Ramblings of an IT Geek

iPhone claps fuuuuuuuuuun

2011-06-28T05:56:00.000-07:00

Sooo. I've been exhorting the virtues of jailbreaking your iDevice. Not for cracked applications, but for the endless possibilities it offers! The ability for you to do what you want with YOUR device instead of staying inside Apple's white-walled garden. Growl for iPhone, SBSettings, Winterboard and many others add many features desired by users but denied by Apple. So yes, jailbreak = many possibilities.

However, the most exciting of them all is that iOS is built on a Darwin, which is a POSIX compliant OS.

In other words, an entire working Unix system in your pocket!

Of course, that only means one thing.

PS:In case you were wondering about the title, check out

http://youtu.be/a-3JdfB5aiw?t=2m14s

2011-04-12T04:55:00.000-07:00

Been messing around with Greasemonkey (or the Chrome version of it, at any rate.) The ability to automatically inject JS into a website is rather useful. Not putting IDs for your tags makes editing and scripting a hell lot harder. I am a horrible blogger as compared to Joel Sposky and Jeff Atwood.

2010-08-26T12:28:00.001-07:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicle_bus

Vehicle Bus. *Weak chuckle*

2010-05-29T22:40:00.001-07:00

http://xkcd.com/742/

*Snort*

2010-01-17T16:22:00.000-08:00

My mind : Login, logout...logerr?!

2010-01-15T02:18:00.000-08:00

Java vs C++ - why Java is just about as fast as C++
http://www.idiom.com/~zilla/Computer/javaCbenchmark.html

2010-01-07T00:44:00.000-08:00

Evolution of a programmer.

2009-12-16T02:09:00.000-08:00

I'm afraid that I'll become too complacent as a developer, and that I'd become too entrenched in a certain methodology, paradigm or language and that I'd be unable to learn new things.

Coming from a OOP background, functional programming sounds interesting, but scary at the same time.

I tend to do things instinctively, which can be useful, but it also means that I don't learn things by the concepts - which tends to be a problem when you're trying to learn more.

2009-12-10T19:18:00.000-08:00

(via)

2009-12-01T23:05:00.001-08:00

DAMNIT PEOPLE, PUTTING AUTOMATIC AUDIO ON YOUR WEBSITES IS A HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE IDEA PUNISHABLE BY DEATH.

2009-12-01T19:32:00.001-08:00

OOo

2009-11-22T06:26:00.000-08:00

Alright - OpenOffice. Love it and it probably works well, and it's LGPL'd!

But - KISS. Seriously, I don't need bleeding Spanish or French dictionaries!

Don't get me wrong, I think OOo is a great idea (haven't given it a test-run), but it's just that I have insane high expectations of it.

Array Indices

2009-11-15T06:07:00.001-08:00

http://xkcd.com/163/

2009-11-07T19:53:00.000-08:00

http://www.geekherocomic.com

XKCD was good, but this - I nearly pissed myself laughing.

jQuery gestures

2009-10-27T20:55:00.000-07:00

http://friggeri.net/blog/2008/12/21/jquery-gestures. Check it out.

2009-10-18T19:53:00.001-07:00

Pointers?

2009-08-31T10:09:00.001-07:00

I find this hilarious - http://xkcd.com/138/

2009-08-23T21:46:00.001-07:00

http://xkcd.com/627/

A-fuckin-men.

2009-06-23T07:02:00.001-07:00

google.com.sg (Singapore version of Google) = Malay language.
Fail.

2009-06-16T13:28:00.000-07:00

Functions are a godsend.

One should use them as much as possible.

Something, however, that gets sacrificed for speed of coding. I swear, I'll never touch this project with a ten-foot pole after I'm done with it.

2009-05-25T12:41:00.001-07:00

I think I might have busted my laptop's fan - it now only works in an air-conditioned room.

Being a mainly software guy, it's interesting to have hardware problems pop up. (And frustrating too!)

2009-05-21T19:04:00.003-07:00

Finally did something useful with bluetooth - syncing my handphone with Google Calendar.

2009-05-04T08:17:00.000-07:00

I've just left my handphone for the last hour pointed at my door connected to the laptop running motion-detection software. Shit I pretty much used all my handphone battery in one and a half hour.

Note to self : Don't do something so stupid again - be green!

2009-05-04T06:52:00.000-07:00

For those who don't know - my laptop doesn't come with an integrated Bluetooth adapter unfortunately ):

One of my modules this semester involve building handphone apps, so I figured that was the perfect excuse to get a dongle (yes, I need justification to buy a SGD20 tech toy). Sides, I could play around with the wiimote too :D

So, went out and got it. I was expecting to play around with the wiimote alot, and simply uploading files onto the handphone to test. Well.

I ended up messing with bluetooth drivers for the laptop, started messing around with Symbian developer certificates (now that was a toughie), started messing about with getting my laptop to work as a gateway for the phone (Symbian S60v3, for those who are wondering).

Then I ended up getting the phone to work as a webcam using the inbuilt camera - all while messing around with COM ports.

And I probably ain't gonna NEED any of these stuff.

On the other hand - I can probably hook up my handphone to my laptop to act as a webcam, then stream that video feed to my handphone.

Or not.

2009-04-22T08:13:00.000-07:00

Holyshit Java supports scripting!

In other words - we can embed Javascript in Java. I don't know the implications of it as of yet, but it sounds very, very interesting.

2009-04-19T18:20:00.001-07:00

God.

Question - is there a need to impose a certain IDE?

2009-04-02T08:27:00.001-07:00

Variable functions with variable variables.

Was playing around with the idea - came out with this. Try reading it and figuring out what it does.

function test($string)
{
print($string);
}
$bar = "test";
$foo = "bar";
$string = "foo";
$$$string("bla");
?>

Output : bla

Essentially, what we're doing is this : I give up explaning. But it's using variable variables to call a variable function. $$$string calls $$foo which calls $bar("bla")
$$($string) = $$foo
$($foo) = $bar
$bar = test("bla")

You get the point.
Sheer awesomeness - although this is a horrible example.

2009-03-24T03:21:00.001-07:00

And lo and behold, googling variable functions dug up another gem of PHP, variable variables.

2009-03-24T03:03:00.000-07:00

Been working with PHP to build a small scale website - it's a refreshing change from ASP.net, and so happens to be the first programming language I ever learnt. Pretty interesting - given how I've been weaned to programming by Java, the differences between PHP and Java makes it an interesting experience (I'm repeating myself).

PHP is very strict on case-sensitivity, so.
Java is pretty strict as it is - classnames, methodnames, variables must be in the same case. PHP goes one up - array keys are also case sensitive. Coupled with the fact that I was working with a MySQL database (which is not case-sensitive at all) made for a frustrating bug-tracking session. (Live and learn eh?)

But the most interesting thing I stumbled upon is (*drumroll*) variable functions.
This is perfectly legal PHP -
function foo($string)
{
print($string);
}
$func = "foo";
$func("bar");
?>
and it outputs "bar".

Essentially, you can put a function name as a string, and execute it by calling the variable and parenthesis. (It doesn't work with language constructs like echo or print, which is why $func = "echo";$func("bar"); doesn't work).

Now that could prove very very VERY useful. How so?
Imagine that you have to sanitize input, and you have three methods to do so, checkInt,checkStr and checkBool.

Normally you would call it as such :
if($type == "Str")
checkStr($str);
elseif($type == "Int")
checkInt($str);
else
checkBool($str);

Now, variable declarations allow you to do this :
$method = "check".$type;
$method($str);

See how much easier it is? (I haven't tested the above code, but I'm pretty sure it'll work).

Variable functions are really really interesting :D

2009-03-14T11:41:00.000-07:00

IT Fair 2009 today. Was packed to the gills. Boy.

And it's a preeety weird experience when you probably know more about the product's domain than the salesmen.

I've been shopping for 802.11n residential routers (cum ap cum switch. You get the point), and DD-WRT (http://www.dd-wrt.com/dd-wrtv3/index.php) support is pretty high up on my list of requirements.

Problem is, everywhere I go, I ask about DD-WRT support, and none of the salesmen has ever heard of it.

Sigh.

Was at a major technology supermarket previously, shopping for said 802.11n router (cum ap cum switch), and I wasn't sure about DD-WRT support. So, didn't purchase said router, but I did note down model and price.

Couple months later (ie. today), IT fair. Thought it was a perfect opportunity to get router so I went. Did some research on it. Thought the WRT160n was a safe bet - googling indicated that it did indeed, support DD-WRT (which was great, given that I wanted to bridge it with an existing router).

Went out, checked with the salesman(guy?). Couldn't be a day past 20 - probably a teenager during his holidays. But I digress. Checked with him about DD-WRT, didn't have a clue. Asked him about WDS (Wireless Distribution System), didn't have a clue, went somewhere to check. Came back and said yes.

So I got the router.

Went home, started setting it up, downloaded DD-WRT in anticipation, when I noticed that v1 and v1.1 of the 160n supports DD-WRT, whereas v2 does not. Looked under the router and naturally it was a v2. No luck for any custom firmware at the moment. Apparently they switched the broadcom with ralink chips. In fact, it looks like the CUT the specs on the v2. And guess what? There is no way to differentiate between the v1s from the v2s from the box, you have to open the boxes to differentiate the two.

Sigh. (At this moment I'm getting pretty dissapointed by Linksys products. First the WRE54g was a PITA to setup, then it was a PITA to configure and gave tonnes of problems while halving bandwith. Which was the whole point of the 160n - to get rid of the WRE and connect straight to the router.)

Alright, end of Linksys rant. (Note to self, do SERIOUS research before buying any more Linksys products).

Oh and, the router naturally didn't have WDS.

I hate salesmen. Those who don't know their stuff are pretty bad, but excusable. Those who try to lie their way through just to make a sale makes me pissed off.

Case in point : Was looking for a external portable harddisk for my laptop. Walked around a little, spotted the Western Digital booth. Wanted a harddisk with FireWire as speed was paramount for me. So.

Apparently the only portable harddisk that supported FireWire was the My Passport for Mac. I wanted that FireWire, so I checked with the staff.

"Oh hi, I was wondering, for the Mac version of My Passport, is it possible to actually format the harddisk so that I can use it in Windows?"

"Oh no, sorry."

"Why not?"

"OH YA YA can!"

Rinse and repeat for THREE salesmen/women who did the exact same thing. First query, not possible. Inquire more deeply and suddenly it's possible. And they didn't offer any explanation at all. I was the one who was asking them if I could actually format it from the HFS+ file system to NTFS. I'm willing to bet that they haven't even heard of these.

Geez, if you don't know, just say so. Don't fake it for the point of making a sale.

Naturally, I didn't get any harddisks.

And by the way, had I gotten the My Passport for Mac, I would have used my sis's MacBook Pro to format it to NTFS, then enjoy 320gb of storage space in all it's FireWire glory. Oh I just remembered. One of the salesmen actually tried discouraging me from getting the My Passport for Mac, and tried to get me to get the normal version (ie. Windows, non-FireWire version). The non-Mac one was $119 while the Mac one was 199. I didn't mind the price difference.

He said, and I quote : "Actually, why not get the other version? It's a price difference of 80 dollars, and FireWire is only 5-10 times faster than USB2.0, not worth it." *arches eyebrows*

Which brings me back to the point - it's pretty interesting, and somewhat frustrating when you know more about the product domain than the salesperson does.

2009-02-19T00:55:00.001-08:00

My dreams are either psychic or 802.11a/b/g compatible.

2009-02-15T19:41:00.000-08:00

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20090101/how-hard-could-it-be-thanks-or-no-thanks_Printer_Friendly.html?partner=fogcreek

Interesting topic about performance and reward. Check it out :)

2009-01-29T11:52:00.000-08:00

3 gigs 0f RAM rules.

Alt tabbing between SWAT 4 and Chrome is instant :D

And I have iTunes and Word open.

No swap used.

2009-01-23T06:28:00.000-08:00

Okay, this is not going to be an IT post per-se.

But.

MICROSOFT IS SHUTTING DOWN ACES?

The team that created Microsoft Flight Simulator?! (Train Sim too,but still.)

):

ESP looks interesting though.

Raytracing

2009-01-11T08:34:00.000-08:00

As quoted from Wikipedia, "Ray tracing is a technique for generating an image by tracing the path of light through pixels in a image plane."

In essence, you generate a ray for each pixel from the view point, then send it out to the world and then check for any collisions. Once there is a collision, generate another ray recursively to track the reflected/refracted ray.

Works perfect for translucent and shiny objects (reflection/refraction). Photorealistic images too!

Looks fun :D

2008-12-08T21:37:00.000-08:00

Remember the post about Wii Remote hacks?

Given the lack of a bluetooth adapter in my laptop (and my sis's old Mac which had Java 1.5,and couldn't be updated to 1.6 - which meant WiiRemoteJ wouldn't work) - I had the brain blast of writing a WiiRemote app in my handphone using WiiRemoteJ.

Unfortunately it appears that the PSM value (the tcp/ip equivalent would be ports,from what I've read) was limited in JSR-82(java implementation of bluetooth), which meant that the wiimote can't connect to J2ME apps.

And, while trying to compile the WiiRemoteJ jar in the project, it turns out that J2ME only implements a small subset of java.util - without iterators and a few other stuff I forgot, which meant that I couldn't compile.

So there goes wiimote for handphone ):

2008-11-17T07:30:00.000-08:00

Am I the only guy who goes around typing ' or 1 = '1 into almost every input form I see?

Doubt so,but it's still a rare talent

2008-11-16T17:41:00.001-08:00

PushPop - the programmer's candy of choice.

2008-11-07T12:26:00.000-08:00

FlightGear is a open-source flightsimulator. Free as in speech.

Awesome thing is, it utilizes a property tree,which allows you to access/edit ANYTHING(well almost. I think) within the simulator (MSFS however, afaik, needs to go through simconnect/fsuipc).

Best part about FlightGear? Not only does it have a totally awesome property tree, it exposes that property tree through a HTTP interface and a Telnet interface. Which means that you can edit almost anything within the server through the internet/LAN. And it being telnet and all, all you gotta do is write a wrapper class for your development language and you're all set to do magic.

Grabbed the connection class off the CVS website (yeah yeah, get a CVS client I know), started messing bout with it. Awesome stuff.

Given enough time, I'm pretty sure that one can fly from point A to point B on a totally different computer using a client connected through the telnet interface. I've already written code to remotely control the throttle (which was as easy as fsgs.set("controls/engine/engine/throttle",input);)

I'm pretty sure that one can send joystick/keyboard commands. Either that or map a aileron/elevator position to given joystick input (ailerons are "/controls/aileron/aileron-position" I think). Or have an instructors panel to remotely set failures, control the plane etc. Possibilities are endless!

In other words - FlightGear : Awesomely fun toy for the computer geek flightsimmer.
Hell,it's plenty good for flightsimmers who cant afford MSFS.

EDIT : Messing about with this painfully reminds me of how horrible I am at Java GUI programming. ):

2008-11-02T07:00:00.000-08:00

Google Analytics is kinda useful, but good luck trying to access the current user accessing your blog via javascript - I have no idea how to access the header template ):

Spend a good hour trying to set logged-in blogspot user as user-defined value bah.

Anyone knows how? xD

2008-10-25T00:30:00.001-07:00

Been toying with ubuntu the last few days (wubi is teh secks).
Second or third time I've tried it already.

Unfortunately, I have horrible apt usage habits, and I simply ctrl-z halfway through downloads. Naturally, apt/dpkg doesn't release the lock (/var/lib/dpkg/lock). So, I usually delete the lock (rm /var/lib/dpkg/lock), and aptitude works again.

Unfortunately, me being the linux newbie cum careless one, I type sudo rm /var/lib/dpkg. Try installing, gives me shit load of errors. Scroll up, see the last comment, and I go "oh shit."

So, I'm locked out of aptitude right now,with no idea how to fix it. I'm considering simply deleting ubuntu or reinstalling again. Damn.

2008-10-14T08:01:00.000-07:00

Developing Web Applications today - learnt about ASP.NET - code-behind of VB.NET. Was really interesting.

Classmate asked a question about how ASP.NET stores session state. Piqued my interest as I've successfully performed session hijacking proof-of-concept on a ASP classic page. ASP classic simply stores a session cookie, and simple javascript will be able to access it. (type javascript:alert(document.cookie) as a url)

Didn't work for a asp.net app I knocked up,however (*insert sad face here*). A bit of searching revealed that asp.net uses HttpOnly cookies, which means that the cookie cannot be read clientside (ie. via javascript - no wonder javascript:alert(document.cookie) turned out blank).

Apparently, HttpOnly cookies are sent with the headers with a XMLHttpRequest request though. Interesting vector :D

And cookieless sessions via url is one of the stupidest idea I've heard in a long time. For chrissakes just use a hidden form?

2008-10-12T08:56:00.000-07:00

Blogspot's gadget-based layout is really useful and cool at the same time.

And dammit.

I gotta improve on a blackjack program I wrote for Windows Application Design. And I practically did everything in one day. Without any comments/documentation of any sort. And the whole protocol is. Urgh. Trust me you have no idea how bad it is.

*headdesk*

2008-09-21T09:04:00.000-07:00

Quirk of mine.

SQL (the language) is pronounced as SEQUEL.

SQL Server is pronounced as Ess-Que-Ell Server.

Go figure.

2008-09-15T03:15:00.000-07:00

MSN Bot -> Twitter -> Facebook status integration is kinda cool.

But wiimote hacks kicks ass.

Lightsabre, drums, mouse - some of the many things you can do when you hook up your wiimote to your computer :D

Although, my laptop is one of the rarities which does not have bluetooth,so I'm stuck with my sis's old Mac for now. *Shudders*

Java library for wiimotes is out though, makes life much easier ;D

IT For Dummies - Part 1

2008-09-06T08:03:00.000-07:00

if($do || !$do)
$there = $no_try; - Do, or Do not. There is no try.

2008-09-06T05:30:00.000-07:00

Oh, as for the school SQL thing, tech guy contacted me, telling me that they're working on it, and isolated the module's database.

Guess they aint all that bad.

2008-09-06T05:15:00.001-07:00

Woah. Appearently unknown people are accessing my personal laptop :O (Something tells me I shouldn't be surprised, but still - first time seeing something like this.)

So, I was messing about one day and decided to install IIS on my laptop. Installed it, played a lil about with it, and thought of hosting something somewhat useful. First thing that came to mind was BlackNova Traders (google it).

BNT ran on PHP, which naturally, didn't come with the IIS prepackged with Vista, so installed the fastCGI PHP on IIS.

BNT didn't run too well on windows/IIS (only supported on *nix/apache. go figure) so deleted it, and started playing about with php.

Wrote a script that displayed my external ip address (sounds stupid, but if external clients even access that page, they already know my external ip address, so the point's moot. And, it makes it easier for me to find my external ip address. Localhost is much faster to type than whatismyip.com. So there.) and the client's ip address that IIS is seeing. And, log the IP too.

Checked the log after a couple days, saw a few IPs that definitely weren't mine. And, I hadn't told anyone about the site. Hell,even if I had, I have a dynamic IP address, (which was the whole point of the script). Had a dyndns domain pointing here for a grand total of 5 minutes (+dns entry timeout).

Cleared the log for now, see what happens then.

2008-09-01T07:02:00.000-07:00

So.

Found a SQL Injection vulnerability in my ex-secondary (That's high school for you Americans out there) school's website.

Crafted a query to get one column name,table name and schema from the entire database using information_schema.columns

Came across a mdl_user table (school was using Joomla,with a Moodle module). Chock full of users - the entire school uses the moodle module for e-learning, so every single student was in there.

Simple guessing came out with the username and password columns. (NB:No prefixes ;)

Checked that out - remember,SQL injection hole - and the username were IC numbers. (The American counterpart would be the Social Security Numbers).

So, there were storing sensitive data, IN CLEARTEXT, as usernames. If I were a identity stealer I would have been in Nirvana. Well,close, in any case, though I can't imagine why would you need to impersonate a high schooler.

Anyway, password was MD5 hashed (moodle module remember.If it was developed inhouse it probably would have been in cleartext as well, going by what I've seen so far),but found that many users had the same password.

So, digged in further the website. Went to the moodle main page. And lo and behold, on the login page, "All student accounts have been reset on January 15th with the password \"password\""

Do they seriously expect 15-year olds to bother about changing their default passwords in a school e-learning portal? At least generate random passwords or something.

So, fired an email to the school's sysadmin, and about five days later, no reply. Hole's still there.

Oh well.

2008-08-17T12:09:00.000-07:00

Ok. I absolutely love XKCD.
I mean, everyone loves Bobby Tables.
http://xkcd.com/327/

But seriously, that article introduced me to the concept of SQL injection.
Which is cool.

And I'm so gonna call my child Sudo.

"Sudo clean up your room."

2008-08-17T12:07:00.000-07:00

Hello World.

Created this blog on a whim to pen down the IT side of me.