∞ Infinite ∞ Resolution

iPod Touch Screen Becomes Unresponsive

Kevin — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 19:40:36 +0000

Just about five minutes ago my iPod Touch’s (Second Generation Model MB528LL) screen stopped responding to my finger. The screen itself still worked as did the the physical buttons. The dang thing just wouldn’t respond to my touches. So, assuming it’s not some sort of hardware malfunction, you need to restart the device. There are two ways to do this. For a force restart you can hold the lock button and home button at the same time until you see the device restart. The second way may be a little safer but more complex. Yes, SSH. You need to:

Find or guess the IP Address or Hostname of your iPod. Sometimes your router’s web interface will tell you.
On Windows, download PuTTY. On Linux or a Mac open up the terminal.
In PuTTY, type in the hostname or IP you found. Then hit open. On Linux/Mac type “ssh root@(hostname/ip)”.
When you’re asked for a username in PuTTY put in root. When you’re asked for a password, put in the one that you changed it to. If you didn’t change your password try “alpine”.
Now you should be logged in to the device as root. To restart the device type “reboot” then hit the enter key.
Your connection will be closed and your iPod or iPhone will restart. Hopefully, when it boots back up it’ll now be fully functional.

If this doesn’t restore touch functionality to your iPod then it very will could be some sort of hardware defect. I’d give Apple Tech Support a call and pray it’s under warranty.

SwagBucks: It’s legit

Kevin — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 03:30:45 +0000

Anybody ever heard of SwagBucks? It’s essentially a site where you search using their search engine (which is really just Google & Ask) and get SwagBucks. I saved up enough and just redeemed two $5 Amazon.com gift cards. I added them to my account and it worked. Totally legit. Totally awesome.

The Hash Class

Kevin — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:35:54 +0000

I’ve been working on a C# Library to make hashing strings an easy (and fun?) task. I’ll show you the very basic bare-bones usage here:

Hashing mudkipz = new Hashing();
string m5 = mudkipz.md5("So, I herd u liek mudkipz.");
string s1 = mudkipz.sha1("So, I herd u liek mudkipz.");
string s256 = mudkipz.sha256("So, I herd u liek mudkipz.");
string s384 = mudkipz.sha384("So, I herd u liek mudkipz.");
string s512 = mudkipz.sha512("So, I herd u liek mudkipz.");

The library currently supports md5, sha1, sha256, sha384, and sha512. So yeah that’s all nice and easy to use and such but it there more? Yes, there is! There are four different formats your string can be hashed into:

AB-CD-EF (default)
ab-cd-ef
ABCDEF
abcdef

For any of you that have used PHP’s hashing functions you’ll notice that format number 4 is identical. Let’s say you want to have everything be formatted like PHP does. Using format 4.

Hashing mudkipz = new Hashing();
mudkipz.setFormat(4);
string blah1 = mudkipz.md5("So, I herd u liek mudkipz.");
string blah2 = mudkipz.sha1("So, I herd u liek mudkipz.");

You’ll notice that both strings will be formatted in the same way PHP would. We can switch back in the middle too.

Hashing mudkipz = new Hashing();
mudkipz.setFormat(4);
string blah1 = mudkipz.md5("So, I herd u liek mudkipz.");
string blah2 = mudkipz.sha1("So, I herd u liek mudkipz.");
mudkipz.setFormat(1);
string blah3 = mudkipz.md5("So, I herd u liek mudkipz.");
string blah4 = mudkipz.sha1("So, I herd u liek mudkipz.");

What if you want everything to be formatted with format 3 except for just one? Ya know, the odd man out. Instead of switching default formats you can just specify a extra format parameter.

Hashing mudkipz = new Hashing();
mudkipz.setFormat(3);
string blah1 = mudkipz.md5("So, I herd u liek mudkipz.");
string blah2 = mudkipz.sha1("So, I herd u liek mudkipz.", 4);
string blah3 = mudkipz.sha256("So, I herd u liek mudkipz.");

blah2 would then be formatted using format 4. All the others would use format 3.

That’s just about it. It’s licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. A link back would be nice, but not necessary. Use the following links to download. Enjoy!

Complete Hashing Class Source (26)
Hashing DLL (27)

How to Keep Your Site off Google

Kevin — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:30:31 +0000

There are tons of great articles for getting your site indexed by Google and other search engines. But what if you, for some reason, just don’t want something to be plastered across peoples search results? Maybe it’s a login page or even just a personal website of yours that has no reason to be on a search engine.

Let’s get down to business. Create a new blank text file called robots.txt in the root directory of your site. Put the following text into it exactly as you see it below.

User-agent: * Disallow: /

This should keep all search engine bots from indexing all pages past that point. If your site is already indexed though, it might become more problematic.

10.22.09

Kevin — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:46 +0000

That’s it. Tomorrow. The big release of Windows 7. Some have high expectations and some have very low expectations. What do you have? Perhaps you’ve already tried the beta or release candidate, as I have. I, personally, can’t wait. The only thing that would hold me back from buying it right away is its price tag. Isn’t exactly a freebie. Or anywhere close.

What do you think of it? I’m gonna buy it. Eventually.

I gotta tell ya

Kevin — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 03:38:19 +0000

FiOS is awesome. 100 MB iTunes / QuickTime update? I can do it in under a minute or so. I don’t even have closest to the fastest package either.

The biggest change that I like is the upload speeds. I can update MyBB via FTP faster than ever. Video? No sweat!

Now I used to have Comcast as my TV provider. It was nice, but the On Demand section felt old, clunky, buggy, annoying, slow, and outdated. The FiOS On Demand looks much more promising. It actually lets you search the on demand selection. Something Comcast didn’t have and was one of the more annoying aspects of it.

I love it. If it’s in your area, get it… Now.

PS: To avoid confusion I’m referring to the Verizon FiOS service.

Getting FiOS

Kevin — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 04:08:56 +0000

Today they will be installing the Verizon FiOS service in my house. I seriously cannot wait! There’s a chance the installation might be done while I’m at school. I hope not. I wanna see this for myself. The technology is fairly interesting. If they don’t do it while I’m in school I might blog about the proccess. Should be fairly cool.

I hope I can write some less personal stuff and more tips, tricks, and tutorials soon!

Time is of the Essence

Kevin — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 03:03:13 +0000

It seems as if I have little to no time now a days. I’m nearing the end of the second week of school. Been great to catch back up with my friends, but I can’t say the same for homework. Luckily, I’ve been able to be on IRC a little more than I thought I could.

When I get some more time I’ll probably write up on how to get an IRC server running on your localhost. Nice for testing bots without lag or annoying other people. You could even set it up as a real irc server but I won’t be covering how to secure it up. At least, then.

Back to homework!

Never Ending JavaScript Alerts

Kevin — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 03:35:26 +0000

while(true) {
alert("Ohai!");
}

It really is that simple. Perfect for your *-Roll sites.

Last Day of Summer Vacation

Kevin — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 18:15:20 +0000

It’s the final day of summer vacation for me. It’s not a pretty thought. I gotta get the rest of my backpack together. Hopefully this year will be better than the rest I’ve had. I’m not sure how much homework will await me this year but um… it’s gonna be alot. Probably.

O noez! This means less time for blogging! This means less time for IRC! This means less time developing web applications! That’s funny, I just noticed that this post has an ID of exactly 700. Meh, more randomness. I can’t wait for the next summer break.

It’s gonna be really weird not being able to sleep in or no longer being able to not sleep. *Sigh…* Ah well.