Hacker for Hire

I don’t normally re-link to other blogs unless I really think it’s worth mentioning; however, there is currently a debate between boxee and what I can only assume is a content provider over here.

To me, it’s enlightening to the the other side of the arugument for a change. Generally, the only thing on the Internet is how the people on the Internet are always right and how other media/content providers are crazy.

I’ve read through both sides and, well, I just can’t agree with the content providers. I’m all for a la carte and I personally find the arguments made by the content provider to just be frustrating. One in particular about how “consumers think they want a choice” really got me annoyed. The plays into my hatred of how media really helps control the way the brainless masses think; however, freeing up that thinking and allowing real choice and hopefully removing the brainless from the masses.

Last night we got to check the beer and it’s done!

Pre-bottling taste test seems to show that it has a very smooth amber-styled ale flavor with the essential hoppie notes. I hope it will taste as good if not better after fermented in the bottles for a few weeks!

One style of bottle

Test and Filter

Some of the final product

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That’s it! Success has been had and I’m definitely going to do this again with everything that I’ve learned from this experience (a.k.a., no candy thermometers).

Some how, I got this crazy idea in my head that I should try making my own beer. I’ve just finished sterilizing everything in the kit and now I’m moving on to the fun part … actually trying to brew beer.

1. Steeping the Grains
The hard part about this is trying to get the steel pot up to 170F without making it insanely hot to deal with later when I have to make sure that I don’t over boil the silly thing.

And the waiting…. We finally got to the appropriate steeping temperature so now there’s 20 minutes of waiting before we can bring it to a boil

2. Adding in Malt & Extract
Finally finished steeping. Have to let the grains drain and then add in the malt and extract

Added the ingredients and now we wait till it boils

Boil dammit!!!

Just broke the candy thermometer. It is now officially a fiasco.

Finally got to add the hops. Hope I don’t make it over boil.

My stove is having trouble keeping the heat up…moving to the lid.

Brand frickin new stock pot lid started snapping and developing hairline cracks…moving to a beefier lid and walmart is going to get a nasty-gram.

3. Beginning Fermentation
Starting the rapid cooling of the boiled sticky mess.

Adding in the yeast and the cool little air lock thingy.

And the beer has a new home for the next week

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That’s all for now!!! Tomorrow, we’ll have to see if the yeast is actually working the way that it’s supposed to and that will be the tell-tale sign of whether or not we have a chance at success. Stay tuned!

Recently, I receive a comment from a gentleman named Ryan. Normally, I just trash messages from people I don’t know; however, this one caught my eye:

Wow, I was considering you for some work, but after reading some of your comments to other individuals I now will not solely for your lack of tact. You may be some geeky techy who knows a lot about computer systems and networking, but you know jack shit about common courtesy.

No, I’m not one of these morons who asked you a previous question and am now offended by it. I am offended that you are trying to run a business and feel the need to treat people like crap because they ask stupid questions. Get used to it and get over it…you’re gonna get stupid questions guy!

I nearly spit all over my computer monitor when I read this I was laughing so hard. Wow … just … wow.
Continue reading ‘Ryan Writes In’ »

Super iPhone Blog can kiss my ass. Their crappy spam bot decided to visit my site and this is the result:

If you can’t read it, here’s what they wrote:

I eventually managed to intend a useful “hello world” app created for the iPhone and additional up on my site. The difficulty I was having was not exclusive were individual tutorials discover on the cyberspace inaccurate (i.e., using rattling older groundless techniques), but Apple’s cipher didn’t quite seem to provide me sufficiency information.I started mine completely from irritate with an Xcode iPhone analyse supported application, went finished the impact of adding my IBOutlet conjunctive it up, and then took the player travel of exercisin

Go here to feature the rest:
My First iPhone Hello World App

And my response:

I don’t care if you’re going to rip off my work; however, if you’re going to do it, at least take the time to write a spam bot that can actually do your job with a few more brain-cells that you. Your crap-ass rendition of my post doesn’t even come close to making a grammatically sound or remotely cognitive thought.

Write a better spam bot or just suck less in general. In fact, just leave the Internet before someone revokes your day-pass.

Go suck a spoon jackass. All of your links have been purged from my site and if I find anymore, I’m going to myspace-goatse “hack” your crap-ass spam bot.

I finally managed to get a functional “hello world” app created for the iPhone and added up on my site. The problem I was having was not only were several tutorials out on the Internet incorrect (i.e., using really old unsupported techniques), but Apple’s code didn’t quite seem to give me enough information.

I started mine completely from scratch with an Xcode iPhone view based application, went through the process of adding my IBOutlet connecting it up, and then took the extra step of exercising some memory management in Cocoa Touch (something I couldn’t find many places). I’ve tacked it up on my iPhone development section for your viewing pleasure.

Apparently, Google.com has developed a small glitch for today. Twitter and Tech Crunch are reporting that Google has labeled even itself as a possible malware site. I think it’s probably due to their server that does the malware checking being down (giving me 502′s). Here’s hoping they get it fixed shortly.

All Google Results Are Malware

Really .. they don’t. No one should every be allowed to “generate,” and I use that term so loosely, a website from what they create in Dreamweaver. Two of my friends and I have spent nearly 2 days fixing 5 pages that were “generated” by Dreamweaver. Has any one ever looked at the crap HTML it generates??? It’s absolutely nuts. The cramming of all the style sheets in to anonymous names and stuffed at the top of each HTML is beyond ridiculous. And don’t even get me started on the static layout of all the pages it trys to render by default. I took at page that was “generated” by Dreamweaver and ran it though the W3C Markup Validation Service … 138 errors. And not hard to catch errors … they obvious really stupid errors. Missing tags, improper style declarations, style declarations to absolutely nothing on the page; the list goes on.

So moral of the story … don’t let anyone use Dreamweaver to PRODUCE the live version of a website. Build it in a REAL editor like Notepad, Vim, The Programmer’s Notepad, or TextMate. Hell, build it in Visual Studio’s text editor … just don’t trust some bloated, crappy tool to produce something functional for you.

Alright, I’m sure this will be documented much more clearly elsewhere and in a hacker-ish manner, but here’s the basic steps to make the atv-bootloader in a Linux environment so you can install Boxee or XBMC. Make sure you install the HFS/HFS+ tools for your Linux distribution.

1. Open up the shell and roll up your sleeves
2. Get the latest from svn
   wyatt@hax0red:~/ svn co http://atvusb-creator.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/atvusb-creator
3. Change into the atv-usbcreator directory and launch the creator
   wyatt@hax0red:~/atvusb-creator$ sudo ./atvusb-creator.py
4. Plug in a partitioned USB drive and create the patch stick with Boxee/XBMC/whatever (which will do it wrong, but that’s ok!)
5. Now, write the real image to the device using dd like a good linux user
   wyatt@hax0red:~/atvusb-creator$ dd if=staging/atv_512MB.img of=/dev/sdb
6. Once that’s done, pop out the USB drive and plug it back in
7. You should now be prompted to automount 2 partitions on the drive, the second should be empty
8. Copy everything from payloads into this mounted directory
   wyatt@hax0red:~/atvusb-creator$ sudo cp -r payloads/patchstick/* /media/PATCHSTICK/.

Hope it works for you! And if not, give it a few, they’ll have a Windows and Linux version working shortly.

Every now and again, I get the chance to help someone out and I just thought I’d share this one for a couple of reasons. First, I like helping people. Second, it shows that there are solutions to common problems on the Internet that don’t require delving into the illegal and unethical side of things.

I received an email from Raili with the following:

Hi Wyatt

My name’s Raili and I’m in Thunder Bay, Ontario.

A new client of ours has a serious website conflict and I’m looking for advice. Several years ago a fly-by-night web guy bought them a domain, built them a terrible site and then, before even finishing it, left the country for parts unknown: no forwarding address. Since then the client’s bought a new domain and we’ve designed a nice site for them, but despite advertising efforts people are still stumbling across the old website which nobody can alter, take down, redirect or ANYTHING until 2010. We’ve got a massive fundraising effort underway for them and an important event about to be launched and I’m really worried that people are going to go to the old site and be baffled or turned off and we’ll miss our chance to collect their donations.

Client’s real site: [withheld]
Client’s unfixable site: [withheld]

Can you offer advice – we haven’t found anyone locally who can help us.

Warm regards,
Raili

My reply:

Raili,

I pulled the whois information on the unfixable domain and I found the
following:

[-- lots of whois information --]

While it seems like a lot of information, it does provide you with some important details. First, you domain registrar is InnerWise Inc. Since your organizational information matches the domain information, you should be able to contact them and tell them you’ve had an administrative change and that Ning Zhang is no longer your administrator and you need to resolve the issue that he has the passwords to this domain. It will take several phone calls and you sending in your information in paper form in more ways that will be pleasent; however, if you are persistent and can provide all the proof that you are your organization, you should be able to regain control of the domain since it has been registered to your organization.

I hope this helps and remember, be persistent. Talk to managers, talk to phone representatives, and re-enforce the fact that you are a non-profit organization and above all, do not give up. This process is painful for your protection (say someone tries to pretend to be you and steal the domain) but it is not impossible.

Good luck,

Wyatt

The success in the response:

Wyatt-
Thanks so much for your help. The WHOIS info got me to the registrar and they were very helpful. (nice tech support folx!) We had things sorted out by the afternoon. If by some weird twist you ever meet [name withheld] please take a few of his teeth out for me and tell him that was from [business name withheld].

I’ve read a couple of the postings on your site and have to tell you how impressed I am by your command and consistent defense of the English language. Hope your business is doing well – you deserve it.

Again – thanks, it was totally unexpected and gratifying to have your help.

Raili

I’m really glad I could help Raili out and actually see it happen for a change. Normally, I never get a response back from the first email. This also points out a few good points to keep in mind from a business / web-perspective.

1. If you’re a business owner, make sure your domain names are registered in your business’s name. Raili was able to get the domain information changed because he could provide business charter information and validate ownership of the business
2. Make sure you buy the all domain names (.org, .net, .com) when you start
3. Persistence pays off