Linux on a used cash register, part deux. Had quite a bit of mail about it, too. Seems there's quite a few folks that have old registers and want to use them with non-Windows (or non-SCO, AIX, whatever).

It's sad that I have to tell those guys that I never finished that point-of-sale software thing I started, and that the old cash register has been doing triple duty as a web server, remote login server, and weather station.

My work on getting the led-on-a-stick™ has been well-received, however. I've already sent out two tarballs of sample code.

I saw this picture on one of the aliens prop-making web boards I've been frequenting lately. The dude's using his kid as a host! For making tiny little fuzzy aliens!

For some reason, I can't stop chuckling at this. And I know this isn't going to come out like I mean it, but it sort of makes me want to be a father even more than I already do.

Recently, Hurricane Electric (where I and many other people I know) get hosting sent out an email asking people to turn off a feature they offered called "email wildcarding". In a nutshell, email wildcarding is where any address at a domain which is not already spoken for goes to one catch-all address. I use it dozens of times daily in order to weed out spam. For instance, when I buy something at Fry's online store, I always use ''. When I buy from Amazon, I use ''. That might seem like a bizarre scheme, but I can't tell you how may "throwaway" addresses I've got permanently blackholed because some online retailer didn't live up to their bogus privacy statement.

So when HE said that I have to turn that feature off, I was annoyed. It was one of the reasons I liked HE so much. And I use it a lot. But apprently spammers have been finding and using catch-all domains in their spam campaigns.

What they do is have their spamming software generate random addresses at example.com, and then go hit that domain's mail server to see if it'll bounce. When it doesn't, they use that address @example.com on a few dozen spams as the reply-to address. Which means when someone sends the spammers a nastygram reply or the spam email bounces, the person with the catch-all domain gets the reply. Lately, I've been getting around 500-600 bounces and replies per day. I can see why the HE tech was saying that spammers are causing the server load to get too high. My annoyance level has been high. So far, procmail filtering means I don't get to see many of these emails.

However, using procmail isn't the best solution. Turning off wildcarding is. Then the spammers will eventually find out that there's nobody home, and that means the target of their spams probably won't accept their email. I'm all for hurting spammers, even if it means a little hurt for me. (Truth be told, I'm all for the death penalty for spammers, but that's another post. Or a previous one. I forget.)

Anyway, what you have to do if you have an HE account is get all the addresses you want to use (or have used, actually) into your aliases file, pointing to your main account address. The problem is that remembering all them is near to impossible. So I wrote a small perl script that went through all 150+ MB of email I've received in the last five years and found all the addresses that I'd need to add to the aliases file. The script is right here.

Put that in your home directory, make it executable, and then run it. It'll tell you what it needs. Once you have the list, go through it and add whatever you want to your .virtualmail file, then you can turn off wildcarding. You're good to go. Unless you want to make up any new throwaway address, that is. HE only updates their aliases once every three hours, so if you need one, you'll have to know that in advance...

Check this Russian motorcycle out. Does't that look funner than hell?

Before the Soviets went to war with Germany in WWII, they decided they needed an offical motorcycle for their armed forces. They studied various designs, and finally settled on the BMW R71. They nabbed a few examples of the motorcycle and completely reverse-engineered them (much like they did with the B-29 Superfortress). And they've been making them ever since.

I don't think there's a way in which one could ride on of these without looking completely goofy, but I also don't think that would stop me. If past history is any indicator, the risk of being a dork hasn't really been as an effective deterrent for me as it should have been.

I have this feeling that if I get into a mid-life crisis, it's going to be really, really bad. Did you know that you can buy an armored personnel carrier over the Internet? Talk about your ultimate camper...

In case you wanted to know more about this guy who dresses up as Elvis imitating a stormtropper, you're in luck. He has his own web site.

The world needs Elvistrooper, I think. More than people realize. In fact, I believe I just found my write-in presidential vote.