The Death of a Legend...

I spoke to the owner today and Thomas said that he hopes that the site is only down temporally, i have known him for many years of being on the KLF Mailing list. His site was legendary in the KLF community and it will be missed while it is down.

From His Site:

THIS IS A KLF ONLINE COMMUNICATION...

Whenever questioned about THE MANUAL, Bill Drummond replied that its essence was that, whenever you want to start something, you should not wait for someone to come along and tell you to do it. Just do it. I think this also applies to putting things to a rest.

From the days when I joined Daniel, Jens and Torsten to work on KLF ONLINE, our website has grown larger with every year, having seen various changes, added features and layouts. I say "our website" cause although I was not part of the initial list of members, after putting about five years of work into it, I adopted it as my child just like everyone of us.

The ever-growing list of added features, however, is one of the reasons I am writing these lines now. Both the code and the interal database structures have gone through so many incarnations that large parts of it are still patchworked into the (not anymore) current website, while other parts seem to never see the finish line.

Another reason is that content management currently is a pain. Most things happen directly in the database, making it impossible for others to add, update or delete parts when needed. I had added some things to change this, but they only add up to the clutter which the source code had become lately.

That is why, in my opinion, the whole website needs a fresh start. Tear it down and start rebuilding it from the grounds up. So much for the technical side of things.
On a more personal note - well, life moves on. There are many other things on my to-do list which just do not seem to happen due to the fact that, even after great time management, a day still has only 24 hours. And while being able to contribute to one of the few remaining KLF websites was a priviledge at first, it slowly has become a duty which seems to consume more and more time. Time which I would rather invest in different things nowadays.

There are some website projects waiting inside my mind to get out for... well, years. Things I know I would absolutely love to create and of which I hope will be interesting for others as well. But in order to get these things started, KLF ONLINE has to move down on my priority list.
This is no complete departure from this page, though. It just means that, as I wrote before, things have to be started from scratch again, not repeating the mistakes that have been made. A new version of KLF ONLINE will eventually grow and prosper again. Hey, someone has to do it, right? ;-)

This is not the end. There WILL BE further communications.
Cheers, Thomas

(c) 1999-2007 KLF ONLINE

What is your opinion?

More roses are blooming...

I cut all my roses back several weeks ago and now, after the rain, they have started to bloom again!

What is going on?

It has been a crazy few days and i am very tired. I wanted to get up at 12.30pm today but i just could not. Tomorrow i am taking my daughter and her friend back to Busch Gardens for a marathon roller coaster ridding cession!! IT should be fun!


What is your opinion?

Hurricane Dean Pictures...

Texas-Sized Powerful Hurricane Dean Hits Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula
Dean came ashore as a Category 5 hurricane, packing maximum sustained winds of 165 mph.
This image of Hurricane Dean was created with data from Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-12), which is operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The image was created on August 21 at 9:10 a.m. EDT (13:10 UTC) by NASA's GOES Project, located at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.


S118-E-07918 (18 Aug. 2007) --- A still photo close-up of the eye of Category 4 Hurricane Dean. Crewmembers on the Space Shuttle Endeavour captured this image around Noon CDT of Hurricane Dean in the Caribbean. At the time the shuttle and International Space Station passed overhead, the Category 4 storm was moving westerly at 17 mph nearing Jamaica carrying sustained winds of 150 mph.


S118-E-07920 (18 Aug. 2007) --- Crewmembers on the Space Shuttle Endeavour captured this image around Noon CDT of Hurricane Dean in the Caribbean. At the time the shuttle and International Space Station passed overhead, the Category 4 storm was moving westerly at 17 mph nearing Jamaica carrying sustained winds of 150 mph.


What is your opinion?

Leading edge out east of city

Heavy rain on I64 East.

Downtown on I95 North.

Contrast!

Storm Clouds looking back down 288 Northwest.

Swift Creek Reservoir of Genito road.

Storm is comming...

Foggy morning Near Southside Speedway.

Bit Torrent and Comcast

According to the latest reports, Comcast is hindering Bit Torrent traffic and doing packet shaping. Their method of "throttling" torrent traffic is sending RST packets.

These are the ports that will be affected: (Brian's BitTorrent FAQ and Guide)
Prior to version 3.2, BitTorrent by default uses ports in the range of 6881-6889. As of 3.2 and later, the range has been extended to 6881-6999. (These are all TCP ports, BitTorrent does not use UDP.)

Intrusion detection
"A standard transmission control protocol (TCP) connection is established by sending a SYN packet to the destination computer. If the destination is waiting for a connection on the specified port, it responds with a SYN/ACK packet. The initial sender replies with an ACK packet, and the connection is established. If the destination computer is not waiting for a connection on the specified port, it responds with an RST packet.
Most system logs do not log completed connections until the final ACK packet is received from the source. Sending an RST(Reset) packet instead of the final ACK results in the connection never actually being established."

INFO: Winsock TCP Connection Performance to Unused Ports
"Upon receiving the ACK/RST client from the target host, the client determines that there is indeed no service listening there. In the Microsoft Winsock implementation of TCP, a pending connection will keep attempting to issue SYN packets until a maximum retry value is reached (set in the registry, this value defaults to 3 extra times).

Since an ACK/RST was received from the target host, the TCP layer knows that the target host is indeed reachable and will not double the time-out value in the packet's IP header, as is standard during connection attempts with unacknowledged SYNs. Instead, the pending connection will wait for the base connection's time-out value and reissue another SYN packet to initiate a connection. As long as an ACK/RST packet from an unused port is received, the time-out value will not increase and the process will repeat until the maximum retry value is reached."

So perhaps a way around this is to not use the normal ports that are associated with regular Bit Torrent Protocols as I am sure that they are being monitored. If this is done to all ports then people will start to complain about their service being disrupted on a wide range scale.


What is your opinion?

Michael Vick will plead guilty to federal dogfighting conspiracy charges.

What a thug... He had it all, the power, the money, and the endorsements from his football career and he will loose most of it if not all of it over what? A dog fighting ring. A mere $20,000 dollars for literally millions of dollars from his athletic ability. He could have been a force for good in these times with all that he did do for the community, but the thug came out and ruined everything. Perhaps in time, people will forget about the dogs and he will go back to professional sports and people will care more for what he can do instead of what he did…

This from the news today:
By Andy Jenks, NBC12 News
NFL star Michael Vick will plead guilty to federal dogfighting conspiracy charges. Word of the plea agreement came late Monday afternoon at the federal courthouse.Vick had almost nowhere to run. Three former co-defendants all pleaded guilty. Now Vick, the multimillion-dollar NFL superstar has been left with no choice but to admit to his role in illegal dogfighting.

Vick will plead guilty next week for participating in an illegal dogfighting conspiracy that began in 2001 at a home in Surry County. In a statement to the media, U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson confirmed the agreement but would not offer specifics.Published reports indicate that Vick will agree to a prison term of 18 to 36 months. The resurrection of his NFL career remains in question. The plea agreement means Vick knowingly and willfully funded and participated in Bad Newz Kennels and in the brutal killing of pit bulls that did not perform well in fights.

Word of Vick’s plea agreement comes following guilty pleas by three former co-defendants, all of whom implicated Vick in the illegal conspiracy.Calls to Vick’s attorneys and the U.S. Attorney’s office for comment were not immediately returned.The sentence that Vick will receive is not clear. That will be up to the judge later this year. The dogfighting charge he’ll plead guilty to carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.


What is your opinion?

More haze, I64 East

Hazy day

Mack: On Reporting Hurricanes

Thanks to Mack Hall for letting me publish this. My family as well as Mack Went through Rita and the Southeast Texas area was hit incredible and all you ever still hear about it Katrina…

Secret National Press Guide for Reporting Hurricanes

 

1.   Remember: hurricane reporting is always about Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans.

2.   If you simply can't avoid mentioning the fact that a hurricane destroyed large parts of Mexico, Texas, western Louisiana, or Mississippi, skip over it lightly and get back to talking about existential angst in New Orleans.

3.   Showing pictures of the dead in Jamaica is acceptable only if you make a New Orleans connection

4.   Employ lots and lots of hyperbole and personification: "Mother Nature's Fateful Wrath of Hell-Storm Dean Bearing Down on Doomed Island Leaving a Swath of Destruction in His Wake" is good. Also remember that storms are always poising, bearing down, aiming, plowing, blasting, raking, tracking, thrashing, lashing, slashing, slamming, churning, and cutting swaths (whatever a swath is). Be sure to talk about people bearing brunts, which they never otherwise bear (and just what is a brunt, anyway, and why must it be borne?). Oh, yeah – say that every bit of litter looks like a war zone. War zone sounds cool, though no one who has ever been in a war says it.

5.   Never, never, never publish a photograph of a lineman working to restore electricity, of a fireman rescuing folks from floods, or of a police officer patrolling in 100+ heat; instead, show a picture of some guy squatting in the gutter and playing a saxophone or harmonica. Use an artsy sepia filter for this.

6.   Always imply that evil President Bush is responsible for any scene of sorrow. After all, we never had hurricanes until the bad man seized power through the machinations of his evil elves. And while blaming global warming for this mess we don't need to mention that President Clinton did not sign the Kyoto Protocols.

7.   When interviewing His Honor Mayor Negin of New Orleans, never reveal that the interview is in the safety of his getaway home near Dallas.

8.   FEMA trailers are all about the preservatives (found in all new wood products, all new furniture, and all new carpets, but we don't mention that, okay?). Never suggest that the residents might want to show a little gratitude for having a place to live and might want to clean up after themselves.

9.   Never interview positive individuals who are repairing and cleaning and solving problems on their own. Find the professional victims; they have the time to indulge you, they're much better actors, and they enjoy posturing for the cameras.

10.                Always find some whining twit with a baby but with no diapers, no baby food, and no formula to complain loudly that "(President) Bush shoulda been better prepared for this! This is ridiculous! This is ridiculous!" Never suggest that, with almost two weeks of warnings she might have made some effort herself.

11.                Fill in dead air time with the usual babble about global warming. Don't go with science or history here, go with populist mythologies. Global warming is real (ignore the fact that in this hemisphere it's summer, and don't even think about the people freezing to death in Argentina), and is caused by the evil middle classes owning their own homes and driving cars and working for a living.

12.                If you can't avoid showing those dramatic water rescues in Oklahoma, don't forget the New Orleans tie-in.

13.                Never, ever speak the R*** word. There was no hurricane in East Texas / western Louisiana which took out an area the size of England.

14.                When you assign some idiot to stand in the wind and rain of a hurricane, remind him to say things like "This must be a little bit of what Hurricane Katrina was like."

15.                My fellow journalists, our reporting on The End of The World,Y2K, and Hurricane Katrina (genuflect at this point) was too, too restrained. Let's go out there and go with YooToob and MeMeMeSpace journalistic passion with the hurricanes! Darn the facts! Grab those cliches' and stereotypes!

16.                After you read this, make three copies on your Blueberry and eat the original while kneeling before your Dan Rather ikon.

 

-30-

Our loyalty is due not to our species but to God.

-- C. S. Lewis

Over The James River on 895 to 150 interchange

This is looking Northwest from the 895/150 interchange that is over the James River and Interstate 95. If you look into the picture, you will see Downtown Richmond.

Powerline Workers...

What is your opinion?

I have been an Electrician for over 11 years and i have never watched or scene anything like this. I have heard that in Vermont the power company workers will land a bucket and use two of the line to support it, but never anything like this.

Southpoint Mall Durham NC