James Galvin

No matter how many times I watch this scene it doesn’t get old. The way Pappy O’Daniel and Junior look in opposite directions… reminds me of The Big Lebowski!

A post on Irish Linux Users’ Group awhile ago linked to this boards.ie thread about a major weakness in the way the default WEP key for your Netopia is generated. The WEP key is formed from the serial number of the router and some Jimi Hendrix lyrics. That’s fair enough you might think, because nobody knows your serial number, right? For some reason, the Eircom SSID is also generated from the serial number in such a way that, given the SSID, you can easily find out the serial number, and hence the WEP key. The process has already been automated via an Eircom WEP key generator. I haven’t tried it myself, but one ILUGer has already reported that it works.

Some people will point out that WEP hardly gives much protection to begin with, since it can be cracked so easily and quickly by someone who knows what they’re doing. But now, even the laziest kid on the street can hack into your network without ever having to worry about command prompts or aircrack-ngs. Eircom broadband users would be wise to change their SSID from the default, and to switch to WPA encryption while you’re at it. (Surf to 192.168.1.254 and it’s in the options there somewhere…)

Update: I removed the link to s4dd’s site with the WEP key generator. There’s no point brushing stuff like this under the carpet, I think it is important to raise awareness about this, but at the same time I don’t want to be responsible for anyone stealing your email.

Don’t forget to delete all those 2 year old plugins before you upgrade!

It’s that time of the year again - time to vote for your buddies in the Net Visionary Awards. The question on everybody’s lips: “How do Jacobs get the fig” “Whom should I vote for in all of those other categories?”. Even the all-knowing Michele is struggling with that one.

As for the “Best Online Banking Service”, Bank of Ireland’s 365 Online is the only one I’ve used and it is not quite painfully bad, so that’s a no-brainer. Congrats, BOI.

In the web designer category, it has to be Darren Murphy, because he’s the only one who links to me on his blog. A close second-place goes to Alan, because I’ve actually seen some of the work he’s done and it’s very good.

The real decision now is, do I randomly select my votes in the other categories, or do I pick the guy with the funniest name? Now who said anything about this being a popularity contest?

MAXroam has launched today - congrats to Pat and Cubic Telecom.

I have seen other travel SIM services. Why is MAXroam better?

The common method for all “alternative roaming” SIM’s is to originate their service in somewhere like Latvia, Estonia or Liechtenstein, or via a UK-based toll-free phone number. This approach doesn’t work very well. We know because our first product “Roam4Free” used this method.

The problem is that people have to call a strange country code just to call you. It just isn’t intuitive and it isn’t user-friendly. With MAXroam we have made the service work as you would expect plus we’ve added a lot of new features that you will have never seen before.

Looks like a very useful product. A nice feature is that you can add up to 50 different phone numbers on the one SIM card. Only downside for me is the minor hassle of having to unlock my old phone and set this up. I would never admit this, but I’d sooner pay €150 to get the MAXroam SIM bundled with a new phone.

Apple has the trailer for the Coen Brothers’ upcoming release: No Country for Old Men. I have been looking forward to this for a long time. For what it’s worth, Ebert saw it and he says it’s perfect.

Damien has a fairly thorough rant about online advertising. Covers just about everything, from the ugliness of Google Ads to the deception of Pay Per Post (that’s these guys).

I always had similar feelings about advertising on blogs… I don’t have a problem with other people who do it, but I never would have considered baiting my users with spammy links on this site in return for few quid a week. I changed my tune this summer as I was consistently getting over 1000 unique visits each day - nearly all of which were search referrals landing on a couple of posts I made a over year ago about the RPG “Oblivion”. Some of the search terms were bordering on disturbing! Just as an experiment, I tacked Google ads on three old posts that were getting hit a lot by the search engines - in a couple of weeks I made enough for a few months hosting. I will admit, the temptation is there to do some more prominent advertising. This is effectively free money.

Evil Angel: Internet ads are so common these days, is anyone really inconvenienced by an oul banner or two?

Good Angel: Don’t listen to him. Would you try to sell stuff to your friends down in the pub?

Well, Good Angel, now that you mention it… I probably would. Don’t worry just yet, I’m not likely to start bombarding you all with animated smileyface banners just yet. The bulk of my traffic still comes from people searching for Night Elf porn, and it would not be worth fiddling with the layout just to claw in the extra $0.07 a week.

New York to Shannon: after a series of miserable flights with the disastrous Delta, my luck had finally changed. No matter how many times I checked my boarding pass and the seat number, and the boarding pass, and the seat number, it remained the same: Seat 3A. I thought back to the check-in at Raleigh Durham earlier that morning, the special treatment I got. Ushered out of the queue, my passport and luggage was taken from me by a nice person who “took care of everything”. At the time I thought I had been singled out for security reasons, but now I see it was just great service.

Reclining in my extra spacious seat, I was resigned to the expectation that a flight attendant would be along shortly to rectify their mistake. In preparation for my eviction, I opened the bag of free stuff so that at least I wouldn’t return to coach empty-handed.

A great sense of victory flooded through me when the cabin doors closed; victory over all the rabble piled on top of each other in the adjacent cabin. Instinctively, I hid my John Grisham novel (lucky to have also brought some Russian literature on the flight with me) and turned to greet my comrades in rows 1 to 6. Like old friends, we discussed yachts and the Hamptons, and make jokes about currency markets. All the while smugly conscious of the furious envy being directed at the back of our heads by a herd of stackable livestock.

Just as we started moving, the crew woke up to the fact that half the warning lights on the plane were lit. We were assured that it was not a problem, just a minor electrical fault. The pilot was a nice guy, but talked too much. He told us that this was a new plane that Delta just bought off American, so they didn’t really know how it worked. That was comforting.

After about an hour with some maintenance guys, the pilot declared that it would be safe to ignore the warning lights, because they weren’t that important anyway. Some people were unsettled by this decision - I was happy just to get moving at this stage. But I guess the pilot was overruled by the ground staff, because an hour later we had gone nowhere.

Seated at the front of the plane, I watched and listened as the pilot and the maintenance guys bungled around tried to figure out what to do. I could hardly believe it when I realised that the extent of their troubleshooting was to reboot the plane. It seems like tech support on an airplane is no different to anywhere else. Unsurprisingly, the reboot changed nothing.

The pilot opted to pass the time by chatting on the intercom.

“Funny story: A Nepalese airline had similar trouble last week - they sacrificed two goats and the problem was resolved.”

No laughs. Some Americans looked at each other, wondering if they should be offended. I waited for the punch-line.

“Unfortunately, Delta don’t stock goats!”

Still no laughs. The pilot should have introduced it as an interesting story, rather than a funny one, because it actually did happen. Unfortunately, half the plane thought the guy was was making racist joke, while the other half wanted to know exactly what part of cruelty to animals he thought was funny.

I turned to my new business class buddies and smugly asked, “Why don’t they sacrifice a few of those goats in the cabin behind us?” We all chuckled among ourselves, secure in the knowledge that the aforementioned passengers in economy class could not have heard us over the din of crying babies and engine noises that would accompany them for the duration of their flight.

A moment of panic struck me as I wondered: what if we had to change planes? Could I insist on remaining in business class? My Dunnes Stores jeans would surely let me down. In the end, everything turned out OK. We took off nearly four hours after scheduled departure time, which meant that I had to miss BarCamp Galway, unfortunately. I probably would have been knackered anyway, although I did sleep soundly on the flight (naturally). I’m glad to see that the videos and slides are online - fair play to whomever is responsible for that. Sounds like I missed out on a lot of worthwhile events in Ireland over the past couple of weeks - at least I can look forward to Future of Web Apps in London. Will have to brush up on my Web 2.0 speak.