Does anyone have suggestions on what camera to purchase? Travis and I are thinking about getting a nice camera, something along the lines of a Canon EOS or Nikon equivalent - some sort of SLR.
I know some of you have nice cameras - you must have some ideas!
I'm so far liking my new phone. After dealing with my poorly supported and underpowered iPhone 3G for six months after they stopped producing updates for it (and two years after they stopped caring about it), having something that is snappy and feature-rich is a nice change. The switch to the Android interface wasn't a hard one: it has it's deficiencies, but for the most part the extra buttons and configurability lend well to my insect technological mind.
This is also my first phone that has video capabilities. Well, technically my second, but the first one could only do postage-stamp videos which were pretty painful to watch. This one can record 720p at 24 frames / sec, which is a considerable leap forward. I also have a couple gigabytes of storage, which means I can potentially record a few hours worth of footage if I wanted.
The thing is: I don't know if I should. The videos I've been taking so far have been 10-second shaky-cam clips of family get-togethers, drunken board gaming, and a mountain top. There is no real discernible subject, narrative, or indication on the occasion that I'm filming. Mostly just people looking out of the corner of their eye as I point a phone at them.
I like that I can capture brief moments in time with movement, gesture, and sound. I have people talking about the recent reincarnations of Calvin and Hobbes, or people gathering to eat an Xbox-shaped birthday cake. But I'm not sure if I'm really capturing an occasion like I would be with a photo. A photo depicts who is there, who was standing still long enough to have their picture taken. Taking a video is something else entirely, like I'm filming a very specific event: what people are saying, what they are doing. It's not enough that I'm recording, I have to be recording something.
That expectation almost makes me want to not take videos. There's also that people hate having video taken of them so much more than having pictures taken.
But we'll see. Anybody else found a good use for their phone video cameras?
I need tech advice, so I figured you nerds were the people to ask.
I'm ever so pleased with my Mac Mini. It is fast, has never crashed ever, doesn't complain about the things I make it do, and is cute on my desk. But I'm going to be traveling again, and I kind of want some portability.
I figured my options were: macbook (or pro) in addition to my Mini, which seems silly, because I don't need that many computers.
Keep the Mini (and put it in storage when I'm traveling) and rely on iPhone when out and about. I like this in theory, but I want a keyboard, a word processor, flash, all my music, and the ability to switch email accounts (which I could set up I know but I'm lazy).
Get rid of my Mini (I'm thinking mac recycling program) and get a Macbook, or Pro, or Air. Probably refurb because I'm cheap. Also, keep in mind that I will probably plug it into external monitor and wireless keyboard/mouse when I'm using it at home.
Option three is the strongest contender right now.
If I go with option three, here's a quandary. I would send my mini in (to get a couple hundred bucks) before ordering my new laptop. I currently have all my stuff backed up using TimeMachine on an external drive (the kind that still has a spinning disk inside, which I understand is slightly more likely to fail). I could just keep the TimeMachine back up and then put it on the new laptop, but there is probably plenty on my computer that I don't need/forgot about/shouldn't have anymore.
So then I'm thinking I reformat the drive and just transfer the stuff I want- files, music, pics, etc. Start fresh. This sounds appealing to me. I'm a little terrified, though, of putting all my stuff on one poor external drive, waiting for a new computer.
Sooooooorry for the tl;dr, but thoughts geek friends?
Today, UAA had their IT surplus sale, where they get rid of their old computer equipment and computing furniture (desks, cabinets, etc.). We got there about an hour after they opened and apparently had missed the laptop sales. However, I was able to swing two 17" monitors and a decent desktop computer for $175. Screens were Dells with VGA, DVI, and USB hubs. Desktop was a higher-end Dell workstation, P4 running at 3Ghz, 2GB RAM, a 40GB SATA hard drive, and a DVI+VGA dedicated video card. Screens were $75 for two, and the computer was $100.
Not bad deals. Talking to the folks there, they're planning on having another sale in June, if people are interested in picking up used computer gear. I understand not everyone needs / wants aged computer parts, but in my time wrangling computers, having spares is rarely a bad thing. Likely, this one will be a replacement for my 2003 A31 IBM Thinkpad. It so longs for death, and maybe I can finally grant its wish.
The Glass Menagerie opens May 6th and runs through the 22nd. If you feel like making a road trip, we goes to Homer the next weekend. Get your tickets! I might be able to get you a two-for-one, even, if you ask! http://alaskapac.centertix.net/eventperformances.asp?evt=801 (alaskapac.centertix.net)
Finally, I'm doing it. I'm letting my AOL Instant Messenger account die.
kaiden11
Worst. Password. Ever.
February 17th, 2000 - April 14th, 2011.
March 31st is Reddit's World Backup Day:
http://blog.reddit....-world-backup.html (blog.reddit.com)
Back up your stuff, people. Your hard drives are built by the lowest bidder, and have a measurable error rate per gigabyte of information read or written. It's just a matter of time. And I can't always fix it.
My work announces the 2011-2012 season tomorrow! Just thought i'd give IDKFA a sneak peak of a few of the more "titillating" shows. I'll post a full list with dates tomorrow just in case anyone wants to subscribe this year.
Broadways:
Fiddler on the Roof
Beauty and the Beast
Rock of Ages (its a musical based on 80's rock hits. movie in progress. and totally awesome.)
Other Stuff:
Broadway's Next Hit Musical (improv, and cheaper tickets that CCL)
Lily Tomlin
k.d. lang
Capitol Steps
Anything look good?
If you haven’t gotten your tickets yet, and you want to be hit in the face by a giant Jello mold, here’s the inside scoop:
Blue Man Group Poncho Seats: For one week, February 21-25, Poncho seats to Blue Man Group shows in Anchorage will be available to ACA Facebook friends only! These tickets cost $82 on standard night shows and $92 on Premier night shows.
The poncho section is the first three rows of seats in the theatre closest to the stage. It is the most interactive seating section of the show. If you sit there, you will be provided with a poncho to wear, because the performers work with some materials that splash and can make a mess. Everything in the show is washable so we suggest that you do not wear anything that needs dry cleaning. Sitting in the poncho section does not guarantee that you will get splashed but we provide ponchos as a precaution.
Call 263-ARTS or Centertix.net to purchase. Or post questions on IDKFA.
If you prefer “Jello free zone” tickets, I’d wait until the last week of February to purchase b/c we “might just be” adding 4 MORE SHOWS!
My grandmother's computer has been hit by more viruses than I'll venture have ever been written. Being that the main thing she does on her computer is exchange email, read joke forwards, and browse bizarre and malicious sections of the Internet, it doesn't really come as a surprise. It's not necessarily her bad habits that adversely effect her computer, it's those of everybody she corresponds with. And those people are goddamn idiots.
In the last six months, myself, my uncle, or my father have had to rework her computer as a result of viral infections. Every time, my poor grandmother has to listen to our stilted, generic technical descriptions of what went wrong, how we fixed it, and how we made it better this time. For the last few months, however, I've been telling her that there's a different world out there. A better world. A world where she can browse the Internet without fear. A world with solid systems architecture, sane permissions frameworks, and actual capability for customization. I told my grandmother about Linux.
So now we're trying an experiment. I disconnected her abused Windows desktop, and gave her a relatively new Linux laptop. I set it up so that her login account can't break anything, configured her wireless mouse and keyboard, gave her all of her emails to work with, and increased the system font so she doesn't have to crane her neck just to read.
She's going to try it for a week and see what she thinks.
Something important hangs in the balance here. A critical element to my theology: the grandmother test. If Linux can pass the grandmother test (that is, if my grandmother can understand and use the system), then everyone else can too.
And then I can, hopefully, stop having to deal with Windows entirely. And start recommending Linux desktops for people rather than Windows.
Because if my grandmother can do it, so can you.
In case people didn't know, the Miners and Trappers ball (www.minersandtrappersball.org) is coming up fast on March 5th at the Egan Center starting at 7:30pm. I will be there for the Beard and Mustache competition. If people aren't doing anything, they should come out and cheer me on..
Another fun opportunity to enjoy some theater:
Wine Tasting and "La Boheme"
Saturday, February 19
5:30-7:30 - Wine tasting at Grape Expectations
8:00 - Curtain for "La Boheme" at the PAC (Opening night!)
Tickets for wine tasting + opera are $75/person.
RSVP by Feb 10 to Julie (let me know if you are interested and I can send you her number)
Travis and I are going! Should be a good time.
Hey Guys! For those of you that don't know, Avenue Q is coming to town!!!
Its a Tony award winning musical that is pretty much targeted and written towards our age group. I'd equate it to The Muppets meet South Park with Gary Coleman thrown in for good measure. Anyway, its a quality show and very funny. Sure to be a good time! If you're broke like me and can't afford tickets i might be able to help :) there are a couple 10% or more off discount codes, and an event at Rum Runners this Thursday night which has several dozen pairs of tickets to give away.
Since no one knows what Avenue Q is, we need help spreading the word! Check clips out on Anchorage Concert Association's FB page, or youtube. Hope to see you there!
Christian Heppinstall, the mastermind behind Reefer Madness, is producing Cabaret at Wild Berry Theater. I got cast as a dancer again (yes!) and this time dancing is not only in heels and false eyelashes, but corsets and stockings, too. And there is chair dancing. OH MAN, AWESOME.
There will be many reminders. It's gonna be sweet.
I'm... I'm... (sighs). I'm just happy I have my laptop back.
A week or two ago, my Macbook Pro went dead. I assumed total power failure, but the hard disk was intact, and most likely everything else as well.
Turns out, a combination of third party (cheaper) batteries and a malfunctioning power cord left the computer unable to boot. Being that I still had a month of warranty, I got a new power cord and battery out of it.
Working this through the Alaska Mac Store was... trying. Their store isn't "Apple," but rather, a private business that works with Apple to complete warranty work and ship parts to and from Alaska to support the Alaska Mac Store's customers. This means: zero chance of instant gratification, even for the simplest things.
It took the tech 15 seconds to figure out that the laptop would boot with a different power cord. However, in order for them to replace the cord, they had to keep it for four days to wait for their "purchasing" employee to take a shift, put in the request for the new power cord with Apple, and have Apple overnight a battery and power cord, then wait another day for a tech to "install" the power cord and battery.
I can take care of probably 95% of the problems I have with my various computers. For the other 5%, I have yet to find a place in town that's impressed me with their level of service. At no point did the Mac Store call to update me on the status of my laptop. Granted, it was probably the lowest priority they had among their support tickets, and I wasn't technically a direct paying customer (Apple likely reimbursed them for their time), but phone calls are cheap, and quick, and as the sole method of communication between you and the client, should be used. At my work, if we haven't called or emailed a customer to notify them of work done, that particular task is considered incomplete.
There's also the question of why they had to a) keep my computer, and b) force me to give up my password to run their diagnostic tool. If the problem is glaring without even having to log in to the computer, there should be no reason to spend extra time on the Mac Store's part trying to find something.
(Also, I changed my password to one of my trash passwords before I gave it over. Fuck them.)
I have important shit on my computer. Like everyone does. Things you don't want to lose, but also things you don't necessarily want strange individuals perusing. I have literally years worth of work stored in my various source code repositories. I have my ideas for writing. I have 10K+ pictures of friends and family. Things that I would very much consider intellectual capital in a business sense.
Take, for instance, a tool like foremost (foremost.sourceforge.net). Initially used by the Air Force for data forensics, it was apparently released to the public some time ago. Its function is simple: based on user commands, look for well-known data boundaries in a given file. File formats like JPG, GIF, PDF, etc., all have signature starting bits and signature ending bits, making for data boundaries that can be scanned for in any given set of bits. This means that, unless a hard drive partition is encrypted, someone without a) access to the computer with a password or b) knowledge of the underlying filesystem, can reliably extract items from a drive image. They can do it quickly, and without ever touching the filesystem such that it would indicate that the drive had been scanned at all.
The scary thing is that this works even after you've deleted files. File deletion, by default, and unless explicitly told differently, is not removing anything from the drive, it is only removing the reference to a file. This means that even if your computer forgets about something, that file, and its well-known boundaries, still exist on the drive.
Granted, the file may eventually be overwritten, either completely, or partially, hopefully corrupting the file beyond retrieval. And formatting a drive (to some degree, depending on your paranoia, and your system defaults) will usually blow away files.
My point is: I've had lots and lots of things on my computer. I've done backups and recoveries for other people. I make it a point to delete people's files the moment I'm assured they've performed their own backups (not only do I want the space back, but I don't want to know anything about people they wouldn't tell me in person). Tools like foremost mean that it's not only what I have on my computer currently, but anything I've ever had and didn't have the time to write zeroes over that I have to worry about. Things that have nothing to do with me, but ultimately would come back to me if indeed they were found to be suspect.
Which comes to why they would be searching in the first place. In 2008 (consumerist.com), it was reported that a Best Buy Geek Squad found child porn on some guy's computer. That the guy was collecting child porn is horrible and disgusting. However, nothing was cited as to the legality of the search performed on the guy's computer. One might assume it was a routine search, or maybe it was on the desktop, or maybe it was being backed up and the Geek Squad employee just happened to notice bad things being transferred. More likely, though, it was an automated tool, say, to aid the Geek Squad employees in finding files that would need to be backed up (ask yourself "Where are all of my important files, exactly?", and you'll see what I mean).
I know about these types of things because it's my job. And maybe I'm a little paranoid. But when the Mac Store asked me to sign and initial my agreement to having my computer scanned by the "Apple Diagnostics Tool," and then releasing them of all liability, particularly in a support case which had absolutely no reason to perform such a scan... I got super nervous.
TL;DR: Trust no one.
(Also, it felt like I was handing over my child-that-I-cared-for-like-a-piece-of-equipment to a bunch of emo kids. Seriously. Get a haircut.)
So this is a little old news, but i want to point out that in the Hallelujah Chorus video put together by Quinhagak's fifth and sixth graders, the teacher is wearing a three wolf moon shirt in what seems to be a non-joking manner.
link to the video:
http://www.youtube....atch?v=LyviyF-N23A (www.youtube.com)
(at least, that should be the video)
You don't see the teacher until the very end.
So I've been tinkering with another project.
In going to school for programming for a number of years, it was always a big pain in the ass to show people code examples. Email seemed heavy handed, and IM never quite seemed to be the right format (computer code generally has more viewing window size restrictions than English). Neither were that quick or convenient, and both introduced problems in how one had to copy and paste code segments into email and/or IM conversations.
Having the need to do more code snippet passing, I've put together something to address this: http://idkfa.com/paste/index.php
It's a simple function: it stores up to 10,000 characters in a file. Whenever you hit "paste," it overwrites that file. However, if that file has been updated since you last accessed the page, it'll let you know that there's been a change/conflict, and show you the differences between the existing page and the page you're trying to paste.
It's got kinks, and isn't super elegant, but it's something useful if you're just wanting to quickly pass some text and you want that text to remain unmolested by its fonts, bounding boxes, email clients, or transfer protocols.
(A site exists at http://pastie.org/ (pastie.org) that does about the same thing. However, it works the same way that imgur or other image hosting services in that you're given your own URL to deal with as you see fit. My "paste" application is not that sophisticated. It's one paste, one user at a time.)
I don't know if anybody really gets any value out of the stuff I write here, but I think it's important, and interesting, and good to know if you're interested in the nature of the Internet.
In recent years, a service called Twitter introduced a message distribution system that lets people send short messages over the internet to people who have subscribed to those messages. By short, I mean 160 or so characters. The overall quality of information one can transmit in 160 characters has been a criticism of the service, but people continue to use it in the interest of having access to short thoughts from their friends, politicians, celebrities, and a number of businesses who find interesting ways to use the service.
Out of Twitter came the necessity for URL shortening services. URLs (e.g., http://idkfa.com) (idkfa.com)) are human readable "resource location" addresses, or at least, were initially designed to be human readable. Their initial intention was to define a) the protocol over which you were accessing a file, b) the host which was supposed to serve you the file, and c) the resource location on that host of where you expect to find that file. Most web sites only make you memorize the host name, providing default pages at the "/" resource location, and most web browsers don't require you to enter in the http://. Even if efforts are made to make it easier for humans to enter URLs (bookmarks, URL completion), there's still the problem that most URLs (after they've been "helped" by the computer) are much longer than 160 characters (even much, much longer for sophisticated and intricate web applications).
Thus, Internet companies invented URL shortening services. These services would take a long url (say, http://idkfa.com/v3...id=1&msg_id=1) and turn it into something like http://bit.ly/g3WVDN (bit.ly) (from 54 characters down to 21).
If a person clicks on the bit.ly link, they are taken to the bit.ly web site, which then redirects them to the longer URL you intended. This is ideal when you are trying to provide both a comment on something, and then a link to what you're commenting on in your limited 160 character Twitter message.
Now, in almost all Twitter clients, *all* of your URLs are shortened automatically, even when it's not necessary in order to fit in the 160 character mark.
However, the concept of URL shortening is not altogether altruistic. Every time you click on a "shortened" link, you access an unrelated site first before you're redirected to the content you're actually interested in. Why is this bad, Josh? Do the URL shortening services try to send you to the wrong place? Do they try to forward you to viruses, or other malicious content?
Not in the least. Their entire livelihood in running a free service is being reliable, accurate, and trustworthy. And because the system is so simple, it takes almost nothing to switch from one URL shortening service to another. The URL shortening business is a business in hopes that you maintain a habit.
So how, then, does a URL shortening business make money? Particularly, the large services, for which huge amounts of bandwidth are passed through for absolutely no cost to the users? How do they keep the lights on?
They do so by identifying trends. That is, on their side of things, they have a massive database of URLs that people are clicking on. And based on those URLS, they have identify patterns in usage. Things like:
It is essentially free, accurate, and real-time market research for anyone who wants to buy it. The information tends to be anonymous, and thus, generally has no personally identifiable information associated with it to get into sticky privacy messes. It's a data mining treasure trove.
Businesses have of course caught on. The original URL shorteners are now competing with companies like Facebook (their fb.me service). It's a subtle, but pretty lucrative market. And it's all for the ability to identify trends before people realize they're trends in the first place.
What's more fun is that this is completely old-hat, in terms of companies using "clicks" or recording usage to get data. Search companies like Google and Yahoo have been identifying trends since they realized how accurately people's search terms correlated to various social, economic, and political trends.
The Internet is a weird and scary place. And the big players on the Internet know exactly what you're thinking.
"20 Years of Commander Keen"
http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/12/15/0746225/20-Years-of-Commander-Keen (games.slashdot.org)
Commander Keen and its sequels were some of the first video games I played as a child. They were pretty engaging, particularly for a 5-year-old, and while frustrating for somebody with fledgling gamer dexterity, still kept me pretty interested at a time in my life when I couldn't sit still.
"FBI Alleged To Have Backdoored OpenBSD's IPSEC Stack"
http://bsd.slashdot.org/story/10/12/15/004235/FBI-Alleged-To-Have-Backdoored-OpenBSDs-IPSEC-Stack (bsd.slashdot.org)
Aggrajag and Mortimer.CA, among others, wrote to inform us that Theo de Raadt has made public an email sent to him by Gregory Perry, who worked on the OpenBSD crypto framework a decade ago. The claim is that the FBI paid contractors to insert backdoors (marc.info) into OpenBSD's IPSEC stack. Mr. Perry is coming forward now that his NDA with the FBI has expired. The code was originally added ten years ago, and over that time has changed quite a bit, "so it is unclear what the true impact of these allegations are" says Mr. de Raadt. He added: "Since we had the first IPSEC stack available for free, large parts of the code are now found in many other projects/products." (Freeswan and Openswan are not based on this code (twitter.com).)
---
This is a little crazy. These are simply allegations, and have yet to be verified, but the mere accusation is devastating.
IPSEC is a way to secure communications on internal organizational networks, as well as provide access over secure remote connections to an internal IPSEC connection.
This means that the FBI has potentially had access (via hidden backdoors) to all IPSEC traffic for the last 10 years on systems that run the OpenBSD operating system. OpenBSD is one of a number of open source systems that are used in large deployment networks, specifically in VPN appliances that support IPSEC.
This means that companies who relied on IPSEC as a secure means of communicating on their internal network can no longer be certain that their internal network is invulnerable to potential traffic sniffing. It also puts the spotlight on all open source software that may have borrowed source code from the OpenBSD IPSEC software libraries.
Had a couple of hours to kill, so I looked into a new project. I had a conversation where people were talking about what they would do if their house was broken into (what was actually valuable, what would be replaceable, what wouldn't, etc.). Computers were pretty high on the list of "things that were valuable," for the reason that they often stored things like tax information, usernames and passwords, etc.
As usual with conversations, if I find something computationally interesting, my inner programmer surfaces and pushes my higher functions to a lower priority.
I started thinking about what it would take to deter theft of computers. Or, well, not so much deter, but give the possibility of reclamation in the event that somebody steals your devices. This essentially means programming intelligence into your computers for them to realize:
In any of these events, it's relatively trivial to have your computer do things like dial into a server on the Internet, feed it information necessary to a) locate its current network, b) give information on what the computer is connected to, and c) give information on the internals of the network. You could even go so far as to ask the computer to tell you what wireless networks are available. And all of this information would be able to be collected in seconds, and would be barely noticeable in terms of bandwidth used.
The prototype I have drawn up works only on Mac/Linux, but could pretty easily be drawn up on the Windows side of things.
Does anybody have experience with this? Or, have you had your computer stolen, and wished there was something on your computer that would have been able to react accordingly?
In addition, does anybody have any thoughts on how to thwart theft if the thief is savvy, and they are aware that the computer might try to dial out and contact somebody? Nothing is stopping somebody from just ripping out the hard drive. I'm just curious, past maybe a BIOS password, what one could do in this case.
/thinking aloud
