FutureCrüe

yea.  i’m kinda hooked on foursquare.  they had me when i got a crunked badge after bar hopping and stopping in at white castle.  i was like….yes….i am crunked.

then i started looking at the api and sniffing packets from my phone to see what i could figure out.  turns out, the square api is simple and there are good python libraries out there to use.

so with that in mind, i’m planning on going badge crazy and taking over the world.  here’s a basic snip of code to show how easy it is to checking to a venue from python.

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#!/usr/bin/env python
 
import foursquare, time
fs=foursquare.Foursquare()
 
fs = foursquare.Foursquare(foursquare.BasicCredentials("your@user.com","mypass"))
 
 
# trains / lines
print fs.checkin(1593117, 0,"",0,0,0, 41.99228, -88.187801)
time.sleep(60)
print fs.checkin(101479, 0,"",0,0,0, 41.99212, -88.1839)

and just like gieco, it’s so easy, even your mom can do it.

here are the top 10 organic google searches that bought people to this site since it has opened.  this information is from google analytics.

1. cyanogenmod themes
2. android icecast
3. icecast android
4. ubuntu 9.10 flash not working
5. futurecrue
6. flash not working ubuntu 9.10
7. android at&t
8. avr programming in ubuntu
9. flash problems ubuntu 9.10
10. ubuntu 9.10 flash problems

yea.  that was interesting.  shut up!!  i’m running out of shit to post.  its not like i can build a new stereo cabinet everyday.  you start a blog.  its hard.  and theres all this pressure!!  and then there’s the bottle of alcohol going “hey you!  yeah you!  dont post some dumb shit.  come here and drink me.  get over here!  i’m not gonna drink myself!!”  damn you bottle of alcohol!!!

wow.

yea….i made it myself.  but not as in i bought it at ikea made it myself kind of making.

i wanted something different and this is something different.  its made from 1/2 frosted glass that i picked up from a local glass place.  then i have glass blocks like the kind you would get at the hardware store.  put that all together and you have a college dorm milk crate kind of a stand.  in real life, it looks kinda cool.  i have led lights that illuminate the glass.

there is some of the gear.  ps3, xbox360 with a clear case, slingox, apple tv (moded to run atv), squeezebox, directv receiver, receiver, etc.   just your basic everyday stuff.

my new glass stand. for about $120, you can make one too!!

if you are not interested in at&t uverse internet only service, you can quit reading now.  but if you are interested in this service, then read on.

at&t uverse is a dsl service based on fiber to the node.  if you have this type of service in your area, you will have seen dslams located in your neighborhood….they usually sit on a bock of concrete and have a power meter.  fiber runs to these dslams and standard twisted pair copper then runs to your house.  you can google things up and learn more if youre interested.

so how about performance?  well a little bit about me.  i live in chicago suburbs.  i ordered 24mbps line of internet only.  i was coming from a 50mbps comcast connection.  i’m using 802.11n for my speed tests.  i’ve got good equipment—if something is slow, it would not be a fault in my home network or equipment or i will figure out what it is and fix it.

the bottom line, the 24mbps connection i got from uverse definitely delivers the goods.  i can hookup 50 ssl connects to my usenet provider and essentially nail the 24mbps speed with no issues.  i have to admit that i am not using the uverse 2wire router.  i only use their box as a pass through and then route to all my networking equipment.

throughput is solid. this is over an 802.11n 5GHz connection even.

a little extra security in the garage.  make thieves work a little harder.  yea…i have insurance but i just dont like ppl taking shit from me.

in the awesome blurry shot we have some 1/4″ lag bolts with lead anchors in concrete.

i need to get a real bad ass cable. this aint that cable.

subway is a bunch of soot and poo.

in the words of grandma roberts….”this is slop.  i wanna see the manager.”

seriously.  crap ingredients and actually not healthy for you at all.

look at this picture of chicken from my subway.  it doesnt even look like chicken.  and fake grill marks.  really.  and if you look close, you can see its frozen.  these processed frozen fake grill mark chicken nuggets are a joke.

FAKEOMGWTFGRILLMARKS??!?

enough already.  i gotta quit buying bikes.  or do i.

having 2 bikes makes you clean up your garage

maybe.  ok.  its on the way.

i did manage to find one of these bikes.  also price out insurance at $764/year.

done.

i will most likely die.  but some people die and never really live.  yup.   i running on a full tank of testosterone.  young.  dumb.  and full of cum.  and always remember kids, your best decisions are made while drinking at the bar.

not the best picture. trust me. its one sick bike.

i had “comcast” back in the day when they were called @home.  does anyone remember that service?  yup.  bought cable modem at that time which switched me from ISDN 128k service…..before 56k modems were released.

ok…enough bullshit.  enough past.  the past is past.  now for the future.  this is futurecrue.  not pastcrue.

i returned all of the comcast equipment.  and cleaned up my yard and put the cable in the trash.  maybe one day, i will return to them.  who knows.  i think they would have to offer greater than 50mbps speed and also remove that 250gb cap.  but like i said, who knows.

in the meantime, i will be with internet only at&t uverse at 24mbps.  will it deliver?  stay tuned.

make sure you keep your equipment receipt that shows you returned your shit. i know somebody that got screwed and had to buy equipment

with a motorcycle.  i’m trying like hell to find this 2009 honda repsol.  i want it brand new with no miles.  i found one in wisconsin but it sold immediately.

i saw one in person at tilted kilt.  it was awesome.  as soon as i find one….BAM.  purchased.

so this weekend, while you are out doing what it is you do, i will be searching this planet to find this beautiful piece of shiny metal.

the honda repsol cbr1000. i want to be inside you. dont judge me.

that is how much energy i’ve burned this week so far training for a marathon run.  its equal to 3537 calories.  or equal to the amount of solar radiation received by 1 square meter of earth in 15 seconds.  yea that is not impressive.  my fat ass could prolly produce more energy by sitting down on a couch and smashing a cat.  cool.

oh yea…i guess for the past 3 weeks i’m training for a marathon that i’ll be running in october.  no, i havent run a marathon before so i need to buy electronic gadgets to help.  in fact, any excuse i can come up with to get liquor, pills, hookers or electronic gadgets is kinda the theme of my life.

so i went out and bought a Polar RS300X G1 Heart Rate Monitor/GPS Black and a flowlink to hook up to my mac from the running warehouse.  i’ve been using it about a week.  its okay.  it has a gps to measure your distance and your pace in real time.  the flowlink works extremely well with my mac.  i’ll have to give a better review on the hardware later.  my first run with the gps measured my distance exactly.  but my last two runs outside had trouble tracking accurately.  maybe in a month or so, i’ll post up some data of my progress and give a better review of the hardware.

in the meantime this week (sunday->thursday), i’ve run 21.8 miles which is a mere fraction of my beer drinking calories.  with all this training, i will have to double my beer intake and see if amazon sells a britta-liver.

the goods. can you really run without a monitor and a gps? damn. i'm a gadget freak

if you don’t have a mac, and you don’t use vi, you can quit reading this now.

are the page up and page down (fn+arrow keys) driving you mad in vi??  like when you are vi-ing (new term for vi editing) a large file and you want to page down or page up.  sure, you can use the ctrl-b and ctrl-f keys in vi.  but what about the mac page up and page down keys–they dont works so well with vi.

well suffer no more.  change it to how it would work in ubuntu or most any other linux distro.  when in your mac terminal, go to terminal preferences and then look at the keyboard prefs.  change these mappings and have fun.

just because i dont have internet does not mean that i will not be posting.  currently i’m stealing my connection from burger king.  and speaking of stealing, i ran down to spring and grabbed me one of those sprint 4g evo phones.  i’ve had the phone about a week and if you read this blog like my mom does, you would know i’m coming from about 6 android phones in the last two years.

so let me start with the radio service.  here in chicago, tmobile really sucks for data and voice.  many times calls drop or go straight to voice mail.  in the past 5 years at this location, i’ve had all the major carries.  sometimes two or three at a time.  tmobile and at&t just suck.  then sprint.  then verizon.  tmobile called me for a survey of why i left them.  i was all like “you suck.  you go to hell you die!!”  well not really but i wish a survey could fix their service.  it will take much more than that.

4g service:

so now with evo impressions.  how is the 4g network??  i’ve had 4g service here for 7 months with clear.  its about the same on the phone as it is with this dongle for the mac.  it is NOT good for moving (like in a car or train) cause when you fall back from 4g to 3g, it takes around 30 seconds.  but if you are still, you can turn it on.  when you get signal, its fast.  using speedtest on the phone it is not uncommon to see 5mb down and 1mb up connections.  and the phone/browser can handle it.  it easily blows away any non-wifi solution out there.  period.  you want fast internet and your city is lucky enough to have 4g, get this phone.  you will be blown away.

build quality:

compared to the nexus one, the phone feels cheap.  i’m not entirely convinced the faceplate will not lift off like i read about things online.  the power button is a bitch.  i dont like it at all.  i’m constantly fumbling for it.  nexus one and other phones (except original samsung galaxy) were easier.

battery:

biggest battery hog of any android phone i’ve ever had.  i still have to charge it more than once a day.  insane.  i keep things turned off too.  it definitely draws more power than other androids i’ve used.  but in all fairness, i do more with this phone than any other.  i use it for a wifi hotspot while checking mail and sending text messages and listening to music.  all at the same time.  you can surf on the phone while provide 4g service to others.  the phone never lags and easily keeps up….just keep a battery charger nearby (any standard usb cable).

5 things i like:

• screen size is just impressive looking.  it nearly fills the whole footprint.
• sprint tv.  hey its free.  i didnt think i would like it but i can watch world cup soccer wherever i am!!!
• 4g speed.  pure and simple.  this is like heroin and cocaine.  bam.
• hot spot.  yea i bought that and its handy and works great.
• 8mp camera.  the pics are impressive and the dual led do a very good job.

5 things i dont like so well

• thickness.  needs to go on a diet.  get thin and keep that big screen
• battery life.  i can (have) to live with it
• build quality.  it just feels kinda cheap.
• screen resolution.  sure its 800×480 but on this large screen….1024×600 would have ruled!!  hey, my eyes are good!
• kickstand.  i dunno…just seems kinda gay.

overall…dood, go get the phone.  its freaking fast.  4g.  nobody else has it.  did i mention its fast?

hacked nexus one vs evo 4g. fight.

i have not had internet in my house since june 1st but i should be connected again on the 19th (besides the 4G clear hotspot).  as a huge blackhawks fan (not just the kind that starts watching the playoffs) i was kinda pissed to find out my cable tv was out 6 minutes before a stanley cup final game was about to begin!!!  yeah.  then i find its because of comcast doing some goofy wiring job in my backyard.  note the previous post with wires hung through the trees.

so after the lawnmower guy ran over the cable, i got directv and when i went to cancel my tv service but found out i had to pay $10 and make another appointment for a tech to come out.  that would be two saturdays in the height of summer that i would have to wait at home for some lame cable guy.  hey comcast, you should have hot cable women!!!  i bet “installs” would be up!!!

anyway i just caned all their services.  i cant in good conscience pay someone that makes no effort to correct their mistakes or worse, wastes my time.  actually the cancel process was fine and void of emotion on my behalf.  i’m not the emotional / irate customer service pissed off cancel it all type like somehow comcast would care they are losing one account out of their millions.

but i did laugh when they ended the call with “thank you for choosing comcast”  i think they mean it in a past tense.  like thank you for haven chosen comcast.  or maybe they should say thank you for un-choosing comcast.   i dunno.

anyway, i’m getting a uverse interntet only 24mb link on the 19th.

hey, there is what comcast left laying in my yard and what is left of my internet. sloppy work at best. thank you for choosing comcast!!!

so i come home wednesday night like 3 minutes before the hawks stanley cup final game and BAM. cable tv and internet are out. the picture below shows what comcast did in my yard. yea….that is my 50mbps cable connection hanging in the trees. OMGINTERNETWTF!! yea….its cut in half now so i have not had internet since wednesday. my house without internet is…..well…like my parents house!!

have no fear, i was wiring up satellite in the middle of a rain storm so i could watch the next cup game. all is good and we are in the process of transitioning all services off of comcast. while their speed (50mbp) is nice, i never liked their internet cap anyway.  and cables running in my bushes and trees is not cool…..unless they have pretty christmas lights on them.  ooooh.  pretty christmas lights.

now who the fck did dat? thats my internet hanging it the trees. comcast, youre fired.

so i put together this peggy2 kit from evilmadscience.com.  it uses an ATmega328P and can be developed for using the arduino development environment so you can write routines in c to control the device.  i’m just getting started.  its pretty cool.

holy crap.  i just realized i have 109 applications installed on my nexus one.

the cool thing is, when i thinking about purchasing the evo 4g phone this week, android will automatically reinstall all of them!!!  doing that manually seems like alot of work.

these things just plague windows and mac. i’m glad they dont have this crap on ubuntu. what a waste of time. your mom doesn’t even read these warnings. be careful. the internet is not safe.

the interwebs are dangerous. be careful. hookers should come with a warning dialog too.

on a mac, you can disable it by typing:

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defaults write com.apple.LaunchServices LSQuarantine -bool NO

or re-enable it by typing:

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defaults write com.apple.LaunchServices LSQuarantine -bool YES

and dont forget to restart your finder, kids. and tip your hookers accordingly.

oh yea….the details of the updated rig

the stuff i updated:

• i7-950 cpu
• 12 gb CORSAIR HX3X12G1600C9
• ASUS P6X58D PREMIUM motherboard
• SILVERSTONE TJ09-BW case

the stuff i had:

• 2 nvidia gtx 295 cards (quad sli)
• 1000 w silverstone power supply
• solid state and velociraptor drives
• blah blah blah

no, its not a performance system.  just a good system.  every system i put up is a good system.

the new rig brings it. like your mom.

yea…thats right.  every week  it seems like i buy a new computer or cellphone.  well i’m at it again.  this time….its an update to my main linux server.  i’ll post the specs in a bit….right now i’m about to play some modern warefare 2.  i bought it all at once from new egg.  spur of the moment.  from oh, i should build a new computer to purchase in about 30 minutes.  like pizza.

12GBWTF!?! honestly. 12gb is entry.

this place is dead. yea. that should change.

caption contest. how about the sharks got swept.

its good to be back?

my mac book pro has a decent bootup time.  check it out.  go get yourself one.

who is this bad ass.  oh yea, thats me doing a little riding and without a helmet.  hey, at least i put the beer down.  i should have my license in another couple weeks or so.  sorry for the crap mms picture quality.  its really me.

helmets are for whimps

i missed my train today.  two police were out all morning issuing people tickets if they cross the walk across the tracks when the lights are flashing.  its that simple.  so i missed my train because of this and had to take a slightly later one and there is one every 15 minutes so its not a big deal.

but people were not happy including a woman who told the cops “fuck you” and then stormed off cause she was going to miss a class that costs $600 / hour.

in my near 10 years, nobody has been killed at this station.  and there are not kids crossing the tracks.  i’m not sure that as an adult, i want to pay two officers to make sure i’m capable of crossing when its safe.  if you want to issue tickets, then put a sign stating that crossing tracks while lights are flashing is prohibited.

theres your tax dollars hard at work.  sigh.

two police guarding the pedestrian crossing. there's your tax dollars hard at work.

its here and its awesome.  although at one point during installing and setting up all my dev stuff, i hard locked up the machine (STEVE!!!)

its been a while since i had a mbp (i do have an imac i5 27″) and i noticed something about this machine.  ununtu 9.10 boots in about 15-20 seconds tops and thats everything.  for funny show the desktop but stuff will still load for another 30 seconds.  lucid (10.04) ubuntu i hear boots easily in under 10.

this mac boots fast.  while i did not time it, its way faster than the imac i just bought.  i’m guessing about 15-20 seconds.  i will time it.

overall, very satisified.  but i’m still on the honeymoon.  i’ll give some more about it in a few days after i finish some brutal 16 hour work days.  :)

welcome

my mom and maybe 1 or two other people are the only ppl that visit this site.  and so far, we’ve racked up visits from 119 countries!!  that alot of countries for my mom!!  wha?!??!??  you didn’t just say that my mom gets around.

actually, my mom never visits this site since its utter nonsense.

my new macbook pro is in the united states!!!  it wont be long now.

is it here yet?

if you are ever in chicago…..even if you don’t like hockey….go to the madhouse and watch my hawks.  its gonna change your life.

the madhouse. i'm actually gonna sell my house and try living there. yea. its that good.

no but i buy my hockey jerseys from motorcycle dealers.

this is the “knock off” kane olympic usa olympic jersey that i bought today while getting my motorcycle for $60.  its one of those chinese knock offs for sure.  its all sewn on letters and numbers–none of those screened on patches.  it has kane and number on the back and even has a “fight strap.”  its nice but not a “true authentic” (few would notice)  buy hey, a true authentic goes for four hundo easy.  the guy the runs the bike place  has hockey in his blood and his son and daughter also play (high school and college).  he kinda bought the knock off jerseys for fun.  its always great running into a fan and someone that still gets on the ice too.

i’m gonna wear this fine jersey on sunday and watch the hawks beat the bejesus out of the preds.  that will be fun.

rule #47: dont get your hair cut at radio shack. rule #21: you can never have too many hockey jerseys.

am i having a midlife crisis???  my whole life has been a midlife crisis.  it stared when i was about 10.

now i’m sitting around on a saturday night writing blog posts.  we’ll its because i’m flat broke.  broke as in i just bought a crazy ass mac book pro notebook and i followed up with it today by buying a motorcycle.  so this cash deal spending spree has left me hard pressed to scrape up enough money to even buy a 40oz king cobra malt liquor for $1.99 and drink it out of a brown paper bag while riding public transportation.

but hey, i’m getting focused on the wrong details.  i gotz me a sweet ass bike, yo.  yea…i’m learning to ride.  its a learner bike….i’ll keep it for the summer and dump it (kinda like that first girlfriend) for a my dream bike.  i took a class and i’ll be going for my license in a couple weeks.

seriously though, i gotta give a shout to arlington motorsports.  these guys are seriously kick dick.  best buying experience i’ve had with anything.  ever.  they are serious hockey fans/players and just honest good people running a business.  i’m definitely going back there when i trade up.

my starter bike. i'll dump it soon enough. in the background, i have a ladder, hockey net, nerf football, industrial fan, framing square and a router (the kind for wood--not networks)