Musings » Tech Articles

Super Mario Bros. Bluegrass Theme

cckid — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 15:04:00 +0000

Yet another reason why I love the Internet.
The Nameless Guy plays a sweet bluegrass version of the SMB theme – good job Nameless guy, now I have another Super Mario Bros. song stuck in my head.

iPad2 is fast and can see through clothes!

cckid — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 17:11:10 +0000

It turns out that the iPad2 has a neat feature called “see through clothes”. Just kidding, it’s not so much a feature as it is an unintended consequence of their “semi-closed aperature” lens on the camera.

Check out the video below:

Turn Off Apache SSL Certificate Warning

cckid — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 13:32:12 +0000

I have a few Linux (CentOS/RHEL) web servers around some of them have SSL certificates. Installing them is one thing (another story for another day) but when you don’t need the certificates anymore and they’re about to expire, how do you stop from receiving emails titled “SSL Certificate Warning”?
As it turns out, this warning is generated by a cron job called certwatch. Navigate over to your /etc/cron.daily directory and either delete that file or comment it out and you should be all set.

Things I Hate: Cell Phone Carriers

cckid — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 15:38:36 +0000

I’m a pretty even-keeled person. I don’t get angry very easily and I certainly don’t like to use the word “hate” in my everyday conversations but when I learn about things that just make no sense, I get furious and can’t help but “hate” on the news.
So, what’s bothered me so much today? Well, Verizon (and pretty much all mobile carriers, actually). I absolutely can’t stand the fact that we pay them so much money and yet they are able to cripple services that we receive.

For example, take the brand new iPhone 4 that hasn’t even arrived yet. It’s already crippled. How? Verizon has decided not to allow certain features of the phone unless you pay more.

WHAT?!

Let me repeat that. You pay $200 for a device and you are not allowed to use all of its features, unless you pay MORE money to the carrier. They are basically hijacking the device you paid for. I wouldn’t have a problem with this if this were a free phone or if my service wasn’t “unlimited”, but surely this raises some really good questions that Verizon has and probably won’t address in a public forum.

For example, take the mobile hotspot function of the iPhone or Droid phones. Verizon makes you pay extra for the use of this function. But WHY? I paid for the phone. It is a feature of the phone. I pay for unlimited bandwidth, and any connected devices would be using the phone’s bandwidth. So, Verizon, what gives?!

Let’s make a quick analogy. You buy a new car that seats 4. You fill it up with gas. You are ready to hit the road. But your friends can’t enter the car unless you pay more. Why? Well, just because. Makes sense? Didn’t think so…

If you can offer a logical explanation, I can try to understand and be more civil about this, but until then, @(*^&!!!

Official: iPhone 4 hits Verizon!

cckid — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 16:24:20 +0000

It’s the real deal! Apple and Verizon love each other and had business deal!

The iPhone 4, available to current Verizon customers for pre-order on February 3rd and everyone else on February 10th. $199 for the 16GB version, $299 for the 32GB.