You Look Like I Need a Drink

Chalkline is Dead

2007-04-29T22:31:00.000-04:00

You Look Like I Need a Drink is officially retired. Here are the goals I have met:

*Been on the front page of digg twice.
*Number one spot on del.icio.us.
*Featured on Lifehacker.
*Broke 10,000 hits in one day.
*A photo posted here (DeLorean one) made it to a local newspaper.
*A mention on Popular Science magazine (May 2007 issue, page 96.)

Anyway, I am quitting this blog while I am ahead. Thanks to everyone that visited!

Flux Capacitor Gone Wrong

2007-03-21T22:48:00.000-04:00

The Story Behind This Vehicle: First off, this is NOT my DeLorean. I was down in Portsmouth Virginia visiting a friend and as we parked at a pawn shop, we noticed a torched DeLorean parked outside of the shop. It turns out that the owner of the shop (and car) was just doing a casual drive when the rear of his car burst into flames. Supposedly, no one was injured but this car will be one hell of a fixer-upper if anyone decides to restore it.

Welcome Autoblog readers!

Ubuntu With Beryl

2007-03-21T22:33:00.000-04:00

After tinkering with a number of different linux distributions (last one was Dreamlinux), I decided to switch to Ubuntu running Beryl instead of upgrading to Vista. It runs fairly well on my aging Toshiba Satellite A45-S151 but if you choose to run Beryl and Kiba dock on it (being the same laptop), expect to do a wee bit of tweaking for speed and performance.

Kitchen Timer Trick

2007-03-18T10:46:00.000-04:00

Here is a quick and easy trick for your kitchen if you are cooking something that requires a timer, but don't have a timer. Assuming you have a microwave and are not using it, set your microwave to time the food in your oven or on your stove and now you have an instant kitchen timer.

A Fat Wreck Christmas (mp3s)

2006-12-17T13:22:00.000-05:00

The good folks at Fat Wreck have recently posted a link to listen and download (free!), their Christmas Bonus CD. I have not listened to it all but with Leftover Crack to Strike Anywhere, I am already content.

But if that is not enough to sate your tastes, I did a little digging and found another free download titled Sample 2006 also in which you can freely download the entire album. Noted songs are by Against Me!, the Loved Ones and the Lawrence Arms.

And of course, via entering the normal Fat Wreck site, you can download some mp3s from their featured artists, at www.fatwreck.com/audio/.

the Salty Napkin Trick

2006-12-10T11:56:00.000-05:00

Scenario: You are at a bar, and because there is a lack of coasters, your cold frothy beverage is placed on a napkin.

The inherent problem with this oft used coaster replacement is that as the condensation forms on the outside of your glass, it eventually follows the laws of gravity and inevitably, the napkin ends up stuck to the bottom of your glass as you are toasting to your friends.

Solution: As soon as your drink is served, lift your drink off of the napkin and grab the nearest salt shaker. Sprinkle the napkin lightly with salt (roughly 3-4 shakes per average salt shaker) and replace your beverage back on your napkin. No more sticky napkin even as it gets saturated from condensation.

*Quick Update: Here is your challenge. If you are dubious, bookmark this page and go test out the theory, and then get back to me.

*Yes, the picture used with this trick has no napkin, I am aware of this. Also thanks to Randy for showing me this trick.

4500 (+) Myspace Phishing Passwords Revealed

2006-11-21T22:54:00.000-05:00

I was in the process of updating my portable apps on my thumbdrive when I came across a disturbing post on Digg (which had not made the front page-yet). Anyway here is a list of 4500+ myspace username and passwords revealed from a phishing scheme (the download is at the bottom of the screen). I ran the .txt file through excel so it could be sorted. Myspace users might want to check if their account has been compromised. Oh and don't be a dick, although I imagine that a fair amount of the accounts have already been changed due to abuse.

Dissection of a Parking Meter (Eagle 2100)

2006-11-19T19:02:00.000-05:00

In Virginia the other day, I came across a discarded but fully functional parking meter. After getting it home an disassembling it, I discovered that the make and model was a Duncan Eagle 2100.
Quick Specs:
2 LCDs, a card reader (mine was disabled), a peripheral port, infrared capability, green red and yellow LEDs, runs on 2 9v batteries.

These plastic switches help determine the size of the coin when inserted into the meter. Simply manually flipping these switches will not result in extra 'time' on your meter.

I have not fully explored the peripheral port but I am sure it is not a CAT5 female adapter.

So far this meter has been sitting on the tank of my toilet blinking into obscurity. If anyone has any further information on the Eagle 2100, that would greatly be appreciated. Any ideas what should be done with it?

Shirts You Should Own

2006-11-19T11:59:00.000-05:00

Insanely Great Tees does not have a huge collection of shirts but their nod to computer/gamer geek culture is enough for me to be satisfied enough to list them. Their brightly colored and 8 bit inspired shirts are all listed at a moderate $17.00.

Nerdy Shirts offer a throwback in retro nerd-dom (is that even a freakin word?). You will find everything from your classic Space Invader's shirt to your 'remember back when I had to blow on my Nintendo game cartridge' shirt. Nerdy Shirts has a medium sized collection of shirts at a decent price.

Resist Today has some of the most bizarre and imaginative shirts I have seen in awhile. For some reason, their designs remind me of old tyme style circus posters. Caretaker is a pretty bad ass shirt, not to mention only $13.00. Resist Today also offer a medium sized collection of shirts but shirts can range anywhere from $10.00 to $24.00.

Not only having an awesome URL, Owl Movement has some pretty unique shirt designs. More cutesy than Resist Today, but not nearly as simplistic (and feminine) than Crowded Teeth, Owl Movement is definitely worth checking out. They have about 20 shirts in their collection mostly all priced in the $20.00 range.

You won't understand this shirt to the left here if you have never had Vietnamese food. Asian culture aside, T-Shirt Corner has a few vintage shirts with some slogans- you know how 'vintage' and 'slogan' shirts are all the Internet induced get rich by making a shirt company online rage these days right? Their line of baby/toddler shirts are actually pretty funny, however I am not sure how well their category of weddding/bachelorette shirts are selling. Also a medium sized shirt collection (unless you count baby shirts, etc) priced around $15.00.

Ten Bills is currently having a $5.00 shirt sale so I expect inventory won't last much longer. Their designs are slick-think Threadless but with less hype and way more off the radar. What the hell are you still lingering around for? I said, shirts are $5.00!!!

This ladies Night Owl shirt from teetonic gives me ~~an excuse to put boobies on my site~~ an example that their are also plenty of sites out there that offer shirts tailored for women. Their Robot Invasion shirt is awesome. Also a medium sized catalog with shirts starting at 20 pounds.

Squidhunter is currently down, so my brief review will be truncated even shorter. From what I can recall, they have a few samurai-based shirts. Or maybe it was Kabuki? For all I know, with my depleted brain mass they could have featured penguins sliding down slides at a playground? Probably not but hey, don't blame me for my memory loss...

Shirt Stain only currently offers 9 shirts. But here is reason number 1 to go there. And here is reason 2. All shirts priced at $15.00. Hopefully their collection will expand shortly.

Also a good tongue-in-cheek site name, I was actually slightly disappointed going back to this site the second time and thinking,'damn for a cool company name, they really don't have all that many shirts that I would buy.'I don't know if it's me, but some of their shirt designs are too whimsical for me. Need an example? I do however, dig this shirt. 16 shirts, priced from $15.00 to $20.00.

Anyone that has the need to exclaim to the world that he has too much Testosterone by displaying the molecular structure of Testostrone on his shirt, most likely is trying too damn hard to compensate for something else. But hey, Molecule Wear caters to the science community with straight up molecular structures of your usual daily intake (like caffeine or chocolate or LSD). Be the only one in your lab to be taking Meth and brave enough display it on your chest! Shirts around the $20.00 range.

Invicid has some seriously kick ass designs. They don't only cover your basic shirt but also offer hoodies, bags and wallets. Site design is slick and straight forward-no ever annoying Flash intros or preselected background music(see also Spray Graphic). Invicid even has an integrated available stock chart for each item sold (brilliant!). Shirts start at $24.00.

Individualitee has a pretty large collection of shirts bordering on the vintage side. This shirt makes me laugh and this issues shirt is also slightly amusing. A decent collection with shirts around $20.00.

I also like me some sea monsters. In fact, I have already mentioned it to more than one person that one day I would like to have my whole back inked with a giant squid pulling a sinking ship into the cold blue depths of watery demise. There I go digressing again, i like seamonsters offers up a whole bunch of personally crafted things ranging from shirts to magnets and even jewelry. I think next time I am forced to attend a large conference, I will walk in late with this shirt. Shirts at under $20.00.

Wow, we are full of great URL names or company names today! Go Ape Shirts only has 9 shirts in its collection right now but all 9 are great. Ok, so maybe I would only buy 6 out of the 9 but I still like that ratio. Shirts are priced at $18.00 and each shirt has a good and proper title.

Future Relic has some amazing shirts that I could never wear to work. They seem fixated on children with guns (great theme guys!) and warfare in general. I think I am going to have to order me this Population Density shirt before they all sell out. And for my daughter, maybe the Kid Sniper Classico? Shirts priced starting at $15.00 with a fairly large collection.

To be perfectly honest, I didn't like the shirts at Disturbia as much as I thought I would. The feeling, trying to be too edgy comes to mind. I have enough punk/metal shirts from concerts but the shirts at Disturbia just seem too laden with generic skulls for me. Maybe I am jaded? Well this site's not for me but maybe for you? Decent sized collection with shirts starting at 16 pounds.

Did you know that last year in the Pacific alone, there were 23 coconut related fatalities? Ok, so I made that up but I could find no real stats on coconut related deaths. You can can really tell when I'm about bored of my posts when I start to rant like this. Crazy Coconut offers up a few shirts, scarves (what is it with scarves at an Indie show anyway?), fabric, and a few other small items. Designs are more designer than simplistic and prices can be higher than other previously listed sites. Ah those crazy coconut related deaths.

Divine Clothing has 16 shirts in its collection. I cannot distinguish any sort of category or theme for their shirts but they seem to have one slogan shirt, a crudely drawn fanged man which might be their mascot and one vintage like shirt. Befuddled. Shirts are priced starting at $16.00.

Let's close up this post with a Bang! White Frog T-Shirts have a lucky number of 13 shirts in their collection, but you will only be able to buy half of them for yourself unless you happen to have attributes of both sexes. Personally, I like this Girl's Giant Squid shirt but alas, I was born a Male! Curses! Robot Anatomy v2.0 will have to be my list of shirts to pick up. The idea of taking Da Vinci's famous 'Vitruvian Man' and using a robot instead is pure genius.

*This about wraps it up for my post on shirts. For the first shirt write up, go here.

Encrypt Your Rolodex

2006-11-09T20:49:00.000-05:00

I used to keep a plain .txt file of my phone contacts on my desktop. The other day I decided that the file (although probably of little importance to others), should still not be in plain site for anyone that happens to be on my computer. I suppose Locknote would do just fine to keep nosy snoopers from seeing my contact information but since I already had KeePass running, I decided that a quick and easy way to encrypt my backup phone contacts would be to create a new group in the database and show the phone numbers in plain text only after logging into KeePass.

1.)Open KeePass and right click the left pane under 'General' and add a group (I called mine 'contacts').

2.)Under the 'Title' add your contact's name and under 'URL,' add your contact's phone number (this will allow the phone number to be shown up on the main screen). I left the 'password' on default as it is irrelevant for my contacts.

3.)Now just click on your new group, (mine being 'contacts') and eureka! you have your backup contacts which will all be encrypted when you close KeePass.

MP3s

2006-09-30T23:48:00.000-04:00

Tipping my hat to Digg Drop, the following is a list of MP3s. Genres include: Punk, Indie, and Metal. Subgenres will not be listed or even attempted. As is, hardcore, ska and skacore will fall under the 'punk' category and so on and so forth. Also, at your own discretion. Enjoy!

afi (punk)
1
2
3

alexisonfire (punk)
1

andrew bird (indie)
1
2

ani difranco (indie)
1

anti-flag (punk)
1

the aquabats (punk)
1

the arcade fire (indie)
1
2

architecture in helsinki (indie)
1

bloc party (indie)
1

blood for blood (punk)
1

circle takes the square (punk)
1

the clash (punk)
1

common rider (punk)
1

danzig (metal)
1
2

dead kennedys (punk)
1

death cab for cutie (indie)
1

dog fashion disco (metal)
1

earth crisis (punk)
1

the exploited (punk)
1

the flaming lips (indie)
1
2

flogging molly (punk)
1

ignite (punk)
1

lagwagon (punk)
1
2
3

le tigre (indie)
1
2

metallica (metal)
1

minor threat (punk)
1

the misfits (punk)
1
2

modest mouse (indie)
1
2

the mountain goats (indie)
1

neutral milk hotel (indie)
1

the new pornographers (indie)
1

nofx (punk)
1
2

pantera (metal)
1

pennywise (punk)
1

planes mistaken for stars (punk)
1

the pogues (punk)
1

the polyphonic spree (indie)
1

the postal service (indie)
1

propaghandi (punk)
1

rancid (punk)
1

rise against (punk)
1

snow patrol (indie)
1

sonic youth (indie)
1
2

stars (indie)
1

the suicide machines (punk)
1

sufjan stevens (indie)
1

tv on the radio (indie)
1

wilco (indie)
1

the wrens (indie)
1

youth brigade (punk)
1

A Geek's Guide to Moshing

2006-08-06T14:44:00.000-04:00

*This post is by no ways the definitive guide on what you should do in a mosh pit but merely a few tips on what you can do to reduce injury. I am not a concert veteran with hundreds of concerts, but in my last decade and a half of surviving concerts ranging from 'Suicidal Tendencies' to 'Dropkick Murphys,' I have picked up a few tips. So let's get started.

Body (self)
*Hands: Clench your hands into balled fists (you don't have to squeeze all that much). Fingers outstretched in a pit can get snagged, kicked, punched, etc. Avoid that scenario by not exposing your fingers.

*Feet Position: This is important. If there is enough room, stance should be one foot farther back (for support) and the other foot up front (like you are walking forward). You want balance when being knocked around.

*Arms: Pretend you are hugging a half keg. Now lower them to your side so you look like some scary bouncer. Arms go up to the holding-keg position when the crowd starts to pit. You now have yet another barrier between you and the crowd.

Awareness (mind)
*Avoid: Do not wear excessive jewelry, rings for they can get torn off and make your fellow moshers even more angry. While in the pit, watch out for crowd surfers sporting boots, large belt buckles and the such. Remember, if it is attached to you or someone else, it can be ripped off (literally).

*Military: Unless you yourself are in the military and have your boys to back you up, I would say avoid pitting where the jarheads and grunts congregate. If you want to answer to the whole platoon for accidentally punching one of their brother's in the jaw, I suggest you find another place to pit.

*Skins: Along with the whole military thing, these tips are just generalizations, it doesn't account for everyone in the military nor what I am about to write. Skinheads. God love their testosterone, but stay the hell away from a group of them. Usually the lone skinhead won't bother you much but get stuck in the middle of a bunch of them and then you might want to find the quickest exit.

Tips (in general)
*Tip: If you are heavily intoxicated, stay out of the pit. Reaction time combined with heavy body water loss (sweating) is no good combination.

*Tip: Piercings, take them out.

*Tip: Bring a buddy to mosh too. He/she can at least watch your back.

*Tip: Don't pick on women moshers. If she has no boyfriend, there are always a steady stream of heroes ready to help her out.

*Tip: Don't be a dick if someone falls or gets knocked down. Reach in and help them up.

Shaken Baby Syndrome

2006-08-06T12:30:00.000-04:00

Shopping at Petsmart with my kiddo, I came across a 'shake me' sticker on a toy. I decided that a 'shake me' label on an infant's onesie would be horribly un-PC of me. So I fired up Photoshop CS2 and got to work. Something tells me I am going to get a one way ticket to the 7th Circle of Hell for posting this picture.

Skymall's 10 Worst Products

2006-07-30T10:49:00.000-04:00

On a commuter flight from Baltimore Washington International to Logan airport in Boston a few weeks back, I decided to peruse the copy of Skymall to see if I had recently missed any gadgets that I needed to know about. Call it old age or being raised as a cynic, but have their products always been so meaningless? I decided to compile a list of their top 10 worst products.

10.

Are you ready to fork over $229 so you too can be the talk of the tailgate party while hanging with your NASCAR buddies? Seriously though, with $229, you could buy out the stock of plastic lawn chairs at your local Home Depot. The plastic lawnchairs won't impress the ladies much but then think of all the lapdances you can buy with your saved money.

9.

A $45 uber large rubber band is what this product is. What happened to just pushing the two twin beds together? Of course if you are having an orgy, this product might come in handy, but otherwise, why bother?

8.

Paying $40 dollars for something that dispenses soap does seem extravagant. Yes, it is motion activated and yes, it does play 'chimes' whilst dispensing. The only good thing that could come of this product is if the ROOMBA hackers modded this product to play mp3s or maybe shoot out a jet of fire at some randomly generated time.

7.

If you need to fork over $120 so Chuckles, your pet toy poodle can get some fresh air, I will personally come over and kill you execution style. What a waste of money, for a pet no less. What happened to driving around your neighborhood, taking a broken stroller left on the curb and fixing it to hell with duct tape?

6.

$30 dollars for the world's largest crossword puzzle. Look, I like crossword puzzles as much as the next person and wasted many a college hour back at the University of Hawaii working on them during class, but this is just silly. Nothing screams 'I am a big dork with no life' than hanging this on your wall and actually working on it.

5.

$450 dollars for a WTF? contraption. Yes, people will see you as eccentric and maybe somewhat enlightened when they walk into your living room and see this bizarre exercise equipment meant to stretch out your back. This picture amuses me more and more every time I see it.

4.

At first, there seems nothing wrong with this picture. Dude by the pool chilling in some weird $99 hammock. Then we find out the damn hammock is 'portable.' Who the hell brings a hammock around anyway? Such a wasteful product but I can see the upside of bringing this to your next Monday morning corporate meeting.

3.

For $20, you too can turn your state of the art, iPod into a baby toy. There are a plethora of iPod accessories so why the hell would Skymall feature this one?

2.

If you can't get off the john, there is no way you will be seeing this ad as you probably also can't get off of the airplane seat where they house Skymall. $60 dollars buys you a 'Safety Seat Toilet Support.' Why can't your elderly family member not just use a cane I am not sure. But at this point, I would rather have grandma stuck on the toilet rather than clean up yet another mess she left in the dining room.

1.

And the number one worst item at Skymall, (drum roll please). For a small donation of $160 dollars, you-pool owner can now never have to actually swim in your pool again (if you don't want to). The 'Motorized Pool Lounger' is a floatie with propellers that allows you to bask in cancer ridden sun rays and never again will you have to deal with that evil Chlorine saturated water.
Honorable mention also goes to the Snack Float.

Kape, Karaoke and Kubuntu

2006-07-15T22:28:00.000-04:00

I will concur with those who tell me I have been slacking here at chalkline. However, I am currently working on the next project (which shall be fully documented and hopefully done in the next two weeks). In the meantime, a (mostly) non tech related post but here are some pictures from my vacation in Cape Cod, and also some from Karaoke night at Galaxy Hut. As for the tech part, I have been running Kubuntu on my laptop for the last 3 weeks and although I have partitioned my drive so I can dual boot Windoze, I have enjoyed Kubuntu to the point where Windows on my laptop is not so necessary.
Cape Cod after 10:30 PM has very little options for food. On two consecutive nights, we ended up getting Chinese food at this ghetto ass Chinese restaurant in Orleans. The food was bad but no one was complaining.
A more lively picture here (and also jumping both time and space), I appear possessed while singing a horrible bad song with Zack. Trust me, the Guinness helped boat loads.
It was my friend Kate's birthday so I had to post this one. Also at Galaxy Hut and for once, she sang!
Jumping back to Cape Cod, this poster picture was taken in Provincetown where a large gay community dwells. Funny enough, all the straight bars we hit on the previous days just sucked.
Here is my friend Mike who is neither gay nor a 'bear.' I kept referring to him as 'Bear' all night long and he stopped finding that amusing really quick.
Sunrise off of my friend's 'backyard' at 6 AM. Why was I up? Thank my buddy insomnia.
An old buoy turned into a birdhouse.
Morning from porch view.

The Boing Boing Fiasco

2006-06-17T20:59:00.000-04:00

I won't lie when I say that I have always wanted to get some of my content on Boing Boing. It must have been a week since the last time I paid them a visit and today I was in for a surprise (not one of those look what I got at Victoria's Secret honey surprises either). Let's take a look at this screen capture here. Instead of their normal red logo, I noticed in the far left hand corner of their main page, a picture of a bat on the grill of a SUV taken right here in MD outside of a UPS complex that I used to work at. The original picture (below) was taken with from a Nokia 3660 cell phone. How do I know? I took the fucking picture last year.

Yep, here's a copy of the original picture. It has also been on my flickr account for some time now. The bat picture has also been on my textamerica account too.

Before I was about to throw a bar stool through the window, Amy suggested I take a look at the picture properties to see if there was any mention or credit given. Looks like no credit was given.

Here, I sent the folks at Boing Boing a relatively nice letter explaining the situation and why no credit or link was listed. That was sent roughly four hours ago. I guess we will see what happens.

Update: Here is my would be public apology. Yes, I am a jackass, filthy whore, idiot (the list goes on). My fault, not Boing Boing's.

*Random site news: I know there are a few typos on the last post (the t-shirt post). And as far as the rest of the site, yes there are some layout problems with this new template. I will attend to them when time allows. Peace out.

Shirts You Didn't Know You Needed

2006-06-11T19:38:00.000-04:00

After getting accosted by numerous friends and strangers alike regarding where I get my shirts, I decided to come up with a list of online t-shirt sites that I frequent. This list is by no means complete but will point you in a better direction of what is out there. Let's take a look.

If you have not heard of T-Shirt Hell, surely you must be living in some remote ice cave somewhere in the far north with your hairy fingers jammed deep into your ears. Their shirts are so un-PC and full of disgusting slogans that you can either stare with mouth agape, laugh at the raunchy shirts or immediately go to confession. Seriously though, who hasn't heard of this site?

Moving onto ThinkGeek, we foray knee deep in geek shirts. If binary on your shirt does not qualify you as a computer geek or programming nerd, I don't know what does. They carry everything from your Slashdot shirt to a coder's shirt. ThinkGeek has a pretty large selection of computer related shirts as well as other apparel (like jewelry?), toys, and books.

Jinx made a name of themselves by advertising their shirts on the Screen Savers and later on G4TV. Their motto is 'Gamers, Geeks and Hackers' and their site has grown exponentially within the last year. Although I have not recently purchased anything from them, they do update and offer new shirts on a pretty regular basis. As with ThinkGeek, Jinx also has a bunch of other goodies aside from t-shirts.

Personally, I harbor a secret infatuation for Threadless. OK, maybe not that secret but they roll out shirts faster than a fat clown being chased by a steamroller. Yet, with all the new shirts, often if you wait for more than a week the shirt you were drooling over will be long since bought out. Basic economics of supply and demand but the demand is high. About two weeks ago I went out to a sort of hipster bar and a right off the bat a friend spotted 3 other people rocking a Threadless shirt.

Spreadshirt has so damn many user submitted shirts that some of them are bound to catch you. I must have spent roughly an hour one night just going through and seeing what they had in their catalogue. Their shirts tend to be less offensive and more politcal, funny or just weird. Really, they have a humongous selection of shirts and are on the dot when it comes to filling an order. But don't take my word, go check it yourself.

Busted Tees has a kind of campy feel good variety of funny shirts that you can maybe get away with wearing when going to church on Sunday (not that you would do such a thing). Think catchy but sarcastic catch phrases with a minmal amount of art. They don't try to overdo the artsy thing and it works. However, their catalog of shirts is not quite as large as some of the above listed sites.

Spraygraphic's site sometimes makes me want to take the claw end of my hammer and bury it deep in my left foot. With all the flash animation and preselected music playing, it feels like I am being forced to visit some MySpace kiddie's uber overloaded page. If not for some of their cool designs, I would not have added them to this list. Sometimes, when you're looking for clothes, you just want the cut and dry catalog. Waiting for site load time sucks.

I have not purchased any shirts from Snorg but my lord at least two of the women models are smoking hawt. Sexism aside, Snorg also conjurs up the likeliness of shirts at Busted Tees. Everything from pop culture, iconic dumb and universally hated president shirts to shirts saluting the 40oz can all be found here. Also need to mention that Snorg also does not have a huge collection of shirts. Hey, apparently an online shirt business is harder than one might think.

I am still slightly unsure what to think of ThreadPit. They seem to lack a general theme but hell, they have a Hunter S. Thompson shirt so they are okay in book. Some of their designs are so bizarre I can't see anyone but a one legged stripper wearing them for the attention. I'm not jesting either. A shirt of a mime in Paris lighting fire to the Eiffel Tower? I know you'll have to check this link to see if I'm really joshing you. ThreadPit offers a decent selection of shirts although there are a few more of the 'what the hell kinda shirt is that?'

Sinfulshirts attempts to capture some of the market from buyers of T-Shirt Hell. They have some medium(ly) offensive shirts as well as some that will have zero meaning when the slang term used on the shirt dies off in a half year. However, amidst some of the trying offend you shirts, a few of them actually are more than halfway witty as well as offensive. Want an example? Yes, funny to browse online but I have not actually bought a shirt from these people.

Protoculture has avery small catalog of shirts but they made this list because of two of their shirts. I own the 'germ' shirt and even though I am not a full on germophobe, the shirt is the shit. And the second shirt would have to be the 'recessive riverboat gambling gene shirt.' Also love the prescription pills shirt 'relax because it's friday.' Oops, that was three reasons.

The guy at Preshrunk (at least I think it was preshrunk) was right about Panic's shopping cart. The thing rocks like um (insert witty simile here) something cool. Oh yes, back to shirts. Small selection of shirts at Panic but they all seem to at least be in the same vein so you sort of have a clue on what the rest of the shirts will look like even if you don't view them. Mostly clean slick designs with a few computer geek(esque) shirts to satisfay everyone. Or at least mostly everyone.

PalmerCash is another one of those sites that seems to have an old skool touch to their shirts. Then again they also claim to have 'vintage' clothes so that might be part of the reason. Although not generally the shirts I am into, PalmerCash has reasonable amount of shirts mixing in some humor, some bizarre vintage to regional humor shirts.

OMG Clothing which is occasionally featured on threadless had to have a mention. And once again, not such a large supply of shirts but then again you came for the quality, not quantity right? Ah, who the hell knows. OMG Clothing offers some of the tongue-in-cheek slightly geeky but more hipster than anything shirts with bright colorful designs and messed up looking animals or snarky (yes liz, snarky) slogans.

Oddica made it to this list too albeit their small catalog didn't do much to help. Definately some odd shirts in the collection. Have you seen 'for those about to rock?' Although they may have less shirts than some of the other sites listed, some of the artwork is done so well it almost feels like you're buying something more than just a shirt. Damn, that last line came out more cheesy than I had intended.

NoiseBot actually had a few shirts that made me laugh out loud. Also along the lines of 'vintage' clothing, simple designs, retro references to shows or pop culture and snazzy (not snarky) phrases. Here is one that amused me to no end. However, being amused and actually buying something amusing is two different things. Good thing NoiseBot has a fair selection of stuff.

Lucha Workshop shirts have such a level of intense artistry that I just want to take their designs and draw them on my brother's back while he is passed out from drinking 3 beers. Their designs are like a whimsical industrialist. Or maybe their designs are like factory workers forced to draw while high on acid? Either way, their art is their selling point.

Honestly I am not crazy about the shirts at the Giant Robot store. But then again they have just recently started printing and for some of the entirely bizarre random but cool stuff they sell, I have high hopes for their shirts to get progressively better. As is, artists are already populating their store and it seems like everytime I check, new shirts are being printed.

Much like the Giant Robot store selling shirts, I also have high hopes for the Engrish store. Their actual site is funny as balls. It would seem like their shirts have been a relatively new thing so I am patiently awaiting to see what makes it down for printing. Their store does have a moderate amount of shirts but once again, most of them seem like filler, and not a shirt you would want to wear out on a regular basis. They also offer and assortment of other odds and ends.

Enclothe (btw, the chick on the main page of the site is also kinda fine) is the home of the infamous, 'I'm claiming it before you do' ghost pirate hoodie (wow, was that a mouthful). So to anyone reading this that I might know in person, find something else to wear or buy bastard, this one I am claiming. Also need to mention that the featured catalog is unfortunately small.

ELSEWARES offers more on the artsy side of shirt designs. Honestly I see more women's than men's shirts here and the prices may be a little higher than the average t-shirt site. Then again, some of the shirts look more designer and I guess that equals to a higher costing shirt? ELSEWARES has a lot of offset picture placement which does look good in the pictures. But then as formerly mentioned, prices can be a bit higher and as being a cheap Chinese bastard, I have yet to buy one even if the designs are kinda sweet.

Defunker reminds me of the shirts at threadless and/or OMG Clothing. The style generally fits with the feeling of the site and the art is articulate if not poking fun-most of the times. Now come to think of it, I do think they have had their shirts on Threadless. Damn! Maybe I better slow down on the beer and focus a little more. Before I forget, selection is rather slim but the shirts they do have look good.

How many more sites that offer vinatge clothing that offendes people can we have? Don't get me wrong, the people at DeezTeez have a fair amount of fairly anti-you shirts but it comes to a point when all of it blurs and all you think of is that jackass frat boy who was wearing one of those shirts at the concert who was hitting on your girlfriend but you were too much of a wuss to step up-well you get the gist.

I absolutely love the site name of Crowded Teeth. It conjures up the image of me back in highschool having to get four teeth pulled all at once and then not taking the pain killers until one day bored at school and then taking handful during Biology and have to throw up like a madman. Um, shirts eh? This site listed is more for the girlies (or maybe uber sensitive boys?). More pastel shirts with cutesy designs of animals and the such. Hell, if I were a girl (or a more sensitive guy), I'd be buying shirts here too.

Although I didn't promise you more vintage, it looks like I have another one for you. BUT Cotton Factory does have a few cool designs. The 'Mad Scientist' would be a great gift to any science dedicated person. The 'Pile Up' shirt is also kind of nice in a really minimalistic way. And who the hell doesn't like penguins flying while wearing jet packs? There are some decent shirts here but I did warn you about the 'vintage.'

Amorphia gets kudos simply to the Nietzsche shirt. Then again, if I could find any good Lovecraftian shirts, I would not hesitate to fling my own poo in celebration. Amorphia has some pretty funny, stuff that should not be funny shirts. Very pop culture and up to date, somewhat (here comes that fucking word again) vintage and yet most of the shirts, even the bad ones aren't all that bad.

Quickly tab 80's Tees and tell me those broads weren't born until maybe until the early 90's. I'm all expecting to see some 80's models with teased Debbie Gibson hair. Anyway here is the final link. I had a bunch more but this post is officially killing me so we are ending it here. Transformers, G.I Joe, Thundercats, you name it. Good hunting.

*(update) Part two of shirt site reviews are here.

*del.icio.us it!

*On Reddit

Mac Spoofing Again (Mac MakeUp 1.95d)

2006-06-04T08:41:00.000-04:00

Not too long ago, I posted an entry about MAC Address spoofing (in Windows) via SMAC. I found a download for Mac MakeUp a week or two ago and totally forgot about it until yesterday. I decided to give it a try and must say that the results and clean interface were quite efficient (if not less than 100% functional on all options). Give it a try if you don't already use SMAC or simply want an alternative.

Cheating on My Play List (going indie)

2006-06-03T09:20:00.000-04:00

It was never in my greatest intentions to start listening to indie music. After a decade and a half of proudly listening to metal, goth/industrial, 80's and punk, I feel now that the progression towards slower paced, sometimes more ambient rock officially qualifies me as cheating to the rest of my archived music. And no, I am not embracing the scene as well, in regards to looking the part either. Anyway looking for some bands to check out so feel free to recommend some.
Here are a few bands I am currently listening to:
TV on the Radio
Wolf Parade
Broken Social Scene
Neutral Milk Hotel
Spoon

The Jimi Wallet and Bar Codes

2006-05-23T20:37:00.000-04:00

First off, I won't dignify this low technical level D.I.Y project as a 'hack' or 'mod' but a simple guide to adding just a little bit more to your Jimi Wallet. And yes, I do realize that the whole concept of a minimalistic wallet is to lose things, not gain them but with the ability to hold only 4 credit cards (or ID cards), I didn't want to waste room and have to carry a Safeway or Giant Bonus card. I decided that since the bar codes are only needed, that all I needed to do was to transfer the bar code to the outside of the wallet.
Here I cut out the bar codes (all of my razors were rusted so I used scissors) and bust out the Epoxy.
Mix the Epoxy and apply a liberal coat to the back of the cut bar codes and all you need is to let the glue set. Perhaps not the most visually pleasing but it does save me some wallet space.

BlinkList and Social Pr0n?

2006-05-13T21:23:00.000-04:00

Not too far in the past, I wrote a review of the social bookmarking site BlinkList and at the time, with its shares of bugs, downtime, and somewhat clumsy navigation BlinkList still seemed like the del.icio.us killer. I stopped using BlinkList for a few months (and even forgot my user name and password) and decided to grace their page again last week. Finding some tech news that I had not already seen on other major sites, I decided that I would frequent their site on a more regular basis. I did and to my surprise, found many a link to porno on the Internet (What?! Are ya kiddin me?). Don't get me wrong, I like pr0n as much as the next guy but I think some moderation on BlinkList to weed out the *spam and pr0n is much in need. I didn't go to a social networking site with the intention of viewing women engaged in dress up gnome sex (OK, made that last part up...wasn't actually on the site). Before I get too carried away, let me get to the crux of why I think user driven sites need some moderation. I'm not talking about the whole Digg conspiracy here as that is not my focal point. Many people, be it IT related or not, check these popular social networking sites for new and upcoming news from their workstation or office desktop. These people will be driven from a site that is NSFW (well most of them). With an influx of spam related links and pr0n, credibilty to the site will be lost (unless that is why you are at the site). I am curious to see what appears on the front page of BlinkList in the following days and hope that a remedy (perhaps a filter, algorithm or even more more moderation) occurs. Otherwise, I would hate to see the slow demise of a site that once held such promise.

Almost Vegas (a reunion, a vacation and defcon)

2006-05-10T22:20:00.000-04:00

Turning down a trip to Vegas three times (for 3 separate reasons) was not an easy task. The first trip however, was a no brainer.

Invite #1: A 10 year high school reunion didn't top my list of things I needed to attend and albeit fun as it may seem, it more or less came across to me like some long-winded gathering after a family related funeral where everyone spends time because of some secret obligation more than something anyone would do on a regular basis. So I opted out.

Invite #2: My buddy kpR is going to Vegas at the end of May with some people I knew from my college days and although he would originally be there for some software tradeshow, he would have the weekend to kick back and whore it up. This was a little more hard to turn down as I think the last time I kicked it with him was over 2 years ago. Financial obligations aside, the time just would not work.

Invite 3: I am amidst trading some music with a friend who I just recently found out works for Defcon and BlackHat (killer combo there?) and was invited to make it down to Vegas in August for Defcon 14 (and would love to go) but once again gritted my teeth and had to opt out. I am however planning to make it to Defcon next year so I will attempt to round up more geeks who are interested. Karma had better serve me something good soon or I just might swallow the entire contents of the tasty looking Drano liquid sitting on my dust covered bathroom floor.

Practically Anonymous (setting up Tor on Firefox)

2006-04-26T21:17:00.000-04:00

Tor has come a long way since its inception at DARPA. A basic (very basic) overview for those unfamiliar, is a more secure way of using the internet by hiding amongst 'virtual tunnels' over many servers. The overview (accompanied with pictures) helps visualize the onion routing. The end result is a new IP, and more secure, less traceable digital footprints on the net. Combine Tor with Privoxy (for managing those cookies while on the Tor NT and also to keep from leaking DNS requests). But all this is no good if Tor is a beast to set up and from the get go, it honestly was more for the geekier crowd. With the new builds (0.1.0.17 and 0.1.1.18), using Tor on Firefox is now a snap. I decided to give the new version a try so I went to download the latest version.
Using Firefox, there was already an extension built in that allowed me to toggle on and off of the Tor circuit. I downloaded the extension here, installed it and then rebooted Firefox. I started Tor, then Privoxy and then ran Firefox. On the lower right hand bottom of my browser (right above the task bar) sat a 'Tor Disabled' button that toggled to 'Tor Enabled' when clicked.
Going with a more visually pleasing check (as opposed to the 'cmd' prompt), I pulled up GeoTool and indeed my connection was now bounced to Ohio.

No Itchies From New Tattoos

2006-04-26T21:01:00.000-04:00

My last tattoo (much smaller in size) gave me a wild itching sensation like some ill gotten STD from a woman you thought was short but the next morning realized was truly a midget. I think it was day 3 or 4 when the newly inked tattoo was nearly the equivalent of seared flesh but in form of itching. This time, with my new ambigram tattoo I decided to try a different skin revitalizing lotion. Wanting to keep it sterile and non infected, I went with Vanicream (yeah yeah, I know it sounds like some feminine hygeine product) but the reason I chose this over what the tattoo parlor gave me last time (some mucky semi-translucent gel) was that Vanicream is free of dye, perfume, fragrance, lanolin and most importantly, formaldehyde.
Night one was the worst and I applied the Vanicream over the new tattoo religiously all night on the hour. Day two, my flesh was on the mend and a drastic transformation took place where the tattoo had been set. No raised bumps, or itching. I am up to day 4 now and a regular coat of the Vanicream has kept me from even thinking about possible itches. A new cure? Or maybe just an old one I never heard about.

Pirate Radio (not mine)

2006-04-26T20:50:00.000-04:00

My commute from Virginia through DC and to Maryland has few perks. Four years ago, when FM transmitters were just starting to saturate the market, I could pick a random station, plug a FM trasmitter into an MP3 Player (Nomad Jukebox at the time) and have my portable music with me at all times. Times sure have changed and now when I use my 3rd Gen iPod with iTrip left at the default 87.9 frequency, I will occasionally pick up other people's transmitted tunes clashing violently with my own. That comes with the territory. Yes, I have read numerous accounts of 'hacking your iTrip,' but that frequency clashing is not all the frequent (until now). I have found a steady pirate radio station on 87.9 in-bewteen the underpass tunnels from 395 to New York Avenue. In this section, my iTrip gets pwned and I am forced to listen to mindless drivel for about 3 minutes. Griping aside, I guess I could sit here and complain or do something about it.

Spongecell (watch your back)

2006-04-17T22:07:00.000-04:00

A little over 2 months ago, Spongecell launched, boasting a AJAX calendar with the platform based on Ruby on Rails. What does that earful mean? A fancy looking calendar that ought to shock and awe you, enticing you to use their service as an online planner that you and your friends (if you have any) can set your church burning schedules to. Joking aside, I was itching to give this a try at the release but somehow, my tumultuous life is more or less maintained in my head and I don't usually have much need for a calendar, let alone an online calendar (my Palm Tungsten collects more dust than a hand knitted seasonal sweater made by a farsighted in-law). But with the advent of popularity of online based calendars: 30 Boxes, CalendarHub, HipCal and Planzo to name a few, I figured it would not pain me so to sign up with an account with Spongcell to see what all the fuss was about. I rolled up my sleeves and signed in, greeted by some helpful hints on what Spongecell was capable of.

Filling out some basic events was a snap, although I did notice some lag time in saved events to when they actually showed up on the weekly calendar. Not a huge drawback as navigation was easy (as it should be-it's a freakin calendar-not programming in Fortran!). The options set were pretty standard but did allow the choice of being viewed by 'friends' or set to private (which might come in handy with the church burning thing mentioned earlier).

After setting a few mundane tasks, I decided to see what further options were allowed. As afore mentioned, pretty much standard calendar options. Nothing much over Outlook or Thunderbird but then again that is somewhat comparing midgets to dwarves. My overall view of Spongecell was that it was pretty and quite functional but perhaps not something I would use on a regular basis given my many options to choose from. Something that the infamous Google has over them is the integration of GMail with their Calendar. If that isn't the ol 1-2 combination to sites like SpongeCell, I don't know what is? But I am rooting for them as they offer a decent product that will hopefully develop more as time allows and maybe they too will one day be acquired like the folks at Writely.

Against Me! @ Nations

2006-04-16T12:07:00.000-04:00

Against Me! opened up for Alkaline Trio at Nations in DC last week. I was slightly apprehensive about going to a show where Against Me! was opening, as they normally headline but we got in free via the guestlist so I could not refuse the offer. However, the Alkaline Trio fans were there in full force and I reckon that 1/3 of the people using Myspace were at the show (ok, I jest). Against Me! started promptly at 8pm blasting into songs from their latest album, as well as adding some of the older crowd favorites (Pints of Guinness, Rice and Bread). The crowd of which maybe consisted of 200+ people packed in the front while the Trio fans, deathly underage and staring forlornly at the open bars hung out back, on the other levels, or trickled in late. Against Me! also did a mock jam session at the end of the song 'Turn Those Clapping Hands Into Angry Balled Fists' which went over quite well. The only big complaint from me was the audio was slightly skewed and the PA come out sounding somewhat tinny.

After their set, we walked to the front of the club where it was rather empty and hung out and had a few drinks while waiting for Tom to finish up. Liz had brought a sweat shirt laden with buttons that Tom's mom had made for Liz back when they were kids. No sooner had the guys from Against Me! started strolling through the club was when we suddenly had an exponential growth of friends. I guess it would be a blessing and a curse to have rabid fans (will never find out as a blogger) but eventually the ass kissing got to be too much for Tom so we headed backstage to hang out. All in all, it was a pretty good night.

How to Fold a Mattress Cover (for the XY's)

2006-04-09T10:31:00.000-04:00

As a guy, folding my mattress cover after laundry day was quite a chore. With the corners and flaps sticking out, I used to just roll the mattress cover up under my arm in a ball and that was that. Today, I will share with you other clueless mattress folders how it can be done easily and quickly.
Step 1: Lay your mattress cover flat and pinch the corners until you have a rectangular shape. The mattress cover should resemble some odd looking elongated donut.

Step 2: Bring your pinched corners together but do not line them up.

Step 3: Here is the tricky part. With the pinched corners next to each other, take the bottom corner and slide it under the pouch of the top corner.

Step 4: If you have followed the instructions so far, your mattress cover should look something like this. If it looks slightly sloppy, do not fear, for we still have a few more steps and in the end you will have bragging rights.

Step 5: Now fold as you would normally fold. Those sneaky mattress cover flaps don't stand a chance.

DONE! Quite painless I must admit. Shout outs to Liz for showing me this trick.

*this post via Lifehacker!

The Tragic Flaw Theory (the unicorn girl does not exist)

2006-04-09T08:22:00.000-04:00

AK0808 writes:*What is the Tragic Flaw Theory (TFT)?

In essence, a tragic flaw is the one glaring flaw you find in a potential partner that keeps you from pursuing that person. A tragic flaw is not always based on physical deformities such as a severed appendage, a glass eye or malformed baby sized arm on an adult. A tragic flaw is not always revealed quickly as the flawee may already be aware of the flaw and attempt to mask it.
Tragic Flaw Theory states that in every ideal partner, there will always be one all encompassing reason why a relationship with this person will never work.

1337 Sl4x0r writes:*If TFT exists, then why are so many people married and in love?

People are willing to overlook the shortcomings of their partners based on various reasons. The number one reason is that the tragic flaw has not yet been identified. Have you ever heard the term 'ignorance is bliss?' Truth of the matter is that there is no 'Unicorn Girl' (will be explained shortly) and that humans are full of flaws and more willing to bypass the cracks in a mate's personality or physical aspects and settle. But deep down underneath those lint caked toenails lurks the deadly infection of ideas. 'Would I love her more if she had bigger boobies?' 'Would he be the one if he could keep a job?'

drkmatter writes:*Tell me more about Unicorn Gril (sic).

You bloody wanker, we are not talking about outdoor cooking machines here. 'Unicorn Girl' is a term dubbed by my associate kpR who states that not unlike a mythological siren or extremely attrative equine with one horn, the perfect woman simply does not exist. Like a unicorn, it is only fantasy.

Proofs:
IF UG=True, then unicorns, leprechauns, and menehunes exist as well.
IF UG=False, then TFT=True, as there is no perfect partner.
Case Study:
*Study (a)'s tragic flaw was an inability to carry on simple mundane conversations. Study (a) would have made up sexually for being such a lackwit, but the tragic flaw kept study (a) from being in a stable relationship.
*Study (b)'s tragic flaw is the inability to tell the truth. Although not a pathological liar, by fabricating too many false stories, the partner eventually caught on to some descrepancies in logic and in the timeline.
*Study (c)'s tragic flaw is errant and unpredictable behavior. Gang bangs and meth binges aside, study (c) suffers from clinical depression and is prone to wearing clown costumes while vacuuming the garage.
*Study (d)'s tragic flaw is simply, nagging. Study (d)'s nagging has driven a former partner to drinking and months of unabashed silence.

John911 writes:*Thank you for the overview of TFT. Are you really a scientist and are the case studies real?

The case studies are indeed factual and were tested on barnyard animals in a rural Pennsylvanian town. TFT is verified beyond all doubt.

Spoof that MAC Address (on Windoze)

2006-04-08T09:25:00.000-04:00

You can change your MAC address on your network card using DevCon and diving through your registry to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}.

I will agree however, that not everyone is totally keen on registry editing. A simple tool by the KLC Consulting, Inc dubbed SMAC will allow you to spoof your MAC address to another MAC-48 address. Why would you do this you ask? Think Mac filtering on NT's, more anonymity, and for the sake that it was not intened to be done.
Here is another screencap of my spoofed physical address. As such, the last time I downloaded SMAC, I was given a shareware version where the spoofed address was already set and in order to dictate my own address, I had to pay for a full registered version. Lucky for you, I still have a legal copy of SMAC 1.1 (older version but has been working for me for years now) which allows you to spoof away without software restrictions. Enjoy.

DIY Lasik is 1337

2006-04-05T22:36:00.000-04:00

At 10:24PM, I went to log into Digg and interestingly enough found an entry on a DIY Lasik kit. I wasn't about to check the link but because funny enough I was was just talking to a hot co worker about Lasik today and strangely enough the amount of diggs happened to be at 1337 diggs, it was pre-ordained that I needed to see the site. I must say the cartoon illustrations completely sold me on at least attempting to purchase the product. As seeing as I need some touch up being that it has been at least 5 years since my first Lasik treatment (honestly it was painless and quick with the aid of drugs), I proceeded to the checkout cart not really intending to purchase a modified pen lazer. But to no avail the order form was a no go. Oh well, April Fool's day came a little late but was amusing none the less.

Orbox B and a Reason for Down Time

2006-04-03T23:22:00.000-04:00

*Feel free to skip the rant and just click on the linked screenshot

Just when I was starting to sleep peacefully without the aid of over the counter medication, herbal remedies (not referring to weed), or plain old booze, my somewhat tumultuous personal life had to kick in (once again) and rear its ugly 3 headed beast of a cluster fuck magnet. What that translates to is that the lack of updates is largely due to drama. Another brief translation: now the mother of my child and I have been in only SMS (text messaged) based communication. No smiley :) faces, just pure unadulterated text based sarcasm. At this point, I could use a whole lot less drama and maybe more time testing out Fedora Core 5, the leaked version of gmail chat or a few other apps (or OS's) that I have recently acquired. I have a planned post that should hopefully make it to Lifehacker and or maybe 43 Folders when I finally get it out, but that is yet to be determined.

For the actual post, go play Orbox B to waste some serious time. Personally, I am not a gamer (the sux0rs) but I do have the old skool spirit of NES games buried in my intestinal tract somewhere. As is, I don't normally bother to post every online game I come across but Orbox B was pretty impressive. I got up to level 7 before I called it quits.

Al Queda Should Use Colletive X

2006-03-28T22:08:00.000-05:00

How does a secure (well if by secure you mean 128 SSL encryption) private group network with business oriented goals sound to you? I recently was granted the invitation to give Collective X a try. Although not a totally free service (options much more limited with a free account), I signed up for basic access to see what all the whispers were about. I must say that I was pretty intrigued about the set up, attention to details, layout and functions. I initially thought it might be a good way to set up a ring for pirated apps (I kid, I kid) but found that there were actually quite a lot of decent functions and options allowing one to set up a tightly controlled and secured way of plotting information and sharing one's calendar of events with an invite only group.
Because none of my actual friends (I can count them with the fingers on one hand) would be remotely interested in joining this group, the following screencaps and review will be based on admin access to the account with no actual basic user testing (sorry folks) outside of the admin set up.
Tabbing the options at the top of the screen allows you to quickly access the main features of Collective X (which will herefore be dubbed CX for a shorter abbreviation).
Because I wanted to try out the calendar function, I quickly picked a site to bash on and jotted down a few random notes to see how they would turn out. The calendar description was basic but necessary and the timestamp was as easy to set as, well a VCR blinking 12:00. OK, bad analogy but in essence, I had the correct time and date set in a flash.
CX also allows access to a forum which would be great for Project Mayhem (yes, that was Fight Club reference) with the added option of mass emailing everyone in the group. But because I was the only one in the group, I was unable to test out the forums and email blast. At this point, I need to mention that although I was unable to test some functions that require other members, I still found no bugs and no problems while logged on. Everything worked, and there was no lag in between jumping from option to option.
When I got to the email blast, I was disappointed that in order to use this function, I would have to sign up for the upgraded paid plan. Well I guess a good service is not always open source or freeware.
I also found (unfortunately again) that I was unable to upload a file without a paid subscription. I personally thought the folks at CX should have at least had a 1 gig restriction or maybe even a 512MB max upload but with what they put into the product, I am sure they want people to upgrade their plans so I cannot fault them for that. Still I would have liked to have tested the upload speed.
Finally, a contact settings control panel had a number of key features (check the screenshot, I will not list them all).
Overall, I have to say that Collective X offered a fair amount of core features that any group would be happy to use on a regular basis. I, on the other hand have had it up to my neck with .xls and .doc files from my previous job and no longer want a work related site I must view from my home computer, but for those with higher aspirations than me (or better work ethic), CX could just possibly be the next office related killer app. That, or a good way for terrorists to plan and coordinate their evil plans.

*Collective X is still not readily available to the general public but leave your email addy and your name and they will notify you when your request has been accepted.

Small Kine Down Time (bandwidth exceeded)

2006-03-28T21:44:00.000-05:00

This site was not completely taken down due to traffic viewing the previous post on the KKK Toothbrush Holder but since I image link my banner and a few other images from my decrepit, all but outdated and rarely used geocities site (you can find it if you dig a little), some image loads on chalkline were failing to load yesterday and parts of today. My blame is squarely aimed at the direction of geocities, as being owned by yahoo, I thought that I would never have that dreaded 'bandwidth exceeded' message. Oh well, maybe I will throw the images on my google pages site and see if that helps the next time.

*I am currently doing a review of ColletiveX and if all goes well, it will be posted later tonight.

KKK Toothbrush Holder

2006-03-26T00:56:00.000-05:00

*First off I need to mention that I do not condone or concur with racial bigotry, hate related crimes or agree with any forms of genocide or racial slurs. This project and post was based purely on random ideas colliding around in my cranium. Not that it is a legitimate reason, but I also happen to be Chinese. Okay, now with that out of the way, let's move onto my KKK toothbrush holder project.

The other day I was at Safeway an noticed some cone shaped toothbrush holders. After the thought process had reached my synapses a few minutes later, in the middle of isle 14 I inadvertently blurted out 'Klansman toothbrush holders!' Gaining a few strange looks, I went back and purchased them for three dollars.

Step one was to use my dremel to make a desired effect of an offical Klansman hood. I tried a variant here I dub the 'Batman Klansman' based on the cut of the mask revealing the mouth but was unable to find any images of actual Klansman with the same cut. For the second hood, I was highly considering using resin to fill in the smiley mouth but decided that timewise and volume would not be worthwhile. I used the cheaper (more Chinese route) of filling the mouth with spackling paste (for the more traditional KKK member look).

The next step was to sand down the spackling paste to erase any traces of a smiling mouth. Mind you, I didn't have the right sandpaper to make make the project flawless of bumps but I spent a few minutes smoothing out the large lumps (once again resin would have been choice number one).

Finally, I applied three coats of 'blossom white satin' spray paint to each of the gaudy colored toothbrush holders. The dried effect almost screams Aryan Nation (btw guys at the Aryan Nations site, tables are dead and a surplus of animated GIFs reminds me of old geocities sites). Not too shabby. Maybe next time I will pick on the Black Panthers.

Google Page Creator (at a glance)

2006-03-24T23:35:00.000-05:00

Amidst all the excitement of Google's newly released Page Creator, I missed the initial launch and had to submit an email to queue for an account. Of course like some absent minded professor, when the account request was accepted, I simply read it and instantly forgot about it until one night at 2AM I randomly arose from a lucid nightmare, sitting straight up in bed and with the dawning realization, recalled that I now could have my very own Google page to pet and feed and love and call cutesy names. The very next day I logged on to take a peek.
As I soon came to find out, Google's page creator was geared towards those with limited technological skills, a short attention span, a quick homepage set up, grandparents, or for anyone too intimidated to see HMTL. That however is not always a bad thing. Highly integrating WYSIWYG with drag and drop functions, I was able to (if I wanted to) set up a page uber quick. As the screenshot above shows, a simple picture upload combined with drag and drop ability allows images to be placed (almost) anywhere.

The side toolbar had a few options that allowed the size of font and style to be changed on the go as well as the usual functions of bold, italics, bullet points, links and images. Overall, Google Page Creator was very simplified but lacked innovation. I had hoped for more features and perhaps an 'advanced' tab for those somewhat familiar for editing pages. However, if Page Creator is to separate itself from the pack, the folks at Google had better up the ante.

Graying out (not 'gaying out') GrayBit v0.5

2006-03-20T22:07:00.000-05:00

GrayBit launched earlier this month offering the ability to transform (some) sites to grayscale. I had to give it a try to my own site and then got curious and decided to see the effect on other sites. Below is a screenshot of my pals over at dreamlogic.net.

Interesting. Well I thought next it would be amusing to see if GrayBit could render its own page gray.

Slightly amused I began to ponder deep thoughts on why anyone would use this service on a regular basis. GrayBit claims:

'Relying on colors to determine page visibility and contrast can be misleading. Converting the colors to their grayscale equivalents is a more reliable method. By removing color’s influence, you’ll better find true visual contrast… GrayBit makes it possible.'

I personally think it is a crock of shit. Here are two reasons I came up with on why anyone would use this service regularly.

*The user is already fully colorblind and wants poorly rendered pages that does not work with JavaScript
*The user is so fucking goth that all they see anyway is shades of gray.

So much for me being polite.

Never Hand the Devil the Keys to Your Car

2006-03-19T10:42:00.000-05:00

The 'bomber' feature for textmessage.cc is no longer active. This simply means it will be featured on another site that I am not going to bother researching. The original post is here. Feeling slightly guilty for any trouble I may have caused, I sent the admin of the site this email. Sometimes I am so polite it kills me.

I just got a reply from the admin so here is the cut and paste text.

'I was getting complaints long before you put that up, you just put it over the edge. No sweat off my balls, I didnt use it anyway. Plus, there is still a secret bomber on the site, just not for the general "public".

Later man

-Barry'

Well shit, now I don't feel so bad.

Sick of It All @ Rams Head Live (and misc week info)

2006-03-16T21:31:00.000-05:00

*I had originally planned to get more entries out this week but my schedule has been kicking my arse so this post will be a conglomerated entry of going to a show last night in Baltimore at the Rams Head Live, as well as some info on what I have been up to this week.

Liz and I managed to get up to Baltimore last night at around 9pm to catch Sick of it All open up for Dropkick Murphys for a little pre St.Patrick's Day celebration. We of course started with some Jameson's shots. We would later find out that the shots were necessary as we were on stage right in the front row next to a bunch of goddamn cheerleaders gone wannabe punk. But all things aside, I droned out their idle chatter as I watched Pete run circles all while playing the guitar. The pinnacle of their short 35(ish) minute set was when they burst into 'America' and really got the crowd moving. There was mixture of older folks (by older I mean pre-Green Day) but the kids by far populated the sweat fueled crowd. The crowd gave a tepid response as most of them were there to see Dropkick Murphys. Lou spoke to the crowd a few times and for some sad reason, I realized that their history had been lost on the young crowd and that some kids would think that they were simply emulating From Autumn to Ashes. As such, in-between sets a Stiff Little Fingers song (Alternative Ulster) was played and I saw one measly fist in the air which threw me into a drunken rant. Bitching aside, I was quite pleased to see them perform and although Liz was not totally thrilled to see them, I had at least managed to catch them as we had already missed the Horropops (wasn't dying to see them anyway), and the Tossers (damn, how the fuck did we miss them?). Dropkick opened shortly after and put on a great show (although I am more of a Flogging Molly fan). I must say that Dropkick had great stage presence and unfortunatley we were not able to stay for the whole set.

*Changing gears onto research for chalkline.
I have been looking up some articles on OS fingerprinting and have an application I want to review and maybe tweak but that project is turning into a lot more work than expected so I may not have anything posted regarding that topic in the near future.

*Computer Security Related
I will be working tomorrow night (St. Patrick's Day--green beer anyone?) with a client on migrating data from one box to another and then going back and cleaning out backdoors and shutting off remote services on the compromised box. I have to plan a toolkit to bring and off the top of my head, here is the short list.
-Blank CD-Rs
-Blank DVD-Rs
-Knoppix STD (running Fluxbox as I think the KDE version lags too much)
-a LG External Super Multi DVD/CD Rewriter
Anything else I am sure I will think of when it is too damn late. Oh well. Happy St.Pattys Day to all.

PixOMFG (pixoh review)

2006-03-11T23:28:00.000-05:00

I may very well be spoiled being an avid Photoshop CS2 user, and the thought of editing pictures online on a box other than my own (that doesn't have Photoshop) intrigued me. When I came across Pixoh, I decided I had to give it a try being that I might have the urge to moblog and not have access to a photo editor and panic like a pedophile at an all girl's teen sex recovery meeting. What I immediately liked was the function to go directly to a picture via URL or by uploading a picture from a hard drive. I graced my stored pictures and decided that a picture of some friends (Mike and Liz) would be appropriate to edit as size, cropping and lighting were rather shitty. I uploaded the picture and pixoh responded with a minor lag time.

Cropping the picture was easy as a basic frame was dragged around the screen. Everything outside of the lighted box was cropped and I was ready to move onto resizing.

Resizing was also a drag function which seemed to distort my picture terribly. Reading the note on the editor, I was told that a simple 'holding the shift key' function would resize my picture without the distortion. That was a no go so I left it at the regular unedited size. However, when it was time to save the picture, I was offered more formats than expected. I had still wanted to work with shading, color contrasts and a few other things but that was not available.

Here is the final picture. Not great but hopefully the people at pixoh will address these shortcomings and more features will be added in the future.

Computer Security Consulting (Will H4X0R for Food)

2006-03-09T20:32:00.000-05:00

I am now enjoying a nice Chipotle burrito and thought I would share the nice night I had rummaging through an (almost) complete stranger's computer to see if it was compromised by a crazy estranged husband. The client was worried that her online activity was being monitored by her husband who also happens to be a software engineer (so not exactly dealing with a regular knob of a computer user). Worried that a software monitoring app like Spectorsoft was at play, a keystroke logger was used or maybe a backdoor telnet was in use I immediately checked the startup to see if any strange apps were launched. Luckily none were. But as it turns out, the husband had already set up remote access and allowed the hard drive sharing properties so none were needed. I poked around a little and managed to find a few digital footprints of online sports gambling sites, a person searcher site, and a few other things he had not managed (or didn't bother to) delete. I didn't even check the .dat files, dive into the registry or root the account (that may be for a later date).
As is, because the client was through a friend of a friend, I was not exactly going to ask for payment. A simple 'will hack for food' would have been fine but the client refused. So next week I will be spending some time migrating data to a new box and cleaning out the old one. Seems like I am always working out someone's mess, other than my own.

*I am taking Friday off so no new posts, but I have some planned posts that should be up this weekend.

Chandler Calendar (Partial Review)

2006-03-06T22:15:00.000-05:00

Blogger is still not letting me upload pictures so to the hell with the screenshots. As is, this is going to be the blog part for the day and if you came only for the app review, feel free to skip this part.

My afternoon started to suck as soon as I got a call from Liz who was near tears. Deciding to call my parents in Hawaii as I still have nothing to listen to in the car (as the deck fuse has still not been replaced), my mom told me she was doing okay but felt bad because she accosted my brother about possibly taking a HazMat job. I told her I would give my brother a call and shortly thereafter got in touch with him. He told me he was not going to take the HazMat job because my mother was being a complete bitch and called him stupid and threatened to kick him out if he did. So back to my mother, I reported that my bro was mad at her but was not going to accept the job. Flash forward to Liz's house. Now I come from a Chinese household and thought my parents were crazy. Liz's family is more chaotic and hyped up than a bunch of fruit bats on meth. We're not talking about taking the 'cake' here. We're talking about taking the whole FUCKING bakery. I got yelled at just for being there and attempting to help out but eventually things got settled down. On top of this all, I have a potential client who needs some security consulting because her estranged husband might be monitoring her online accounts remotely so I have to get my toolkit ready (which I have not even started). Basically, I could use a lot less drama. OK, onto the application review.

I know that Google is planning a calendar which should be released shortly but I decided to give Chandler a try in the meantime. Not that I have a whole lot planned for my schedule or not (would have been useful while I was employed at UPS), I thought it would at least be fun to try out for a few days. I must say, the options for Chandler were quite staggering. Featuring not only basic calendar functions, it also includes an RSS Aggregator, planner, notes, sharing of data in a workspace and more.

This is as far as I got with screenshots before Blogger decided to not work for me as well. In a nutshell, the RSS Aggregator works fine and pulls up text right into the Chandler browser allowing you to view your feeds without having to open another browser. However, if the feed is image heavy, then prepare to wait. On the whole, Chandler is rather sluggish and is pretty time intensive on loading. Even just to open the app, I had to sit as long as launching Photoshop CS2. There are a ton of options and choices that go far beyond the calendar ability but the lack of speed when using Chandler was a major turn off. I didn't get a chance to test the mail or Pop3 functions but they do seem intact. I will most likely wait until Google comes out with their calendar before I attempt another calendar application again.

Books I Got For Free

2006-03-06T22:06:00.000-05:00

Today at work, amongst the usual clutter of nameless objects sat an old mysterious cardboard box. Curious, I poked my nose into it and saw that they were donated books for anyone to take. Here is what I chose.

*Dante's Inferno
*Beowulf (or as Liz says 'BearWuf.')
*Psychotic Reactions
*High Fidelity

not too freakin bad for free.

*Blogger is not letting me upload pics currently so my application review will be put off until tomorrow.

Death By Silence (and then some)

2006-03-05T21:38:00.000-05:00

Maybe it is karma for laughing at Liz's car CD player that plays a veritable 1.5 songs worth of tracks from a CD before shitting out, but my Toyota Tacoma's deck decided to rear its ugly head as well and blow a fuse (if that is indeed the problem). The good news is that the car still works fine and the internal lights are still functioning. The downside is that my display will not turn on, which means no music from my iPod. Call it griping but I will be damned to the hot depths of Hades if I have to drive to Arlington and back to Southern Maryland every damn day this week sitting in total silence. I have already told kpR that in order to remain sane on my morning commute, I will call him bright and early at 6:30AM (which in California would make it roughly 3:30AM) every morning until my car stereo is fixed. Talk about burning bridges. I guess I had better call and get my truck serviced.

*On a sidenote, shout outs to Gina at Lifehacker for sending me an invite to be a commenter.
*And as I write, I am currently testing and reviewing another application that will hopefully be posted late tomorrow (if I don't repeatedly bash my forehead into the windshield in a desperate attempt to break the silence in the car and wind up in some filthy 12 car pile up in NW on the way home).

The End is Nigh (New York Ave, DC)

2006-03-04T14:40:00.000-05:00

On my way home from Arlington after helping a friend move, I decided to go on route 50 (New York Ave) as seeing that it was a Saturday afternoon and traffic would hopefully be light. As I waited at a stoplight in view of the XM Satellite building, much to my disbelief, I did not see the usual roadside vender selling flowers. Two older black gentlemen were weaving around the stopped cars, holding high an unopened club (see the picture above). If that isn't a sign of the apocalypse, I don't know what is. How does this one act reflect upon our Nation's Capital and what message does it bring to the hordes of tourists that flock to DC each summer in high hopes of seeing a big shiny gem, or a chance at viewing that heavily secured white building where that dude who everyone hates lives?
I think I will continue to reside in PG County where getting shot at is to be expected and the only thing roadside venders sell is flowers, bottled spring water, and maybe sexual favors in return for money to buy crack. We all know, the latter is a given.

Integrate Netjaxer into Qliner Hotkeys

2006-03-02T22:12:00.000-05:00

I have done a few short reviews on both Netjaxer and qliner Hotkeys over the last few days and thought it would be a wonderful idea to combine the two in order to hotkey frequent websites with just one click on the keyboard. Unfortunately, when I initially dragged a site icon from my quicklaunch to Hotkeys, it merely launched Netjaxer and didn't take me to the desired site. So after a little deliberation, I decided to do a wee bit of tinkering to see if I could get a nice site icon (favicon- the little icon on the left of the http://) on my Hotkeys, that would allow me to launch and browse from site to site in mere seconds. Well, with a lot less pain than expected, it was done. If you look at the screenshot above, the number keys on my keyboard are set to a few random sites. Here's what I did.

First in order to do this you need to run both lightweight apps NetJaxer and qliner Hotkeys. First, create a folder where you can store the sites you want to assign to your hotkeys. Visit the site and holding the left mouse key on the site icon (once again the icon on the left of http://) and drag it to your folder of sites you just created. It will look pretty generic at this point until you change the icon to the proper one.

Now open NetJaxer and click 'add.' On the right of 'icon,' there will be a paper icon that says 'download site icon' when hovered over. Enter the correct web address and click it and save the icon.
Now, go back to your new folder with the stored sites and right click the site shortcut, go to 'properties,' and 'change icon.' If you did a default install of NetJaxer, you will go to C:\Program Files\NetJaxer\Icons and will find your nice little site icon sitting there waiting to be assigned to the right site.
For the last part, open the websites folder you assigned the icons to and hold down the 'Windows' key on your keyboard until the virtual keyboard for qliner pops up. Drag and drop your websites to your blackened heart's content.
Incidentally, if you use NetJaxer and set the sites to open on your system set browser, it should jump from site to site without relaunching another browser.

qliner Hotkeys...BAM!

2006-02-28T21:50:00.000-05:00

Hotkeys are a must for those lazy bastards who claim to be more 'efficient' but really just want a nifty way of opening up an application that takes 1 click of the mouse (or keyboard) instead 2 or 3. Up until now, I have not installed third party software for hotkeys but when qliner hotkeys came up, I just had to give it a try. qliner claims that after installation, you merely have to hold down the Windows logo key on your keyboard for 5 seconds and then drag and drop applications onto your keyboard. Then when you want to open up an application, instead of digging through mounds of folders, you simply hold down the Windows key and the assigned key and BAM!, your selected application is open. Sounds pretty easy right? I decided to see if it was really that simple.

After installation, I began to find random applications on my desktop and dragged and dropped them to selected keys. It all went easy enough but I did notice that the drag and drop keyboard on the monitor was not adjustable or moveable which meant that if the virtual keyboard were covering a application shortcut, then I would have to move it out of the way first in order to find it after to place on hotkeys. Other than that, setup was a snap. I don't have too many applications on my desktop so I have a screenshot of some of the boring apps (the good ones are on my dead laptop) on my desktop. Also, I had the brilliant idea of combining hotkeys with NetJaxer so I could have hotkeys for the multitude of websites I visit but that was a no go. It will require some work so I am looking into that. All in all, qliner hotkeys gets a recommended from me.

NetJaxer

2006-02-26T20:37:00.000-05:00

A few days ago, I read an interesting aricle at Lifehacker on writing batch files for web to desktop icons. This sounded quite intriguing so I was just starting to roll up my sleeves and see what I would choose as icons for sites on my quicklaunch or desktop, when I came across NetJaxer. Then I decided to be lazy and save batch file programming for a rainy day. This screenshot above is the result of 5 minutes of work with NetJaxer. Before I get any further, for those not quite sure what NetJaxer is, let me give you a quick walkthrough.

After firing up the small application, we are given options to select favorite and often visited websites. Simply enter in the correct website an title and then you can choose an icon. If your site has a custom icon in the address bar (right before http://) you can use NetJaxer's little 'download site icon' and it will pull up the favicon as your designated icon. Then simply choose if you want it on your Start menu, quicklaunch, desktop or even to run at startup.

After fiddling around with Netjaxer for a few minutes, I was quite annoyed that I overlooked the option to choose my system set browser (Firefox) and initially chose the default NetJaxer browser. So I went back and changed the options to open my icons to the selected websites in Firefox.

So far, NetJaxer has been running like a champ, allowing me to open my browser up to the desired site with one click AND saved me from batch file programming. Sound like an informercial? Hey, it's also free.

CrackSearcher (again)

2006-02-26T20:03:00.000-05:00

Disclaimer: I am not responsible for your actions when using or downloading CrackSearcher. With that out of the way, my brother called me the other day asking for an application for his iPod. As it turns out, I had to put CrackSearcher up, and as people are still directed here to find the old info on where to find it, I thought I would do a quick update.

Threads for Geeks, Artists and Internet Junkies

2006-02-25T08:38:00.000-05:00

Courtesy of my buddy Nell (whom I was going to insert a goofy picture here but decided that the ramifications exceeded the amount of actual fun)-well now I have just killed the first sentence. Let me try again.
I have been on the hunt for cool, somewhat inexpensive T-Shirts on the net. The usual sites to visit were Jinx, Thinkgeek and a for punk bands, Interpunk. Quite randomly, my friend Nell sent me a link for shirts at Threadless and I was simply awestruck at the bizarre, simply designed but highly imaginative shirts in their catalog. Unfortunately, all of the shirts I wanted were already out of stock. Luckily, Nell had also sent another link to another shirt site iheartguts. I took a gander at the shirts at iheartguts and found them colorful, somewhat cutesy and fun but decided that if I were to purchase a shirt, I would probably never wear it in public.
So like a one eyed crack addict looking to get high again, I stumbled (metaphorically, and over the net to the West Coast) to pester my friend again about other sites where I could find more neat shirts. Probably annoyed as all hell, I was finally sent this link for Cool Hunting. Cool Hunting is a blog on net t-shirt sites worth checking and now I am satiated. Now where can I find cool socks?

I Didn't Know Apple Made Kid's Jackets

2006-02-21T22:15:00.000-05:00

Yes, this picture of a kid's jacket with an apple is real (I know because I took the damn picture with my cruddy cell phone). Although not exactly like the old Apple computer logo, it is close enough. I wonder if there is a lawsuit that happened, going on or if Apple is covertly making children's clothes with their logo to engrain young minds to use their hardware?

On the Topic of Phones

2006-02-21T22:07:00.000-05:00

I'm not big into the IM world as I tend to blather on and on and eventually get nothing done but with Gmail's new integrated chat service, I do have to say that I have been chatting more than usual. But enough about me. For mobile chatters, Agile Mobile has some pretty cool downloads that allow you to bring the world of chatting to your cell phone (it's fun to do while driving). I cannot vouch for their products as I have yet to try them but if anyone has any feedback, that would be great. For regular old computer chatting check out
Trillian, Miranda, Gaim or ICQ.

DoS A Cell Phone Easily (script kiddies rejoice)

2006-02-20T19:52:00.000-05:00

I don't condone spamming or even email bombs, and anyone stupid enough to get caught using one deserves what is coming. However, I read an article a few months back about DoS'ing (Denial of Service) a cell phone by sending either 900 or 9000 (I don't recall the exact number) text messages to the phone rendering the cell phone inoperable. I got to thinking that there are many free web services that allow anyone on the net to send a text message to a cell phone. Up to now, I have not come across any services that allow you to send more than one text message at a time. This is where textmessage.cc comes in. After typing in the pertinent information and choosing a cell phone provider (be it Verizon, Cingular, Sprint, etc.) We are given the option to send 10, 20, 30, or 40 messages at the same time. Curious but not stupid enough to actually try this, I first recommend you download Torpark to anonymize your IP, or better yet, take a laptop and find an open Access Point, then use Torpark, log into textmessage.cc and then bombard your cubicle dwelling boss's phone rendering it useless. Now I have tried it with one message at a time but simply hitting the 'back' button on your browser allows you to go back to the previously unsent text message and resend it. Do it a few times and suddenly 900 textmessages are sent in just a few minutes. Proof of concept? Well shit, someone step up to bat.

Songbird Crashed My Box (the un-review of Songbird)

2006-02-20T19:41:00.000-05:00

Songbird crashed my XP box three times all in under 5 minutes so I am unable to do a complete review of this 'newly' released, Firefox based Internet music player. To their credit, the application looks slick, offers a ton of choices on where to go to listen to streaming music, plays formats ranging from MP3, AAC, OGG, FLAC, WMA and more. However, browsing from one site to the next you do feel a somewhat lagging downtime. I am hesitant to give this a try on my linux box, although this application does support non Windows users. Make no mistake, this is a not an iTunes replacement and although I do not use iTunes (due to DRM issues-- wish JHymn still worked!), I still strongly urge you to use iTunes over Songbird at this time. Until the good folks working behind Songbird flatten the bugs, speed up browsing and make the interface smoother, I say wait on this app.

Drink of Choice

2006-02-19T22:28:00.000-05:00

It is probably not an accurate poll but it seems like the choice of drink for viewers of Chalkline would be Whiskey. The breakdown for the main drink of choice is Whiskey at 41%, shortly followed by Tequila at 24%. Not too many Gin drinkers at a small 1%. Anyway I should have more updates as soon as my laptop is up and running (again) but tomorrow I will have an update on my views on Songbird, the new Web music player.

Enter the World of Geek Tattoos

2006-02-16T22:59:00.000-05:00

First off, I do agree that this is a hideous picture from my cell phone but it is the only picture that I do have of my new tattoo. Liz and I went to get inked on Valentine's Day pretty much spur of the moment so the actual design that I had planned was not on me and will be deferred to a later date. Speaking of Geek Tattoos, I have to say that I have now joined the cult. Word around my work is that it is more or less a kind of geeky. Well maybe my next one will be on my forehead with a message in bold saying 'Death to All Script Kiddies.' Hold on a minute, that is geeky too.

the Music Genone Project (Pandora)

2006-02-15T22:22:00.000-05:00

Let's play musical association. So you have a bit of time to kill while the boss is on a business trip and you are looking for the something new to listen to so you can 'wow' your musical elitist friends. Or maybe you listen to bad music and want more awful ear bleeding induced crap that passes for music these days. Awhile back, I posted a link called liveplasma that maps out artists according to what other people listen to. The next step would be Pandora. With the actual ability to listen to an artist as opposed to seeing a visual representation, I have to hand it to Pandora for this feature. So let's enter in an artist.

Granted, Gogol Bordello isn't something easily associable with other bands such as Blink 182 but I wanted to see what this web application was capable of. So after entering in the band name I am given a song I can listen to. Then if I want a suggestion for another would-be-similar band, I hit the 'next' (button which is the universal two triangles facing to the right) to cue up the next artist.

Look, new music that I can listen to. Of course this can go on and on which includes your own account in which you can create new stations, add more bands to a playlist and a few other minor options. Pandora limits its playlist by selecting one band at a time for you which seems to be a small drawback but is still good enough where if you want to check out some new music for free, and hear it streaming, it is worth checking out.

Rimming and Snowjobs

2006-02-13T21:15:00.000-05:00

Here is a non-tech related post today, but shows what trials I had to face for the last 2 days. Hell, this isn't North Dakota, or even Alaska but when the DC area calls for snow, us Washingtonians run like a newly H.I.V infected madman to the nearest grocery store to stock up on goods for our next ice age.

Pixelate this, Bitch...(Recolored Demo)

2006-02-09T21:46:00.000-05:00

Recolored is what you will need to turn a Black and White photo to color in a few minutes flat. With permission from a friend, I took a B&W photo and downloaded a free copy of recolored and fired up the small app. Yes, this can better be done with Photoshop but not everyone can plunk down the few hundred dollars it costs for this application (or get it free from a P2P site). Well let's jump into this demo on using recolored. Total time for this project was 10 minutes.

Take your black and white photo and import it into recolored.

From here I take a black ink selection and quite messily outline what I want in black, colors I want for skin tone, hair color, eyes and lips. I can either use a drop down selection of 'human skin' to 'Fabric Jeans.' For other colors in-between, I can select a color from the gradient map. The right most icon will 'colorize' your photo. It may take a few tries so if you get the desired color tone the first time, it is wise to save your ongoing project as a .rcl file so you can further edit and if needed, backtrack to where the tone was the way you like it. Okay, this looks about right so let's hit the 'colorize' icon and see what the result is.

Not too freaking bad. The eyes and lips could better be done with Photoshop but this is not a Photoshop demo. Plus, we are working with a 10 minute overhead. Overall, I say Recolored is worth the download. Give it a try and by the way, the picture in the demo is not included in the application.

the Moblog Addiction (textamerica)

2006-02-07T23:02:00.000-05:00

I got into the moblog kind of late and for a good reason. I had enough on my plate but recently I decided to sign up (free) to textamerica and I have to say that now I will be sleeping even less. Think Flickr, but add the poor megapixel resolution with a second rate camera phone. Sure, we Americans are lagging behind in the mobile phone race compared to Asia but hell, we have to do something about it. I signed up for textamerica a few days ago and I must say that even through the clumsy navigation the site has to offer, it is still quite a fun experience. I initially signed on just to have the storage for my crappy cell phone pictures but now am drawn into the dank underworld of upskirt cam shots, blurry spring break titty shots and the occasional pee captures from late night binge drinking combined with cell phones. OK, maybe not all that but I bet if I were to delve a little deeper, I could find the depravity mankind has to offer with on-the-go poor resolution cameras built into cell phones. Anyhow, if you are up for a gander at what catches my eye, the set of my cell phone pics are at al999.textamerica.com, aptly titled 'Chalkline.'

Poor Product Names

2006-02-06T19:35:00.000-05:00

Sometimes excess verbiage just kills the joke. Does anyone other than me think that this is an awful name for a product? Really now, the i-mate? At a loss of words.

Beautiful and Deadly, But Does She Fly A Kite? (Flyakite 3 Review)

2006-02-05T10:07:00.000-05:00

With much anticipation with the new release of version 3 from Flyakite, I could not wait to get my stiff Chinese fingers around this new transformation pack. Essentially, to turn the boring old WinXP shell to something new, radical, Apple (I swear they did not pay me to write that). I didn't think I was a big fan of aesthetics over functionality but Flyakite version 2 sold me well enough to keep it on my laptop for a solid 6 months. So the screenshot abover is the new 'dock' featured here in v3. Seems to be okay so far. Let's move on. The rollover is smooth. But when we try to change the icons on the dock to another application, we are forced to use the .png file extension which means most windoze users will have to download a separate icon pack. But aside from that, not too bad.

Everything seems intact. Let's take it on a test run on the net with Firefox. I don't know how many of you out there use the gmail notifier but I had just started my browsing experience when an email popped up on the notifier and could not follow through with the subsequent emails causing me to prematurely close the application. So take away another point here.

The new 'system prefences' is pure eyecandy but is really just a souped up version of the control panel. I saw that a new screensaver was on default and wanted my old one of Bender (from Futurama) back but Flyakite v3 jammed and would not allow me to tweak my settings. There goes another point. I unfortunately did not take a look at the CPU usage before and after Flyakite but after 20 minutes of fooling around with my newly replaced shell, I noticed that my applications were much more sluggish. I don't have a state of the art Voodoo PC but my desktop has an ample p4 with over a gig of RAM. Still Flyakite slowed my workpace to that of a parapalegic on downers. Websurfing was the equivalent of using a 28.8K dial up modem (not really that bad but it felt like it). Before new problems arised, I decided that it would be in my best interest to uninstall Flyakite v3. I never did think that I would be so glad to see my old WinXP logos. Yikes, did I just write that?

My Laptop Has Taken Up Smoking

2006-02-04T23:21:00.000-05:00

OK, so technically speaking, my brick of a Toshiba laptop which is incidentally the weight of a small baby on my back is not really smoking (the laptop, not the baby) but the power supply or AC adapter is. Can you spot anything wrong with this picture other than careless neglect of cable management? Let's take a closer look.
This morning as I was firing up a Super Nintendo emulator for my kiddo to play Super Mario World, I noticed that my laptop was still running on its battery even though the AC adapter was plugged into the wall. This was roughly the time that an acrid, not somewhat unfamilar burning smell started and I immediately noticed that the cable to my power supply was literally smoking. A nice little message on my laptop popped up saying 'you fuckwad, you messed up my power and now you are on my shitlist.' Well moreso a message saying that my laptop battery was very low and that my laptop was going to shut off. Needless to say, that update I was going to do for this page was put to a smoking (har har) halt. So I will be giving Toshiba a call tomorrow and in the meantime I will check if BestBuy has a replacement which will more than likely cost me an arm and a leg.

Back Like (not with) the Herpes

2006-02-03T00:23:00.000-05:00

You didn't think I would actually come back did you? But much like that nasty growth that seems to appear on your lower lip every few months, grow full of pus and then prematurely burst when you absent mindedly brush your lower lip with your index finger while thinking, I am once again back from my hiatus. Here is a short list of what has transpired since my last post.

I have...
*consumed copious amounts of alcohol to the point where my body has all but saturated due to the influx of poisons.
*bought a new DVD burner, namely the LG 16X External Super Multi DVD/CD Rewriter (yes, quite a mouthful of words there LG).
*been on a reverse honeymoon. What is that you say? Think honeymoon but trade the sex part with discussion about child custody and visitation rights.
*reviewed and downloaded a number of applications that will be discussed in the very near future.
*had non-biological parents lecture me about the trials and tribulations of life
*not slept much and as a result have been reading books like Kung Fu High School to books by Ernest Hemingway.
*gotten shit face drunk with a bunch of Peruvians playing dice drinking games.
*reassessed my goals and where life is taking me. I have found no visions, bright lights in long hallways, and no religion. In other words, during my time off from chalkline, I have not had an epiphany.

I am however back, and have a number of things to post. Some reviews, some rants, and some applications to try. So sit back and let's get reacquainted. I promise, I won't taint you with any ill-gotten venereal diseases. At least, I will try.

Temporary Hiatus

2006-01-05T09:38:00.000-05:00

The staff here at chalkline (which is primarily composed of me, my multiple personalities and from time to time my kiddo) are taking a much needed break in lieu of some more important life issues. As mentioned, this will be a temporary break from posting.

dat file scanning (Irish for the night)

2005-12-24T22:07:00.000-05:00

For the two ladies who actually read this blog, ever want to scan your boyfriend or husband's computer for .dat files? Well what can you gain? Your ole so sneaky boyfriend might be harvesting disgusting pr0n in some buried directory that you may never stumble upon deep within the sub files of some installed program or 'fake' program. The trouble (for him) is that if he frequents his stored scat or clown pr0n on a regular basis, even if he clears the cache on Firefox or IE, .dat files still point to where he has been browsing. idatscan is a freestanding .exe file (that does not need to be installed) that will tell you where the last files your significant other has visited that probably has not had the time, energy or knowhow to erase. I won't get into how to erase .dat files today (as it is Christmas ever and Liz and I have just downed a number of Jameson's shots) but chances are, your .dat files are more easily trackable than you might think. So fire up the idatscan the next time your hubby is at an extended 'conference' and see what depravity has really been stored on on the computer.

Corporate Drama and a Bleak Optimistic Outlook

2005-12-19T16:58:00.000-05:00

I know I have not been posting much lately. First off, the DSL line from Verizon has still not been set up and they promised it will be up this Tuesday. Second, my job has been kicking me in the shins with soccer shoes and I have been leaving work feeling like an exsanguinated victim after a vampire attack. Third, blame the holiday season for taking my Internet time. But let's not be putting any blame here as I am a firm believer that if your life is shitty, it is probably because you have not done much to keep it from being shitty. Here is my letter of resignation to my current work and next week I start work at interpunk.

I am regretful to inform you that Friday, Dec 23rd 2005 will be my last day with UPS. I have been trying to seek a full time job with UPS for the last 4 months with no avail and recently an offer for a different full time job came along. I did not want to rush into leaving UPS so I spent 2 weeks weighing the pros and cons and also hoping that I would hear back about a possible interview for full time hours. With no response from HR about full time hours, I accepted the offer at the other company who wanted me to work right away but I told them that I would at least like to give UPS a week's notice.

I know that both of you (Bill, Pete) are not in charge of the hiring process but I have felt slightly overlooked in the past few months when new hirees who have just graduated from college come right in and are hired, where I have a degree, computer training, certifications, as well as a lot of preload operation skills and training. It seems to me that the idea of promoting within was not taken into account for my case after I left the DC building.

Nonetheless, I have learned a great deal from working at UPS and have gained many skills that have not only made me a better employee but a better person as well. I have learned some valuable management skills and am fully grateful for Jim Harris in the DC building who has looked out for me since the day I started.

On Friday Dec 23rd, after the driver helpers are set, I will drive to Burtonsville where I will return my uniform, laptop and ID to Pete. Once again, thank you all

aL (well shit, did you think I would use my full name?)
Metro D.C Industrial Engineering Department

Wireless Sniffer on a Switched Network

2005-12-16T17:30:00.000-05:00

I downloaded switch sniffer about a month ago because I was curious. As it turns out, it is a pretty handy um, 'network auditing' tool. Not only can you capture packets on a switched LAN via ethernet, but try capturing packets via wireless as well. Throw in arp spoofing, and a number of other cool functions, switch sniffer has quickly been added to my collection of network tools. Now if I could only get Verizon to get off their ass and install my DSL (as they are still having problems) I could get a nice tutorial on using switch sniffer out as well as update this blog on a more regular basis.

Tux on the Treo 650

2005-12-13T17:06:00.000-05:00

Goddamn this is cool news for phone people (I hesitate to use the word 'phreaks' but I guess that would be fitting). So this guy managed to get linux to boot on his treo 650 cell phone. Now other than booting, you can't do a whole lot but I have a feeling that linux on the 650 will soon be old (but cool) news. Maybe I won't go ahead and buy that LG VX9800 I was thinking about buying. However, I still do want the Nokia 770.

High Rollers at the Micro Center

2005-12-12T15:26:00.000-05:00

My weekend was pretty interesting. Not only did I get to meet some old friends in Arlington, I also acted as a free computer consultant. Basically, my friend Veronica asked me to tag along as the mother of the child she watches after work was going to buy her a Christmas present and had no idea about what constituted as a 'good' laptop or desktop. So the lady, who shall go by the name 'C' met Veronica and me, and we followed 'C' to the Micro Center in Fairfax VA. In 20 minutes and about 4 thousand dollars later, my friend Veronica had a brand new HP laptop, and 'C' had bought a dual core p4, 1 gig ram, 300 gig HD desktop and also the 21 inch wide panel LCD to accompany it. After a UPS, some printers and cables not to mention the warranty, we were literally greeted by no less than 3 managers and had sales reps from different departments of the store offering free deals, mail in rebates and even had our pictures taken by two different sales people. I did manage to shy away from the cameras, but it was pretty surreal. I think the next time I do some computer consulting, I will charge people in lemons and grapefruit, as I am still dying of scurvy.

I Am Dying From Scurvy

2005-12-11T19:51:00.000-05:00

So maybe I am not dying from scurvy but I have been craving anything with Vitamin C. I had 3 lemonades yesterday and today I have had half of a lemon, 2 clementines and am fondly dreaming of pink grapefruit while gently caressing myself. Also, a DSL line is being set up at home so I should have more updates when the router is properly configured within a day or two.

Carnies Don't Like Dumb People

2005-12-09T15:31:00.000-05:00

Yeah you heard me. Carnival folk only like to dupe the educated marks. Good thing I am educated enough to hand my money out to the bearded lady...

Qlam (like knitting for the lazy)

2005-12-08T19:32:00.000-05:00

Yes my posts of recent have been short. I have been sick as a dog lately coughing up a mandatory lung sized ball of phlegm. Work has me so frustrated that I am seeking other job options and I might have just found one. More details on te possible new job if things are set correctly. Speaking of 'set correctly,' this interactive thing (for lack of a better word) is pretty versatile with cutting options, adding and manipulating. Did I mention that an ice storm is coming tonight as well too?

Unlucky OS (terminal fun)

2005-12-07T17:28:00.001-05:00

The Unlucky OS is more than you think. So you probably won't be using it on a regular basis but that glowing green terminal does induce a fuzzy feeling in my gut. So after logging in and not finding 'pine,' 'gopher,' or much of anything that didn't result in insulting me, I typed in 'help.' Ah, from there the wealth of information was released to me. Go look.

Pimp Proxy and Secure Gmail

2005-12-05T18:05:00.000-05:00

This post is going to be rushed as my other half is breathing down my neck waiting to use my laptop. Pimp My IP is yet another proxy service that allows you to hide your surfing habits (at work). I was able to login to blogger.com and do an update which many proxy services do not allow. However, I was unable login to gmail or yahoo for email. I will have to delve a little deeper to see if this is possible.
Speaking of gmail, I love my gmail account and was tired of having a secure login only to be dumped into a non secure account. This guy figured out an easy way to encrypt not only your logins but your traffic as well by having a login set at https://gmail.google.com. That 's' after http is the key. If you do a search for gmail under google, or have a google bar with a gmail button, you are sent to one of the many gmail proxies where only the login is secure. After reading this, I gave it a try and logged in under https://gmail.google.com and now not only my login is secure but traffic on my gmail is secure as well too!

My Kid Likes Apple Computers and I Don't Even Own One

2005-12-02T21:35:00.000-05:00

Not too long ago, a post from my blog made it to the front page of digg.com just because people liked the computer my 5 year old daughter built. Not to exploit her just for a few cheap shots to raise site stats, I was hestitant about putting her next project online. Well I decided it was a cool enough project and won't go into it too much, but basically, she wanted a laptop so she took two white cardboard boxes and drew herself a laptop. I did help her in gluing a hinge on the back so that her laptop could open and shut like a real one. Not bad for a kid mod, and I might just have to reward her sometime by getting her her very own computer so she can stop pestering me to use mine.

Rubbish Fish and Delicacies

2005-12-02T21:04:00.000-05:00

What is wrong with this picture you ask? Well nothing really if you live in the 48 contiguous states. Really, at this point most people will wonder why they are still reading this blog. But to those just over a million people in Hawaii, let's take about half, so roughly 500,000 of those in Hawaii who can actually read. Well now that I have thoroughly insulted less than 1% of my Hawaii readers, let me just tell you for the misinformed what is wrong with this picture.
On the beautiful island of Oahu (yes, in Hawaii which does belong to the USA, I promise) we have an endearing canal named the 'Ala Wai.' Roughly translated to 'filled with shit,' this canal sits a 5 minute drive from the gleaming shopping mecca known as Ala Moana (big fucking shopping center) and located in the famous Waikiki beach, the Ala Wai spills her great juices into our opaque blue oceans. This cesspool has been a long running gag with stories about dead bodies, a repository for chemical wastes, sewage, used condoms and other such wonderful things of beauty. The stories are only partway true as the signs near the Ala Wai do in fact discourage fishing, boating, and swimming as it may cause you to grow a third eye right below a nipple. Now my convoluted story in a nutshell is that in this polluted bog of death and disease, one fish flourishes like a mad multiple cat owning widow. Talipia. So I don't care that the Tilapia here on the East Coast is bred and raised in a sterile farm. All I see when I look at the menu and Talapia is on it, is the dead look of disease in the Talapia when I shine a flashlight into the Ala Wai at night.

Poll Results For November 2005

2005-12-02T20:53:00.000-05:00

Not surprisingly, you degenerates have chosen wanting a hooker for Christmas the most. I am guessing all people who voted for the hooker as a gift were males. Next runner up is a very sensible but somewhat shocking 2nd place of the poll for giftcards. 4 people wanted a burrito for Christmas (yes, I voted for a burrito you fuckers). 3 People wanted a gun for a gift, 2 people wanted a shrunken head (I have looked it up on eBay before and the link is here). And last, we had 1 measly vote for a cute stuffed animal. This month's vote is for those who suffer from the depression of holidays and wish to express their love for their favorite alcoholic beverage. Me, I'm sticking with the Whiskey.

Chronological Beer Count at an Against Me! Show

2005-12-01T18:12:00.000-05:00

1st shot of Jameson's Whiskey: We walked into Recher Theatre in Baltimore at 9 to see Smoke or Fire take stage. Roughly 300 people were already packed in the old poolhall renovated venue.

2nd shot of Jameson's Whiskey: Halfway through Smoke or Fire's set which mingled older material with their new unreleased songs. They were tired from their 50 State tour but put up a good high energy show. They had the only circle pit of the night that I was aware of.

3rd drink Natty Boho: This was backstage where the Soviettes, Against Me!, the Epoxies and Smoke or Fire had just finished their set. Liz had brought in childhood pictures of Italy where she had met Tom (from Against Me!) as children.

4th drink Natty Boho: At this time, Liz and her new gal pal Susy (of the Soviettes) were getting their drink on with Jagermeister bombs. We also got to hang out and meet Annie from the Soviettes. During this time, Liz's sister Amy and I were watching members of the Epoxies going in and out of the bathroom trying out different wardrobes.

5th drink Bass Ale: It was around 11PM and Against Me! had just taken the stage playing their new songs off of 'Searching for a Former Clarity.' We were by the front speakers on stage right. The crowd was chanting along and the vibe was pretty mellow. Some folks behind me yelled 'nah nah nah' in between songs and since I wanted to hear that too, I yelled along with them. Against Me! finlly did play the 'nah nah nah' song shortly before their set ended and it was what the crowd needed.

6th drink Whiskey Sour: The show ended and Tom and Liz wanted a few minutes to chat so we went next door to a bar and hung out for about 20 minutes. James joined us at the bar and after a jager shot, admitted to needing a break from their 50 state tour. Jordan (the manager I think) paged Tom and James at about 1:30AM and they had to get ready to hit Philly. We said our goodbyes and got some much needed sleep after going to a diner to fill our guts with greasy diner food.

XP to Mac Skins (Gant3, Flyakite)

2005-12-01T09:45:00.000-05:00

First off, I am not a Mac zealot. I do own an iPod but do not have any Macs. The current laptop I am on dual boots XP and SUSE. But anyway, I was getting a little sick of looking at my boring XP theme and although I had used some skins in the past, I always found them slightly less functional, albeit pretty. Litestep is a decent free skin but using it about 2 years ago, I was never sold on using Litestep on a daily basis. Hopefully, this appliction has been improved over time. This lead me to Flyakite (watch out, the link is to a direct download)which is a Mac skin that I have been using for the last 5 or so months. Well quite happy with Flyakite, I came across Gant3Ocean ShellPack a week ago and hesitant to install it over my current Flyakite skin, I decided to install it anyway and see if it worked okay and not manage to slow down my box that much.
The Gant3 Ocean ShellPack ran just fine without boosting my CPU usage more than 10% (may vary by system). The dock installed was easy to manipulate and within 10 minutes, I was able to remove all of the icons that were unnecessary and add my own (like netstumbler and other useful utilities). With the dock set, I was able to remove a clutter of icons that used to litter my desktop. One of the other applications installed was ubericon which gave me the 'bump' effect when clicking on an icon.
So far I have been using these skins for the last week and have been content with the results. No, it's not OSX, KDE or GNOME, but it does function better than the standard out of box installation of XP, and I think it looks a hell of a lot better.

Quality VS Quantity

2005-11-30T16:01:00.000-05:00

I try to keep a mix of both on this blog but recently posts have come a little more scarce. Blame it on the rush of winter, combined with a relentless work pace if you will but I still plan to have at least one post per day. I have been collecting new applications like a meth addict collects cleaning rags and should have some nice new reviews out within the next few days. G2G Exchange is back up and running again after having some bandwidth problems and I have sent more files to the sleepyliz acct (passwd is n33dsl33p for both G2G and Gmail). Ok, now I gotta get moving, going to see Against Me! in Baltimore tonight.

Pulling My Hair Out (by the roots)

2005-11-29T17:05:00.000-05:00

My work has me so spun up that when I answered a phone call at home today, I did my usual telephone pick up line but with a 'this is aL speaking.' Liz's sister was a slight bit confused. Today at 10AM, I had another 20 some odd new hirees walk in and sheer pandemonium ensued. Liz was browsing through Interpunk last night and noticed that they are hiring in the Virginia area, so I sent them my resume. Now if I get called in for an interview, do I wear a collar and tie or because the company is Interpunk, should I go casual? And what is it with 'corporate punk' these days anyway? Anyway long debate over the words 'punk' and 'corporate' in the same sentence but that is for another time.

Telnet is Dead?

2005-11-29T15:56:00.000-05:00

I was listening to binrev radio episode 109 (I think episode 109) and even if I don't like the new hosts nearly as much as Stank Dawg, Black Ratchet and Not Theory had a pretty cool discussion about the days of Telnet which brought tears of happiness to my slanted Chinese eyes. I can remember back in college my email account was via telnet so that when I was visiting my dead grandma in Tawian, I could still access my email via command line to telnet(as webmail at the time was not always accessible). The radio discussion also went into Gopher (which for those of you unfamiliar, was virtually a text based precursor to the Internet). Anyways, telnet these days is more or less replaced with SSH (which in my opinion is like a good upgrade), and now instead of text based pr0n, we have full on hardcore fruit sex. Well call it an upgrade, but I still do miss the days of telnet.

Romance Novels and Photoshop

2005-11-28T22:03:00.000-05:00

This guy Longmire had some fun with Photoshop and Romance Novels. Go here to see his handiwork. I have to say, some of them are altered well enough to be almost believeable.

Sharing the Pr0n Like Good Friends Do (G2G Exchange)

2005-11-27T14:58:00.000-05:00

Browsing and sharing Gmail files with other users? Well I had to give G2G Exchange a try. But shit, what about all that pr0n that a certain unnamed friend sends me? I don't really want to have other people browsing that nor self incriminating emails I have sent others. So I went to Gmail and created a new 'dummy' account for testing purposes that could be used on G2G Exchange. After logging on, I had to 'index' my files from my Gmail account. Clicking on the 'browse' button, it pulled up a list of users who had also indexed their files (pictures, movies, applications) and simply had to click on a name to see what files from their Gmail account had been indexed.
The image on the left shows a list of indexed files available to be downloaded by anyone visiting the site. Pretty cool idea in the sense of a P2P network, but also a great potential security hazard for anyone with someone else's Gmail login information. If you want to play around on the 'dummy' account, the info is
user: sleepyliz
passwd: n33dsl33p
The information above is not only for G2G Exchange but also for Gmail. I don't know if the feature to upload files directly to G2G Exchange does exists but I was unable to find a way of doing so without first having to login to Gmail, upload a file and send it off. Other than this minor inconvenience, it is pretty fun to browse though other people's files. Also, I need to mention that G2G Exchange does not index actual emails for reading so privacy in that aspect is good. If this exchange thing goes well, maybe I will get brave and unleash the massive amounts of porn filed in my Gmail account.

Free Web Phone Service Via Linux (linphone)

2005-11-27T13:07:00.000-05:00

I don't have a landline. Personally, I am rarely home so I don't see the need in having an extra bill. But there are things that I could or would do if I were to ever have the need for a landline again. For instance, I could maybe get Tivo but the only shows I am addicted to right now are Scrubs and Prison Break so I really cannot justify getting a Tivo. I would also love to get asterisk set up but I still don't see the need for a landline. OK, before I digress too much from my post today, let me bring you back about 9 years ago. Phone service via the Internet was just starting out and a little company named dialpad was offering free Internet phone service. Back then, there was no VoIP but dialpad's service (free at that time), allowed anyone in the US to make calls through their web service to anywhere in the United States. Although the service was free, the phone quality was 'patchy' at best with certain delays. But not being able to argue with free, I used dialpad and as bad as it was with the delays, it still worked. The Internet has come a long way from the old days of dialpad, and even though they are still around, VoIP has largely taken over and replaced the market of web phone service.
But going back to web phone service, Linphone.org offers free phone calls to anywhere in the whole world, but running on linux. I have yet to try linphone as no landline, but this might be a good application for that 100 dollar laptop from MIT as I heard it runs on Red Hat.

Inundated Digg Submits

2005-11-25T23:23:00.000-05:00

I hate to have a bunch of my posts revolving around the site digg but this one I could not pass up upon. This morning after my browse through digg's front page, I visited the 'digg for stories section' which basically shows newly dugg stories people are submitting in high hopes of mass diggs and accolades from fellow diggers. Surprisingly or maybe not, I was bombarded with hate remarks aimed at kevin rose. Slander about him giving bad blowjobs and what not. Although amusing the first time I read it a few days ago, now it just became a tiresome bypass to the next story. I must also mention for those who have not yet seen these dead posts that the story just leads to another link on digg about censorship and banning of spam users and people who post for a lack of better terms, 'shit.' So keeping this post less personal regarding opinions, I have to say that I feel bad for those people who actually have valid submissions and now are buried due to intolerant wasteful spam posts which weigh down and inundate digg with more bullshit. A conspiracy from the folks at Slashdot? I hardly think not even if there is some sibling rivalry going on bewteen the two sites. After wading through 2 pages of the same post regarding Kevin Rose giving a bad blowjob, I just logged off and went to a less user driven site. That does bother me slightly that I might have missed a cool post on page 3 but I am willing to live with that. I don't believe in censorship and a reason I don't post much on forums is due to 'moderation.' I don't think that digg should go the way of banning and censorship and no matter how much they try, there are loopholes around this type of thing. I thought one of the ideas behind digg was bringing power to the masses, not selective stories chosen at a boardroom table. I won't say I have a solution but in the time being, I probably won't be visiting the 'digg for stories' section.

Online Storage Solutions (a Mozy review)

2005-11-24T16:58:00.000-05:00

I decided to take a dive and see what all the word involving a free 2 gig online backup was all about. Yes, the gripe is that 2 gigs of storage is not all that much but hell, when you are talking about 2 gigs of free storage space, you have to put all complaints aside and recall the word free. So like a brave soul, I decided to give Mozy a test run and see if it lived up to the hype. Upon signing up, you are asked if you would like to answer a quick questionnaire for an extra gig of space. I quickly browsed through the EULA which was a slightly disturbing read but decided to proceed with the installation. After filling out the proper information, my account was bumped from 1 gigabyte of storage space to 2. Proceeding to my email account, I was sent a link to download and install the executable Mozy application. Below is a screenshot of the application after login.

I have to say, I was kind of hoping it would all be web based thefore if run on another computer, Mozy would not need a subsequent install to be able to run. However, I guess this step might have been included due to the 448-bit blowfish encryption. Still, navigation was painfully tedious.

The bit rate was for me was about 48 KB/s which is fairly decent. Still, something about this program skeeved me out to the point where after the quick install, I had to go and get rid of the program. For the time being, I am going to stick with my current web host and even though not free, it is much more manageable.
If you are desperate for free storage space, give Mozy a try. If you can live without a free 2 gigs of online storage or are afraid of a third party acquiring all of your personal information, I still suggest you wait until something better comes out. Sorry, but not recommended

Seeking Relative Obscurity (search engine decoder)

2005-11-23T14:59:00.000-05:00

You ever wonder who gets the data to and from Google, MSN, Yahoo, Alexa, and other large name search engines? Well me neither. But the people behind search-this.com have come up with a neat graphical way of showing the tide ebbs of flowing information between such search engines. Search Engine Decoder provides 'bubbles' on which you may click on to find out where the site is pulling information from and who (if anyone) is getting data from that site.
So for instance the picture below shows me clicking on the 'dogpile' bubble. The red arrows indicate that dogpile is receiving infomation from Yahoo, MSN, looksmart, Google and Ask Jeeves. The yellow arrow indicates that dogpile results that are paid results, come from Yahoo.

Honestly however, the fun from this site begins when clicking on the 'New Pagerank Decoder' button on the top right. I normally don't view Google's page rank on my Google toolbar as I don't want Google's skewed views forced upon me before I have a chance to decide on my own if a site is 'important,' but this pagerank decoder is a fun way of seeing data visually pulled. All in all, pretty interesting information which could not be presented in a much better fashion.

Probing Your Box

2005-11-22T14:40:00.000-05:00

Get your mind out of the gutter you degenerate! I was talking about your computer box. Sygate has a Security Scan that you can now implement when online to see what kind of information from your computer is visible. After a quick scan, it will try to determine what services you are running, what your computer name is, your OS, browser and IP. Not totally conclusive and nothing in depth like an nmap scan but good for a quick lookup if you are on a public computer and want to find out some more info on the box you are surfing on.

Wordpress.org VS Wordpress.com

2005-11-22T14:13:00.000-05:00

I will admit that my last few posts have mentioned wordpress.com in it and I am actually quite excited that they finally went public and now anyone who wants an account can sign up (free) and use wordpress without having a webhost which you formerly had to do with wordpress.org. But what the hell is the bloody difference you ask? Well there are some pros and cons for both but let's do a quick breakdown on the newly public wordpress.com.

Blogger (which I am currently using) has some serious competition now that anyone who wants to start a blog can also use wordpress.com. Yes, there are a ton of other blogging services out there like livejournal, myspace, type pad but the heavy hitters in the blogging community have also been using wordpress.org for some time now. I will get into the distinctions shortly bewteen the wordpress .com/.org. All I want to mention in this paragraph is that competition is good and hopefully the folks behind blogger (*cough *cough, Google) will step up their game.

So you don't have to sign up with a webhost for the wordpress.com. You don't have to FTP your files and configure your page and there are a lot less functions for you to have to deal with or worry about when using wordpress.com. That is not always a bad thing if you want a quick, easy installation that can be set up in minutes. The sacrifice for that is that you will not have the controlability you have with wordpress.org. With the .org version, you can set up mulitple user accounts, edit the source code of templates to your liking, and in general have more control over what you have created. The .com version is a 'lite' version if you will. After fooling around for an hour on it, I still had no idea if I was able to upload my own template instead of the canned ones that thousands of other people will likely have. And as far as scripting, I was not allowed to touch any of it to modify it to my purposes. Now I could be wrong and if these features exist, I simply didn't find them but my major gripe with the .com version was the lack of control. However, as mentioned before, if you don't care for the control issues or simply have no need for them, then the .com version works just fine. I have the high hopes that the public release shall grow with more options as time progresses and I even managed to grab some decent short names for future potential sites, but for now I will probably side with the wordpress.org.

Pros on Wordpress.com
*it's free baby!
*it has cooler features than blogger
*set up can be done by a five year old

Cons on Wordpress.com
*less features than the .org version
*less controlability than the .org version
*only a few templates included

OldVersion

2005-11-21T20:07:00.000-05:00

Sometimes the new version your favorite app just sucks. I don't know about you, but I am still running an archaic version of winamp and it works fine, as subsequent versions have had the recurring problems of crashing and other miscellaneous problems. If you want older versions of some of your favorite programs, go to OldVersion for a plethora of versions of applications ranging from instant messengers to utilities.

I haven't had the opportunity do a plethora of posts today as I have been having fun reviewing the new publicly released version of wordpress. Come back tomorrow for a full review.

Scopetech in da House?

2005-11-21T13:21:00.000-05:00

I noticed a jump in my stats for this page yesterday and was trying to figure out why. As it turns out, my post on Harry Potter=Kevin Rose? landed in the Scopetech forums. Quite funny, I must say.

On a side note, Wordpress has just released their doors to the public and now you can create a page through them. I have to say that Wordpress has some nice functions and options that Blogger does not, so I may have to eventually jump ship and move over to Wordpress.

Spread Firefox (not that you haven't already)

2005-11-20T20:59:00.000-05:00

So you have done your share of spreading Firefox right? Well the good people at the Firemonger Project have taken the extra step. Howso you ask? Their mirrors offer not only the download for Firefox and Thunderbird, but also a nice list of extensions and plugins. You merely need to download a version (with extras or not- which incidentally have the MD5 checksums for file verication), rip it to a few CD's and pass them out to friends and relatives. Grassroots style but hey, at this point, IE is the devil.

Toilet Paper Machines

2005-11-20T19:40:00.000-05:00

Japan has some of the most amazingly bizarre technology. I came across this site awhile back and I have to say that I have never seen such cool vending machines here in the States. I don't however, see the cigarette or liquor vending machines work well here in the U.S. Damn, politically correct, uptight Americans!!!

Harry Potter=Kevin Rose? (a synopsis)

2005-11-18T23:51:00.000-05:00

Before I begin, let me inform you fanboys of Kevin Rose that this post is very tongue-in-cheek, and the whole post is merely a playful jest. So please lay off the DDoS's and mailbombs.

The following is a brief synopsis that occurred in my warped brain while watching the latest Harry Potter movie. I noticed that in Diggnation episode 9 Kevin was not amused by the Harry Potter books or movies (which was a little fishy). So I did a little research. OK, let's begin the similarities.

Kevin Rose: Unruly dark hair, against establishment (as G4 took over), an unwanted posterboy for the dark arts of hacking (remember the 'dark tipper'?). Travel(s)(ed) with trusty sidekick Dan, and former Girlfriend Sarah Lane.

Harry Potter: Unruly Dark hair, against joining establishment (Ministry of Magic), an unwanted posterboy for magic, but with the temptation of the dark magic. Travels with trusty sidekick Ron and gal pal Hermione.
Now the image above is of the lesser know sidekicks (yes, that was a Rancid reference). Hermione, although younger than Sarah, does have some similar facial features. And don't forget their love for cats.

I will admit that this one is a stretch but take away the red hair and freckles but note the emo/harcore(I don't give a shit about my hair) haircut and you got the right hand man.

In conclusion, empirical evidence has indicated that Kevin Rose does not like Harry Potter for the striking similarities of his real life with fictional characters.

Not So Elementary Antics (FLY pen)

2005-11-17T15:56:00.000-05:00

This is not new news but it is good news-look, I made a funny. On a serious note, the folks at Leapfrog who create interactive learning toys for the youngins have already unleashed their amazing FLY pen. If you live in the dark ages or simply don't care about products to consume your child's time so you can search for more pr0n uninterrupted, FLY is an interactive pen that allows you to calculate math problems by writing numbers on their specially designed paper, create music by drawing a keyboard and then touching the keys (with your pen), set a vocal schedule by writing (are you getting the 'writing' theme yet or do I have to cram more writing based examples down your throat?) and a host of other cool options. Aimed at a slightly older crowd than the usual tot crowd, I have already seen the FLY pen at the Target stores. Now if I could only get my 5 year old to fluidly read and write, I might have an excuse to buy this. Either that or reverse the aging process so that I can once again become a pre-pubescent teen but that is not quite feasible with the current technology of today (yet), so I will have to come up with another excuse.

Quick Update

2005-11-17T13:14:00.000-05:00

I honestly have not been working much on lifeofstrife.net lately so I figured I would add a new post there. We have some other cool projects in the works so eventually the page will evolve. I should have another few posts up here later today so check back. Holla?

Cold and Ugly (the hot bra)

2005-11-17T12:40:00.000-05:00

The temperature here in the DC area has dropped over 30 degrees since yesterday and now it is cold as balls. What I need is something like this but for men. Incidentally, I got this link from the fine folks at www.dreamlogic.net/. However, I got to thinking that if there were a wardrobe malfunction, the result for a woman would merely be scorched titties but if there was an male version of this product, there would be roasted nuts. Perhaps I will stay with the insulated underwear as I don't want to run the risk.

Smell My Phone (please?)

2005-11-16T16:46:00.000-05:00

The fine folks at Hyundai have created the next-gen cell phone. The MP-280 offers a twist on modern day cell phone technology that has yet to be released so far. What is the hype? Perfume! Yes, now when opening your cell phone, you too can be sprayed in the face like some minature robotic octopus releasing pleasant smelling pheromones when being attacked. So to clarify, it doesn't actually spray , although that would be a great gag when combined with pepper spray. It merely releases beautiful fragrances so that your telephone conversations can be all that more stimulating. I don't know about you, but this expensive contraption from Hyundai seems more fitting in a bathroom odor commercial and this bad boy will set you back around $1,200.00. I don't know about you, but a money-shot from a 1,200 dollar phone just doesn't seem appetizing to me.