Switching to tumblr

I am switching to my new tumblr. So I probably won't use this Blogger site anymore. Hopefully the very few people who follow me will continue to follow me over there.

Gonna go play with the tumblbeasts now. TTFN!

http://jasoco.tumblr.com/

On Mac OS X Lion and Internet Fame

A few weeks ago I posted a video to YouTube showing off the features in the upcoming Mac OS X Lion.



A couple days later I posted a second one. It has so far not received quite as many views as the first.

A few days later, the first one was featured on MacRumors which pushed its view count to a whopping 120,000 views in only a few hours. I was impressed. But unfortunately I decided to use music in the videos, only to break the boredom, but either way, in the first video YouTube detected the song incorrectly, but it detected it nonetheless. So it became flagged in certain countries. Namely Germany.

This prompted a bunch of comments about my music choice, the inability to view in certain places, one user even called me an idiot.

To make up for it, I posted a third video without music featuring both parts 1 and 2 in one video because my account is enabled for longer videos. The third video is 26 minutes long. It has even less views than the first.

And now my first video has been posted on Edible Apple. Another Apple related blog. Also, OS X Daily featured it as well.

The first video now has 135,000 views and growing. And it's still up. Everyone seems surprised Apple hasn't taken it down yet, but I think Apple really doesn't care. There are dozens of videos on YouTube of Lion, none as in-depth as mine, and they're still up. Apple knows people know about Lion. Screenshots are everywhere. Reviews are everywhere. They probably just want people to know about it. In the olden days, Apple would take this stuff down as soon as they found it. Now, I think they'd rather just get the word out.

A few weeks ago, my two most viewed YouTube videos were a video of William Shatner singing "It Hasn't Happened Yet" and a clip from the movie "UHF" starring Weird Al and Michael Richards. And neither of them have nearly as many views combined. Even my Google Cr-48 videos didn't become this popular.

The lesson I take away from all this is next time either use public domain music or don't use music at all.

Here is part 2:

Dear Hard Drive Companies...

I need a 1.5TB hard drive for my 2010 13" MacBook Pro. This is important. Please release one that I can install in my laptop.

Thank you.

Seriously, they exist. There's one you can buy right now for $250 that comes in a portable USB 3.0 case. I don't need a useless USB 3.0 case. I just need the bare HD! Toshiba and apparently Western Digital have them announced and both have said "end of this year", but neither has released a final date yet!

As soon as I can but one, and I will pay whatever they want, I can die happy. Carrying my entire DVD collection with me will be amazing.

Though I'd prefer 2TB, 1.5 will suffice.

Academy Award Winning Movie Trailer

Useless comment posted that no one will read anyway telling people to watch the video.

Moby - Wait For Me

Good video. Watch it. Inspirational.

This Blog Sucks!

Okay, well maybe not. But it has become stagnant. Maybe I should post more often. Post about anything and whatever. I dunno.

So how about if I just post my current project...

http://love2d.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1399

It is a 3D model viewer. I hope to be able to use it for real games some day. It uses the same methods as many other 3D viewers created for strictly 2D environments. It's no Quake engine, but it is pretty fast. Maybe one day it'll play Star Fox. Or a clone thereof.

Löve is a 2D programming environment for Mac, Windows and Linux that allows you to easily program your own games using a language called Lua. Lua is simple to program and Löve is really really REALLY fast.

My real project however is something I'm not ready to reveal to the world. An adventure game engine in the style of Zelda complete with scripting.

And when I'm not programming these, I'm at work or I am hanging with my girlfriend Kati.

Weird Al Takes Grammar Very Seriously

There's not much to say except that Al Yankovic takes correct grammar very seriously. And I don't care if the previous sentence was badly worded. Nor the one before this one or this one as well.


I love how he has his wife drive him around to find street signs to correct.


A shopping trip to the grocery store turns up another poorly worded sign to fix.

I hope he keeps going with these.

Life Lessons: Always Keep a Backup and Always Buy AppleCare

In 2002 I learned my lesson about backing up your hard drive when the drive in my iMac DV+ decided to die a year after it replaced the previous one that died. The day it died I ran to the store and bought the best FireWire HD I could get for the price, (A 60GB LaCie SilverKeeper in the huge silver and blue case) ran home and immediately cloned the entire contents (Which back then was not even 15GB) just in time for it to die. I learned that day to always keep a backup.

Since then I have lost many HD's, but no data at all because I keep exact bootable clones of my data. Sure, it may be considered overkill to keep two exact clones and a Time Machine backup, but why take chances? I have 400 Gigabytes of data to protect.

In 2002 I bought a new iMac. One of the first generation "sunflower" G4 iMacs. This time I bought AppleCare. That Mac still works good enough to this day. Even though it is currently sitting on a shelf. It lasted the longest of any of my Macs despite being driven into the ground by me and my brother when I let him use it to replace his dead Compaq Presario. I figured AppleCare (A 3-year extended warranty) didn't matter and didn't bother with it again.

In 2005 I bought a Mac mini for use as my main machine to replace the iMac G4. It cost me $500 plus $1000 for the Apple Cinema Display. (The then current price) The most I spent so far. I didn't bother with AppleCare so I didn't get it. Since it was a first generation G4 mini it only had a 4200RPM HD which was painfully slow, so I used my FireWire HD as my boot drive to get some speed. After I replaced the mini, I discovered the FireWire port had stopped working. This wasn't a big deal as I now have no FireWire devices that even work so as long as the USB works I'm fine.

And now, in 2007 I bought the computer I am currently using. A shiny new MacBook. She's a beauty. But I didn't get AppleCare once again...



Last June, in 2008, on the last day of my 1 year warranty, I had the keyboard replaced. The infamous "CrackBook" incident in which the topcase (The keyboard and trackpad all in one) cracks along the palmrest area. This was a cosmetic problem covered under warranty. Less than a year later it is happening again. But now I have no warranty. So I just placed Scotch tape over the edge to keep it falling off and chipping so it doesn't look like crap.

A few days ago I noticed a horrible grinding noise, louder than my Xbox 360, and realized it was the fan spinning at a super high rate. It would go on and off, for a while I would tap the computer to get it to stop. But it eventually stopped responding to that.

I posted about it on a forum and was told that it might be the fan going and that it would cost an arm and a leg to ship it to them and have them replace it. I decided against that idea. I don't like shipping things if I can avoid it.

A few weeks of grinding went by and the other day the grinding goes away. I launch a fan speed and CPU temperature gauge and notice it is now running at 2000~ RPM and the temperature is climbing towards the 80's Celsius. Suddenly the computer is shutting off with no warning. Usually when it hits a high processor usage. I quickly realize it might be a safety feature built-in to protect the computer from overheating. It happened about 4 times in the last week, and last night I got a Kernel Panic. Something you don't see unless there is something terribly wrong. This morning in bed it was running extremely hot. Literally burning to the touch.

I went to the MacOutfitters and asked the guy what he thought. He said if it was the fan, it would be pretty cheap, but chances are it might be more than the fan. The cost to look into it would be $75.

I decided to think about it. I'm thinking more along the lines of saving up for a 13" MacBook Pro with AppleCare this time.

I went to Kmart and bought a Targus "Chill Mat" to help keep it cool-ish for now until I can afford the new computer. The new aluminum MacBook's are soooo nice.

Let this be a lesson to all of you. Always buy a backup hard drive, always keep your data safe. And always buy an extended warranty.

"Weird Al" Yankovic delivers again! This time with a little bit of Charles Nelson Reilly

Get it while it's still embeddable.. or click this link to watch it on YouTube.

Edit: Yeah, they move fast. After being taken down by JibJab, it has returned unembeddable. So watch it on YouTube. It's awesome.

Virus scams do not work if you aren't using Windows...

Don't use zShare. Someone hosted a file there and when I went to download the file, I got a silly little alert message in my browser that said:

"Warning!!! Your computer contains various types of vulnerabilities and threats.

Your system requires immediate anti viruses scan! Personal Antivirus can perform fast and free virus and malicious software scan of your computer."

Now, first things first. I am a Mac user. My computer cannot be infected by viruses like this. But look at the number of so-called viruses it found. 527 trojans found on my Mac's non-existent C: and D: drives. Not to mention in my My Documents and Shared Documents folders, both of which do not exist either.

Take note of the Firefox "download file" messages. All 5 of them. There were three, but two more popped op later. All downloading the same .EXE file. I should have downloaded one and put it on a guinea pig PC to see what it did. I'm very curious now.

Now obviously, this page is aimed at the poor stupid Windows user who doesn't know better. You know, your grandparents who wouldn't know what a virus is and will click anything that they are told to.

So the creators of this scam designed their page to look like an Explorer window. Note the blue XP style, implying that they assume the user will still be using XP and that they have never changed their default Luna theme.

Also note the "popup" inside the page, that says "Windows Security Alert". The one that looks like a separate XP window, but is really a page element that can be dragged around thus fooling the user into thinking it is legit because, hey, "we assume all Windows users are stupid so of course they'll fall for this!"

As I closed all the download windows and closed the tab I got a second message:

"The page at safe-online-scanner.com says:
Harmful and malicious software detected. These programs may damage your computer and steal your private information. Online Security Scanner requires Personal Antivirus components to repair your computer. Please click OK to download and install Personal Antivirus tool"

This dialog only had an OK button, but it never downloaded anything. Sadly. Nice try. Obviously trying to once more snag the user into downloading and installing, either willfully or secretly (Thanks, Windows!) their "software" so they can infect your computer even more.

This isn't the first time I've come upon a scam like this, but it is the most elaborate one I've seen. Kudos to the designer for creating a convincing scam. But jeers to the idiot who can't check the users Operating System beforehand so they can see that their scam will not work at all. No matter how hard they try.

In closing, this cheered me up. I love it when someone elses plan to harm me falls apart. But I feel bad for all the people who might have fallen for it, and this is an "ad" on a somewhat popular site! Do the site owners not screen their advertisers first? Scam, Spyware, malicious virus software, whatever, this ad crosses lines and dots i's and all sorts of stuff.

Unfortunately, the EXE it downloaded is incompatible with Darwine. So I cannot run it on my Mac just to see what it does. So I need a guinea pig. I want to get an old PC with XP, connect it to the internet, and see how long it takes to become fully infected.

Just like the good folks over at XKCD.