Birth of a Textgasm
Last month I coined the word “textgasm”. (Google reveals that I’m wrong, as the word appeared on the web before I thought of it, but we’ll ignore that.) It was a natural marriage of concepts I enjoy thinking about. It didn’t end there — I also registered the domain textgasm.com. After the impulse purchase, I didn’t know what to do with the domain.
I asked around and a friend jokingly suggested that I host ASCII porn. Someone else said to use the site for text-related scandals, such as the Detroit mayor’s scandalous text messages. Finally, Iain Cochrane suggested that the site be used for people to type out their fantasies in 140 characters. I liked that idea and worked with it.
Instead of fantasies, though, I broadened the topic to secrets, hopefully attracting a wider audience in the process. I found an Ajax voting system that degrades gracefully if Javascript isn’t enabled on the user’s machine, so I incorporated that into the site. Tijs Vrolix allowed me to essentially adapt the design of his Guestbook 2.0 Experiment to Textgasm.
For two weeks, nonstop, I coded my first web application almost exclusively in PHP and MySQL. On May 14th, the site went live, and I announced it on an online message board. Within a week, the site garnered 4,000 unique hits, many from StumbleUpon and two European portals I’d never heard of: Startkabel.nl and Surfplaza.be.
Some users played with the site in ways I didn’t expect or intend. A spelling mistake in my code allowed for someone to vote 20 times in a row on the same secret if Javascript was disabled on their browser. Another hole allowed for XSS attacks (i.e. posting malicious Javascript code as a “secret”), but someone attempted to exploit that only after I fixed it. And yet other holes allowed people to vote and comment on secrets that didn’t exist. (All holes have since been patched.)
The traffic for Textgasm has dropped off drastically in the past week, but I’m not done with it yet. I have a couple of features to add to it in the next couple of weeks, and then it’s up to the web community to decide its fate. Regardless, this has been a huge learning experience, and it makes me wonder: If Textgasm took me two weeks, what can I accomplish with more time, knowledge, and experience? I can’t wait to find out.
Published May 28, 2008 | 1 Response >>
Extend Your Wifi Range for Under $75
I live in a small one-story house where the wifi signal on one end barely reaches the other end. I’ve attempted to remedy this — unsuccessfully — by amplifying the wifi signal with two products:
1. The Linksys Wireless-G Range Expander. The verdict? It sucks. It doesn’t support WPA encryption (only the inferior WEP), configuration is convoluted (the auto-configuration button doesn’t always work), and the device needs to be close to the signal it’s expanding — partially defeating the point of an expander.
2. The Netgear Wireless-N Networking Kit. Unlike the Linksys Range Expander, configuring the Networking Kit is a breeze. My main beef with this device is that you need a wired connection to the bridge that connects wirelessly to its access point counterpart. (You can hook up a wireless router to the bridge, but that gets expensive and unnecessarily complex.) My secondary beef with this device is that the connection isn’t consistent. It drops. Want to stream music or transfer large files? You’re out of luck. At least I was when attempting to do either one. Third of all, at $179, it’s pricy.
Enter the Linksys WRT54GL router and DD-WRT. The router, on its own, is no different from any other B/G wifi router. But when you arm it with DD-WRT, you turn your $60 router into a $600 router.
DD-WRT, Tomato, OpenWrt, and other third-party firmware projects have been around for years. But the ability to connect wirelessly to a WRT54GL that’s being used as a repeater bridge (range expander) is new to DD-WRT as of late 2007.
I had a Linksys WRT54G router in the attic collecting dust. Earlier this week, I brushed the dust off the router, flashed it with DD-WRT mini and then DD-WRT standard (per the instuctions), and input the settings of the router whose range it’s supposed to extend. I also enabled WPA2 encryption and boosted the transmission signal, all through the user-friendly DD-WRT web interface. After an hour, I was able to connect to the Linksys WRT54G router wirelessly, which in turn was connecting to my Linksys WRT330N router wirelessly, which in turn was giving me an orgasm.
While the Netgear Wireless-N Networking Kit is theoretically over five times faster because of the draft-N standard it uses, the dropped connection I experienced with it alone makes it inferior to the WRT54G with DD-WRT. Also, I can’t move the access point significantly closer to the bridge for a stronger wireless connection in the Networking Kit because of the requirement that the computer has a wired connection to the bridge.
As of this writing, DD-WRT version 24 release candidate 5 is the only version of DD-WRT to support repeater bridge functionality. (Release candidate 6.2 “supports” the functionality but doesn’t work!) You can grab DD-WRT from the downloads page after checking to see if your router is supported (DD-WRT isn’t limited to the Linksys WRT54G/L routers) and reading the installation instructions.
Published April 18, 2008 | 2 Responses >>
Revisiting the SAT
Academia has always been a stale environment for me. Abstract, cold, and sterile. The real shit happens outside of the classroom, and for that reason I was too impatient to graduate from college. I’m a firm believer in not needing a piece of paper to succeed in a career, but there’s no denying that there are lost opportunities without it.
Remember the SAT? Me neither. But I’m applying to UNC to finish my undergraduate degree in Computer Science, so I’m forced to remember it.
When I took the SAT in high school, in 1996, there were only two sections: critical reading and math. As of 2005, there’s a writing section, and UNC requires that sophomore applicants take the SAT with writing. This morning, at age 28, I signed up to take the SAT for the second time.
(I inadvertently signed up to take the test in June when I’ll be in Chicago, 800 miles from home. Now I have to call CollegeBoard to change the date to May, one month sooner and two months away! Enough time to prepare?)
On Saturday, I purchased the unwieldy Kaplan SAT 2008 Premier Program (pictured above). It’s one of the biggest books I own. What I lack in mental acuity I’ll make up in physical agility just by lugging the thing around. Depending on the outcome, maybe I’ll send UNC my BMI instead of my SAT results.
Published March 3, 2008 | 4 Responses >>
Postum Gone Postmortem
This jar of imitation coffee was a staple in the kitchen cupboard of our home growing up. We rarely drank the stuff, though, and that may be why Kraft discontinued it. I don’t miss it enough to bid on it. Actually, I hardly miss it at all. But seeing it reminds me of my childhood, and sometimes I miss that.
[via MetaFilter]
Published February 20, 2008 | 6 Responses >>
Is Your New Bicycle
What started out as an inside joke between Mat Honan and his wife erupted into a meme plastered all over the Web (including blogs at Wired, Time, and The Economist). First, Mat created barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com, a site boasting all the nice things that Barack Obama has done for you.
Within days, copycat sites by various authors sprung up: hillaryclintonisyournewbicycle.com, johnmccainisyournewbicycle.com, ronpaulisyournewbicycle.com, michelleobamaisyournewbicycle.com, stevejobsisyournewbicycle.com, and even a site dedicated to the meme itself: isyournewbicycle.com
DreamHost, the Web hosting provider, couldn’t help themselves from getting in on the action with joshjonesisyournewbicycle.com. (Josh Jones is a Co-Founder of DreamHost.)
One simple but novel idea can go a long way.
[Update 20Feb08: cannondaleisyournewbicycle.com, hillaryclintonisyournewhddvdplayer.com]
[Update 21Feb08: iamyournewbicycle.com]
Published February 19, 2008 | No Responses >>