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Blog
2012/01/30
This weekend we went to The High in Atlanta to see the exhibit Picasso to Warhol. Excellent exhibit.
I was especially impressed by the cutouts of Henri Matisse. It really felt like they were influential in cartoon styles of the mid 1900s. One work reminded me specifically of the Charlie Brown specials, or the interstitials from Sesame Street.
Compare the whimsical style of the stars in both images. I haven't watched the Charlie Brown Christmas Special in years, yet my brain makes this connection. I was always fascinated by the scene where Charlie and Linus are tree shopping. The designs of the trees are so abstract that it always felt, even as a child, that the style was influenced by fine art.
2012/01/12
Congressman Rogers,
My name is Clint Bellanger. I'm an employee for Auburn University. I write library software that supports the cutting-edge research and innovation of our faculty and staff. I work around and create new copyrighted material every day.
I'm writing you today about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), H.R. 3261.
In its current form, SOPA gives tremendous power to Copyright holders. Unfortunately it does this at the expense of Constitutional Rights and with a terrible burden to law-abiding business owners.
Any systems that can be used to thwart copyright enforcement are made illegal under the proposed act. This definition is too broad. It includes projects like TOR, developed by the U.S. Navy to grant anonymity to online users. Online anonymity is critical to the military, journalists, and law enforcement (not to mention ordinary citizens).
Under the proposed act, a judge can immediately block any website found guilty of hosting copyrighted material. Almost all web sites today are built on user-generated content. I'm not just talking about the massive sites like Facebook and YouTube; even small business owners and innovators must have user-driven web sites to be competitive. To abide by SOPA, websites would have to manually approve every user comment, every photo upload, every video clip posted, or risk being eliminated from the Web. US-based companies could not be competitive at that speed.
Compare this enforcement provision to the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), which currently provides a fair system for Copyright owners to issue takedown notices to web sites. This takedown system actually works for law-abiding websites. I understand that SOPA intends to target rogue websites, but it's not specific enough; SOPA in its current form would bring the US business infrastructure to a screeching halt.
The act would be ineffective against actual copyright infringement sites. Black-listing a website only bans one address. Rogue piracy sites are known for moving addresses often (cost to create a new address? About $10). So the main enforcement of SOPA is trivial for law-breakers, but a tremendous burden for legal business owners.
Please consider supporting amendments to this bill, or alternate bills that address these issues.
Thanks for your time,
Clint Bellanger
2011/06/29
If I should be short on words
And long on things to say
Could you crawl into my world
And take me worlds away
2011/05/17
Clouds hung hugely and oppressively
We didn't notice
We didn't care
2011/01/23
Most of what I read these days is 160 characters or fewer. Or, news articles and discussion threads. I'm trying to read more classics it 2011. If I'm going to tell a worthwhile story, I should be aware of what's already been told.
Saturday I picked up Childhood's End from Gnu's. It has interesting imagery and pleasantly fantastic themes (e.g. paranormal) among classic sci fi ones (first contact, transhumanism).
2010/07/24
I finally set up my professional website over at Bellanger Software.
2010/07/16
Weekly Challenge: Mine Cart Set
My entry for this week's Weekly Challenge at OpenGameArt (topic: "Transportation").
2010/07/05
Thing-a-Day: Modern Bench
I saw benches similar to this while at a conference in Asheville earlier this year.
2010/07/03
Thing-A-Day: Paper Airplane
I started with a letter/A4 sized plane and modeled it as if I were actually folding paper.
2010/07/02
I've challenged myself to submit a new piece of art to OpenGameArt every single day. Here's how we kick this off!
Thing-A-Day: Naraphim Sword
2010/06/30
Now I've been hanging' round you for days
But when I lean in you just turn your head away
Woah, I know you didn't mean that
She said I love the way you think but I hate the way you act
Cause I always have to steal my kisses from you
I always have to steal my kisses from you
2010/06/29
I'm thoroughly enjoying my studio apartment. The move was simple; the apartment was clean and set up before I arrived. I'm right next to campus. So far it's quiet, but I imagine it could get rowdy once kids come back in August.
I have a lot of quiet time in my new apartment. It's time to start thinking about my own future. Time to list some goals.
Work
I want to be great at what I do. I want to put dedication and perfection into every project at the library. I need to seriously ponder an MLS (Master of Library Science) as a way to advance in this field. I want to organize, prioritize, and communicate better.
Health
I want to take care of my body. I want to walk to work more. I want to eat more sensibly. I want "eating out" to be a treat, done with friends. I want to floss everyday. I want to keep my apartment and car clean enough to have company at any time.
Hobbies
I want to shamelessly finish OSARE. I want to treat it like a thesis. I want to write articles about the engine. I want the comments to be beautiful. I want the game to be fun and played by many. I want it included in the entertainment repos of major linux distros.
Social
I want to find my niche in Auburn. I want to support the arts. I want to continue to enthusiastically support derby. I want to be okay going out sometimes. I want to find other 30-year-old transplants to hang out with.
2010/06/24
Yesterday my relationship of 4.4 years ended. That time flew by. I have no regrets. Still, I'm human and it's going to be hard to handle.
2010/06/14
OSARE v0.07 released! (theme: Inventory)
2010/04/21
My Camry's officially retired. I bought a 2009 Hyundai Accent, dark gray. I was looking for something slightly older (thus cheaper) but this one had a lot going for it:
- Similar price to a 2006/2007 Corolla or Civic
- Only 20k miles, great condition
- 4 years and 40k miles left on the bumper to bumper warranty
- The exact color and trim (exterior and interior) I prefer
- Compact and economic (I felt my Camry was bigger than I needed)
- The dealership I found it at was a mile from my apartment.
- I'd been interested in Hyundais lately
My credit score was in good shape (790) and I was able to put a nice amount down on it. I'll be paying $220 a month which isn't bad for a certified, nearly-new car.
2010/04/19
Crazy weekend in Baton Rouge. Went for the BCR @ Red Stick bout. The game was incredibly close. The ladies have so much heart.
When we got back, my car overheated in park again. Wouldn't crank back up. Renting a car today to get that taken care of and run some errands.
2010/04/16
Earlier this week, many WordPress-driven websites were hijacked and rerouted to a spam site. One site hit was one that I'm responsible for (the Burn City Rollers derby site). I'll post a brief chronicle of what happened.
I got a panicked email from Cho, founder of the BCR team, last Thursday (Apr 8th) -- a malicious popup appeared when she was using the site. When I checked the website it wasn't quite working correctly: the content appeared by the theme was missing. I use javascript whitelisting and adblocking so I didn't see any ads. I checked the page source and saw something very wrong: the page had an iframe directing to an "ad" site.
I tried to login the wp-admin panel first and could not access it. I used FTP to check over the theme files -- they had not been changed. I Googled around and found other people on Network Solutions having the same problem. Someone pointed out the changed setting: the iframe had been somehow added to the WordPress options table in MySQL.
I logged into Network Solutions and launched PHPMyAdmin. I fixed the offending value. I changed the MySQL password and WordPress admin password. I looked for other security options I'd missed: I filled out the random keys in the wp-config file and upgraded to the latest WordPress. The site appeared fine but I had no way of knowing if I'd closed the hole. I figured they used SQL injection on a WordPress form, cause it's unlikely they found the MySQL database password itself.
I checked the BCR site obsessively for a few days, fearing it would be hit again. Sure enough, two days later it was hijacked again (this time to a different ad site). Frustrating. I went in and changed passwords again, fixed the options, and Googled around to see if anyone had it figured out. I found this blog post by sucuri.net where they tracked down the WordPress vulnerability.
I checked my wp-config.php file and sure enough, permissions were set to 644. It hadn't occurred to me that this file would have the wrong permissions. I used Network Solutions's quick WordPress install to set things up, and it seems this installation had set risky permissions for everyone who used it. I used FileZilla to change the public permission to 0. No hijacking since then.
So what happened? BCR is on a shared hosting setup at Network Solutions. Some user figured out a way to view files of other shared hosts on these machines. Because they had file-level access they could read this wp-config.php file and get full database access. Then they used a script to change a setting in the WordPress blog database to load malicious ads from another server.
Long story short: don't assume file permissions are set properly. Make sure your password files are not public readable, and even move them out of web directories if possible.
P.S. Network Solutions has fixed the issues on their end. If you have a WordPress hosted by them and you're getting "Error establishing a database connection" see this blog on how to clean things up.
2010/04/06
I started up a new Friday Challenge art showdown at OpenGameArt. Check out the Friday Challenge forum and my entry, a tree stump.
2010/04/05
I've set up a microblog for my homepage. Sometimes I need more than 140 characters.
I'm also trying to tie in some bare-bones RSS; seems to be working so far.
Tech details: It's almost like a tumble blog in that entries are titled by day (yyyymmdd) and there's only one entry per day. The editor offers no formatting. A GET parameter can be used to edit older posts. Simple rewrite rules give pretty URLs. On update it creates a simple RSS feed. The variables are all define()s in a config file, so it should be easy to deploy more copies. Total dev time: 4 hours.