Big Trapeze

I’ve been going through a phase lately—a slump, you might call it. Maybe it’s a pre-midlife crisis. The resounding theme of this phase is that I’m really getting tired of modern technology. I love my Mac, I love being creative with programming and design, and I’m a gadget junkie—so this doesn’t make a lot of sense to me yet. But lately I’ve had a yearning to cut myself off from text-messages, IM’s, Facebook profiles, iPhone hacking, and all manner of voice- and e-mail, and just return to a few pieces of paper and pencil as my only outlet for creativity and communication.

Maybe this phase is happening because what I’m doing lately doesn’t fulfill me anymore. It got me thinking, what would fulfill me? What would make me happy? If you had unlimited money, unlimited time, and no other responsibilities, what would you do with your life and your time that would fulfill you and make you happy?

I’ve thought about this question for a few days now. Things like traveling the world or sailing sound great to me–they would be very fulfilling, but they don’t satisfy my need to be creative. And after many similar notions, I hit on one that really makes sense to me: writing. I can be as creative with a pen as I am with a program, and the very act of stringing words together in abnormal ways is very fulfilling to me. The funny thing is, I’m not a writer. I took one or two English courses in college, never a writing course, and I’m shamefully under-read. In the past few months I’ve begun reading some classic American authors like Thoreau (maybe Walden is where this whole anti-technology rant is coming from) and Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. As for writing experience, I actually wrote a haiku that was published in USA Today a few years back, and have a notebook full of unfinished partials of others. For now, I think it best to continue with reading–because I do believe to be a good writer you must have the benefit of being a patient and well-read reader.

The unfortunate part is that most of us don’t have the unlimited money or time to chase the dreams that fulfill us best. I’ve got the responsibility of a family to raise, and writing poetry or short stories for my own satisfaction isn’t going to pay the bills anytime soon. I’ll have to rely on modern technology for that, so I won’t become the reclusive hermit just yet.

In the meantime, I’ll still read 37signals and turn out fun little web-apps, but if you know of an old school manual typewriter for sale, let me know.

Moo.com
I’ve only recently been introduced to the awesomeness of moo.com. If you need business cards, note cards, stickers, or just want to see a cool site, check out moo.com.

Stacks in Leopard
I realllly like Mac OS X Leopard’s Stacks. For the first time in my life, I’ve had an uncluttered desktop for more than a month straight. Normally, you could barely see the underlying wallpaper from all the folders, images icons, and downloads on my desktop. Stacks help me keep organized, and that’s tough to do.

Mike Huckabee
I’m not even voting Republican, but if I had to vote on that side of the fence, I’d vote for this guy. He’s a great speaker, seems earnest and sincere, and doesn’t quit. The “not quitting” thing is what I like the most–the dude knows he’s beat and he’s sticking it out. There’s just something cool about a never-say-die attitude.

Neil Diamond
He evokes fond memories of sitting in front of my dad’s big stereo speakers watching Love on the Rocks spin on his record player. And how can anyone (except Yankee fans) not love Sweet Caroline?

Subway Sandwich: Tuna
Tuna on wheat, no cheese, tomato, onion, parmesan, light mayo, and pepper.

… or “Using Google and Yahoo to Light-Force An (Almost) Infinite Dictionary”

I read an article recently about using Google to search for plaintext equivalents of MD5 hashes. Basically, you search for the hash (something like, “5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99″) and look through the results for the plaintext equivalent (in this case, “5f4dcc3b5aa765d61d8327deb882cf99″ is equal to “password”).

It got me thinking about when I wore the Grey Hat in the old days, and I would download dozens of wordlists to use for my brute-force attempts at cracking Windows NT passwords (for educational purposes only :). If you consider the *illions of pages in the internet, you can essentially utilize them as a massive wordlist, or “webtionary”, for cracking.

Using PHP, I whipped up a script that searches both Google and Yahoo for the MD5 hash, then takes the results, sorts them by frequency of word, and hashes each word to try to match to the original query.

There are sites that let you search their huge databases of MD5 hashes and their plaintext-equivalents, but that’s not the point here. The point is using search results and sifting through a few hundred words of search results–which is more efficient that searching a few million rows, though not as successful. But, I was surprised at how many times the script quickly deciphered a hash. Try it yourself, and send me any improvements that could be made to the code to make it even more efficient.

The MD5 Cracker in action…

Source Code

America is abuzz with political noise, and it’s got me thinking about the candidates in terms of programming languages. In no particular order…

Hillary Clinton is Javascript.

Before I offend anyone that thinks I’m relegating her to such a small and insignificant language, think about Javascript. It’s loosely based off of a programming monster, Java (aka Bill Clinton). It’s the heart and soul of a lot of stuff you see on the web today, like AJAX or JQuery. A lot of those fancy things you love about sites like Flickr or Facebook are filled with Javascript. And, just like Javascript, she’s got the backing of a lot of big players and the pedigree of a respected and well-tested precursor.

Mitt Romney is C/C++.

Romney is one of the more well-funded candidates on the campaign trail. Like Romney, deep-pocketed Bell Labs’ C (and it’s compliment, C++), have features that are admired by many, but its colleagues seem to be growing tired of its rhetoric, and often team up against it much like the candidates at the New Hampshire debates teamed up against Romney. It’s losing ground to “web-based” languages like PHP and Ruby on Rails, but still holds a significance to many people.

John Edwards is ColdFusion.

Edwards has been around the block a couple of times, first as running mate with Al Gore, and now trending towards being a possible running mate again after trailing to bigger candidates in the last few primaries. ColdFusion is a very capable language, able to power even the largest of sites (hello, MySpace), but is typically seen as a runner-up to some of the bigger boys in the web-language field.

Mike Huckabee is PHP.

If only for the reason that Huckabee has Chuck Norris as his biggest “Hollywood” supporter, Huckabee is the tough and no-nonsense PHP. Like its conservative counterpart, PHP is known for providing a solid set of tools and having a vocal group of ardent supporters. It’s relatively extendable, easy to like, and performs well in public–just look at Facebook for PHP in action.

Fred Thompson is Flash.

If Flash had a counterpart in the political realm, it would be one-time senator and part-time actor Fred Thompson. Granted, Mr. Thompson himself isn’t all that flashy, but Hollywood is. And you can pair Flash’s ActionScript with Thompson’s turn in “action thrillers” like Die Hard 2 and The Hunt for Red October. Like Flash, Thompson has his niche but probably won’t provide much in terms of real relevance to the race, but he’s still useful and interesting nonetheless.

John McCain is Perl.

Perl is your dad’s pocket knife that’s been handed down for a few generations. It’s seen a lot, been in a few scrapes, and is always better for the wear. Perl as McCain is old, and slowly losing its effectiveness, but provides those who know how to use it a vast amount of influence and power. Aging well, it shows that no matter who or what steps forward as a new leader, Perl will always be around as a stalwart alternative.

Barak Obama is Ruby on Rails.

If you’ve been programming for anytime at all, you’ve heard about the Rails framework. And if you’ve payed any attention to politics lately, you’ve noticed Barak Obama as well. Obama’s splash came at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, when the relative newcomer burst onto the scene as the keynote speaker, enamoring a section of voters that had become tired of the typical political monotony. Rails, too, was announced in 2004, and has quickly emerged as a leading contender because of its ease of use, youthful loyal following, and ability to combine old programing styles with newer streamlined methods. Who doesn’t like the apps from 37signals, which are done with RoR?

Rudy Giuliani is Visual Basic.

What is Giuliani–a conservative Democrat or liberal Republican? What is Visual Basic? A Windows-based application language or an internet VBScript language? I’ve always had a fondness for Basic, since it was my first programming language, and Visual Basic was always intriguing to me because I could easily build usable Windows apps. In a similar way, most of the nation developed a fondness for Giuliani during the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and he’s hoping that cozy fondness carries him all the way to the White House.

Dennis Kucinich is Smalltalk.

Look, I don’t know anything about Smalltalk, but this joke just writes itself.

This is pretty cool. In a patent filed today, Apple lays out an iMac-esque docking station for the upcoming (rumored) ultra-portable notebook. Not travelling much, I didn’t see myself getting one of these “featherbooks” anytime soon, but this might make a difference. Interestingly, Fig 1D shows a slot load optical disk drive in the featherbook–and that’s been rumored to be ommited in effort to conserve space and weight. We’ll see what shows up in these next 2 weeks leading up to the MacWorld Expo…

I was about an hour outside of Dallas today on a relatively remote highway, when I passed this car. My apologies for the picture quality, it was taken with my iPhone while I was doing about 50 MPH. It’s a car fitted with a large antenna (possibly a camera, GPS, and more?) and a Google Maps logo. Inside, the driver was keeping one eye on the road, and one eye on a rather large and bulky laptop. I’m guessing Google is working on giving us even better map data (and going away from NAVTEQ?), and maybe even street level views. I’m not joking when I say that sounds like a fun job to me…

Update: Here’s an article from the Dallas Morning News talking about the appearance of these vehicles. This guy must’ve gotten lost

Today is December 21st, 2007–4 days before Christmas. You would hope the news of the day would be uplifting, but instead, CNN.com greeted me with this thoroughly depressing sidebar (I took the liberty to highlight the important points):

I would bet for every “bad” story in the world, there is at least one “good” one to counter-act it. Why is it, then, that we are constantly bombarded with depressing news? Why are the majority of news outlets littered with things to bring us down? In keeping with the Christmas theme, I’ll end this with a quote from one of my favorite Christmas heros–Charlie Brown: Good grief.

Five words: No Country For Old Men

I believe in Karma. Maybe it’s the universe’s way of evening things about, but you can only be so bad or so careless for so long that eventually the world rights itself and pays you back. In high school I was one of the guys that went out on Halloween and smashed pumpkins with my friends. Karma has paid me back tenfold in my adult years. Every Halloween when I walk to my front porch and see my great carvings smashed along the curb, I can only give a knowing-nod to Karma and shrug it off–it’s my own fault.

And I can’t wait until the NFL world pays back the New England Patriots and Bill Belichick for being complete sports jerks. I’ve never liked Belichick, mainly for superficial reasons like his sloppy hoodie and grandma-like looks (seriously, just look at him). But now I have real reasons, like cheating and running up the score on people just to pad stats and break records. I hate the Patriots so much that I actually cheered for my second least favorite team, the Eagles, Sunday night against the Patriots. It felt weird, like cheering for Stalin in a cage match against Hitler. Speaking of Stalin, Tom Brady isn’t off the hook either. He’s been slowly taking on the persona of his coach and turning into a complete tool. By the end of his career Karma will take away the supermodels and aspiring political career and hand him back an average Stepford wife, a minivan, and a sideline gig at a Punxsutawney Phil showing.

That’s why it’s only fitting the Miami Dolphins lost last night to the Steelers. The Dolphins were the last team to go undefeated, and now that the Patriots are on the same road, it would be poetic beauty if the Dolphins’ first (and only) win this season came against the Patriots on December 23rd. Whenever or wherever it happens (and it will happen), Karma will exact its toll on the Patriots in a wonderful way, and the world will once again be right.

Disclaimer: REALLLLLLY boring topic (but this took me a while to figure out so I hope it helps someone):

Leopard uses a directory in the root called "home." This is different than a user’s home directory, and it has something to do with NFS shares and/or a new “autofs” feature. I’m not going to pretend I know what this does Update: autofs makes using network shares a lot more stable, but it doesn’t really affect me–I’m really just a designer/developer, and don’t get into the inner-works of the OS much.

What I do know is that I don’t want it using that "/home" directory because in one of my development projects I had used that directory to store a website. Now that Leopard has been installed, I can’t write to that directory, and I need to to avoid changing up my development project.

Long story short: To fix this “problem,” you can edit the "auto_master" file in your /etc directory.

Change the line

/home auto_home -nobrowse

to

/your/directory/here auto_home -nobrowse

Reboot and you will have reclaimed your /home directory.