Jeff Hoy, American

Cause it seems there isn’t much “liberty” left in NYC.

So now a state assemblyman and NYC’s mayor Bloomberg seem to think it’s a good idea to ban restaurants from using salt in their cooking… BAN SALT!  IN FOOD!  Are they serious?!  These two men should be stripped of their positions of power.  I lived in upstate New York for a few years, now I’m glad I left.

Welcome to the nanny state.  Rice, bread, and water for all!  Anything else would be “unhealthy” and the government knows YOU can’t make the right decisions about YOUR life.

Tax or ban, whatever they need to do to “look out” for you.

I’m not sure why, but black metal has been at the forefront of most of my music purchases lately.  I recently found out about Cobalt and have enjoyed their latest album, Gin, quite a bit.  Pregnant Insect is probably my favorite track on that album.  Along with Rob Zombie’s latest I also ordered up Cobalt’s earlier album Eater of Birds and am very eager to hear it.  I was kinda surprised to find out that they are Colorado based.  Just as an aside, if you plan on getting Gin, I suggest getting it on CD instead of digitally.  There’s a hidden track at the end of the physical album that most digital distributors cut off.  I learned that the hard way.

Beyond Cobalt I think my new favorite band is a Finnish black metal outfit called Catamenia.  I discovered them about six or eight months ago while trying to find something like Borknagar’s early stuff.  I was really impressed with their then latest album – VIII: The Time Unchained — so much so that a couple days later I bought Winternight Tragedies.  Catamenia just released a new album called Cavalcade that is next on my must buy list.  Unfortunately CD Universe isn’t carrying it now for whatever reason.  I hope that changes soon.

While I was shopping for new music I also dropped Novembers Doom’s latest — Into Night’s Requiem Infernal – into the shopping cart as well.  I’ve been a fan of theirs for a little while now and greatly look forward to more of that dark/doom/death hybrid stuff for which they are well-known.  I should have bought it when it was released but I kept procrastinating.

All of the stuff I ordered today I got from CD Universe, even having to pay for shipping, for almost $20 cheaper than if I had ordered them from Amazon.com with free shipping.  I think I have a new source for all my music.

Why didn’t somebody tell me that Rob Zombie released a new album last month?  Ordered.

Best R/C Vehicle this side of the Outer Colonies. When cruising the Halo megastructure and blasting the Covenant into oblivion, no vehicle is more useful than the Warthog. As Cortana will be happy to inform you, the Warthog is a multi-function jeep with a LAAG turret mounted on the back. It has enough room for a driver and a machine gunner with room for one additional passenger. Now you can collect your own mini RC version of the Halo Warthog complete with action figures and gun turret. Make good use of it during long office meetings when you suddenly realize the CEO has been terminally infected by the Flood. New Vehicles! In addition to the Warthog, we now have the Mongoose and an R/C Helicopter version of the Flying Hornet.

I read a ton of stuff on the internet every day.  Some of that stuff I end up liking a lot and bookmarking for later.  This new weekly feature highlights those links.

Article: Big Squid RC: Five Questions with Shawn Palmer (formerly of Schumacher USA, now head sales guy for Speed Passion)

Best new product of the week: Tamiya Tyrrell P34 SIX WHEELER 1976 Japan GP

Build log: Building the Sand Scorcher

Event: AirAge Media’s RC Expo – It’s coming up in less than two weeks, if you’re in or near Pomona, CA go check it out.

Photo of the week: F-16 Flyby (by Don Perry) – Is it real or R/C? You make the call.  (Hint: it’s R/C)

Shopping around: (eBay) Vintage Tamiya Hornet – Used less than 5 times, spare front & rear rims and tires. very mino scuffs on rails, zero body damage, missing headlights?, comes with original box in great condition. not tested recently, but worked 100% when it went in storage 25 years ago…

Video of the week: John takes his RC car for a day at the skate park.

Losi has a lot of rebate deals going on for their 1/8 scale race roller (not RTR) vehicles and the Comp Crawler.  If you’ve been thinking about buying a new buggy or truggy now might be the time to do it.  Rebates of up to $150 are available.

Here’s the list of rebates.  You’ve got until April 30th to buy.  Click the link above for more info.

• $150 Rebate – 1/8 8IGHT-T 2.0 Truggy Race Roller (LOSA0805)
• $75 Rebate – 1/8 8IGHT 2.0 Buggy Race Roller (LOSA0804)
• $75 Rebate – 1/8 8IGHT-E 2.0 Buggy Race Roller (LOSA0806)
• $50 Rebate – 1/8 L8IGHT Model Race Roller (LOSA0809)
• $50 Rebate – 1/10 Comp Crawler Race Roller (LOSA0051)

I took these photos of a couple of my R/C cars earlier today for a project I’m working on.  I thought they turned out so cool that I just had to share them.  The first two are my mid-90’s era Kyosho Pureten GP Nostalgia series chassis topped with an HPI Pontiac Firebird Trans Am body in racing trim.  The third photo is my early 90’s era Team Losi JRx-Pro restoration project that’s still kind of a work in progress, even though I’ve run it a couple times as you can see from the dirt that the bottom of the A-arms are coated with.  I should have cleaned it before taking these pictures.

These were shot in a darkened room with my camera mounted on a tripod.  I was using my zoom telephoto 100-400 f/4-5.6 L lens at 300mm f/16.  I set my exposure to 6 seconds and then took my Speedlite and manually popped it three or four times for each photo from different positions and angles.  The black surface and background was made up of my glass entertainment center top and a pillowcase stretched behind the cars.  I did some minor alterations in photoshop, mostly turning the black levels down to get a good match between the backdrop and the table surface.  I also upped the saturation a little to make the blues pop a bit more.  Looking at them now I should probably go back and clean up some of that dust that is showing on the table.

Comment spam is one of the hazards of running open comments on any blog or website.  I’ve dealt with nearly 5,000 spam comments on my blog, and I don’t have nearly the traffic of any of the huge blogs out there.  But recently my comment spam stopped dead because of four easy to use WordPress plugins and a configuration change or two.

Akismet – This is a spam filtering plugin, it comes with the default WordPress installation, you just need to activate it and sign up for a WordPress.com account to get your API key to start using it.  Akistmet’s not going to stop the spam, but what it will do is identify comments that come from common spam sources.  It will segregate those comments and you can then review them later to make sure there weren’t any comments labeled as spam erroneously.  (Plugin Directory link: Akismet)

SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam – You’re starting to see these everywhere.  It’s a small image with a series of letters and numbers that you have to type in to confirm that you are a human.  These work on the principle that a human would be able to read the image, while a computer (spam bot) would not. SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam is a simple to use plugin, usually all you have to do is install and activate it and it starts working out of the box.  Some people may need to make a small change to their theme to get it working but most downloadable themes are already setup to use it.  (Plugin Directory link: SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam)

TTC User Registration Bot Detector – Some spam bots try to get around non-open comment systems by signing up for an account at your blog and then using that account to post comments.  The TTC User Registration Bot Detector checks every computer that tries to register an account on your website against the list of known spammers at Spamhaus.  It also logs all registrations so if you see one IP address trying to register multiple accounts you can put it in your own blacklist to keep it from trying again.  (Plugin Directory link: TTC User Registration Bot Detector)

WP-Ban – Sometimes, no matter how hard they try, the plugins above still let through a spam message every now and then.  WP-Ban lets you ban computers from accessing your WordPress site based on their IP address, domain name, web site referrer, or user agent (browser type, bot type, etc.).  When a banned computer tries to access your site, they are given an error message, which you can customize, telling them they have been banned.  It prevents them from accessing every page on your site, including directly going to the wp-comments.php page which is the only place most spam bots go on your site.  (Plugin Directory link: WP-Ban)

Those are the plugins I use to keep spam out of my comments now.  There’s a couple other configuration changes you can make to your WordPress installation to assist those plugins as well.

Under the Discussion Settings you have three options that you can set to moderate spam.  The first one is to hold a comment in moderation if it contains more than a certain number of website URLs in it.  I currently have that set to two, which I believe is the default setting.  The next box down will hold comments in moderation if they contain certain words, URLs, or IPs.  You can specify words that are commonly used in spam messages on your site.  The WordPress.org documentation Wiki includes a list of spam words that you can copy and paste into this box.  Comments that are held in moderation are not considered spam until you mark them as such.  Every time a comment is held in moderation you should get an email asking you what you want to do with that comment.  The next box below that is the words blacklist box.  This list bypasses comment moderation and automatically marks any comment containing the words in the list as spam.  I consider this one to be a little more dangerous to use, so I don’t really use it.  But if you wish to, you could again use the list of spam words from the WordPress documentation wiki.

I’ve been running this combination of plugins and settings for a week now and I went from about 15 spams per day on average down to zero.  If you have a self-hosted WordPress installation and are struggling with spam then you might want to give this a try.

I’ve been thinking about doing a scratch-built rc version of this car for a long time.  Tamiya beat me to it.

This is the Tamiya Tyrrell P34 SIX WHEELER 1976 Japan GP.  A new chassis and body design based  on the full scale version from the 1976 F1 series.  All four front wheels are steered by a single servo.  It’s got the usual stuff, t-bar rear suspension with coil-over shock, independent front suspension of the spring on kingpin style, direct drive rear axle with ball diff, and  includes a 540 size motor and pinion.  You’ll need to provide all the electronics  and paint for the extremely detailed body.  Decals are included to style it after the #3 or #4 full size cars.  There’s no word on the price or ship date or even if it will be available stateside.  It is considered a limited edition, so expect to pay a lot for it, if you can even get it at all.

[Update:  It is listed on Tamiya USA's site so it should be available here in the states and the MSRP is $284.00, check with your local hobby shop for street price, it's item #84111.  You can also see the complete instruction  manual (PDF link).]

[Update 2: Tower Hobbies has it listed in their online catalog, should be available this month at a price of about $190.]

How awesome is this thing?

Specifications

• Length: 430mm
• Width: 204mm
• Height: 108mm
• Weight: 815g
• Tread: 134mm (Front), 155mm (Rear)
• Tire Width/Diameter: 42/23mm (Front), 67/50mm (Rear)
• FRP Half Double Deck Frame
• Horizontally mounted motor rear direct drive 2WD
• Ball differential gear
• Symmetrical steering tie-rods
• Suspension: Kingpin coil spring (Front), T-bar rigid (Rear)

…carefully watch the current situation with the PSN.  Ubisoft’s new DRM for the PC version of Assassin’s Creed II (and multiple future titles, including the upcoming blockbuster-for-sure Splinter Cell: Conviction) requires a constant internet connection to their verification system.  The PlayStation Network going down is another excellent example of how a critical system failing can render games unplayable for the thousands (millions even?) of gamers.  Ubisoft needs to keep an eye on this situation and learn whatever they can from it.  The stability of their verification system will be the very short wall that separates them from a mob of angry gamers.

Will Ubisoft get the picture?  I highly doubt it, which is why I am continuing to boycott every Ubisoft product regardless of platform.

[Update: So Sony's issue turned out to not be a PSN problem, it's looking more like a firmware problem in the old PS3s, something to do with the system clock.  I still stand by the point I was making though, a weak link in any system is bound to fail, and when it does it's gonna be a bad day for Ubisoft customer service.]