Primordial Ooze

From Boing Boing, this is definitely an awesome practical joke.

After a fake craps dice prank on Thad during Haasfest 2004 was so successful, we had to come up with something for Haasfest 2005 that would top it. The idea was to pre-record a Texas Lotto drawing and a save it on the TIVO. We bought a lottery ticket with the numbers to match that pre-recorded lottery drawing. The day of Haasfest, we asked Thad stop on his way over and buy a couple Lotto tickets. At some point in the night, we swapped the tickets he had bought with the fake tickets. If you ever wanted to know what it felt like to win the lottery, just watch Thad check his numbers...

Play the video. It’s awesome. Warning… lots of swearing!

By Nick at 9:27 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I’m about 1 hour away from minor surgery in my oral cavity. I need a crown-lengthening procedure which involves cutting away the flesh around my tooth so a new crown can be snuggly attached.

If the pain is bad afterward, I wonder which kind of beer would be best to eliminate the discomfort? My first choices are one of the Belgium brews I have downstairs. These are typically higher in alcohol content than the domestic brews and will likely kill the pain the fastest.

I’m thinking a nice Chimay Trappist beer such as a Chimary Premiere or perhaps a brew from the brewery Ommegang in Cooperstown New York. Rare Vos anyone? Perhaps I should stick to a Pale Ale, which I also fancy?

Send me an e-mail (nick.codignotto at gmail dot com) or vote in a comment!

By Nick at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The Hamachi web site says that “Hamachi is a UDP-based virtual private networking system. Its peers utilize the help of a 3rd node called mediation server to locate each other and to boot strap the connection between themselves. The connection itself is direct and once it's established no traffic flows through our servers.”

I learned about Hamachi through the Security Now! Podcast hosted by Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte. Specifically Episode 18 and Episode 19 talk about Hamachi. If you haven’t listed to Security Now! it comes highly recommended. Even if you’re not interested in security specifically, Steve Gibson is so humble and such a master of the topic that it’s hard not to enjoy each and every show.

I immediately installed Hamachi on all of my machines. Once you install Hamachi, you can start creating your own secure networks. All computers on these networks are connected as if they were on the same LAN. Every port is visible and all the services of each machine are available to all of the others. Each network is protected by a passphrase. I recommend using a very good passphrase. Steve Gibson has a very secure passphrase generator here: https://www.grc.com/passwords.

Let me give you an idea on what this allows:

• A static IP you and your friends can rely on never changing (for gaming, TeamSpeak, etc.)
• File transfer via Windows Explorer
• Remote Desktop (though this is still temperamental until they get Hamachi to run as a service) or VNC
• iTunes music sharing. Your home music can be piped to your hotel room or workplace!
• Run any type of Web application from your home machine without punching millions of holes through your home router.

Plus, hamachi is UDP-based. From what I understand, this yields a highly optimized flow of bits. The problem with a typical VPN (again, from my limited understanding) is that TCP traffic is wrapped by another more secure TCP layer. This has  the potential to cause packet fragmentation since the wrapping could cause the packet sizes to go over some pre-defined limit.

I’ve found the connection to be very responsive, though I couldn’t give you any performance numbers. If you have a need to connect mobile machines to your work or home PC’s, I highly recommend you try hamachi out.

The website, the install, and the software are all masterfully crafted. The experience is simplicity at its best. It just works.

Currently, Hamachi is still in beta. My version is like 0.9.9.9. There is a Linux version that works (that’s the anonymous connection at 5.12.93.82 in the picture above). Mac OS X will be done as soon as the Windows and Linux versions come out of beta.

By Nick at 10:15 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Bloglines AND del.icio.us are BOTH offline. Time to get away from my computer and get drunk.

By Nick at 9:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

By Nick at 10:14 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I saw this on digg and has to forward it on. The gallery of photos found here has some outstanding designs.

I wonder if you pay extra for this?

By Nick at 9:09 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

My son had a request last night. He was already in bed by the time I got home from my class so my wife had to relate it to me. He asked, “Please, Papa, fix my Caillou game.”

Sure, I said. I logged onto the machine and saw that the game used shockwave or flash (I’ve always been confused on the difference) and the player application was crashing upon startup.

I then went on a campaign to remove all of the games on the system. This was kind of foolish from the start since the chances a problematic game would properly clean itself up upon removal was unlikely. In any case, I must admit that it gave me some satisfaction.

Still, Caillou crashes. All this time I’m hitting “don’t send crash results to Microsoft” since I’m in a rush and I want to try something else.

I uninstall beta versions of the .NET framework, remove the existing flash and shockwave implementations and install them again.

Still, Caillou crashes.

Hmm. Should I reformat the entire machine? Ever since Windows XP came out, I don’t think I’ve had to re-install any of my XP boxes. Finally, Microsoft has put out a product that doesn’t need to be wiped away every six months.

I decide to send the crash results to Microsoft. Perhaps the reporting page will have something useful.

“Please contact Apple Computer since this problem is related to QuickTime.”

So, I immediately uninstalled iTunes 6 and QuickTime 7. This frustrated me since I want that software installed.

I re-installed Caillou and see that it comes with QuickTime 5.

Caillou runs!

I didn’t want to stop there. I wanted to learn about this incompatibility. I googled and found that a beta version of QuickTime 7 has a bug where some of it’s services aren’t detected by Macromedia products. If you remember, there was a public preview period for QuickTime 7 for Windows. it was basically the period between the public release for the Mac and the final release for the PC. This version had the problem. My regular PC had  the final release since I use it more. The beta version was kind of left as junk on my kids machine. Serves me right.

So, I was able to re-install iTunes and QuickTime 7 and all is well with the world.

One of the steps that I tried was to make my kids an administrator on that machine. Tonight, I’ll try and revoke those privileges and see if things still work.

Fun.

By Nick at 9:11 AM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

I just added categories to a bunch of old posts t hat had no category. They may come in as *new* articles. Please excuse the extra notifications if you get them…

-Nick

By Nick at 8:16 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Force Push
Originally uploaded by NickCody.

By Nick at 8:10 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)