Hosting Japanese Exchange Students

Education things The Japanese folks that study in America all end up improving their English drastically, even in short amounts of time. Here in Japan, even though the people are clever, the education system is so incredibly broken and ineffective that they never reach their full potential until they go overseas. Japanese education involves a […]

North Korea’s Constitutional Reboot

With North Korea’s constitutional reboot, all mentions of communism have disappeared. The country has doubled down on it’s concept of juche, or “self-sufficiency”, which is a terribly ironic term for their “constantly beg other nations for help” strategy. While conceived in 1979, the concept of juche only really took off once the USSR fell and […]

Austerity for North Korea?

Whenever North Korea hits the news, people are able to have a laugh at its expense. Its behavior is akin to a screaming toddler at a supermarket who has been told that it cannot have candy; one of steadfast defiance in a situation that can only be won if the other side cedes. On the […]

Raspberry Pi Ordered and Shipped

The impossible has happened. The Raspberry Pi that I wished to buy back in February finally became available. The order has been made, and it is now due to arrive in mid-September, 7 months after the initial hysteria. Since my first blog posts, I have seen a lot of search queries bringing people to this […]

Netbooks and Tablets

Exactly 2 years ago I ordered an Acer Aspire One from Walmart.com, doubling down on trashhiness yet being blown away by the quality offered by both. For 220 dollars and free shipping, I ended up getting a tasty 1.6GHz processor, 1 gig of RAM, a scrumptious 160 Gb HD, and a deliciously useful Atheros network […]

Stranger Requests Pt.4

A reminder from Linkedin arrived, which means that I must attempt contact with the wonderfully illusive Ms. Sheila Paquette once more! Will she respond and end this string of E-mail correspondence? (spoiler: she didn’t) You can read parts three, two, and one if you want to actively become dumber. A man of my caliber lives […]

Apache Won’t Start in XAMPP

You may have encountered a situation in XAMPP where you press the “start” button for the Apache service, you see the green “Running” message for a moment or two, and then the service fails without error. There are two likely culprits for this situation. 1) Another service is using port 80 Port 80 is the […]

Getting Mp3s From a Website Via Source Code

There are plenty of websites that through obfuscation, make it difficult to save the content on them. Most people don’t realize that in order to view or experience the content on a website, all of that data must first be downloaded to their computer. If you visit a webpage that has a song playing, and […]

Configure Squid on a VPS to Watch Hulu, ABC, and Other Blocked Sites

You have yourself a VPS and you want to watch videos on Hulu, but Hulu has the videos blocked in your country. Hulu does this to save America the embarrassment of owning up to producing shows such as Dancing With the Stars, Hoarders, Ghost Hunters, and more. Those shows are made for American consumption only, […]

Generating Prime and Composite Numbers in PHP

Prime numbers were created by the Sumerian King, Mathimondias, who is often regarded as the grandfather of math. During the time before Mathimondias, a base 2 counting system was employed which ensured equality for all numbers and allowing each number to contain factors. King Mathimondias was upset greatly by the space required to chistle numbers onto stone tablets, and […]