “security through obscurity” and, in my opinion, it’s the worst possible way to protect your system.
The short term fix is to delete or rename a file on your system named c:windowsPCHEALTHHELPCTRSystemDFSuplddrvinfo.htm. A better long term solution is to install the Windows XP Service Pack which Microsoft made available yesterday. It’s a fairly big download, over 50 megs on my fully updated system, but it presumably fixes other security flaws we don’t know about.
Steve Gibson has written about this flaw and it was the subject of a security bulletin on Bugtraq.
This is one more reason I’m no longer recommending Windows machines to my family and friends. Microsoft’s security model is so severely flawed that I believe it’s impossible for them to make a secure version of the OS. Use Mac OS X instead. It’s not perfect, either, but it’s much less susceptible to this sort of thing.
And if you use XP, please run Windows Update and install SP-1 as soon as possible. Now that the word’s out I expect to see this exploit all over the place.
| Wednesday, 4 September 2002, 9:50 pm Tags: TechTV |
If you’ve always wanted to ask a question on the Screen Savers, but have had trouble getting through the busy signals, here’s your chance.
We’re taping shows all week to air the week of September 16 and since we’re not live we’re having trouble getting calls. In fact, if you call us this week, Morgan says you’re pretty much guaranteed to get on.
Call 1-888-989-7879 toll free…
Wed 9/4, 7-8:30p Eastern (call as early as 6p)
Thurs 9/5, 7-8:30p and 9:30-11p Eastern
Fri 9/6, 7-8:30p Eastern
We especially want people with netcams.
Morgan and Kevin are standing by. Call now. Please!
| Sunday, 1 September 2002, 2:59 am Tags: TechTV |
If you’d like to see drawings and models of the new Screen Savers set, they’re online now at http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/supergeek/story/0,24330,3397811,00.html.
You can watch construction when it begins on Tuesday via the spycam link there, too.
Supposedly we’ll be live on the set for the first time on 9/23. Can’t wait! Until then the show will come to you from the TechLive set (except for next week’s re-runs).
Swag
