Author: todbot

me okay
Posted on

Useful Tools Recap

I just got a new Powerbook and had to re-remember all the bits I need/like:

  • uControl — Capslock -> Ctrl key remapper
    I also use it to remap the ‘enter’ key next to the arrow keys to be a ‘fn’ key, so I can do ‘fn+arrows’ to give me easy pgup,pgdown,home,end.
  • Codetek VirtualDesktop Pro — pager / virtual screen
    Like any good Unix, this functionality should be part of OS X, but oh well. It also supports a hack to sorta give one Sloppy Focus.
  • WindowShade X — Windowshade functionality (window minimizer)
    This was part of MacOS, but left with OS X. Here it is as a third-party app. Sigh.
  • Carbon Copy Cloner — disk backup and cloner
    My backup solution is to clone my Powerbook’s disk to an external disk that I boot from in case of catastrophic disk failure.
  • MenuMeters — menubar stats
    Gives you little graphs of CPU, net, disk, etc.
  • PDF Browser Plugin — view PDFs and .ps files in the browser
  • Adium — multi-protocol IM client
    Adium is based off of libGaim, and supports tabs.
  • Mozilla Firefox — Kick-ass fast browser
    Sort of obvious, yeah, but Firefox still beats out Safari in terms of dealing with all the crazy pages out there
    (especially forms-based broken-ness)
  • Fink — Unix program package manager
    Fink can give you all the crap you can get on RedHat, if you want it.
    Things I use:

    • gnuplot
    • ncftp(get)
    • nmap
    • mtr
    • unrar
    • wget

    All my other Unix needs, even X11, are (surprisingly) supplied by OS X itself.

  • Media players
    Sometimes you just gotta view the occasional .rpm or .avi:
    – RealOne Player
    – Windows Media Player
  • Network Beacon — Rendevous service publisher

Almost recommended:

  • XBattery
    — battery monitoring utility
Posted on

Hilighting referring search engine text in web pages

On some random blog I arrived on via a search engine,
I noticed that the page had hilighted all the words
that were part of my query. This is awesome.

I wonder if this functionality could be added as a post-processing
step for all web pages before they are sent to the user.
(an Apache module?) The logic could be quite simple: 

  if( http_referer_exists &&
      http_referer_is_search_engine ) {
    query = get_query_from_referer()
    foreach word in query {
     response =~ s/word/<div name=hilite>word</div>/g;
    }
  }
Posted on

Hashes vs. PowerSets

Reminder to self:
Think more about fun comparisons of hashes
(allows decomposing of problems by N) and power sets (causes problems
to increase in complexity by 2^N)

The former is the standard technique I’ve used to make hard problems easy
or fast: divide-and-conquer. The latter is a a natural result that for any body of N nodes, full connectivity goes as 2^N: applicable in social networks, etc.

Sounds lke hashing fails to decompose power-set problems.
Can we use power-sets to decompose?

Posted on

Pagers as Remote Actuators

I’ve been struggling for the last month or so trying to find an 802.11b
coprocessor similar to the NetMedia SitePlayer
or Lantronix XPort.
Something that is easy to strap onto the side of a little microcontroller like a PIC
or Stamp, or maybe even could work stand-alone for simple tasks.

(Yes, eventually there will be the Lantronix WiPort
and maybe the DPAC Airborne will be made availble
to mere mortals, but until then wireless is sorta out of our reach)

Except that if all you want is to do wireless actuation without feedback,
one can get a free pager with a six-month contract for ~$40, rip it apart, intercept the data
going to the LCD (or hopefully there’s an earlier stage one can get at the real data sent)
and use it to trigger at least 1B diferent things (10-digit numbers).

Initial web searches prove kinda useless. Searching for “pager hacking” gives you lots of
2600-style crap about intercepting pager messages with PC soundcards.