I started working on a little project we were talking about in my algorithms class, I dubbed the implementation ImageShrink. I don’t really plan on doing any development towards but it creates a really cool visual effect that you should check out. It’s interesting how much information our eyes have to deal with and what gets indicated in our brain as being not the important. Mostly, your brain notices edges, so if you get rid of space that isn’t an edge you don’t hardly notice.

I’m giving a presentation in my E-Commerce class on some security issues with SSL/TLS in its current state. I made a video demo of some attacks that are relatively easy to perform and users tend to know little about: Sidejacking and Man In The Middle attacks (I use ARP poisoning). I’ve attached my slides (with notes as required..) and videos. Sorry if you wanted to look at the PowerPoint and don’t have the new 2007/2008 it repeatedly crashed when I told it to conver to old style. Never would have guessed
Also, I’ve fixed GAMVL to work with YouTube again, I’ll post at least some code for that soon.

The USA elected Obama. I think this could be a great step for us, as a nation that has struggled so much lately, and I think it could drastically improve our world image as well. I’m also really proud of us as a country for showing up to vote in unprecedented numbers. It’s nice to know that perhaps there still is an American spirit and pride.  My only real concern is that expectations have now been set sky high and that if the US fails to turn into Utopia in the next four years, there will be a lot of name calling. I guess we’ll see.

I’m going to study in Australia next semester at University of Melbourne. I’m very excited. For me, a ray of light in these dark economic times is the Australian Dollar has gone from almost exactly $1 to ~$.65, similar effects with the GBP and Euro, so it’s a (relatively) good time to travel. As I said, I’m really excited for the experience, I’ve never been to Australia (or the southern hemisphere for that matter). It will be weird going during our spring semester, because it will be essentially repeating the fall semester.

My parents came down we went apple picking and went to their first college football game in a long time, it was an exciting overtime win for us, UVA vs UNC — they were ranked 18th at the time, but we had an exciting closing stretch to push us in to overtime and win. I went to a family reunion in central PA, near to where my family lives. However, there were Amish people around with horse and buggy, I was quite surprised having gone near here my whole life and had no idea. Apparently, they’ve kind of lived “over the mountain” and just slightly out of touch with where we normally go.

I saw Jay-Z and T.I. in concert. They were really good - I’m not a huge T.I. fan, but it was still a good set. Jay-Z got to remind us all how long he’s been making hits and how many fantastic songs he’s had through his career. I saw him at HFStival a few years ago, but only really briefly because I wasn’t a big fan at the time.

Vista has received a lot of flack for its performance issues, but my computer is more than capable enough to deal with them. The installation went well, it detected my raid setup, so I didn’t have to create a special slipstreamed CD like I did for XP, and everything seemed to be going pretty well.

It generally detected drivers pretty well, automatically installing the network driver which would allow me to virtually install anything it missed and grab updates. However, it did not seem to grab the appropriate driver for my graphics card, a Nvidia 7900GT. I went to Windows Update so it would grab a newer one and other updates that needed installed.

Unfortunately, once it installed the driver all I would see was diagonal lines across the screen completely destroying any chance of understanding what it was really displaying. It was acting like the refresh rate was not what it should be. So, I decide to roll the driver back and try something else. After booting into Safe Mode, I get the driver rolled back, and go back into normal mode to have another stab. I try the latest version of the driver from Nvidia, and get the exact same result.

I begin to search across the internet, there appears to be a solution which is an optional download in Windows Update. I’m thinking “Oh, Ok, well at least the solution isn’t so painful.” I try to install the update. It fails. I look up the generic illogical error code and suggests checking for corrupt system files. I do, it doesn’t find any. I try to install the updates several times over with different combinations of things, and none of it works.

Now I’m not sure how to solve this problem. The suggested solution I’ve found online is to — get this — overclock my video card to make it reliably work, because of some bug in the driver or something? Wow. That’s backwards.

So, I’m not sure what to do with my computer, I guess I’ll be reverting back to XP.

Thumbs Down on Vista.

I’ve spent a lot of time working, this is good because I get money, this is also bad because it is quite time consuming. However, I have had enough time to do some interesting things.

I went to New York last weekend, which was a great trip. The Chinatown bus however is becoming a less pleasant experience. Since gas has gone over $4/gallon, apparently the buses are becoming increasingly swamped which resulted in my friends and I not getting a seat on our originally scheduled bus. The way home on Sunday evening was quite good. There has been a lot of talk of new buses ( www.boltbus.com and www.megabus.com are two of the big ones ) that offer $1 rides or other gimmicks — however this appears to be only if you book signifigantly in advance, which in my mind defeats a large part of the convenience of Chinatown buses which provide cheap ($35 ROUND TRIP DC->NYC) spontaneous tickets.. I’ve attached a picture from the top of the Met, one of the best views of NYC.

So, I’m sure there are many other runners out there who would be disappointed that a treadmill cuts off after a certain time (particularly one runner I recently read about who was attempting to break a treadmill marathon time…), but I have a new found appreciation for the cut off. My treadmill cuts off after 30 minutes, and when you get that thing moving (Around 9 or higher speed), it’ll start sounding quite loud.. It’s somewhere between an econobox trying to drive the hills in San Fransisco and a jet preparing for takeoff, either way it sounds like its trying — almost as hard as I am. After you’ve been running hard on it for awhile and it cuts off at 30 minutes it gives up and cuts off. I realize it is programmed to do this, but it still provides me satisfaction, perhaps more than it should.

Jay-Z and Beyonce got married recently (both are very talented artists) — and I saw an article mentioning that they sang both duets and solos at their wedding.  I really want to know if Jay-Z sang 99 Problems.

Also, I’ve been a growing fan of DC based Wale, I think he’s gonna make it, check him out.  He sounds a lot like Lupe Fiasco. He’s performing at Rock the Bells, which I went to last year but probably am not gonna make it to again this year..

I was interested in waste, and decided to see how well it would work on my Mac using wxWidgets. Answer: not very well.  The source didn’t compile, it ended up needing another import line to compile properly and then when it did the windows wouldn’t focus and allow them to be clicked.  I tried Ubuntu, with the import fixed the program compiled and ran but any operation resulted in a seg fault — not sure what’s going on here but perhaps I’ll try to work on it when I get some time.

I realized the other day that most websites had a major vulnerability in that while sending passwords may be secure they do not secure cookies, therefore allowing the entire network to see the cookie traffic. I tested it out and successfully duplicated one of my own sessions. I went on to realize that this is called Sidejacking and was covered at the Black Hat conference last year.

I have not put much work into any of my projects on this page. I’m looking into acquiring another laptop which I can use exclusively for development and my side projects, hopefully that will surface soon.