Of Interest: Prey

Electronics are a hot commodity among sticky-fingered miscreants.

Prey is an application that aims to solve the problem of locating and recovering a lost asset; Prey  across works on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, and iOS, too.

[ http://preyproject.com ]

They've also taken advantage of the "freemium" pricing concept - you can create an account on their site for free, and store up to 10 reports (location, time, and more) for each of three devices.

Of Interest: Rooting your Samsung Captivate [2.3.5]

I somehow bricked my phone today - it freaked me out (more than a little bit), so I ended up taking it to the AT&T service shop, where they restored it to working order, free of charge.

I then bricked it again. (This is where facepalms are appropriate...)

I then miraculously unbricked it.

In the same vein as my previous rooting (I rooted the phone within twenty-four hours of first receiving it), I set out to figure out how to do this. I also want to install a custom ROM, but that comes later.

Enter copious amounts of trawling the internet (and also being scared of breaking something while the phone is in "DOWNLOAD MODE: DO NOT TURN OFF TARGET!").

I stumbled upon this treasure and have since been happily plugging away at getting everything done:

[ http://androidforums.com/captivate-all-things-root/483646-guide-root-official-2-3-5-guide.html ].

There is something to be said about tenacity and perseverance and just how much smarter some people are than I.

I'm somewhat interested in upgrading phones, but this wondrous piece of technology will do for now.

Stuff I Like: Watchismo

[ http://www.watchismo.com ]

I could spend way too much time here just looking at all the neat watches they've got for sale.

Pricewise, you're still paying for "designer"-tier work, and it's probably a safe bet that (unless otherwise specified) these are not the chronographs you take on diving trips.

I'm also digging these: [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ]... (I mentioned Yanko Design & watches earlier.)

Not that I have a reason to wear a watch these days. More on that later.

Important: The United States' Constitution

If you're not a resident of the US of A, you're welcome to stop reading here.

[ http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/constitution.html ]

I'd like to present (what I think is) the most important part:

I. Freedom of Speech, Religion, Press; Right to Peaceably Assemble & Petition the Gov't
II. Right of the People to Bear Arms.
III. Prohibits State-mandated housing of soldiers outside of Wartime.
IV. Prohibits unreasonable search and seizure. Establishes requirement for probable cause.
V. Rights dealing with criminal charges: Grand Jury, Double Jeopardy, Due Process, Eminent Domain, May not Self-Incriminate.
VI. Rights dealing with Trials: Fair and Speedy, Jury of Peers, Notification of Accusation, Right to Confront Accuser, Right to Obtain Witnesses, Right to Retain Counsel.
VII. Right to Trial by Jury in Civil Cases
VIII. Prohibits Cruel/Unusual Punishment, Excessive Bail/Fines
IX. Rights not expressly defined by Constitution are still the People's
X. Anything Power that isn't given to the Federal Gov't is either the State's or the People's, if it's not given to the State's.

 It is critically important that you know your rights. Orwell wrote an iconic phrase: "Ignorance Is Strength". Truer words have seldom been spoken; the ignorance of the masses is all the elite require to stay in power.

Educate yourselves.

Be Privacy Conscious:

[ https://www.torproject.org/ ] and [ http://hotspotshield.com/ ] are two things you should consider.

They allow you to remain anonymous while you browse the internet, albeit at a slight cost to your connection speed (you are bouncing off of other computers, after all).

I encourage other users to be aware of exactly how the internet works - my [ privacy policy ] notifies you that the folks I've partnered with as advertisers may track your activity. Facebook does, [ too ].

I've probably mentioned this sort of thing before - but knowledge is more than half of the fight.

Also relevant: SOPA and PIPA and the imminent threat they pose.

2012: More opportunity for self-improvement.

[ http://www.codecademy.com ] and [ http://www.khanacademy.org ].

Two sites. Different intents, same purpose. One teaches code, while the other teaches subjects from mathematics to art history. Both are worth investigating, for sure. Codecademy and Khan Academy both offer self-paced lessons and well-taught curriculum.

I have two large, multi-part goals that I plan to accomplish by using these two resources:
- Quit writing sloppy code (or reusing functions unnecessarily - no more "frankencode")
- Become proficient in calculus, physics, and understanding today's economy

This, I resolve to do during this new year that we have.

If you're interested, consider also:
This list of free online classes, which has links (at the bottom of the page) to universities' OpenCourseWare - free classes to help you learn just about anything.

Expanding the network.

This has been in the works for awhile, to be frank- Clean Cut / Well Kept is no longer the singular blog- I seek writers and photographers and artists alike to join a group of like-minded content publishers.

Our aim is to establish a readership and create an attractive, networked team of bloggers.

Cross-contamination to increase audience is common enough these days- note the rather daunting number of pop tracks that are of the format "Title - Artist A w/ Artist B feat Artist C" - A, B, and C are potentially exposed to all of the others' fans.

The idea behind the network is something like that, I'd suppose. If you're interested in joining, shoot me an e-mail at [ disposablenamenlos at gmail dot com ].

Something I missed: [ ai-class.com ]

A partnership between Stanford Education and knowlabs, the class offered over at [ http://ai-class.com ] is pretty neat. I wish I had signed up for it sooner, even if my current workload isn't always getting done. I'll have to settle for watching videos on occasion, I guess.

A news article (FD: written by Stanford) detailing what's going on can be found [ here ].

Neat stuff, AI.

Overall, I find the idea of a class where the material is taught in compact format outside of the classroom (in a potentially passive medium, perhaps) to be a pretty neat one- classes could be shorter, wouldn't require an hour-or-longer attention span to take in all the material, and the educator could utilize their time more efficiently- rather than spending time lecturing more than once, they can record the lecture, and spend valuable class time helping the students with more advanced or difficult-to-understand concepts.

Food for thought, I guess.

Magic: The Gathering

This is probably going to be a really expensive habit if I get seriously involved.

I'm also a casual player, which means the prohibitive rules about which cards you can use don't apply (as much).

I am a huge fan of Slivers- a creature type that (usually) has a unique ability which it shares with all other Slivers in play. This means that if you have three Slivers that increase power and toughness by 1, they all experience a buff of +3/+3 - turning little cards into bulky swingers.

The real nasty bits come in once you get the more esoteric variants into play- including poisonous, rapidly-regenerating, and mana-creating abilities.

I'm personally considering purchasing one of these, since it's premade and the entire collection is foils- but it doesn't have quite the number of slivers I'm looking for, and omits some of the particular slivers that I want to use in a deck.

Enter this ridiculous spreadsheet: [ link ]. It's going to be out-of-date in less than a week (link and pricewise), but it is a rough estimate of the different costs associated with purchasing cards separately. In most cases, I'm ordering them 4 at a time, and probably only using 2 of each in a deck. I might construct two copies of the same deck, and resell one to recoup costs (if possible, anyway).

What decks would y'all run?

On being a developer:

I know very little about programming complex things- how to go about coding something like Minecraft, for instance- where would I even start?

I am good at scripting, though, given that I know commands.

It always amazes me how other folks seem to grasp these complex constructs with ease- Everyone tells me that I could, too, if I spent the time to learn, but I don't see it happening anytime soon.

Simpler things come easily, though- blatantly re-using (read: plagiarizing) code that works and hobbling it together (into some sort of frankencode construct) is what I'm good at. Kinda unethical, I'll admit, but I don't sell or otherwise profit off of these things.

Something about reverse-engineering can be relevant here, too. Reading through code that accomplishes something similar (or a part of what you want to do) grants insight into how what you want to do might work. It also presents the tempting opportunity to copy-and-paste, which is a bad habit of mine that I'm working to break.

More to come on all this later.

Stuff I like: Zen Habits

"Men are like steel. When they lose their temper, they lose their worth."
~Chuck Norris

[ http://zenhabits.net/ ] speaks for itself, mostly.

Zen is a curious thing. Difficult for me to explain to my satisfaction. Suffice it to say that watching [ Life ] and reading old zen texts is the easiest way to begin understanding the concept.

When I reach a "Zen" state, I am clear. Devoid of thought, feeling, words, and attachments.

It's not something I can maintain for very long, but it's a pleasant place to be.

[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen ]

Infographic: Digital Distractions

"A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason."

~J. P. Morgan


I'm going to start using quotes to start posts more often. Please enjoy another infographic:

Of Interest: Russian Resources!

Dobre Utra. Доброе утро. Good morning~


[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_language ]
[ http://masterrussian.com/ ]
[ http://www.freedict.com/onldict/rus.html ]

Pronunciation is easy for me (I'm good at picking up accents).

Learning to read is a bit difficult, though. The Russian alphabet has something like 33 letters, special rules for spelling, and is a form of Cyrillic script.

Stuff I like: Marry Me @ Keenspot.com

Calimera (Καλημέρα), readers!

Average guy gets married to a rockstar after holding a "MARRY ME" sign at one of her concerts. Serious quantities of awk ensue. This is [ http://marryme.keenspot.com/ ], a well-written, well-illustrated graphic novel that is available online for your perusal.

It doesn't appear to be finished yet, but the artwork is visually appealing and I like the story.

Still getting back into the swing of publishing things more often.

Self-improvement September.

I've taken it upon myself to self-improve during September.

I'm teaching myself the basics of Russian and Greek (two completely foreign languages), and hitting the gym on an almost-daily basis.

To that end, I'm interested in the Rosetta Stone programs for the two languages- I learned German through immersion in the country, but I don't have that opportunity for Russian or Greek.

Unfortunately, Rosetta Stone is almost prohibitively expensive without a discount of some kind, so that's not even an option.

I'm doing these things to level up IRL. What will you do?

Another update!

Just thought I'd share this with y'all since I have some work up:

[ http://visceralnadir.blogspot.com ]

If'/when I can purchase an awesomesauce camera (i.e. Nikon D5100+), the "photoblog" part will be a bigger part of it.

Techshare: Stack Overflow & Github

[ http://stackoverflow.com/ ]

Essentially, reddit meets forum meets wiki meets blog in the form of a programming Q&A site. Kinda like ask.yahoo.com, but useful. No registration required, even.

[ https://github.com/ ]

Project management. Elegant, efficient, and free.

Notably used for minecraft modifications, and especially useful if you want to collaborate over long distances.

Stuff I like: Adam Bozon's Homepage

[ http://homepage.ntlworld.com/adam.bozon/ ]

I originally stumbled on this page while looking for new openings to use in my chess games (I've been thoroughly defeated multiple times by the same few individuals).

Of note are the inclusion of a multitude of scrabble aids as well as things like opening statistics for chess.

It's going to be okay.

[ http://isitgoingtobeok.com/ ]
[ http://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/ ]
[ http://eloquentwoman.blogspot.com/2011/06/everything-is-going-to-be-okay-words.html ]

Positively uplifting.

Low-content: Lulz Security

[ http://i.imgur.com/VlZ8E.png ] is the graphical representation of the most common passwords as revealed by lulzsec.

[ http://lulzsecurity.com/releases/ ] is a list of the content they've publicized.

The folks over on "the lulz boat" seem to know exactly what they're doing. Furthermore, the fact that they're exposing weak electronic security (in the same fashion that wikileaks demonstrates weak personal security) is something that I think we need more of.

They're not doing it for the money (so far as I can tell)- they're doing it "for the lulz", and they're making a point of how laughably weak most "security" is.

At any rate, some actual content will be on the way in the next few days.