I am sure that everyone has seen the Progressive insurance commercials that feature the sort of grungy looking dude with a mustache and almost unkempt hair. He is the one that is always out there throwing money at people or buying gas and paying tolls or what not. It is supposedly from all of the money he has saved with GEICO err, I mean Progressive, and he is giving back. OK, you are thinking, yeah I have seen him, but what the heck does that have to do on a blog that provides technical information? Good question, let us get to that. Have you all noticed the way cool GTO from the mid to late ’60s that he is driving around? I know I have, I am a huge fan of old GTO’s but there is another reason. There is a commercial out there touting the Progressive Snap-In service, where you plug the little device you get from Progressing into your data port on your car in order for it to record statistics about your driving habits. Supposedly this is so they can lower your insurance rates. The point is that here is Mr. Progressive insurance dude, standing there with the little Snap-In device, talking about how good the service is, right next to his GTO. I am not an auto mechanic any more, but I really don’t think that GTO has a data port in it, so I want to know where the heck he plugs that thing in at?? Then again, maybe I don’t want to know! LOL
Category Archives: Fun Stuff
Review: Ghost In The Wires
This post is a little bit different than normal, but still applies overall to the scope that I am going for here I think. I just finished reading a really cool book called Ghost in the Wires written by Kevin Mitnick and William L. Simon with the foreword by Steve Wozniak. Sounds like a thrill ride already, doesn’t it?
I am sure I don’t have to tell anyone reading this blog who Kevin Mitnick is, but just in case, he’s a well known (in geek circles at least) hacker/social engineer who spent years breaking into corporate systems all over the U.S. Some of the systems he gained access to belonged to Motorola, Sun Microsystems, Novell, and more. By the time he was caught and arrested the final time in Raleigh, N.C., in 1995, he was the most wanted computer criminal in the United States.
This book basically tells his story from early in life up to when he got arrested in 1995. He talks about his exploits, his hacks, the people he hacked with and what is the most entertaining, how he managed to pull off all this crazy stuff.
So, if you are looking for an informative book, as well as one that is funny and entertaining as heck as well, look no further. The audio book is good, with a great reader, and the hard cover and kindle editions are great too. I advise you to check one of them out, this book was great!
Check it out at Amazon now: Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker
Geek Squad Confessions
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One of the websites out there that I just love is The Consumerist. Probably many of you are going to already be familiar with this site, but if not, allow me to digress for a moment. This site is not only funny as heck based on the writers they have and the wonderful work they do, but also the stories and subject matter that they cover. It’s humorous, informative, educational, and usually gives the reader a good heads up about something to be wary of. Another reason I dig the site, is that like me they don’t sell ads or anything like that, they are donation supported, but even more importantly they are there for the consumer. These guys are in your corner finding out information and exposing scams and fighting for the little guy (you know, us!) all over. As someone who has always been a huge proponent of good customer service, I have nothing but respect for these folk, so go check ’em out. Plus they dig up some great dirt on people LOL
This leads me to the purpose of this post, I just had to share this link:
Confessions Of A Former Geek Squad Geek
Check it out, see what you think, then go read some more over there … but don’t forget to come back 🙂
By the way, in case you missed it in previous posts, if you notice the links and logos I have there in the Good Stuff box and a few other places that look a lot like ads when I just said that I don’t sell ads. Those are links to products and/or services that I use or have used that I endorse because I found them to be of superb value. No one is paying me to put those there, they are there because I found something good and I wanted to pass it on!
Solarum’s Open Source Project – nix32
I thought I would post some information about a project that I started a few months ago called nix32. It’s hosted on SourceForge for the most part, with a handy website that I host myself mainly because it’s just easier to manage that way. The basic goal of this project is to create native command line tools for Windows that operate much like the commands that we know and love from Linux and UNIX. Things like ls, mv, cp, df and so on. I have become so used to, comfortable with and productive with the UNIX/Linux command line environment, that when I have to leave it behind on Windows, it’s pretty tough. Not just changing from what I am used to, but also because I think the command line of a UNIX/Linux server is much more powerful and flexible than the Windows command line, even including the power shell.
I have been working on the more popular commands, and I have a few basics out now with basic functionality. I hope to have more and better (improved) tools in the future. I am writing everything in PERL and then compiling each one on Windows as a standalone exe using tools from ActiveState, and so far, they run very nicely. It’s all completely open source, you can download the PERL scripts as well as the executable files if you want to take a look or help improve them.
Now, I know you can get similar results with other projects and products out there, CYGWIN comes to mind first. However, that’s a whole separate shell and almost a little mini-Linux setup in and of itself, especially looking at the directory structure after it’s installed. Here with the nix32 project I wanted to have native Windows executables that you can stick in your path somewhere and call right from the Windows Command Prompt, without ever leaving the Windows environment and without having to install anything. So far that is exactly what we have, just copy the files somewhere, make sure it’s within or added to your PATH variable, and you are good to go!
So check it out, see what you think, spread the word and maybe even help out a bit and crunch a little code too. Do whatever you feel and keep both feet on the wheel … or, keyboard maybe. 🙂
A free game and a quick link
And a heads up! I added a link to the links section here on the Solarum site, and it made me want to drop a note up here to remind folk about that particular section. The links section is where I post links to various and sundry things that appear to be useful or humorous to folk in one way or another. So, you might want to check it out because you never know what you might find, like today where I just posted a link to a the great game Baseball Mogul version 6 since it has been released for free by the company that makes it. Come back often and check that links section out, lots of goodies in there.
Portal 2 has officially been announced!
That means we can stop the speculation and start the salivation over what Valve has in store for us this time. The original Portal is a single player first person puzzle game with some action elements as well, developed by Valve Corporation, the same folks that brought us other greats like Half-Life, Counter Strike, Team Fortress, Day Of Defeat, Left 4 Dead and more. The game came out in 2007 as part of the Orange Box, or was available seperately from Steam (for the PC that is). Portal is all about puzzles, and consists mainly of a series of puzzles that must be solved by teleporting the main character and simple objects using the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device (ASHPD for short, but was also called simply, the portal gun), a device that can create open portals between flat planes. The game is all about the physics attained and manipulated by the portal gun. Portal has been acclaimed as one of the most original games of 2007, and went on to win 70 industry achievement awards. Portal 2, the sequel, is set for release during the 2010 holiday season.
One note of trivia, the final credits song “Still Alive” was written by Jonathan Coulton for the game. Coulton is a wonderful musician who has garnered quite a bit of Internet fame.
Check out the Portal 2 announcement here …