by R.I. Pienaar | Jul 29, 2004 | Front Page
I have a unhealthy interest in product recalls. I cannot walk past a sign of them in the shop and I am subscribed to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission‘s RSS feed of new recalls. It’s fascinating to see just what kind of blatant things can slip through quality control in companies, and its always interesting to wonder just how many people complained – or worse – before the company would do a recall.
Some of my favorites:
CPSC, Coaster Co. of America Announce Recall of Bunk Beds
Hazard: A gap between the step of the built-in ladder and the top bunk allows enough room for a child’s body to slip through but will not allow for a child’s head to pass through. This poses a serious strangulation risk. Federal standards for bunk beds are designed to protect children against entrapment and strangulation.
CPSC, First Samco Inc. Announce Recall to Replace Gun Holsters
A plastic or leather strap on the gun holster can catch the trigger of the gun when inserted into the holster causing the gun to unintentionally discharge, posing an injury hazard to the user.
Re-announcement of Recall of Ames True Temper Wheelbarrows
The plastic wheel assemblies on these wheelbarrows can break when the tires are being inflated. This can result in plastic pieces exploding from the rims of the wheels, possibly hitting nearby consumers and causing lacerations and other injuries.
Recall of Georgia Boot Steel Toe Boots
The boots may have been mislabeled to indicate that they are resistant to electrical current, which is incorrect. This may result in a serious shock or electrocution to consumers.
by R.I. Pienaar | Jul 22, 2004 | Code
I blocked China and Korea off my machine yesterday around lunch time. After 24 hours of these rules in place I have blocked 3500 packets already, thats shocking!
I scripted it all to block these countries and also to block a number of other things like proxy scanners from irc networks, windows networking ports etc. I simply drop the rules into a set using ipfw and move the temp set over the old set to activate the new rules, works a charm and enables me to rebuild the blocking rules regularly without disrupting my other rules.
Now I wonder what these 3500 packets were, so I might enable logging and do some stats on the stuff.
by R.I. Pienaar | Jul 19, 2004 | Usefull Things
I am contemplating blocking all Korean and Chinese IP addresses from my machines using firewall rules. I am just sick of the port scanning, spamming, open proxy probes, virii and other unpleasant things that they do.
I asked on IRC and someone pointed me at this site that contains lists of IP’s in all sorts of formats, next I will hack something up to use a set in ipfw2 to put the rules, and will cron updating of them.
by R.I. Pienaar | Jul 17, 2004 | Photography
A while ago a friend of mine wanted some photos for her portfolio, we went around London to find some interesting spots for her to pose in. She is a absolute natural subject and have a whole lot of character. The shot below is by far my favorite from the shoot. More from the same day can be seen here
by R.I. Pienaar | Jul 16, 2004 | Photography
Last night I was waiting on London Bridge station to meet a friend, while waiting I took a couple of photos of the commuters, photo below is one of the nicest for the night.
The small size of this image does not really do it justice, a bigger version is here though it probably will not stay a valid link forever.