billEberly.com

Laptop Theft Protection with Bacon

Bill — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 08:08:49 +0000

After my car got broken into a few weeks ago, I started worrying about one of most precious possessions: my laptop. After a few hours of hacking I came up with this script called Bacon (beacon was too obvious), which sends the laptop’s current IP address and some other info to my server, so if anything should happen to my laptop I can try to track it down. Currently it’s only been tested with Vista and probably won’t work on XP. I’ll have a linux version up shortly.

Download Bacon

Back to Work

Bill — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 07:07:12 +0000

So you might have noticed that my site disappeared for a while. I was on a sympathy strike with the Writer’s Guild, and I’m finally back to blogging now that that everything is settled. In fact, I was so sympathetic that I started my strike 5 months before they did. Actually, I’ve just been too lazy to do anything here lately, but I was bored and decided that the ol’ blog shouldn’t just sit neglected in the corner.

Anywhoo, things have been pretty swell lately. Christmas break was pretty nice, and I’m back at school with about 2 more years left. Still have the teaching assistant gig, which has been working out quite nicely. Not much to report other than that. I’ll try to keep this updated this more often, but I can’t make any promises.

New Words

Bill — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 23:23:08 +0000

Thank you Meriam Webster for adding ginormous to the dictionary, so people can stop telling me that it’s not a word.

Fox news

Bill — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 19:43:41 +0000

I’ve tried to avoid ranting about politics on here, but this time Fox news has gone too far.

“That man…did a whole generation a disservice”

Of course, they’re talking about the evil Mr. Rogers

Cool idea for cell phones

Bill — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 04:52:17 +0000

Someone should come up with an “away message” type feature for cell phones. Instead of having to do all the complicated stuff to change your voice mail message, you should just be able to hit a button and say “I’m in a meeting, I’ll be back in 30 mins” or “I’m at the beach, I’ll get back to you tomorrow”, and your phone will save it as your voice mail message. That way people could know where you are or when to expect a call back. I always thought that would be handy for when you’re expecting an important call but won’t be able to answer your phone.

PS: Phone companies, you can take this idea as long as you give me free service and phones for life.

Gratitude

Bill — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 04:41:31 +0000

I would like to extend my most sincere thanks to the Cherokee clothing company for creating size 31×30 pants and Target for selling them. For the first time in quite a while I can actually buy pants that fit me.

Beryl Theme

Bill — Sat, 26 May 2007 18:55:06 +0000

The 2nd version of my Beryl theme “Dark and Nameless” is out. You can download it here.

Here’s a couple screenshots:

MC Rove

Bill — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 03:47:11 +0000

God bless the USA