Jason Cosper

Category: Geekery

  • Apple And EMI Drop DRM

    The best part (to me at least) about Apple and EMI’s DRM free deal is the news that full album prices are still going to stay the same. That is to say that the price will remain around the $9.99 mark — but your purchase will apparently net you the DRM free 256 kbps AAC versions of the tracks.

    Now I don’t know about you, but that gives me loads more incentive to start buying full albums thru iTunes. Well, you know, so long as I like most of the tracks on an album. That’s still going to be a big deal for me. Still, this whole announcement is a step in the right direction for online music.

  • BarCamp LA 3 Next Weekend!

    Heads up! The 3rd installment of BarCamp LA is coming up next weekend (March 24th & 25th, 2007) at Little Radio Warehouse in Downtown LA. For those folks who’ve never been to a BarCamp before, it’s a completely free conference (with meals, snacks and beer) where the schedule is open for the attendees to give presentaions on topics they are passionate about. Want to talk about Microformats or web frameworks? Great! Is teaching folks yoga or how to mod their Wii more your speed? That’s totally awesome too!

    As with most 2 day BarCamp type events, everyone’s encouraged to stay overnight — so bring your sleeping bag and your laptop — if they’re so inclined. If they do, they’re in for a geekfest that’s guaranteed to last until the wee hours of the morning at the very least.

    So if you’re going to be in the LA area that weekend, I’d really love to see you there. Feel free to sign up on the wiki and throw your name on the list at Upcoming.

  • I’m Not Even Supposed To Be Here Today

    I don’t even like first person shooters all that much — but when I swung by the office to drop off my weekly groceries, I ended up getting roped into a LAN game of Quake 3. Despite the fact that I totally suck at first person shooters, I have to admit that it was actually kind of fun.

    Why Quake 3? Well, it’s one of the only games that the Mac, Linux and Windows people in the office can all play without too much trouble. If it’s cross platform, who really cares if it’s 8 years old?

    I’ll probably stick with my DS Lite in the long run. Still, the occasional pick-up game might be nice to blow off some steam every now and then.

  • A Change Of Plans

    Due to the slightly hectic day that I had at work, I totally spaced on the fact that Cory’s LA book launch was tonight. Shit. I really wanted to go to that…

    I mean, I bought a copy of Overclocked so I could get it signed and everything. *sigh* C’est la vie.

  • Multitouch Madness

    Oh. Holy. Crap. After watching this video I’m convinced that multitouch interfaces are the wave of the future. I seriously can’t wait until stuff like this is manufactured and sold with end users in mind. [via]

  • Checklist For My Day Off

    Done! Charge DS Lite so I can play some Castlevania: Portrait Of Ruin.
    Done! Pick t-shirt for tonight’s Preshrunk post.
    Done! Write tonight’s Preshrunk post.
    Done! Find and download last 5 episodes of my guilty pleasure via BitTorrent.
    Not done! Watch as many of episodes of said guilty pleasure as I can in an attempt to catch up.
    Done! Go get a haircut.
    Done! Be so unhappy with your new haircut that you go home and shave it all off.
    Done! Vow to never go to that salon again.
    Done! Change sheets.
    Done! Make much needed Ikea run.

  • Helvetica

    I know that I’ll be more than a little geeked over seeing Helvetica when it finally comes out. I don’t want to have to wait for the DVD tho, so I hope there’s a screening in LA that I can catch before that happens. Guess I better add their blog to my feed reader and stay caught up with their announcements…

  • You Got Your iPod In My DS

    Man, I love the DS homebrew community…

  • Friend Coding

    You know what I’d like to see? A site where you can select the DS games you own and enter your friend codes. Of course, sites like this already exist — so I’d like to take it a couple steps further…

    1. A simple social networking aspect would be nice. I’m imagining notifications when an acquaintance add their friend code for a game you already own. Also a simple way to coordinate a time to go online and play against one another would be handy, wouldn’t it?
    2. One word: Badges. Let me share my friend codes on my blog and allow folks to send me a challenge. After all, I’m always up for a pick-up game of Tetris.

    I know it’s half-baked, but I think it would be pretty damn sweet. LazyWeb, do your magic!

  • Attack Of The Comment Spam

    Something that’s been really grinding my gears lately is the amount of comment spam that I’ve been seeing in my moderation queue. Despite the fact that I use the very wonderful Akismet for WordPress, sometimes it can’t keep up with the flood coming down the proverbial tubes.

    Something’s that’s really helped is a little bit of .htaccess magic that one of my coworkers sent me. What it does is keep people from hitting your wp-comments-post.php unless they’re submitting the request from your server. Of course headers can be forged, but it’s really proven to be quite useful to me. Because of this, I thought I’d be a nice guy share it with y’all. Peep this…

    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_METHOD} POST
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} .wp-comments-post\.php*
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !.*yourdomain.com.* [OR]
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^$
    RewriteRule (.*) ^http://%{REMOTE_ADDR}/$ [R=301,L]

    Naturally, you’re going to want to replace “yourdomain.com” with your actual domain — but other than that, it’s ready to go. Since I spend a lot of my day helping folks troubleshoot their WordPress installs and .htaccess rules, I’d really dig it if you’d refrain from asking questions. That’s right, this spot of code is supplied “as is”, kids.

    Enjoy!