Advogato: Personal info for saul

saul is currently certified at Apprentice level.

Name: Saul B
Member since: 2004-05-26 20:44:43
Last Login: 2007-10-04 05:39:05

Notes:
I'm a 20 year old U of Waterloo Student. I'm in the middle of getting Math degree with Comp Sci Honours.

My pet projects (which right now aren't getting enough attention) are: PhotoReider and a Python based XML-RPC client for both advogato and LiveJournal (this project needs a name)

Things I find interesting:

Well designed Software
Rapid Prototyping
Philosophy
Pop Culture

Things I like:

Comedy
Cartoons (the more off beat the better)
Sci-fi

Note: Please excuse my horrible spelling and grammar

My more updated journal is here

At this point I am in: Limbo

Projects

Lead Developer on Photoreider
Lead Developer on pytrips
Contributor on The Universe
Contributor on WvStreams

Recent blog entries by saul

Syndication: RSS 2.0

6 Jun 2008 »

Vudu

So a few months back I got a Vudu box for basically free. It's a movie streaming set top box. The idea being you hook it up to your tv and then you can rent and buy movies from your couch. Now I wouldn't buy movies on it since they are locked on the the device, but renting is only $2ish and the quality is excellent. (Though since my roommate got a netflix account we hardly use the box anymore) The big selling point of the Vudu box is that it does an excellent job of streaming the content, so you can instantly watch anything in their catalog (including HD movies).

One of the biggest problems I've had is that the catalog of movies (which is pretty big about 5500 movies, and over 120 in HD) isn't searchable online. Which is super annoying, since if I want to watch a movie I'd like to know if it's on Vudu.

So I present the full catalog of movies and tv shows on the vudu in one searchable page. I extracted the information from the vudu site (which incidentally is written in non-optimized javascript, which makes for easy dissecting).

When I have some more time I'll detail the format they use, but the short version is:

This URL can be used to get all the movies in one easy to parse javascript chunk.
It's pretty easy to figure out what the different fields do by playing around with the Vudu browser page

Syndicated 2008-06-06 07:17:34 from Saul's Blog

18 Apr 2008 »

Dear Phone Scamming Jerks

Dear Phone Scamming Jerks,

I'm not sure how your scam works but I'm not interested.

Please stop calling me.

Sincerely
- Saul

PS, you're a jerk.

Syndicated 2008-04-18 05:34:14 from Saul's Blog

8 Mar 2008 (updated 9 Mar 2008 at 00:08 UTC) »

Bike almost stolen

So my bike was almost stolen again

I left it at the Palo Alto Caltrain station locked to a tree and when I came back the lock was cut open.

<center>

Cut Lock</center>

The weird part is my bike was still there seemingly untouched. I guess the would be thief got interrupted.

Note to the reader, this is a different bike then the one that was almost stolen in waterloo, but it's of the same "quality". I guess the fact that people are "almost stealing" rather then full out stealing my bike is a good thing.

Syndicated 2008-03-08 09:48:26 (Updated 2008-03-08 23:36:42) from Saul's Blog

28 Nov 2007 »

Free Public WiFi

I always see these "Free Public Wifi" Ad-hoc networks around and just assumed they were infected machines. It would seem they are actually a mix between windows being extra crazy and people being gullible.

Details: http://blogs.chron.com/techblog/archives/2006/09/free_public_wif.html

Syndicated 2007-11-27 23:29:17 from Saul's Blog

13 Oct 2007 »

Dr. Robert W. Bussard

Dr Bussard died :(

I had the chance to see his talk when I interned at Google, and then had the great privilege to have dinner and talk to him. He was an amazing man, very spry for a 79 year old. I'll never forget when he told us "If you've never had the experience of seeing a nuclear blast in person, it's transcendent." (I'm paraphrasing) Just hearing him talk about the the early days of nuclear research was just so interesting, I now wish I had recorded the conversation.

He was an amazing man.

Update: It would seem David had the same impressions

Syndicated 2007-10-13 05:55:11 from Saul's Blog

28 older entries...

saul certified others as follows:

saul certified dcoombs as Journeyer
saul certified pphaneuf as Master
saul certified apenwarr as Master
saul certified wlach as Journeyer
saul certified God as Master
saul certified JoeNotCharles as Journeyer
saul certified sfllaw as Journeyer
saul certified saul as Apprentice
saul certified pcolijn as Apprentice
saul certified Bram as Master
saul certified Satan as Master
saul certified kuro5hin as Master
saul certified gstein as Master
saul certified jerenkrantz as Journeyer
saul certified chrisd as Master

Others have certified saul as follows:

dcoombs certified saul as Apprentice
pcolijn certified saul as Apprentice
pphaneuf certified saul as Apprentice
lerdsuwa certified saul as Apprentice
wlach certified saul as Apprentice
saul certified saul as Apprentice

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