Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Origins of Halloween

The Blog Frog wishes you and yours a very Happy Halloween. But first, here's a little known fact (or two) about the origin of Halloween.

Samhain, End of Summer, was a Pagan festival celebrated in Ireland more than a thousand years ago. When Irish immigrants came to North America in the 19th Century, they called their holiday in English All Hallows' Even'. This became All Hallows' Eve and was then shortened to Hallowe'en which later became just Halloween. While Samhain was recognition of the coming of winter, and a hope the harvest was plentiful enough to last all winter, the Celts also believed that on that day the boundary separating the dead from the living became blurred. This later led (in the 20th Century) to the North American tradition of dressing up or "guising" to confuse the spirits.

In closing, here's hoping you got lots of treats, and nobody played too many tricks on you!

New York October 11

On October 11, five years and one month after September 11, New York Yankees Pitcher Cory Lidle and his flight instructor Tyler Stanger accidentally crash-landed their single-engine plane. They crashed into the 30th and 31st floors of the Belaire, a luxury condo in Manhattan on the Upper East Side. U.S. military jets briefly patrolled the skies above several North American cities. This accident reminded New Yorkers of an earlier more tragic time. But this time co-operation was in order as NORAD scrambled the jets, the NTSB investigated the accident, and the FAA researched a possible mayday call maybe made just prior to the crash.

Monday, October 30, 2006

October 11 new September 11?

Is October 11 the new September 11? Thankfully no, instead it was just a horribly tragic day for two people, and not thousands. And if "Weird Al" Yankovic can't sell a song parody, he'll just give it away for free. That'll teach Atlantic Records! Speaking of music, the Music Genome Project created Pandora Internet Radio, a cleverly designed free service, for the musically curious.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Shock-Jock Howard Stern

If you like New York Shock-Jock radio personality Howard Stern, I've got good news for you. Sirius Satellite Radio is broadcasting shock-jock Howard Stern and his four-hour program live online for free on October 25th and 26th to promote their new web service. To pre-register go to the Sirius Satellite Radio web site. And if you hear anything objectionable, don’t say I didn't warn you!

Monday, October 09, 2006

Happy Canadian Turkey Day, Eh?

Happy Thanksgiving to all the Candians enjoying their turkey today! And I hope you have a great Columbus Day to all the Americans. For those of you not working today, enjoy your well-deserved day off from work, you earned it. And just think, in just a little more than six more weeks, the Americans can have their turkey and eat it too!

Sunday, October 08, 2006

I-Worm.Leebad.A

Leebad A, I-Worm.Leebad.A, is a Microsoft Windows worm. On infection, Leebad copies admin.bat, autorun.inf, System32.exe, and system32dll.dll to the root of all available drives including network ones. Autorun.inf runs System32.exe on infection. Admin.bat creates a new administrator account with a log-in password of abcd1234!@# and system32dll.dll is a keystroke logger.

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Site Map for Blog Frog

A. Ryan Robbins of ycopfiles.com is proud to announce the creation of another Blog Frog Site Map. Because articles are organized chronologically, newer articles appear later in the site map. And because A. Ryan Robbins is writing more articles as promised, another site map was needed!