If..Else Log

… or how a System Administrator unravelled the mystery of emails not reaching any destination farther than 500 miles away. It's an oldie but a good one. A brilliant read.

Want a wordpress.com invite but don't want the hassle of installing flock? Well, install the User Agent Switcher extension for Firefox and change your user-agent string to

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8b5) Gecko/20051019 Flock/0.4 Firefox/1.0+

Not that I really needed one anyway, but I already had the extension installed for other reasons…[via]

Anyone with more than a passing interest in computer games will have encountered the infamous "Konami code". UP, UP, DOWN, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, B, A. Infinite lives, secret menu options, 99 hearts, special characters are just some of the secrets which are unlocked by the Freemason handshake of computer games.

It turns out that if you key in this sequence in the Shaun Inman's Mint screen, a secret easter egg will be uncovered as Jason Santa Maria's stamp of approval shows up momentarily. Almost brings a tear to my eyes. [via]

Absolutely brilliant! Hours of fun can be had trying to mockup e-fit mug shots for people you know. I can't do myself but here's what I'll report to the cops if I'm looking for my brother [via]

There’s an amazing video of a Street Fighter tournament (EVO 2004) in which Daigo Umehara (Japan) pulls off what is an amazing feat. Playing as Ken, he’s reduced to a point in which chip damage would kill him. His opponent, Justin Wong (US), unleashes a super combo and with no possible recourse, Daigo proceeds to parry every single one of the 15 hits!

A couple of things to note for non-SF players:

• Parrying multi hit moves is extremely risky. Parry a super combo in actual battle is just hands down amazing.
• Tournament play is a whole different league from regular play. More stress, more mistakes. This is why this feat is so impressive
• Ken was at a point when even blocking would have been fatal. It was all or nothing at that point.
• After surviving that parry, he responds and combos Chun Li into submission to win the bout!
• The crowd goes wild. This bout becomes legend!
• It’s an old clip and many ardent SF fans will have already heard about this fight. Nonetheless, it’s great to see it again.Does anyone remember at what stage in the tournament this bout was fought? ¹
• Look at the search term used to find this clip!

I would have loved to have been there! [via]

1. No need… found it via Google [back]

I accidentally deleted a post from my WP admin. If anyone still has the text of the post entitled "Daigo’s SF parry bout on video" in their feed reader, could they post it as a comment (including all the markup) to this post? Thanks in advance!

I've also sprained my left wrist whilst playing football. Posting will be sporadic as I'm basically down to two finger typing with my right hand.

Must be more careful in future.

The fantastic spam-killer that is Bad Behavior has just been updated. Download it now. [via]

Bad Behavior has almost been singlehandedly responsible¹ for mitigating the impact of spam on this blog. Now, if only I could convince Michael Hampton to change the name to Bad Behaviour…

1. In conjunction with my carefully maintained blacklists [back]

What cheek! Baitohel 2000 is a Sony First Party¹ Wario Ware Clone for the PSP showcased at the Tokyo Game Show which feature a pair of familiar characters. Not so much parody as a low brow rip off².

Be sure to read Philip Wesley's comments on the legality of the "parody" under Japanese Law.

Whether or not a certain mark is used as a parody would have no legal implication under the Japanese law. That is, irrespective of whether it is a parody or not, if the trademark actually used is viewed as identical to the registered trademark, it would constitute a trademark infringement.

1. Yep, you read that right. First Party, not Third Party. [back]
2. Not to mention a not very funny or clever low blow [back]

The folks at TextDrive have a few tips on running Ruby on Rails. I've heard that these guys know a thing or two…

Zelda Wind Waker - Lego Style. Link goes to save Hyrule one block at a time…