Archive for October, 2011

File this under “Well-documented features I never noticed before.” In Ruby, if you need to generate random strings for various purposes, there’s a native module: SecureRandom. In Ruby 1.8, you can generate Base-64-encoded strings, hex, random numbers (integers), and random bytes. Ruby 1.9 adds the ability to generate UUIDs and URL-safe Base64 strings. Really simple, [...]

Don’t ask why I was spending my Friday night this way, but I was just reading about Juno, the ISP that I assumed went out of business a decade ago. It turns out that they merged with NetZero (another ISP I forgot all about), and formed United Online. (The interesting thing about their merger is [...]

I think most geeks get a ton of email. I’ve been rather selective in what lists I join (and what mail I just auto-delete at the server level), so I only get perhaps a couple hundred emails a day now. For various ridiculous reasons, searching a mailbox is hard. Most of my mail clients will [...]


On Other Sites

  • Matt: Hey Victor, A couple good resources for you... http://www.scanboston.com/boston.htm is really det [...]
  • victor: Hi i just got a uniden bearcay scanner and have no local or regional frequency directory.just 1 460 [...]
  • Matt: I do use them periodically. I bought a few i760's, for perhaps $10 apiece in a lot, on eBay a while [...]
  • Marin: Did you eventually end up going with an iDEN phones using Direct Talk? I had some i560's a few year [...]
  • Dan: fyi, EOD = explosive ordnance disposal [...]