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Brian Briggs: Internet Detective I hate scammers even more than I hate Twilight (I know that's hard to believe). This morning I saved our new guests from a scammer. I'm now going by Brian Briggs: Internet Detective. I overheard Mrs. BBspot say that she needed the credit card, which in these troubled times always makes my ears perk up. I wandered over to the kitchen to see what required this precious information. She was sitting in front of our guest's computer. He is an aspiring film maker who has made a short documentary about Iran. I asked Mrs. BBspot what was up. She said he wanted to enter this film festival and had to pay an entry fee. My spidey-sense tingled. I strolled over and took a look at the screen. My first glance was too the URL. It seemed legit, but something about the page didn't look right. She went back to the site to show me what it was all about. *RED ALERT* *RED ALERT* Here is a link to the page for the "New York Short Film Festival," which raised my shields. First, the URL: mamut.net. A film festival doesn't have their own URL? The formatting on the page looks straight out of 1996. There's no way a film festival out of New York would have such a cheap looking page. Then he showed me the site that he found this "festival" on. Film Festivals News. Really, you've got to be kidding me. This page has "made for Google search" written all over it. I had seen enough. I went over to my computer to do some more investigation. First I did a whois search on mamut.net, which you can see here. The contacts for the site are all in Oslo, Norway. Some more investigation revealed that mamut.net is an ISP in Norway. So possibly, the "New York Short Film Festival" just got their hosting from Norway. Doubtful, but unlikely. With more digging I found that the festival was part of the "Annual Program Without Frontiers," which sound like someone put some words together without knowing what they meant. A search for that brings up this page. The fourth and fifth results on the page call it a scam. One of those pages here, has the down and dirty about this festival. No further investigation needed. I can't blame our new guest for falling for this. He's a film maker, and wants to get his film out there. His command of English isn't great, so the grammar mistakes on the site didn't raise any red flags. These scammers should die in a fire. Preying on people desperate to fulfill a dream. No conscience, no morals, no honor. How do they sleep at night? Mrs. BBspot was amazed by the sequence of events. That my spidey-sense was that powerful. That I could detect a scam on such scant evidence. I'm sure most of you seeing the evidence I did, would've come to the same conclusion, that's one of the benefits of being smart and spending your life on the Internet. That's all for now. Stay geeky! Filed under Musings by Brian - Fri Nov 20, 2009 @ 10:25 AM (Permalink - Discuss)
Ditching DoubleTwist, Rafting on the River I ditched DoubleTwist for syncing music on my Pre, because it relied on iTunes for playlist support. Instead I started just dragging and dropping files onto my phone. Tiring of that I tried out the J. River Media Center, which works really well. I just have to do some search and replace on playlists (thinking of automating that myself with some kind of script), but other than that it syncs fine. It also appears to be a pretty decent music player as well with all the things you'd expect from a modern jukebox. This weekend we had book club, and my daughter and I led the discussion on Fahrenheit 451. It's the token sci-fi book thrown in for my enjoyment. We've got Sense and Sensibility and Rebecca coming up soon to counterbalance it. Most of the girls found the book depressing, but understood the messages Bradbury was trying to impart. I enjoyed reading it for the second time. It was long enough ago that I could find some surprises in the text. This afternoon was rushed, so I wrote tomorrow's story on my Pre while waiting for my daughter at the dentist's office. Typing long passages of text on the small keyboard didn't bother me at all. Unfortunately, the only way I had to create a document was to compose a Gmail message, but given that I had to email it to myself anyway that wasn't too bad. It would be nice for Google Docs to work on it. That's all for now. Stay geeky! Filed under Musings by Brian - Tue Nov 17, 2009 @ 5:44 PM (Permalink - Discuss)Thanks to a kind BBspotter, I have received my invite to Google Wave. If you're just starting with Google Wave then a free online book called The Complete Guide to Google Wave has been posted by Lifehacker friends Gina Trapani and Adam Pash. I spent an hour or so this morning getting myself familiar with it, and luckily I already have a few friends on there that have walked me through a few of the basics. The two uses for it that immediately jump out at me, are story collaboration for BBspot and for trip planning with a friend. I'm sure there will be more as I dive deeper into Wave. I don't have any invites to hand out yet, but hopefully that will change soon. That's all for now. Stay geeky! Filed under Musings by Brian - Mon Nov 16, 2009 @ 10:22 AM (Permalink - Discuss)As you may have seen on the last few stories posted, I've been rolling out a better commenting system. This is from js-kit, and I think it brings me up to at least Web 0.99 in terms of commenting systems. On today's story, somebody used it to call me a "f*g," which as far as I know is the first time that happens. My mom should be so proud of me now. I've also been working on a new, new redesign of the home page and story pages. It'll be a cleaner design that should be easier to navigate, and better for new visitors to the site. As always I welcome suggestions, corrections or insults about the site at briggsb@bbspot.com. At my D & D group last week, I rolled a 4th edition character for a new adventure we'll be doing on a bi-weekly basis. This will complement the 3.5 edition campaign we're doing now. I decided to do an Elf Avenger, who's going to be zipping around the battlefield like a Tasmanian devil. I'll be interested to see how a 4th ed campaign differs from a 3.5 ed campaign. I also wish I had time for another night of gaming during the week. After the intial surge of donations to help me continue to do the site, things have slowed down quite a bit. Can't say I didn't expect it. The donations have helped quite a bit, but I'm not sure they're going to be at a level where I can hold them up to Mrs. BBspot and say, "See this is why I shouldn't get another job." Thanks to all past, present and future contributors to the site. That's all for now. Stay geeky! Filed under Musings by Brian - Tue Nov 10, 2009 @ 2:37 PM (Permalink - Discuss)You may remember a couple weeks ago, when I wrote about how I was the "coolest dad ever" by cracking some "that's what she said" jokes while I was driving a carpool of kids to crew practice (if not you can read it here) Last night was the season-ending crew banquet, and each rower received an "award" from the seniors. I didn't see what "award" my daughter received until after the banquet, but it cracked me up.
Thankfully, I made it through last night without my daughter killing me. I'm sleeping with one eye open from now on though. That's all for now. Stay geeky! Filed under Musings by Brian - Thu Nov 5, 2009 @ 10:16 AM (Permalink - Discuss)I spent most of yesterday afternoon in the airport waiting for our new arrivals. We arrived at noon, twenty minutes after their flight arrived. We knew it would take some time, but we wanted to make sure we were there when they arrived. As people from the Amsterdam flight emerged through the smoked glass sliding doors with the big "Do Not Enter" signs on them, the excitement began to build. An hour later, when no one else was left in the waiting area, the anxiety began to build. A few phone calls later, and we found out from a friend of a friend's father saw our new arrivals on the flight. Now they just had to make it through immigration. A new batch of expectant people began to arrive in the waiting area, as a people emerging from a London flight emerged. An hour later those people were all gone as well, and still no new arrivals for us. Now logistics began to play a part. Our new arrivals brother, due to some cancellations, was able to make it to the airport, so we only brought one minivan. However, as the clock crept past 2 pm he needed to head back to Ann Arbor for work. This would leave us with the task of taking 7 people (hopefully) and the worldly possessions of a family in our one van. I began to calculate how much drag would be created by strapping my son to the luggage rack atop the van. Finally, at 2:35 PM, after 18 hours of flying and 3 hours in immigration, they appeared happy and exhausted pushing three overloaded luggage carts. All anxiety went out the window and we were filled with joy (for the record, it was I who saw them first, no prize for this, just saying). I must say that the density of the minivan exceeded normal operating parameters on the way back to Ann Arbor. The speed bumps in the parking garage earned some new scraps, as well as the bottom of our van. Eventually, we made it home and the suspension breathed a sigh of relief. I hope that we made a good impression for the US of A. By their smiles I think we did all right. Now comes the really fun part. We've got three people who have never been to America. Everything we take for granted will be new to them. All the places nearby where we take people who visit us, will take on an added dimension. We've done it before, and it's a blast. It's like watching excited kids open presents on Christmas morning. Fun times ahead. That's all for now. Stay geeky! Filed under Musings by Brian - Wed Nov 4, 2009 @ 3:25 PM (Permalink - Discuss)For the first time in forever, I was at home and I didn't turn my computer on the entire weekend. I hadn't planned on it, but the weekend turned out to be one thing after another. Mrs. BBspot being off to sunny California, and the impending arrival of new guests created more tasks than the weekend hours allowed. I was able to make sure no emergency emails came through with my Pre, so I wasn't totally disconnected, but being away did help the tendonitis in my wrist (no jokes please). If you want to be my friend on Facebook, and I don't know who you are, please tell me that you're a fan of BBspot or something by way of introduction. Sometimes it's hard to tell if it's a spammer or a legitimate person. Thanks. Not sure if I mentioned this before, but I completely removed iTunes from my system. I gave my 80GB iPod to Mrs. BBspot as she couldn't fit everything she wanted on her 8 GB. I'm now only carrying around my Pre. What with, Pandor, 1000 songs, audiobooks and podcasts jammed on there, I've got plenty to listen to. After trying out DoubleTwist to sync with my Pre, I'm just dragging and dropping files with the Pre as a USB drive. I use Foobar 2000 to create some M3U playlists and I'm all set. I'm sad to report that I didn't use any of my myriad geek costumes for Halloween this year. With all that was going on, I was lucky to even be able to hand out candy this year, so no pics. There's always next year. That's all for now. Stay geeky! Filed under Musings by Brian - Mon Nov 2, 2009 @ 1:18 PM (Permalink - Discuss)The BBvan died yesterday on the way to aikido practice. Fortunately, it died in our neighborhood, so I didn't have far to walk home. This morning I discovered that the Mechanic Fairy hadn't visited, so we have to get it fixed. Looks like it's the fuel pump. Ah, life's little joys. I haven't decided what to be for Halloween yet, but I have a museum of costumes accumulated during the production of The BBook of Geek. It should be easy to throw something together tomorrow. I'm thinking maybe triclops Einstein or Charles Darwin Man. That's all for now. Stay geeky! Filed under Musings by Brian - Fri Oct 30, 2009 @ 11:21 AM (Permalink - Discuss)The Briggs family will be expanding 75% next Tuesday, as a new family from Iran joins us. This time (and I say this time because this isn't the first time it has happened) it's my wife's best friend, her husband and her 8-year-old son. My son is geeked to have a little brother. He's been making cards to help the new arrival learn English, and rearranging his room to fit another person. I'm happy to have kids who welcome guests, and don't complain about leaving or sharing their room when new friends arrive. I know most people complain about house guests, but that's just not how it is around here. I mean, if you don't want people staying with you, why invite them in the first place? On the geeky side of things, my wife's best friend is a computer programmer. I might tell her that to pay for meals, she needs to bust out some code for the site. I'm not sure Mrs. BBspot will go for that. The new family will be staying here indefinitely. At least until they can get their feet under them. Surprisingly, I don't mind that either. Helping other people out, just feels good. That's all for now. Stay geeky! Filed under Musings by Brian - Thu Oct 29, 2009 @ 3:10 PM (Permalink - Discuss)Every Tuesday and Thursday I take my daughter, 13, and four other kids to Crew practice. By daughter sits mortified the whole trip hoping that I won't embarrass her. Every time I open my mouth I get "that look" that says "Dad, please stop, you're embarrassing me." Such is life with a teenage daughter. On Tuesdays I drive 3 Freshman boys and 1 Senior girl. This group is a bit more active than my Thursday girls, so I feel a bit more comfortable making comments. Today one of the boys said, referring to a candy bar that he wasn't going to share, "It's a small one." I couldn't resist a "That's what she said." I could just feel my daughter shrink in her seat as I said that. However, the boys loved it. Started referring to me as "the best" and "the coolest." They told my daughter that she just got a "whole lot cooler." Just to cement my place among the coolest dads ever, I made another perfect "That's what she said" joke at the end of the ride. Let's hope my daughter still talks to me. That's all for now. Stay geeky! Filed under Musings by Brian - Tue Oct 20, 2009 @ 5:03 PM (Permalink - Discuss) Previous 10 >> |
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