Yzabel / July 9, 2005

HNN Onto London Bombings

HNN has published a number of articles, interviews and analysis about the recent London bombings and what can be seen as warnings and consequences. Whether everyone would agree with the exposed theories or not is another story, but they remain an interesting kind of insight nonetheless.Why the London Attack Was Not Unexpected: An insight on certain opinions that could have been very clear warning sights.The Time of Revenge Has Come: And why the post 9/11 choices and actions have probably helped to shape the current situation worldwide, instead of preventing it. Close to this is also Irfan A. Khawaja’s article.Read more of it on their 7/7 hot topics page.

Yzabel / July 8, 2005

The Eeriness Of A Dark Tube Tunnel

In a much odd way, I caught this through the Guardian’s games blog, and no sooner had I started reading that I rezlized how true, accurate and shocking it was, in all the banality of the moment, when the human brain seems to simply shut off in order to allow us to go through the stress and horror of such a moment.This is David McCarthy’s experience of yesterday’s bombings in London – of one of them, in particular. I cannot truly express everything that is contained in this post, from the calm-before-the-storm seconds preceeding the explosion to the eeriness of getting out alive and not knowing how terrible things had been until the news started reporting it. His post covers it all.

Yzabel / July 7, 2005

Someone Comes To The Web

It had been a little while that I wanted to write something about this – however, I was waiting until I had laid my hands on it, and above all read it, or at least a few pages, in order to not be completely clueless about the matter. The way it’s been released now in Second Life gives me one more reason to do so.Cory Doctorow’s third novel Someone Comes To Town, Someone Leaves Town (yes, the same Cory who writes at Boing Boing) is available since july 1st not only as paperback, but also as a free e-book and as a very nice prims-made book in Second Life. I say “nice”, because I actually picked up a copy there recently, placed it on the first floor of my home/store there, and finds it pretty and well done. Not the easiest thing to read when in such a shape, but nice nonetheless. There’s more to this – Cory Doctorow himself, as reported by Wagner James Au, will be in Second Life on July 24th for an online discussing and signing of his book.More convenient to read, both for SL residents as well as for those who aren’t interested in this virtual world, the free e-book copy is downloadable in PDF, HTML and text formats on Cory’s website. Of course, said book is also available for purchase, in case the paperback version would look more appealing (which it likely does).I’m not very far yet in my reading of said book; however, it has been interesting, to say the least – in a very bizarre kind of way, where the caregiving son of a mountain and a washing-machine tries to spread a free wireless Internet with a group of cyber-anarchists. Yes, this sounds weird; a weird that is quite enjoyable to read.(Tags: book, cory_doctorow, ebook, second_life)

Yzabel / July 6, 2005

XML-RPC and WordPress

Seen in many blogs and online sources in the past two days is this announcement regarding a critical flaw in the XML-RPC PHP function:

Many popular PHP-based blogging, wiki and content management programs can be exploited through a security hole in the way PHP programs handle XML commands. The flaw allows an attacker to compromise a web server, and is found in programs including PostNuke, WordPress, Drupal, Serendipity, phpAdsNew, phpWiki and phpMyFAQ, among others.

(Full article from Netcraft here)I must admit that before reading that, I had absolutely no idea of what XML-RPC was. However, as of today, Matthew Mullenweg (creator of WordPress) has released this statement in his blog:

To clarify for all the confused people WordPress is not affected by the recent XML-RPC problem that lots of other apps were. We use different, more secure libraries for XML-RPC. The problem was discovered by the same guy though, I imagine he was auditing our code and found totally unrelated, which we fixed in our recent release. Of course you wouldn’t guess that from the title, “PHP Blogging Apps Vulnerable to XML-RPC Exploits.” Let’s go down the list: PostNuke – content management; WordPress – blogging; Drupal – content/community management; Serendipity – blogging; phpAdsNew – ad serving; phpWiki – wiki (not blogging); phpMyFAQ – FAQ management. If it bleeds it leads, right? 😉

Best to upgrade to 1.5.1.3 anyway. After all, updates are meant to be used!

Yzabel / July 6, 2005

The Eleusinian Mysteries

A bit of reading regarding the Eleusinian Mysteries. Held annually in the city of Eleusis in honor of Demeter and her daughter Persephone, they were the most sacred and revered ritual celebration of ancient Greece, their origin possibly dating back to the early Mycenaean period.Quite a long essay (for a web page), but an instructing one, discussing the known facts about these Eleusinian rites. A shame that not much is known about how they were taking place exactly.

Yzabel / July 5, 2005

I Am A Statistic

Take the MIT Weblog SurveyAlright, alright, I’ve given in and taken the survey. I know everybody and their dog is taking it currently, but it helps them with their stats, after all, so I don’t feel too guilty.In other statistics, snatched from The Blog Herald: Business Week Online reports that 5% of French people are keeping a blog, which makes it about 3 millions of people in our nice country (and more than 2 millions of them using Skyblog, according to Loïc LeMeur’s Wiki, probably because it supports French characters and is easily available, I suppose).Oui oui, 3 millions de bloggers français. Certes, le pays est bien plus petit que les States, ce qui fait que les pourcentages grimpent vite en flèche… mais quand même!

Yzabel / July 4, 2005

Games, Choices, Morality?

Reading the news at lunch today, I spotted what seemed to me like an interesting article in the Toronto Star, raising quite an amount of questions regarding moral choices in games:

Her husband notices you watching his tryst. He begs you not to tell his wife, and offers you cash to keep his secret. So, what do you do? More than that, what is the right thing to do in this situation? The “good” thing to do? Do you tell the wife, destroy the marriage, and leave just as broke as you were before? Or do you take the money in exchange for your silence? Is that right? 

Yup, it’s a scene from Fable, and it’s a choice that indeed is to be taken in the game. What would a player do? What is the right choice? The wrong one? Sure, it’s “only a game”, yet it still calls at some sense of morality that everyone is supposed to have. People want less linear games, games in which we’d really be able to change the course of events through our own choices, and not by simply following the directions set by the developers; when they get it – or as close to it as technically possible – they’re faced with the fact that doing whatever they want necessarily implies that our choices can also be the wrong ones (not as in making them fail to solve game puzzles or quests – “wrong” as in “morally questionable”, sort of).Read More

Yzabel / July 3, 2005

WordPress Theme Love

A few hours of digging, uploading and activating later, I think I’m almost done with the choice of a theme for this blog. The competition was tough, among the many templates listed at Alexking.org, Blogging Pro and the WordPress Reference Centre (even though lots of them can be found on these three websites, thus not taking me that much more time to check them all). I must admit that in spite of the time I needed at first to grasp how the themes system in WP was working, I now like it a lot; it can be a hassle when not having much time to tweak them, of course, but when knowing what to aim for, it allows for much customization.Finally, the winner is Boredom from Aamukaste (I know, I know… what a name for something that I don’t intend to make boring!), with some alterations in its colors and files. I realize that once again, I’ve settled for lots of violet and purple… It looks like these may be some kind of favorite colors for me when it comes to websites. All in all, the basic theme was nice enough, the dominant green just wasn’t my cup of tea at the moment. I’ll make sure to design a fully personal template when I have more time and ideas, though.

Yzabel / July 3, 2005

Mandatory First

Since there is one for every blog, here is my first entry.This blog will be, for a time, experimental more than anything else. There are often many articles or thoughts I find myself wanting to post *somewhere*, yet don’t really have any place to do it; my other blogs are either devoted to a specific topic, or just aren’t really suitable in my opinion. Thus the Y Logs were born, as a page where I could express myself on (almost) everything. I’m able to blab about a lot of things.I may also write in it in French, which is only logical, after all, given that it’s my first language. What is less logical is that most of the time, I feel more at ease writing in English, yet this is another story. Just don’t be surprised to find entries in French only or in both languages when the mood strikes (or when I decide to write about something that is really relevant for French people only).Now to toy with the templates some more, until I find one that I like enough…