Regina Noctis

I’m not so in love with my looks that I would insist on doing self-portraits. But it does seem like it’s always an assignment at some point in the graphics classes I’ve been taking. I’ve already done two, and my current class wants me to do yet another one. How representational each is to be has changed with each assignment. The first one was a study taken from a photograph of myself. The next one, the instructor wanted me to have at least some elements of my face in it, but it was to be more about things that had gone toward who I am. The current one, no likeness of myself is required. It’ll be an image montage that talks about who I am rather than what I look like. I’m having the hardest time with this latest one. I can’t find anything I want to put together and say, “This is ME!”

The two I’ve done before I’m actually pretty proud of, despite my dislike of doing self-imagery. I’ve found that I dislike doing self-portraits graphically as I do having my picture taken. One of the reasons I haven’t taken the intermediate photography class that I’d love to take is that one of the assignments will be self-portraiture, and I hate having my picture taken, even if I’m the one doing the taking.

So, anyway, since I have succeeded in doing a couple self-portraits that I managed to be proud of despite the subject matter, I thought I’d share. (And I think that my favorite compliment thus far on the first one was when saw the final printed and mounted version, and had great difficulty believing that it wasn’t a photograph. I was trying for a high degree of photorealism in that one. Good to know I succeeded in achieving that goal.)

The cat in the second one is my Manx, Morris. The background is the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion in Greece. Since the instructor was willing to allow it, I recycled parts of the first self-portrait (those parts of my face that I like rather than object to) for the second.

Spotted this on ’s LJ, and though I don’t do memes often any longer, I thought this one was intersting. It’ll show melds with other people when viewed on the friends list. Amusing, too, that mine is green, which is my favorite color. Though I do prefer dark greens to bright ones.

(And, apparently, and I meld into something resembling a bit of Lucky Charms cereal – my vaguely heart-shaped image plus her red-purple rather works out to pink hearts. Now we just need people to show up as the rest of the marshmallow shapes.)

Get your own spectral analysis from Area 23®

For something around two and a half weeks, we’ve had problems with internet connectivity. Out of that time, there were three or four days where we might have between 10 minutes and an hour of connectivity, and then the damn thing would go down and stay down.

I don’t even want to think about how much all the people on my friends list have managed to write in that amount of time. I did try to do a little catch-up reading on LJ and the various blogs I normally read every day whenever the computer would consent to connect, but it wasn’t enough.

After much fighting with the equipment in this place, connectivity seems to be solid again. However, with school going on, I’m giving up on the idea of catching up with two and a half weeks of unread blogs and LJ. If there’s something anyone really wanted me to see, please point me in the right direction.

And a big thank you to everyone who avoided using the LJ nudge function to get me to write. If I’d finally gotten connection back, in the foul mood I was in after all the problems I’ve had with getting every damn thing to work like it’s supposed to, and found my inbox full of nudges, I’d probably have gone on that cross-country killing spree I mumble about periodically.

Some folks may not have heard about the WMF exploit. Simply put, it’s a vulnerability in Windows that can, through viewing an image file, execute a metric assload of malicious code. I would warn that the extension to look out for is .wmf, however that wouldn’t be correct. WMF images can be renamed with any extension – .jpg, .gif, and .png to name the most often used image file extensions – and Windows will still recognize the wmf coding and execute the malicious code. The current attack vector is through images posted on websites, but it could also arrive via email and instant messaging. It can carry a large payload of spyware, adware, trojans, and various other malware. A movie of an infected machine can be found here (Windows media movie, safe to view) that even includes in the payload a fake viruscan software installation that sends the user to a page to phish for personal and credit card information. The whole thing was released while people were off for the holidays to maximize time to spread.

Anti-virus programs are not catching this exploit, and firewalls aren’t blocking it, so don’t rely on them to keep you safe.

Microsoft, with their usual timely response </sarcasm>, has said that the soonest they will have a patch to fix this extremely critical exploit will be January 9, giving this thing plenty of time to spread like wildfire.

There is, however, a solution, vetted by the folks over at SANS. A group of volunteers gave up their holidays. They put together a third-party patch to tide everyone over until the official patch from Microsoft is out. Two links can be found here to the patch. Removal is easy after installation. It will be in your add/remove programs. Remove it before installing the official patch when Microsoft gets around to it.

It’s also recommended that you disable the .dll file that gets called by the wmf exploit. Some sites indicate that it’s not necessary if you have the patch, but most recommend that you do so as well as install the patch. To disable the .dll file, go to Start -> Run and then type:

regsvr32 /u shimgvw.dll

If you’re going to go the safest route and disable the .dll, then you’ll need to do it every time you boot up your machine.

To enable the .dll without rebooting, go to Start -> Run and type:

regsvr32 shimgvw.dll

Make sure the .dll is enabled before installing the official Microsoft patch.

(with thanks to middleclasstool for the heads-up over on Mofi.)