Loebas weblog - Blogpost about my honeypot, and setting it up to ban IP's

Download as PDF 📄 Download as ePub 📱 Last weekend, I took my kid out around town, and we went on a “photo walk,” which is what I’ve decided to call it. They’re taking a Journalism class, and they’ve been entrusted with a DSLR so they can get familiar with photography, so I figured we’d go and get some practice on our own before the year really gets started. It was a lot of fun, and we got some really great photos! It was a Sunday, and so our downtown area was even deader than it usually is; we had the run of the place while we looked around to find cool images. We both decided we’d love to do it again, but we may wait until it starts too cool down and isn’t 100+ F first. There are a lot of really neat murals down town, but this one captured our attention as soon as we saw it. The artists’ info isn’t shown here, but it was located off to the side. It was done by Joe Rael, and you can see more of his work on his website here. This one was done in 2019. This one was taken by my kid, and is down the street from the first, but is by a different artist, named Sorrow. We have several of his pieces around town, and this isn’t even my favorite one. I’ll have to get more pics next time we go out. Not all of the art we encountered was officially commissioned 🙂 I’m glad they let this one stay up and I hope it doesn’t get taken down. Next to this piece was a really cool stairwell, rusted and weathered, but still very functional. Both of us took photos of it, and it’s kind of neat to compare them. **Mine:** **Theirs:** My poor little Nikon CoolPix can’t really compete, lol, but I love it anyway. Here are some other angles I grabbed: We weren’t about to go down these steps here, because it’s technically private property, but it was neat to see because below-ground buildings are super rare in North Texas. There’s a ton of clay in the soil which, in addition to being difficult to dig through, settles and moves as moisture comes and goes throughout the year. Almost no houses that I know of have basements, though occasionally people do have storm shelters. These are easier to build, because they’re often one large molded structure, so you don’t have to worry about separation of bricks or anything. Anyways, when I come across stuff underground I like to take pics because it’s so surprising. I’m technically moving backwards through our walk–this is where we started. This is our city banner, located in a park in the middle of downtown. The backdrop may seem a little bland, but I actually really love all the architectural details in the old buildings here. At some point, I’ll have to go back and take pictures of my favorites, especially our Post Office building, which is gorgeous. The town we live in is rather small, and most locals complain that there’s not a whole lot to do here. I think most places are kind of what you make of them, though, and there are always interesting things to find if you look hard enough. Just like in my garden, which looks boring at first, but houses such a diversity of life when you get down on your knees and start looking under the leaves. Speaking of which, I’ll have another post coming up soon with some of the new friends I’ve made there as well. Take care of yourselves, and drink lots of water if you’re where I am. See you next time!

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Download as PDF 📄 Download as ePub 📱 Recently I beat a game that I have owned since about 1997, when I first bought it with my chore money as a kid. It’s time to review **Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins**!!! First the name: While the NES and SNES full-sized consoles had the Super Mario _World_ series, the ones with _Land_ in the title were aimed at the portable Game Boy console. Sort of a Disney World/Land situation, if that makes sense. This installment has a “2” in the title because it follows after Super Mario Land, which was the first Mario title for the new-for-the-time handheld. Both games are excellent and very fun, but if you grew up with the Mario sequels, this second game is going to be closer to what you’re used to. Unlike the first, SML2 has an overworld and several bosses, and Mario’s sprite has been enlarged (as have the other sprites in the game) so that he’s easier to see. This has since become a bit of an unspoken rule in Game Boy graphics–in order to make things more legible, all the sprites are made bigger, which, if done right, will seem so natural that it’s not noticed, but it seems that Nintendo didn’t realize this until they got to the second title in the series. This is fair, though, since it usually takes a while to get really comfortable with programming for new hardware. As a child, I didn’t have much money for games, and my parents never bought them for me, so I saved for ages in order to buy my Game Boy Pocket (translucent version), and one game (the Pocket didn’t come with Tetris like the original DMG did!). I didn’t have much knowledge about the games that Toys-R-Us had on display, but picked Mario because I was familiar with the franchise and figured it would be a good choice. I ended up playing it over and over again through the years, but never did beat it. I remember finding it so very difficult as a child, and although I did get to the last level multiple times, I couldn’t ever get to the final boss (in this case Wario, not Bowser). So I would go back through all of the levels and beat them again, for fun mostly, but also because I would rack up lives that I could use to burn through that last _ever so difficult_ castle level. Playing back through it as an adult was a fun and interesting experience! I still remembered many of the level secrets that I discovered as a kid, and all of the levels were so familiar to me. And although I’ll admit I wasn’t that great at games as a kid (and I’m probably still not that good today), I do think some of the difficulty had to do with the Game Boy Pocket’s unlit LCD screen, which I really struggle to look at today. While the Pocket has more contrast and far less ghosting than the DMG, it’s still really, really difficult to play on, so for Christmas this past year, I requested a Modretro Chromatic from my partner, and I am so very grateful that people are making hardware that is easy for people with bad eyesight to play! With it, I can focus on the games and I don’t have to cozy up right next to a light bulb to see what I’m doing. It’s also way easier to take pictures of, which I always like to do when I reach credit screens, so I can keep a record of everything I’ve beaten. I will say it’s not a very difficult game, and I managed to complete it this time over the course of a couple of days (playing for about 20 minutes at a time, as my day allowed). However, it’s a blast and extremely well designed. Almost the entire map (minus a few secrets) is available to you from the very beginning, so you can hop around and play each of the six mini worlds in whatever order you like. Each of them has a different theme (Turtle world, Mechanical World, Haunted World, etc) along with about four separate levels each, and at the end of the last is a short boss fight. Beating the boss grants you a coin, which will fly off the map and slot itself into the final level’s castle gate. Once you’ve collected all six, the gate opens and you can go defeat Wario! Wario lives in a castle very much like Bowser’s–maybe he bought it from him after Bowser kicked off to some place nicer. It’s definitely challenging, but if you can make it through each of the castle’s traps, Wario himself isn’t too bad. Afterwards, you’ll get a nice little theme and a view of the outer castle as the credits play. The game doesn’t save after this, and there’s no reset, so you’ll need to turn the Game Boy on and off to play again. I was expecting some sort of star on the save file screen (there are three slots to use), but this is one of those older games that stays perpetually at the last level after being beaten. This always bothered me for some reason, like I wanted the cartridge to have proof that I had gotten to that credit screen that I could point to. Zelda: The Ocarina of Time did this too, and it used to drive me crazy, both because you didn’t get the Triforce like in other Zelda games, and because it left the Hyrule castle grounds a barren, depressing, ruin. Ah, well…I know in my heart I beat them both. The music is unsurprisingly great: Nintendo delivered again! However, this title doesn’t have the famous Mario theme that it’s so well-known for now. It’s got it’s own unique melody, which for each of the other levels has been remixed into their own unique songs. Ever before I decided to revisit this title, I would still frequently get them stuck in my head occasionally, because they’re so drilled into me. One of my favorite tunes is called “Athletic”, but the best one I think is titled Star Maze, and is featured on an outer space scrolling level. Being an early Game Boy game that isn’t Pokemon, I feel like the soundtrack here often gets overlooked, which is unfortunate. Screenshot of the ending, in case you’re like me, and like to save it for yourself as a surprise * * * Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins is, despite its very unwieldy name, a great little game and definitely one that’s worth picking up if you’re into collecting Game Boy cartridges. Somehow most games for the system are still pretty affordable on the secondary market, so you can probably pick it up without shelling out too much these days. That said, emulation technology is excellent these days, and the entire Game Boy library fits into 800MB, including all regional releases (!!!), which is a hell of a lot of gaming for less than 1GB! So I won’t shame anyone for picking up the ROM and playing it that way. Either way, it still holds up great after all these years.