iPhone Hack

Quick post:

The typical nerd from my school Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) and also a fellow New Jersian just hacked the iPhone to allow it to be used on other cell networks (tested on T-Mobile). His blog about hacking the can be found here. He is also planning on trading in his original hacked iPhone for a $30k car from the Fast and the Furious, a bit unusual, but we all have our weaknesses. Hopefully he doesn’t do to this car what The Hulks son did to his FnF car. I def give props to this guy and hope he doesn’t get too much trouble from Apple’s Law team, though there are no immediate legal issues.

It’s pretty ironic that Steve Wozniak-one of the founders of Apple-is coming to RIT for Brick City Festival as a distinguish speaker. Maybe this will raise some interesting talk this year, if not, Howie Mandel will certainly be able to think of a stupid game to wake everyone up.

Sextastically yours,

Benjamin Willis

Concept Maps…wtf

Warning: boring content ahead, again for you illiterate users just watch the video and look at the pretty pictures.

I have always found it hard to tell someone in detail, technical or not, to do a knowledge transfer. It usually consists of sitting down with someone for a long time while they take notes and look very confused. After hair pulling questions a general concept can be understood, but the details are almost never transferred. Every time I do a coop or short job term it is always the same thing, how do we get what’s in my head out into someone else’s? Well, starting about 12 years ago the solution for this problem was coined with the buzz word Knowledge Management. There have been a bunch of tools that are used, the main stream ones are obviously wiki, blogs, forums, comments etc. One other tool that is not commonly used struck me at a previous job to be quite ingenious.

When I worked a while ago and I did some interesting work with a free tool called CMapsTools (there are a bunch of others out there). The software used to be free, but now it has been aquired and costs and arm and a leg to used. But anyway-the purpose was to easily place out what you know into organized maps or concept maps and link to other detail content. The concept map is just a tree with linking phrases that explain the relationships between nodes, as you can see from their webpage. I, personally, think that a tree structure is one of the easiest and fastest things to understand. Now-it is not the end all be all of knowledge management tools, but it makes the high level overview extremely simple to understand. A wiki backend to link to more detailed descriptions of the major topics can be a very complementary pair. Yeah all very boring but….

…what do you get when you add technology with concept maps? Just watch this :

Yeah, pretty freaking awesome, huh?

Shameless plug: Still think trees are boring and worthless, take a look at the one we developed for eBay categories on getitnext. Aside from some ui improvements I couldn’t have been happier about the way it came out. I would love to hear comments about how awesome it is, otherwise, cram it with walnuts . Just compare it against eBay, which would you really find more useful:

VS.

No contest.

Benjamin Willis – out.

tubular hotels…?

Ok, just heard about these interesting means of shelter that are popular in spacious Japan called Capsule hotels. Everyone knows for a fact that Asians are clearly more efficient that Americans/Canadians: their multi core brain processors have surpassed our overclocked single cores which allows them to develop some amazing technological advances like these Capsules or as we refer to them in the office, tubes.

I see many different advantages to these tubes and they are clearly the wave of the future. They are extremely cheap, 40$ for the high-end model and compact perfect for city life-get home from work, slink into your private tube, maybe catch some news before you sleep. The tubes are extremely clean and with a few upgrades can be the last home you will ever want to live in, yeah screw white picket fences.

So here are some upgrades, that we have been discussing for the tubes:

• Teh Internet

The next logical step is to increase the technology in these things-I mean who doesn’t use the internet, unless you have been living in a cave or a tube your whole life.

• Facebook…or TubeBook

Now that you have internet, check out who is in your Tube Neighborhood, see who your tube is touching and give them a poke (yes, i’m using facebook terminology when i don’t even have an account).

• Tube Mobility

So, you can go online and meet ppl, and maybe you don’t like your neighbors because they wrote something nasty on your wall so why not move? With this tube mobility you can move to a nicer part of town with the push of a button. Or, find someone you fancy, travel over and see if you can stand living tube-by-tube with them.

• Tube Connection

Maybe things did work out with the lady from Tube 743A and you want to get a bit more intimate. Tube connection can give you that real human touch by connecting your tubes together, heck why not connect 2 or 3 together and have yourself a real party.

• Tube Cleanser

An important part about connecting with your friends tube is how messy it will become afterwards, but it’s a small confined space-maybe smells a bit funky. Pull a lever and flush your tube with fresh chlorinated water, like from high school pools-that’ll kill anything, but remember not to open your eyes. Heck, why not equip the tubes with sensors to auto determine your funkocity level and it will schedule a cleansing for you.

• Tube Food

Up till now we have gotten you entertainment, sex and clean-what’s left to do in life but eat. Each tube should be equipped with a single tube that you suck your meals through. We are all eventually going to get there when we are 80yrs old drinking down all of our solids, so we might as well get an early start.

• Tube Optimizations

We have gone as far as to experiment with optimizations to the tubes by shrinking them in size. The logic being that without the need to move around, your arms and legs become useless, so they would be amputated upon signature of your lifetime tube contract. Reduction is tube size and of the amount of tube food that is required for consumption. The details of this requirement are still up in the air.

• Green Tubes

Green is this years hot button so we might as well press it a couple times and answer the question of how do we pay for such a wonderful service as I’ve described? Body heat-the more your produce the more you get fed, or can go online or some other means of entertainment (hmm maybe we shouldn’t cut off their limbs…).

Yes it sounds like the matrix, so this is both realistic and awesome. Of great ideas this is probably up there with the pet rock.

Thanks for wasting your time with me,

Benjamin Willis

Generic Forgotten Blog Post

I’ve seen it many times before the blogger who promises a daily blog posting, which turns into weekly, then bi-weekly then monthly. Then they come back one day telling people they are sorry for not posting, blah blah blah-like they had fans or something holding their breath. So here is my version:

OMG??! I haven’t posted in like a 5 months! I’m SOSOSO SORRY MY P33PS. I know you have been dying for my dry humor and uninteresting blog content and I promise it won’t change. Please check back as I will totally def be writing in this more often. I LOVE YOU ALL.

Your RockStar,

Benjamin Willis

No promises here on how often I post. Honestly, I care more about how often GoogleBot checks my blog then anyone else.

i <3 computers

Benny-wenny boo boo

Movie of the Century

The moment you have all been waiting for, the movie expected to make a billion dollars opening weekend is here, Balls of Fury. You haven’t heard of it?!? It’s only about one of the coolest sports in history, ping-pong and by one of the creators of Reno 911! Ben Garant. Okay, so it may not be for everybody, something like Dodge Ball but prolly funnier. Watch the trailer and await the count down 8-29!

Boink-

Benjamin Willis

Bourne Ultimatum – Willis Approved

I got a break today from work to catch the latest in the Bourne movies. The movie was very well done and was well worth the theater experience, def 4/5 stars, or thumbs or whatever else you want to call it. It keeps in pace with the Identity and Sumpremacy by offering good action plot line and contains a lot of on-site filming (New York City, India, Morocco, Spain, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom). Matt Damon did quite well with the few lines that he actually has, but it’s funny to note the amount of actual stunt men that were used-makes you wonder how much time he actually spent on camera.

One final note that made the film a little funnier was the use of Motorola phones, VW cars and Google Maps-they are kinda hard to miss. Amazing things you must be able to do with the latest Razor phone like putting out and confirming your kills.

Benjamin Willis

10 Coolest Things of Summer ‘07

I’ve been in Ottawa on a great opportunity and have had the chance to to several freaking sweet things that I haven’t gotten to before.

1. Seadooing

So freaking awesome, highly recommended, like motorcycling with a slightly lower risk of death.

2. White Water Rafting

Amazing how much fun it is to almost drown. Pictures/Videos to follow.

3. Drinking

Drinking and meeting cool people is always a top 5. We’ve had many fun Monday nights at Barley Mow and even better trying to recover for our Tuesday status meeting (Thanks Matt). Oh yeah, Tough Guy shots ftw.

4. Canada Day

Um wtf, being in Ottawa there was an insane amount of drunken stoned Canadians playing with fire and throwing firecrackers at each other. A bit extreme, stupid and dangerous at times-I like it.

5. Touring the Thousand Islands

I’ve never been to the Thousand Islands (which I think I was told is more like 2 thousand islands) and got a private boat tour. I also got a great story about how bootleggers would attempt to race across the boarder with the Coast Guard chasing them. It would be hard to see at night for a safe quick place to dock so they would ironically target a statue of the virgin mary. This guy wasn’t too concerned with his booze habbit, lol:

6. Private Jet

If you looked up in the skys on a particular day in June,

7. Penthouse Party in NYC

Sweet party with free drinks, how can you go wrong-especially with a view like this:

8. Brother’s Wedding – 7-7-07

This was so much fun and I am so happy for Nick and Cynthia! Best of the 7-7-07s!

9. Ping-Pong (duh)

Do you Pong?

10. Living Situation

If you know where I am living, enough said.

This is just a short list and there are many other things that I have done that were a ton of fun-plus the summer isn’t over-so more to come!

Tragically yours,

Benjamin Willis

(I’ll be editing this for more content later, but googlebot is getting hungry….)

Willis vs. Airport

WARNING: Lots of words ahead, for illiterate viewers click here to see what happened to me visually.

So, as some have heard I had quite an interesting time at the airport the other weekend. I was on a brief holiday from Canada back home to Jersey for my older brothers wedding, which was excellent. All was going well until my run in with customs at the Ottawa Airport. First, after waiting in a long ass line for about 30min, I spoke with one lady and attempted to explain my sitch. She didn’t buy what I was selling, so after gathering a few more tid-bits of information I was told to go to another line to wait. After another 15min I spoke to a guy and produced my training letter which seemed to convince him and I thought I was in the clear. I started to make my way out and just before I could taste the freedom another lady glanced at my papers and said, ‘oh, you go down there’, directing me down a hallway.

I cautiously walked down to, sigh, yet another line and several tables with people’s personals strewn about. One couldn’t help but notice how different everyone else looked compared to me…yes, I am a white male getting hassled at the border. Again, I waited another 20min in line until it was my turn up-for the second time I thought this would be cake, the gentleman swabbed my bag for God knows what and just as I was ready to pack it up he sees my laptop. Here is a little backlog about the room I was in, technically it was no mans land where anything could be done to me and I couldn’t do shit to leave. I wasn’t even aloud to make a phone call to let my ride know to put extra padding on my seat, cause I was getting bent over. The guy asks me some stupid questions like, do I use the computer online? do I download stuff? and then the striking one, do I have any obscene content on it? Definition of obscene: child p0rnography, rape or bestiality images/videos. My 80gb harddrive was search using OSX spotlight search, for *.jpeg, *.gif, .avi, *.mov and other such files. Each of these searches took 10s of minutes. Feeling confident that I didn’t have anything wrong I waited patiently while he scrolled through what seemed like thousands of images on my machine. NEWS FLASH: I’m working on image object detection for my master’s thesis and I have several public image databases loaded on my laptop. Along with that I had several face image dbs for a facial recognition project I had done last quarter. More questions started to arise about why I had so many images of a specific person and I tried to explain the jist of it, but I doubt he bought it. After the long drawn out searches he said I could leave, so I walked out feeling a bit disappointed that I didn’t get a reach around or even his number.

I just get pissed off more and more every time I think about this-so hopefully this will be the last time I have to visit this topic. I would enjoy if anyone else has good stories of their border crossing-comment it up.

</rant>

Benjamin Willis

Can Chuck Norris Be Defeated?

Quick post in response to the comments about good ole Chuck: Aside from me, who could beat Chuck Norris?

I have the answer of course, Bruce Lee pwns a 70s porn star styling Chuck Norris:

Let the flames begin…

Benjamin Willis