It is at http://blog.regehr.org/ and covers a range of embedded topics relevant to his academic research (which is more embedded that most).

I think it is important for users of technologically advanced tools to know a bit of how they work. A classic example of this is compilers, where I taught an ESC class almost a decade ago which is my most popular piece of writing to date…

For the next few months, I will be on parental leave, so there is likely to be less blogging about technical subjects (and less blogging overall). There is simply less inspiration about virtual platforms, and a bit more about toys.

Here is what I saw, see how BBC and SR P1 Ekot stand out:

After some web searching and poring over www.wordpress.org, I managed to find a utility that would indeed customize my feed for me. The aptly named “Feed Image” plugin does the work needed, and it seems to allow both an icon for the feed and a larger banner for title. I have used the same image for both, as I saw no effect of any setting for a while.

But yesterday, I noted that on my phone, I finally got the custom image working! And it is also working in Firefox, finally. I do not know what has changed or what has timed out in the meantime, but now it does seem to be working.

How it looks on my phone:

And in the Firefox RSS display:

Mission accomplished.

Notes on SonyEricsson G900 Screen Capture

To take the screenshots on the G900 phone, I used the freeware program “TOSC version 0.3“.The download location that works is the link in this blog post: http://www.saxoft.com/wordpress/2006/11/08/tosc-v03/.

TOSC puts the captures as png files on the top level of the memory stick memory in the phone:

Annoyingly enough the PC sync file manager software for the G900 will not display files, only folders. Thus, on the phone, I used the file manager to move the files to the “Pictures” sub-directory and only then could I copy them from the phone onto my PC for further use in this blog post. Or I can send them to the PC over bluetooth, which was a more convenient solution in the end.

Just after the first post on the front page, there was a nasty error message:

Fatal error: Only variables can be passed by reference in .../functions.php on line ...

Fortunately, some googling gave me the answer. There is a one-line computation apparently pretty common in WordPress theme code that has to be broken out across two lines, suddenly.

From

    function comment_count($count) {
        global $id;
        $comments_by_type = &separate_comments(get_comments('post_id=' . $id));
        return count($comments_by_type['comment']);
    }

To

    function comment_count($count) {
        global $id;
        $get_comments= get_comments('post_id=' . $id);
        $comments_by_type = &separate_comments($get_comments);
        return count($comments_by_type['comment']);
    }

I have no idea about php etc, but this does seem to work. Thanks to wordpress support.

Annoying, and a bit funny.

Comments:

• Most spam is for porn sites of various kinds. Strange that they need to advertise themselves, but I guess they could be temporary sites set up to spread various forms of browser-attacking malware.
• Replica handbags and watches come in second, clear market for scams and making money there.
• Viagra and tramadol-style substances are also very lucrative, especially for expensive fakes. I can see the logic.
• There is also a fair number of posts that I cannot make sense of immediately. Possibly, they are attempts at boosting search-engine ratings of the sites submitted as URLs to the posts… but since all comment links are set to “no follow” on this blog, that effort is wasted.
• Various financial services, especially payday loans, are the last large category.
• There are some interesting spams that just contain jumbles of letters (consonants only), and a link to a similar-looking URL. No idea why someone would do that, as nobody is likely to follow a meaningless link.

Overall, this follows the logic of spam of being pretty lucrative, especially selling various forms of overpriced fakes or replicas to people who seem unable to tell that a deal that is too good to be true really is.