This Is Faux

Oh Wikipedia, you keep me young! I’m looking around the internets today trying to find information on how to set up an SMS gateway to forward SMS messages to a php script and I stumbled across some very cool SMS features I didn’t know about. I knew that through T-Mobile I could receive text messages to my phone via an email address, but I had no idea what the email address was (it’s xxxxxxxxxx@tmomail.net). Not only that, but I found out almost every other major service prover has similar functionality!

Just to make things better, you can send email via text message just as easily. For T-Mobile, you simply follow the format and send it to 500

<email@domain.com>/subject/message

You can find all the formats, numbers, etc of other service provers at Wikipedia.

I’ve got a few minutes before I have to be in my LEGL class, so I decided to sit here in Sanford Hall and write a long overdue post on the TiF blog. I buy my Sprite, open up my laptop, and wait for that sweet, free, on-campus wireless to fill up my AirPort bars. Much to my dismay, only the tiny little period at the bottom of the arc is filled, and that’s when I remembered that the wireless signal in Sanford Hall is lacking to say the least.

I figured I would at least get decent wireless sitting in a designated sitting area, so I decided to do a little “snooping.” With so many wireless access points on campus, my computer doesn’t always seem to automatically choose the best one, so I have to do a little work myself. I use a program called KisMAC for all of my scanning. It has a lot of features, but really the only one I use is scan and then join the network with the best average strength.

KisMAC before any scanning

Open up KisMAC and you’ll see an empty box ready to be filled with potential wireless connections. Click start scan and let it do it’s thing. It will immediately start sniffing around for all of the available wireless connections, secured or not.

KisMAC filled

After scanning you should get a nice little assortment of connections to choose from. Because all of these are nice and available to me as a student, I want to click “Average Strength” to sort them based on the strongest signal. I then just “Connect to Network” and voila! I’m using the best possible wireless connection available to me.

Since I started this blog I’ve been using the default WordPress theme, which, as beautiful as it is, didn’t match the rest of my site at all. Since I had finally gotten around to coming up with a decent site design, I decided to make a design that at least kind of matched the site itself.

Just to make sure credit is given where it is due, the design of the blog is based very closely on the original default theme based on Kubrick. If you’re a nerd and looked at the source code of the site itself you’d see that the Twitter logo I used belongs to the Litho system of icons from the Icon Factory.

So, recently I’ve gotten very attached to a certain TV show. So attached in fact, that I decided I wanted to keep it on my external harddrive. That way, when my roommate and I part ways for the summer, which is merely 2 finals away (I should be studying), I can still watch Ryan and Marissa play their love games over and over again…I mean, watch episodes of Man Vs. Wild over and over again…

As I sat down to start ripping, I realized that I had never ripped anything other than a full length movie before. How exactly am I supposed to rip the DVD into individual files of the episodes instead of one file with them all? So, I played around with HandBrake for a while and figured I would write a very simple tutorial up for anyone else that was interested.

First, of course, you want to click Source and select the VIDEO_TS folder of the DVD. Once that’s open, you’ll find that the DVD is split up into the various titles. The longest one is the title you choose when you select “Play All.” In the case of a TV series, that’s not the one you want.

As you can see in the screenshot, we want the four titles that are 43 minutes long. Looks like I mislabeled the series though, that’s supposed to say The Sopranos. Once you’ve selected the title you want, give it a name. I go with the SHOW_SXEY file names, with X being the season number and Y being the episode number. Once you have the name selected, click “Add to Queue” and continue on to the next title. Do this for all the episodes on the cd.

When you get done, your Queue should look very similar to mine. Set your video settings to your personal preferences, click “Start Queue,” and enjoy!

Yesterday I logged into Facebook like normal and noticed a new popup window at the bottom talking about a new Facebook IM service. So I think to myself, “fabulous, another journey of epic failure into the instant messaging world.” Actually, and I was completely surprised by this, I kind of liked it. It looks decent, although features are severely limited. I would like to see more of the Google Talk features such as having the windows “pop up” and be their own seperate windows, but for what it is, it’s great. It’s wonderful if you just want to have a quick chat with a friend that’s online at the time, but it will never be the next AIM…or am I the only one that still uses that?

I’m currently waiting for friends to get out of class so we can go eat in one of the dining halls. I’m starving and need to get my mind off of it.

The question I’ve been hearing the most in class lately is, “What program is that?” Not that I’m using my computer in class for anything but taking notes of course…but sometimes for some reason they just…pop up? Anyway, here’s a list of the five (Mac) applications I use the most on a daily basis.

1. Vienna - If there is one application I wear out, this is it. It’s the best RSS reader I’ve ever used. How good? When I started using it, I didn’t read any blogs, but it was so easy to use and pretty looking to boot that it actually made me want to pick a bunch of blogs to follow. I open this app so much that it is constantly the center app in Sapiens, which brings me to number two.
2. Sapiens - I’m a little OCD when it comes to my desktop looking clean, so I hate having a cluttered dock. But what about all of the other software I use? A few twirls of the mouse, and those pop up too thanks to Sapiens. You access Sapiens by tracing a few circles with your mouse. Once it pops up, it has the software you use the most right there. The longer you use it, the smarter it gets as to what applications you want when, so go ahead and download it and start using it. At first the circle thing was annoying because I kept accidentally opening it, but I think that’s just because I thought it was cool at first and got in the habit of doing it.
3. Journler - I use this software for everything when it comes to writing. I try to use it as an actual Journal, but I barely ever write in that. I use it for writing all of my lyrics and stories really. A great feature is that while writing a song, if I want to do a quick and dirty recording so I’ll remember it later, I can just record right from Journler and it will attach it to that entry!
4. Candybar - Ever since I’ve had my own computer I’ve been all about some customization. Immediately after I built my own Windows machine I downloaded WindowBlinds for the aesthetics, and soon after went so far as to completely change my shell with LiteStep. When I bought a MacBook Pro to take to college, I hated the fact that I pretty much had zero customization options for my GUI. Granted, if you’re not using Leopard yet there’s WindowShade, but I am a Leopard user so I’m out of luck. CandyBar won’t let me change the appearance of windows and such, but lets me completely customize the dock and all of my icons.
5. Firefox (3)- I debated whether it was silly to put this on the list, but I decided since I still get asked about it enough to this day I would. I used Firefox even when it didn’t look like it belonged in OS X, but now that it fits with everything else it’s that much more beautiful. I tried to like Safari, I really did, but all I use it for now is to grab the occasional “web clip” for my dashboard.

Some of the applications are pay-to-play, but if they are they have a demo of some sort. I’ll get around to registering Sapiens one day…

This is a random post, and the first in quite some time, but today I stumbled on something very interesting while browsing Neatorama today. Take Me Back is a web series that’s actually good. I’ve seen them before, but in every other case they’ve seemed cheesy and low-budget, certainly not something I’d consistently follow. This show, however, actually got added to my home page script that directs me to certain sites on different days. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday used to take me first to Ctrl+Alt+Del, my favorite webcomic, but now Monday has been usurped by TMB. So far they’ve released two episodes, with a new one coming out every monday. Seriously, check it out.

So I know there have already been three posts on this but….err….on a side note, I thought Revolution Money Exchange’s special offer ended 3/31, but it turns out it is (or has been extended to) 5/18. Therefore, if you want to sign up AND support me by giving me the $10 referral, you can either leave your email in a comment or click on the button below.

I guess I feel compelled to start bloging today out of sheer boredom. I’m exhausted from the weekend and all of the high school kids have school tomorrow. Anyway, the weekend was definitely eventful. Friday we headed down to Savannah for the St. Patrick’s day celebration. I had barely gotten the car put back together when Matt arrived at my dorm on Friday ready to go. So we hopped in the car, picked up John Nelson and drove on down.Upon arrival, we picked up Thomas from a sketchy mall and made our way downtown. I must admit, it was pretty fun. Theres something great about just being a general college asshat, driving through a city while your friends yell at people, decked out in green, stumbling down the sidewalk. I guess there aren’t really many exciting details of this trip though, other than I got hit on by some drunk 24 year old woman and we saw a black dude get arrested by a horse cop. Anyway, the rest of the weekend was spent working on Matt’s car(which sucked) so that’s in no way blogworthy.

Random side thought:

While eating dinner with my parents today I was thinking about how awesome it would be if everything I wanted instantly happened. I looked at a peperoncini on moms plate and wanted it. Strangely, she offered it to me. Needless to say, that was the only event of that kinda that took place today.

_david

So just a little update on the Revolution Money Exchange website: I have the  funds transferred safely into my bank account. I must admit, until I actually got the money I was a little skeptical, but everything is complete and I’m $35 better for it.

Once again, if you’d like to sign up, help a guy out and let me refer you! Post your email in the comments and I’ll send you a referral!

I’m pretty much a sucker for free money any day of the week, but when a site asks me for things like my SSN it usually sends me packing. I’ve tried a few sites for the free money thing, namely sendearnings.com, which turned out to be a sham. Not a sham because they don’t pay, but really because you have to make $30 before they’ll send you a check, which one learns quickly, would take forever regardless of the $5 sign-up bonus. Every “paid email” shells out about a penny, and many of the paid surveys allow you to spend 15 minutes taking the whole thing and then tell you you’re the wrong demographic at the very end. Infuriating.

So with this in mind, I hear about Revolution Money Exchange, a service targeting facebook users, etc that want to send money to each other. This service is shelling out $25 to everyone that signs up, with an additional $10 going to every referral. This certainly seemed too good to be true, so I did a little research. I find out there are supposedly some big hitters on the board and that this is really a front to try to garner potential users for the Revolution Card. With this in mind I begin the sign-up process, but stop dead in my tracks when I see a “Social Security Number” box. Time for more research before I put that kind of information anywhere. The San Francisco Business Times put my mind to ease the most with this article, but articles like this certainly helped.

I would suggest reading those links for your own edification, but long story short, the site is actually legit and its credit card seems really interesting and innovative. I’m not going to lie, I wanted this to be real and useful so bad because I seriously hate PayPal after they jacked $430 from me without warning. Regardless, I have an account, so if you’d be so kind as to post your email in the comments I’ll send you a referral email so we both win! I’m waiting for my bank account to clear, but I’ll post as soon as that happens.