Keithieopia

Hanna

Last night I saw Hanna, the general consensus from my family was it completely sucked. My major gripe with the movie is how it was marketed incorrectly. In the Trailer Hanna is marketed as a action flick, which is only partly correct. The opening scene (which is in the trailer) is one of roughly 3 scenes that resembles anything action-wise. Most of the movie is a complete sleeper: a sort of avant-garde coming of age story. Read More...

North Korea: The Land of No Smiles? Metaphorically only...

I came across a photo essay from 2009 by Thomas van Houtryve entitled "The Land of No Smiles", that has gathered some additional popularity with the recent death of North Korea's dictator, Kim Jong-il. Read More...

SOPA, PROTECT-IP, and Other Idiocity

If you're new to the news, SOPA, PIPA, and PROTECT-IP are current bills in the House of Representatives and Senate that would enable the Department of Justice to remove websites from the internet. Supporters of the bills state that websites would only be removed if copyrighted information was posted to the site without permission from their authors (think pirated movies, music, or even ebooks of school textbooks). Read More...

Raven's Intelligence

I've wanted a pet Raven ever since I watched a TV show about them 10 years ago. The show featured seven Ravens at The Tower of London, which are somehow considered royal servants due to a local legend stating the UK would fall if more than six Ravens left the tower. The Ravens are so intelligent that one escaped simply by watching it's human caretaker undo its cage's lock and repeated the steps. Read More...

Activating Vista in a VM with a OEM Key

Being a Linux user there are certain times when I just have to use Windows whether I like it or not. Since I don't use Windows all that often, I chose not to dual boot and instead virtualize it inside of VirtualBox. Read More...

Old rm -rf comics

In early 2010 I started a webcomic named "rm -rf", which is the *nix command that deletes a folder forcefully. I have no more time to maintain the comic, so I figured it would be nice to write a post that included all the past comic strips I made. Read More...

Prime Time

I really couldn't find a list of primes greater than the first 1000, so my first line of thought was to download a script and simply generate them. However, most of the scripts I found to generate primes where in a programming language I didn't know, and I wanted to make sure they generated them logically and efficiently so I wouldn't be waiting forever. Read More...

Facebook enables HTTPS

Q: What's the quickest way to get something changed in a business? A: Have something bad happen to the CEO. Read More...

Sharing Zim Desktop Wiki Across PCs

One of my favorite open source programs is called Zim. Zim bills itself as a "Desktop Wiki" although it's more in line with the digital notebook concept like EverNote, Microsoft OneNote, TomBoy, or any of the numerous sticky note applications out there. One of main features that I love with Zim is everything you type is automatically saved; there is no annoying popup to warn you to save your changes when you close it. Read More...

Key Rot

I've always been a fan of GPG, being the fairly stereotypical crypto-nerd with nothing to keep secret. Some people in the security community believe that PGP is somehow better or stronger than it's free counterpart. Of course most of the argument is based off of how PGP's interface is more pleasing to the eye. The fact is both programs use the same standards and are compatible with one another. The strength of encryption is entirely dependent on your pass phrase and the amount of bits in the key. One of the true problems with GPG isn't its software, but the key servers for hosting the public keys. Read More...

Hover Nano

It finally happened... my vacuum finally died after being on it's last limb for quite some time; it seemed to have lost most of it's suction and constantly was getting clogged. In our house we have some very long cords to raise and lower the reed blinds on the windows. Unfortunately, said cord decided to attack my poor vacuum effectively killing it. The vacuum still sucks, however the brush that rotates on the bottom no longer works. I've heard that this can be fixed by replacing the belt, however when the cord got sucked up I didn't smell the characteristic burnt rubber smell of a broken belt. The obvious solution was to go out a buy a new vacuum. Read More...

(Lack of) Unity in Ubuntu on Netbooks

For my birthday I received a spiffy new netbook: an Acer Aspire One. At first I was pleased because it came with Windows 7 which I consider gasp to actually be a pretty decent OS. I was also very pleased that the amount of pre-installed crapware was almost non-existent, which is rare these days. However, I immediately noticed a few goofy things. The wireless didn't work out of the box on the netbook, which after several hours of research I discovered it was a well known issue with Windows 7 and most Aspire One models (something about Windows 7 detecting the wrong driver). After 3 reboots, Windows magically fixed the driver and the Internet was working... or so I thought. After a few minutes I kept getting disconnected from the network. After trying to manually install the right driver for the built-in wireless I somehow b0rked the system up, and I was rewarded with the dreaded blue screen of death. Read More...

Dryer Bar

We recently picked up one of those dryer bars that can replace those obnoxious dryer sheets that subsequently get stuck in your clothing. The only information I found on them was what was being advertised on television. I was extremely sceptical that the thing wouldn't melt off and get all over the clean cloths in the dryer, provided we even have a High Efficiency unit that tends to get a little hotter than most dryers. Upon examining the bar, it's soapy feeling surface and adhesive backing didn't do anything at all to curb my skepticism. Read More...