iMatt :: The Blog of Matt Clare

I can’t say why, but I’m always concerned with what’s over my shoulder — and it’s not just because it’s bad feng shui to sit facing away from the door.

To address this concern I built a simple laptop rearview mirror that will mount on the top of almost all LCD screens. All you need are these two basic parts available from Canadian Tire and many other places. The best part is you’ll have one for each side of your laptop as both components come in pairs.

1. Toolholders (as pictured below, part 61-3936-0, SKU 3069917459)
2. Pair of convex mirrors (found in the automotive section – choose your size – the ones that pivot are the best option)

Remove the wax paper from back of one of the mirrors and stick it to the side of the Toolholder. You may want to also remove the screw from the Toolholder (save it for your collection ) The rearview mirror should now clip onto your screen. Feel free to make another one.

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Send me a message via the via the “Send a Message ASAP” link found on my home page mattclare.ca.

I’ve had enough!

I’ve had enough of ‘bots posting spam as comments on my blog!

Today while trying to remove hundreds of items of comment spam I removed at least four comments I really wish I still had. Of course, it was to be a quick job and I didn’t do a backup before hand.

It’s not the first time either, I lost all the comments from the Billy Corgan and K-OS concerts because I mistakenly deleted them. Too much comment spam makes the comment section of a blog unreadable and blog comments are important. Blog comments are what keep people blogging about things they know nothing about in check! ….that and there’s a community aspect to it or something.

For those of you who don’t have a blog, especially a wordpress blog, you probably aren’t familiar with comment spam — though you may have seen it. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, most people who read blogs don’t leave comments about poker, debut consolidation, and pron. Many do leave comments about how much they like the blog, but they tend not leave links to poker, debut consolidation, and pron with those comments.

Where is this all coming from?

‘Bots are what all these comments about poker, debut consolidation, and pron are what are coming from. ‘Bot is short for robot. As I recently explained during an interview for a local paper about this blog, ‘bots are computers programmed to scower the internet for blogs and to post comments with links back to their sites. Comment spam is created to get the word out about their site and to increase the value Google assigns to it. The worst part is it’s very easy to create a ‘bot and one ‘bot can make hundreds of posts a second. Many viruses are designed to turn PCs into Spam ‘bots.
Read more... (650 words, estimated 2:36 mins reading time)

This afternoon I watched what I thought was shaping up to be a more mundane opening ceremony than Athens: Opera and ballet and no flying land-forms or giant temporary lakes. But then I heard the greatest thing I’ve heard all week.

As the modern dancers left the stage out of the floor appeared the Scuderia Ferarri’s pit crew placing tires on an F1 car driven by test driver Luca Badoer. The car appears to be the 2005 F2005 chassis painted in Olympic colours.

The team lowered Luca down to the floor and he slowly drove the car out to the main stage, set the brake bias to the front and did a number of screaming doughnuts filling the stadium with sound and smoke. I think the whole segment of the ceremony lasted about a minute, but I was jumping up and down with the TV at full volume for the whole thing. It was capped off with a large fireworks display that ringed the stadium.

The T in FIAT stands for Torino. FIAT currently own Ferrari which is also based in Italy in Maranello.

From the nose of the original F2005 car

I recorded (well, MythTV’d) FOX’s 24 and watched it Tuesday night. It’s amazing what you notice when you can pause and rewind TV: I thought I saw John McCain deliver a docket to the conference room in CTU. A quick rewind made me even more certain. I Google’d it and AZCentral.com and the Hill News confirm it. The Hill News pointed out that torture is often employed in 24 and John McCain is not only the lead advocate in the US Senate against torture, but he was tortured himself in Vietnam. In any case it was a good McCameo.

You haven’t seen a real street DJ until you’ve seen this.

www.zippyvideos.com/3328389063290496/eb_proxfade_400_225_web/original

“I wish I knew how to quit you.”

www.mightymcpilgrim.com/films/brokemac/