To paraphrase Chris Brown, these CDNs ain’t loyal. If you used Socket.IO for your web app, you may have run into a few issues today, 5/27/16. A few issues is probably a bit of an understatement, as any secure app that used Socket.IO’s CDN to serve their client the necessary library to communicate with their server today was crippled. The culprit? Socket.IO forgot to renew… Read more →
NoSurge – Avoid Uber Surge now on Android, Windows, and iOS; tops 11,000 installs!
Wow. Originally just a fun project to try to make my first mobile app (and originally only for Android), NoSurge has hit over 11,000 installs on the Google Play Store! I’ve learned a lot in the process, and have also released it for Windows, and just released it for iOS after multiple requests. Thank you for your downloads (and for those of you… Read more →
SquareTrade Claim with a 14 Digit IMEI/Serial Number
TL;DR: Need a 15 character-long serial number but only have a 14 digit HEX? Type your 14 digit HEX code into here and the 15th digit will be calculated and added automatically. My Sprint Galaxy S4 survived a jump in the pool, a fall out of a second story window, and plenty of other mishaps over the years, but it… Read more →
Macys.com Password Reset Mystery: How Macys.com Gives Spammers Email Addresses
I’ve noticed a regularly occurring email in my inbox: a password reset link sent from Macys.com. The problem with this? I didn’t try to reset my password! Someone else is requesting a password reset using my email address. But since they can’t actually reset my password this way (since they don’t have access to my email) it’s weird that they would bother, right? Unfortunately, no, I… Read more →
NoSurge – Avoid Surge on Android, iOS, and Windows
This app has been discontinued due to Uber’s termination of its public API: I started my first foray into Android application development by creaing “NoSurge”, an app that allows users to look nearby for places that will be cheaper to hail an Uber during surge pricing. You can find NoSurge on the Google Play Store here. You can also find it on… Read more →
Uber API Deep Linking [was] Broken for Android (Pickup Location)
Update 3: Good news everyone! The issues with Chrome for Android not properly passing the pick-up location to the Uber app appear to have been fixed! Update 2: I created a WebView app (NoSurge) for Android that manually handles the Uber deep-linking/Android intent and confirmed that this approach allows a user to correctly pass the pick-up location to the Uber app.… Read more →
Europe on a Budget: Azores AND Lisbon for $415.20 (from Boston)
SATA Airlines is an airline most are not familiar with. It is the flagship carrier of the Azores, a place, still, that most have not heard of before. The Azores are a group of Portugese islands in the Atlantic nearly 1,000 miles from Portugal proper. They are volcanic islands with hot springs, waterfalls, stunning scenery, Europe’s only tea plantations, wineries, and some of… Read more →
So you want to travel for cheap…
I’ve been fortunate enough to learn a few good ways to score cheap flight tickets to enable my passion for traveling. I’m always asked by people how I get such good deals, and I figured I’d share some of the best ways to travel on the cheap. I’m only a good resource as far as the links I can provide, and… Read more →
Node.js Twitter Bot: USAJOBS Student & Recent Graduate Job Feed
Click here to see the resulting Twitter Bot! As someone who has applied to dozens of government internships or jobs over the years, I’m among the multitudes that realize how random and unfair the Federal hiring process is. Jobs may go up for months at a time, at which point you realize that with thousands of applications you probably won’t ever… Read more →
Countering Radicalization: An Agent-Based Model of Precision Strike Campaigns (MPSA Working Paper)
During my last semester of undergrad at William & Mary, I wanted to find a way to combine my computer skills with my field of study, political science. I ultimately applied my knowledge of agent-based modeling (honed during my senior research lab in high school) to my studies in international security. I wrote a short paper as part of an independent study with Professor Dave Ohls, and went… Read more →