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Kid Proof a Kid's Computer

Full Disclosure: I'm not a parent, but I will be one soon. I have many nieces and nephews, and also a young brother (my in-law). For almost everyone in my family I am the go to guy when it comes to technology, and people trust me to understand this enough to help protect them, and their families as much as I know how to. That was the impetus in doing this.

Philosophy

Open Source Social Networking Web Applications

I decided to take a look at Social Networking solutions for higher education usage, but a lot of these solutions extend to use in a business, or organization. I think the thing that is critical to understand about implementing a solution like these, is that since all of them allow you to run them closed (as far as I can tell), they allow you to create a private and secure "social network". In my case this will be used to facilitate communication between advisors in different departments of a college.

TrickleStar [z-wave] Web App for Remotely Controlling Lights from any Web Browser, even your iPhone

If you haven't already done so you need to perform the actions discussed on this page. If you don't have a TrickleStar USB Stick or a z-wave device, than you're also going to need to have those to even hack the widget to work in the following web app writeup.

TrickleStar [z-wave] Dashboard Widget Hacking

First things first, if you're curious exactly how or why I know this, well it's because I contacted TrickleStar and they sent me this pdf(A link to download is below as well) that explains how their dashboard widget works. Unfortunately after some trial and error it became abundantly clear that simply posting JSON data in the manner they discuss, and in the same manner the widget does (using ajax javascript posts) was not going to work.

Record TV Shows with your iPhone (no iphone app required), or remotely from a PC

This "project" is not for the feint of heart, but once it's setup it's pretty simple to operate. Proceed with caution... you may become addicted to recording more tv shows than you can watch, or have space for. This addiction is known as tivoitis.

Why are you even doing this? Hulu ROXORS! Cable SUXORS!

Green Rim Film Documentary - Motion Graphics Intro

Halloween 2009 Decorations - Nightmare Before X-mas

This is what we did for Halloween this year, enjoy...

FirewireSDK Complete (?) STB Channel Changer using modified clover


Update: attached below is a binary of my modified 'clover' utility. I am calling it clover-pace (simple because it's a modification to clover aimed at making it work with the Pace RNG110 STB). It retains the same actual utility name and Nathan Ramella's License.

Also the usage is a little different. One no longer needs to execute clover 3 times for a 3 number channel change, it can be sent to the utility all in one command, for example:


clover -f 7,0,2 -d 60 -o my_recording.ts

Using Twitter as an Alternative to Text Messaging - Using a Twitter App, Prowl, Prey Fetcher, and Some Custom PHP

My wife and I finally broke down and got the new iPhones (3GS to be exact, woohoo!), and as a result were confronted with AT&T's messaging plans. We previously used T-Mobile, and for $5/month we could both share 400 texts. What a great deal! I use very few, texting my wife mostly, and some friends, but it's probably about an 80/20 split. We almost always barely pushed this 400 amount, mostly from US sending each other back and forth notes about what to get at the store, or to communicate with each other in short messages, anything else, we did over IM, or via e-mail.

Introducing... HTPC Launchboard | iPhone Web App

First... take a gander at this video.

What is this for?