condescension.net » Nerdy

Greasemonkey Script for Joystiq.com

Mike Corey — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 06:32:07 +0000

Just a quick update. I wrote a greasemonkey script to remove ads from joystiq.com. Its very static, but it gets the job done. The script can be found on greasespot.

Piss off Roadrunner

Mike Corey — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 06:03:53 +0000

Roadrunner just began resolving bad DNS queries to a search page. Absolutely stupid as this breaks the whole state machine of the internet. request some ridiculous domain that doesnt exist like “bestbuy.co” and instead of getting a DNS server error the server name will resolve to 24.28.199.152. This in fact is a roadrunner webserver which will in fact return a 200 response from the webserver. absolutely ridiculous. So now a site that doesn’t exist suddenly has a server with the page you requested.

As if breaking the state machine for web browsing wasn’t enough, whats at the top of the results? SPONSORED results. I’m sorry but piss off roadrunner. I pay enough for your flaky service to not have to deal with you trying to sell me shit at the drop of a misplaced “m”

UPDATE:
DSL reports noticed this also. Check them out for some additional details.
http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/90502

Facebook Beacon: Perfect for self-centered pricks.

Mike Corey — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 15:42:20 +0000

Facebook Beacon is a new effort announced by Facebook to allow users to share their buying preferences. A few lines of javascript allows a website to post to facebook what items you purchased, games you played, movies you saw etc. Hell attach the three lines of code to your toilet so you can alert your emo friends when you drop a deuce.

Seriously, are we that vain of a country that we need to tell everyone in the world we bought a DVD. I don’t care who you are I don’t give a toss if you bought friends volume 1 on DVD on overstock.com. If you think everyone does, you’re an ass.

Zune 2: Bigger Faster Stronger

Mike Corey — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 01:09:57 +0000

Simply put the new version of the Zune software is amazing. Microsoft took all the suck out of the last version and released something that rivals iTunes. Its podcast support is awesome now. Simple and to the point with an excellent browsing interface. The social actually is social now. Please note the new zune social card under my xbox live gamercard. Wow so sweet. Thanks zunenuze for the code to embed the zune social card. Most important update though. Wireless sync.

Steam = Everything wrong with DRM

Mike Corey — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 23:20:15 +0000

Oh well I do beg your pardon Steam. How absurd of me to attempt to play a game I purchased. Please accept my apology for bothering you while you were doing other, much more important things. I’ll try back later when its more convenient for you.

Why Java applets are obsolete.

Mike Corey — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 20:27:12 +0000

Recently I took a test where I had to write a Java Applet. I realized something while I was writing it. Java Applets are obsolete and deprecated. Anything they can do, faster newer technologies can do better. Lets look at the two main purposes of a Java Applet: animation and robust GUI development.

In terms of animation Applets fall short… way short. Writing a program to animate something is as painful as drawing a picture with LOGO. Applets lack the ability to draw and animate as effectively as alternatives like flash and silverlight. Flash gives the user simple easy ways to import media or draw vector (or raster) images and animate them using keyframes. Need advanced animation or programatic animation? Flash actionscript has you covered. It can animate as well as provide an event driven program.

Java Applets however have none of this. Each frame must be drawn programatically and requires a blanking in between. While this isn’t a huge inconvenience it shows Java applets are not intended to be powerful animation tools.

Additionally Java applets are supposed to provide a robust GUI experience. In actuality Java applets provide for a clunky slow loading experience frequently resulting in a large ominous gray box in the center of a browser.

When Java originated (early 90’s) applets were a very powerful tool allowing for robust GUI development. Java applets were leaps and bounds ahead of any early version HTML controls. This utility however diminished as HTML became less of a presentation markup and more of an interaction markup. My realization that java applets are obsolete was concreted by AJAX, asynchronous Javascript and XML. This technology fixed the primary problem still plaguing HTML: The HTTP protocol.

Historically Web pages have always functioned with a query and a response. forms simply alter parameters in the query. What this caused was any time any server interaction occured, the web page needed a total page reload. This greatly diminishes a HTMLs ability for GUIs as any updates required completely reloading the page. AJAX changed this.

AJAX allows for partial page refreshes. That is a portion of the page can be reloaded through javascript and xml calls resulting in faster more robust GUIs being developed using a STANDARD HTTP connection appropriate for in browser use.

Calling them completely obsolete is unfair though. Java applets do have a purpose, just not in browser. Java applets can be a powerful visualization tool of data as well an excellent GUI for showing off a proof of concept. In fact things like Java Web Start have done an excellent job of rejuvenating applets by breaking them out of the browser and executing them in their own window where they belong.

XBOX 360 Towel Trick

Mike Corey — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 02:58:26 +0000

So it happened. My XBOX 360 red ringed. Right when I put BioShock in. So after panicking for a few I decided to try something. I placed the busted xbox in two towels and turned it on for about 15 minutes. After it heated up to something hot I turned it off and let it cool. Turned it on and ZOMG it worked. I was more surprised than those guys from the David Blane Street Magic videos. What the EFF!

How to find your old host

Mike Corey — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 03:25:01 +0000

I came across an issue today. After changing hosts, I decided that I wanted to recover my data from my old host. A problem of course arises that the dns entry for condescension.net has changed from my old host to the new one. So FTPing into my host accesses GoDaddy instead of TotalChoice hosting. After multiple failed attempts to get tech support to tell me how to access my old site, I decided to take matters into my own hands.

On Windows, to do a DNS lookup one can use a tool called nslookup. Normally when you nslookup a page it uses the DNS server you (or your ISP) provided in your network settings. However, if we execute nslookup without any arguments we arrive at a prompt. Within this prompt we can set the DNS server we want to query. I was able to remember that the dns servers for TotalChoice hosting are dns[N].totalchoicehosting.com. With this information we can use the following comman to set the query server:

server dns3.totalchoicehosting.com

With the server specified we can then ask it for the ip it knows my site to be:

name condescension.net

Success! The correct IP is returned. From there I’m able to ftp into that IP and download all the old crap on my site.