bradleybaker.com

4 Reasons to be excited for ourFI

Sun, 24 Apr 2011 22:43:51 -0400

What have I been doing? Working on the details of a project I probably have pitched to you several times. This is just another teaser to what else I’m going to be doing but expect more soon.

Why would I use ourFI?

You see 12 other Access Points and they all have 4/5 bars.
You hate paying 50+ a month for service you barely use.
You’d like to share but don’t really want to share your personal network data with your neighbor.
You like money.

Expect more info within a couple weeks, including product details, and a survey you can help me out with.

Brad

This was absolutely killing me for 1.5 days. Fresh install,...

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 22:22:20 -0400

This was absolutely killing me for 1.5 days.

Fresh install, sawtooth processor load. What’s going on??

two NICs, one with a plug, one without. gimme a lease, gimme a lease…. ruining my day :)

FIXED!

Check out my live video stream of the head shaving event,...

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 15:15:25 -0400

Check out my live video stream of the head shaving event, I’ll update as we get closer…

Attend a technical conference and not be lame

Sat, 19 Mar 2011 17:54:25 -0400

Attending a conference as an attendee or sponsor of the show? How do you come off as not being the creepy sales guy? Here are my thoughts on how to make this your best conference yet.

Be congruent with who you are. Only attend sessions that you feel you are interested in personally or your product might actually be able to help.
Make it a point to meet as many people as possible. Please, please don’t think about how you are going to say your name when you meet them, just remember their name, one personal item about them, and what project(s) they are working on that you can help them with.
Never eat alone.
Always contribute to the conversation with either a true fact or introduce a person that could help that person.
Have a pre-planned agenda of the sessions you’ll be attending.
Research each speaker you’ll be seeing on the internet for at least 5 minutes. Find out a personal item about them that wasn’t announced in the speaker notes and be prepared to meet. Have something to say about an interest of theirs that wasn’t on the speaker notes. Follow note # 1.
Have your business card but make sure it’s different than everyone else’s card. Have Bump ready to rock. Hashable. Something unique that makes you stand out from the 290481 other people that person has met today.
Take frequent breaks to document! Dictate, write, or email your contacts and information you’ve gained — Look for a future post on organizing the process on meetings, teleconferences, etc. later.

Those are 8 things that were just on the top of my mind, any other ideas out there?

Shaving my head for a great cause March 30th!

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 14:33:00 -0400

Do you know kids that have / had cancer? I don’t know anyone but if you guys do, I need someone to honor because it’s coming off regardless. Yup, shavin it Greg Rebbert style!
St. Baldrick’s Foundation is set up to raise money for the fight against childhood cancer. They have a very high percentage of money that actually goes into the research and care for the fight. The St. Baldrick’s Foundation is a volunteer-driven charity that funds more in childhood cancer research grants than any organization except the U.S. government.

I will be shaving my head next week to help fight childhood cancer. Please help in anyway that would be awesome.
Please donate:
http://www.stbaldricks.org/participants/bradleynbaker
What song should I loose my locks to?

Love Song Unbelievable :) my face hurt from smiling at this!

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 23:40:52 -0400

Love Song

Unbelievable :) my face hurt from smiling at this!

ourFI is underway

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 22:16:52 -0400

I’ve got my VM working nicely that has a cakePHP system that incorporates a nice front-end with a radius backend to administer hotspots. Idea is to get this working with a custom build of openWRT ideally on hw that is deemed to be stable and have some features that I think are worthwhile - i.e. Gb ethernet, and MIMO N wireless signaling. Mostly this is about clearing my thoughts on what to do next:

Management system allowing me to incorporate activations, billing, status, etc. Implemented now, but needs modification of rules to incorporate 1 rule: make it easy to share ourFI.
Select router compatible with openWRT, the package coova-chilli, and finally pptp so that authentication of the remote router to the RADIUS server when you are behind a cable modem w/o a static IP.

These of course are just the generic first steps, my inital router purchases have been DD-WRT compatible, but apparently it’s implementation of chillispot is less than ideal.

Anyways, what’s the point of all this?? Well to make something that will allow people to share their wireless without talking to anyone, and get paid to do it!

update: tomatoUSB potentially might work for the router. I think that we are in uncharted waters here…

Finding Love at the Corcoran

Sat, 05 Feb 2011 19:20:52 -0500

Catalina had been searching for me in the crowd, “THERE you are!”

Dag, discovered again! “Hey”

“What’s going on, are you having fun still?”

“A blast, I have to run, a friend is introducing me to this important art guy.” Hey, it could have easily been true.

“Find me when you are done!!” OK, will do island off the coast of California.

Now there wasn’t anything really wrong with her, she was (probably still is) a nice enough girl but the goal of the evening wasn’t to be at the 1869 Society’s Fall Fete’ and walk away with a phone number of a girl I wasn’t that interested in. Apollina was that girl, and this was the night I was to meet her - this is our story…

I was invited to the 1869 Society’s Fall Fete by the Xavier Equihua. “You HAVE to be there, it’s only the best party of the fall. Beautiful women, delicious drinks, a fun atmosphere. Oh and everyone will be there.” “Who is everyone?” I thought to myself, Xavier hasn’t steered me wrong yet so I’ll oblige. I wasn’t used to putting up 150 dollars to attend an event, especially when I didn’t really understand what the event was all about and only knew 2, maybe 3 people who were going. I signed up online, and following the instructions of Xavier, emailed Diana Kaw to make sure I was on the guest list.

“What do you wear to this?” I asked Xavier. ”You wear a tux. Don’t you have a tux?” Ha! Riiiigghht, I had just bought my first suit about 7 months earlier.

“I don’t have one, hmmm, should I wear my dark grey suit and a black tie?”

“Definitely not. I’ve got a backup that will work perfect for you.” A Ralph Lauren purple label no less. Of course, I was oblivious to what that was at the time but it was really quite nice, albeit a bit snug.

“Never have your bow tie perfect, always tie it sloppy like you don’t know what you are doing. It shows that you don’t care and opens you up for a good conv

ersation starter.” This guy was good, I doubt I would have been able to tie it perfectly anyways.

We arrived and valeted his Land Rover and walked in. Diana welcomed me and pointed us in the direction of the bar, “you can’t stand around without something to drink!” Xavier said, “Let’s go get a couple.” Within 3 minutes of standing in line Xavier had met 4-5 people, and said “Just get me whatever you are having” and wandered off. In front of me was Catalina, eager to meet me - probably due to my disheveled bow-tie and friendly demeanor. But this isn’t a story about her, it’s about Apollina Justina Casal Spoto and Bradley Nathan Baker.

Meanwhile…

Apollina was primping and prepping in her brand new top floor Arlington apartment, getting ready for the Fall Fete. She had never been to the Corcoran before and still wasn’t quite sure how to pronounce it. She was invited by Robert, a lawyer friend with whom she had worked on a case before. It was great of him to invite

her as she was relatively new to the DC scene and with Robert being so good at the meet-and-greet, she was sure to be introduced to many new people.

A few days earlier, Apollina decided to wear a dress that she had worn only once before (to prom!) and would buy a new necklace to give it a different look. Robert picked her up and they headed to Potenza for some light food and drinks.

They arrived at the Corcoran and before she knew it, Apollina had a glass of champagne in one hand and a delicious cupcake in the other. Although she wasn’t quite sure what to expect of the evening, she was having fun already. The theme of the night was A Nautical Affair and the exhibition, “Sargent and the Sea”, was beautiful. Apollina met up with two girls she had met the night before, Christelle and Kou and they had their picture taken together on the stairs for the Washington Life magazine. Robert, being part of the 1869 Society, knew a lot of people there and they spent the better part of the evening upstairs mingling. All the introductions were difficult to keep track of, so with a glass of champagne in one hand and her clutch in the other sat down to try and actually have a conversation while Robert mingled.

Xavier and I got our picture taken by Kyle Samperton around half way through the night. Notice the disheveled bow tie, the white wine (“Never drink red at a party, your teeth turn purple.” - Xavier) the big smile and happy crowd.

They wandered to the main floor and commenced meetnig new people again but the music had started to call her name. She quietly slipped away and made her way to the dance floor…

At this point I was still trying to dodge Catalina and spent a little time on the stairs to just soak in the cultured atmosphere. Then, there she was. Coming through the crowd on the dance floor. Wow.

What’s the first thing you notice? Besides her perfect hair, the sexy dress with cutouts on the side, and well-put-together makeup? The necklace.

Apollina moved through the crowd and made her way between the beautiful white stone pillars surrounding the dance floor. I quickly moved down the steps on an interception route coming from her back right shoulder behind the DJ tables.

“That has to be the prettiest necklace I’ve seen all night.” “Thank you.” We promptly shook hands and exchanged names — in proper DC fashion. I don’t recall a single thing she said at this point because I was completely taken in by her. Something about getting a drink and finding her date I think. Before she could leave to find him, he found us. “Apollina, I’ve been looking for you, you just disappeared!” “I’m sorry, I just wanted to dance and figured you were talking so you wouldn’t mind…” (Since then I have become all too familiar with the fact that Apollina has a mind of her own and tends to wander sometimes.) He gave me a look and with a, “Whatever” walked away. Apollina said it was nice to meet me and that she had to go make sure everything was all right with her date.

I thought to myself, “Really? What’s she doing with him?” He was tall, definitely older than Apollina, and his uptight attitude didn’t match her effervescent one. I had no idea what she was doing with this guy, but it didn’t really matter. I would definitely be back.

I walked over to Xavier and told him that I had just met the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, “You aren’t going to believe it”.

“I want to meet her then!” So off I went, determined to have another chance at talking to her and hopefully getting to spend more time with her.

“Excuse me, I just wanted to apologize to you for earlier, I didn’t mean any harm”, I explained to Robert. Truth be told, it wasn’t an authentic apology but it was a good way to get back to Apollina. Grumble grumble, he replied. ”Do you mind if I borrow Apollina for a little bit, I want to introduce her to a few people?” Grumble… mmm… hrumph. I’ll take that as a yes.

“Oh my gosh thank you so much!!” Apollina gushed as we walked over to grab a drink. “I don’t understand why he became upset, this is a platonic date, I think he just expected me to be by his side all night.”

We got our drinks and headed to the dance floor where we met up with her friends Christelle and Kou. Apollina introduces me to her bubbly personality and overflowing energy levels, quickly dancing figurative circles around me. ”I LOVE YOUR ENERGY!” I yell over the music. This was too much fun!

Then the music stopped. I did my best at carrying an interesting conversation with the three women while trying to not be overly excited (This was by far the best night of my life). ”I like this one, he’s fun and different” Kou told Apollina. “You two should make this happen.” God bless you Kou.

Xavier appeared and I introduced him to Apollina. He asked her what after party she was on her way to and she responded that she had to go somewhere with her date. We were going to the W and she was going to a different hotel bar. I had to make my move.

“Are you adventurous?” I asked Apollina, “What are you doing this weekend?” trying to get her to want to do something out of her comfort zone with me. Like, ride my classic 1976 Triumph Bonneville through Rock Creek Park perhaps. “Do you like motorcycles?”

“Motorcycles huh? Yes, I like them, but they’re dangerous! I’m busy this weekend, but here’s my number. Call me.”

Now that’s not the end of the story, we didn’t connect up that weekend, and I had a flight back to my parents home in the Pacific Northwest for a Halloween party and some vacation time. With Apollina running through my mind nonstop the two weeks I was away, I came back and tried my luck.

Two weeks, in case you didn’t know is “like two years” in hot-girl time; I’m still a little dumbfounded to this day that she remembered who I was with only 30-40 minutes of real interaction. So what was I supposed to do? I called of course, but got her machine - “Hello this is Apollina, please leave a me a message” wow she even sounds hot and intimidating in a recording!

Ummm, stammer, something about adventures and fun, and it being a long shot.

To my utter surprise I get a text from her, “I have you in my phone as Christelle, so I thought it was her calling me! What’s going on, how are you?” She really was that nice.

She agreed to a friendly lunch, and went on that adventure in Rock Creek Park on my bike the next day. It was an unusually warm November day, beautiful fall leaves and two people just getting to know each other. We had pizza at Paradiso, a nice walk through the zoo, then rode over to Eastern Market to eat some chocolate as the sun set to cap a perfect first date.

Here we are over a year and a half later, and we are still going strong - We are that crazy, madly in love couple, complete with schmoopys (our nickname for each other) and smooches in public.

All thanks to the Corcoran’s Fall Fete organized by the 1869 Society!

Celebrating our one year anniversary at the Corcoran’s “NOW at Night” 2010

My home network

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 17:57:46 -0500

My home network

New Years Goals

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 17:19:00 -0500

It’s that time of year again; Time to freshen up the list of goals for the year. I’m going to spice things up and keep things measurable (as Buffet says - what get’s measured get’s improved).

Complete 2 bible studies with Apollina
Take at least 2 vacations for at least 4 days in locations of my choice that aren’t at a family’s home. Tropical preferred.
Create income via adwords or some other website generated method
Prototype and release at least 1 product of my choice to friends and family
Volunteer at least twice for any amount of time
Complete 3 triathlons of any distance
Get to 12% bodyfat
Call at least 1 friend not in the area once a week.
Love Apollina; cause her love tank to be overflowing every single day.

Google Voice and your iPhone. How to make it work!

Fri, 10 Sep 2010 11:00:01 -0400

Google Voice and your iPhone. How to make it work!:

In order to make Google Voice work correctly with the iPhone, three rules need be established about how the phone reacts to sending voicemails under different conditions. The three rules are:
1. No Answer
2. Call Declined/Ignored
3. Phone Off/No Service

If you fail to set up any of these three rules, the iPhone defaults back to AT&T visual voicemail and you lose the significant value of Google Voice (GV).

I’ve run and tested this on 3 unique GV set ups and feel confident it works every time. You have may have seen and tried other directions online which didn’t work as I did, but working through a friend at Apple and an oddly friendly AT&T tech, this is pretty bullet proof. Here we go:

1. Ignore the settings on your iPhone itself. The master call forwarding feature is useless on the iPhone unless you never want to receive calls on your device and forward right to GV all the time.. Leave the forwarding setting off.

2. All of the conditional forwarding comes from AT&T Central Office and the standard GSM forwarding codes, however the iPhone doesn’t understand these in native form.. With most GSM phones a single * puts the phone into GSM command mode whereas the iPhone has reserved the first * for its own command lines, so to use GSM commands you must use two. Hence, when you see the instructions below, all GSM commands start with either ** or #.

(Before you SPAM me, GSM is the underlying command code for EDGE and 3G networks so no matter what iPhone version or network you run on, trust me this works.)

To Forward Unanswered Calls:
1. Open the Keyboard on the iPhone app
2. Dial EXACTLY: **61*xxx-xxx-xxxx# (Again, STAR STAR 61 STAR GV # POUND)
3. The iPhone screen will darken and provide you feedback that it is now forwarded

To Forward Calls When You Are Busy Or Decline A Call:
1. Open the Keyboard on the iPhone app
2. Dial EXACTLY: **67*xxx-xxx-xxxx#
3. The iPhone screen will darken and provide you feedback that it is now forwarded

To Forward Calls When The Phone is Off Or In Airplane Mode/No Service:
1. Open the Keyboard on the iPhone app
2. Dial EXACTLY: **62*xxx-xxx-xxxx#
3. The iPhone screen will darken and provide you feedback that it is now forwarded

To END All Forwarding Of Calls:
1. Open the Keyboard on the iPhone app
2. Dial EXACTLY: #002#
3. The iPhone screen will darken and provide you feedback that it is now forwarded

How to jailbreak and get yourself some facetime over 3g!

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 15:51:35 -0400

I’m going to layout the steps to get facetime over 3g here:

FOR FREE

open up cydia
go to manage - > sources -> repo -> edit -> Add(this only shows up after you hit ‘edit’)
add http://sinfuliphonerepo.com
head over to ‘sections’ (on bottom)
scroll down to sinfuliphonerepo
scroll to the bottom and look for ‘3g unrestrictor’
install the package!

Now you’ve got the system ready to fake out the apps and say that you are on a wifi system. Next thing you need to do is configure 3g unrestrictor to have the phone app use it for facetime.

Open up 3g unrestrictor
add ‘phone’ (near the bottom of the list)

I’ll refresh this post with some screencaps later!

How to get a job offer (or new salary) when you're an all-star

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 19:22:56 -0400

I wanted to share my experience on my own personal job search experience. I had heard about 23904821 times that everyone should shop themselves out every 3-5 years to calibrate their salary. I didn’t, and 5 years is (was) approaching fast. I was worried about upsetting people that I was thinking about leaving, that I wasn’t dedicated, that I would jump-ship when things weren’t 100%. Truth be told, I really thought I was worth more, and the comments from others around the office that you are a ‘go-to’ guy struck me as undeserved.

Also, the adage that relationships gets you jobs, not actual qualifications is true. Make friends with people, read some books on body language and influence.

Understand that you are an all-star. What makes an all-star? When everyone asks for your help specifically, and you’ve got great recognition from the uppers.
Seriously think about where you want to go with your career, don’t pick something that is incremental. Go for something different that puts you outside of your comfort zone. You’ll never grow unless you do, yes it’s scary, but it’s a necessary step and you’ll be happy you did.
Sharpen and tune your resume towards your new goal.
Use your influence tactics and friendships to see what’s out there. Let your friends know (and / or your management) that you are “seriously considering outside offers”
Apply to everything that meats your criteria for an awesome job, regardless of your skills and qualifications. I’ve been told that ‘being personable is 80% of the interview’.

It might frustrating at first not hearing anything back from the cold internet applications, but you’ll be surprised about the number of opportunities that come from friends and acquaintances. These personal interactions are where you will really get the concrete opportunities. Most of the time they’ll say, “are you serious about leaving?” and always, always say “yes”.

The fun part begins after a few weeks or a month when these contacts that you’ve told start to come back to you with opportunities. Why? Because you are an all-star. Everyone you’ve worked with knows how fantastic you are and what an asset you’ll be. They want more people like you on their team, and will suggest roles and opportunities that might have been outside your radar. Be open to their suggestions and really listen to any advice that they give; remember the influence tactics you’ve read about and apply them in a positive manner.

The Interview(s)

Interviewing is an important step; here are a couple of suggestions that work wonders:

Write down the names of the people you will be interviewing with - physically write them down in your interview binder.
Study the company like crazy for a couple days before the interview. Learn about their market, what types of products they offer, who their competitors are, and any technical areas you aren’t 100% confident in. I believe it takes roughly a knowledge of 15% of the total information to be credible.
In the interview remember to be calm; physically take up space - spread out a bit. Repeat the interviewers name(s) and try to relate in a personal way with them by sharing some interests outside of work. Get some rapport going!
If you don’t know, admit it. Be honest.

Knowing how much you are worth

Take your latest salary and add 20%. This is your absolute minimum baseline salary. Look at salaries for the company and position you are interviewing for on salary.com and glassdoor.com (my favorite). Once you know the range that people make at the position you are applying for you’ll have a better understanding. When you get to the portion of the interviews where they start talking money, try and always get them to put a number out first. If they ask, “what would you like to make?”, counter with “I’m looking to be compensated just as one of my peers would be.” But if they continue to press, put out a range, starting at what the median is from your research and cap it off at 10% above. For example - if you are new to an area and the range from your research is 90-130, say I’m looking for 110-120. Remember though it has to be at least 20% above your existing position wages.

Counter Offer! Don’t take the first offer, no matter how awesome it sounds. 60% of hiring managers leave money on the table. They can and will play hardball at this point; they will scare you with suggestions of “I’ll have to check on that number and see if this is a go no-go decision.” implying that they’ll rescind their offer. Don’t worry, the manager that wants you on the team won’t let the hiring manager take the offer back, they’ve got too much at risk. After all, they choose you out of a huge playing field, and to take back an offer to you would make them look like they’ve made a poor decision. It just doesn’t happen. So play hardball right back and find out who makes the decision on the salary increase and volunteer to talk to that person directly. (And back up your threat if they say OK!) I personally say take the original add 10% and explain that this isn’t that much more than my current position, I’ve got a counter from my current employer for xx more, blah blah blah. Wait on it for a while and then be prepared to accept or counter once more. Don’t go back and forth more too much however as you could come across as looking petty.

Brad

Fri, 02 Jul 2010 17:25:09 -0400

Brad:

The Crazy Monkey - from Costa Rica …

coconut creme
condensed milk
evaporated milk
tequila
coffee liquor
banana
ice

Not sure how to make it perfectly, but i’ll update when I figure it out.

sharing internet connections

Sat, 05 Jun 2010 17:32:09 -0400

Why should everyone want to pay the man for their internet?? We should lower our bill, using our collective buying power to share the connection. I’ll share mine for 10 / neighbor, but you won’t get dedicated service. Not to say that you wouldn’t get great service, but I’m not going to guarantee anything.

Need some legal advice? I know an attorney:)

Distributed encoding farm

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 12:30:20 -0400

Thought a little this morning in light of the Google acquisition of ON2 - why not create an encoding farm that people can upload their jobs, or create their own farms?

zencoder I think is doing this, but it doesn’t seem that difficult of a problem. But who would use it?

Just love the color of the sea here ;)

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 10:28:44 -0400

Just love the color of the sea here ;)

How to create an iPhone repo!

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 10:22:00 -0400

Been working on creating an iphone cydia repo for a while using a virtual machine.

The problem has always been getting the initial setup done, and then getting the ports to forward correctly.

Here’s the template that I’ve been trying:

In the world of Debian APT/dpkg, anything you can install is a “package”. These packages exist in the form of .deb files, which have a rather arcane (which, to the software historian, may be read as “fascinating”) internal format that this guide will not bore the reader with. At a high level, a .deb contains the files that are going to installed as part of the package, and “control” information which comprises metadata about the package (its name, size, and other sundry details). The construction of such a file is done using the tool dpkg-deb. Users of Debian (or Fink on a Macintosh, which is also based on APT) will already have this package installed, but users of almost any other platform are able to install it easily, or may do this work on their iPhone itself. To then make a package, we need only prepare a folder that contains the files we want to install as they would appear on the iPhone’s filesystem. Additionally, we will add a single directory called DEBIAN to the root of our package to house a file called “control”, which will contain our metadata. If, for example, we want to install a program and a LaunchDaemon for MyProgram, we (depending on what we were installing, of course) may end up with the following directory structure:

RT73 and Backtrack 4

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 16:08:03 -0400

I’ve been playing around with this

And trying to get it to work with Backtrack (wifi security + a whole lot more) live USB.

The problem is that BT4 doesn’t come with the driver built in - i.e. you plug it in, and dmesg gives you a:

usb 4-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 8
usb 4-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice

Now the problem is that once you’ve done this it doesn’t add in another ifconfig automagically for you. For example the laptop that I’m using (dell e4200.. meh) has an intel wifi nic, wlan0. Now I want this guy to be rausb0 but modprobing it doesn’t exactly work.

We’ll update this later, this post is mainly to test out my post by email

Brad