WWDTM Stats: More and more data entry

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged about updates to the Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! Stats Page, but I have been making a little bit more progress on a couple of things.

First thing is that I have been able to locate MP3s of Wait Wait shows from early 2003 through early 2006, stopping where the first show was made available as a podcast. My goal is to listen through each show and fill in scores and other information that is currently missing.

Along with that, I will be entering in not only which panelist had the correct bluff, but also the panelist that the listener chose. Once I get that information entered, I will find a way to display both on the page.

Next, I have been slowly collecting where the show has been recorded and will be entering that into the database as well. I will also have to figure out how to display that on the page.

I will also be working on filling out the panelist scores when they start the Lightning Fill-in-the-Blank round and how many they got correct. This will eventually make it on to the page as well.

In the meantime, I will be working on building up a new version of the site. I’ve got a basic mock-up built, but it isn’t quite ready to be made public… yet :)

Liking it in Leica Land

It has been a while since I’ve last written about photography, up until the last blog post anyway, and there have been several changes since.

First, as this post’s title states, I have joined the ranks of Leica rangefinder owners. I have been lusting over Leica film and digital rangefinder cameras for a while (2-3 years), mainly due to the major retro experience. My fascination with Leica also deals with how small the camera and lenses are, as well as how the whole system works. The fact that the Leica M system is manual focus only did not bother me, as I already own several manual focus-only lenses for my Nikon D300. I was also getting tired of lugging around my D300 with its support system every time I wanted to take pictures. Read the rest of this entry »

First impressions with a Fuji X-Pro1 camera

Got a chance to hold and play around with a Fuji X-Pro1 over the weekend. Definitely yearns to be a proper digital camera with manual controls for shutter, aperture and exposure compensation.

Even with the 35mm fast prime lens, the camera is pretty darn light; quite a bit lighter than my M9 with a Voigtlander Ultron 28mm f/2,0 (yep, I’ve crossed into the Leica world with a foothold in the Nikon DSLR world). At first, it almost felt too light, but got used to it and it felt quite nice to hold. The dual viewfinder is pretty dang cool to use, with the EVF being a touch better than the OVF for focusing.

In terms of price, it’s a whole lot cheaper than an M9 and is more in line with a high-end m4/3 camera. Jury is still out on lens availability and selection over the next 2-3 years (critical as it uses a unique mount).

If I wanted a digital camera that would be shared between my mum and I, I would probably just pick up an Canon S95 or S100 and be done with. Sorry Nikon, the 1 and the Coolpix cameras do nothing for me.

Fixing SonicWALL NetExtender on OS X 10.6

This afternoon, I was trying to establish an SSL VPN tunnel to work via the SonicWALL NetExtender client on my MacBook Air running OS X 10.6.8. Instead of connecting, it spat out the following error:

FATAL: You don't have permission to read/execute '/etc/ppp/peers'

The problem occurred after installing the “Security Update 2012-001″ update.

Looking at /etc/ppp, I noticed that the directory listing looked like:

d--------- 16 root wheel 544 Sep 7 18:00 ppp

So, I changed the permissions on that directory so that it would be world readable and executable with the following command:

sudo chmod ugo+rx /etc/ppp

Even with that change, it wasn’t enough as the error persisted. I then checked the directory listing for /etc/ppp/peers and it looked like:

d--------- 5 root wheel 170 Feb 23 11:28 peers

Changing the permissions to match that of its parent directory, by running the following fixed the problem.

sudo chmod ugo+rx /etc/ppp/peers

Thankfully, that was pretty simple to fix.

SOPA and PIPA Protest: Site Going Dark Tomorrow

In protest of both SOPA and PIPA (also known as “PROTECT IP”), this site and the Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!: Show Details and Statistics site (among thousands of other public sites, including Wikipedia) will be going dark starting 12:00 AM until 11:59 PM Pacific Standard Time. This applies to all portions of both sites.

If you would like to learn more about the two dangerous legislations, please read “A technical examination of SOPA and PROTECT IP“. For more information about the blackout and the dangers that SOPA and PIPA, please visit AmericanCensorship.org.

New home for Wait Wait Stats Page

During another bout of boredom, I was trying to see if there was a way for me to shorten the address for the Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! Statsitics page. After checking the availability of several domains that I could register (while the waitwa.it domain was available, I could not register it as I am not in Italy or the EU), I found that wwdt.me was available.

So, instead of remembering a long URL or sending people to Google or Bing, all you need to remember is a simple URL: wwdt.me/stats. Yep, it’s now that simple to remember! :)

You can still access the page using the current URL, as I will be setting it up so that it automatically redirects you to the new URL.

Now, go and pass it on!