Category: Life

Well, I’ve finished the work component of my thesis. I did finally implement a list view mode for the application, which has been added in as a plugin.

Screenshot

You can download the latest version of the program, which includes this demonstrative list view parser, here.

I’ve also managed to write a fair bit of documentation for the program, which you’ll find in the form of about.txt file. They, along with the comments in the code, explain how the program works, and how to write extentions for it.

My last post to this blog was more than a month ago. I do believe this is the longest I’ve ever gone without posting. This absence is also highly reflective of the state of affairs on my end in general.

I’ve been busy. Very, very, busy. In any odd week I would go to school full-time, go to work full-time (45 hours/week), work on completing my thesis, and finish off some work for the Shared World Initiative. Needless to say, Docks has been put on the backburner.

So what’s the thesis about? Well, it focuses on an application I’m designing, with the extremely original name of the “Metadata Parser.” What it does is that it takes GIS XML metadatafiles using the FGDC standard and presents their text-heavy contents in a simple pictographic layout. The idea is that it’s much easier to identify critical characteristics of a metadata file by looking at a few pictures than by sifting through reams of lingo-heavy text.

I coded a tech demo, which parses through single individual files. My hope is to design a second application (or plugin for the first… yes, it supports plugins) to list directories worth of metadata. If you want to try it out, you can download the parser for yourself here (Windows, 8MB.) Sample metadata files are included with the installation.

Screenshots:

In other news, the LCD on my 300MHz laptop had been going wonky for some time. So I got myself an Eee PC last month. Fantastic machines. You can read a review of them that I wrote here.

I just finished spending 6 hours designing a new website for Docks. Personally, I think the new one is better, despite it being much more image intensive.

Old website – New website

Perhaps because of the camera, perhaps because of RAM issues on my computer, and/or perhaps because Premiere has difficulty with certain containers/codecs – but all the footage I’ve taken for Docks has been virtually unimportable. Premiere will simply stall during the audio normalization process, making the end footage uneditable. Sony Vegas fares no better. Heck, even playback is just as problematic, with only VLC being able to handle it all.

So I decided to use VLC to transcode the footage into a format that Premiere would accept more readily. The way I went about it is that I converted a 20 minute sample file into a multitude of formats, seeing which fared best. I then imported it into Premiere, and saw how Premiere handled the formats. I then tweaked the settings until I was satisfied. Sounds simple enough, but that conversion process takes quite a while to complete – and most of stuff I outputed were duds. In all, this took me over two weeks to get done. The length of time required was compounded by the fact that I’ve been incredibly busy with school, work, and my thesis (big priority.)

I’ve got VLC now converting all the footage into the new editable format using a batch script. It should be done in two days, assuming the computer doesn’t crash till then.

The term “hacker” is an interesting one. If you ask what it means to someone at my local LUG, they’ll say that it’s the guy that was able to add support for 5000 cheap webcams into the Linux OS. On the other end of the spectrum are the news media outlets, which have defined it as a computer criminal, regardless of proficiency.

Somewhere in between is this small devoted contingent of people, that have come to define it as those that have been able to make computers and electronic hardware accomplish extraordinary things. In their world, someone who is able to fit a 3D game engine with textures and AI into 32KB using ASM is not belittled, but rather reigns king. In their world, digital security is a toy that is fair game to be undone, laws be damned. It’s a world where knowledge rules, and where age has become all but irrelevant.

And one graphic novel author understood that: Ed Piskor. Piskor has just released this first volume of a series called Wizzywig. It’s a tale about Kevin Phenicle, a fictitious character that draws much inspiration from real-world hacker and social engineer extraordinaire, Kevin Mitnick. Mitnick is famous for being sent into solitary confinment, by judge convinced that Kevin could do catastrophic things if granted access to a regular prison telephone. Things such as, according to the prosecutor on the case, launching a nuke by whistling in a set of tones.

I’ve ordered the book, and it’s heading towards me in the mail. Once I get it, I’ll give a full review. But from what the preview pages tell me, this guy gets it. The content is heavily inspired by real world characters and stories, which has no doubt helped in giving the overall hacking elements to the plot credence. There’s a radio show that is pretty much 2600’s “Off the Hook”, with Emmanuel Goldstein at the helm. Appropriately enough, the host in this fictional world is called Winston Smith. There’s a sgement that pays hommage to Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak’s blue boxing beginnings, whose fictitious equivalents are named “Steve & Steve.” The book even appears to come with a “Free Kevin” sticker drawn on it’s back cover.

I can’t wait for this to get in.

PS. And if you like it enough, order three like Jason Scott.