A River Runs Through It

May 30, 2008

There’s something magic about living in Vancouver, and it’s easy to forget what an amazing place this is.

This morning I got up and took transit from North Vancouver to Richmond. One transfer and an hour later, I was sitting on the deck of Madsu at Skyline Marina on the Fraser River in Richmond.

I spent the next few hours motoring down the North Arm of the Fraser - enjoying a completely different aspect of Vancouver - one you forget is there when sitting in city traffic.

By the time I was off the river and into English Bay the sun decided to show up - and my trip over to Howe Sound and Horseshoe Bay was a delight.

So many different aspects to the city in one short day. From sitting on a bus in rush hour traffic to watching a bald eagle feast on a salmon. Gotta love BC.

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Guest blog post at Vidfest

May 6, 2008

I was asked if I’d do a guest blog post on the Vidfest site - the post is here.

I’m also moderating a session called Crowd Pleasers on crowd sourcing at Vidfest this year. That means I can’t see Eric McLuhan so I hope someone podcasts it. (OMG, our session is competing with MM’s son!)

Really looking forward to it and the rest of the festi-conference. It’s always sunny and hot during VidFest, and I figure that’s at least as accurate a weather forecast as we’ve had all year.

VidFest web site is here.

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Madsu’s mast

April 25, 2008

With the boom primed and ready for topcoat, I’v opted to prep the mast so I can paint both spars together.

With the experience of working on the boom under my belt, things are going much quicker on the mast. Madsu’s stick is 25 feet 2 inches long.

After filling some old screw holes I sanded the entire mast down to bare metal. Tomorrow I’ll etch, condition and prime.

As with the boom, the hardest work was in getting the hardware off the mast. I was pretty luck and got most of the fittings off with little trouble. I did have to drill out 3 of the 9 screws used to fasten a 1 inch T-track on the forward end of the mast. You can see the corrosion on the machine screws in the photo below, as well as the remains of the screws I drilled out.

Madsu’s standing rigging is now taking a break - I guess it’s ’sitting rigging’ for now.

I’m replacing the rope to wire halyards with all rope low stretch line. I’ve got a bit of work to do on the mast head fitting - there’s a new anchor light and windvane to attach, as well as swapping out the sheaves for the new halyards.

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Super Smash March

April 18, 2008

Nintendo is once again making a huge impact on the game market. Their Wii platform is a huge success and so is their portable DS platform. Both are outselling Sony’s playstation and XBox 360 by more than 2 to 1.

Despite a slow economy in the US, game platform sales are booming. The latest figures from NPD Group show that with Wii and DS, Nintendo owns more than half the total platform sales market:

Nintendo’s riding a huge wave of popularity with the recent release of Super Smash Bros. I wrote about this a while ago - March sales figures show Super Smash Bros. Brawl selling 2.7 million copies in March alone. Ars Technica puts that into perspective:

Nintendo sold a copy of Super Smash Bros. to 31 percent of its US installed base in one month. Just when our expectations are set for what Nintendo can do in sales, the company comes up with a new way to blow away the competition. Nothing in software or hardware came close to touching what Nintendo did this month (full story)

Ars Technica also has a great article on how all the companies spin the numbers.

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HSBC and MasterCard Battle Phishing with Phishing Technique

April 15, 2008

Here’s a little internet security quiz for you.

You’re planning a trip and are using the internet to reserve a lovely B&B in Scotland. You’ve filled out reservation information and now are going to use your credit card to pay.

You fill in your card number, expiry date, the 3 or 4 digit security number on the back/front of the card, your name, home address etc.

You press “SUBMIT”

After pressing submit, a window pops up, taking you to a different site, where you’re asked to fill in some of the same information you’ve just given, plus your date of birth.

You should:

a) cancel the transaction immediately
b) never put in the additional information being requested
c) copy down the address in the window and call your bank immediately
d) all of the above - you’re being phished.

If you answered a,b,c, or D, you’re correct.

Unless of course you have a Mastercard account.

Because, for some bizarre reason, this is exactly the technique Mastercard has begun using to try to bring ‘more security’ to your online transactions.

And it’s bound to fail miserably.

The scenario I described above is exactly what happened today. The popup looked like this:

Now, pop-ups are bad enough and always put me off.

But this one comes from a domain I don’t know (its not my bank or mastercard.com) and it uses the same kind of language I always see in those spam emails. You know, “free service”, “get it now” to make things more secure - oh, and guess what - you can’t complete your transaction without doing so…

We immediately bailed on the transaction fearing we’d been phished.

In a way, we had been - except it wasn’t a bad guy - it was Mastercard

OMG. Whoever talked them into this new online security move apparently doesn’t actually use the internet.

To make matters worse, even if you were going to institute such a lame scheme, you’d think Mastercard would tell their customers via their monthly statement that this was coming. You know, a heads up ?

Didn’t happen.

After spending 20 minutes on the phone with our bank, HSBC, we were reassured that this is legit.

I should point out that if you go to securecode.com you will be redirected to Mastercard. However, if you try the URL that was in the popup - a subdomain - you get a very un-Mastercard looking error screen (click it for a larger version)

This plan is doomed to fail. Mastercard’s new securecode system sends off alarm bells for even the most seasoned internet shopper.

Ironically, Mastercard may in fact reduce internet fraud by reducing internet transactions - their new system will cause people to cancel their transaction for fear they’re being duped.

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