I guess I’m a machine. I can’t get these CAPTCHAs from MegaUpload.com.

I’ve been working on my own ray-traced CAPTCHA for a few weeks now, and I’m finding it very difficult to create a CAPTCHA that I can’t write software to break – unless it’s darn near impossible for a human to solve. I think these are dead. Time to move on to something else.

Of course, maybe their engine is just broken.

The CAPTCHAs found me out - I am, in fact, a machine

There's a lot of talk about hacker spaces in Atlanta. I've wanted to
start one for a long time and I think there's a perfect storm of
interest for it to happen. I've even been thinking about using my tax
refund to pre-pay a lease, open the doors and see what happens.

I know of several other groups who are talking about it, some becoming
more serious.

If you are interested in a hacker space in Atlanta, I would appreciate
your input and have a handful of questions on a survey to get a general
idea of what people want in one, where they want it, etc.
http://hacklab.cypherghost.com/

Much appreciated...

-Ghost

Atlanta Hacker Lab Survey

For those of you keeping track, the Unix Epoch will be 1234567890 on Feb 13th. (Exact time depending on your Time Zone... unless you want to be UTC about it.)

Audio versions of all the talks from HOPE are now on-line. Also, there are torrents of some of the videos on-line at http://hopetracker.donthax.me/.

I found out because someone downloaded my talk and emailed me some questions/suggestions about it. That just rocks!

The Last HOPE Talks Now On-line

Adrian (left) and Vik (right) with a parent RepRap machine, made on a conventional rapid prototyper, and the first complete working child RepRap machine, made by the RepRap on the left. The child machine made its first successful grandchild part at 14:00 hours UTC on 29 May 2008 at Bath University in the UK, a few minutes after it was assembled.

I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

Fabrication machine reproduces. Has off spring.

As CCD sensors cool, tiny "fingerprint-like" imperfections lead to recognizable noise artifacts in images. Given enough processor power, it seems plausible that photos could be linked back to a particular camera based on these noise patterns.

HOWTO anonymize your digital photos - Boing Boing

Sir Tim Burners-Lee's workstation that hosted the first web site.

The NEXT that hosted the world's first website

The Georgia Tech Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) is announcing that on May 15th they’re going to be holding their annual Entrepreneurs Showcase down near Tech Square in Atlanta, GA.

ATDC is saying that the event is expected to attract around 500 entrepreneurs, investors and business leaders from across the Southeast. If I remember, last year was about 1/2 that or so - or at least that small conference room where the main presentation was couldn’t have held 500. This year’s event will be at the Biltmore Hotel, presumably because of the increased size of the event. Way to go guys!

ATDC Entrepreneurs Showcase coming May 15th

QR Code stencil cut into a business card. Yes, some pixels fall out, but error correction makes the code work anyway.

qr code business card - with a twist

So, I have a project for a client that has some huge SQL queries and I finally forked out the kilobucks to hire MySQL to optimize them.

When I teach databases, I usually take students back to an old library or doctor's office to examine how information was stored before computers. You probably remember the Title Cards, Author Cards, and Subject Cards. If you wanted to search by something else, you were screwed.

As I've watched this complex set of queries drop from 4 hours to 5 minutes 34 seconds, I'm reminded of how much the right method matters.

So, this article on organizing Lego blocks just hit home with me today.

Organizing Lego