This is what happen..!

I dipped my toe in Android land

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 10:06:40 -0500

I’ve been using a Google Nexus One phone since 3 days. I’m using it exclusively, keeping my iPhone 3GS without a sim card and power off at home. This is a nice experience because I was always curious about this new phone os. I never tried version 1.x, so I can’t tell how much it evolve since day one. What I can say for now, I like it. But there are a few things that I would like to point out.

Keyboard layout needs a bit of getting use to. This is probably due to the fact that I’m coming from an iPhone and I’m used to it’s layout.
This one bugs me a lot, I can’t change the language while in a text box. I speak french and english, and I write email / im / sms in both language. While typing, the dictionary / replacing tends to slow me down.
Android market, there is a lot of good apps, not as much a on the iPhone, all seem free at first. I found out that some apps have a pro version, but where do I buy..? It looks like every dev needs to sell their apps from there own website.

Other than that, I’ve been using DoubleTwist to drop music and video from my iTunes. And it works great.

Weewar Stats

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 19:03:05 -0500

For almost a year, I’ve been playing Weewar, an online game based on Advanced War for the Nintendo DS. It’s a turn base game that you receive email when it’s your turn to play. It got chat, around 12 types of units, air, land and sea, it’s really cool and fun. You should try it. I’m “optikz” in the game, friend me up and let’s play.

This post is not to gain friends on the game, but to promote a web app that I’ve been working on. I used to use a Greasemonkey script to gather stats while playing. This was nice, but I sometime played from other computers that I do not fully control. That’s where my new web app comes in handy. It gives me almost the same stats as de GM script, but on a website with an iFrame at the bottom with the game I’m playing.

It’s been really fun to work on, I hope it will gain popularity.

Here’s the link: http://weestats.com

Jolicloud on my Sony Vaio P

Tue, 19 Jan 2010 15:48:49 -0500

Well my Vaio P has been gathering dust from quite some time now. I’ve stop using it as it was too slow and even in Linux, I wasn’t really satisfied. I’ve been waiting for some time to try something new on it, but the Intel GMA500 video card is kind of keeping me away from a lot of distro / options.

Jolicloud looked promising, but it took them like 2-3 month to release a GMA 500 compatible version. I’ve installed it Sunday and I’m quite pleased with it. It’s basically a Ubuntu Netbook Remix branded with Jolicloud and using their Social featured package management. I haven’t tried UNR 9.10, so I can’t tell if this is the reason why everything is working. But it’s fast, and my hardware is fully supported. I can even use the hotkeys to set the sound and britghness. Their package management is full of usefull web apps. They use something like “Fluid.app” on OSX to create native looking web apps.

I’m happily using my Vaio P again, and in 3 months when I’ll visit Hong Kong and Beijing, I’ll probably be bringing it with me instead of my Macbook Air. On vacation, it will probably be the best weight / size notebook to take on the other site of the world. =)

Inspiring video..! A must watch.

Sat, 02 Jan 2010 20:30:25 -0500

Inspiring video..! A must watch.

2010 resolutions

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 12:12:00 -0500

This year, I’ll make things simple… As making a list of things I want to achieve is probably one of the worst thing you can do. Last year I only did 3 things out of 9. Maybe 9 was too much. Thinking about it, it should not, cause you have 12 month to do stuff. You could spread it all over evenly and be able to do one thing a month. But history says it doesn’t work. So let’s do it 3 things on do it great.

Loose some weight; (this can be tricky, but achievable)
Get one security certification; (work on doing my cissp, I need this for consulting)
Work on my consulting cie. (I got my first gig, beginning January 4)

That’s it, 3 things, 3 easy things.

Happy New Year peeps! Be safe.

Looking back on 2009

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 19:14:49 -0500

Let’s have a look back at the big highlights of 2009.

Olivier my second child (last one) was born on the August 31.

I’ve bought a house in Montreal.

I’ve lost a job, but I’ve reinstated my personal company and started to work for myself. This is good as I found a consulting gig 2 weeks down the road. I will now work on stuff that matters to me.

As for my 2009 resolutions, here is what I have achieved out of 9.

I did start drinking more tea. By the end of the year, I was drinking tea 2 times a day. It feels really good.
I did de-clutter a bit. This is probably due to buying a house and moving in. The more I packed / unpacked, the more I threw away.
I worked on a sleeping schedule, but I lost it after my new born got home.

That’s about it for my old resolutions… I did lost some weight, but I got it all back and some more. I’m not proud of it… This will probably be what I need to work on next year. Starting January, I’ll be planning and working on what I eat.

I’ll definitely do a 2010 resolution post, stay tuned!

That is some funny sh*t! ;-)

Fri, 11 Dec 2009 21:07:33 -0500

That is some funny sh*t! ;-)

Haitus

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 10:41:47 -0500

Wow, it’s been a pretty long time since I wrote anything on my blog.

All I can say is that I’ve been busy. New baby, buying a new house and all. If you want some updates, you can follow me on Twitter.

iPhone 3.0 tethering over bluetooth on Linux Ubuntu 9.04

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:27:25 -0400

This is a repost from ubuntuforum.com from Cooperlees. I’m posting it on my site so I can find it easier and I like to spread the word.

Ubuntu iPhone 3.0 Bluetooth Tethering with uit.sh

If you would like to use your iPhone 3.0 with your bluetooth capable Ubuntu 9.04 PC then uit.sh (Ubuntu Iphone Thethering) is for you. This script installs all required conf, allows you to enable and disable your iphone tethering and even uninstall the conf if you no longer need it. I do expect NetworkManager to eventually support this out of the box.

Thanks to http://xn—9bi.net/2009/06/17/tether…o-ubuntu-9-04/ blog post which assisted me in knowning what configuration was needed.

Usage:
— Ubuntu iPhone Tethering (uit) Version 0.1 - Cooper Lees —
Usage: ./uit.sh options
- This script will install, uninstall, enable and disable iPhone tethering with iPhone 3.0 Software.
- It has been tested on a upto date (patched) box as of 20090623.
- !! Be careful, this script will ask for your password to get root privledges to your system!

OPTIONS:
-h Show this message
-i Install required configuration
-u Uninstall required configuration
-c Connect Tethering
-d Disconnect Tethering
-m [] Set iPhone’s MAC Address (to /home/USERNAME/.uitrc)
-v Verbose

Install Guide:
Avaliable from: http://us.cooperlees.com/download.php?F=uit.sh.gz

- Inital installation requires an active Internet Connection to get required dependancies through apt-get. Current dependancies = ‘bluez-compat’
- Only the install requires you to sudo the script, other areas apropriately sudo where required.

Install Process:

Open terminal
wget http://us.cooperlees.com/download.php?F=uit.sh.gz
gunzip uit.sh.gz
chmod 755 uit.sh
[OPTIONAL] Move the script into your sbin - ‘sudo mv uit.sh /usr/sbin’ (This will allow it to be in your PATH)
Run ‘sudo uit.sh -i’ (You will need to have your iphone in discoverable mode with Bluetooth on)
You will be notified if it all sucessfully installs.

Connect Process:
- Ensure Bluetooth is on and paired with your system (use the GNOME Bluetooth tool to pair). Also make sure Internet Tethering is on.

uit.sh -c

- Once connected you will see the iPhone come up with a blue bar stating ‘Internet Tethering’ is activated.

Disconnect Process:
One command will disconnect from the iphone tethering - You should see the blue notification text dissapear.

uit.sh -d

Uninstall Process:

uit.sh -u

- This will remove conf from files and also make backup of files modified.

Hope you enjoy it as much as I am. Finding the bluetooth a little slow. But still very handy and good. Thanks Apple.

Password security

Sun, 21 Jun 2009 22:58:20 -0400

I had a talk lately about password. People are asking me, what are good password? Well let me tell you how I create my random password that I use. I have 3 rules to create them.

It needs to be longer than 8 chars. 10 chars is a sweet spot.
It needs to contain numbers, extended chars and letters. All of those!
Extended chars and numbers need not to be use to end the password, some of those chars needs to be in the middle of the password.

With those guide lines, you need to make a password. The best password are those that are not words. They are easy to crack with a dictionnary attack. Even if you change some letters for numbers. Like l33t speeking. Well I hate to pop your dreams, but now, almost everyone knows that trick.

When I took my CHFI class, we came to conclusion that the best password are made from a phrase. Something that has a meaning to you but not others. Lets try this.

Lets say that I ate a KFC at lunch time, it was good, I had a great meal. My pass phrase could look like this: “I love kfc, f**k the world!” With a pass phrase like that, my password would look like this:

i<3kfcftw!

Ok, I got an extended char at the end, but I do have one in the middle, so it doesn’t count. I got a number, and this password is not a dictionnary word.

It’s easy like that. Keep in mind that remembering a phrase is quite easier than remembering random letters and numbers.

I bougth some new Vibram FiveFingers shoes. update: I...

Sat, 09 May 2009 19:08:00 -0400

I bougth some new Vibram FiveFingers shoes.

update: I haven’t use them that much, I broke my pinky toe. (I wasn’t wearing my vibram)

Safari 4 tabs

Sat, 09 May 2009 09:58:56 -0400

I didn’t want to come to this, but Safari’s tabs on top is getting on my nerve. If you ever miss the X to close the tab and double click, it minimize the browser window. That happen so many times a day that I stop counting.

Here is what to do to get the old look and feel back.

defaults write com.apple.Safari DebugSafari4TabBarIsOnTop -bool NO

That’s it, problem solved.

http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/May2009/05/c8261.html

Tue, 05 May 2009 11:17:23 -0400

http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/May2009/05/c8261.html:

This is great news! I will be receiving Twitter’s SMS again.

Gmail Sandboxing

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 18:33:34 -0400

Gmail Sandboxing:

Using Google Mail as a Sandbox for reading insecure files.

This is mind blowing!

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 13:17:09 -0400

This is mind blowing!

VNC to OSX

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 15:29:49 -0400

I always had problem connecting to my home computer running OSX from a Windows computer. VNC was slow, it didn’t work too well.

I tried TightVNC today and it solved all my problems. It’s fast and work as good as screen sharing on OSX.

I’m just happy to report this, you may carry on! :-)

Twitter

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 18:55:42 -0400

I installed Tweetie on my iPhone. I can only say that it is way better than Twitteriffic.

I was using the free version of Twitteriffic, it might not compare with Tweetie since the last one is a paid app.

Ubuntu on my Vaio P

Sun, 05 Apr 2009 22:08:00 -0400

I’ve installed Ubuntu Linux on my Vaio P. It’s quite easy with Ubuntu 9.04 Beta. Graphic card, wireless, some function keys, hibernate and suspend works out of the box. Some tweak are needed, but everything works quite ok.

Here is what needs to be tweak for it to work. First thing, graphic card, you need 2 tweaks for it to work in native 1600x768 resolution.

Grub, you need to edit /boot/grub/menu.lst modify the line beginning with “kernel” and append this last command to boot in 1600x768x16bpp:

vga=0x367

Don’t forget to update grub:

# sudo update-grub

Then you need to add the following line to your /etc/X11/xorgs.conf file. In the device section, right under “Identifier”:

driver “fbdev”

Now reboot and you will have native resolution. It wont be a speed daemon, but it’s really usable. You can play low res flash video full screen without any skipping.

Update Sony Vaio P

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 19:20:27 -0400

It’s now been almost 3 weeks since I got my Vaio P. It’s really a great little laptop. I once had a Asus EeePC 701 and this little dude kicks his ass. Ok, It’s not a great comparaison, I know, first gen Netbook vs a brand new one. But this is only what I have used.

I did try to install Linux on it, but the Vesa resolution isn’t that great, it’s slow as hell! I might as well use Vista. I’ve thought about using Windows 7, they say it’s faster, but the beta will only work until August. After that, you need to reinstall Vista or a new version of Windows 7. Since this is not confirm or anything, I might as well give Vista a try.

Right now, it work ok. I’ve found how to customize it so it feel good. Been using it with Cygwin and Console2. I’ve also installed Google Chrome. I’ve been using a text editor that looks and feel like Textmate on my Mac. It’s called E. With all those Apps, It’s good to use. And I’m almost not using my MBP anymore. Well at least for day to day browsing.

Oh, and it’s a great laptop to bring with you anywhere when you’re on duty call.

In my last post about my Sony Vaio P, I didn’t publish any...

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 19:10:10 -0400

In my last post about my Sony Vaio P, I didn’t publish any picture. Here is one.