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Never see smh or theage autoplay videos again!

Do you hate Fairfax’s horrible auto-playing videos? How about their retina-searing flash ads and giant fluorescent ad-wrap-arounds? Well, worry not!

First, download Adblock/Adblock Plus:

Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/
Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom

Use the EasyList filter (this kills all the ads). Now, add the following custom filters:

(In Firefox: Tools -> AdBlock Plus Preferences -> Add Filter…)

com.au##DIV.videoWrap
com.au##.overlay.overlayPlayCountdown.overlayPrePlay.visible
com.au###video-player-content

It should look like this:

Hooray! No more stupid freaking horrible autoplay videos and ugly ads! Win!

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Now Accessible via IPv6

I guess this is a bit of a follow-up to my post from last November about the impending IANA IPv4 address exhaustion. On November 30th, 4 of the last 6 IANA /8 blocks were allocated, leaving just two. It’s anticipated that APNIC (the Asia-Pacific Region authority) will pick up these last two in just three weeks time. From there, it’s likely our region will be the first one to run entirely out of IPv4 addresses in November of this year.

Last week I decided it’s probably a good time to put my money where my mouth is and get IPv6 enabled at home and on this website. In Australia, Internode is the only ISP offering native IPv6 (and they don’t provide tech support yet) but given the fact that no ISPs will be able to get new addresses for customers by November, I’d imagine a few others have some plans in the works.

Enabling it at home was real easy:

And enabling it on here wasn’t too hard either, with some instructions on the Linode wiki. Now, if you’re a giant nerd, you can access this site via IPv6: http://ipv6.slightlyodd.com/

If it doesn’t work, you probably haven’t gotten IPv6 working properly. Good luck! 🙂

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Good old creepy Facebook

Sure, I was only cursing them out 5 months ago, but having undergone Facebook Re-education I now love big brother.

Actually, I’m kind of torn by the Facebook Connect stuff that’s popping up all over the web (including just to your right over there). On one hand, hooray for sharing stuff with everyone. On the other hand, It’s really weird seeing my face pop up when I visit random websites.

And I’m just not so sure about the fact that ol’ Zuck the sociopath seems to have hoovered up control of a gigantic slice of social interaction on the Internet. I’d love to see people diversifying a bit – maybe getting on Twitter for the chatty type stuff, Flickr for photos, I dunno. But it’s so convenient to have it all in one place. Most of all, it’s so convenient to only need to maintain one set of connections with people.

It’s the most powerful asset that Facebook has – your friend list. Just try exporting it. The Facebook police will be round at your house with rubber hose and phonebooks in no time.

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Things I Wouldn’t Want To Be Swept Away By #15

When visiting New Zealand earlier this year, I climbed Mt Ruapehu – well, some of it anyway. At the time, I marvelled at the sternly worded warning signs like: “Did you know? Volcanic mud travels down gullies” and “Do you know what to do when the siren sounds?”

After watching this (from 2007), I can see why. Volcanic lahars – now on my list of things I wouldn’t want to be swept away by.