2008 Nov 9, 11:29
I finally replaced my old regular cell-phone which was literally being held together by a rubber band with a fancy new G1, my first Internet accessible phone.
I had to call the T-Mobile support line to get data added to my plan and the person helping me was disconcertingly friendly. She asked about my weekend plans and so I felt compelled to ask her the
same. Her plans involved replacing her video card so she could get back to World of Warcraft and do I enjoy computer gaming? I couldn't tell if she was genuine or if she was signing me up for
magazines.
I was with Sarah in her new car, trying out the phone's GPS functionality via Google Maps while she drove. I switched to Street View and happened to
find my car. It was a weird feeling, kind of like those Google
conspiracy videos.
The phone runs Google's open source OS and I really enjoy the application API. Its all in Java and URIs and mime-types are sort of
basics. Rather than invoking the builtin item picker control directly you invoke an 'intent' specifying the URI of your list of items, a mime-type describing the type of items in the list, and an
action 'PICK' and whatever is registered as the picker on the system pops up and lets the user pick from that list. The same goes if you want to 'EDIT' an image, or 'VIEW' an mp3.
I wanted to replace the Google search box gadget that appears on the home screen with my own search box widget that uses OpenSearch descriptors but apparently in the current API you can't make home screen gadgets without changing
parts of the OS. My other desired application is something to replace this GPS photo tracker device by recording my
location to a file and an additional program on my computer to apply those locations to photos.
tmobile personal api phone technical g1 android google 2008 Oct 27, 1:39Rubber-hose cryptanalysis is first defined by Marcus J. Ranum on Oct 15 1990: "..unless you resort to the rubber-hose technique of cryptanalysis. (in which a rubber hose is applied forcefully and
frequently to the soles of the feet until the key to the cryptosystem is discovered, a process that can take a surprisingly short time and is quite computationally inexpensive)"
humor cryptography rubber-hose security 2008 Aug 27, 11:36
Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 is now available! Some of the new features from this release that I really enjoy are Tab Grouping, the new address-bar, and InPrivate Subscriptions.
Tab Grouping groups tabs that are opened from the same page. For example, on a Google search results page if you open the first two links the two new tabs will be grouped with the Google search
results page. If you close one of the tabs in that group focus goes to another tab in that group. Its small, but I really enjoy this feature and without knowing exactly what I wanted while using
IE7 and FF2 I knew I wanted something like this. Plus the colors for the tab groups are pretty!
The new address bar and search box makes life much easier by searching through my browsing history for whatever I'm typing in. Other things are searched besides history but since I ignore favorites
and use Delicious I mostly care about history. At any rate its one of the things that makes it impossible for me to go machines running IE7.
InPrivate Subscriptions allows you to subscribe to a feed of URLs from which IE should not download content. This is intended for avoiding sites that track you across websites and could sell or
share your personal information, but this feature could be used for anything where the goal is to avoid a set of URLs. For example, phishing, malware sites, ad blocking, etc. etc. I think there's
some interesting uses for this feature that we have yet to see.
Anyway, we're another release closer to the final IE8 and I can relax a little more.
microsoft browser technical ie8 ie 2008 Aug 26, 3:42Links to write ups on how much energy it would take to destroy the Earth or at least make it inhabitable in various fashions: "Destroying the Earth, It is often asked what it would take to shatter
the Earth into little pieces. Erik Max Francis gives a rough answer. A less drastic measure would be to sterilise it by heating the outside. Brian Davis does the arithmetic, but I think he should
have calculated what it would take to boil the oceans, which is a few thousand times more by my BotEC. Occasionally it is asked what would happen if you shot a fast-moving projectile at the Earth;
I've written something up."
scifi science math 2008 Aug 21, 10:40"I see a lot of questions in the Media Center newsgroups and forums asking how to access recorded TV from another Media Center in the house. This is fairly easy to accomplish. In this entry I'll walk
you through it in Vista; XP is almost the same except for some of the steps for sharing and securing the folder."
tv vista windows mce sharing mediacenter dvr howto 2008 May 6, 12:12Get Google Map display of and RSS feed of your package progress via UPS, FedEx, DHL, etc package tracking. I was looking for an RSS feed to do this but I didn't think of Google Map integration. Neat
idea. He should do georss in the RSS feed too.
geo google map rss package UPS visualization mashup 2008 Mar 4, 11:00You can paste the Flickr GeoRSS feed's URI into Google Map search (or any GeoRSS feed) and have the feed displayed on Google Maps.
rss georss google maps flickr 2007 Dec 13, 2:05DJ mixes various well known songs together. Lots of good stuff in here.
via:swannman music mp3 audio techno remix free download mashup 2007 May 2, 1:12Voting records from congress people available as well as money trail information.
article politics mashup web blog social public privacy voting 2006 Jul 31, 1:07Guy messes with wireless theiving neighbors using fun proxying.
http humor internet prank ip wireless wifi proxy 2006 Apr 4, 5:21This document describes the inner workings of IETF meetings and Working Groups, discusses organizations related to the IETF, and introduces the standards process. It is not a formal IETF process
document but instead an informational overview.
internet reference ietf rfc 2004 Apr 22, 3:52I actually have something to say which I thought would be appropriate for the LiveJournal format. Why I haven't posted to the LiveJournal for such a great length of time can be saved for later. I
spent Easter weekend and the Monday following, in Washington, the state. Microsoft paid for me to fly up and stay in Washington so I could do the technical portion of the interview with them. I hung
out with my friend Jeannie and she showed me all around Seattle on Saturday and Sunday. Each night we had somewhat expensive dinners, all paid for by Microsoft. It was cool. On Sunday I stayed at a
nice hotel in Redmond and the next morning I spent just short of eight hours being interviewed by five different people from different groups within Microsoft. Each sub interview consisted of two
portions. First there was the general portion where they would ask me why I wanted to work there, ask about my previous experience, and those sort of non technical questions. The second portion would
take the majority of the time and it would be me trying to solve some technical problem they'd present. By the end of the interview my hands were gray with dry erase marker ink because apparently
everybody's got a whiteboard and they all want me to write code on them. I have to go to class soon and I might post some more stories related to this trip, but mostly I wanted to say that last week
I received a great offer from them and I'll probably be moving up to Washington sometime (weeks or months?) after graduation. Also, I've changed my AIM name from SequelGuy to SequelDave. My email
address will also have to change soon, but I don't know to what it will change.
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