When did the Decepticon, Soundwave, become Soundblaster?
The one who has smaller cassette tape bots in his chest.
Is Creative Technologies creating Decepticons now?
Friday, July 12, 2013
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Faraday Shield For Multiple EZ-Link Cards
What is a Faraday Shield?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage
Contactless Smart Cards
Singapore, being the high-tech place it is, produces lots of cards.
Membership cards, credit cards, door access cards, contactless public transport fare (ez-link) cards.
Some of the more innovative companies produce multi-purpose cards!
The result is a Frankenstein member/credit/ez-link card.
This was great at first, I survived a long time carrying a bare minimum of 2 cards to deal with life. Suddenly, I was given an extra membership club that had a lot of benefits that I wanted to carry around too.
The Problem
However, it was also an ez-link card. The problem with that is that if you hold up your wallet to an ez-link card reader on the bus or train station, it would throw an error as it detects multiple cards. With a loud series of beeps and flashing red lights. In a bunker somewhere, a monotone voice says, "The terrorists win"
Also, I didn't want to physically separate my cards, nor flip my wallet open like an FBI agent every other day (I had outgrown that phase).
Credits For The Solution
I first saw the design concept of a wallet-based Faraday shield at a Singapore Hack and Tell.
The hacker envisioned a time when evil hackers would go around touching butt pockets to scan for credit card information. So he sort of implemented it as a public/private facing wallet, depending on how he kept his wallet in his pants.
He had gone through several iterations, using aluminium foil, etc, before concluding that a soda can was the most ideal, in terms of weight, thickness and effectiveness.
The Implementation
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_cage
Contactless Smart Cards
Singapore, being the high-tech place it is, produces lots of cards.
Membership cards, credit cards, door access cards, contactless public transport fare (ez-link) cards.
Some of the more innovative companies produce multi-purpose cards!
The result is a Frankenstein member/credit/ez-link card.
This was great at first, I survived a long time carrying a bare minimum of 2 cards to deal with life. Suddenly, I was given an extra membership club that had a lot of benefits that I wanted to carry around too.
The Problem
However, it was also an ez-link card. The problem with that is that if you hold up your wallet to an ez-link card reader on the bus or train station, it would throw an error as it detects multiple cards. With a loud series of beeps and flashing red lights. In a bunker somewhere, a monotone voice says, "The terrorists win"
Also, I didn't want to physically separate my cards, nor flip my wallet open like an FBI agent every other day (I had outgrown that phase).
Credits For The Solution
I first saw the design concept of a wallet-based Faraday shield at a Singapore Hack and Tell.
The hacker envisioned a time when evil hackers would go around touching butt pockets to scan for credit card information. So he sort of implemented it as a public/private facing wallet, depending on how he kept his wallet in his pants.
He had gone through several iterations, using aluminium foil, etc, before concluding that a soda can was the most ideal, in terms of weight, thickness and effectiveness.
The Implementation
- Buy a can of soda
- Drink soda
- Clean can
- Cut off the top and bottom of the can
- Cut a straight line across the height so that you have a sheet, instead of a tube
- Cut card sized pieces from the sheet
- Bonus points if you got it to look good
Testing
I had initially made 2 shields, to cover both sides of the new ez-link card:
| SHIELD | NEW CARD | SHIELD | OLD CARD | <- div="" scanner="">
The scanner picked up my old card. Perfect.
Boarding another bus, I flipped it around:
| OLD CARD | SHIELD | NEW CARD | SHIELD | <- div="" scanner="">
The scanner didn't pick anything up at all. It seems one shield is sufficient
| NEW CARD | SHIELD | OLD CARD | <- div="" scanner="">
Scanner picks up old card only. Done
Links
Here's a link to the results, in less than 140 characters:
Other links:
Thursday, May 30, 2013
EVA-01
A friend sent me an Evangelion related link and I went off on a wild Google chase.
Almost couldn't concentrate on my work as I was imagining wearing this:
while riding this:
Source(s):
http://internetflexin.tumblr.com/
http://cyrem.org/freewill/evangelion-superbike-to-compete-in-july/
Almost couldn't concentrate on my work as I was imagining wearing this:
while riding this:
Source(s):
http://internetflexin.tumblr.com/
http://cyrem.org/freewill/evangelion-superbike-to-compete-in-july/
Monday, May 20, 2013
This Is My Lorem Ipsum
A New Hope
It is a period of civil war.
Rebel spaceships, striking
from a hidden base, have won
their first victory against
the evil Galactic Empire.
During the battle, Rebel
spies managed to steal secret
plans to the Empire's
ultimate weapon, the DEATH
STAR, an armored space
station with enough power
to destroy an entire planet.
Pursued by the Empire's
sinister agents, Princess
Leia races home aboard her
starship, custodian of the
stolen plans that can save her
people and restore
freedom to the galaxy...
The Empire Strikes Back
It is a dark time for the
Rebellion. Although the Death
Star has been destroyed,
Imperial troops have driven the
Rebel forces from their hidden
base and pursued them across
the galaxy.
Evading the dreaded Imperial
Starfleet, a group of freedom
fighters led by Luke Skywalker
has established a new secret
base on the remote ice world
of Hoth.
The evil lord Darth Vader,
obsessed with finding young
Skywalker, has dispatched
thousands of remote probes into
the far reaches of space...
Return Of The Jedi
Luke Skywalker has returned to
his home planet of Tatooine in
an attempt to rescue his
friend Han Solo from the
clutches of the vile gangster
Jabba the Hutt.
Little does Luke know that the
GALACTIC EMPIRE has secretly
begun construction on a new
armored space station even
more powerful than the first
dreaded Death Star.
When completed, this ultimate
weapon will spell certain doom
for the small band of rebels
struggling to restore freedom
to the galaxy...
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Stop the Spam: Suzhou Beef Products
Best legible result is here:
Basically, it's an article that was written on 24 Oct 2012, dismissing the message as a false rumour.
If you read the message itself, it's an awesome doomsday message of anthrax-infected mad cows, which is as serious as avian flu and as infectious as SARS. All the main keywords are there.
Tuesday, February 19, 2013
Stuttering / Lagging Nexus 7 [SOLVED]
I had an issue with a badly stuttering Nexus 7.
Everything that was supposed to be "Butter" was now stuttering, lagging or downright unresponsive.
Features affected:
Screen rotate
Turning screen on / off
Volume control
Keyboard pop up
Unresponsive Application
Unresponsive OS (even the screen wouldn't switch off with the hardware button)
I Googled around, read up the Currents fix and applied it, but it still didn't work.
Android 4.2.2 rolled out, but I haven't got it yet and didn't have the patience to wait.
Growing up with MS Windows, I had a strange suspicion it had something to do with a page file or a swap file. And so I continued Googling about Android page files or swap files or minimum space issues but came up empty.
So, on a hunch, I started to delete things.
Initially, I had left 1GB of free space, just because.
And I had recently downloaded some more files, that reduced it to around 800MBs free.
Not good.
After deleting a couple of large-ish CBRs and an episode of Battlestar Galactica, I now had slightly more than 2GBs free.
And my 16GB Nexus 7 is back to its snappy self.
Conclusion: A 16GB Nexus 7 requires 2GBs of free space to run smoothly.
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Made L5 Today
I made it to L5 today.
Found a portal with only 1 resonator, half drained, in town while I was out with the family for dinner.
Perhaps the attacker had left the area, having run out of XM.
With only about 1000AP remaining to level up, I didn't do anything too fancy. Stepping into the periphery of the portal, I deployed 7 resonators and recharged the lone 8th reso which had survived.
Level up.
Satisfied, I left to rejoin my family. Thinking back, I think I forgot to hack it for resources!
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