I’m Back
December 17th, 2008
Though I was gone for a longer period of time, I have finally returned. I had moved and just today got the internet hooked back up.
I plan to get back to work as soon as possible with web development and design as well as finishing up some story ideas, getting Ouroboros updated, and fleshing out a new story Idea I have for Christmas. Stay tuned for all that fun stuff.
Insecure Online Banking
October 30th, 2008
I always choose a very good password, and I don’t forget my passwords, only which one I used. My passwords contain numbers, upper and lower case letters, and symbols. Every website I’ve ever had to use a password for has allowed me to create a password of my satisfaction, with one exception: banks. I’ve used online banking with two or three banks so far and both times my password has been stunted by either a maximum length requirement (even though the user name can be any length I choose) or doesn’t allow special characters.
What benefit could they possibly be gaining from disallowing me to choose a more secure password? Or maybe it’s just the programmers, but then the question becomes: Why on earth would they hire programmers dumb enough to limit the security of a client’s account? Then again, maybe it’s just me; perhaps I just have really bad choice in banks.
Is this some sort of bank conspiracy to make identity theft and theft of our funds easier? They would certainly have something to gain in the case that they offered some protection. Reminds me of the second Dragonheart movie where the guy gets paid by the townspeople to slay the dragon that is working with him.
I see insecurities like this in various different forms on all sorts of websites. Once I found a bug on a major retail site that let anyone view any and all invoices, which includes the customers’ personal information. I’ve sent e-mails to everyone in these companies I can get a hold of, complained in person, bounced up through the ranks over the phone, etc. All of this in an attempt to help these companies fix their issues and protect their customers’ (which may be you) information. I get the run around and they never fix the bugs.
I see this as a serious problem, and in this case I see absolutely no valid reason for the limitation of a user’s password. Don’t let this one go unfixed! Check if your bank has this issue, and if so, make them fix it!
Questions
October 15th, 2008
A friend of mine wishes to become a singer. I told him that I write poetry and he asked if I could write him a song to sing. I wrote this poem a few months ago as a song about my emotions regarding my failing marriage. It is called “Questions”.
I used to think that the world owed me something
The only things that mattered were the things in my head
I used to be a child, but now I’m a man
But there’s still somethings that I don’t understandHow many words make up a memory?
How many notes are in a melody?
How many people are lonely today?
Tell me, why must I feel this way?I used to take for granted the way that you’d feel me
Now I only feel that you don’t know who I am
You used to tell me that you knew that you loved me
But now I don’t even feel like we’re friendsI remember when we first made love
And I know just what I was thinking of
I want to be with you for all of my life
But I’ve got questions for you, my wifeHow many lies add up to misery?
How can I hide it when it’s easy to see?
How can I trust in anything that you say?
Tell me, why must I feel this way?I know I’ve made mistakes but can you forgive me?
You know, they say that the best things in life are free
But I will spend my time devoted to you
Baby, tell me what you want me to doHow many moments make up true romance?
How will you know if you don’t give us a chance?
Oh, I don’t feel like a man today
Tell me, why must I feel this way?
Ouroboros: 3
October 10th, 2008
This is one chapter of a short story. To start from the beginning of the story head over to Ouroboros: 1.
The light was too bright to see. It slowly dimmed to reveal beautiful, lush, green trees all around him. Ben stopped short as he noticed a gaping hole in front of him. There seemed to be someone in the hole, but his attention was grabbed by a voice heard in the distance.
He looked up to see an armchair in the clearing. The voices lingered closer as he examined the floral pattern on the chair from afar. The voice’s words were unintelligible and he looked down for a moment into the well.
There was a boy looking up at him with no facial features at all, save a mouth. The boy whispered, but the sound echoed through Ben’s mind: “Please…”
Suddenly the voices in the distance were close and clear as day. He heard the words “father” and “accident”. Ben jerked his head up to find his aunt sitting in the chair talking to someone. A shadowy figure sat on a couch next to her. He looked directly at Ben and as he finished “…but we don’t want to rule out any possibilities.”
CSS3 Suggestion
September 28th, 2008
Is it too late to request something like ‘background-position-x’ and ‘background-position-y’ to be added to the CSS3 spec? These would be extremely useful in cutting down the amount of code needed when the X position of the background needs to be as previously set but the Y needs to be changed. This is useful for sprite techniques.For example, say you have a single image with a bunch of icons in a matrix. Different icons are represented horizontally in the image and different styles of those images (e.g. hover, selected,disabled) are represented vertically. So, now you can style all elements that contain icons with the ‘icon’ class which defines the background-image. Then add an additional class to each of these based on which icon it represents, which would change the background-position-x to display the appropriate icon image. Finally, you would have addition rules that define current state of the icon, such as a ’select’ class or a ‘.icon:hover’, which would change the background-position-y.
An example of 5 icons with 3 states (e.g. normal, hover, selected) would require 15 different rules as follows:
.icon {
background: url('images/icons.png') 0 0 no-repeat;
width: 16px;
height: 16px;
}
.icon1:hover {
background-position: 0 -16px;
}
.icon1.selected {
background-position: 0 -32px;
}
.icon2 {
background-position: -16px 0;
}
.icon2:hover {
background-position: -16px -16px;
}
.icon2.selected {
background-position: -16px -32px;
}
.icon3 {
background-position: -32px 0;
}
.icon3:hover {
background-position: -32px -16px;
}
.icon3.selected {
background-position: -32px -32px;
}
.icon4 {
background-position: -48px 0;
}
.icon4:hover {
background-position: -48px -16px;
}
.icon4.selected {
background-position: -48px -32px;
}
.icon5 {
background-position: -64px 0;
}
.icon5:hover {
background-position: -64px -16px;
}
.icon5.selected {
background-position: -64px -32px;
}
Whereas with the background-position-x/-y properties it would only need the following 7 rules:
.icon {
background: url('images/icons.png') 0 0 no-repeat;
width: 16px;
height: 16px;
}
.icon2 {
background-position-x: -16px;
}
.icon3 {
background-position-x: -32px;
}
.icon4 {
background-position-x: -48px;
}
.icon5 {
background-position-x: -64px;
}
.icon:hover {
background-position-y: -16px;
}
.icon.selected {
background-position-y: -32px;
}
Of course, the more sprites used the more redundancy is needed without the use of a background-position-x/-y. Without separate X and Y properties it takes i*s rules, where i represents the number of icons and s represents the number of states. With them it would only take i+s-1. The benefits are obvious.
Motorola S9 Fix
September 27th, 2008
So I bought these really nice wireless bluetooth stereo headphones from Motorola back about a month ago. I opened the package while I was out and about and promptly made the huge mistake of just throwing out the packaging and reciept after making sure they work with my BlackBerry Curve. They are pretty sweet, and not too expensive for the convinience of being able to control volume up/down, track back/forward, initialize voice calling, and play/pause right from the touch of an ear peice.
The problem? They were broken and I didn’t even know it! That is until I started fiddling with them and hit the volume down button. I quickly found my volume at the lowest setting. Cool, nice feature, but wait, where’s the volume up button? I took them off and sure enough I was hitting the right button. Nothing is happening! Now they are stuck at the lowest volume setting and its the volume on the headset not on the phone.
So, I tossed them into a box for a while until I finally sat down and took out a handy soldering iron and started to strip a few wires and make some connections. I’m no electronics genious or anything, but I guessed right that black is always ground and found that the red wire is for the voice dial initialization. After accidentally ripping that wire out (no matter, since I planned to cut the activation strip off the earpiece so that this wouldn’t happen again) I found the yellow wire on my second attempt. The yellow wire was indeed the volume up!
I then soldered a hole right through the volume up and down connectors before remembering I cut out by accident. No worries, one day I’ll get around to repairing it and the connector is still there, so it will work.
Apparently this is a common issue with these headphones. Whether it just be sweat interfering and/or frying connections or, in my case, the circuit was just torn to bits when I got them. I didn’t check all the wires since I got it on my second try, but maybe I will later. Nonetheless, anyone that has these now has a partial pinout! Black is ground, red is voice, yellow is volume up. Comment with more if you’ve got them 
Ouroboros: 2
September 24th, 2008
This is one chapter of a short story. To start from the beginning of the story head over to Ouroboros: 1.
Ben plopped himself down on the bed from his upright position. He stared at the ceiling for answers. “Could it have been a dream?” He found it just about as difficult to believe that as he did that the experience was real. Having had the same dream for the past fifteen years, he was slow to accept the possibility, but what else could it have been. “Things like that just don’t happen in reality,” he thought. He made a mental note to discuss it with his therapist. The ordeal slipped from his mind entirely as he looked around.
His room was covered in obsolete movie posters from the theater that his mother worked at. There were model cars lined up on his dresser and a recently raided jar of mostly pennies setting on its side beside them. The room was well lit by the eastern morning sun through faded beige curtains. The bright sun revealed little in the small room, but papers strewn about the floor and a backpack leaning against a wall in the corner. Ben thought for a moment that the room looked pretty empty.
Everything in the house had a putrid yellow-beige color to it, but the color was deepened the closer you looked towards the ceiling. Ben’s father was quite the smoker, and the smell and look of the place had slowly taken a downward spiral since they moved in, but nobody ever noticed. There were streaks running down some walls in the living area where the nicotine had condensed together and dripped slower than the eye could perceive. Despite the appearance, the walls were dry to the touch.
Without thinking, Ben dragged his hands across the walls of the hallway on his way to the bathroom. He headed for the toilet, but did a double take at his image in the mirror. He spoke to himself “Darn, I got a pimple. I’m not supposed to get those yet!”
“Ben! Time for school!” His mom had to yell for him every morning, since he was typically a slow start to get out of bed. Read the rest of this entry »
New Site Layout
September 10th, 2008
I’ve designed a new layout for the site finally. It’s funny how it can be so easy to come up with ideas for other people’s sites and so difficult when it comes to your own site. I’m just so picky and I wanted something that could serve both personal and professional purposes. Anyway, it’s done and it’s mostly integrated as a WordPress theme. I’ll just fix little problems as I see them, but I’m not too worried about it right now, because I am reading Pro Drupal Development Second Edition which is over 700 pages long. So, I will most likely be converting the theme over to Drupal soon. No reason to get too cozy with WordPress then right?
Once I learn Drupal pretty well I may be using it in all of my projects. The first theme I made for Drupal was certainly less complex than my first WordPress theme. If that says anything at all for Drupal then I’m all for it.
Note to self: write another story or an update to Ouroboros.
Ouroboros: 1
August 15th, 2008
He awoke in a familiar sweat. The same dream again. Though there was something new that he couldn’t grasp in the fog of his early morning mind. “Oh well. It will come to me or it won’t,” he thought. A go with the flow attitude that he had adopted in most aspects of his life.
Ben didn’t believe in free will. His philosophy was that even if he made a conscious decision, it was the decision that he was always destined to make. Not that there was an explicit plan for his or any one’s life, but that all of his actions were governed by cause and effect. All of the thoughts in his brain were simply a larger overview of billions of atoms bouncing around like billiard balls in some universal game of pool. And like the elements of his imagined game, he and everyone and everything in the universe had a predetermined course and destination, reliant on simple causality.
When the dreams started, Ben thought right away that his unconscious mind was trying to tell him something. He had shared his experience in his repetitive nightmare with doctors and friends and family, but everyone had a different idea of what they meant. “Maybe it will come to me today,” he thought. Read the rest of this entry »
The Gravity Of Time Travel
July 31st, 2008
The rules of time travel were decided upon by a panel of the best and brightest of the world. As it turns out, even our best efforts at safeguarding our journey into this, our newest frontier, were anything but hopeful. We never really stood a chance, and in the end we only managed to expedite the inevitable: the extinction of the human race. This is the story that was never written. Read the rest of this entry »