Christmas day snow
Apparently this is the first time this has happened here in one hundred years. Merry Christmas!
Update: Video 2. Removed the audio. Unless you guys really wanted to hear my family fuss about no-one being at the table to eat.
Silent Night – The App!
I’ve decided to actually develop some Android programming skills, and as my first project I’m making an app version of my Silent Night night-time ringer silencer.
Truth be told, I’ve been working on the code for a few weeks now, and I’ve run into issues with the Android OS stopping my background Service, then restarting it, well, weirdly. It seems to be the same issue that stops my ASE version if the script has been running for more than, say, 6 hours.
I’m planning to release a basic version as a freebie, and a more feature-rich version as either paid or ad-supported.
Here’s the part where I ask for some help:
I own one Android phone, the Moto Droid a855. I need to test this thing on multiple phones and tablets (if you really need a ringer silencer on a tablet), and I’m not made of money. If any of you would like to do some testing, go create an account over on the project page and leave a comment here with your username. If you contribute your time, I’ll repay your kindness with free releases of the future premium versions. And a credit in the about dialog.
Thank you in advance!
Silent Night – Script for Android’s ASE to silence the ringer at night
I coded a little Python script for ASE which silences the phone’s ringer at a specified time, and un-silences it afterwards. Perfect for when you want to receive phone calls in the morning, but don’t want to hear the email chirp when you get spam at 2am.
Details are on the project page.
http://github.com/docblades/Silent-Night
Classy – This is why I love my school
Dear Students:
Our last mathematics colloquium this term is scheduled for next Monday, 22 February, at 3:30 pm in H203. Our speaker is John Loustau, Professor of Mathematics in the Dept of Mathematics and Statistics at Hunter College of the City University of New York, in Manhattan. Dr. Loustau’s talk will be about recent and ongoing work he’s been doing in the area of approximation. This is interesting and deep work that builds on classical results like Gaussian quadrature. He will explain his results using only elementary tools. Please see the flyer here for more details oustau. htm Coffee and cookies will be unveiled upstairs n Building D at 2:45.
We’ll have the usual classy spread, including brand name cookies served on a chipped plastic platter and rea Half-n-Half I hope you will join us for this student- friendly event.
Dr. Dillon Mathematics
Connecting to SPSU wireless in Ubuntu with wicd
I’ve noticed from browsing forums and from my own personal experience, connecting to any WPA encrypted wireless network in Ubuntu is less than stable. In my own experience, my connection stops every 10 or 15 minutes.
To solve this problem, I recently switched to Wicd and now I get a nice stable connection on my home wireless. But here at Southern Poly, I had some trouble connecting to the wireless network. After some googling, I found this script: http://wicd.net/punbb/viewtopic.php?id=200. What I’m follows is a step by step HOWTO for connecting to Southern Polytechnic State University’s wireless network in Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala.
- Add the wicd package
sudo apt-get install wicdIt’s going to want to remove network-manager, but don’t panic, you won’t miss it. After the install, the gnome panel is going to complain about network manager not working, but this is also normal.
- Download this template (eap-ttls) to your desktop and move it to your /etc/wicd/encryption/templates folder.
sudo mv ~/Desktop/eap-ttls /etc/wicd/encryption/templates - Now add the template to wicd’s active list
sudo echo eap-ttls >> /etc/wicd/encryption/templates/active - Start wicd.In the menus, click “Applications”->”Internet”->”Wicd Network Manager”
- Find “hornet” in the network list.
- Click Properties.
- Leave all of the choice boxes unclicked except for Use Encryption.
- In the drop down box, choose EAP-TTLS
- Under Identity, type your user name (the part of your school email address that comes before @spsu.edu)
- Under Password, type your password. The same one you use for your school email.Your property window should look like this, now.
- Click Ok.
- Now click Connect and you should be good to go.
Hostile Email from the Registrar
So, I got this email from the registrar today, and it just drips with hostility. Read along and see if you agree.
(I read the extra spaces as pauses where the writer is trying to give me the stink eye down the web-o-tubes)
edit: added subject, equally disturbing
My Wife’s Etsy Page
(or how to write a shameless plug)
http://flutterbeads.etsy.com
She makes some neat stuff, and is only selling this stuff to offset the cost of the gazillions of beads and stuff she’s buying. And she takes requests. What’s not to like?
I keep trying to convince her to make some nerdy jewelry. Like a millenium falcon necklace, or stargate earrings.
Hate to break it to you, but you’re not getting into college
Step 1) Learn to spell your sponsor’s name.
Step 2) Give up on “Colage.” You’re not going to pass the intranse x-am.
Step 3) Focus on the skills that will help you later in life. Like running a McDonalds cash register, or finding a good park bench to sleep on.
Who Else Has Received This Fishing Email Claiming To Be From Gmail?
This special thing about this one is that the spam filters let it through. Usually those spam filters catch just about everything. I’m impressed.
It almost looks official. All of the links in the email go to their correct addresses at Google, except of course for the “Click Here to update your account” one.
It goes to some website at http://accupdategmail.110mb.com, which is a pretty good spoof of the gmail login page. Except that the space counter doesn’t go up, and it’s only at 2 gigs instead of the 7+ that we have here in 2009. If you’re fool enough to log in, the page captures your account name and password and dumps you back to the real login page.
Needless to say, I wrote a nasty message in the “password” section.