John's Recount: Archive

1 tag

How I use Google Apps

I use Google Apps as my e-mail service for gaelicWizard.net. Here’s why and what-for. Gmail Gmail is almost the best e-mail service ever. This is not actually saying much, though. Most e-mail systems merely replicate a directory tree. A directory tree is just not a good way of storing human-centric information. Gmail ditches this. The storage of e-mail is abstracted away. Gmail...

Sep 12th

1 tag

Blogging for RWU Law

Update I’m gunna be blogging for my law school. The blog will be targeted at prospective students, so it might be interesting to some of you out there in blogger land. I’ll put up a link to the blog once I know the URL. Here’s what should be the starting-content on the new blog. Bio I’m not an honour student. I’m not on Law Review. I’m a regular joe...

Sep 8th

4 notes

2 tags

Dropbox

I tried [Dropbox]. The promise of working cross device file sync sounded really intriguing, but the final straw was [Elements]. Elements is a great app. I purchased, downloaded, and launched it. I signed up for Dropbox right there, then downloaded Dropbox onto both my laptop and my desktop. Installation was drag-and-drop. From what I’ve heard, the sync works wonderfully. However, when I...

Aug 26th

1 note

Bash's init files

I finally understood the shell init files for Bash. I think my block might have been due to a left-over confusion from tcsh. When bash is interactive it runs profile or bashrc, not both. If its interactive and login, it runs profile. If its interactive and not login, it runs bashrc. If its not interactive, it runs neither (unless you tell it to). Easy, right? My problem was that I was...

Aug 25th

1 tag

Back from London, Back to School

This summer I spent five weeks in London with RWU Law’s very own Professor Robert Webster. Around thirty other students and I explored the history of the common law, and where it has led to, right where it began. That, and we explored London and the surrounding area… and Dublin. The focus of the program was Comparative Trial Advocacy. Now, I have never intended to be a litigator,...

Aug 24th

2 tags

purge(8)

Warning IMPORTANT: DOING THIS TOO OFTEN WILL SIGNIFICANTLY REDUCE PERFORMANCE. Furthermore, the equivalent happens automatically. THIS IS A TOY ONLY. Fun With Debugging Tools Do you like it when Activity Monitor reports large amounts of free memory, regardless of actual performance? Try this: open Terminal and just type “purge” (without quotes). OMG WTF BBQ Pretty neat,...

Apr 13th

1 tag

Not HD _yet_

I haven’t jumped on the HD bandwagon yet. Here’s Why. Subjective Quality One of the reasons that I don’t use Blu-Ray or choose HD when purchasing from iTunes is that I don’t need it. 480p, that is full-resolution, progressive-scan, DVD-quality, is good enough for me. My television is only 33 inches diagonal. Its widescreen and LCD and all that HD goodness. It’s...

Apr 12th

5 tags

Prostitution, Politics, and Human Trafficking

There’s a young woman in my class who is both smart and highly motivated. (Actually, there are several people like that.) This last year she led a campaign to make prostitution illegal in Rhode Island, and succeeded. I was always curious about why she was so passionate about it, though. Whenever she talked about it, she rarely spoke about the business/institution/practice of prostitution....

Mar 8th

35 notes

Check Your Phone Bill

Did you know that any company can just add a ten dollar charge to your phone bill? I had a charge for $9.99 added to my bill without my permission. I called AT&T. They said that any company can add any charge to your bill at any time without my knowledge or permission. If I have never sent a single text message to anyone, let alone this random company, they can still charge my bill without...

Feb 24th

English Dubbing

So, I’ve been watching Bleach for a while now. I’m getting it on Netflix, so I’m roughly three years behind what’s on-air in Japan. I really enjoyed seasons 1, 2, and 3. Seasons 4 and 5 are filler, and therefore suck ass. I’m hoping season 6 will be as enjoyable as the first three. My wife, @RussianDina, refuses to watch it with me. Why? Because she can’t get...

Feb 22nd

Apple "Tablet"

Here, documented, is my prediction for the we-have-no-information-at-all-but-“know”-it’s-coming Apple “tablet”. Prediction The new “tablet” computer from Apple will replace the MacBook. Fine Print Please keep in mind that this prediction is as accurate as, if not more accurate than, all other predictions regarding the Apple “tablet.” ...

Jan 14th

Ripping Speed

Over the last few weeks I’ve been re-working my DVD-to-AppleTV procedure. For getting the material off the DVD, I use RipIt. For encoding, I use HandBrake. Then, I tag using AtomicParsley through Lostify. I do this two-step process, instead of using HandBrake to read directly from the DVD, for two reasons. First, RipIt gets the movie off the DVD and onto my HDD much more quickly. I can...

Nov 17th

Bleach: The Bount; or Corporate Content Creation

The Bount I love Bleach. I first discovered this Anime while attending Genius training in Cupertino. One of my roommates was watching it on Cartoon Network. I immediately added it to my NetFlix to catch up. Last week, I started watching the Bount arc (season 4). If I had seen an episode from the Bount arc that day on Cartoon Network, I never would have considered Bleach. I wouldn’t have...

Sep 29th

The Google Books Settlement

Lots of people are complaining that the Google Books Settlement is really just an end-run around existing copyright law and Congress’ power to set copyright policy. It is. That’s a good thing. Congress’ copyright policy from 1976 has flaws. Congress addressed those flaws by completely fucking up the whole thing with the DMCA. Now, the cracks in the original system are showing,...

Sep 19th

“$ hdiutil compact Armitage_XXXXXXXXXXXX.sparsebundle Starting to...”

– Compact that bundle!

Sep 18th

4 tags

Why I turned on FileVault

FileVault was introduced in Mac OS X v10.3, if I recall correctly. Basically, it replaces one’s home folder with a disk image, which is mounted during login and unmounted at log out. The idea is that the disk image is encrypted, and so therefore your home is encrypted. At first, this sounds like a fantastic idea: real data security. However, there are often misunderstandings about what this...

Sep 15th

iPhone OS 3.1: Fix for Deleted Messages in...

MobileMail CVE-ID: CVE-2009-2207 Available for: iPhone OS 1.0 through 3.0.1, iPhone OS for iPod touch 1.1 through 3.0 Impact: Deleted email messages may still be visible through a Spotlight search Description: Spotlight finds and allows access to deleted messages in Mail folders on the device. This would allow a person with access to the device to view the deleted messages....

Sep 9th

Bristol Water FAIL

Begin forwarded message: ROGER WILLIAMS UNIVERSITY Message sent - 9/8/2009 Boil Water Alert Campus Community: Bristol County Water Authority has issued a Boil Water Alert for Bristol, Warren and Barrington, which includes Roger Williams University. DO NOT USE TAP WATER FOR ANY REASON unless it has been boiled for at least one minute and then cooled. This includes...

Sep 8th

Snow Leopard can't write to HFS volumes!

I remember when HFS+ was released in MacOS 8.1. They recommended that one does not use it as one’s boot system, since it was still new and, more importantly, since one wouldn’t have a bootable floppy(!) or CD which could read HFS+. I dutifully reformatted by boot system to use HFS+, without a bootable floppy or CD. Some time later, I found that this was not such a great idea, but...

Sep 6th

Thoughts on Snow Leopard

In short: go buy it now. Grand Central Dispatch has just guaranteed that Macs are the most powerful machines in the consumer, workstation, non-HPC, and maybe even HPC market segments. Period. All Snow Leopard apps for Mac will, quite simply, beat the shit out of all comparable Windows or *nix apps in terms of performance and flexibility. Hands down. Update: I told you so. OpenCL will nicely...

Sep 1st

Snow Leopard in 64-bit

Just do this: sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot “Kernel Flags” “arch=x86_64” sudo plutil -convert xml1 /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.Boot That’s it. JP P.S. if you change “arch=x86_64” to “-v arch=x86_64” then your Mac will always boot in verbose mode. It makes me feel...

Aug 29th

Miley Cyrus and state censorship

The state has already decided that it has the right to censor, despite the “protections” of the first amendment. There is a legal doctrine which allows the state to censor anything which it would like to, so long as it refers to it as “obscene.” This, by itself, it bull shit. However, we’ll accept it as the-way-things-are for the purposes of this argument. ...

Aug 16th

Boston kicks the shit out of SoCal

In SoCal, I hate Mom & Pop restaurants. Dunno why, I just feel like they’re cheap and dirty. Maybe I’ve only been to the cheap and dirty ones. Here, they kick ass. My wife and I have found no short of four different great Mom & Pop restaurants inside of a week. Within walking distance from our tiny apartment. I went to city hall and in UNDER 30 MINUTES I had a permit to mark...

Aug 6th

Kansas is Wired!

While driving across the country, we eventually got to Kansas. In short order, I discovered something truly amazing. Being a big-city boy, I always assumed that Kansas would be like the inner-city of the rural world; that is, poor and backwards. I was wrong. The Welcome to Kansas sign had a URL on it. Not a tiny one added as some kind of after thought, but front and centre:...

Aug 6th

Riverside, CA -> Brighton, Boston, MA

Here’s our route from Riverside, CA to Brighton, MA. I’ll be posting notes about the various spots on the trip. Riverside, CA -> Brighton, Boston, MA Start at: Canyon Crest Dr Riverside, CA 92507 Head northwest on Canyon Crest Dr toward El Cerrito Dr - 476 ft Turn right at El Cerrito Dr - 0.5 mi Turn right at Box Springs Blvd - 0.1 mi Merge onto CA-60 E/I-215 S...

Jul 31st

Brüno

My wife and I just saw Brüno tonight. Short Review: Fucking Hilarious. Longer Review follows. Sacha Baron Cohen manages to attack contemporary western culture in such a way that everyone seems to think that he’s attacking the other part of western culture. For example, many reviews that I’ve seen seem to think that that Cohen is attacking our society’s faux acceptance of...

Jul 19th

Mammoth Lakes, CA

I love Mammoth. The air is clean. The sunlight seems cleaner. The trees are green. Its peaceful and quiet. I love it up here. If they had respectable internet up here, I would so move here. I mean, I’d need to (a) finish school, (b) get a job where I could work from home, (c) save up to buy a house, and (d) other. But, I’d do it. Maybe I will!

Jul 15th

Old Notes

While packing for our move to Boston, I found a note wedged inside a book. The handwriting is clearly mine, but the contents make no sense. Here it is, reproduced and preserved for posterity: Tissue in dirt. Ashtray ash/sand in dirt. Cigarette butts PJC, massive lamps Clean . Ponds cold ass air conditioner Hotels cute girl lack of students. I’m not sure exactly what that...

Jul 14th

First Post!

So, I started a new blog… again… we’ll see how well it goes.  JP — Sent from John’s iPhone2,1

Jul 14th

The Mystical Majyk of Tech

I’m one of the lucky few to purchase and download NetShare by Nullriver before AT&T forced Apple to ban the app. Using it today while on a weekend retreat to Mammoth Lakes, CA with my wife, it struck me how utterly inept at even the most basic design people can be. Even people who are smart and clever! NetShare is not rocket science, but it is wildly valuable and certainly involved a...

Jan 10th

The Chronicles of Amber

The Chronicles of Amber, collected in the Great Book of Amber, are probably my favourite book of all time. Well, at least the Chronicles share that spot with very few others (such as Lord of the Rings). The first half of the Chronicles follow the adventures of Corwin, who wakes up in a shady private hospital to find that he is being heavily sedated. If you’d like to invest in a slightly...

Dec 27th

What am I reading?

The What am I reading? series on this site follows my reading habits. I’ll be posting short comments on whatever it is that I’m reading these days. As I pen this first post, I’ve just begun Twilight with my niece. So far, so good. One chapter down, many more to go. UPDATE: I never got past that first chapter. Oh well. Sounds like I didn’t miss much. :-) I read a great...

Dec 1st

We were Never at War with Eastasia

Slashdot just posted an article saying that Scientists Discover Proteins Controlling Evolution. The just of it is that the whole idea upon which the theory of Evolution is based is completely false. The conclusion, just like so many other religious presentations, is that Evolution is, therefore, absolutely true and reliable. This is the sort of religious ridiculousness that our contemporary...

Nov 18th

Highlander

Have you seen the Highlander movies? I’ve got Netflix, and had an itch, so I rented all 4 (some of which I’ve seen before). Highlander 1 was good. I enjoyed it. Highlander 2 was weird. I enjoyed it too. Highlander 3 was not so good. I’m not sure anyone enjoyed it. Highlander 4 directly contradicted the first three movies is major, significant ways. It shouldn’t...

Jun 18th

Got Married

Remember back when I posted about that perfect girl I met? I married her. How do ya like them apples? JP

Aug 19th

Getting Old

I forgot to mention, I turn 20 years old this friday, 19 November. I feel old… 20 years is a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time! JP

Nov 18th

Election, Love, Site

So the Election’s over, Bush won (because the only alternative SUCKED BAWLS). Joy. I didn’t vote for Bush, though. I voted for Badnarik, the Libertarian Party’s canidate www.lp.org. I have a girlfriend. Her name is Diana. Not “die-anna”, but “dee-anna”. She’s half Armenian, one quarter Ukranian, one quarter Russian, and from Uzbekistan. She’s...

Nov 18th

Lets keep going!

Why do I want us to take on Syria? Well, they are the largest know contributors to international terrorism. They fund, almost entirely, the terrorism in Israel (no matter whether you support Israel’s right to self defence, or oppose the occupation and genocide, does not change the terrorism there), and are major contributors to Al Qaeda. This is meaningful to me for a number of reasons: I...

Sep 14th

Ready to Vote?

Ok, so I’m having a crisis right now. I am trying to weigh the options in the upcoming election. I am a firm believer in “Sissies vote for the lesser of two evils: vote your conscience”, and so I will absolutely not vote for Kerry, as he is a coward. Here’s my problem: the alternative is a lying moron. I gave serious thought to the Libertarian candidate (Badnarik,...

Sep 8th