Yannblog

The personal website of Ian Littman

Windstream Soundbytes

Aug 2

Posted by Ian Littman in Tech | No Comments

So I talked with someone who should know what they’re talking about with regard to Windstream. Not naming names because it isn’t important to do so anyway. Here are are some of the more interesting (though predictable) things that he mentioned:

1. Windstream’s biggest customers are AT&T and Verizon
Telcos buy backhaul from other telcos when it comes to providing cellular service. As long as Verizon and AT&T continue to rule the roost in the wireless biz, Windstream will continue to get a fair chunk of change per month for T1s and fiber Ethernet connections to cell sites in their footprint. In many cases other cellular providers also have to use Windstream for backhauling their cell sites, which generates even more revenue for Windstream, which isn’t particularly forgiving when it comes to T1 pricing either. Read the rest of this entry »

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Picasa Slideshow -> YouTube? Not so fast…

Aug 1

Posted by Ian Littman in Tech | No Comments

You’d think that going from one Google product (Picasa) to another (YouTube) would be quick and painless. However when it comes to exporting slideshows to YouTube, I must say, Au Contraire…at least from the Mac version of the desktop photo manager, which by the way is 100% awesome. There is a fix, however…

The problem in my case had to do with embedding videos into the slideshow. You see, when Picasa exports a slideshow it takes advantage of some of the more esoteric specs of the MPEG-4 container, saving video clips, unmodified, with their accompanying audio alongside the photo slideshow, which includes your music track, captions, etc. So you get multiple video and audio streams “neatly” packaged into a single MPEG-4 container. Cool, right?

Right…as long as you have something that won’t roll over and die when it sees a multi-stream, multi-resolution container file coming down the pike. Read the rest of this entry »

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A couple of cool VPS tips

May 30

Posted by Ian Littman in General | No Comments

So I’m transferring VPS hosts, as of less than an hour ago. Not that there was anything to transfer (I store important stuff on local systems, backed up to BackBlaze, and host this blog and my other personal stuff on MDDHosting) but I’ll be ending my stint at Virpus Networks with the end of my billing cycle. Not that they’re bad or anything, but with my new provider, QuickWeb, I’ll be utilizing what’s arguably the world’s best data center network (SoftLayer) and spending less money while I’m at it ($25 every three months instead of $12 every month).

The server also seems to be more snappy; not sure whether it’s because the Virpus server is packing more VPSes onto a machine stocked with four dual-core Pentium 4 based Xeon chips (at 3 GHz) versus the QuickWeb Xeon 3220 VPS count or what, but the QuickWeb server feels…well…quicker. Sure, I’ll be limited to 1TB of transfer (yeah I know, *limited*) per month (versus 1500GB for $7 or 3000GB for $12 at Virpus) but that 1TB can be transferred over a fire hose of a connection: a gigabit port, to be exact. Needless to say, if I need to deliver some files quickly to a bunch of folks they’re going on this server.

But back to the title of this post…here are some quick VPS-related tips…key words will be linked…eventually… Read the rest of this entry »

MASC: Miniature/Modifiable Asymmetric-Symmetric Cryptosystem

May 8

Posted by Ian Littman in General | 1 Comment

I just finished writing my final report for Intro to Modern Cryptography. The topic: a light, home-brewed, C++, library-asisted OpenPGP equivalent for encrypting files. The basic concept is as follows for OpenPGP:

  1. Symmetric encryption (AES etc.) is fast but you have to get the key from point A to point B securely
  2. Asymmetric encryption (RSA etc.) negates the key sharing requirement but is slow
  3. Asymmetrically encrypt a symmetric “session” key, then use the session key to encrypt the file/message you’re trying to send and you get the best of both worlds!

So I made a command line utility, using the Chilkat Visual C++ library set, that did the above for file encryption, with automatic signing built in so the recipient knows who sent the file. The application is rather basic, but it works very well (and pretty quickly for encryption/decryption…my IdeaPad took about seven seconds each to encrypt and decrypt a 100MB file) and is easy to dissect for anyone who wants to do that sort of thing.

For more information, download the package below Read the rest of this entry »

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Page Updates, Class Elections

Apr 13

Posted by Ian Littman in General | 1 Comment

So I finally updated my About page and my Google profile to reflect where I am now, rather than where I was six-plus months ago. Or thereabouts.

I should also note that I ran for Student Body President here at Mines. This isn’t the first time I’ve run for such a position; I ran last year for Junior Class Treasurer (a friend was running for Junior Class President and I didn’t want to split the ticket), and in fall 2007 I ran for Freshman Class President. This is the first time I was soundly defeated; the other two positions were won by a handful of votes by my opponent. Read the rest of this entry »

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Looking back on today’s communications outage

Mar 23

Posted by Ian Littman in Tech | 6 Comments

UPDATE 4: Added a Kerrville Daily Times link for a new article on how 911 is handled. Lots of good information there.

UPDATE 3: Added another news source. Swamped by homework so tweets will have to wait, but other than those I think I’ve got all the online info on the outage linked from here.

UPDATE 2: Added another couple of news sources, corrected one of my usual typos…some how I forgot to add a “not” into the paragraph about Wal-Mart taking credit card transactions. Sorry for the confusion. Also modified information based on an article from the Fredericksburg Standard Radio-Post. The link below takes you to the subscriber-only version of the article; the non-subscriber snippet just makes the paper look bad (very little info).

UPDATE: Added some more news articles, (still) working on collecting all tweets about the incident, revised some information for accuracy (originally wasn’t sure about CricKet and Pocket, but they too were taken down by the outage…DSL was also apparently iffy in Kerrville).

Granted, I wasn’t in the area when it happened, but since I have plenty of family and friends down there I’m certainly going to talk about it! Read the rest of this entry »

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If the iPad can do this stuff, I’ll buy it

Jan 30

Posted by Ian Littman in General | 2 Comments

So the 3G version of the iPad (announced Wednesday) is still three months away, but I already have some expectations that, if met, would cause me to fork over $630 for the sucker…these expectations are realistic technology-wise, though I’m pretty sure they would require a jailbreak to get working…

1. SIP VoIP, over 3G and WiFi, with Bluetooth and in the background
I’ve successfully run phone calls over AT&T’s HSPA network, so assuming the processor on the iPad is “all that” this shouldn’t be difficult. If I can get a SIP client that connects to a Bluetooth headset and allows other applications “up front” without killing voice quality then I’ve got a very versatile system for nformation gathering while “on the phone.” This is particularly useful when you see my other requests below:

2. Full-fledged RDP, SSH and VNC clients…and either GoToMyPC or LogMeIn if at all possible
The iPad can be an excellent remote access tool; its screen has enough resolution to run any modern OS without having to scroll around. Add in the keyboard accessory and you’ve got a lovely little remote terminal that works anywhere AT&T has service (I’m talking about the 3G version here). Or any other non-AWS GSM or 3G carrier for that matter; the device is unlocked. SSH would be a godsend for doing command line heavy lifting, though you’d need a host to SSH to in this case (not a big deal for me). Even nicer, all of the above will likely be available for the iPad as App Store apps; no jailbreaking required.

3. A high-quality PDF viewer
I want a PDF viewer that can search and copy text, preferably at least as good as Preview. Yes, Preview can be outdone with PDFs…it’s not the most compatible piece of PDF reader in the world unfortunately. Read the rest of this entry »

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