It used to be that ice cream trucks would ring a loud bell to call the children to the curb. There still is one in the neighborhood that does that, but for the most part they have these crappy musical horns. Those things should be banned for a multitude of reasons. First off, they sound like shit. Second, they have Christmas music built in. Third, these dumb asses driving the ice cream trucks don't bother to exclude the Christmas songs from the playlist.

Don't get me wrong, I like a good Christmas carol in season. I seriously do not need to hear them from mid-May through late-September. I fear that all this overexposure to them may ruin them for me come the holiday season. Only time will tell. In the mean time, I'd like all the ice cream truck drivers of Providence to start playing Michael Hearst's Songs for Ice Cream Trucks.

First, here's the link to WJAR's page for the segment, where you can watch the video.

How to Watch HDTV for Free

Not bad, huh? I was a little nervous and forgot to mention a couple of things during the interview. While I did mention that I get all the Boston stations with my OTA antenna, I forgot to note that Cox doesn't carry any of them, whether in standard def or high def. Also, despite what the operations guy from Cox said, you can totally tell the difference between the recompressed HD signal on cable and the pure OTA signal.

For the most part, 98% of what's on regular cable is crap. I will admit that I love the original series on HBO and Showtime like Deadwood, Rome, Weeds, Six Feet Under, etc. I see them when they come out on DVD. I like watching a whole season of something in one shot anyway. Except for those few series, how many times can you watch Beverly Hills Cop on HBO? There are also a few of those reality competition shows on Bravo (Top Chef, Top Design, Project Runway) that we don't get to see live. But if we're really dying to see them, we can always get them from the iTunes store.

When you figure that I'd pay about $100 per month for the pleasure of having all that entertainment piped into my house by Cox every month, I'm way ahead of the game by going OTA for network television and then buying everything else a la carte.

I spent the better part of yesterday digging up about 24 square feet of the side yard to make room for a raised bed garden. Late in the afternoon, a friend stopped by and helped with installing the raised bed frames and getting them level. I'm pretty sore today in places where I forgot I had muscles.

Today I've got to go get a whole boatload of peat moss to fluff up the soil. Our soil is really sticky and clay like.

Link

Later on, I get home and check out the receipts and such. Much to my amazement, Staples has actually made it easy for you to file for rebates now. It seems that now on any Staples rebate offers, there will be an offer code and an Easy Rebate ID code. To file for your rebate, you simply go to stapleseasyrebates.com, enter the two codes and fill in your mailing address info. Ta Da! Done. No stamps, no envelopes, no bullshit. This is so easy, my friend Emory would even use it, and he never files rebates. Let's hope that everyone else follows suit.

Saturday was chock full of interesting sessions, starting with Jennifer Granick's talk on FISA, CALEA and Executive "privilege". After the room split break, I attended Fyodor's talk on nmap. Nothing like learning tips and tricks for a tool straight from the mouth of the creator. From there I rolled into Elonka Dunin's presentation on Kryptos and the Cyrillic Projector. Elonka is an excellent speaker and has an obvious obsession with code breaking.

After lunch, I caught Abend's presentation on magnetic card reading and emulation. This was an awesome talk on a topic in which I've always been interested. Thanks to my super-smart question asking ability, I was gifted with a surplus magnetic card reader of my very own. Of course, now I have to build an interface for it.

I filled the rest of my afternoon with bits and pieces of Lance James' talk on Trojans, Botnets and Malware, Richard Bejtlich's talk on Sguil, and Shawn Merdinger's talk on WiFi VoIP phones. I also spent a little time playing Galaga in the hacker arcade, but not enough to accumulate enough tickets to get a prize. Next year, I'll have to build a game for the arcade, as the pickings were a little sparse.

Sunday was a short day with my main interest being the lock picking talk given by Deviant Ollam. The Shmoo folks were quite kind in giving him two hours for the talk instead of the usual one hour slot allocated to everyone else. It was an awesome talk, and I'm not just saying that because I won a t-shirt and a Swiss Army knife/USB memory drive. After that there was a room join and we all got to enjoy J0hnny L0ng's gut busting talk on 'Hacking Hollywood', in which he reviewed just how l33t the folks in Hollywood are when it comes to all this cool computer stuff. After that I had to bail, as I had a 3:30 flight back home. I probably could have managed to stick around for the last half hour, but then I would have been fighting with everyone else for a cab to the airport.

Thoughts for next year. Fly down the day before and bum around the city instead of getting stuck at the airport all day on the first day of the Con. I'll also plan on staying an extra day so I don't have to rush out before everything is over.

Update: I received an email the other day with a fix for this launchd plist. Apparently, I had forgotten to include the program itself in ProgramArguments array, which exec treats as the argv array. Thanks go to Adam Ingram-Goble of Indiana University for pointing this out to me. Sneers to Apple for misnaming the key. Given this information, they should have called it CommandLine instead.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>Label</key>
	<string>org.instiki.instiki</string>
	<key>OnDemand</key>
	<false/>
	<key>Program</key>
	<string>/usr/bin/instiki</string>
	<key>ProgramArguments</key>
	<array>
		<string>/usr/bin/instiki</string>
		<string>--port=2500</string>
		<string>--storage=/Library/WebServer/Instiki</string>
	</array>
	<key>RunAtLoad</key>
	<true/>
	<key>ServiceDescription</key>
	<string>The Instiki Wiki</string>
	<key>StandardErrorPath</key>
	<string>/Library/Logs/Instiki-error.log</string>
	<key>StandardOutPath</key>
	<string>/Library/Logs/Instiki.log</string>
	<key>UserName</key>
	<string>instiki</string>
	<key>WorkingDirectory</key>
	<string>/Library/WebServer/Instiki</string>
</dict>
</plist>

I was in a photo shop yesterday killing a little time before a haircut and came across this nice little bag for my digital camera. Tamrac makes excellent soft sided bags for all sizes of cameras, from SLRs to tiny digitals. This bag is great for my Panasonic Lumix. The camera fits perfectly in the compartment and the front pocket has plenty of room for cables, extra batteries and memory cards. This is a quality bag made here in the States, with real metal D rings and clips for the straps. If you're in the market for a camera bag, check out Tamrac, you won't be disappointed.

Tamrac website

It seems that The Pernice Brothers are going to be playing at The Century Lounge here in Providence on August 25. I think we'll go check it out. We've seen them before (or was it just Joe Pernice) and it was a good time. It'll be nice to see a decent show here in Providence.

I spent last weekend participating in the Psy-Geo Provflux 2005 event here in Providence. One talk that really grabbed my attention was by Nick Montfort and Scott Rettberg about their novel Implementation. It was written as a series of discreet sticker length chunks that may be read on their own. I first noticed one the day before their presentation on a sandwich board sign for a gallery downtown and was left wanting more. You can download PDFs of the whole novel from the site and print up stickers to spread Implementation around your town. Be sure to send Nick and Scott pictures of your placements.

A stylist working for Matrix is apparently a fan of the old Flock of Seagulls look. At the end of their selection of hairstyles for men, all promenently featuring their Trix line of products mind you, is this modern look at Mike Score's unforgettable hairdoos.

The thing that really kills me about this styling guide is that 80% of the men's styles require a flat iron. I don't know a single guy who could manage to flat iron his own hair. I know I'd end up burning half my hair off, which would really blow considering I spent the last year or so growing it out. That's something you really need a stylist to do for you. Guess it's time to get my own personal stylist. I'll get right on that once I find that winning lottery ticket. I think it's somewhere in the couch.

Link

The modernist prefab housing trend is gaining some traction in Germany. As a fan of modern design and prefab housing, I fully support this. There are some beautiful prefab structures being sold these days, so much better than the crap that went up in the 1970s. Also, pick up a copy of the April/May 2005 issue of Dwell to see an article on a cool prefab apartment complex that is going up in Manchester, UK. If I ever end up there for work, I'll definitely look into getting a flat in that building.