For whatever reason (perhaps it’s the slowness of Twitterific, or the lack of any other application to satisfy my Twitter-craving) I wanted to be able to Tweet from Quicksilver. A quick Google led me to an AppleScript to Tweet from Quicksilver, but alas…it was a year old and not functional. So, two hours later - allow me to present an updated version of the script: {% codeblock %}{% codeblock %}using terms from application "Quicksilver" on process text im_text repeat with im_delimiter_position from 1 to (length of im_text) if character im_delimiter_position of im_text = ":" then exit repeat end repeat set im_contact_name to characters 1 thru (im_delimiter_position - 1) of im_text as string set im_message to characters (im_delimiter_position + 2) thru (length of im_text) of im_text as string tell application "Adium" set user to first contact whose (status type is available and display name starts with im_contact_name) if not (exists (chats whose contacts contains user)) then tell account of user to (make new chat with contacts {user} with new chat window) end if send (first chat whose contacts contains user) message im_message end tell return nothing end process text end using terms from{% endcodeblock %}{% endcodeblock %} ...

Final Update to This Post For those not following along at home, I finally took Twitter Stats to the next level and released a webified version over at TweetStats.com. I, somewhat unfortunately, had to go with TweetStats as twitterstats.com was already taken. :( I made a post about it here and you can see an example of my stats on the site on the graphs page. So I’ve been a user on Twitter for a little over a year, but it wasn’t until recently when I hit 2000 tweets that I wanted to see what my Twitter history looked like over that period. Ever being the statistics nerd, I pulled down all of my tweets and using a combination of curl, sed, grep, Excel, and Numbers, managed to generate some nice graphs. ...

Since German does not have the th-sound (as in thin), the proper pronunciation of the first syllable of the name is more or less like English wrote, while -burg is similar to “buak.” Source: Wikipedia. This town not only brings you back hundreds of years, but it makes you feel like a little kid at the same time. I don’t know too many children that don’t get excited by the idea of knights and castles and such imaginations run rampant while wandering the cobble-stone-lined streets of this town. ...

Sometimes you visit a place and feel instantly at home. You wander the streets within two days of arriving and already feel as if you know where you are and where you’re going and can get wherever you want to go. This was Amsterdam for me. I dropped in on a Wednesday night with absolutely no idea of what to expect from the city of the famed Red Light District and “coffee shops”. Nor had I even looked at a map of the city. ...

Well I just arrived in Amsterdam and already, “window shopping” has taken on a whole new meaning. I had absolutely no clue what to expect of the city, but even the 15-minute walk from the station has confirmed pretty much everything I’d heard about it. My cohort in crime and I walked out of the train station just before midnight with nary an idea of where to go. After extracting some money from the ATM and printing out a shady-looking map, we headed across the street dodging construction workers (again, midnight) and motorized bicycles zooming down the bicycle lane that’s so dedicated it’s actually just a mini street next to the regular one (which isn’t so big itself). We continued walking, trying to determine where we were but street signs seem to be rather sparse. Eventually we felt we had walked too far and, succumbing to our better male senses, walked into a random hotel and asked for directions. The guy at the front desk pulled up Google Maps and showed us where we had to go. About 8 head shops and 2 “red light” shops later, we were at our hotel. ...

Happy Thanksgiving to all my friends and family. For only the second time in my life, I am spending Thanksgiving away from home. The first time was when I was visiting a friend in Venice and the reason this time has to do with a combination of seeing my family back in October, and my recent travel to and from Germany. I got back from Germany Monday, am here in Seattle for Turkey Day, and then I leave again for Germany on Monday for a good couple weeks. ...

So after approximately 21 hours of travel, I am sitting in my temporary accommodations in Germany. The trip was great, mostly because of the business class ticket that allowed me to eat non-stop and catch some good movies on the way over. I just wanted to say a quick hi that I’m excited to be here (this is my first trip to Germany) and I’m already having a great time. I went exploring a little bit tonight and got a little lost, but not really. My fantastic male sense of direction kept me tuned in at all times to where I was. ;-) ...

There’s a meme going around about socnet ROT measurements and I got pinged by Clay Newton about socnet inputs into security metrics. It’s always interesting to discuss security and ROI, because one of the more elusive aspects of security. Having good security is generally compared to insurance. You don’t realize you need it until it’s too late. OR You pay and pay and pay for it, but never realize the need for it. So what’s the ROI? Not being hacked? How do you monitize that? ROI is hard enough to determine in general, nevermind on a social network where there’s no data. So allow me to ramble for a few brief moments. ...

In my threat modeling and secure coding classes, as well as directly with my clients, I always stress the importance of introducing security as early as possibile in the software development lifecycle. In addition to raising awareness amongst the developers, doing so can help identify potential problems early in the development process as opposed to later when they will require more effort and more cost to fix properly. I recently experienced a real-world example of this that I wanted to share. ...

Thanks to the new Twitter Tracking, I came across a great blog called Sufficient Thrust that discusses various “life hacking” techniques. As somebody that’s always on the go but gets motivated at odd hours, the post about why I shouldn’t wake up early tomorrow peaked my interest. I frequently get motivated right around 11pm and keep kicking until 3am easily, so getting up early puts a pretty large shadow over my day. Unfortunately, we do live in a 9-5 world and I often have clients where I need to be productive between those hours. So here are a few tips for forcing yourself to get work done. Note that everybody has different drivers, but these help me get through the day. ...