theootz

Your complaint was super effective! CRTC is still crap though, and so is traffic shaping.

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 18:34:40 -0500

Woah…WOAH. Ok so, a few weeks ago (on a whim really, and upset that after paying for hotfile premium I still got shit speeds) I sent out a complaint to the CRTC stating that bell throttles websites that are not listed in their traffic management protocols/documentation online (which is essentially not allowed). I finally got a response today :o

They stated that they stick by the reasoning that their traffic management hardware/software can sometimes falsely identify traffic from sources as being P2P traffic even though it isn’t. This can result in some traffic being throttled even when it shouldn’t be. Specifically:

As the Company has consistently stated, it does not intentionally shape any non-P2P file-sharing traffic as part of its network management practices and, as such, there are no websites that the Company “targets” for traffic shaping. However, as the Company has stated in the past, the deployment of any network technology such as technical ITMPs may have some unintended consequences and the Company encourages its customers to bring such unintended consequences to its attention in order to resolve them.

BUT, they’ve done extensive testing with some of the specific sites I mentioned to them and were able to replicate the issue. Specifically hotfile.com, using both free and premium accounts.

As a result of the complaint letter, the Company has performed various tests in an attempt to recreate the reported problem. As accurately indicated in the complaint letter, www.hotfile.com is a storage type of site that leverages http (web) direct downloading mechanisms for the sharing of files. The site offers two types of access, a free access and a premium (paid for subscription) access. Whereas the free access has limitations in terms of the number of concurrent downloads as well as throughput/speed that can be reduced if the site www.hotfile.com is congested, the premium service is not limited in concurrent downloads or throughput/speed as a result of congestion at the site itself.

So they admit something is messed up for ‘some’ of the traffic. But the interesting part is they’ve claimed to already be rolling out a solution :o I’m wondering if this is the result of many complaints, or specifically this one, but still interesting. In the following quote, DPI is Deep Packet Inspection devices. And to give context, my original complaint was sent to them on the 19th of October, so it definitely gave them time to react to it.

In order to address the issue of inadvertent shaping of www.hotfile.com traffic, there was a requirement to update the signatures used in the various DPI platforms used by the Company. A solution was implemented for the vast majority of the Company’s DPI devices on 2 November 2010 and a second solution for the remaining DPI devices will be implemented by 30 November 2010. As such, www.hotfile.com traffic should no longer be shaped during peak hours after the 30 November 2010.

So it looks like ISPs don’t want to mess with whatever the CRTC deems they should be doing, once it’s been established. The issue is the CRTC giving in so much to ISPs when they lobby for change. UGH.

Also DPI devices freak me out. EVERY packet that leaves from your computer to go to anywhere else, encrypted or not, is inspected by these machines. They look at the actual CONTENTS of the packets to determine what type of traffic they are. It’s like having a packet sniffer constantly monitoring your connection -.-

So what else does the CRTC have planned for our internet? Why, more control for the ISPs and government of course and screwing us over! YAY……..

Currently we’ve got this wonderful issue with FURTHER tracking of what you do on the internet. And just for kicks, lets give the ISPs even MORE control over how much they can limit our bandwidth. Unlimited internet? NOPE. Rogers already doesn’t allow this, and bell charges an extra $30/month for unlimited bandwidth on their current packages. Think of our cell phone plans. $30/month for a measly 1 or 2gb or whatever the hell it is that they offer. And then charging a RIDICULOUS amount of money per additional MEGABYTE. Now imagine that happening to your internet connection on the desktop too. Hell you’re probably already in that position. Imagine it being worse. Ugh…

*edit*
Thought it might be useful to include my original complaint sent to the CRTC as well. If nothing else, could serve as a template for throttling for other sites and such. If they’re gonna throttle P2P traffic then they damned well stick to nothing but that only.

If you want to try and get throttling changed at all…then complain to the CRTC, your local government officials, whatever. Hell, complain to every government official you can get the contact info for even :P

This complaint is in regard to Bell Internet Services and their Internet Traffic Management Practices.

In January and February 2010, the CRTC followed up with several Canadian ISPs in order to ensure consumers have access to the information they need to make informed choices about the Internet services they purchase. Specifically, the Commission required that several ISPs more prominently display information about their ITMPs on their websites, marketing materials, and terms of service.

This is currently NOT the case with Bell’s Internet Services! Bell has decided to throttle (i.e. lower the bandwidth) on websites beyond only P2P (peer to peer) traffic as stated on their “Network Management” web page http://internet.bell.ca/index.cfm?language=en&method=content.view&content_id=12119

An example of these websites includes HOTFILE.COM.

This is a well known issue amongst it’s customers, but such practices are not at all mentioned on any of their websites, marketing materials, terms of service or acceptable use policies.

Their terms of service http://internet.bell.ca/index.cfm?method=content.view&category_id=550&content_id=11013 has several locations in which they mention the quality and speed of service one should expect:

1) Section 6: “Service” in this case refers to the internet service I have chosen from their available plans. There is no mention of the service being affected by using a particular website here.

2) Section 12: Here, they explain how they are not responsible for bottlenecks somewhere along the connection between my local system and a remote system. However this is a well known issue that affects all its customers, and ONLY their customers. Customers on competing ISPs (such as Rogers) have no such issues with the mentioned website. Also, the speeds obtained and the times for which the speeds are at a lower rate correspond to their P2P traffic management practices.

Further down the Terms of Service page is their Acceptable Use Policy. There is one section in particular which seems relevant:

1) Under the GENERAL heading, it lists actions which are prohibited from being committed while using their Service. In particular, “Restricting or inhibiting any other user from using or enjoying the Internet, impairing the operations or efficiency of the Service or creating an unusually large burden on our networks, or otherwise generating levels of Internet traffic sufficient to impede other users’ ability to transmit or receive information.”

This may be a viable reason for restricting the internet connection speed of a single individual. However, this is not the case. Connection speeds to the web services and web sites I have mentioned are throttled for everyone, regardless of how much bandwidth they use or otherwise.

It is important to note that HOTFILE.COM is not a P2P service. It is a direct download over HTTP, using standard ports. It should not be throttled according to their own practices. Also, having a premium account with the HOTFILE.COM service does not matter - Bell is actively throttling the connection to this website as a whole.

I believe Bell should be required to specify which websites it throttles on their Network Management website in order to allow customers to make truly informed decisions.

Links:
1) http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r24012235-Hotfile-IS-throttled. This page shows screen captures comparing other direct download services and their speeds, with speeds from HOTFILE.com while using a Bell internet service connection. The speeds achieved are at most 256kbit/s - in line with their P2P traffic management practices.

2) http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r24729541-So-Hotfile-is-throttled-During-What-Times Customers have found that the times correspond to the times used for their P2P traffic management practices.

Original Article

An experiment in 3D Max :o

Fri, 08 Oct 2010 23:49:05 -0400

Messing around in 3d max…haven’t used it in so long :o (see image to right, and video at end)

[caption id=”attachment_3800” align=”alignright” width=”300” caption=”Click to view full image”][/caption]

Just an experiment in some things. For the image:

Texturing
- This failed :/ I wanted to try to make the tree look as realistic as possible. Unfortunately, the texture I used was too low of a resolution and I couldn’t get the bump map to work out the way I wanted. Also, I couldn’t figure out how to properly texture the vines. UGH
Lighting
- I think this turned out ok :) I wanted to make the tree blend in with the background. I should have changed the angle of the lighting a bit but it’s not bad I think. Also messing around with HDRI maps, and global illumination.
Modeling
- Modeling of the tree, and the vines. Mostly trying to get micro-triangle modeling to work…worked out decently for the vines - couldn’t get it to work at all for the tree :(
Compositing
- Getting the tree to blend in with the background and not look out of place. Pretty much failed here too lol

[caption id=”attachment_3810” align=”alignright” width=”300” caption=”This is what the image looked like before I edited it in photoshop…”][/caption]

The video was just to see how it the global illumination would hold up in an animation. Some methods end up producing a lot of weird artifacts once you start trying to animate and such. I still have to try to build a scene and move things around inside of it instead of just the camera and see how that turns out. I also did a small bit of post processing on the video - added some film grain, color correcting, and other little things here and there. Since I rendered the video at a very odd resolution, Youtube decided to sample it down to an even lower res. Meh. The video download probably looks a bit better.

Video: Download

[youtube width=”640” height=”480”]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGuwWA_XyHg[/youtube]

[dataset id=11]

Original Article

Swan-dive into Android development!

Sun, 05 Sep 2010 22:52:36 -0400

I’ve decided to take a crack at developing my own android game. I figure, since I’m getting an android phone soon (hopefully…come on Rogers! I want my Samsung Captivate!) I should learn how to develop things for it :o I’m going to use this post to walk you through what I did and what I’ve learned while doing it to hopefully save someone out there some headache.

[toc=”1,2,3,4” title=”Table of contents”]

So first thing’s first, I’m not going to dive in straight to a game. Nope. We have to create a hello, world app first! At this point I’ve already installed the Android SDK and Eclipse, along with the ADT plugin and a virtual device (run: android create avd —target 2 —name my_avd or use the SDK Setup.exe program included in the Android SDK). I really have no idea when I did this, but I found the folders all ready and configured on my system :) Hurray past me! There’s lots of documentation on how to set this all up, and it’s relatively straight-forward so I’m not going to go through it all here. Follow the links if you’re having trouble. I’m also going to assume you have at least basic experience working with the Eclipse IDE and know enough Java to follow along.

Hello, World!

Note: A lot of this section is taken from the Hello, World tutorial found on the android website as that’s what I followed myself.

Create Project

[caption id=”attachment_3746” align=”alignleft” width=”193” caption=”Settings for creating the Hello, World Android Project”][/caption]

Begin by creating a new Android project in Eclipse. Press CTRL+N (or File -> New -> Other from the menu) and choose Android -> Android Project. Give your project a name, and choose a Build Target. If none show up, then you must use the Android SDK to download the libraries you wish to use. Personally, I set mine to target Android 2.1-update1 as that’s what a lot of phones currently have (or will have soon) and also what the phone I’m getting will ship with. After that, set your Application Name - this will show to your users in their android phone menu. It can be changed later if you like. The Package Name is what your java classes will live under; I used theootz.helloworld. The Activity is the class that will be created for you by the IDE. An android application is a collection of one or more activities. I just called mine the same as the Application name. Finally, the Min SDK Version tells Android what your application requires to run. If you look at the Build Targets you will see an API Level column. Any of these numbers is valid for the Min SDK Version. But you’d probably want to set it to be the same as what you chose for your Build Target. If you picked Android 2.1-update1, then this is 7. Once all your information is set, you can click Finish.

O, hai dere world!

And now to get to some actual coding. Creating a Hello, World! app in Android is actually pleasantly simple. The IDE will have created a base class for your application to start with, so lets go ahead and open that up. In your project, use the package explorer to browse to src -> your.package.name -> activity_name.java and open it in the editor. The actual path will vary depending on what you chose when you created the project but there’s only one file so it should be easy enough to find :P You’ll get some code that looks similar to the following:

[java highlight=”11”]
package theootz.helloworld;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.Bundle;

public class HelloWorld extends Activity {
/** Called when the activity is first created. */
@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.main);
}
}
[/java]

Now we want to create our View (a drawable object to use in our UI) and set the text to “Hello, World!”. So naturally, we’ll use the TextView object :) Replace line 11 with the following lines of code:

[java gutter=”0”]
TextView tv = new TextView(this);
tv.setText(“Hello, World!”);
setContentView(tv);
[/java]

What we’re doing is creating a TextView object, setting it’s text value, and then telling our application to use this View for our Activity’s UI. You may notice that the TextView class will not get picked up as a valid object by the IDE. This is because we haven’t imported the right package. You can either add the following line:

[java gutter=”0”]import android.widget.TextView;[/java]

Or use Eclipse’s awesome package management to do this for you by pressing Ctrl+Shift+O.

Your final code should look like this and is now ready to run:

[java highlight=”5,13,14,15,16”]
package theootz.helloworld;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.widget.TextView;

public class HelloWorld extends Activity {
/** Called when the activity is first created. */
@Override
public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);

// display our text
TextView tv = new TextView(this);
tv.setText(“Hello, World!”);
setContentView(tv);
}
}
[/java]

[caption id=”attachment_3753” align=”alignright” width=”300” caption=”Hello, World! Running an Android Virtual Device”][/caption]

Go ahead and run the project, and if all goes well the android emulator should start up and begin your application!

OH NOES! “ERROR: unknown virtual device name”

Oh gawd, an error… but it’s only a Hello, World! app what can possibly go wrong?! :(

Not everyone will get this, and if you didn’t then you can go ahead and skip to the next part. If you did, you’re probably on windows :/ Turns out that the Android SDK will look for the Virtual Devices in “%USERPROFILE%.android” but the SDK will create the .android folder in “X:.android” where X is the drive letter you installed to. So this leaves you with two options:

Move the folder to your user profile folder (start -> run -> %USERPROFILE%). The problem with this is, if you create new virtual devices you’ll have to manually move them each time as well.
Create a symbolic link. This is the route I went.

So how do you create a Symbolic Link? Start by opening a command prompt (start -> run -> cmd). Browse to your User Profile folder (something like C:\users\). Then type the following command:

[code light=”1”]
mklink /D .android X:.android
[/code]

Replace X with the drive letter that has your actual .android folder. And that’s it! Run your application from Eclipse again and you should see the Virtual Device pop up with your app :)

What’s Next?

Well, for me it will be creating a first game. If you want to take smaller steps in between then you can read the rest of the Hello, World! tutorial or others on their dev site.

Thoughts

So developing on android, at least on a simple app, seems fairly comparable to creating a Windows Phone 7 app. I think I prefer the MS approach at this point because it uses a lot of systems I’m already accustomed to - i.e. .NET and WPF. Also, I’ve grown to like the .NET development environment (at least in ASP .NET) over the last few months as I’ve been using it at work. It seems to grow on you pretty quickly. Granted, I haven’t created a full out app in either system yet, so hard to say how it will be once I dive a bit deeper.

Buuuuuuuut I will be creating my game soon for Android and will be creating a post as I do to keep track of everything that happens (already started, actually..but its hiding from the world as a Draft). Eventually, I’d like to re-create the same game in the Windows Phone 7 system and see what I like/dislike about each platform. I thought about doing the same with the iPhone but I’m not gonna buy a mac just so I can develop on Jobs’ precious - so forget that. If by some chance I end up buying an iPhone instead of the Galaxy S, then I’ll consider finding a work-around :P (a VM seems most likely solution).

Original Article

Going Ons

Tue, 11 May 2010 20:14:11 -0400

Whew, busy last little while - been a while since my last post!

Since then, I’ve applied to positions for an internship at school and finished my semester. Went through a bunch of interviews and finally accepted a position at ATI (i.e. AMD) which is awesome! I’m not really sure yet if I’m allowed to blog about the things I’ll be working on there but I’ll find out. Would be cool to keep track of the progress I make while there for the next 16 months. Along with that, I’ve bought myself a car to get to and from work - FREEDOM! :)

Elsewhere in my tech-space, I’ve begun familiarizing myself with the ASP.NET framework (in C#) and MsSQL as the project I’m working on at AMD seems to require such. I actually ended up coding a test project for an interview for another company using the framework/database and posted the project (more info below). It’s my first dive into ASP and far from the proper way of doing things, but I’ve already learned quite a bit since then so I think I’m on a good course.

I also won 2nd place in the International Student Design Competition (iSDC 2010) for my group project in CSC318! The conference is being held in Germany and our projects will be presented there soon :) Unfortunately, no one in our group will be able to attend but we’re going to try to get our poster printed out for display there. We’ll probably be listed on the iSDC website too once that’s done. Look for the Grocery Garden project by The Crew :)

Finally, I also got myself hardeepsingh.ca because well, why not? It just points to the same host as theootz.com though.

[dataset id=10]

Original Article

Your site, saved and backed up on the S3 cloud!

Sat, 20 Mar 2010 14:56:02 -0400

I got sick of having to do backups manually and then manually saving them somewhere…then I wondered if it’d be possible to use my S3 service to back up my website? I mean, I’m already using it as a content distribution system but having a full backup of all files + databases would be nice too!

What You Need

You’ll need PHP, bash, CRON access and python to get this working. And given the bash/cron requirements, that also means it assumes you’re running a *nix based server. It’s probably possible to get the requirements down, but I just wanted to get something done quick and it’s what I came up with.

The Files

backup.sh

First up is the bash script (based on this one) that does most of the work. It will tar+gzip all your site files, export your database(s), and remove old backup files (+5 days old) when necessary. You should only really have to edit the top part of the script. Make sure you remember what you set your BACKUP_DIR and FILES_DIR to - you’ll need them in other scripts later on.

[bash]
#!/bin/sh

# EDIT THIS PART —————————
# where all these backup scripts are stored
BACKUP_DIR=/home/theootz/backups

# where you want to keep all the actual backup folders
FILES_DIR=/home/theootz/backups/files

# where all your html files reside
HTML_DIR=/home/theootz/public_html

# your MySQL database name, username and password
SQL_USER1=myusername1
SQL_PASS1=mypass1
SQL_DB1=mydb1

# a second database
# Uncomment these lines if you want to back up a second database.
# Also uncomment the line specified below!
# You can also add more databases and follow the same format.
#SQL_USER2=myusername2
#SQL_PASS2=mypass2
#SQL_DB2=mydb2
# STOP EDITING —————————

THEDATE=`date +%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S`

mkdir -p $BACKUP_DIR/files

mysqldump -u${SQL_USER1} -p${SQL_PASS1} ${SQL_DB1} > ${FILES_DIR}/${THEDATE}_db1backup.sql

# Uncomment the line below if have a second database to back up
#mysqldump -u${SQL_USER2} -p${SQL_PASS2} ${SQL_DB2} > ${FILES_DIR}/${THEDATE}_db2backup.sql

tar -cf ${FILES_DIR}/${THEDATE}_site.tar ${HTML_DIR}
gzip ${FILES_DIR}/${THEDATE}_site.tar

find ${FILES_DIR}/*site* -mtime +5 -exec rm {} \;
find ${FILES_DIR}/*db* -mtime +5 -exec rm {} \;
[/bash]

backup_upload.py

Next is the Python script to upload the files. It uses a PHP library that I’ll give more information on below.

[python]
import sys
import os

########## Make sure these values match the ones you set in your shell script!
BACKUP_DIR = “/home/theootz/backups”
FILES_DIR = “/home/theootz/backups/files”

# this needs to be changed to reflect your settings on your s3 account
S3_BUCKET = “theootz”
S3_FOLDER = “mysite/backups”
##########

j = os.path.join
fname = os.path.basename(sys.argv[1])
cmdstr = j(BACKUP_DIR, “s3.php”) + ” put ” + \
j(FILES_DIR, fname) + ” ” + \
j(S3_BUCKET, j(S3_FOLDER, fname.split(“_”)[-1]))

os.system(cmdstr)
[/python]

PHP S3

The python script uses a PHP library to do all the S3 uploading work. The original is available here.

I had to edit a few paths in the php library to get it to work, so if you want to download my version it’s available here:

[download id=”3”]

Regardless of which one you pick, make sure you open and edit the s3.php file! You’ll need to put your S3 keys in there (near the top of the file). It will look something like this:

[php]
// S3_CONF file
$aws_key = null;
$aws_secret = null;
[/php]

You’ll want to put your access and secret keys there as strings, as follows:

[php]
// S3_CONF file
$aws_key = “my access key here”;
$aws_secret = “my secret key here”;
[/php]

How To Get It All Working?

Ok, so you’ve got the files. Now upload them to your web server to your BACKUP_DIR folder (whatever you choose it as, I picked /home/theootz/backups). Finally, take the files from the the PHP S3 library and put them in your BACKUP_DIR as well. This should leave you with the following files in a single folder:

backup.sh
backup_upload.py
s3sync.php
s3.php
libs3.php
libaws.php

I’m pretty sure most of the files from the S3 library aren’t needed but once again not something I bothered to check.

Now you’ll want to enable execution for all our scripts. You can do this by running the following commands while in your BACKUP_DIR folder:

[bash]
chmod u+x backup.sh
chmod u+x backup_upload.py
chmod u+x s3.php
[/bash]

At this point, you can go ahead and run backup.sh and see if everything worked. If it did, then we can set up the cron jobs to have this all work automatically for us :)

You’ll want to add two entries to cron. The first entry will run our backup.sh on a daily basis for us. This will give us 5 days worth of backups at any one point. The second script will upload our latest backup to the S3 service, replacing whatever is already there.

[text]
1 1 * * * /path/to/BACKUP_DIR/backup.sh
1 1 * * * find /path/to/FILES_DIR/* -mtime 0 -exec python /path/to/BACKUP_DIR/backup_upload.py ‘{}’ \;
[/text]

Make sure you edit the paths to reflect the way you have it configured for your system! For example, my cron jobs look like this:

[text]
0 0 * * * /home/theootz/backups/backup.sh
0 0 * * 0 find /home/theootz/backups/files/* -mtime 0 -exec python /home/theootz/backups/backup_upload.py ‘{}’ \;
[/text]

Done!

And that’s it :) Your website along with databases and other content will now be backed up daily to the server itself, and uploaded to your S3 account weekly. If you wanna be super extra paranoid you can download the backups from the FILES_DIR yourself or use rsync or something similar to automate that as well. One idea is perhaps sending it to your e-mail - use that g-mail space for something right? :P

Hope that’s some help to someone :)

Original Article

Creating a Windows 7 Phone Series application

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 23:42:23 -0400

Yay, long article time!

With the release of the Windows Phone 7 Series (I really really hate that name so I’m gonna just use winmo7) SDK, I decided to give it a shot and see how hard (or even easy?) creating an application on the platform would be.

I should probably mention I have very little experience coding in SilverLight and only dabbled with it a while ago, and I’ve been coding in C# for a good half year or so now but once again not quite that much experience in the language. On top of that, most C# applications I’ve written use Windows Forms and not WPF. I’ve also decided that my first application will be a simple browser for Amazon S3 (considering how much I’ve been fiddling with it recently), of whose API I have zero experience with as well. So from what I can tell, I have quite a learning curve ahead of me :)

I’m not going to go over any problems I have over the IDE, APIs, language, etc… but I’m going to try to focus on the experience of creating an actual application for the platform.

Initial Setup

The download and install of the SDK was relatively painless. It did take quite a while though because I had the beta of Visual Studio 2010 still installed and the SDK requires either the RC or it will install Visual Studio 2010 Express on its own. I didn’t really feel like downloading and installing Visual Studio 2010 again, so I had to uninstall VS2010 along with the .Net 4 beta. After which, the SDK installer downloaded and installed the RC for me. It was kind of annoying how it didn’t really tell me why the beta simply HAD to be uninstalled and I had to search through the depths of their forums to figure it out, but I guess most shouldn’t have this problem.

One thing to remember if you’re using the Express version of VS2010 though, I don’t think it’s possible to have any VCS integration so you’ll have to do it outside the IDE.

My First App

Opening up VS2010, I’m presented with a few nice big buttons on pre-set winmo7 specific projects. You can create a Windows Phone App, a Windows Phone List App (not sure what this is exactly but it’s somehow specific to “list and navigation controls”) and a Windows Phone Library.

I figured I want an application and I’ll code in a simple library for working with S3 inside that.

So I went ahead and choose the first option and it creates a nice looking UI preview for me with the phone chrome and all so I can see exactly how it will look. Not bad. Running the program launches the emulator (which takes quite a while :/) and launches my app which currently does nothing. Good enough of a Hello World for me!

Also of interest, the emulator need only be loaded ONCE. It can then be used for multiple debug/run sessions, very nice considering how long it took to load up!

Designing the S3 Browser

So at this point I need to figure out how I want the program to look and behave. I’ve decided to use this desktop S3 Browser by NetSDK Software as a basis on functionality. At the bare minimum, I’m going to need a way for users to enter in their keys and save them (because typing them in every time on a mobile device will DEFINITELY be annoying). They then need to be able to view buckets, and then be able to explore the contents of each bucket. Perhaps even adding in the ability to upload, download, delete and rename files if possible. Though at this point, I’m not even sure if winmo7 has a concept of a user accessible file system or if it’s abstracted/sandboxed like the iPhone.

[caption id=”attachment_214” align=”alignleft” width=”153” caption=”Login Screen Design”][/caption]

Screens will probably be something akin to:

(1) Login/Key Manager -> (2) Buckets -> (3) Browse

(To the left you can see my first stab at the login screen using the built in controls.)

I’m going to have screen (1) act as a login screen for now, no saving of multiple accounts. That can be added later. Screen (2) will simply list buckets, and then later allow creation/deletion of them as well possibly. And finally screen (3) will list all your files and other functionality to be added later.

The actual design of each screen may be somewhat trivial, but I want the look and feel of application to be as if its a part of the operating system. A quick google search shows that there ARE a set of guidelines so I’m going to have to read them over and figure it out. From what I can tell though, as long as I’m using the Controls that are given to me then most of it should follow the look/feel anyways.

Initial Thoughts

So far, it seems that Microsoft has gone out of their to make it very easy to develop for the platform - leveraging technologies that developers should already be familiar with: Visual Studio, .Net, Expression Blend, SilverLight, etc…

I suspect that the SDK will become better as time goes on. For example, being based on .Net it wouldn’t surprise me if they allow programmers to use languages other than C#. Also from what I’ve been reading, a lot of people have had success porting over their existing SilverLight applications relatively easily and quickly to the new platform.

What’s Next?

Well, I’ve gotta make a library of some sort to connect to S3. I’ve gotta figure out how to use WPF but that shouldn’t be too difficult. Then I’ve gotta get it all working in the emulator. I’ll post updates as I have them, for now my project is available below along with a repository (SVN where it also turns out I managed to misspell theootz as theooz :/) link - feel free to check it out.

[dataset id=7]

Original Article

Speed, projects and features - oh my!

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 13:47:47 -0400

Added a whole bunch of new features to the blog, mostly back end changes but a few new pages too.

There’s the new “Projects” section which is powered by a nice little back-end script to let me easily manage links and data to all the projects I’m working on, or have worked on.

I added a “LifeStream” - based on the same concept that facebook uses to aggregate many social sites into one ‘stream’. Ironically, I disabled facebook from showing up on the stream because it was posting way too much. Though the upside is, it gave me an idea for getting my whole cross-posting idea to work that I’m going to explore later. Originally I was trying to use my blog to push data to all the other services I use, but I figured I could also use facebook to push to my blog and from my blog to the rest of the services. I’d have to work out how I could make my blog still push unique posts to facebook and not push those specific posts but I haven’t really looked at any code yet so I’ll figure it out then.

Next, I finally figured out how to set up my blog as an OpenID provider :) So instead of remembering that convoluted verisign address that I *ALWAYS* forget, I can just use my blog address. Nice and simple.

I’ve added a massive caching system and found another use for my Amazon S3 account! I decided to create a new s3 bucket and linked it to Amazon’s Cloud Front. All media, most javascript, css, etc… is now served from local amazon end points (@ cloud.theootz.com) instead of my hosting provider :) I haven’t tested to see if this has resulted in any real speed improvement, but at least at a glance it seems to help a lot.

And to end it off, I found a wordpress plug-in for managing resume’s that I’m looking at using for posting my CV up on the site. Haven’t fiddled with it much yet but it seems to hold promise. Also another plug-in to find and display ‘related posts’ at the bottom of each post I make. Gotta love wordpress plug-ins :)

Original Article

video+cross post test, second attempt

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 06:26:00 -0400

video+cross post test, second attempt

Da Stank Bank Uploader - progress!

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 01:05:46 -0400

Got a chance to sit down and finally do some more coding for this project which has been neglected for long enough now :/

I managed to add effectively full (for the program’s purposes anyways) youtube support to the program now. So it’ll batch render the mp3s to videos, and then upload all of them to youtube. The user can choose a youtube description for each file or just use the default one, as well as tags, the youtube category (synch’d with their schema), tags, etc…

Next up is figuring out the wordpress API to make posts on there, changing album art and video art per file. I might also decide to change the way it uploads the file to youtube and do it manually instead of using their .net library so I can add a progress bar but that would come after I’ve finished the more necessary features.

Original Article

video+cross posting test

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 13:11:57 -0400

video+cross posting test

Jungle Disk - continued

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 20:01:22 -0500

So turns out Jungle Disk was not the culprit…it instead appears to be — NOD32? WTFARK. Dammit ESET!

Anyways, long story short - un-installing NOD32 and installing Microsoft Security Essentials (which is more than good enough anyways) seems to let me sync things. Jungle Disk is still giving odd errors but I’ll see if I can work through them.

Not ready to ditch Dropbox yet — but it does keep reminding me I’m getting close to running out of space :/

Original Article

Jungle Disk - great idea, but...

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 05:23:33 -0500

…doesn’t really seem to work as advertised. The story starts a few days ago when I realized that my free dropbox account was nearing its full capacity. I contemplated creating a few ghost accounts to get that extra gig or so of free space but figured that eventually I’d end up in the same situation once again. Considering how much I used the cloud storage I decided it may be time to finally put some money into a paid-for service.

Problem with dropbox’s paid service however, was that I was using only 2gb. It seemed like overkill to upgrade to a 50gb account for $10/month. I then remembered from a while back when I was first looking into cloud backup/sync software of one called Jungle Disk. It sounded great - uses Amazon S2 (as does dropbox) but with an open source client that gave you far more controla. Only reason I went with dropbox was because it was free and suited my needs at the time. So, it was time to give Jungle Disk another shot.

The sign up, payment and install processes went without a hitch. I decided to go with the “Jungle Disk Desktop” version, and hey turned out that with the base monthly fee they decided to include 5gb storage too - great! Payment was processed instantly and away I went!

On installing the program, it presents you with a wizard to help you set up your first ‘drive’. I figured I’d just enable all options and go from there - whether that’s a good thing or not I don’t know. To begin with, I wanted to sync my “My Dropbox” folder and if all goes well, I’d start with other folders too maybe - who knows? Yea, never got that far though. I set it to my drop box folder and let it sync over night. Waking up in the morning and expecting it to be complete I instead see several errors complaining it wasn’t able to upload one file or another and failed. It didn’t just skip the file (which from what I can tell, it’s supposed to!) but kept trying that same file over and over again until it finally gave up. So I figured, yea sure first time with the software - maybe it’s conflicting with dropbox already running in the background? So I gave that a close, and tried again. It got to the same file and stopped. No errors this time though (I was only able to check because of the logs I turned on from curiosity). Made changes to files? NEVER updated. I tried viewing what was saved on my disk via the virtual network drive - it only got bits of 2 main folders from about a dozen. Horrible!

Essentially, I’ve spent the last two days fighting with a horrible piece of software. It’s been constantly crashing on me whenever I try to make changes to configuration. And I’ve been making config changes trying to get it to sync successfully, if only just once! But every time it starts syncing, it gets to the same files and goes into an endless loop. Click cancel on the upload for that file? And it crashes! One of the files it was hanging up on was insignificant, so I decided to delete it but sure enough it finds another file to hang on.

I got frustrated to the point where I’ve decided to delete the virtual disk and try starting again. See where that leads me. If it -still- fails then I’ll contact support and see if the money I’m paying is worth it at all. If not, then I guess I’ll find something else. I’ve recently learned of another service called Mozy that seems to offer unlimited backup for around the same price as Jungle Disk’s base price but unlimited hosting of anything always makes me weary - more research would definitely be required. I’ve also been toying around with using Microsoft Mesh but the software is still a bit sluggish and doesn’t always sync properly. It also has no revision history which I’ve found can be VERY helpful!

Anyone else have any experience with Jungle Disk or other online backup/sync solutions? Any recommendations?

Original Article

Extremes (depth/heights) of mars vs earth - would make a pretty...

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 16:33:39 -0500

Extremes (depth/heights) of mars vs earth - would make a pretty cool logo :o

(via dayonedesign)

so crazy :o

Mon, 25 Jan 2010 00:54:56 -0500

so crazy :o

Epic :o

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 00:11:56 -0500

Epic :o

:o

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 15:20:22 -0500

not a bad tshirt indeed :o

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:43:09 -0500

not a bad tshirt indeed :o

Many projects could benefit from this imo

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 01:22:41 -0500

Many projects could benefit from this imo