cji.me

It is hard to believe I’ve been out on paternity leave for a month already - 2 more to go! I’m very grateful to be able to take this much time off from work to spend with our newest addition. When they’re this young though, it’s a lot of sleeping in between feedings/burpings/diaper changings - which means lots of time sitting on the couch marathon streaming shows on Netflix and reading books.

To feel slightly productive, I spent a few hours last week whipping up some code to potentially get a free PlayBook - not that I need yet another tablet to play around with, but people are doing some cool things with the device and the latest OS has just been released. In any event it was a good way to start brushing back up on some JavaScript/HTML5 (thanks Sencha!) and keep geek brain fresh during my time off. 

I also snagged (on backorder) a Raspberry Pi, which will hopefully be here before I get back to work. I’ve got plans to use it for a network media center or potentially a basic programming environment for my son to get started on. I’m just hoping it doesn’t end up in the “bin of tech I was excited about and then did nothing with”.

I really like Brian Lam’s approach to cutting back on information consumption. This is something I’ve been trying to work on, starting with getting rid of my RSS reader, picking my twitter followers a little more carefully, and slowly cutting back my time on Reddit.

The first thing I did was to take back my time. I quit all the online content that was id-provoking and knee jerk. I stopped reading the stupid hyped up news stories that are press releases or rants about things that will get fixed in a week. I stopped reading the junk and about the junk that was new, but not good. I stopped reading blogs that write stories like “top 17 photos of awesome clouds by iphone” and “EXCLUSIVE ANGRY BIRDS COMING TO FACEBOOK ON VALENTINES DAY.” And corporate news that only affects the 1%. Most days, I feel like most internet writers and editors are engaging in the kind of vapid conversation you find at parties that is neither enlightening or entertaining, and where everyone is shouting and no one is saying anything. I don’t have time for this.

Source: http://thewirecutter.com/2012/01/happiness-takes-a-little-magic/

Kendelle came home with a great surprise yesterday afternoon. Usually when she comes home and says she has a surprise, it’s a (very much appreciated) afternoon snack of some kind she picked up on the way home. I was not at all expecting tickets to see American Idiot that night.

We had talked about going but the tickets were expensive, and so with a baby on the way we decided to pass. Or so I thought. My 37 week pregnant wife drove into Boston after work to get half price day of tickets as an early birthday present for me.

I was extremely excited to finish up work and go to the show. We listened to the album on the drive in to the city and lucked out with no traffic and decent parking. The show was amazing. The story, the music, the sets - all very cool. While I knew the albums were intended to be rock operas, it was great to finally see them acted out like a 95 minute punk rock episode of Glee (but much cooler). 

I feel lucky to have such a wonderful wife, who once again showed me the importance of experiences as gifts instead of just things.

My office is in the back corner of the house, which is where I have my cable modem and router setup. In our apartment I had been using a Buffalo WHR-HP-G54 running Tomato, but decided to make the plunge into 802.11n and upgraded to a WNR3500L. I was pretty disappointed with the wireless performance of this router, even running the TomatoUSB firmware (though just last night I flashed with a Toastman build, and things have mildly improved, so I’d suggest starting there since the last TomatoUSB build was over a year ago).

My house isn’t very big, and I was surprised at how weak the signal was less than 50 feet away in the living room where I had a Roku and Xbox 360 connecting wirelessly. The Roku seemed to be able to overcome the weak signal and stream Netflix in HD without any problems, but streaming movies to the Xbox was hit or miss. Despite supposedly being the newer wireless adapter, the Xbox never even connected at 802.11n and dropped back to 802.11g. That’s what I get for buying one used I guess. With Battlefield 3 fast approaching, and my motivation to run Cat6 through my crawlspace nonexistent, I picked up an Asus RT-N12, flashed it with one of Toastman’s builds (tomato-K26-1.28.7486.3MIPSR2-Toastman-RT-Mini.trx) and configured it as a Wireless Ethernet Bridge. I now have a consistent, strong connection for the Xbox and Roku, hitting up to 300mbps RX/TX according to Tomato, and I didn’t lose half the throughput that I would have if I configured it as a repeater. I concluded my scientific study with some CoD:Black Ops, and didn’t see any lag or stability issues. Bring on BF3!

This year I was lucky enough to finally make the great hacker pilgrimage to Las Vegas in August to attend the Black Hat and DEF CON conferences. While I’ve been to other security/hacker cons before (Shmoocon and SOURCE Boston), BH/DC have always been the ones I’ve wanted to go to.

I saw a lot of great talks (some not so great - too introductory or old, rehashed material) and was inspired to research some new areas and dig deeper into others. The parties were excellent, and as expected from past con experiences, some of the best information came out of the “HallwayCon”. It was really great to meet (or re-meet) a lot of people and put faces to handles or twitter accounts or just see people I haven’t seen since my last Shmoocon.

I did learn a few lessons that I will hopefully remember if I go again:

• Don’t bring nearly as much tech as you think you’ll need unless you have a specific project you plan to work on. I had a kindle, tablet, laptop, ham radio, DS, and phone and only used less than half of that.
• Stay hydrated. There are water coolers in each talk room, but it’s better to have a water bottle or camelbak type setup in case you’re taking a break from the talks.
• Be sure to book your room under the con group - you get cool con room keys and I think this is why I didn’t have all of the DEF CON TV channels in my room.
• Talk to everyone. These are people that probably have more in common with you than most people you see during any given day.
• I read a suggestion to bring some clothes in a freezer bag for your last day, this way you don’t go home smelling like smoke. I wish I took this advice. Cigarette smoke is everywhere.
• Don’t worry about invites to the sekrit/elite/squirrel parties - there’s at least 2 or 3 events on any given night during con, with plenty of excellent hacker people to hang out with (and sometimes free drinks).

I purchased a new domain, but I’m not entirely sure what I’ll be doing with it just yet. Stay tuned…