Asylum-ET™

Over a good number of years now this blog has been a moved from one blog software to another and back then from this domain to that and so forth. Over the years much has been damaged due to abruptness in moving data and files because I never really cared anyway. I often write just for the sake of writing and nothing more. Over time what is left of the majority of past posts are going to be archived and then deleted and will no longer be public. The only posts that will be found here from herein will likely only be in relation to updates and events on asylum-et.com or anything of that nature.

I have been following some of the talk and Internet posts about the recent alleged outbreak of H1N1 otherwise known as Swine Flu or Avian Flu. I have been rather amazed that the lies and misleading information about the Swine Flu has spread faster than any virus ever did. We as human beings need to take a serious step back and look at the situation. Firstly I am willing to bet that the cases of H1N1 that have been found are nothing new and many people everywhere carry it. I am also willing to bet that this has gone on for a large number of years. The symptoms are the same as any other flu and if treated right away the infected would be just fine which goes for all flu viruses that we have seen.

The only reason we are seeing so many accounts of H1N1 is that we are now targeting that strand specifically so of course the numbers of infected people is going to climb as we never bothered before to determine what type of flu someone had, we just treated it as the flu and moved on.

I believe the number of deaths that have been seen in Mexico as apposed to the lack of deaths from it everywhere else is only due to a lack of proper health care and other failing conditions such as tainted water supplies. I am not suggesting that water is how people are contracting Swine Flu but I am suggesting that drinking already tainted water only attributes to the bodies immune system not being able to tackle the virus as it would normally.

There have also been raging stories about hundreds and even thousands dead from H1N1 but seriously that is not the case. There were 20 something in Mexico that died from H1N1 and the rest are not substantiated one way or the other. Back in 1976 there was such a hysteria over the Swine Flu that the US government started mandatory inoculations which resulted in further complications and deaths that where not necessary. I feel that this does not merit to be called an outbreak or epidemic at all as apposed to something like the HIV virus is a global epidemic. When I can ask any one of you to name 2 people that you know who have H1N1 and you do than I would consider it a serious problem but I can guarantee only 1 in every 1000 readers I have will know only 1 person if that.

I have seen accusations against the government ranging from population control to trying to use it as a test to see how fast people react and what their reaction is while the government monitors things like twitter and the like. I have yet to see any hard fact or even any sources revealed in regard to any of this so I view it all as propaganda and fear mongering. We as the people of the world need to grow up and stop spreading lies and nonsense. Take a little time to think about things before you go run off at the mouth next time. Check your facts, show your sources, and mainly be responsible for your actions otherwise get yourself signed up to go on Jerry Springer because that is the place for that type of thing.

On a final note, let this Swine Flu be a message to us all that we need to take care of ourselves. Wash our hands frequently, prepare our food properly, know the source of our food, eat properly and exercise often. These are all things that will help you to overcome illness.

I am not to be considered an accurate source of information on this as I am not a doctor or scientist. I am only statig my opinions and common sense. Please when seeing or reading anything check things out for yourself before believing any of it.

Bless you all.

Rev. B

I have been using the Google Chrome browser more often lately because it is just so much faster than Firefox or IE. With this has come some serious set backs though when it comes to time.

I would think that with the speed increase in the way pages load and how quick the browser itself opens would be a good thing and it is but not at a sacrifice of very important features.

I use pretty much all of the google command options such as site: link: cache: related: and define:. There are others as well but you get the idea. So anyway I use these rather often to save time. I type them right into my address bar on FF and all is well. Now I try any of these on Chrome and it just does a redirect to my iGoogle page and then I have to type everything again into the search box on the page. At least if the address bar is not going to work like other browsers in this area the least they could do is populate the iGoogle pages search box with the query you just typed in your address bar.

I do like the browser a great deal. I would have to say that it is geared towards web developers more than it is the web user and being that it is this way I think the features a web developer uses most often that are Googles features in the first place should/would be included in their own browser don’t you?

Recently I downloaded Google’s attempt at a web browser. For the most part it is impressive. It seems to handle css rather well. I would compare it to using firefox. It does not suffer the typical issues of the IE variations out there, it does not suffer the same issues that Apple’s Safari browser has with redirects or other header calls. Overall it is well thought out and works great. More or less it is like they stole all the good ideas from the leading browsers and put it all together into a mash that they call Chrome. One issue I have noticed so far is rather trivial but could be viewed as a bug. I have included a little image to show the one and only issue I see so far.

There is a red box I have drawn in the area where an input box would normally be. The fact that they do not show the input box for a file upload is right on since it is not a user editable field anyway but the one thing that is a bit off is that if you click your mouse anywhere in the area that the input field would have been then it is as though you clicked the “Choose File” button. As I said I don’t know if this should be considered a bug but it could be an annoyance anyway.

Google Chrome Upload Field

Rather disappointed with the result of yesterdays upgrade to SP3 for Windows XP. I use a notepad replacement called metapad. I actually replace notepad.exe with it. That is “ALL� instances of it. This is done within micro seconds of each other so windows doesn’t realize it is being done until the files that windows would use to replace the alleged corrupt notepad with have been replaced so the one that appears corrupt is replaced with what is actually metapad. I have had windows XP pro installed for over 3 years now. My notepad replacement has never been an issue before.

Ok so with that said here I notice a problem right off the bat. Metapad has been replaced with notepad after the SP3 upgrade completed. No big deal right? Wrong. I start to overwrite the file(s) as I have done on many machines now for years and the second I right click on the file to copy it into the copy buffer for pasting into the 3 other folders exploder.exe crashes.

That was the first time I noticed it happen anyway. That was within minutes of having upgraded to SP3. Since then I would say every 1 out of 3 times I right click in a folder or on a file explorer crashes. It restarts itself right away but crashes. A few times I submitted the report windows generates. Maybe they will have it fixed in a day or two? We shall see.

It obviously has nothing to do with the fact that I replaced notepad, that much I do know. I am considering reverting back to SP2 if this keeps up though. I don’t care how many alleged security fixes SP3 takes care of because they are all useless if the shell can’t handle a right click.

I have since found that even ctrl + c to copy a file can trigger this explorer crash. After a day of fighting to keep windows exploder stable and free from crashes every few minutes I decided it was an incredible waste of precious time and money so I attempted to uninstall SP3 with the methods that Microsoft outlines for SP3 removal. The first two methods were a total bust. Tried to uninstall, just hung there for 2 hours at the very end. Killed the uninstaller process. Tried the second method to no avail with similar results. Tried the last method, System Restore. That worked like a charm and the crashing exploder is now gone. I am rather disapointed though that I have used XP for over 3 years and not once has explorer deserved to be titled exploder till now. Leave it to good Ole M$ to spoil a good thing.

There was once this website that tracked browser usage statistics and everyone linked to them and then they just went and disappeared :/ Oh well, it happens but when it does then what? Well I decided the other day that this information is still very useful when trying to develop a good website or to make additions to our users experience for with the current one. That evening I wrote a small application that uses an embeddable image that you place in your web page. The image lets us know which browser each visitor is using giving us a general idea of browsers that we want to make sure we have tested. It is also just interesting to follow people’s choice in browsers so it is really just that simple. If you would like to add to the statistics just embed an example image from below into one or all of your web pages and away we go.

You could also just link to the chart image on “one” of your webpages if you wanted. Either image tracks browser usage. or follow the examples below that show how to change the image color so that it can fit your websites theme. Color values are RGB 0-255. Be creative. We use it as a bullet in the footer of the asylum-et.com website.

(X)HTML


<a href=”http://asylum-et.com/browser.stats/”><img src=”http://asylum-et.com/image.png?r=255″ alt=”Browser Stats”/></a>
Or
<a href=”http://asylum-et.com/browser.stats/”><img src=”http://asylum-et.com/image.png?r=255&g=255″ alt=”Browser Stats”/></a>
Or
<a href=”http://asylum-et.com/browser.stats/”><img src=”http://asylum-et.com/image.png?r=255&g=255&b=255″ alt=”Browser Stats”/></a>


HTML


<img src=”http://asylum-et.com/image.png?r=0&g=0&b=255″ alt=”Browser Stats”>


Just recently the Asylum-ET website completed it’s second phase as we added the ability for unsigned bands and artists to register for a free account so they can get started on creating their personal band page as well as publishing their music online. The website offers mp3 audio and flv video players for bands as well as Band Logs or as we refer to them Blogs for each of the bands to embed in their webpage so they may keep their fan base up to date on upcoming events, shows and album releases just to name a few things.

Unlike most labels, here at Asylum-ET, unsolicited demo albums and unsigned bands are most welcome here. If you are an artist or band Join us today. We want to hear your music and I know there are thousands more just like us!

Do you have a favorite local band? Let them know to stop by and sign up for a free account so you can join their online fan club. Fans can sign up here.

Warning: Probably nothing new to you since this is what I often do but this is a bit of a rant. Once again I find myself aggravated with our ignorance as a so-called advanced species. Recently there have been rumors of counterfeit money being circulated in the city that I live in. Nothing new there I suppose but the thing that I now find funny is the fact that a real counterfeit bill “I know that is sort of a oxy moron but anyway� a real counterfeit bill would cost upwards of twenty dollars to print, being that the ink is multi-colored, there are watermarks, a metal strip, the paper is not a normal every day stock made from wood but rather is a cloth fiber and that is not even to mention that I don’t know where the heck you think you could get plates or a press to print “real counterfeit bills�.

I know twenty dollars per bill is a bit steep but I am considering the fact that the person whom printed these bills is someone I knew from school and I know would not be able to afford it to cost any less than that since they would have had to of bought a very considerable amount of these materials to bring the cost per bill down and this well, just is not plausible.

With that said comes the real funny part. There are counterfeit one-dollar bills being passed around. I find this extremely amusing because I see one of these so called counterfeit bills, for sure they are counterfeit in that they are not real but seriously if someone is so stupid to have accepted one of these incredibly obvious fakes well then they deserve to be out the money they were worth.

Some dumb twit used a damn color printer and scanner to make these. They are extremely obvious, they do not feel remotely close to a real bill, they do not look like real bills and it goes without saying they are very obviously not real bills, they have a yellowish color to the print hinting that the bill is a result of a scanned bill, the inks should be blues and greens mixed with red, not green with a yellow hue. I am not sure if the person who printed these bills should be on America’s dumbest criminals or if the people who have accepted them should be on a new show called America’s dumbest victims. Luckily for this store I was in, they were given this bill to post as apposed to accepting it.

The thing that brings this all up and spawned this post is that this convenience store I had been in. The clerk ran a counterfeit check pen across the 4 one-dollar bills I had paid with. I could do nothing more than laugh even though my amusement was not directed at her. The thing that got me was that this is just one more thing to cut into the bottom dollar of a business in more than one way. First you must buy these special markers and it will be allot since they are using them for every single bill. These markers cost around $3.50 a piece. Add that to your daily expenses or weekly dependant on your volume of sales. The next thing is now the incredible waste of time it is causing. Imagine a line with 15 people in it who just want to pay and get home but oh wait… Now you have to wait for each and every bill to be checked and I have just tried to pay for $85 in gas along with another $15 for a quick bite to eat and a drink. I sure do hope you are not the last person in that line. This is a serious joke. Train your employees. Not kidding, if it looks like a dog, smells like a dog and barks like a dog chances are pretty darned good that it is in fact a what?

Another thing that I must mention before going is that these so called counterfeit detector pens are nothing special. They use iodine to react with the starch used in paper made from wood, which then turns from brown to black to hint that it is counterfeit. These so called counterfeit detector pens would not hold up at all against a “real counterfeit bill� since a real counterfeiter would use a higher priced paper made from what? Surely not wood! I guess you can just be happy to know that the price to make a real counterfeit is just not economical. Now I wonder if you realize that the $1277.50 a year you are blowing on those stupid pens is also not very economical but teaching an employee what to look for… Priceless!

I do want to be clear though that I am not suggesting that we dumb down the checking for these bills but what I am suggesting is that we look at the cost and for what? If a counterfeit bill is passed at your store it is going to be passed with other bills that are legit in hopes that it would be overlooked. If it is such a good counterfeit that even a partially trained eye can’t tell then we end up with it in our deposit. The chance of us getting a frequent supply of these fakes is zero to none. We will find out it is counterfeit when the bank checks our deposits. The total we lose out would be what, a few dollars. Weigh that against the aforementioned yearly cost, or heck even one month’s cost. Was it worth it or is it worth it to simply train your employees. Now this does nothing to stop the bills from passing hands but there is much to be done there as well that does not involve you spending more money or wasting precious time. You know when the bill was passed within a maximum of what 12 or maybe even 16 hours. You have surveillance tapes. You turn in the appropriate tapes to the police and then you go about your normal business. A few cops watch the tape(s). Weed out the ones who pass credit/checks as well as those who don’t pass a bill of the amount the fakes were and out of the 200 customers you have 20 suspects. Process of elimination is what this is called right? It works so use it!

The person who printed these bills is in prison now and I don’t envision parole any time soon. I do know this can happen any time and anywhere so as I mentioned before train your employees to spot fakes. If you can’t feel or see that it’s fake then your little pen just is not going to do the trick anyway.

I will now give a list of things I look for when accepting money. Bills $20 and higher will have a metal band in the left side, have obvious layers of colors with individual lines forming patterns in them that you can actually feel as raised edges on the surface. Newer bills stick together annoyingly due to these raised edges. Older bills are not as detectable with this method in which is equally helpful. If a bill is crumpled, folded many times and so on yet still has stiffness it is an obvious fake. Take a piece of printer paper and run an alignment test on it with a laser printer. Cut the paper in four. Take that printed pieces of paper and fold and crunch them for a bit randomly. Unfold and straighten them using a table to flatten them out even. Hand them to your employees and have them feel the paper and how stiff it still is. This is due to the starch used to make the paper. Cloth fibers are just not like this.

Another thing you will want to do is to take some of the printed test paper and a few authentic new and old bills and put them together. Rub them over each other. Feel the difference? The concept here is that I assume that you still count the money and therefore must actually touch it so I implore you to encourage your employees to use just two of their senses being site and touch while counting and add a little actual thought to the process. These are all things we should be doing anyway and the government has given us all these nice little tweaks to our currency for just this purpose so why then are we not using them? I would still suggest using your pens on higher valued bills but checking every single bill regardless of its value is seriously flawed. Why not just have a dispenser that requires a credit card only and be done with it if you can’t get a decent employee. I’ll build you such a machine for as little as 33 x my est. 1-year cost for those pens. You pay a single employee that within 1 to 2 years. Ponder on those thoughts… Comment on it if you want. Maybe give us a few tips back that you would use to spot a facsimile/fake.

This was the first time we have got involved in pyrotechnics in a long time since permits, location and firemen are all needed for a show like that. This time everything fell right into place perfectly. We photographed and filmed the fireworks display and I have put it together into a nice little video for you all to check out. Maybe the next time we do something like this we will have it a little more planned out but this was a pretty spectacular show for a birthday party. The complete show took almost 4 Gigabytes of video and 50 Megabytes in JPEG still images before being edited to fit the time of one audio track.
Editing of the audio, video, images and rendering took close to 4 hours. Hope you enjoy, I know we did but next time I am wearing a hardhat… I got rocked in the head with a spent casing wizzing out of the sky as I stood a few hundred feet below the launch site filming. No worries, luckily it was nothing serious. Gave me a slight headache for a few Before I show the video though I must stress that this was done with permits, firemen and proper location. Do not try to do this yourself unless you know what you are doing, hired professionals or whatever it takes to make sure you are safe and have acquired proper permits, etc. I have known professionals who knew what they were doing that have lost body parts or worse due to slight oversight and or slips so now with that said enjoy the video.