Author Archives: ivan

Dec
26
2011

MOG first impressions

I’ve been using Grooveshark since 2008 and haven’t had much complaints after moving to their premium service a year later. But recently, the disorganization (duplicate tracks, mislabeled or wrongly tagged tracks), plus the very low quality mobile streaming (even on WiFi) has left me searching for an alternative. Enter MOG. While definitely not a newcomer to [...]

Posted in music, software | Tagged , , | Comments (0)
Nov
24
2011

Why do people dislike Perl?

I happen to enjoy using it much more than shell scripts for anything that needs a more complex logic or real data structures. It gives me better portability, a ridiculously large selection of easily installable modules, and the freedom to scale should I need it. I could say this for Python or Ruby as well [...]

Posted in programming | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)
Sep
17
2011

Dumb car radio powered by smartphone

Recently I’ve been interested in purchasing a new car radio, as my current one has no auxiliary input and is basically a rudimentary device. Thinking about different options, and even considering a carputer project, it occurred to me that there should be a car radio that would be powered by your smartphone and allowed seamless integration [...]

Posted in hardware, projects | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)
Sep
10
2011

Fixing write permissions for NFS Windows client

So after a recent Arch upgrade, Samba mysteriously stopped working, and I really wasn’t in the mood to troubleshoot what broke it. I have always disliked Samba (and CIFS as a whole), so was pleasantly surprised to learn an NFS client has been shipping with Windows for like, ever, now. After installing and configuring NFS in Arch [...]

Posted in linux, software, windows | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)
Jul
26
2011

Format selected text with AutoHotkey

In case you don’t know, AutoHotkey is an awesome GUI automation tool for Windows. I use it all the time to speed up monotonous stuff I usually do by hand. I’m not that proficient with the language, so it takes me a lot of searching and experimentation to get it to do what I want, [...]

Posted in software, windows | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)
Jul
03
2011

Favorite chiptunes

I have already written a bit about the demoscene and chiptune in the past, but I had to write a separate post about these two tunes I keep coming back to whenever I need a fair dose of nostalgia and optimism. I haven’t heard a lot of chiptune, nor do I know much about the [...]

Posted in art, gaming, music | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)
Jun
23
2011

Manifiesto zapatista

Politics doesn’t interest me at all, but I was just listening to Manu Chao’s Clandestino for the umpteenth time, and this quote from “Welcome to Tijuana” rang a bell as much now as anytime I’ve heard it before. Nuestra lucha es por el respeto a nuestro derecho a gobernar y gobernarnos, y el mal gobierno [...]

Posted in art, life | Tagged , , | Comments (0)
Jun
21
2011

Approximate Analogy

When you ask me whether I believe the god in the Bible is real, and I answer “No”, if I ask you—a Christian—whether you believe the Hindu god Brahmā is real, and you answer “No”, then you have a good reference of my position.

Posted in atheism | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)
Apr
26
2011

About password management

Amidst the recent PSN debacle, I have come yet again to doubt in any information I give to third parties. You would think a huge company like Sony could at least have some basic security measures covered. But from the recent reports, it seems they stored every account’s password in unencrypted form. This is—aside bat-shit [...]

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Apr
07
2011

Session log of an insomniac

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