Steve Gets A Life

the camera phone cometh

maybe i should add a new section for images from the new phone. so lets get started.

first off is andria at my desk at home. your standard "hey i got a new camera phone and i want to try it out" kinda picture

next up is the front steps of our apartment. for those of you who haven't seen it. its nice and 70's ugly/boring.

new phone

its almost done. maybe ill write up a little bit on what ive gone through with at&t trying to get this phone deal done.
anyways, andria and i have new phones (1, 2) now. now that i've got my bluetooth phone, ive realized that my g5 doesn't have a bluetooth module. aaaaagh! then why does it have a bluetooth antenna? dammit. i knew i should have checked on that..
so ya, gonna try to get one from the bookstore, if they're even open on new year's eve.
soooo cloooooose to techno greatness.
update!
got it working. so awesome.
went to the bookstore and got an external bluetooth adapter (only $30!). one stupid complaint: nowhere on the device does it say "bluetooth," not even the little logo (see picture), so it could get confused with a storage USB stick. but ignoring that, its awesome. i can bring it home and sync on my PC too. schweet.

broken lizard

well, considering i thought that Super Troopers was gonna suck after watching its trailer (way back when), i hope that Club Dread will follow suit and produce something awesome from such a so-so trailer.
lets hope Bill Paxton doesn't screw it up.

the big news

holy cow, im engaged. i gave andria a ring and she actually said "yes."
do i know what im doing? kinda. i don't know what the date is, what the colors will be, or anything, but i do know that i want this to happen.
i don't know how we're gonna pull this off, but it's gonna be interesting.
ok, back to reality...

shakin

whoa. haven't experienced an earthquake since loma prieta back in '89.
so that was fun.

holy christmas

this video is hilarious.
thanks to dhm for that.

24

as cool as the tv show 24 is (season 1), Dennis Hopper's accent really sucks. I mean, come on. He sounds like dexter.

speak it, bruce

What's your position on full disclosure of vulnerabilities? The only reason that software companies are paying attention to vulnerabilities and issuing patches is because of full disclosure. Before researchers started publishing vulnerabilities publicly, software companies would routinely deny that the vulnerabilities existed. Full disclosure is what's getting them to take security seriously, and it's what's keeping them honest. Yes, it also helps the bad guys. But the benefits grossly outweigh the disadvantages.

[bruce schneier, from computerworld]

skitzo

check out the last comment, at the bottom of this page. this lady(?) is totally whacked.
so i guess there's a downside to being a world-renowned security guru. crazies send you weird stuff like this.

dr steve ?

if i really want to get into security, do i need a PhD?
should i go back to school? i had an offer to enter the program when i left with my MS. it seems like it might be the best way to really enter the security world, but what about everything else?
can i handle the entrance exams? i mean, i just squeaked by my undergrad on purpose, avoiding things like compiler design and programming languages (well, i took the courses, just conveniently forgot everything in them)
and how long would it take? can i really put myself through 6 more years of school? of course, i'd be in santa barbara, so it couldn't be that bad i guess. but damn it would be expensive. and i can tell you, grad students do not make the big bucks. maybe andria would be my schoolteacher sugar mama ;)
reading about recent events at my old stomping grounds makes me feel like im missing out on cool stuff. a distributed CTF game? awesome. and UCSB kicked ass. right on.
anyways. just feeling directionless as usual.

awesome site

go check out metacritic if you haven't already.
it gathers reviews of movies, music, etc and compiles them into one place. for example, you can see that the movie Gigli reeeaaally sucked, while The Fellowship of the Ring was frickin awesome.

finally

apparently the magic number is 4:20. thats right, 4 hours, 20 minutes on hold with AT&T wireless.
what are you laughing at?
well, i spoke to a real person for all of 10 seconds and she put me on hold again. at least there's music on this one. kinda funky too.
damn. no dice on getting the deal. gotta call up customer service and see if they will give it to me. apparently if your order just doesn't go through, they don't give a crap.

horrible horrible horrible

oh hold with AT&T going on 3 hours now.
wtf.

perl does my bidding

wrote a pretty cool perl script today.
not going to go into it, as its part of a larger project im working on right now, but it used DBI and XMLRPC together. pretty cool.
so, this is just for my own reference, pretty much.
carry on.

actual AT&T person [nevermind]

in case you ever have problems ordering a phone from AT&T's website, here's the number to call to get straight to a person: (866)391-0749 if all goes correctly, i should have a new phone by next week. whoa. ignore that. ive been on hold for 3 hours and still haven't talked to anyone. giving up.

im your printer monkey

today some student waltzed in with a "do my bidding, my senior project is due this week" look on her face.
she looked around the room and said

"is the printer techie guy in here?"

i found myself glaring at her. i wanted to ask "where is the girl who draws flowerboxes all day?" (she's a landscape architecture student).
argh.

---

on iTunes: On the Turning Away from the album "A Momentary Lapse of Reason" by Pink Floyd

CD-protection problem solved!

from schneier's cryptogram
The Doghouse: SunnComm Technologies
The home page of this company says "lightyears beyond encryption." Actually, it's an anti-copying technology for music CDs. This technology is being used to protect the new CD by BMG soul artist Anthony Hamilton.
It's actually not worth fighting the pop-ups and the Flash and the annoying website to learn about how the system works or how you can purchase it. It turns out you can defeat this system by holding down the shift key when you insert a music CD into your computer. This disables autorun, so the SunnComm software never gets executed.
Unfortunately, SunnComm has some more tricks up its sleeve. They're suing John Halderman, the Princeton PhD student who first noticed this. That'll make the system secure again; of course it will.

publish your iCal

if you want to be able to publish your iCal calendar, all you need is a static ip (or a free service like dyndns) and your own mac. no need for fancy-pants web hosting. check it out. that way, people can subscribe to your calendar and have it appear on their iCal or Mozilla Calendar.

dont forget about PHP iCalendar for the fancy web front..
to set it up:

• just download it
• move the unzipped folder to /Library/WebServer/Documents/
• sudo su -
cd /Library/WebServer/Documents/
ln -s phpicalendar-0.9.5/ ical (just to make it easier on the eyes)
  
• in config.inc.php i made the changes:
  $calendar_path = '/www/DAV/'; (or wherever your webdav share is mounted).
  and $download_uri = 'http://smcghee.caed.calpoly.edu/DAV'; to allow the "download" and "subscribe" buttons to work.

there is also a way to publish iCals to this program without even setting up WebDAV, but i already set it up, and anyways, whats the fun then?