I just received one of the best scam phone calls every to my cell phone (I seem to be getting more and more of these calls to my cell phone and it pisses me off).
The call came from (916) 219-8163
It was an automated recording that said the following:
This is the second time we've called to notify you that the warranty on your vehicle is about to expire. Driving without a warranty can lead to serious problems and you should renew your warranty immediately. We will not call you again, if you do not renew your warrant we will remove your file from our system. Please press 1 to speak with a representative or press 2 to be taking of our calling list
Given that I'd already answered, I figured I might as well have some fun, so I pressed 1.
The remainder of the call went like this:
> "Hello sir, can I get your name"
< "Yes... it's Tyler Jones J-O-N-E-S"
> "Thank you sir and I just need to confirm the vehicle you drive"
< "I don't own a vehicle.. but I have a bike"
> "Does anyone in your home have a vehicle sir?"
< "Nope... we all have bikes"
> "Oh, just to confirm your number was 647-828-6206, we'll put you on our do not call list"
*click*
I didn't get to have nearly as much fun as I wanted... next time they call back I'm definitely going to own a car.
So previously I'd posted about writing my own curses twitter client, partially to use and partially to start playing with curses. It was quickly pointed out that I had used an older version of twyt (python library to access the twitter API) -- this taught me to think twice before running apt-get install in the future.
Anyways, I was a little delayed (due to a quick trip to Atlanta) but now I'm back at a computer and I decided to fix up TwCuP to make use of the latest twyt (0.9.0). Everything is cleaned up and working, and at Marcin's request, I've set it to make use of the API over HTTPS (twyt uses HTTP by default).
Once you have all the required modules (twyt.twitter, twyt.data, getpass, sys and curses), you'll only require a single file (client.py).
You can get this file via websvn here.
I plan to add the rest of the twyt API and then start tweaking... expanding on just what can and can't be done. In the mean time I'm open to comments and feature requests.
[Update: Added Screenshots]
A long time ago I decided that I would never review software that I was asked to look at, and that I probably wouldn't post deals sent my way unless they were truly valuable to my readers. So when I was contacted by Neobyte Solutions with a "special offer" for my readers, I almost hit the spam button. However, I've recently been considering personal backup software (storage is dropping in price and I have a number of systems with critical files these days), so I looked online and saw some features of Titan Backup that I really liked. The initial offer was a copy of Titan Backup 1.5 [download] for free with this serial: 000020-ACM8KK-1YXTMT-JZT4C6-JF18HG-VTR9BJ-VKM9KR-K2923Y. They also offered a 50% off discount code [NEOB-SGKO] which could be used here to upgrade to Titan Backup 2.5.
I countered with a request for a few 2.5 keys that I could give away to my readers and they were happy to provide a couple. As such, I'm going to give away a few serials for Tital Backup 2.5 on Friday by selecting random people from the comments. Please be sure to include your email address so I can get back to you.
Read more...
[Update: Due to Bandwidth concerns and the popularity of DVL, I've had to remove the public mirror. If you really require a direct download and can't get one... contact me and I'll share a private link. I just need to limit the number of downloads.]
DVL 1.5 is out, and I have mirrored it again.
There is also a call out for people to create training materials, so if you can, swing by the DVL forums and volunteer to make a video or two. However, I'm unsure of where to find the forums (there's no link on the main page and I'm not a user). Please share a link if you know how to get to them.
So I mentioned some of this to someone the other day and they were surprised by it (and a Blackberry user) so I thought I'd do up a quick post about it... some people may not realize how much information can be determined about you. Note, these are based on my observations.
Blackberry IM Status:
- Active -- User can be sent messages and will receive them immediately
- Contact is Unreachable (Icon: (- (not quite sure on this one but that's what it looks like) )
- Out of cell range
- Phone is no longer active
- On a phone call
- Pending -- They haven't authorized you yet. (Icon: Green +)
- Unavailable -- Set by the user (Icon: Red X)
Blackberry IM Icon:
- Clock -- Waiting to Sent
- Bulls Eye Circles -- Sending
- Checkmark -- Sent successfully
- D -- Delivered
- R -- Read
Now... you'd think that this limits what you know, but it really doesn't. Generally you'll know if one of your Blackberry IM contacts has had their phone deactivated and depending on where you live, you may also know when they are in or out of cell range (the exception may be if they turn their phone off).
Something that was recently pointed out to me is that GSM will continue to deliver messages while you're on the phone, while CDMA (which is what both the Blackberries in my house are) won't.
This means that you can further determine:
- Unreachable + Checkmark == Phone Off or CDMA on a Call
- Unreachable + D == GSM on a Call
I know, to most people this probably doesn't seem like much, but I figured it was worth sharing... if one person learns something new... mission accomplished.
Those of you that follow me on twitter may have noticed that yesterday I was posting quite a bit more frequently and most of them contained the word 'test'. I was playing around with twyt and decided to build a curses-based Twitter GUI. I've never done any curses programming before, so this was my way of learning the functionality. I implemented command-line support in a style I found more to my liking (even though twyt already has this) and then started buliding the curses GUI. If I go very far with this, I may eventually rewrite the API to fit in with the rest of my code, but for now I'll use twyt on the backend.
The code is very basic, but already it can do a few things:
- Display latest friends list updates.
- Display recent replies.
- Display recent sent and received DMs.
- Update your status.
- Send a DM.
Unfortunately the next update is most likely a week away, but when I get around to it, I plan on splitting the screen into multiple windows with your current status always displayed, along with a regularly updated friends list. Right now everything is jammed into a single window.
I do need to figure out how to get Twitter to display my client name (apparently I need to contact them for that) but so far, so good. Anyone wishing to take a look at my (very alpha) code, can check it out here.
For those of you wondering about the name... TwCuP kinda reminds me of 'hiccup', so I found it slightly amusing at ~4am when I was trying to come up with a name.
Eventually this will (hopefully) be a client that can be left idling in a screen session... that's my goal anyways.
You may have noticed that recent comments have disappeared. It appears that IntenseDebate.com is down, so I've disabled the plugin (otherwise my blog won't even load). This isn't the first issue I've had and I'm finally fed up. I don't get email notifications for all my comments, my site won't load when they are down and the site is slower to load because of their plugin. My only hope is that when their site comes back up I'll be able to dump the comments and import them into Wordpress.
I wanted to take a minute to mention a new project that Marcin and I have started that we're calling SSLFail.com. One of the primary purposes of the site is a gallery of images of sites with failed SSL due to invalid certs, bad domain names, etc. Browsers can add more and more protection against sites with poor SSL implementations, but until these big players on the web ensure they have valid SSL, users are going to continue to click through these error messages.
This isn't all the site will be though. Expect to see future discussions on our reasoning for the gallery, as well as tips and tricks and anything else.
We've already added two additional contributors. Jay Graver and Romain Gaucher.
I got my first smart phone about 2 years ago. It was the UTStarcom 6700, a rebranded HTC Apache. I used it for ~8 months and was a big fan of the phone but it had major battery issues, and even getting a replacement battery didn't seem to help. So I finally got fed up and took advantage of a Blackberry Pearl promotion. Since then, my HTC has sat, untouched. Recently I contemplated installing some sort of Linux on it, and using it as a PDA. It has a large touch screen, a slide out keyboard (that I find rather useable) and WiFi. Then I stumbled across this website, where someone is building Android for the Apache.
The project is still in alpha, and while it states that CDMA is working, the currently release doesn't seem to have working CDMA (I eagerly await the next release). Anyways, I installed it and played and I must say I'm rather impressed with Android. I'd imagine on a phone that's been engineered for it, it's probably amazing. Even on the Apache it looks and feels great. I imagine if I used an iPhone that I'd see these similar slide menus, but I have, so far, successfully stayed away from the iPhone.
Once this build gets to be further along, I think I'll be fairly happy with it. It's fast and looks great. I may even go find a extended battery and carry it instead of my blackberry.
Romain Gaucher mentioned this on twitter and I had to post a screenshot for anyone who hasn't seen it... it's awesome.
