Archive for the ‘Apple’ Category

After action report: Tucson, AZ.

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

My regular readers (and my irregular readers, too; come to think of it, “Whipped Cream Irregulars” would be a good name for a band) may have figured out by now that I’ve spent much of the past week on the road. Specifically, I was in Tucson for the annual convention of the Smith and Wesson Collectors Association. (You might have been able to guess that I also made a brief trip to the Phoenix/Scottsdale area so I could visit Taliesin West.)

I’m not going to talk much about what went on at that convention here, since it is a closed private convention, and I’m not comfortable discussing the organization’s affairs on a public blog. (Jay G. and the rest of the Vicious Circle gang might be amused to know that there was an actual S&W police bike, manufactured in Springfield, MA and complete with lights and siren, on display at the convention. I didn’t get a chance to take a photo.) I will say I had a great time at the convention, and in Tucson in general. Sadly, I didn’t have time to hit any used bookstores or gun stores in the area, but maybe next time.

This is the first extended road trip I’ve taken since last year’s DEFCON, so I thought it might be interesting to do some notes about what worked and didn’t work on this trip.

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We are amused.

Friday, June 25th, 2010

We watch very little television these days, to the point where we haven’t even hooked up our converter boxes to our analog television yet.

What TV we do watch (Cops, America’s Most Wanted, the occasional episode of Nova or the American Experience during the three months out of the year our local PBS affiliate isn’t begging for money: and we have recently found that The Good Guys kicks over our giggle-box), we watch on the MacBook using an Elgato EyeTV Hybrid and Elgato’s EyeTV software. The EyeTV software gives us very TIVO-like features, as well as the ability to export and even burn recordings to DVD (as well as skipping commercials). Indeed, we are considering an upgrade to a new television (now that prices have come down considerably) and hanging a Mac Mini off the new TV as a fake TIVO.

The point of this tale is that we were highly entertained by an email from Elgato this morning: the company has released a version of EyeTV with a “Vuvuzela Filter”. Not that this matters much to us; we consider soccer to be even worse than baseball, but the idea brought a rare early morning smile to our face.

Flash! (A-ah!) Savior of the universe!

Tuesday, April 13th, 2010

Lawrence pointed me to this article over at /dev/why!?! about possible reasons why Apple doesn’t want to support Flash on the iPhone.

Meanwhile, Sebastian has a good post up on the NRA’s crappy Flash-heavy website.

And Other Brian sent me a link to this Downfall parody.

Musical notes.

Monday, January 25th, 2010

The Hindu Love Gods album is now available from iTunes. I believe exactly two of my readers will find this significant.

Also, thanks to a tip from Caleb (yes, the Caleb of tactical coffee fame) on Tam’s site, I’m enjoying Kompressor’s World Domination. Especially “Kompressor Does Not Dance” and “Red Robot Theme Song”.

Random notes: January 18, 2010.

Monday, January 18th, 2010

The New Jersey Nets are on a pace to win a grand total of six games this season. The NBA record for futility is the 1972-1973 Philadelphia 76ers, who went 9-73. Could the Nets beat the record? The NYT speculates.

I note this only because it will fill Lawrence’s heart with delight: Frank Gehry has withdrawn from the project to design a Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem.

Saturday’s Statesman has a longish article recapping the Triton Financial story, highlighting the firm’s ties to the Mormon church.

Church members and others describe the concentration of Triton executives and investors from the Mormon church as a possible example of “affinity fraud,” in which people looking for money often go first to those they know, either personally or through social organizations.

A $1,000 iPhone app that’s not I Am Rich.

Non story of the day: U.S. Military Weapons Inscribed With Secret ‘Jesus’ Bible Codes.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned this, so; I’m back in school one night a week (and not even meeting every night on the schedule). So blogging is either going to be light or heavy as I avoid schoolwork.

MIT OpenCourseWare: 6.00, the home game (Part 1).

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

School has wrapped up for the semester, at least for me. (Yes, I’m aware it is mid-October. Yes, I’m aware normal people are dealing with mid-terms. What can I say; that’s the way the St. Ed’s New College schedule worked out this time around.)

Now that I’ve got some free time, I can engage in some useful projects, like more Project e work (I’ve got a long multi-part post in the works that I hope to finish soon), updating the SDC pages, and perhaps some outside study.

I’ve written here before about the MIT OpenCourseWare initiative, and I decided this would be as good a time as any to start working through 6.00, “Introduction to Computer Science and Programming“. As I was reviewing the various readings, a thought came to me.

“Hey,” I said to myself, “wouldn’t it be nifty to blog this as you’re taking it?”

“That’s a definition of ‘nifty’ I was previously unaware of,” I responded.

“It’d give you some motivation,” I said.

“Why am I talking to myself?” I responded.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Have you considered medication?”

Anyway, my need for psychotropic medications aside, this seems like a good idea, if only to give my loyal readers something to laugh at. So…

Lecture 1.

Course readings.

Getting Started: Python and IDLE.

Problem set 1.

My code for problem set 1. (This has been tested on Project e with Python 2.6.2, on the MacBook with Python 2.5, and on the Nokia with Python 2.5.2. I haven’t tested it on my work machine yet.)

Comments on my code or coding style are welcome; as a matter of fact, they are downright encouraged.

Random notes from a Friday night dinner.

Friday, August 28th, 2009

First of all, if any of my friends (or even blog readers who are not friends) are considering purchasing Snow Leopard from Amazon, here’s the link that gives me a small cut. Also, someone made a specific request for the ASUS DVDRW external drive.

To keep this from being a 100% “Buy Amazon! Give me money!” entry, I want to mention a web log that’s new to me; by way of Lawrence, we have Lovely Listing. One entry that he found particularly striking was the velour people. Lawrence also included this link, but I’m not sure where he found it on Lovely Listing.

When he mentioned the names Arakawa and Gins, I thought they sounded somewhat familiar. Indeed, they were; it turns out Arakawa and Gins were two of Bernie Madoff’s clients. (That second link is by way of Nancy Nall, who has some pungent things to say on the subject.)

0-Day DEFCON Notes

Thursday, July 30th, 2009

I like DEFCON. I like Dark Tangent personally. I like Joe Grand, the guy who has designed the DEFCON badges for the past few years.

But, guys, it looks really bad when, for the second year in a row, you run out of badges early on Thursday and have to issue temporary badges until more real ones get to the con Friday morning. You don’t even have the Olympics to blame this year. This is especially frustrating now that badge hacking is an official event/contest.

DEFCON talks I will not be attending:

“Hacking UFOlogy 102: The Implications of UFOs for Life, the Universe, and Everything.”

“Two years ago at Def Con 15, Richard [Thieme] presented Hacking UFOlogy. He supported his contention that (1) UFOs are real and (2) the data to support that statement is voluminous with numerous references and links…”

Hippie, please.

DEFCON talks I plan to attend:

“Is your iPhone Pwned”, Mahaffrey, Hering, and Lineberry. (This may be tough to get into, but it is scheduled against Dark Tangent’s intro and Joe Grand’s discussion of the badge, so we’ll see.)
“Hacking with the iPod Touch”, Willhelm
“That Awesome Time I Was Sued For Two Billion Dollars”, Scott
“Three Point Oh”, Long. (For the speaker’s reputation; I’ve heard Johnny Long speak before, and he’s someone I’d like to know better.)
“Something About Network Security”, Kaminsky. (Again, for the speaker’s reputation; Kaminsky is to TCP/IP what Musashi was to the sword.)
“Hacker vs. Disasters Large & Small”, RenderMan and Schearer
“Personal Survival Preparedness”, Dunker and Dunker
“Picking Electronic Locks Using TCP Sequence Prediction”, Lawshae
“Sniff Keystrokes With Lasers/Voltmeters”, Barisani and Bianco
“Bluetooth, Smells Like Chicken”, Spill, Ossmann, and Steward. (It looks like they’re going to talk about using software-defined radio to sniff Bluetooth, techniques for breaking the pseudo-random hopping sequence, and apparently some stuff that can be done with sub-$10 off-the-shelf hardware.)
“RAID Recovery: Recover Your PORN By Sight and Sound”, Moulton
“USB Attacks”, Vega
“Cracking 400,000 Passwords, Or How To Explain to Your Roomate why the Power Bill Is a Little High”, Weir and Aggarwal

I missed the panels on “Hacking With GNURadio” and “Hacking the Apple TV and Where your Forensic Data Lives”. Perhaps next year I need to arrive on Wednesday. If there is a next year.