However, a few months ago my inbox began to fill, and by fill I mean become completely inundated with spam. I have to give Google praise in that most of the spam gets filtered out, but I now have to clear my trash of over 1000 unsolicited e-mails daily. Maybe six out of those thousand ever makes it to my inbox, but this sudden influx was enough to make me wonder where it was coming from.

A simple search for my e-mail address on Google brought up four results. One of the results linked me back to a post I made in a Google Group. Unbeknownst to me this group happened to be a Usenet Newsgroup, a term that wouldn’t have raised any red flags for me. It’s just one of the oldest community systems on the Internet right?

When I joined these communities a year ago and began offering helpful tips and answers topics concerning Adobe Photoshop, CSS, and web design everything seemed merry and bright. I’d like to assume I would have noticed any particular warnings about my address’ potential abuse while posting, especially the likes of those displayed whenever you try to post something now. However, in my ignorance I continued to post.

Unfortunately, because I was creating this post through my gmail account, my full email address was used as the default author and any time you are communicating on a Usenet Newsgroup this information is freely traded amongst other users emails, message boards and a slew of other vehicles for transmitting the information. Essentially putting my precious address in a shop window for E-mail harvesters.

I soon realized that the other three results were just other message boards that picked up this particular Usenet group, displaying my information at multiple addresses.

I’m usually particularly savvy when it comes to protecting my address and I don’t recall seeing any warnings that this was a possibility. I only wanted to contribute to a community of designers. I’ll not-so-gladly take the blame. To make matters worse, somehow my address was used as the default username, so like a bonehead even where Google might have tried to protect me, I made myself openly vulnerable.

Moral to the story? Read the fine print…

The group you are posting to is a Usenet group. Messages posted to this group will make your email address visible to anyone on the Internet.
“2. What is a Usenet Newsgroup?

Usenet refers to the distributed online bulletin board system begun in 1979 at Duke University. Usenet users can post messages in newsgroups that can be read or contributed to by anyone with access to the Internet and special newsreader software. Over the years, the number of newsgroups has grown to the thousands, hosted all over the world and covering every conceivable topic.

Google Groups contains the world’s most comprehensive archive of postings to Usenet, dating back to 1981. Google Groups eliminates the need for newsreading software and lets you search this archive in the same way you would search HTML pages on the Internet. You can also use Google Groups to post your own comments to an existing Usenet newsgroup.“

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Is my email address visible on the web when I post to a group?
When your message is posted to a group, Google Groups masks your email address on the web to prevent automated computer programs from harvesting it for spamming purposes. When you see an email address in a message on the Google Groups webpages, it will look something like “add…@example.com” instead of “address@example.com.”

Please note, this masking only occurs on the web. If your message leaves Google Groups, your email address will be visible. Messages leave Google Groups in two ways:

• You post a message to a Google Group where members receive messages via email. Only the group members will see your email address.
• You post a message to a Usenet newsgroup. If you post to a Usenet newsgroup (not a Google Group), your message is sent to Usenet servers all over the world, some of which are controlled or used by spammers. Spammers extract the email addresses from these messages when they arrive on their servers.

Around the same time that I began studying at UB, blogging became popular and more accessible to the general public. Now here I am doing the same thing only I’m competing for an audience that is already very saturated with blogs. This has led me to refine my online goals.

I am a professional graphic designer and web developer. For all intensive purposes I am the Graphic Director and a partner at 360 Professional Services Group. Most of what I have learned about the industry has been self-taught. The closest thing I’ve had to a mentor was one professor at the University at Buffalo. The majority of my education was wasted on media studies that did not interest me, but were forced on me so that I could earn my degree.

Nonethless, having freelanced in the past and now being a part of a growing startup web development shop, I have accrued a great amount of experience with Photoshop, HTML, CSS, interface design, web standards, online trends and other related subjects that I’d love to share with you.

Expect future Photoshop tutorials and explanations into less commonly known features of the application. Expect CSS tutorials and instruction on how and why to implement it. Expect personal entries explaining the joys and frustrations I’ve come to know in the industry. I will share my experience as a relatively fresh designer with anyone else that finds themselves in the same situation or who would like to explore the field. I’ll probably ask just as many questions about the subject.

There may even be the occasional comment about video gaming, another passion of mine.  This might include fan-fiction, comics, critiques and strategies.

Of course comments are always encouraging and appreciated. I’ll do my best to reply to any future feedback!

On the flight to Boston I picked up one of the magazines that are always shoved in the back of the seat in front of you. Coincidently there was a multiple page article on Syracuse outlining everything from the nightlife in Armory Square to the future development of Destiny USA. Follow that link and take a look at some of their promo videos. It’s pretty funny how dramatic the marketing campaigns can be. You’d never know that a mall could alter your life in such amazing ways…

However, it wasn’t the article on Syracuse that got my full attention, it was an article titled “Next Stop: Earth Orbit”. I ended up coaxing Jen into letting me smuggle magazine into her baggage before we left the plane so that I could continue reading about the subject, even though later on I found out that taking the magazines is actually encouraged by the airline… Much like the Gideon Bible.

Several decades ago a novel by Aurthur C. Clarke sparked the imagination of many readers when he proposed the idea of a “Space Elevator” that could take ordinary people into space. Only eight years ago a physicist who hadn’t been exposed to the idea in Clarke’s book, took the concept very seriously and the research and competition to make the science fiction a reality has since taken off. There have been grants given for hundreds of thousands of dollars and competitions with rewards equal to that money held annually to further the technology. Today hundreds of scientists devote some time and effort to develop the technology so that construction on a space elevator can begin as soon as 2010.

The goal of a space elevator is to create an alternate method of transporting people or material into space. According to the article it costs $10,000 to transport one pound of cargo into space by rocket. This expense has made it difficult for man to really stretch his space legs and all but a impossible for even above average civilians to share the experience. A significantly cheaper mode of transportation into space would give us access to an environment with unimaginable potential. As Arthur C. Clarke stated in an anology, “…If you had intelligent fish arguing about why they should go out on dry land, some bright young fish might have thought of many things but they would never have thought of fire, and I think that in space we will find things as useful as fire.”

There are several potential methods of creating a lift with the ability to reach into space. Two prominent concepts are a tower stabilized by a space fountain and a tether that a lift could attach to. The latter is what this article focused on. The technology includes an incredibly long strand of carbon nanotubes that would be anchored to earth and stretch 62,000 miles into space where it would be connected to a counterweight in geosynchronous orbit. Like swinging a ball on a string, centrifugal force would keep the tether taught, allowing for a transport to be attached which could then make the long climb into space. To give you a frame of reference, the circumference of the earth is around 25,000 miles so you can imagine how long this would take at slow speeds. For instance, at 120 mph it would still take 22 days to reach the end of the lift.

Once the transport broke the grip of earth’s gravity, ships could then be launched deeper into space, material could be off-loaded and used to build stations, telescopes and satellites could be released to explore deep-space, all at a fraction of the cost of conventional means and with significantly less danger involved. The scientific community hopes to have a functional elevator ready by 2020 with a cost of about $10 billion and is banking on advances in single walled carbon nanotube technology to make this fiction non-fiction. You can find out more about these concepts here!

I had an interesting conversation at Applebee’s with a friend of mine named John who just recently moved to Europe to work for a large oil company (whose name shall remain unsaid because it slips my mind at the moment). He shed some light on the industry and although he was only my age and fresh with experienced at best, he went on to explain the politics and players behind these companies that he has either tracked or been physically involved in and how they affect the globe. It’s these politics and players that the majority of the nay-sayers in America tend to target as the vampires and money mongers out to earn their penny with no care for the people or nations involved.

It’s rare that I get any rewarding conversation with the majority of those so eager to bad mouth, the oil industry and anyone involved. So I’m left believing their words are spoken mostly out of ignorance and a vain attempt to stand on an already crowded soapbox. After all, everyone knows the war in Iraq is over oil… Not that I would ever be proud to back a war that did turn out to be based on money and oil, but John shed some interesting light on the subject.

Imagine multiple countries, powerful enough to compete in the oil market all vying for the best oil fields in the world. If one doesn’t capitalize on the resource another will. Oil is probably second only to air in that we depend on it for so much of modern life. Whoever owns the oil makes the money. Whoever makes the money gains power and it’s this power that is inevitably being fought over. Maybe that sounds simplified or obvious, but to any Americans who are sitting comfy in this country, think twice before you criticize your leadership (regardless of how tactless he is) for spending so many resources in the Middle East right now.

His motives and those of the people around him may concern money and wealth, but you’re kidding yourself if you think those comforts don’t trickle down through society and land somewhere on your dinner plate, or in your dresser or in whatever it is you do to have fun.

Everything short of a Utopian society would result in the same situation we find ourselves in now. Wars over power and gain have always and will always be fought. Perhaps we discuss the nature of man some other time. It is the lesser of two evil courses that we are forced to accept. Fight fair, but still fight, or let loose the reigns that control who gains power and inevitably the choice to control those reigns again. Either way it seems someone gets caught in the middle. However, the extent to which damage is done should at the very least, be considered, which as life has shown us is beyond the priority of some of those vying for control.

If we are fighting a war over oil, but we are doing so less violently and with more control than the alternatives, then I’m thankful.

And share it he does in this post as he goes on to explain some interesting strings that you can type into Google in order to expose vulnerabilities that range from mild to serious.  I’ve spent some time playing with the many cameras that you can control.  For instance this one points at someones catamaran.  You can pan the camera and scan the waterfront or see across the river and into the city.  I’ve found cameras that face beaches and boardwalks and many campus cameras.  Leave a comment if you find anything interesting!

Here are a few strings you could try (careful with the last one, you could really mess someone’s website up):

• inurl:”viewerframe?mode=motion”
• intitle:”Live View / - AXIS”
• inurl:indexFrame.shtml “Axle Video Server”
• inurl:LvAppl intitle:liveapplet
• intitle:”WJ-NT104 Main”
• intitle:”anc-rz30 home”
• intitle:phpMyAdmin “Welcome to phpMyAdmin ***” “running on * as root@*”

After the party we drove out to New Hampshire to visit the Byrne’s new house. After a little guitar hero and the most incredible sweet pickled jalapeno peppers the brother on the right in that picture, the son of the brother in the center and I trekked through the unexplored woods of their new locale. I’ve gone three years now with the same cell phone. Not once have I lost it or had to replace it due to it breaking or malfunctioning. About ten seconds into our trek Steve, slips down a steep hill, grabs me (who is bare foot and balancing on rocks, dirt and sticks) and proceeds to drag me down the slope with him. Needless to say my three year record is broken and the cracks in my screen are slowly creeping across the entire screen.

That’s unfortunate timing too, seeing as how I thought my car would easily pass inspection (after I replaced the cracked windshield), only to be surprised by a $700-$800 grocery list of repairs necessary for it to pass. Now that’s nerve racking, with my wedding and honeymoon only two paychecks away… I’m about ready to run to Lowes and pick up some of the tools that I already have on our registry so that I can do the brakes myself.

I haven’t had my own kitchen in over a year so most of my implements of construction have been stowed away and sorely neglected. Finally that can change. Now that Jen and I have combined forces our small drawers and cupboards can barely contain the amount of gadgets, cutting-boards, cutlery and cooking vessels that we’ve accrued over the last 7 years of living away from home. That’s pretty scary considering our registry is stuffed with even more junk for the kitchen.

We’ll be renting this place for the next 9 months while we look for a house that we can buy. Were hoping to find something in a nice neighborhood and one that could use some minor updates. I look forward to investing in and fixing up my own place. I’ve already had some practice in our new cottage, clearing pipes, hooking up our washer and dryer and even mowing my own lawn, but I look forward to tearing down old nasty kitchen tile or landscaping a roughed up yard… I think its a little strange how after 7 years of not having to do the chores I eventually hated to do as a kid, I actually look forward to doing now.

I could use any wisdom that you might have in purchasing and owning a home. I know many of you who read this are far ahead of me in the game. Just leave me a note below!

Congratulations to Pete and Kerrie on their newborn baby boy! I got to see Logan last weekend at the hospital while he and his mother recovered from the labor. He is a beautiful boy at something like 7lbs 2oz, 22 inches. Pete, feel free to comment if that is incorrect : )

From this picture it looks like Logan is home safe and sound in his awesome nursery. Pete has hand painted Winnie the Pooh murals across three bedroom walls that I must say came out incredible. As I watched the work in progress a few months ago he revealed his pride and excitement for his new son. I gotta say I’m very proud myself.

• I got engaged, in fact were getting married in less than 3 months now.
• I’ve barely made any progress on my little zombie novel, apparently put off by the impressive writing of Max Brooks and his NYTimes best-seller World War Z. I still like my concept, but I’m going to have to focus a little harder on the story if I’m ever going to take it anywhere.
• Several movies have come out that I would have loved to review: Pirates of the Caribbean 3, Transformers, Harry Potter 5… And they were good/weird, fun/shallow, anticipated/fulfilling, in that order.
• Speaking of Harry Potter, the last book was released as I’m sure even the most technologically depraved Inuit in Alaska is aware. Perhaps I’ll have a guest entry from my lovely fiance once I’ve finished the book as she is such an avid fan of Harry that were he a real person, my first point in this list would probably not be a reality and her last name would be Potter. I’m sure she’d have interesting points to make.
• My slow-pitch softball team made it to game 1 in the play-offs again (which almost every team gets to participate in) and took a crushing loss. Our worst defensive game all season.
• Year 2 of the Williamsville Youth Dodgeball Tournament has doubled in size, with 28 junior high teams of 5+ players each and 12 Senior High teams vying for the cash prize at the end of August. I’ve been having fun on Wednesday nights calling the play-by-play’s and getting yelled at by 30 teens upset over what they thought was a horrible call.

That’s about it. You’re all caught up. The blog will continue to be a medley of topics invariably covering my favorite subjects such as, gaming, sports, entertainment, technology, faith, knot-tying, survival and zombies. The order certainly not reflecting any order of importance. I really do enjoy tying-knots…