Kalimat al-Mutafalsif

I just threw the new theme on my website and was poking around making tweaks this afternoon. I wanted slightly different colors, wanted to make the picture look cooler, maybe edit the footer to change the whole "Made by" to me, and give credit for being based on the theme I based it on. However, upon opening the footer.php, I found a very weird comment:

 
/* V8 - WARNING: This file is protected by copyright law.
To reverse engineer or decode this file is strictly prohibited. */
 

Well that's weird, because in the style.css we read:

/*The CSS, XHTML and design is released under GPL*/

(Side note, if you don't know what we mean by GPL, check out their site.)

No, they don't say PHP in there, however I read that (because 'design' is included) as "This theme is GPL'd". Poking around their website, I see no mention that you're required to keep any part of the theme the same.

If we read past the warning about reverse engineering, we see why they included it, a nasty big base64 encoded blob, then an eval command. Pastebin paste is here.

This piqued my interest, as I can think of very few legitimate reasons to do such obfuscation, or why there should be so much (footer.php is 47kb!). My initial thought was that I'd opened a backdoor into my site, with lesser thoughts to them being able to push random stuff into my footer (the last way I was infected), and finally just trying to control the links on the bottom of the page so that even if I were to edit their theme (as is my right under the GPL) I couldn't take credit for it myself, they'd always have credit for it. None of those sat right with me, so I hit up the local IRC channel, and we started puzzling.

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First time in, oh, 4(?) years I've put up a new theme! Hacked on Sporty from Themespack.com to get something that looked good. I'll be tweaking more, but wanted something more bike oriented up. Let me know what you think!

(And those finding this on LiveJournal, come view it)

Weather forecast on Monday was rain all week, bleh. Needless to say when I stood up from my cube and saw the sunlight streaming through the window this afternoon I immediately thought of a ride. However, due to recent storms in the area I didn't really trust the roads (dirt washed into about half the intersections, sand into the other half, and still had some branches and stuff laying about from the trees that went down. Bummer... It being a cooler day due to the storms, I decided to get my roommate out to learn how to ride (ok, get a very beginner quick course) to see if he likes it.

I gave him a spare helmet, a nice leather jacket, my gauntlets (about the only non-expendable gear) and we took Tina out to a local parking lot that is used for the MSF course, so it had all the fun lines showing turns, braking lines, everything.

He did quite well, first we got used to the feel of the brakes by rolling forward and applying them. Then I had him feel the friction zone for the clutch by letting it out just until the wheel rolls forward the slightest bit. Then we did 'power walking': Letting the clutch out enough to roll forwards, giving it a tad of gas, and walking along with the bike. After that he wanted to pick his feet up so he did two 1st gear passes of the lot, staying upright. Finally we wanted to see 2nd gear, so I gave him the longest shot across the lot, and he managed to get up into it twice before we called it a day! Quite successful, with only two stalls and no drops.

But what struck me most was the memories it brought back. I did my course in the middle of summer (about 10 months ago) so it was a little hotter, but the smell was the same. There's something to the smell that a small 'thumper' engine gives off that just takes me back. The nervousness of dropping the bike, the joy that first time you pick your feet up onto the pegs, the realization that counter-steering actually works... all of it. It was nice being on the other side of the bike this time, and giving some one else that experience, although I have to say the nervousness of the bike going down is still there.

It was an afternoon well spent. I'd highly recommend everyone spend an afternoon like that learning how to ride. Even if you don't end up a rider, you may never touch a bike again. But you'll feel the wind in your face, and the bike responding to your input and you'll realize why people say "Live to Ride, Ride to Live".

Rolling Thunder is a motorcycle gathering/parade to publicize POW/MIA issues. "To educate the public that many American prisoners of war were left behind after all previous wars and to help correct the past and to protect future veterans from being left behind should they become prisoners of war-missing in action." The main portion of this event is a parade through downtown Washington, DC, from the Pentagon around the Mall, however many riders come from all over, and there's smaller groups that journey together from California every year which is just as much a part of 'Rolling Thunder'. All told, the bikes participating in the event is in the hundreds of thousands (now-a-days over a quarter million to 300 thousand), while the number of total bikers descending on the city is even greater (some like to ride in before the parade and park to see the memorials).

Ride route:

I've been attending this for the past 7 years, the first 6 as a spectator, and this year as a rider. It is an experience both ways.

As a spectator you get to enjoy DC, seeing the popular sights, and have the backdrop of hundreds of thousands of bikers rumbling past just a few feet a way. You can usually feel the parade up to a block away on some of the faster sections. In addition you can walk around, see the vendors there, listen to some good patriotic music, and witness people paying final respects to comrades from years ago. Its very powerful to see giants of men stepping off chromed out behemoth bikes and breaking down crying at the Wall.

As a rider you get to spend a lot of time waiting around, that's the route I went this year. Got down to the pentagon parking lots (staging grounds for the parade) around 10am.

I believe I was in lot 3 of 5, but no one knew for sure... all we knew was we could see a few thousand bikes in each direction.

Of course, its not *just* for bikes. There's some appropriately painted trikes, trucks, and cars.

Finally after 3 and a halfish hours, it was time to roll out! The excitement level shot way up at this point, and the noise was deafening with everyone revving their engines, good to go.

Sadly my timing got off and I thought the camera was on when it was off, and vice versa, but managed to get some footage of the parade. You'll notice my hands are bear... I always wear my gear, but for 10 miles an hour in 80ish degree weather, I was stripped down to just my helmet for protective gear. I wouldn't have had that on but I thought it was required.

I like this one as a shot at the Capital... I thought I was taking pictures, nope, video. Oh well.

You cans ee my confusion here... I "turn it off" twice (when my hand goes over the frame). I only include it to show the guy giving everyone high-fives (I obliged him) towards the end. His hand musta been HURTING.

And the last segment, ended by my pulling over on the off ramp to gear up and get gone.

It was a great experience. Met some cool people, heard some stories, saw some awesome bikes. Best of all I was able to show some support for those in the military now, and vets, something we don't do enough. I'll be back next year, you can bet on that.

Currently I have two bikes in my stables (sadly, simply a parking space out front with the bikes crammed into it).

1985 Yamaha XT 350 - "Tina"
This is a FUN little bike that I just got yesterday. It's 24 years young, and still running in near tip-top shape. It looks no worse than my 14 year old bike did, so she's got many years left in her.

This is a dual-sport with semi-knobby tires that I intend to use for some street putt-putting around for groceries and the like locally, then learning how to ride on dirt and off-road as well. In addition, I have a few friends who want to learn how to ride, and I'll show them a thing or two on here as I don't think it can be that hurt from one fall.

2001 Suzuki SV650 - "Qarina"
This is my main bike, and my main love right now. She's an '01 SV that was chopped up a bit to be a nice streetfighter. The front end was swapped out for an '07 GSXR 600 front, the handle bars were replaced with clip-ons, some good shocks are in there, and the pipe's an old one that's not made anymore that sounds beastly. Then everything was painted black. Gorgeous.

I use this bike for everything... from runs to the store to runs 5 states west. She's teaching me confidence in my tires, and how to go fast in turns, not just straights. I average about 200 miles a week on her, and its no where near enough.

For a little while now I've been pondering changing this blog from its current focus of (theoretically) computers and some Arabic grammar over to something else. At one point I was pondering 2nd Amendment law discourse, but I think then it would take any fun I had from updating this away as I just get riled up. More recently I'd been thinking about changing it to be about motorcycles but figured 'eh, why?'

This past weekend has been a brutal reminder of the preciousness of life, from a memorial ride for a fallen police officer on Saturday (and finding out just how many memorial rides I could be going on) to putting my childhood kitty, and friend, to sleep last night. I'm resolved to start living life even more than I am, and to help others (naturally by throwing them on a bike and forcing them to enjoy themselves).

So where I typically would go out on the bike, enjoy a great evening, and have the events live in my head, I hope to start posting ride reports here. I'll flesh the rest out later when I can think more.

This is for you, girl

I've been silent because I've been busy with a few things. Chief among these is exploring my passion for motorcycles. I've put darn close to 3000 miles on the bike I bought mid-February, 1448 of which were a trip to Indiana that last 8 days. It was a wonderful experience, everything looks better on a bike.

(Click for high-res version)

This has been a fairly bad week for me. One thing seemed to pile on to another in typical avalanche fashion. One of the worst bits was Monday, when Blade died. I'm fairly certain a nasty static shock through the USB port is what did it.

Blade is the system that started as a pure gaming rig, back in January 2005, and quickly became my full-time Linux do-everything box. It was my first 'new' build, all the others had been with scavenged parts. It seems cheesy, but tonight I'm dismantling her and I feel pretty sad, actually. This computer went through 3 power supplies, but otherwise had no mechanical issues. I ended up adding 2 hard drives to have almost a Terabyte of storage on there, an extra 2GB of RAM, a 'new' (at the time) GeForce 6800XT, and logged untold thousands of hours of gaming on her. LAN parties too numerous to count, dozens (hundreds including stuff for school) of software projects, and just about all my Walraven programming was done from her keyboard. Her uptime (aside from a summer in storage while I was out of the country) was probably up around 95%, not 5 9's but everything I ever asked for. Honestly, it was to the point where when I finally graduated and got a place with an office separate from my bedroom I'd wake up and wonder why she was off (as I couldn't see the running-lights). Now she's sitting in pieces on my floor as I part out what's good, and what's bad.

Living for another build:

• All the small bits: Screws, Jumpers, CMOS battery, etc.
• Case... she's served me well.
• Hard Drives, no data corruption that I know of.
• CD-ROM, still good but ordered a new one anyhow to get SATA.
• Peripherals, I may have damaged my USB mouse, but I think the others still work.
• RAM, its still good, and decent stuff too!
• Video card will definitely find a new home, she's still great!
• Heat sink, SPU had a nice heatsink, might as well keep that.

Bound for the scrap heap:

• PSU. When I plug a power cord in I get big blue sparks off the back power switch.
• Motherboard, although she won't hit the trash yet. I'm thinking of making a display for it.
• CPU. I don't have a spare board to test and see if its still good. If I can nab one off a friend I'll test, but otherwise this is gone.

What I ordered:

• Motherboard: obviously need a new one of these.
• RAM, my old stuff is DDR, need to get at least DDR2 for a new motherboard.
• CPU, again an old form factor just can't be found on modern boards.
• CD-ROM, I need a SATA CD-ROM as the new mobo only has one IDE slot and I have two IDE drives (yes, still).
• PSU, nice new 630W with a good long warranty!

The above should get me back up and running nicely, though in the future I'll be picking up a PCI-E video card (my old ones are all AGP) so I can run monitors dual-head. Have a nice 9800GT (my old card's big brother, XFS) picked out for early May, I think. This is money I did not want to have to spend now, so the optional pieces are waiting. I think that once I get the system up and running I'm going to do a nice reformat to clean up all the drives (begs the question of where I'll keep the data) and start from scratch. I'll consider it a new build, and let the name 'Blade' go to rest.

With all that said, I'll go back to dealing with the remains. If anyone knows of fun ways to display a motherboard, let me know. I want to honor this build somehow.

Good night, friend.

Another game review coming at you, took about a week off for the holidays and worked in some PS3 time.

Game: Metal Gear Solid 4
Developer: Kojima Productions
System: PS3
Difficulty: Solid Normal (3rd highest of 5)

Background
Metal Gear Solid 4 is set in a bleak future where war is a driving force for the world economy. Instead of standing armies, countries turn to Private Military Companies (only referred to as PMCs) to fight their wars, and the game portrays these wars as being purely for business sake. The soldiers are all kept in control by nanomachines running throughout their body, and every piece of equipment is 'tagged' to respond only if an authorized user is using it.

Full review below the cut.

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Everyone knows that if you play certain Beatle's records backwards you can uncover the conspiracy that Paul McCartney died and was replaced. There are other albums, especially metal albums, that make use of this technique, called Backmasking. In it a sound is placed into the music that means nothing played forwards, but played backwards its intelligible.

In order to find Backmasking, one must either already know to look for it, randomly play everything backwards, or hear something that sounds interesting and essentially just stumble upon it.

In regards to stumbling across almost subliminal messages, I just found a funny one. I use the Famfamfam Silk icon pack a lot. I mean a LOT. Just about any website I set up will use at least a few of them because they're so clean and, well, free! (And since I'm plugging him, I'll point out that these are licensed under the CC Attribution 2.5 license, so if you end up using them, make sure to attribute!)

Browsing through the big ol' image of all icons I came across this:

(Don't) Drink and drive!

I've browsed through here may times before, but this time I read that as "drink and drive", and then I just couldn't help but notice the hidden commands.

1) Get a drink.
2) Empty drink.
3) Drive! (and you'll notice later on there's drive_error, and drive_burn... as such I highly do NOT recommend actual drinking and driving).

Hope you get a chuckle out of it as well.

(DISCLAIMER: Neither I, nor Mark James/Famfamfam, would ever encourage any form of dangerous or illegal behavior. Do not drink and drive... period)