Updated Apple TV supports 1080p resolution

February 12, 2008 – 5:06 pm
I just upgraded my Apple TV with the new "Take Two" update. Everything works as promised, and I noticed one extra goodie in the video settings dialog. The Apple TV now natively supports 1080p video output! Attached photographic proof!

Posted in apple | 2 Comments »

The future of American politics, what do Ron Paul supporters do after he loses?

February 5, 2008 – 3:06 pm
I won’t be able to caucus for Dr. Paul today because I am a registered Libertarian. I would have had to change my voter registration way back in December to Republican in order to participate. That doesn’t stop me from supporting him. I’ve donated significant money to his campaign and I have advocated him at every opportunity within my social group. I know, just like every other Ron Paul supporter, that he has no chance of winning today. His campaign is not about winning, as great as that would be. Nobody comes out and says it like it is, but it is true. His campaign is about spreading a message, a message of liberty and the constitution. I sincerely hope that the Paul campaign comes up with some way to get his name on the ballot in all 50 ...

Posted in Libertarian | 1 Comment »

Automatically backup your Mac to Amazon S3

February 1, 2008 – 11:46 pm
With the new version of OS X (Leopard) Apple has included some great functionality in Time Machine. Your Mac will automatically backup to an external drive every hour. It includes the ability to recover deleted files in a timeline. The one downside to the Time Machine approach is that the data isn't remotely stored. A couple years ago my wife and I had a house fire where most of our things were destroyed. Fortunately the fire was extinguished before it spread to where our computers were so we didn't lose any data. If it had been elsewhere in the house it could have been a serious situation for us if we lost all of our digital files. After the fire I have followed a manual process of backing up our files on an external drive that I store in our fire safe. The problem with ...

Posted in apple, organize, projects, s3 | 11 Comments »

Extracting emails from Gmail and Google Apps for Domains

January 20, 2008 – 4:09 am
First off, I'll get the link out of the way. If you go to http://vallery.net/gmail/ you can see this application in action. Now a little bit more about it. I discovered that over the years I haven't exactly been great about maintaining my addressbook. I've lost touch of many of acquaintances that I have had casual communication with. I realized that their email addresses where trapped in the deep bowels of my Gmail account, if only there was some way to extract them. I quickly realized that using the newly released IMAP protocol I could probe every message and then extract out the email addresses from it, and in some cases even additional data like the first and last name. I started playing around with the scripting a bit and came up with what I have now. This tool goes out to the Gmail IMAP server and downloads ...

Posted in PHP, ec2, email, projects | 3 Comments »

The death of the local newspaper?

November 27, 2007 – 11:42 pm
The death of the local newspaper? I consider myself fairly well informed. I read a number of different publications to stay up to date with current events, the latest technology, or even just a bit of celebrity gossip. I'm a busy guy, I have a lot going on and I don't have a bunch of time to just sit around reading different websites. I, like many others, rely heavily on RSS in order to get the most of my online leisure time. I use the fantastic Google Reader application to aggregate the feeds that interest me into a single easy to sort through interface. I'm subscribed to several national and international news feeds like the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and the BBC. I've got feeds for a couple of the social news websites like Digg and Reddit. I've got a ...

Posted in Digg, local news, rss, times call | No Comments »

Debug your outbound POST and GET requests

May 17, 2007 – 1:27 pm
I work a lot with different types of web services. I find when I'm building an application that has to post data off to a remote service that it can be difficult to debug where the problems are. I can't always see an exact copy of the HTTP request that I am sending, and therefore how the remote service sees my call. I created a simple little app that when called will return exactly what it was sent. You can pass in variables in a POST or GET, and it will just spit them right back at you along with whatever HTTP headers were sent by your client. If you point your browser over to http://vallery.net/postback/index.php you can see it in action. It will report back to you exactly how your browser is identifying itself, including any cookies you might have received from my word press ...

Posted in GET, LAMP, PHP, POST, projects | 1 Comment »

Libertarian point of view on digital rights management

May 4, 2007 – 2:29 pm
I've been doing some thinking the last few days about DRM and I can't seem to come to a conclusion on how I should feel about it. Generally with any issue I can look at it with my moral lens of libertarian ideas, and it becomes very clear what is right and wrong. In this case, I'm lost, so I wanted to toss this question out there and see if anyone has any opinions one way or the other. First a synopsis of DRM. DRM is a method used to control how digital content is used. It uses different types of encryption technologies to prevent users of digital media (DVDs, CDs, HD-DVDs, video games, downloaded music, etc) from accessing the content without a "key" that is approved by an issuing authority. To put it in real terms, the encryption prevents you from making a copy for your friend (pirating). ...

Posted in Libertarian, dmca, drm, mpaa, riaa | 2 Comments »

AACS processing key, and the C&D letter to come

May 1, 2007 – 1:58 pm
I'm doing my part in adding yet another place where you can find the AACS HD-DVD processing key. I'm a firm believer in fair use, and the DRM scheme implemented by AACS clearly limits my abilities to use content that was legally purchased. I buy all my music on iTunes, I buy all my movies from various legal sources, and I get my TV from either iTunes or DirecTV. I'm in no way a pirate, and the use of the below key does not constitute piracy. While it might be used for illegal purposes, so can a gun, or so can pretty much any device. Don't punish the individuals who posses the "weapon", punish the individuals who commit the crime. AACS processing key (09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0)

Posted in uncategorized | No Comments »

Review of Penn and Teller: Bullshit! Immigration

April 26, 2007 – 11:22 pm
Penn and Teller did it again, this was a great episode. I'm glad to see them taking on the immigration issue. Most American's are opposed to immigration, and support stricter border controls. I think changing that opinion will be a hard pill for most American's to swallow. Penn and Teller are critical of the government's plans to install 700 miles of fencing on the border at the cost of $60 billion dollars. They setup a mock version of the wall and show how easy it is to circumvent. Their illegals are able to get past it in around 3 minutes using a variety of different techniques. In addition, they pointed out that majority of illegals actual enter the country on legal visas and overstay their welcome. I think the most fascinating fact that they pointed out is that the contractor, golden sate fence ...

Posted in Libertarian, Penn and Teller, capitalism, immigration | 8 Comments »

Gun control in America

April 24, 2007 – 3:25 pm
I'm sure you could take a guess and figure out that I am an atheist, a libertarian, and generally considered a nut job by my peers. I find it interesting how seemingly separate areas of ideology (religion and politics) so often intersect when you become a free thinker. Almost every libertarian I know is an atheist, and almost every atheist I know has at least a slight libertarian bent. I mentioned in an earlier post that I had been reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I just finished the "John Galt Speaks" chapter, which is essentially a 58 page monologue describing Ayn Rand's theory of Objectivism. It amazed me that this book, and this philosophy which was written over 50 years ago, describes exactly what I believe today. It amazed me that Ayn Rand was essentially an atheist libertarian, before it was socially accepted to be so (Not that it ...

Posted in Libertarian, atheist, gun control, virginia tech | 14 Comments »