In a moment of brilliance, instead of giving up, I decided I would spoof the MAC address of my laptop to match the MAC address of her laptop. I remember the Professor of a Computer Networks course I took last semester mentioned that it was ridiculously easy to spoof MAC addresses.

So how is it done? Simple. Fire up Terminal and type the following command:

sudo ifconfig en1 ether 00:AA:BB:CC:DD:EE

Where en1 is the code for the interface you want spoof and 00:AA:BB:CC:DD:EE is the new address you want the interface to have.

The code for the interface can be found by entering ifconfig in Terminal. You can verify the change by entering the same command and looking at the ether address for the interface.

Note: If you get an error, turn off your wifi, turn it back on, and quickly while it is trying to reconnect- enter the command to spoof the MAC address again.

After I did this, I refreshed the tab I had opened in Chrome. Lo and behold, the Google homepage loaded successfully!

As the years passed, I justified the Rebel XT sitting in my closet as photography is an expensive hobby and that it was a good thing I didn’t get too into the whole photography thing.

Fast forward to today. I now have 3 lenses for my camera after a renewed interest to capture photos. This desire might have been sparked due to my excitement of post graduate travelling that has been in the planning stages. Photography is a way to capture moments and capture memories forever. It’s a way to capture that unique moment in yours or someone else’s life.

So what lenses did I pick up? The first is the very sharp Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM for $400. The second is the very versatile Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM for $345. Both of these were purchased used off of Kijiji. Many people consider the 50mm prime lens a lens that everyone should have. For many people, it’s even their favourite lens and for good reason. After a few sample shots I can easily see why. This lens gives really sharp and clear photos. It’s well built and feels solid to boot. The 17-85mm is considered a very versatile walk-around lens. Being fairly light and with a decent range. Reading reviews about the 17-85mm had me worried as there were many complaints about the image quality of this lens. After biting the bullet and purchasing it, I took some photos and couldn’t be happier.

Before these 2 lenses I only had the old 18-55mm kit lens. It didn’t even have image stabilization! The photos I ended up capturing with the kit lens were subpar as I always ended up with some blur due to camera shake. The 2 new lenses seems to be huge improvements and I hope they’ll be enough to renew my interest into photography.

There is no shame in quitting.

One of the materials that we have to produce in this course is a term paper at the end of the term. The term paper has to be a topic about technology and the social impact. A topic that really jumped out at me was technology and how it degrades the quality of our real life interactions.

We are constantly checking our phones, going on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and instant messaging services like MSN or Skype. We feel more connected than we’ve ever felt before. But are we really?

In my term paper I want to focus on how all these technologies are actually making us farther apart from people. We become complacent with sending a text message to a friend instead of giving them a phone call. We email our coworkers even though they are just down the hall in the office. What happened to real in-person communication? We use Skype as an excuse not to travel hundreds of miles to see a loved one. When we go out for dinner we play with our phones instead of spending that quality time with the person sharing that moment with you.

I’m actually excited about writing this term paper. It’s an issue I feel really strongly about. Even though I love technology for all that it is, sometimes its just a distraction for the things and people that matter the most to us.

I’d definitely like to hear what your take is on this issue. Leave a comment or drop me an email!

A lot has changed since my last update. But I will save that for another time.

If you do decide to purchase a phone, upon activation I kindly ask you use my referral code: 000806

Using the referral code upon activation will give both you and I $10 BONUS airtime!

So I thought to myself, this would be a great time to build my first computer!  Suprisingly enough I thought to myself, I haven’t built an entire computer from scratch by myself ever! Sure I’ve serviced computers many times, I know how to install ram, swap hard drives, and do basic hardware stuff- I have just never built a computer from its individual parts.  In order to do this, I turned to some trusty people over at the RedFlagDeals.com forums.  I knew the forum is filled with tech savvy and money savvy people.

Surely enough RFD users came and provided immense help in choosing parts for the computer I wanted to build.  Although I do have to admit, they successfully pushed me to spend about $500 more than I was hoping to do but who can blame them. ;)  The computer build also went from an AMD Phenom II X4 base to an Intel Core i7 920 with several heated debates about platform versus price.  The users at RFD didn’t fail to disaapoint though because through their heated discussions I was able to come to my own conclusion that going the Intel Core i7 route would be the better solution for my needs.  Then parts were dissected into what would fit into my computer build and I put in an order through NCIX as they offer an incredible almost no questions asked price match policy and Canadians outside of BC only get charged for GST!  So NCIX offered the best cost effective store to purchase these awesome new computer parts from.

Intel Core i7 Quad-Core Computer Build Parts

So here is what my build consists of…

• Antec Nine Hundred Two Mid Tower Gamer Case 902 ATX 9 Drive Bay
• Gigabyte Ex58-UD3R ATX A1366 X58 DDR3 2PCI-E 2PCI Sata2 RAID Sound GLAN CrossFireX Motherboard
• Intel Core i7 920 Quad Core Processor 2.66GHZ Bloomfield 8MB
• Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme 1366RT Heatpipe Cooler 120MM Fan
• G.Skill 6GB DDR3 3x2GB DDR3-1600 CL 9-9-9-24 Triple Channel Memory Kit
• Sapphire Radeon HD 4830 575MHZ 512MB 1.8GHZ DDR3 2xDVI TV-OUT PCI-E  Video Card
• Western Digital WD1001FALS Caviar Black 1TB Sata2 7200RPM 32MB Cache Dual Proc Hard Drive
• Corsair HX520W CMPSU-520HX ATX Modular Power Supply 120MM Fan

The build came out to a final grand total of: $1439.77

Pictures of Parts and Build

Antec 902 and various parts shipped from UPS and ordered from NCIX.

Antec 902 Box

Parts shipped from NCIX well packaged in the box, all the parts came unharmed.

Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme, Core i7, Corsair PSU, HD 4830, and $10 NCIX gift card for free ground shipping with my order.

Antec 902

Antec 902 with side window and side fan.

Big Boy 200.. no seriously that's what Antec calls the gigantic 200mm fan on the top of the Antec 902 that draws a massive amount of air out of the case.

Front shot of 902 with 9 drive bays. The front of the 902 also has 2 120mm fans with blue LED lighting when powered on. There are also 2 USB ports on the top, 1 eSATA port, and 2 audio jacks (one audio and one mic I presume).

Opening up the 902, the Antec 902 has an all black interior compared to its earlier sibling the 900 which did not have a sexy all black interior. The Antec 902 uses thumbscrews for the side panels and also to remove the hard drive bays. But installation of hard drive and DVD drives still require the good old screws.

Intel Core i7 920 2.66GHZ

Gigabyte EX58-UD3R motherboard, love the colours on this motherboard. Has some nice shiny blue heatsinks.

Thermalright Ultra 120 Extreme, this thing was bigger than I thought! Big heatsink for a high end CPU!

The Ultra 120 Extreme mounted on the Core i7 and mobo. The 120 uses spring screws and it seemed a little flimsy even after installation. The heatsink still moved around quite a bit more than I thought it would even though the screws were tightened.

G.Skill 6GB 3x2GB DDR3 ram inserted into the ram slots. Love the shiny red heat spreaders on this ram!

Gigabyte Ud3 goes into the computer case. Had quite a lot of problems with this and aligning the holes to the brass standoffs. The gigantic Thermalright 120 Ultra heatsink didn't help the cause. Finally able to get it in after I noticed I didn't put the I/O panel in properly so it wouldn't allow the motherboard to go in all the way. The HD 4830 video card is also installed in here in the PCI-E slot.

Corsair 520watt modular power supply installed. Didn't realize how much of a pleasure a modular power supply is to work with. Basically I can pick and choose which connectors should connect to the PSU, this reduces the number of unwanted connectors from the PSU. Also note the PSU is installed at the bottom of the Antec 902 versus the top which is usually the most common in retail computers. So no, I didn't install the PSU upside down. ;) Cables also getting a little messier now.

Another shot of most of all the components installed.

But wait… there’s more, Dell Ultrasharp 2209WA 22″ Widescreen LCD x 2!

So coincidentially about the same time, Dell had an awesome sale on the Dell Ultrasharp 2209WA.  This is a 22″ widescreen LCD with a high quality e-ips panel.  The e-ips is a new LCD technology developed by LG which reduces the cost of an usually expensive high quality IPS panel because the e-ips uses a backlighting technique which makes them more cost effective to manufacture.  The Dell Ultrasharp line also traditonally is a higher line of LCD monitors as they feature a really flexible and useful monitor stand.  The 2209WA was no exception.  They regularly go for $369.99 but were on sale for $219.99!  So I picked up 2 to replace my old Dell Ultrasharp 2005FPW which was a 20″ widescreen s-ips panel which I ended up selling for $160 so the cost of purchasing these 2 new 22″ LCD came out to $337.16 after taxes and deducting the sale of my old monitor!  Awesome steal in my books.

There's one box, the other one was stuck at the border. Had to wait another day to get it.

2209WA came well protected.

Lovely monitor, no cosmetic problems, so far so good! Looks really sleek and business-y. Stand isn't as sturdy as my old 2005FPW but still really good.

Cable management at the back and height adjustable stand.

Everything in Action Finally!

New i7 rig on the left and the 2 new 2209WA monitors on the desk!

Computer booted up with Windows 7

That's a whole lot of pixels. Also got the HTC Touch HD in the bottom right hand corner ;) not to be forgotten that sexy Windows Mobile phone.

It's a light show. Really, it's not that bright, increased the exposure time on the Rebel XT to make it look cooler than it actually is ;) but it still is pretty cool.

Another shot at night.

Close up shot of the computer. I really love the honeycomb effect from the lighting. Really slick and subtleness makes it look nice in the room when the light reflects off the walls.

Well that’s all folks, hope you enjoyed it!  I hope there aren’t any 56K users still out there… like one of my profs *cough*.

The Problem

A co-worker of mine, Nick Papadopoulos recently wanted to create an effect on his portfolio whereby an icon appears over top of his screenshots when visitors mouseover them.

I pointed him to this article I found: http://cssglobe.com/post/1238/style-your-image-links

But Nick quickly informed me that Internet Explorer 7 gives a security bar warning when using that method.  So I ventured to provide a solution to this problem and my first instinct was to work with opacity in CSS.  The problem was in order for this to work IE needs specific CSS properties and adding the filter property through the CSS once again triggers the security warning in IE7– not an acceptable solution.

The Solution

So here is the solution I was able to come up with which works off of 2 images and some clever HTML markup with CSS.

Step 1: Images being Used

Our first image is the one we want to apply the hover state icon on top of, in our example it is a cropped screenshot of a web 2.0 e-commerce template that Nick has designed:

madisons.png

The second image is our actual hover state icon or image.  In this example I’ve made a PNG image with some alpha transparency so that when this image is overlayed on top of the cropped screenshot, it will dim the screenshot and you will see the plus sign at the top left.   You can be creative here and have different type of effects or indicators.

hover.png

Step 2: HTML Markup

<div class="hover_icon_container">
	<img class="screenshot" src="madisons.png" width="360" height="142" border="0" />
	<a class="hover_icon" href="http://google.com">
		<img src="hover.png" alt="" width="360" height="142" border="0" />
	</a>
</div>

The HTML consists of a div container and the madisons.png image which is the cropped screenshot. Our anchor tag follows and this actually links our transparent hover.png image. We do this so we can absolutely position this hover over the cropped screenshot and the anchor link will still work as the hover.png image will be the top most layer, it is the element that we need to link.

Step 3: CSS

div.hover_icon_container {
	width: 360px;
	position: relative;
}
 
	div.hover_icon_container img.screenshot {
		border: 1px solid #c8c8c8;
	}
 
	div.hover_icon_container a.hover_icon {
		display: none;
		height: 142px; width: 360px;
		position: absolute;
		top: 0; left: 0;
	}
 
	div.hover_icon_container a.hover_icon:hover {
		border: 1px solid #000;
	}
 
	div.hover_icon_container:hover a.hover_icon {
		display: block;
	}

Nick also wanted a border on his screenshots so here in the CSS we apply a border to the .screenshot class. Then for our anchor tag and hover.png image we absolutely position it to the parent container so that it is overlayed over top of the screenshot image. Finally we hide this hover state and only display it when the user hovers over the parent container.

Final Product

Live Preview

Download Files

Download Demo Files

I use Speak Out Wireless and it offers the best bang for the buck and they always run great promotions so I thought whoever else uses their service may find this useful!  Or those looking for a new pay as you go cellphone provider.  Feel free to leave comments/questions about the service; I will be pleased to answer them as well.

I thought I’d just fill you in a bit. I’m on my first co-op work term now as a Web Developer at IBM.

The whole job searching process was done during the summer. I had interviews with Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, and finally IBM. Each interview was quite unique in itself and I’ve learned a lot going through the job search process. I think this has been one of the most valuable experiences I’ve gone through and one of my most valuable learning experiences so far in university!

I’ll outline just a bunch of things I’ve been able to learn and experience from the process

Things I’ve learned from the Job Application Process

• preparing a kick ass resume
• preparing a kick ass cover letter
• tips for preparing for interviews
• how employers perform certain interviews and the different types
• STAR method of answering behavioral interview questions
• the importance of a co-op coordinator or a helping friend to critique the things you do

Things I’ve learned from the Job Interviewing Process

• how to go about a phone interview (Microsoft)
• BE PREPARED as you will never know what your employer might throw at you
• come prepared with some questions to ask employer
• your attitude and confidence really dictate how well you do in interviews
• you can usually tell if you got the job or not at the end of the interview

Things I’ve learned from the Work Environment

• not everyone knows what their doing
• it takes time to get the trust of co-workers
• past co-op students can influence how co-workers perceive future co-op students
• the corporate world is slow sometimes… really slow
• I really like a more personal work environment… in terms of personal space but also a more personal work team
• I’m fairly good at motivating myself to do work
• make sure your comfortable with your workspace, makes you work more effectively

Well that’s about it.  Not really organized but just a flow of my thoughts.  It’s still been a fun experience.  I started my work term in September 2008 and I am set to finish April 2009 but there’s also a possibility of an extension into the summer which I am debating.