Hacker Idol

12 Jan

Corey |  January 12th, 2010 | Rants |  2 comments

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Today was the first night of American Idol, Did you watch?  I watched about half of it.  While I do find the auditions the best part of the show, there is only so much that I can take before I wanted to pull my eyes out.

What would be an interesting idea, is IT Idol, or Hacker Idol. They start out with all the geeks and nerds, and see who really has the true l33t speak talent and can either fend off the hackers, or can beat the IT people.  It might not be the best TV, but it sure would be more funny to me at least.  I can just see the quotes “ Yeah, I dropped in the rootkit with the exploit to phpmyadmin, and then boosted the ect/passwd file and ran jack the ripper, and boom I was in”  Ok, well yeah. I am a geek, what can I say, but truly I’d enjoy a show like this.

Also, the shows on food network like “The Next Iron Chef” and others, are often more fun because they have more…. Flavor than the wanna be singers I guess.

Oh, 24 starts, and is in New York this year… I wonder how the Yankees will deal with that..

</rant>























Rant about Drivers

11 Jan

Corey |  January 11th, 2010 | Rants |  2 comments

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Since, this is after all my Blog, and it’s called Corey Rants, you would have to expect some type of rant or rave pretty quickly.  Here is my first official rant about stupid people.

Today’s topic is Cars.

<Rant>

Cruise Control.

  • Use it, seriously for the love of god.
  • There is nothing worse than having the same car try to pass you, then pass you, then you pass them back and forth for 6 miles because the other person doesn’t go at a constant speed.  It’s dangerous.  Yes you stupid car, sitting in my blind spot, then speeding up and going back and forth.
  • Keeping a constant speed, with cruise control, when you are paying attention is very safe even in the rain and snow.  You are more likely to cause problems by speeding up and slowing down, then just going a constant speed.  If you notice the car start to slip,definitely turn off the cruise control, or if you are coming to a corner that you know if slippery, turn it off. It is common since. But you save so much in gas and time and annoy drivers less if you just go a danged constant speed.  Plus you can pay more attention to the road and what is ahead of you when you aren’t worried about your speed control constantly.

Driving too fast or too slow.

  • More accidents are caused when people are going to SLOW for conditions than going too fast.  When someone is coming too fast you can get out of the way, but when you come across someone that is going say 25 when conditions warrant 50, and are going 50, it creates as much if not a bigger problem then someone going too fast.

</Rant>

Thanks for letting me blow off some steam, sometimes we all need to do that from time to time.  :)























IRC as a Social Media

11 Jan

Corey |  January 11th, 2010 | Random, Raves |  2 comments

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As you may or may not know, I am a very frequent member of the IRC community.  IRC, or Internet Relay Chat, is a early internet technology that allows users to chat from all over the world in a simple and easy environment.   IRC has seen a new life come out recently from some social media events such as Online streaming.  UStream uses IRC to allow users to communicate within a community and show, Justin.TV uses a hacked form of IRC to communicate as well.

Depending on the network that you chat on, you can find users that chat about anything. From software development, fighting malware, talking about technology, or even discussing the latest movies and video games. IRC is a place that you can find many people to pass time and even find good bits of help and friends.

There are two networks that I frequent are GeekShed, and DevilsFreek.  GeekShed is ranked as one of the top 100 IRC networks that are rated by users and channels by SearchIRC.  DevilsFreek is more of a quiet and small community that is more of a test bed for my workings.

IRC has had a few bad bursts of publicity in the past, media often covers IRC as a place that hackers hack, and steal credit card numbers and botnets are from.  While there are a few places that this is true, the majority of IRC networks are safe and have active network administrators that keep the trouble makers away.

If you want to connect to GeekShed to take a peak at what IRC is, and what not, feel free to click the More button and a flash chat should appear below.

Read the rest of this entry »























How Social Media Changed us

07 Jan

Corey |  January 7th, 2010 | Random, Raves, School |  1 Comment »

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A few days ago, I wrote about Social Media, and got more comments than I expected, and it gave me a lot to think about and yes I do plan to respond to the comments and discuss social media more.  However, this article

How Social Media Has Changed Us was sent to me, and it brings to light a few things that I haven’t completely considered before.

The article was sent to me, by my good friend tengrrl, who very much has education on her brain, and always looks out for the best interests of me, and everyone else.  What the article discusses is the different aspects of social media in our world. The main part that I like, is that it shows that children that use social media, are writing and reading, and thus then more that we read and write, the better we understand literacy. In an age that we hear more about children using txt chat to write their papers, its awesome to see more positive aspects about literacy.

I hope to have more time to comment about this further, but if you are interested in the social media world as much as I am, it would be a good read to take a peak at.

Thank you again to tengrrl for sending me this link :)























Text Rental and Chegg

07 Jan

Corey |  January 7th, 2010 | Raves, Reviews |  3 comments

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A friend was asking me about our text rental system at UWSP the other day, and started asking me questions about chegg, so I thought I’d take time and share a great experience that i had with them

I am blessed to attend a school that provides text rental as part of our tuition, which means that we have very few books that we have to purchase, as most of them are provided in form of rental, for free. Well, somewhat free, it’s included in the weird fees that they charge us, but that’s another story.  The main benefit to these rentals is that it saves us money, but also the environment.

Well, what if you attend a school that doesn’t provide text rental, or that you want to just read a book that your local library doesn’t have?  The solution came to me last year when I needed to buy a book that was quite expensive and I only needed it for a few weeks of a class.  The answer is Chegg.

Chegg is the online version of my local text rental system.  You look for the books that you need, and odds are the book is in their system.  It tells you the price to rent the book for different lengths of times, ranging from a few weeks to a few months.  The books ship promptly, either from chegg’s offices, or from the publisher or Amazon if it’s a newer book.  In my case, the book arrived two days after I ordered it, directly from Amazon.  The system is also great, because for each book that is rented, they plant a tree to help restock the rain forests.

When you are done with the books, you log back into Chegg’s system and tell them that you want to return the book, and they provide you with a shipping label that is prepaid, and you drop it off at a shipping point. Boom. You are done and don’t get charged anything more than the rental charge.

But what happens if I don’t like the book or it’s the wrong one? Chegg offers a 30 day no questions return policy where you get your entire rental price back.

The system honestly is one of the coolest and quickest options for a text or book rental system.  If you do have books that you no longer want that you have purchased, you can sell them to Chegg, which is a cool option.  They take into factors things such as how many classes might be using this book, the update frequencies and stuff like that, but still, it’s a cool system to take a peek at.

Do something green for the environment and that is also easy on the wallet, and check out this cool system for any books that you need for the upcoming terms.























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Corey's Rants

A Web Developer's rants, raves and randomness.