bazbax

iPhone app request: remind me when I'm near

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 22:44:34 GMT

Dear iPhone App Developers,

I would like an app that allows me to say things like:

"remind me the next time I'm near a walgreens to buy soap"
"remind me when I get to work to take my bike off the shuttle"

The interface would look like google maps. I draw a circle. When my phone notices I'm inside that circle it pops up a reminder.

I'm tired of getting home after just walking by a walgreens to realize I don't have soap. And I'm tired of forgetting my bike on the shuttle and having to chase it down three blocks to get it back.

Thanks,
Jay

Who's Gunna Be VP

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 19:53:09 GMT

Everyone else is speculating who Obama is going to pick for his running mate.

My short list, in order of likelihood:

* Jim Webb - Senator from Virginia. Former Marine (Vietnam Vet). Former Republican. Reagan's Secretary of the Navy.
* Sam Nunn - former Senator from Georgia. He was the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
* Wesley Clark - Retired Four Star General. Ran for President in 2004.

Ping Pong Balls Photo Shoot

Fri, 30 May 2008 19:56:25 GMT

Jud Dagnall and mal did an excellent job in a photo shoot of me with two gross of ping pong balls.

Thanks Guys!

Fri, 23 May 2008 21:49:41 GMT

The Cisco VPN UI sucks. I instead prefer to connect using a command line program. To connect on my Mac I do this:

sudo vpnup 123456

Where 123456 is your RSA SecureID.

First put this in /usr/local/bin/vpnup:


#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use Expect;

my $secure_id = shift or die "Usage: $0 \n";
if ( $> != 0 ) { 
        die "You must run $0 as the root user\n";
}

# get the PIN from /etc/cisco_vpn_pin
open my $fh, '/etc/cisco_vpn_pin' or die $!;
<$fh> =~ /^(.*?):(.*)/;

my $username = $1;
my $password = $2 . $secure_id;

print "got username $username and PIN XXXX from /etc/cisco_vpn_pin\n";

# if you do not reload the kernel module after inserting the EVDO card you'll get this error:
# Could not attach to driver. Is kernel module loaded?
# because of this you need to run this command (as root)
print `/System/Library/StartupItems/CiscoVPN/CiscoVPN restart`;

# give it a sec...
sleep 1;

my $exp = Expect->spawn('vpnclient', 'connect', 'sunnyvale') or die "Cannot spawn vpnclient: $!\n";
$exp->expect( 5, 
        [
                qr/Username \[\]:/ => sub {  $exp->send("$username\n"); }, 
        ], 
);

$exp->expect( 2, 
        [
                qr/Passcode \[\]:/ => sub {  $exp->send("$password\n"); }, 
        ], 
);

$exp->expect(undef);

Then add your username and PIN number to /etc/cisco_vpn_pin like this:


jaybuff:9876543

be sure to make that file owned by root and only root can read it:


$ chown root:root /etc/cisco_vpn_pin
$ chmod 400 /etc/cisco_vpn_pin

And that's it! Let me know if you find this useful.

Mon, 05 May 2008 14:37:58 GMT

I'm throwing a Memorial Day get together for anyone in San Francisco on May 24th.

The official video invite:

Bikram Yoga

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 19:43:55 GMT

Figure 1: Hippies

Bikram Yoga is hard. Lauran has been raving about it for sometime now. Last night I agreed to go with her to Funky Door Yoga in Cole Valley.

The room is 105 degrees F and 40% humidity. The class lasts 90 minutes. We went through 26 different poses and two breathing exercises. The last ten minutes I started to get tunnel vision and had to lay down. I was zapped.

The instructor was really good. She knew I was new and kept giving me advice on the hard stuff. She kept calling me "James" though. Apparently I mumble my own name.

I wasn't aware it was possible to sweat that much. After a cold shower I felt 10,000 times better.

Afterwards Lauran and I went to some sushi place in Cole Valley. I haven't explored that neighboorhood much. It's actually really cool. I would like to live there, but Noe is really nice, too.

It's only $29 a month and you can pay as you go. Since one class is $16 I signed up for a full month. I'm actually looking forward to going back next week.

Apparently Daylight Saving Kicked In

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 01:14:22 GMT

Me: Whoa, it's bright out.
co-worker: yeah, daylight savings time.
Me: Oh yeah, when is that?
co-worker: it was this past Sunday
Me: get out of here

My phone is my primary clock and my laptop secondary. They corrected themselves and didn't mention it to me. For the past three days I've been trying to figure out why I've been feeling so sluggish. I guess that explains it.

50 million voters in Democratic TX primary tonight (not really)

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 02:29:15 GMT

Hrmm... We have one million votes counted from only 2% of the precincts? That's from CNN. MSNBC says the same thing.

I assume that most of those votes are from ballots that were cast before the election day (absentee voters). Nowhere on either site (CNN or MSNBC) do they explain this.

Seriously, media, get your act together.

Dinner party madness

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 17:18:18 GMT

Eight days, four dinner parties.

Saturday: Iron Chef Noe Valley. The secret ingredient was cheese.

Wednesday: Cooking at Brad's: Belize themed.

Thursday: Steve's in town. Eats and drinks at my place.

Saturday: Flying to San Diego for Sean's third annual Soiree de Crepes.

Wow! It's a busy week for my stomach.

Room 641a in 611 Folsom St, San Francisco, CA

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 18:23:06 GMT

You know how in Monopoly you trade Park Place and $500 for Pennsylvania Avenue, but you get immunity the first two times you land on the big blue monopoly? And then the other players complain that immunity isn't fair and it's not in the rules and you can't do that?

Yeah, that's basically what G.W. Bush and congress is doing with the warrentless wiretaping. I thought we elected democrats en masse in 2006 to stop this kind of nonsense?

For the record, here is a handy chart (via SFist) to remind you what Democrats didn't vote to stop immunity:

EFF is fighting this. Read their coverage.

Automatically connect EVDO card on insert on MacBook Pro

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 07:54:08 GMT

I bought a card for my MacBook Pro laptop that will connect to the high speed EVDO network. I've been annoyed that it takes about eight clicks to connect after insert the card. This should happen automatically whenever I insert the card. Here is a Perl script to automate that.

Before you can run this script you need to install some prereqs. Run these two commands in terminal:
sudo cpan -i File::Tail sudo cpan -i Mac::AppleScript
Here is the script that you should write to /usr/local/bin/modem_watchdog

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

use File::Tail;
use Mac::AppleScript qw(RunAppleScript);


my $file = File::Tail->new( name => '/var/log/system.log', interval => 1, maxinterval => 1, adjustafter => 2 );
while ( my $line = $file->read ) {
        if ( $line =~ /SMSIWirelessUSB: USB Modem driver loaded./ ) { 
                print "Verizon Wireless card detected.  Setting location!\n";
                print `scselect 'NationalAccess - BroadbandAccess'`;
                print "Connecting Via PPP\n";
                RunAppleScript(qq(
tell application "Internet Connect"
        connect
        quit
end tell
                )) or die "Didn't work!";
        }
        if ( $line =~ /SMSIWirelessUSB: USB Data driver unloaded./ ) { 
                print "You removed the card.  Setting location back to Automatic\n";
                print `scselect 'Automatic'`;
        }
}

To run the script automatically at startup, put this into /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.foobarbazbax.modem_watchdog.plist

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC -//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd >
<plist version="1.0">
        <dict>
                <key>Label</key>
                <string>com.foobarbazbax.modem_watchdog</string>

                <key>ProgramArguments</key>
                <array>
                        <string>/usr/local/bin/modem_watchdog</string>
                </array>

                <key>RunAtLoad</key>
                <true/>
        </dict>
</plist>

The script polls the system log in /var/log/system.log and looks for the string that says the card has been inserted. Thanks to Reid for that idea. Reid agrees there is probably a better to fire off a script whenever the PC Card is inserted. If you know of one please comment below.

When the card is inserted it changes the location to the name of the card, "NationalAccess - BroadbandAccess", just like if you went into system preferences -> network and changed it there. Then it uses some AppleScript to start the PPP connection.

When you remove the card it sets the Location to "Automatic"

Let me know if you find this useful.

Telecom Immunity Bill

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 21:01:47 GMT

This is insane. Telecom companies (like AT&T here in San Francisco) illegally gave the NSA access to all my data flowing through their internet connections. Now that they've been caught the Whitehouse is pushing to give them immunity from lawsuits against them.

I'm in awe of how horrible things have gotten. The US has become a country that tortures, holds citizens without habeas corpus and spies on its citizens.

Check out the photo pool on flickr of people speaking out against telecom immunity.

Genius

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 03:08:14 GMT

I love this idea:

Via ffffound

VPN with EVDO Card and OS X on a MacBook Pro.

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 20:29:59 GMT

Question:
I have a Verizon EV-DO card. I connect on my MacBook Pro using the built in "Internet Connect" It looks like it creates a PPP connection. When I launch Cisco VPNClient it tells me that there are no interfaces connected and exists after I click okay. What do I have to do to connect to the VPN when I'm using my EVDO card?

Answer:
After connecting to the EVDO network you need to restart the VPN service by running this command in terminal:
sudo /System/Library/StartupItems/CiscoVPN/CiscoVPN restart

Now if I can just figure out how to automatically connect when I insert the card.

Gelaskins for my iPhone and MacBook Pro

Thu, 17 Jan 2008 18:26:48 GMT

Gelaskins.com sell great art that applies to the back of your iPod, iPhone or Laptop. They come off easily and are very durable. I bought Kobe by Aya Kato for my MacBook pro and I couldn't be happier with it:

For my iPhone I got Tea Party by Brandi Milne:

They're high quality and made from "3M vinyl and adhesive technology." I love mine and I highly recommend them to all Apple fan boys.

MyQ Gadgets

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 23:02:46 GMT

Jay Janssen gave a talk today where he showed off his new
MyQ Gadgets pack. Super cool. If you've ever tried to decipher "show innodb status" you need this tool. Thanks Jay!

Weekend update

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 23:57:16 GMT

Busy weekend:

Friday night Kieran and I had horrible Chinese food at 18th and Mission. We each at about four bites and left the rest.
- I urged Kieran to start a citizen's action group to "fix" muni. He has a lot of great ideas.
- I'm dog sitting, so Rio, Sam's Dog, chilled with me and Kieran. I took him back Sat. Night.
I got my Arduino Friday.
- I'm building a a 16x16 grid of 6" x 6"x 6" RGB cubes. Each one will work similar to this
- I designed a protocol for talking to the grid, example here
- Currently working with YACC to write a grammar for parsing that which I'll upload to the arduino
Helped Julia put together a patio heater. It's fancy. Looking forward to using it at her next dinner party.
Saw the ANSI art exhibit. Met my old school IRC friend (circa 1996), tHe_pUnk there. Very fitting. He's a great guy and we're still friends. I also met Steve there. He has a nice write up.
went to the range with three guys from work. [pics on flickr]
had a late lunch with Mike Schilli at Chow on Market and Church. Great place.
got yet another ($40) parking ticket for street sweeping. I thought I had to move it by 9am, it was 6am. That's it: I'm selling my car. It gets posted on CL tonight.

New Year's Resolutions

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 20:57:13 GMT

1. Shut up and DO something. I have a bad habit of having good ideas, tinkering with it for a while, getting 80% there and then giving up. I want to have an idea, commit to it and at the end have something to show for it. My first project is an iPhone Remote Control for iTunes. I'm 80% done, but I've committed to giving a presentation on it during a brown bag here at work.

2. Don't consume anything with high-fructose corn syrup in the first four ingredients. This means I'm off soda. I haven't had any this year so far, but it's harder than I thought.

weekend wrap up

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 19:08:26 GMT

* power was out Friday from 10:30am-9:00pm. I went to the dollar store and stocked up on candles. I found a video online on how to make a lantern out of cooking oil, cotton cloth and a glass bottle.
* traded music with lady-friend. Now I know Interpol and Al Green. And she can enjoy Radiohead In Rainbows.
* recovered from cold (juicer is magic giving my body vitamin goodness)
* Chad bought a Tenori-On
* Chad and I are going to burning man. tickets go on sale Jan. 16th.
* We started building a huge LED light display for BM. I ordered an Arduino to control it all.
* started watching Home Movies (the cartoon). Hilarious.
* wrote a simulator in Java to start programming light sequences in huge LED light display. Realized I had forgotten everything I knew about Java. nowIProgramLikeThis $instead_of_like_this.
* making it look cool is way more difficult than I thought. I'm inspired by Marissa Meyers light wall seen at 4:15 in this video.
* wrote a perl script to write scrolling text to said LED light display.
* watched both the democratic and republic New Hampshire debates. Ron Paul was the only one that made any sense. I thought we elected republicans to end wars, not start them.
* went to a Barack Obama "what you can do to get involved" meeting. Learned how to be a precinct captain, which basically means making phone calls. Yuck. Decided I'd just print out some voter registration forms with stamped envelopes and give them to people that would vote for Obama but aren't registered to vote (i.e. most of my friends)

Some videos on politics

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 09:51:59 GMT

"The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis" is Bill Moyer's editorial mostly discussing the Iran-Contra affair. It was made in 1987, when I was six years old. It seems to me that the same argument could be made about today's executive branch. Transparency and openness in government is incredibly important.

"Larry Lessig on Corruption" Larry Lessig, best known for creating the Creative Commons license has switched his focus to corruption in government. As a Stanford post-doc and a lawyer that has argued before the Supreme court Lessig is a smart guy with great ideas.

"Ron Paul's Iowa TV Special. While I don't consider myself a Ron Paul supporter (I haven't given him any money), I have a tremendous amount of respect for him. He has strong principles and always supports his views with excellent historical perspective.

listmania!

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 09:17:25 GMT

* new userpic! I look like a normal person in this one.
* I'm addicted to podcasts now. NPR has some great stuff.
* getting into Make. I love their "Weekend Projects with Bre Pettis". I'm working on building LED cube.
* Instructables also rocks your socks. I'm learning so much about hardware hacking.
* writing a firefox extension to take a screenshot of the current page in the browser and upload it to flickr
* selling my armoire since it's not 1995 anymore and my room is too small.
* becoming a mac fan boy. I love Gelaskins. Tea Party for my iPhone and Kobe for the MacBook Pro
* flew the "bay tour" in a Piper Warrior PA-28 plane with a friend from work. Took off from San Marcos, flew around Angel Island, up to Stinson Beach and then touch and goes at Half Moon Bay.
* spending too much time watching political videos on stumble upon.
* "Dinner Parties" seem to be in vogue. They're great fun. I'm going to Sam's tomorrow.
* switched email client from mutt to Thunderbird. This is a one month trial period.
* firefox still hates me. Opening 15 tabs and watching lots of videos means it malloc()s 1gb of RAM and never free()s it.
* new found music: I bought The Disassociates over a year ago, but I'm just now learning to love it. "We're much preferred customers" is an awesome track.
* I paid $12.00 USD for Radiohead's In Rainbows. Well worth it.
* job is going well. Yahoo! knows how to deploy software. I don't think I can ever work without igor and yinst now. Still amazed at how many smart people I work with.
* Christmas shopping is completed. I'll be in Missouri from Dec. 22nd-27th to see friends and family.
* xkcd is awesome if you're a nerd. The author, Randall Munroe, gave a talk at Google. Fun guy.

Juicing Power

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 18:41:38 GMT

Check out this bad boy I bought last week.

With all stainless steel construction it has been called "The DeLoren of Juicers".

All my juicing fantasies have come true. Who wants carrot-pommogranit-apple-pineapple juice!?

Photo Dump

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 18:50:32 GMT

I went to McDonald's to satisfy my "one fast food meal a month" cravings

My porch is being slowly devoured by a tree.

I bought new shoes.

Some guy wouldn't move his hand while I was eating

Baracking the house

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 18:40:00 GMT

Last night my friends waited in line for two hours to see Barack Obama. I, on the other hand, showed up late, and said "thanks for holding my spot in line!" and got in after ten minutes.

I've been paying a lot of attention to this presidential race. While I don't agree with all of Obama's positions, he is, by far, the first politician in any race that I have ever liked and believed in.

Another hero of mine, Larry Lessig, summed up his thoughts on Barack quite well.

The differences between Barack and Hilary are exactly the differences that make me a support of Obama.

Pictures stolen from SFist

25 hour birthday!

Wed, 07 Nov 2007 00:22:57 GMT

This past Sunday, for the first time since I was sixteen, my age is a cube of an integer.

A group of about 12 people met up at Cha Cha Cha in the Mission. After much Sangria, we went to Doc's Clock for shuffleboard and connect 4. It was great.

Interestingly, for the first time ever, my birthday was 25 hours long. Assuming daylight saving time doesn't get changed again I will have seven more of these 25 hour birthdays in the next 50 years (according to a quick n dirty perl script). That means the odds of my birthday being on a 25 hour day are about 14%

The general form of this question is "What are the odds that a date falls on a given day of the week." It's interesting because I think it's different for dates before and after Feb. 28th

Huh. *scratches head*

Update: After talking to some smart people, it's not the probability that's an interesting problem, that's 1 in 7. It's predicting the series that's interesting. For instance, how many days long (between the years 2001 and 2399) is the period?