I barely saw any business cards change hands, but I (personally) have a heaps of new twitter followers/followees and a bunch of new facebook friends. This lead me to the question; do Gen-Y prefer social networks to business cards?

The person that told me this was bragging about the guys he got business cards from… I wonder if he’ll get home and start calling CIOs?

I think they’ll go in his rolodex and any chance of a relationship with it.

I have business cards, I even had a stack with me, but when I think about it; having someone on my social network(s) suits me more.

Why?

For me, it’s about commitment, building a relationship and convenience.

It is assumed that I will have things in common with most other attendees of a conference I attend, but if I meet someone, have a short chat – a few things in common – then end it by exchanging cards, the chances are high that I will not build a relationship with that person after the conference. However, if I add that person to Twitter and Facebook on the spot; it is highly likely that I will converse with them again. Having them in these networks means there is no commitment to interact, as with “Yeah, I’ll give you a call,” but there is an opportunity.

A business card generally contains an email address and phone number as the two primary points of contact, but I find ringing someone I met at a conference a little intrusive unless there is prior “permission” to do so. Addressing something they post on twitter/blog/facebook however is an acceptable way to build a relationship with someone. It also allows you to mine the interests and specialities of those that you meet to build better relationships.

We’ve all met the person at a conference who wants something off you, but has very little intention of it being a 2-way relationship. They want an introduction to a member of your network because they want to hassle them for employment, and they will pester you until you give that to them. Once you have, you won’t hear from them again until they need something else off you. Do you really want that person to have your phone number? I’d prefer them to contact me via a social network where I can respond when I am ready to, on my terms.

Now I realise that if someone gives you a business card you can go and look them up, but I would argue (especially with the number of iPhone’s I saw) that (virtually) everybody there was able to easily access the internet from their chosen mobile device, so why make it difficult. As people in technology, we are always connected so let’s use that to build better, stronger relationships within our network.

Hell, I don’t even own a rolodex.

When I find that my container div isn’t stretching the full height, it is usually because the HEIGHT property has been specified. Specifying height: 100%; Doesn’t have the effect you might think it would. Removing height: 100%; has the effect of making the parent container extend the full height of the child container, even if the child is a float.

So now it’s time to move my calendars. I run out of 3 calendars, one for timetables (hours worked, uni classes etc), one for due dates (projects, assignments) and one for everything that doesn’t come under either of thsoe 2 categories like personal dates.

I expected it to be an annoying and arduous task, but low and behold, it is extremely simple!

First you need to log into your Gmail account, click settings up the top rightm, choose the calendars tab and export all your calendars.

Unzip the file and keep the .ics files somewhere handy.

Next, log into your Google apps calendar and create the neccesary calendars.

Then click the little arrow next to Add and choose import calendar

From here you select the file you want to import, the calendar you want to import to and voila! Calendar moved from Gmail to Google Apps for your Domain.

I decided to post some of the code for anyone interested in how I did it.

The bot is written in Python, and uses the python-twitter library for the Twitter API calls. I will apologize upfront, the code is probably disgusting, but this is only the second thing I’ve ever written in python, so I’m still an L plater.

The first thing we want to do is import the 3 libraries we need; re, twitter and urllib2.

import twitter
import re
import urllib2

Next we need to authenticate with the twitter API, then we’ll get the replies in the form of a Status object.

api = twitter.Api(username='lyricbot', password='nottelling:)')
status = api.GetReplies()

Now that we have all the replies sent to that user, we can iterate through them to decipher what people have said:

for stat in status: #iterate through replies
lyric = stat.GetText()[10:] #strip the '@lyricbot ' from the front and grab the text
userN = str(stat.GetUser().GetScreenName()) #grab the name of the user that replied
idno = stat.GetId() #the unique id no of the message. This is for ensuring people don't get multiple replies for one request

Next I parse the string for use in the URL and get the html:

lyric = urllib2.quote(lyric)
f = urllib2.urlopen(url) #open the URL into the stream
html = f.read() #read the url into a string


Once I have the html of the search results, I need to use regular expressions to find the song names from that site.

#compile the regex that finds the first 3 song names returned
re_lyr = re.compile('[123].([A-Za-z0-9].{10,80}).Lyrics', re.DOTALL)
#find the matches for the expression in the html
newRes = re_lyr.findall(html,1)
songs = ''


Once I have the (1, 2 or 3) song results stored in the newRes tuple, I need to check how many (if any) it found, or deal with none being found.

reslen = len(newRes)
if reslen > 0 :
songs = songs+newRes[0] #append to the string that gets sent
if tuplen > 1 :
songs = songs+' '+newRes[1]
if tuplen > 2 :
songs = songs+' '+newRes[2]
else : #if there were no songs found
songs = 'Sorry I couldn\'t find that one!


Now that we have a string to post (either the song names or the fail message), it’s time to send:

api.PostDirectMessage(userN, songs)

That’s about it really.
There will be another post after I launch it properly, probably with some updates.

Navigate to
C:\Users\Brendo\AppData\Roaming\uTorrent
and back up the entire directory. (In Vista, not sure of the exact directory in XP)

Then navigate to your downloads folder
C:\Users\Brendo\Downloads
in my case, and back that up too.

Once you have reformatted/moved and installed uTorrent, simply drag those two directories over the top of what is already there and voila! your torrents are back how they were.

Now to finish setting up this computer to puuuurrrr…

It starts with Rage Against the Machine, which actually started waaay back in 2007. Most of us were at work, but we were planning to line up overnight to ensure we got floor tickets, so we sent Ashley down at 4pm to see what the deal was, the guy suggested he line up now as people would probably start arriving soon. He pulled up a seat and within 15 minutes, there were 2 people behind him. He was going to see Grinspoon that night, so a series of tag team moves ensured we kept our spot, he got to his concert and we were spending the night camped out at the Regent Theatre in Wollongong. I wasn’t overly worried that there had been a shooting there a few years ago, though I’m not entirely sure everyone in the line knew this. I arrived about 8:30pm, after I had finished work to give the guys a toilet break. By this stage, there were about 20 or so people behind us. It was a Wednesday night in Wollongong, which meant there were loads of drunk young people roaming the streets. Everyone that walked past stared, and every 2^nd person that stared asked “What are you lining up for?â€? After about 5 minutes this got old, so we then refused to tell them… “Brittany Spears… The Wiggles… The Beatles… Elvis… “. The night dragged on as many of our friends walked straight past us and into the clubs around while we sat on a cold hard tile floor having a good ol’ chat with the other people in the line.

About 10:30, I couldn’t help but laugh… 2 guys came around the corner, obviously thinking they were going to be beating the crowd and as they saw the 20 or so of us sitting there, I thought they were going to cry… they pointed, looked up, walked past a few times until they eventually asked “Are you guys here for Rage?â€?
“You bet we are!�
“oh… ok, cool…â€?

They hopped in line and were visibly shattered that there were so many people before them. I had work the next day, so about 4am, I decided to head back home and leave the purchasing up to my mates. We got our floor tickets, but the guy behind missed out, though he still got seat tickets. The guy who was shattered as he came around the corner missed out all together.

The paper was there in the morning and my 2 mates got their photo taken and unofficially named head of the Wollongong Rage fan club by the reporter. Now that we had the tickets, it was only 4 months until the concert….

I know people who have left Facebook, and others who are considering it, simply because of the ridiculous number of application requests they get. Every day my requests page is flooded with

• Kath wants you to be a vampire and fight off hobos and skeletons with the ninja turtles… sorry Kath, I live in the real world, and if I’m going to play a game, it will be a little more appealing than that.

• Jimmy wants to know how alike you are… If we were anything alike, you’d know that I f*cking hate these stupid application requests.

• Bob thinks you are sexy… Bob is a man. I am a man. This doesn’t work for me, no matter how sexy Bob thinks I am.

• Gemima wants to know what kind of lover are you…? If she really wanted be my lover, she would stop wasting my time having to block her Facebook requests and making mental notes to push her over next time I see her.

• If you add this application I will have anal sex with an Arabian orphan monkey and name my unborn child gumby… Well, I’d probably consider this one… only because Gumby rocks though!

I know I am not alone, my roommate has been saving his up for a few weeks and is at well over 400 application requests.

Any application request I get, I will automatically block. Why? Because if an application was really good, someone would tell me in person about it, or write on my wall about it, they would not spam me. That is what viral marketing is, not unsolicited, unwanted advertising in my face when I could think of nothing worse. The worst are those applications that don’t allow you to use them until you spam 20 friends.

This is the big Facebook fail as far as I am concerned – they are fabricating spam and alienating their users that are act over the age of 15. When the developer platform was released, the development community was excited, but the only people to benefit are those annoying people with too much time on their hands and that enjoy doing quizzes to see which pole dancing move is most likely to pick up the inbred transsexual they secretly desire.

Don’t get me wrong, I have enjoyed quite a few applications, especially Jetman during last exam period instead of studying, but none of the applications I have added have come from requests.

Facebook seem to slowly be warming to this theory with the “Ignore All Requests” and “Block Application” options now on the requests page, but it seems this is too little too late. Facebook needs to disable applications being able to spam users, plain and simple. Until they do that, I think their user base will begin to shrink.

As well as the annoying spam is going to a loser’s person’s profile and not being able to find their wall, photos or any other core Facebook features some people still use, because their page looks like a slightly more valid, but equally painful, Myspace page. The implementation of the extended profile was another fail by Facebook. As if any of these people of well below par maturity are going to remove these applications off their page themselves. The way for that to work is if all non core applications are automatically put there, and it is then a hassle to get an application back onto your front page.

Facebook started so promising, but day after day it is slipping into just another over stimulating piece of shit website that only 15 year olds will use.

Note: I am not leaving Facebook, but may consider it in the future.

First there was the fact that a self signed certificate wouldn’t do. This wasn’t a big surprise, but it wouldn’t even allow me to test my app to ensure it was working before I forked out the big bucks for the proper SSL certificate.

I had an idea, I have a code signing certificate from Thawte that is worth a pretty penny, surely it will at least allow me to test my app, if not be my solution. Strike 2. A Code-Signing certificate can only be used to sign code (JARs in my case), not for authentication – again, no real surprise.

So an SSL certificate was purchased from a company we have a good relationship with, so we got it for wholesale price and away we went… almost. Java’s Virtual Machine looks in a certain spot for trusted certificates, but unlike the major browsers, only has about 15 in there. Of course the certificate we bought was not one of them. Strike 3 – back to the drawing board. For anyone reading this because they are experiencing similar problems, use:

keystore –list –v –keystore %JAVA_HOME%/lib/security/cacerts

Password: changeit

to view the certificates that are in that cacerts file. This is the default file java will look in if you do not specify a trustStore property when calling your applet/application.

We found a certificate in here, were able to obtain a refund on the previous and now it was time to invoke methods remotely over secured sockets and love life… nearly.

The first test of this saw love. The problem was that test didn’t bring browsers into play. I ran the RMI Registry and the Server Implementation, downloaded the jar and ran it from the command line on my PC. Voila!

Hello World!

I was ecstatic. Until I ran the applet from the same jar and got an error telling me “bad certificate�. This didn’t make sense as the root CA of the certificate we were using was certainly in the browser (both Firefox and IE7). A bit of looking around the forums provided very few answers so I decided to post myself (I very rarely post on java forums as the answers to my questions are there if I look hard enough).

It turns out that the Root CA certificates in the browsers have a property that specifies what actions a certificate using that Root CA can perform. The certificate we were using was marked for Code Signing, Server Authentication, Email Authentication. Notice Client Authentication missing. *sigh*.

This was getting thoroughly annoying as I have now spent 3 weeks trying to test code that only took me a couple of days to fully merge with the older code.

I tried checking the Client Authentication box in the browser for out certificate provider, but this didn’t fool the browser for a second, and I was still denied. After a long chat with an RMI expert, it was concluded that it is not currently possible to enable client authentication in RMI using SSL in an applet. If the application is not running from a browser however, this works as it should. The reason is that when you use the browser, it looks for the certificate there rather than in the parameters specified by the applet.

The work around is buy one of the (I think) 2 certificates that support client authentication, though this is untested as we added security other ways and as such, didn’t purchase one of these certificates.

The applet is now running with SSL enabled using Remote Method Invocation. Hurrah!

It turns out this is some little quirk between Vista and Air, but it is fixable if you follow these steps:

Step 1:

Open Default Programs from the start menu.

Step 2:

Choose “Set Program Access and Computer Defaults”

Step 3:

Click Custom, then choose Mozilla Firefox (or whatever your default browser is) and click ok.

And now you are done

Brendo

Before confirming your name change request, please read the following.

* Your Facebook profile must be attached to your real name.
* You must include your full name.
* Celebrity names, nicknames, or other fake names are not allowed and will not be approved.
* Obscenity, curses, and swear words are not allowed and will not be approved.
* ISn’t~ ThIs <3 AnN0YiNg 2 ReAd? Non-standard capitalization and special characters are not allowed and will not be approved.
* Do not try to combine sentences into one word; Jane Lookatmysupercoolnewnickname Smith will not be approved.
* We review all name changes, so this may take a while.

No wonder it hasn’t been taken over by the deviants yet.