Click here to watch.

Okay, I’ve to get this off my chest. The way GNOME’s NetworkManager determines whether it’s connected to the internet is so fucking dumb. Now that several apps rely on the online/offline status from NetworkManager, this causes all kinds of really annoying problems that often occur at the most inconvenient times.

Right now, NetworkManager just determines whether it has made a physical connection, and if it has, it thinks it’s on the internet, and if it hasn’t it assumes there’s no connection available.

So, there are to problems with this:

* Offline-but-not-really – When I’m in the car, I have two options for connecting to my phone for internet access. I can either turn my phone into a WiFi Ad-Hoc node, and use it as a gateway for my laptop. Or, I can use Bluetooth to create a PAN and do basically the same thing. Either way, I have to set up the connection from the command line on my laptop with one or two commands. Of course, when I do this, NetworkManager has no knowledge of the connection and all of my GNOME apps that rely on it think there is no internet connection. This gets really, really old.

* Online-but-not-really – So the second problem is captive portals. For example, I’m typing this from a Panera Bread. I turned on my laptop, NetworkManager saw the open WiFi connection, and it automatically connected. Great, except NetworkManager now thinks it has a working internet connection… but it doesn’t, because I have to pop open a browser window and hit “Agree” before I actually have internet access.

The solution to this is so fucking easy… just ping! Each second, or every three or five seconds, NetworkManager should just try to ping a host like google.com… if you get a response, you’re online. This way, it doesn’t matter how you’re connected, or whether or not there’s a captive portal in the way… Why is this so hard?

Do you have a need to do a search and replace on an entire column in your MySQL database?

I had to do this recently due to a domain change.  Here's the easy way:

UPDATE tablename SET tablefield = replace(tablefield,"findstring","replacestring");

For example, when the shell service I started moved from silenceisdefeat.com to silenceisdefeat.org, I issued the following command to change all of the links in my blog posts:

UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = replace(post_content,"silenceisdefeat.org","silenceisdefeat.com");

You can do this via the command line, or using a tool like PHPMyAdmin by clicking on the SQL tab.  If you're running wp-cache on your WordPress blog, don't forget to clear your cache to see the change take effect.

Over the years I've encountered many instances in which I've had to search through thousands of fonts in order to figure out which one was used in a graphic. Those days are over thanks to these two great resources:

1. WhatTheFont – This site actually allows you to upload a sample graphic and then tries to do the matching automatically.  Very cool!  The only problem is that the sample needs to be at least 100 pixels in height for it to work with high accuracy.
2. Identifont – This site uses a completely different approach — the process of elimination.  If you don't have a high-resolution sample and don't mind answering a few questions, this is the way to go.

While we're on the subject, FontyPython is a really cool font manager for Linux that allows you to browse through tons of fonts before installing them.  This is really convenient if you happen to be pirating large font packs while looking for one of the fonts you identified using the sites listed above.  If you know of similar programs for Mac or Windows, feel free to leave a comment.

This is mostly a note-to-self, so if you don’t have any interest in encrypted VoIP, you might as well go ahead and skip over this blog post.

First, some background information… I had an interesting phone conversation with Adam Panagia, the manager of AT&T’s Global Fraud department. From a conference bridge, we placed an outbound call to his cell phone without passing ANI to see how easy it would be for him to trace the call. He immediately answered and knew who was calling, which was pretty impressive. As it turns out, Adam was already listening to the conference call by sitting on the line of one of the parties on the conference. We know this was the case because after Adam hung up his cell phone and kept speaking in the conference, the “Talking” light on the conference web interface for one of the other parties would illuminate. In other words, Adam was speaking through the phone line of someone else who was on the conference call.

Adam, who works for AT&T can intercept and even speak on behalf of practically any long distance phone call with ease. In this case, he was intercepting a call in real-time that was originating from a Verizon land line. So, the carrier matters not. Obviously he’s not the only one who can do this. It goes without saying that there are likely dozens, if not hundreds, of government employees who can do the same thing.

So, if you’re interested maintaining privacy, you only have two options: Bypass the PSTN altogether or use encryption.

Why not do both?

The software released by the Zfone Project, which was founded by the creator of PGP, is of particular interest to me. Two-party phone calls can easily be accomplished by using Zfone on both ends with a VoIP softphone.

But what about conference calls? That’s a little bit more complicated, but it seems that the ZRTP patch for Asterisk could be used to allow each party to place an encrypted call to an Asterisk box, where a conference could be mixed.

But who wants to be limited to softphones? In theory, you don’t have to be. Sure, a company called TiVi makes software for cell phones that allows you to place encrypted VoIP calls over WiFi, but what about the analog phones everyone is already used to? I have an idea as to how to accomplish this: Get a tiny motherboard like a Mini-ITX or Nano-ITX, which can be had for cheap. Get a $10 voice modem. Install Asterisk with the ZRTP patch, and configure it to use the voice modem as an FXO port… and Bingo! You have a cheap homemade ATA with full encryption support.

I was going to go back and add links for all the acronyms, but since this was a very casual note-to-self, and since I have other work I need to be doing, you’ll just have to Google it if you see something you don’t recognize.

As of yesterday, T-Mobile will add MyFaves to your post-paid account for free if you call their Customer Loyalty Department and ask for it.

If you have less than a year of your contract left, you’ll have to extend it to a full year. Since I just bought a G1, I had over a year left, so this didn’t effect me. Click here for the related HoFo thread.

Also, it’s possible to get 10% off your bill by joining the Freelancers Union, which is free. Click here for the related thread. I haven’t tried this yet, so leave a comment and let me know how it works for you.

The first privately-funded and privately-developed rocket, Falcon 1, has successfully made it into space. Falcon 1 was developed by SpaceX, a space-transportation startup company founded by PayPal co-founder Elon Musk. Eight minutes after launch, Falcon 1 reached a speed of 5200 meters per second and passed above the International Space Station. Pretty cool.

You can watch it here:

I just love learning about biology as it relates to technology. This video repays watching.

So recently I went to a lot of trouble to hook up the MythTV system I built a couple years ago, only to realize two weeks later that I don’t use it. I don’t really watch TV much at all anymore. However, there are a few YouTube channels I enjoy. More specifically, I tend to prefer the bias of Russia Today and AlJazeera English versus the horse shit that tends to come out of American media. There are a few other YouTube channels that are worth watching.

So, the problem I ran into after a week or so of watching these YouTube channels is that YouTube’s interface completely sucks. After checking around for other options for interfaces, Miro is what I ended up settling on. Miro is basically a video podcast client, but it supports BitTorrent and YouTube channels. I remember checking it out when it was called Democracy Player, but I wasn’t really impressed for reasons I can no longer remember.

What this means for you is that you can always have interesting, free, on-demand content available on your computer for when you’re ready to watch. Channels I subscribe to can basically be divided into four categories: News, Science & Technology, Libertarianism, and Humor. When I open Miro each day, I click on “New” and click Play. I am then shown a mix of videos that I am almost always interested in watching. I can skip, delete, keep each video, or just let it play through and expire ones I’ve seen after five days. The result is by far more stimulating than the content I get from my cable company.

Just FYI for those of you looking for something better than traditional cable television.