Hunan Express

I decided I'd also make a ringtone from Scott Johnson's Hunan Express story from episode 190 of The Morning Stream (If you haven't heard it yet, I embedded the YouTube, below).

Then you can eat rice! mp3 or iPhone

I also made a longer version that has an intro of Scott's angry little man voice in mp3 or iPhone

Justin Robert Young, Rolling in the Deep Ringtone

You might have heard Mr. Gordon Wilson Phillips's (A.K.A. Justin Robert Young) rendition of Adele's Rolling in the Deep he sung on NSFW or heard it mentioned on Frogpants podcasts such as The Morning Stream, where I first heard it myself. Well, I decided to take the audio and create an ringtone out of it which I make available to you, if you want it, as either an mp3 or an iTunes ringtone. Enjoy!

Apple Distorts Reality

I'm listening to a recording of Buzz Out Loud's live coverage of Apple's announcement of the iPhone 4s and I'm reminded of how many people, myself included, were so disappointed that it's "only" a 4s, not a redesigned iPhone 5. All the changes are incremental, not revolutionary. A better camera, faster processing, voice commands, nothing terribly exciting.

Then I watched the keynote.

Suddenly that camera rivals the finest DSLR, the games spring to life as glimmers of light shine off of dust particles in games, and Siri is my own personal Jarvis from the Iron Man movies. I don't know where Apple gets their magic sauce or how they make it, but man, they've got it. If you haven't watched the keynote, I highly recommend it, if only to learn how to make a good presentation, but be prepared to exert a little willpower or you might find yourself at the nearest Apple store.

I haven't preordered and I don't actually plan on buying one, but not because I don't want it. I'm just waiting for my contract to expire before I jump carriers. By then the 5 will be out, or almost out, so I'll wait.

Reality distortion field aside, it actually seems like a pretty good update, not worthy of the complaints I've heard. The only things it's missing are true 4G (LTE or WiMax), NFC, and a change in form-factor. I'd be willing to bet the reason it's not 4G is battery life. Current chips suck down power pretty quickly and I don't think Apple wants to compromise on that front. NFC isn't very widespread and I could see Apple wanting their own payment partnerships rather than going with Google Wallet or similar services. As far as changing the design, since the retina display has so many pixels, they could probably get away with having the same pixel count in a slightly larger screen. I don't foresee Apple changing the resolution since one of their biggest strengths is that developers only have to work with one layout for a phone and one for an iPad. I couldn't see them introducing a third standard. Because of that, a larger screen wouldn't really get you anything since you couldn't display anything more on the screen, everything would just be bigger.

Copying Custom Emoticons

Every now and then I move to a new computer and try to IM someone using one of my custom emoticons only to find that the picture doesn't show up. Luckily, it's as simple as copying some files from your old machine.

Simply go to C:\Users\User Name\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Messenger\Live ID\ObjectStore\CustomEmoticons and copy the files in there to the corresponding location on your new PC. Remember to replace User Name with your own user directory and Live ID with the email address you use to sign into messenger.

G-Mobile?

AT&T wants to buy T-Mobile, but no one in their right mind other than AT&T thinks this is a good idea, including the Department of Justice (go DOJ!). Let's say consumers actually win this one and the deal fails, but T-Mobile's parent company still wants to get out of the US market. Who might be the big winner? Google. It might just be my own wishful thinking but I'd love to see an innovator in the cellular market get bought out by a company with a vested interest in ensuring cheap, fast, and unlimited access to the Internet from anywhere and everywhere. Google would also have the resources to expand the T-Mobile network into something competitive with the other major players. Yeah, this is probably just wishful thinking, but maybe I'll be watching for a shooting star tonight.

We need more democracy and less republic

The biggest thing wrong with our government is that we're voting for people rather than issues. This made sense back in the old days because when our country was first founded, it was small enough that you likely knew your representative or at least his or her reputation. Communities tended to be more homogeneous since people tend to group with like-minded individuals. There was also the consideration that it was just plain hard to find out what everybody wanted. You almost had to vote for a representative because distance and travel time made it too hard to poll people's opinions.

These days, corporations and special interests are leading politicians around by the nose since the goal of politicians is not to do what's best for their constituents, but to get re-elected and/or retire and become a lobbyist. In the days of the Internet, it makes far more sense to poll people and get their opinion on the actual issues. We might also vote on who should be in charge of working out the details and writing the final bill, but the election should be entirely funded and run by the government, not the people/"entities" with the deepest pockets.

How to generate a self-signed SSL certificate

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is great for protecting your users from snoopers, but there are many cases where you want the protection, but you don't want or need the trouble or expense of getting a certificate from one of the big authorities.  For example, you might have an intranet application or an application designed for users inside your company, or you might simply be in the development phase and want to test it with security.  In these scenarios, you can generate your own SSL certificate and get all the security without the cost (though there are some caveats, see below).

How to do it:

1. Get SelfSSL.exe from the IIS 6 Resource Kit Tools (works with IIS7) or download it from here.
2. At a command prompt, run: selfssl /T /N:"cn=site name" /K:1024 /S:1 /V:3650

"site name" is the host name you're responding to, e.g. www.mycompany.com or mycomputer.mydomain.com and this must be specific, including the sub-domain, if any.  If you want to use the certificate for multiple sub-domains, you can do so by adding more cn (short for "common name") entries, e.g. /N:"cn=mycomputer.mydomain.com,cn=www.mycomputer.mydomain.com".  Note you might have to set up a DNS entry for the sub-domain.

The /K parameter specifies the byte length of the key. In the example above, you'd get a key that's 1,024 bytes long.

The /S parameter specifies the site to install it for.  E.g. the default IIS website is typically site 1, the second is site 2, etc.

/V specifies the number of days the certificate will be valid for.  In the example above, the certificate will be valid for 10 years.

Now the downside: Because you're generating the certificate yourself, when your users try to access the content they'll get a warning message saying that the certificate is not from a trusted authority and they might be a victim of a phishing attempt.  To combat this, you can export the certificate and install it on the client computers.  This is why you only use these certificates for internal applications or testing.

To Export the certificate:

1. Go to Start -> Run, enter "mmc" and press the enter key.
2. Open the File menu and choose "Add/Remove snap in..."
3. Add the Certificates snap in to the list of selected snap-ins and when prompted, choose to manage certificates for the Computer account.
4. Click OK to close the Add or Remove Snap-ins dialog.
5. Expand the Certificates node, then expand Personal and choose Certificates. The certificate you just created should be listed to the right.
6. Right-click the certificate and choose All Tasks -> Export...
7. In the certificate export wizard, click Next to skip the welcome screen.
8. If you simply wish to install the certificate on client machines to avoid the warning, choose "No, do not export the private key".  If you're exporting to back-up the certificate, choose "Yes, export the private key".  Then click Next.
9. Select the "DER encoded binary X. 509 (.CER)" option (should be the default.  The option will be different if you export the private key and you'll have to enter a password) and click Next.
10. Enter or browse to choose the path and name of the resulting file then click Next.
11. View the summary and click Finish.  You should get a dialog saying "the export was successful".  Click OK.
12. You now have your certificate.  You can email or otherwise distribute this file to your user's machines (If you chose to export the I recommend not emailing pfx files if you exported the private key since emailing is not usually secure).

To install the certificate on the client machine, simply double-click the file and click the Install Certificate button.  It should work if you choose the "Automatically select the certificate store based on the type of certificate" option, but if that doesn't work, try placing the certificate in the "Trusted Root Certification Authorities" store.

Note: If you get an error message saying "Failed to generate the cryptographic key", please check the security settings of your MachineKeys folder and make sure you have write permissions. For Windows Vista, Windows 7, and newer versions of Windows Server, this folder is located at C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Crypto\RSA\MachineKeys. You might also try running the command prompt as an administrator.

Note: If you get an error message saying "Failed to build the subject name blob", make sure you specified "cn=" for every common name specified in the /N parameter.

Further reading:

• http://tristanwatkins.com/index.php/the-stuff-around-selfssl/
• http://mystyleit.com/blogs/mystyleit/archive/2008/01/14/creating-a-ssl-certificate-with-selfssl.aspx