2009 July « More shameless remarks by Larko

Out of Twitter

Tuesday, July 28, 2009 at 23:30 | Posted in internet, web 2.0. | 2 Comments
Tags: security, twitter

I appriciate that Twitter is concerned of my security but this is a bit too much of the good stuff. Locking me out of my account does not help me at all, neither does it prevent any unauthorised usage of my account. On the contrary, it makes things worse because as long as I have no access to my account, I am unable to make sure that nobody else has that access.

What happened was that I temporarily granted access to my account to a third party application. As soon as that app had done what it was supposed to, I cancelled the access and changed my Twitter password, just to be on the safe side. What I failed to observe was that when I changed my password in the web interface I had TweetDeck running all the time and I did not come to think that I needed to change the password there as well. Hence, TweetDeck kept trying to access my account using the old password and naturally failed.

Twitter apparently took this as an unauthorized attempt to crack my account. But rather than letting me update the password in TweetDeck they chose to lock me out in both TweetDeck and web interface. Security is fine but I wonder what the point in this action might be and how exactly is it going to increase my security.

Edit: Looks like I have my access back. I still honestly do not understand why it was necessary to keep me out for a couple of hours.

Not too impatient

Thursday, July 23, 2009 at 19:34 | Posted in web tests | 4 Comments

This test says that I am patient enough. At least I had the patience to take it although I do indeed not like to be tested on such matters. Come to think of it, the description of my patience level is pretty accurate.

You Are Patient Enough

In most cases, you are patient enough to keep it together.

You may feel impatient on the inside, but you don’t usually let it show.

However, if you’re made to wait for too long, you will usually crack.

You’re only human, after all. You don’t like for your patience to be tested.

Are You Impatient?

Parliamentary dispute

Wednesday, July 22, 2009 at 19:57 | Posted in Politics | Leave a comment

Members of the South Korean Parliament apparently had some procedural differences of opinion while debating and voting on a disputed media bill. Also a way to make the parliamentary disputes more attractive and understandable for the voters.

via @teemulehtinen

Beware Dubliners!

Monday, July 20, 2009 at 17:09 | Posted in web 2.0. | 2 Comments

I just made this silly test which suggests that I should be living in Dublin although the whole of Ireland has so far been spared from my presence. I am not sure whether to comply or not but I guess the good people of Dublin have herewith been fairly warned.

These boys seem to have a strong opinion about the matter, though:

You Belong in Dublin

Friendly and down to earth, you want to enjoy Europe without snobbery or pretensions.

You’re the perfect person to go wild on a pub crawl… or enjoy a quiet bike ride through the old part of town.

What European City Do You Belong In?

I am kicking Tagged

Sunday, July 19, 2009 at 2:01 | Posted in internet, spam | Leave a comment
Tags: social networks, tagged

A couple of years ago I received an invitation from a friend to join Tagged. I was not very much for increasing my social network activities at the time but I thought I could give it a chance and joined. Found a couple of other friends ahead but my Tagged contacts today are but a fraction of those in Facebook and Twitter. Besides, I have contact, and I mean real contact, with everybody listed as my friend in Tagged through several other channels but all I ever get through Tagged is a load of spam.

Not a day goes by without at least one e-mail notification of a spammy message through Tagged. On worse days, like today, there could be about 10-15 of them. Most of the time it appears to be sent by somebody who says they have “seen my profile and fallen in love”. The alleged senders would be young enough to be my daughters unless they in reality were robots.

The rest of the spam mail is what is generally called Nigerian scam letters. One such today was the last drop into my bowl of patience. On top of 10-15 “Afro-Asian love letters” I received “a solid business propotition” from somebody whose picture displayed an elderly American or European gentleman. They chose to address me as “My Dear”!

This was where I decided that enough is enough and I am quitting. I found the “cancel account” button in my account settings and pushed it with joy. Just to get this:

Well, I am happy to lose a profile that spam robots keep falling in love with. I have plenty of copies of the couple of photos I have ever uploaded and as I said, I have good and clean channels to keep in touch with the handful of Tagged friends I have. I even see some of them in person from time to time so they are not likely to be “permanently lost” if I hit the “Submit” button.

Which is what I did. Only to be encountered by a password prompt! Never ever have I been prompted to enter my password when I have reported those messages as spam (for little good, though) because I have never logged out and never bothered to delete their cookies. So now they insist that I enter my password when I want to have nothing more to do with them!

Of course I did not remember the password so I needed to take the trouble to search it. Not a big deal but still a last annoyance to get rid of Tagged. Having bravely entered my password they have the nerve to throw a survey at me:

I did not bother to tell what they could do to improve themselves. I spared that detail for this post: EAT DIRT! YOU ARE FIRED!

My Twitter behaviour

Friday, July 17, 2009 at 18:17 | Posted in web 2.0. | Leave a comment
Tags: tweetstats, twitter

Just had a look at my tweet stats. All sort of interesting or trivial statistics about my Twitter behaviour since last September presented in graphics. I picked a couple of interesting details to share.

This confirms what I already knew: I do not tweet on Thursdays between 9 and 10 p.m. The sauna steam would not be healthy for my laptop.

This proves that my sleeping hours spread evenly throughout the day but I am most likely to be awake on afternoons.

All days of the week are equal but those in the middle of the week are slightly more equal than others.

Statistically, the web interface is still my prime option but TweetDeck will soon catch up and pass by.

You can check your own Twitter stats (or those of anybody else, for that matter) here.

Turning the cups

Tuesday, July 7, 2009 at 9:31 | Posted in Not serious, USA | Leave a comment
Tags: mexico

What about turning the cups upside down? According to Onion, Mexico is building a border wall to “keep the American assholes out”. Hilarious.

via @olevvaher

more about “”, posted with vodpod

First ever North Korean beer ad

Saturday, July 4, 2009 at 5:03 | Posted in beer | 4 Comments

Commercials are not what you would be likely to see in North Korean TV and never before has the Central Television run a beer ad. The clip is a piece of crap but I would definitely like to taste the beer.