Adam's Blog

Yes, I can now confirm that I have found a bug in Picasa Web Albums. Since the new "tagging" features are not validated - either client side or server side - you can use URL signficant characters in your tags. At first, I used a plus sign (+), which was URL decoded as a space. This lead me to try #, then ?, and finally &, which inexplicably - WORKS! So I created a new tag D&psc=CONTACTS -- and guess what? -- it has some funny results. It searches all of your contacts' photos for the letter D (which is common in default photo names, such as DSC001.jpg). Then I thought, "I wonder if I browse the JS source if I can find a command that is passed via URL GET variable that can be instantiated via an intentionally malcrafted tag?" I have posted on the Google USENET group and filed a bug through the standard complaint form. I consider this pretty big news, but I don't want to submit it to digg or Slashdot or post on OSNews until someone has a chance to implement a fix, which is probably pretty trivial (URL encode the tag links) or fix...

Well, I'm very excited to report that Google has begun bringing Picasa into the Web 2.0 realm. Today I signed in and found -- tags! and search! and moire storage! Hooray! So this is fantastic, it's the start of bringing this beast up to "usable" for large photostreams. Now that Picasa is evolving, they are letting you expand beyond 6GB to 25GB, 50GB, and even 100GB. I can't image how clunky and weak it would be with that many albums, but I have to assume they're working on it. Unfortunately, what's really missing is the ability to tag multiple photos at once. I'm not going to tag 3000+ photos one by one. But still, nice to see some progress. I did find a bug. It let me create the tag "A+J," which is linked on the front page of my photos, but not wrapped with urlencode(), so it throws an error. I found a google bug!

What a shame. Trey was arrested. It doesn't appear he'll do any hard time or anything, but I just wish it didn't happen. It's a lot easier to like Phish when they are just a relatively unknown group of jamming hippies with charitable ways. When this stuff happens, they make news and all most people remember is "Trey the druggie" and "Mike Gordon the child molester." It sucks for us hardcore fans. That said, I wish Trey and his family luck in getting through this painlessly.

This one deserves a post of its own. My sister sent me this link this morning, and I'm totally digging it. If you've never followed any link or watched any video I've posted before, do yourself a favor and at least check this one out:

Today is my birthday. And I was pleased to get a laugh at an article entitled "Paris defends Britney". A choice quote: "For people to call out her parenting skills on behalf of her partying ethics is appalling." I mean, seriously, what the f@*% does that even mean!? If you have even a cursory understanding of English, you'd know this makes no sense whatsoever. "On behalf of her partying ethics?" Uh... what? Wait... "Partying ethics?" What the hell are partying ethics? Paris Hilton must be dumb as a post. What has this world come to??

Seinfeld Horror Film I *love* mash-ups. Scary Mary Absolutely genius Mary Poppins redux. Fart caught on infrared I had to watch this three times I was laughing so hard. Kid Tries to Eat 10 Habanero Peppers Honestly, I would flip out after 1 bite of 1 pepper. Family Guy live action Funny.

Who knew that Flickr supported so many types of feeds? RSS, RDF, Atom, SQL, PHP, Serialized PHP, YAML, CSV, JSON, CDF... that's incredible.

Here's a long overdue lists of tasty links for you: 33 things you never knew had a name Seriously, this really weird - but common - stuff. Make Ginger Ale I'm going to do this. What happens if you drink a Coke right now Makes you think twice about that Ginger Ale. Walking Table This is the kind of ingenuity I like to see. Too bad the table itself it fugly. Man trapped 4 days behind a wall of his own feces Holy hell do I wish this were a joke. Girl, 13, charged as sex offender *and victim* Does this world make ANY sense at all? Kids divide by zero This is interesting, if you're a math dork. Family Guy: Osama's message Seriously, I laught for two minutes straight watching this. Family Guy: Brian's Novel A classic.

Success! Unfortunately, I was not able to get PN2 running on ReactOS. However, I'm pretty impressed with ReactOS and will probably keep abreast of the development. If, on day, it's more stable via Parallels, I'll be all over it. In the meantime, I fired up a copy of Windows XP inside Parallels and it installed quickly, easily, and painlessly, actually, and kind of surprisingly, a lot easier than it ever was to install Windows FOR REAL. It took about 40 minutes, and I never had to interact with it even once - Paralles installed XP, configured and entered the CD Key, and even added Parallels native drivers. I am impressed. I installed PN2 as well as AVG antivirus and AVG anti-spyware (new app? Never used it before!). Then I tried out coherence mode. Beautiful. Absolutely beautfiul. Did I mention that Parallels put XP on my Mac network and I easily opened files on my Mac from my new Windows installation? Gorgeous. So, here is the finished product: XP running on my Mac. Note that PN2 is sandwiched *between* Mac windows. Cleartype is on and works. The apps feels great. The whole thing is just ... awesome. This is an amazing...

As many of my readers know, my favorite application on Windows is called Programmer's Notepad. I've been using it for about 6 years or so (since at least early 2000) and I am really comfortable in it. This is my story - still in progress - of getting this thing to run on OS X. It covers the first part of the quest - including SciTE, ReactOS, Q, and Parallels. Read on for more.