Sep 10

Domain expiration monitoring

Category: Uncategorized

why

I want to keep an eye on domains and their expiration dates without signaling that, avoiding middlemen who would like a signal of interest, to front run the purchase, and auction it off.

This is, to me, surprisingly hard to do.

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May 3

Updating an Apple Watch that couldn’t see the Internet

Category: Uncategorized

what

Trying to pair an Apple Watch to a phone, an update was required; upon requesting it, the Apple Watch (through the iPhone) would cancel, reporting:

Unable to check for update, not connected to the Internet

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May 3

Posting notes

Category: Uncategorized

I’ve long braindumped notes into a specific app, which has issues with, say, command line details and links; smart quotes can lead to really unpleasant surprises and breakage, for example. I’ve been spreading notes across other apps and locations, and it’s tripping me up when I reach for notes.

So, I might post some of my notes to my blog. They might be helpful to other people. Just having them tagged here might make them easier for me to find.

(to do: switch themes to one that displays tags)

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Jan 2

Hourly Dong, from Glass Onion

Category: Uncategorized

about

In the movie “Glass Onion”, there’s a recurring background chime: every hour, a resounding “dong!” with some chimes. Turning this into a ringtone sounded like fun.

what

Here’s the playable mp3 (I didn’t make the mp3, see below for the source):

And here’s the m4r version, usable as a ringtone on iPhones. It’s an aac / mp4 (audio-only) file.

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Feb 4

Afterlife Wingdings

Category: Uncategorized

Edit, 2019-02-05: WhatTheFont was able to recognize the decoder ring! It’s Deniart Alchemy B – see also MyFonts and Linotype. Alchemy C looks like the fuzzy text on Shawn’s computer screen; some decoding matches some Latin lorem ipsum text, though that’s not done yet.

I’m a fan of the TV show, “The Good Place.” The makers of it are fond of easter eggs, and some weird fonts made an appearance. Some folks on Reddit decoded them; I thought I’d make a font out of it. I made a quick lofi draft with iFontMaker on an iPad Pro and an Apple Pencil.

I present: Afterlife Wingdings v 0.1, as a Truetype font (15k).

Currently missing: Q, Z, q.

Decoding:

Edit, 2019-02-09: From a behind-the-scenes video, there’s the door to Heaven (about 1:31 in), in Alchemy A:

Shari
Cort
IHOP
Adam
Zdcks

Before that, a sign (around 1:16 in):

Adam is the land of the
small and the mighty
ill powerful bageljohn-
nys should be on the
look out for wonder?
ful cruises

Zacks Is a land of slugs
and waterfalls slugs
love waterfalls so
that should be a sur-
prIse I mean really
comone

IHOP be careful what
you touch In thIs mIs-
tIcal realm of danger
and IntrIgue ???
dont eat an???
fInd on the ???

s03e01, “Everything is Bonzer!”

Shawn’s computer earlier in the season used Alchemy C, blurred (see the podcast, around 1:14 in):

aspernitur aut odit out fugit, sed q…

equuntur magni dolores eos qoi r…

voluptatem sequi nesciunt.

Neque porro quisquam est, qui dol …

ipsum quia dolor sit amet,. e porro


consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non

re et dolore magnam aliquam qu

“Neque porro quisquam” led me to a page about lorem ipsum’s origin, and I think the translation kinda defends me spending time on translating this.

s04e04, “Tinker, Tailor, Demon, Spy”

The tub of Glenn did have “1 GLENN” in Afterlife Wingdings.

s04e12, “Patty”

Around 7 minutes in, the contract that Michael signs:

… ed and eIght shall In any Manner affect the
… the fIrst ArtIcle[;?] and that no
…prI … of Its equal Suffrage In the Senate

[Michael’s signature]
New Leader of the Good Place

The first part was identified on Reddit, as being part of the Constitution.

I’d thought there was a glimpse, when Eleanor was looking over the green folders, but on rewatch from Hulu, I don’t see it.

Resources:

  • DenaPhoenix on Reddit decoded the Wanted poster on the bulletin board (s03e09, Janet(s)).
  • kodiakuma on Reddit decoded the other notes on the bulletin board.
  • Lixa123 on Reddit decoded the first page of the subject transcript (s03e12, Pandemonium).
  • carrythenine on Reddit decoded the second page of the subject transcript, and noted there could be another language to work on.
  • TV/AV Club mentioned “afterlife Wingdings,” and I thought, “ooh, that’s a good font name.”
  • A Day in the Life on Set – The Good Place is behind-the-scenes video with closeups of the door to Heaven, and an IHOP sign.
  • The Good Place Podcast – Season 3 Premiere with Jameela Jamil & Jen Statsky
  • The Metafilter discussion of season 3 finale, Pandemonium, pointed to the previous work from Reddit.
  • TuvalPollack on Reddit covered some new territory, with images:
    • s02e09, “Best Self,” hot air balloon instructions – lorem ipsum, and some other text, not covered
    • s03e01, “Everything is Bonzer,” a closeup of Michael’s papers: “Lorem upsu” and (not mentioned) “1584354e”
    • s03e09, “Janets (part 2)”, various places
    • s03e10, “The Book of Dougs,” (not decoded) “MUYDHS”
    • “The Selection” webisodes – the menu says “JJ’s Coffe Shop MENU”, a Parks and Rec reference
    • s04e05, “Employee of the Bearimy,” the are signs for the prisoners
    • s04e08, “The Funeral to End All Funerals,” the files for the people still on Earth and a little more
    • (huh, extra bullet)

I’d love to know if you do anything fun with this!

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Aug 17

Server on fire

Category: Uncategorized

Note: I’m in the midst of a web developer bootcamp. I feel like writing this up to help others, but I’m going to show the sausage getting made, because (1) I’m not sure I’d cover everything, and having all the details might help others in this position, and (2) I don’t have the time to make it more concise.

As background: I run a few websites, some for myself, and some for other people. When the sites for other people break, I pay more attention. And when I check the traffic to see what’s being requested, and the most frequent is a page for suicide and depression prevention resources, right after Robin Williams’ taking his own life, when the resources could be timely and helpful, well, that really lit a fire under me. Some sysadmin geekery ensued…

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May 7

Arcanum’s Sidhe-Gaelic language

Category: Uncategorized

Arcanum’s a new webcomic (over at Thrillbent) written by John Rogers, of Leverage (from TV) and Blue Beetle (from comic books, and previously touched on here) fame. Arcanum’s sort of “24,” fighting the sinister and secret return of magic to the world. There’s “an alien language” called “Sidhe-Gaelic” therein, which is basically a dingbats font, which can be easily decoded, given enough text. Today’s issue 6 offered enough text to decode, so I took a shot at it.

What was encoded? Spoilers follow.

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Feb 18

Ebook Index of Free Ebooks for the Kindle

Category: Uncategorized

Here’s the backstory: My parents got a Kindle for Christmas, and I’ve looked into ways for them to read public domain books on it, and the interfaces for browsing for books and transferring them are non-optimal. First, I tried emailing books to the Kindle, which worked for me, but it was too complicated for my parents.

Then I found the Magic Catalog, an ebook index of Project Gutenberg books, linked up so that you can immediately download books and add them to your Kindle, without using a computer or Amazon. It’s in a useless order, though – it’s not sorted by the book title, or by author.

So I thought I’d fix that. Here’s the prototype, sorted by the author’s last name!

This is my first ebook, so please forgive the rough edges.

Update, 2013-02-20: I made major revisions, to the formatting and to the data. The authors’ names were mangled in spots.

Update, 2013-03-07:

  • New list: Popular ebook downloads from the past month.
  • Titles are sorted properly, ignoring stop words like a, an, and the.
  • I removed most long subtitles. This removed about a third of the pagecount.
  • There’s cover art again.
  • Renamed the local file, removing a problematic apostrophe.

Update, 2013-03-13:

  • adding navigation help – by the first two letters of authors’ last names, and for unspecified authors, the first letter of the book title
  • added the latest books from Project Gutenberg
  • I made an EPUB version, for readers without Kindles
  • some fixes – some special characters, and some missing “illustrated version” labels

Update, 2013-03-18 – Fixed the EPUB version.

4 comments

Jun 11

Afro Circus

Category: Uncategorized

So there’s a moment in the Madagascar 3 trailer that Marty the Zebra, voiced by Chris Rock, breaks into a hilarious and catchy song, about an Afro circus and polka dots, and someone was kind enough to loop it, for 10 minutes. I noticed a slight pause in the loop, which quickly drove me nuts! Here’s my attempt, as an mp3 and an iPhone ringtone.
Let’s try looping this:

Edit: It works! The ringtone works fine – though my roommate hates it – and the loop has a pause but it’s otherwise good.

Another edit: For more details, see Know Your Meme.

2 comments

Oct 23

Server push animation

Category: Uncategorized

This came up because of Jason Scott’s posting hundreds of “Under Construction” animated gifs (warning! that can crash your browser!), derived from Archiveteam’s attempt to backup Geocities before it closes.

Seeing that page led twoleftfeet on Metafilter to reminisce about creating the first “Under Construction” animated gifs, mentioning the earlier, clunkier “server push animations.”

A thread on Hacker News centered on that story. Scriptor asked “server push animations? How were those done?” And I dug up some information – including an implementation – & posted it there.

I’ve been curious about what it would do on current browsers, so. I took the Perl script, hit the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine for some canonical test images, & put them together to make:

This is a server push animation. It surprised me that it worked in Firefox & Mobile Safari.

I can’t say that this is terribly useful, except for historical interest. Each frame of animation is sent as a separate picture, so, for example, a loop would require an ongoing connection.

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