And here are some images of the purple carrot and yellow carrots we found at our local natural foods coöp.

These purple carrots have a green/yellow core.

Not all purple carrots have a green/yellow core. Some have orange cores, and some are purple all the way through.

Peels from the purple & yellow carrots. These were used in the soup.

Chopped purple, yellow and orange carrots.

More chopped purple, yellow and orange carrots.

A soup made from purple, yellow and orange carrots (and purple potatoes).

I promise the soup tasted better than it looks. Even my in-laws liked it.

My wife and I like to eat a lot of non-standard items such as purple and yellow carrots and purple potatoes.

Here are some images of foods we’ve eaten in the last few months.

We get these from our local natural foods coöp.

We make carrot soup with carrots, potatoes and an onion.

This was really hot. And spicy.

Delicious with a little soy mylk.

This post will be of particular interest to customers of Global Payments, Inc. I received an email which seemingly came from them, asking for account login details. Since I don’t have an account with them (and before this morning didn’t know who they were), I did some detective work. It turns out to be a phishing scam.

phish·ing/ˈfiSHiNG/
Noun:
The fraudulent practice of sending e-mails purporting to be from legitimate companies in order to induce individuals to reveal personal or confidential information, such as such as credit card numbers or passwords by directing a user to a fake email message or website.

Do not trust any emails coming from the domain “global-paymts.com”, e.g. “virtualT@global-paymts.com”. This is not the company “Global Payments, Inc.” (which itself is a valid company), but a phishing scam intended to get you to enter your real payment processor login data, which the scammers will then use to access your real account and take all your real monies.

A Google search did not turn anything up, so I did a little investigating myself. The HTML form in the email accepts your login info and sends it to a script at the fjnusoft.com domain. A “whois” search reveals that this is a Chinese domain:

Domain Name.......... fjnusoft.com
  Creation Date........ 2007-04-08 11:12:47
  Registration Date.... 2007-04-08 11:12:47
  Expiry Date.......... 2016-04-08 11:12:47
  Organisation Name.... fu jianshida ruanjian
  Organisation Address. fujianshifandaxue ruanjianrencaipeiyangjidi
  Organisation Address.
  Organisation Address. fuzhou
  Organisation Address. 350000
  Organisation Address. FJ
  Organisation Address. CN

Admin Name........... lu qixue
  Admin Address........ fujianshifandaxue ruanjianrencaipeiyangjidi
  Admin Address........
  Admin Address........ fuzhou
  Admin Address........ 350000
  Admin Address........ FJ
  Admin Address........ CN
  Admin Email.......... lqx@fjnusoft.com
  Admin Phone.......... +86.59187248372
  Admin Fax............ +86.59183560708

Tech Name............ jinfeng wang
  Tech Address......... BeiGuo East Residential District 26-102
  Tech Address.........
  Tech Address......... Nantong
  Tech Address......... 226001
  Tech Address......... JS
  Tech Address......... CN
  Tech Email........... sales@dns99.net
  Tech Phone........... +86.51385292710
  Tech Fax............. +86.51385292710

Bill Name............ jinfeng wang
  Bill Address......... BeiGuo East Residential District 26-102
  Bill Address.........
  Bill Address......... Nantong
  Bill Address......... 226001
  Bill Address......... JS
  Bill Address......... CN
  Bill Email........... lqx@fjnusoft.com
  Bill Phone........... +86.51385292710
  Bill Fax............. +86.51385292710
  Name Server.......... ns1.dns.com.cn
  Name Server.......... ns2.dns.com.cn

Below is the email I received. Note that I use mutt, a text-based email reader. If you are reading your email on a web browser and are hit with this scam email, the text of the message will be the same as below but you will probably see the HTML form and some image(s).

From: "GlobalPayments, Inc" 
To: contact@ngmarley.com
Subject: Account Update

[-- Attachment #1 --]
[-- Type: text/plain, Encoding: 7bit, Size: 0.2K --]

Dear GlobalPayments Customer,

Because we registrated to many frauds we decided to lock your Virtual Terminal account.
To unlock it please download the file attached to this e-mail and update your login info.

2012 Copyright Global Payments ,Inc.

[-- Attachment #2: Login_myvirtualmerchant.html --]
[-- Type: application/html, Encoding: 7bit, Size: 2.2K --]

[-- application/html is unsupported (use 'v' to view this part) --]

[-- Attachment #3 --]
[-- Type: text/plain, Encoding: 7bit, Size: 0K --]

update: Apparently the company Global Payments, Inc. are aware of this scam, as they have an alert on their homepage and a link to a more detailed alert/disclaimer here: http://www.globalpaymentsinc.com/Alert.html

Since learning about the black carrot about a month or so ago, I have been fascinated with the idea of growing and eating them myself. The world carrot museum probably has the most information about them. They are grown in Turkey, the middle east and the far east.

Black carrots are not the same as purple carrots, although they are in the same carrot family (eastern carrots). They contain anthocyanins, which gives them their dark color.

I am currently searching for a supplier of black carrot seeds and will post any updates to this blog.

Nathan X. Marley
black carrot enthusiast

To all my American friends:

I am sorry.

The painful truth has been dawning on me over the past few weeks, and I now realize that I’ve reached my breaking point. As Doug Casey often says, America is just an ideal which doesn’t exist anymore. It’s been replaced by the United States.

It really hit me as I was reading the slashdot headlines this evening before leaving work. Headlines like:

“How X-Ray Scanners Became Mandatory In US Airports”

UK Government Pushing For ‘Trusted Computing’ (which basically means “chips installed in all computers that effectively remove control of the PC from its owner”)

And here’s the kicker:

Weaponizable Police UAV Now Operational In Texas

Here’s the slashdot excerpt:

“The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office in suburban Houston, Texas is preparing to launch operations with a newly received Shadowhawk MK-III unmanned aerial vehicle, paid for by grant money received by the Department of Homeland Security. The MK-III is a product marketed for both military and law enforcement applications. Michael Buscher, chief executive officer of manufacturer Vanguard Defense Industries, said this is the first local law enforcement agency to buy one of his units. ‘The aircraft has the capability to have a number of different systems on board. Mostly, for law enforcement, we focus on what we call less lethal systems,’ he said, including Tazers that can send a jolt to a criminal on the ground or a gun that fires bean bags known as a ‘stun baton.’ ‘You have a stun baton where you can actually engage somebody at altitude with the aircraft. A stun baton would essentially disable a suspect,’ he said. The MK-III also has more lethal options available, capable of carrying either a 40mm or 37mm grenade launcher or 12 gauge shotgun with laser designator.”

… the police, not military, have a machine which can fly, unmanned, and shoot you with a 12-gauge shotgun or just blow you to hell with a grenade launcher. But, of course, the CEO of the company which makes them points out that they focus on … the less lethal systems. Well, that’s good to know.

Personally, I don’t think the police should have any type of device which is …a product marketed for both military and law enforcement applications. I don’t want my child growing up in a place where he has to fear being gunned down (or blown up) by a remote-controlled flying police robot.

With the TSA now making routine stops on America’s U.S. freeways, I have come to realize the the US has become a police state.

This is my breaking point.

It’s only going to get worse from here. As the economy gets worse, capital controls will be next (as in, you won’t be able to move your money outside of the country). Restrictions will be placed on the purchase, ownership and sale of gold and silver. Tax burdens will increase. More things will be taxed, and existing taxes will go up.

It’s time to pack up & look to greener pastures. Not just for myself, but for the future of my family. I’ve always had a desire to expatriate, but until recently didn’t realize the sense of urgency. I will be setting an exit date tonight. After that date, I will no longer reside here in the U.S.S.A. This will set the clock a-tickin’, in my mind at least, and spur me to stop putting off what I’ve needed to do for quite a while now.

Some would argue that to leave is unpatriotic. They were born here, and they will die here. But all immigrants at one time or another had to go through this. The very people touting “American pride”, etc., etc. fail to realize that their own ancestors did the same thing while living in England, or France, Spain, Japan, Vietnam… wherever (Native Americans excluded of course).

This is what the Polish immigrants in the US/Canada had to do 30 years ago (the smart ones anyway…). This country is now in a downward spiral (thanks to the Godvernment and politicians) and I’d rather be watching the chaos from my TV screen* rather than from my front porch.

*It’s a metaphor. I don’t really own a TV.

A Perl utility I wrote to convert .m4a files to .mp3 format. It will also pull the tags over from m4a format. If there are no m4a tags, the script will die. (But of course you can just comment that part out.)

Here is the direct link to the script: m4a2mp3.pl

So my wife & I have been on a date kick lately. Not the kind of dates you go on, but the kind you eat.

Since we’ve been going really green the past 3 months and now have a strong interest in self-sustainability, we’ve been trying to sprout and grow just about every seed we can get our hands on. We have a particular interest in growing seeds that came from food that we’ve eaten. There’s just something about growing & eating your own food which came from food that you ate… something about taking it full-circle that really feels empowering & let’s us know we can grow our own food without depending on others.

Anyway, after discovering “fresh” dates (not dried & pitted), I thought the date pits (aka “date seeds”, “date stones”, whatever) looked interesting and wondering if it was possible to sprout them.

It is.

Here’s the article I found on how to germinate a date seed: http://www.personal.u-net.com/~treetops/dateseed.html.

We followed the steps (including using the vermiculite, which you can find at Lowe’s) and here are the results:

The small white knobs sticking out of the middle of the pits are the sprouts. We’re going to leave them in the vermiculite for a few more days & then pot them. Meanwhile, we’ll be soaking another batch of date palm seeds for the next round.

We just got back from a weekend trip from Oklahoma and checked them, so the fact that these were sprouted came as a bit of a surprise to us. We started soaking the pits on 24th August of this year (2011) and let them soak for 24 hours. Then we started them in the vermiculite and 12 days later (6th September) these were sprouted.

In case anyone is looking for it:

https://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account

This is the official Facebook delete account link. You can permanently delete your account by visiting this & entering your password & a (Re-)Capcha.

Be aware that it will be gone forever — this doesn’t just de-activate it. For now, there is still a 14-day grace period, so if you log back in within 14 days, the account deletion request will be cancelled.

I wrote this a couple of years back. Some of the information (esp. chronological) no longer applies. -2012Jan02

El idioma español seems to be gaining quite a bit of popularity (at least within my social circle) nowadays. These are the resources I have used to learn Spanish:

Coffee Break Spanish – An intended-to-be-weekly free podcast from Scotland. Instructor Mark is an experienced Spanish teacher, and Kara is a student that learns along with the listeners.

Spanish Verb Conjugator at 123teachme.com – Type in a Spanish infinitive and this spits out a handy conjugation table, which includes subjunctive mood. The site actually has more than just the conjugator.

Yahoo Babel Fish Translation – Useful tool for translating a word/phrase. I don’t recommend this for whole sentences/paragraphs.

Spanish for Gringos Level 2 by William C. Harvey M.S. – This is the best Spanish learning book I have picked up, hands down. The book is chock full of adjectives/nouns. Also includes quite a few infinitives and more advanced conjugations, as well as a bit on the subjunctive mood.
ISBN: 978-0812097436
amazon.com: Spanish for Gringos Level 2 by William C. Harvey M.S.

Rosetta Stone Version 3 – Latin American Spanish
This is actually the least used yet most expensive resource I’ve listed. Just never used this that much, I felt it was a bit slow. But would probably be great for people with a bit of either patience or time.

Univisión, Galavisión
These are the 2 Spanish-language TV channels I get. I mainly watch “Al Diablo con los Guapos”, “Fuego en la Sangre” (both telenovelas – like Spanish soap operas) y las noticias (the news).

Mägo de Oz – A Celtic folk-rock band from Madrid. Going to the band’s website (magodeoz.com) and looking up song lyrics has helped expand my vocabulary.

people – My friends from Latin America have helped me to learn a lot over the months. This is probably the best resource I’ve had, truth be told.

At times I get tired of editing code with tabs. And by “at times”, I mean every time. I hate tabs in code. I hate trailing spaces in code too (makes it more difficult to navigate using vi/vim). And more than anything, I hate Windows CR/LF (carraige return/line feed) line terminator characters.

So I wrote a script to take care of it. I call it “spicnspan”. To use: spicnspan

Simple enough.

This script:

• Converts all tab chars in a text file to 4 spaces.
• Converts Windows-style CR/LF line terminators to UNIX newline chars (0x0a).
• Removes trailing spaces.

If I were to re-code this, I would allow for multiple filenames on the command-line. I would also make separate smaller functions, one each for:

1. Slurping the file data
2. “Fix” ing (i.e. remove spaces, etc) the file data
3. Writing the file back to disk.

This is done now. The code below has been updated to reflect these changes, as well as the direct link.

Here’s a direct link to the code (save as .pl on your computer, or whatever you want if you have a real OS):

spicnspan