Hijinks Inc.

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  • The MMA Minute – Fighter Profile: Royce Gracie

    The month of September is an unusual one in the world of MMA. We’ve got 2 weekday fights and only a single weekend PPV. To fill this void for The MMA Minute, and to help further educate you in the world of MMA, I’ve decided to bring you fighter profiles. Similar to my articles on the history of MMA, the UFC, and the other main organizations, these will be fancy reproductions of the Wikipedia pages for these fighters, as well as some of my own thoughts, and tidbits from other great websites.

    We really can’t start anywhere else other than Royce Gracie. This is the man that captured all of our imaginations and really helped facilitate the sport MMA in the United States. I’ll cover his career record, bring you some highlights, and do my best to reflect what this fighter represented in the grand scheme of Mixed Martial Arts… after the jump! (more…)

  • Top 10: Ideas For Beginning Bloggers

    Photo courtesy of Elwood Photography.

    I would like to start out today by setting the record straight. I’m not some big deal blogger that churns out real groundbreaking posts that continually make their way around the internet. For those, you’d have to talk to Aaron, he’s the head honcho that’s actually been recognized by one of the big time blogs. If you found this post and you are just starting out as a blogger, or are struggling for ideas, then I’m just like you.

    Today marks the end of the 2nd full month that I’ve had a post every single day. I’ll be the first to admit that not all of those were great posts, but when you are starting out, you can’t expect to strike gold with every post. It’s about getting into the habit of blogging. With experience comes more worthwhile posts, and eventually, it all comes together… I’m still waiting for the whole ‘coming together’ moment with my own writing!

    After the jump I’ll give you my top 10 tips for beginning bloggers, some relate to blog post ideas, some I’m still working on myself, but hopefully you find a point or two to help you get started with your own blog. I’ll also include some links to some other great resources that I’ve used. (more…)

  • Alternative iTunes 10 Icon (OS X)

    If you’re like me, you might not be sold on this new icon for iTunes. Don’t get me wrong, I love that they killed off the CD, but the new icon looks a little Windows 7ish in my dock.

    This morning I noticed this new icon from Chris Carlozzi floating around on Twitter, which looks pretty sweet.

    So I downloaded it and converted it to a .rsrc file so you can replace your iTunes icon with it on OS X.

    You can download the .rsrc file as a .zip here. After it’s downloaded, extract the icon file and right click on it a select Get Info.

    Next, navigate to your Applications folder and right click on the iTunes icon and select Get Info.

    You should now have both Info windows next to each other. In the iTunes 10.rsrc window, click once on the small icon in the upper left hand corner (should now be highlighted). Then press Command+C.

    In the iTunes Info window, click once on the icon in the upper left hand corner and press Command+V. You should now see the same icon in both windows.

    Close out the open windows and start iTunes, and you should see the new icon in your dock. Enjoy!

  • iPad 3G Data Usage for August

    Seems like my data consumption is averaging out a bit, last month I used 22.4GB, this month 27.4 so the mid-20GB range seems to be the sweet spot.

    I’d still like to break 40GBs in a month, just to stick to AT&T, but I’m not going out of my way to make that happen.

  • Secunia PSI – The Security tool every windows user should be running

    Lets be honest, Windows security is not the easiest thing to manage.  On top of the Microsoft products, there exist the 3rd party programs that tend to be forgotten about. Microsoft has made great progress with the security of Windows in its most recent releases of Windows 7 and Office 2010, but that’s only part of the solution. The Microsoft update website and built in Microsoft update utility in Windows Vista and Windows 7 have helped a great deal with keeping Microsoft products up to date, but these are far from all of the programs that most people run.  Persons crafting malicious code such as viruses, malware, etc know this and are targeting other programs too.  These 3rd party programs do not have a common updater and each must be updated on its own, for example, programs like Adobe Flash Player, Adobe Acrobat, Java, and Firefox, just to name a few. It is a lot for the average user to do, especially considering there is no general update policy (IE, Patch Tuesday) with most vendors, and announcements about updates are quiet.

    Enter Secunia PSI. This is a free (for personal use) program put out by the Secunia company. They specialize in finding exploits and providing monitoring software.  PSI (Personal Security Inspector) is a tool that scans the programs on your hard drive and then does version checks against its vast list of known exploits.  It then notifies you of older versions and tells you where you need to go to fix them. The program is great for finding those programs you rarely use and forget about when updating.

    The program is smart. For Microsoft websites it knows to open them in Internet Explorer so the download tools will work. It also allows you to rescan specific programs after you update them instead of spending time to rescan your entire drive.  It also offers the ability to ignore a specific program if for instance you need the older version for a custom tool to work.  It will run in the background and notify you when new updates are available or new known exploits exist.   It also offers an advanced mode which offers more features and details.  In advanced mode PSI will tell you about products you have installed that are no longer supported by their vendors and any known exploits that exist in them.

    Secunia also offers a product called OSI (Online Security Inspector) which is a great tool as well. It is similar to PSI but does not require you to install anything. However, it does require Java to run in the browser.  While not as thorough as PSI, it’s similar in operation and usage.

    In conclusion, this is a great tool that is very thorough and easy enough to use that every user should have this in their tool box and run it as part of a biweekly security audit.  It really helps to inform users of out of date software that could leave their computer vulnerable. While PSI is targeted for personal use, they offer a corporate version that is a paid version. Its functionality is similar but it also offers many more features.

    Update #1 (9-3-2010)

    Since this article was originally posted Secunia has come out with a new version of its PSI security tool that is currently in beta. It is called Secunia PSI 2.0. You can grab a copy for free here. The big feature that this adds is the ability to install updates silently and automatically if you choose for your vulnerable software. I think this could be a great feature especially for people who don’t want to deal with always having to update their computers.