Didn’t think I’d have another update on the GPS software so soon. But on my way back from Utah I was informed that the plane had GPS tracking available online. Now because the flight also had WIFI I had to check it out.

The site that did the tracking was http://www.flightstats.com and it did an amazing job with updating where we were in real-time. Now being me, I found a quick and easy way to grab the GPS coordinates from the site and import them into my database. It was a quick and dirty shell script that was all of 3 lines of code. So I won’t be sharing it, however I do think it is something that should be added to my overall GPS tracking suite.

I’m going to start looking into other GPS type location services, such as FourSquare, and FireEagle and try to build a framework around all of them that allows one to update all of them by updating one. So if anyone can think of any other apps or services out there that allow one to share their GPS location with friends or just track it, let me know and I’ll see what I can do.

Also, one last thing I’d like to share. With the flight tracker I decided to have my script run every minute to pull the information. It’s pretty amazing how far planes get in a single minute. Here is a screenshot of when I started the script.

GPS Flight Points

The 2 main parts of this software have changed over the years, however this post will describe each change and will include what I currently use to get my location on the site.

The main part is the use of the Mologogo software. Which I used because I had a old boost mobile cell phone and this was the easiest and fastest way to get my location up on the web. It was also the cheapest at $1 dollar a day. After the iPhone came out I developed my own application to get my location and update the mologogo software that way. This was awesome because I could get rid of the boost mobile phone and I only had to carry a single phone then. However after almost every update to the iPhone software, I had to wait for a new jailbreak and then I had to change my code to work. This became a huge hassle and I had to deal with it after every update.

When the iPhone 2.0 software came out I assumed I wouldn’t have to do that anymore. Except for the fact that in order to actually use any application that you wrote, you needed to pay the developer fee. So instead I decided to get my location another way. On many of the twitter iPhone apps it would allow you to update your location and this would then update the GPS coordinates shown on your twitter.com page. This was an easy way to get the location of myself without the need of writing a new custom app. So I wrote some code that would look on my twitter page and find the location of me and check to see if it had updated since the last time it checked. This solution was great because it would only update as much as I wanted, and wouldn’t drain my battery since my phone would do none of the work. However, a few months after this went live twitter decided to change their design and at first the location info was no longer shown. So I had to come up with a new idea.
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I needed to get a bunch of text up on pastebin and I’ve used my own cURL script to get it up there before. But then I started to think that others might want to be able to just post to pastebin directly from their bash shell. What started off as a simple one-liner then started to grow into a bit more.

With pastebin you are able to post to a sub-domain, as well as put a name along with the post and even set how long the data should stay up. So I’ve made it possible for you to edit those settings in the script so that if you want to post as “bob” and keep the data up there for a day you can do all of that.

The easiest way to install this would be the following 2 commands

sudo curl haxbyjaku.com/pastebin -o /usr/bin/pastebin
sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/pastebin

I know that you won’t run sudo on commands that download code from my server, but you can trust it since you get to see everything.

After it is installed I suggest editing the file as well so that you can set your own settings such as username or pastebin URL. Once that is all set simple run a command like "echo test | pastebin" in your terminal and you’ll get the URL that pastebin posted it to. You can even do something like "echo /etc/passwd | pastebin" and it will work exactly as you expect it to.

I’ve pasted the code after the break as well.

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The last presentation slides are now online.

http://haxbyjaku.com/hax_GA1.pdf & http://haxbyjaku.com/hax_GA2.pdf

So I haven’t been keeping up with the blog as much as I’ve planned. But that seems to be the norm around here. As most of you are aware, I have been using twitter a lot more. Most likely going to delete the “Latest dodge coming soon” thing on the right hand side. Maybe get a new theme setup on here as well. Not sure yet about that, a lot of things are coded into this one now. :\

Changes in the past few months include:

Working nights now, 1am to 9am, instead of normal days.
Moved into a new apartment. Much nicer and better view.
Working on a few new projects, but this time with friends instead of alone.
Been driving a bit more.

Otherwise, I don’t have to much else to say. In about 2 weeks, there should be a post about one of the projects. Some of you know a bit of the details, but the one’s that don’t should enjoy it. I will also be doing a new presentation at the next 2600 meeting in June. You won’t want to miss this one.

This isn’t really a hax or anything but it’s kinda funny.

I got a WoW trial yesterday from a friend at work, and so when I got home I figured I’d try it out. I played no more than 49 minutes when I got banned. I didn’t get banned for anything I did, I got banned for something an “associated” account did. However, my friend that gave me the trial, isn’t banned. So I don’t see how that would work. So I figured I would call to try and get this fixed, as I was actually having fun for those 49 minutes. I wait on hold for 50 minutes before I get connected with someone and talk to them for no more than a minute. All they can tell me is to email the email address I got in my Inbox about the ban, and they might be able to reverse it. Nothing can be done over the phone. Also he tells me that it can take up to 3 weeks for them to even reply. o_0

So, let’s see, I played for 49 minutes, was on hold for 50 minutes. I was on hold longer than I played. Thats neat. However it gets better. Since I am on a 10-day trial, I have 10 days to play, but wait, it takes 3 weeks to reply back. Thats 21 days, my trial will have been over for 11 days before I even get a reply. That is just awesome.

I can now see why they call it WoW….

Moving from one server to another wasn’t bad at all. Had very little downtime, and was able to do a few things I was putting off doing anyways. Either way, site should load a bit faster for people in Chicago, which is good. Because 90% of my traffic is from Chicago or Chicago areas.

Let me know if you find any errors or anything like that.

I should have really though of a better title when starting these blog posts. Oh well.

So yesterday the app was finished and working pretty much exactly how I wanted it. A few things were left out but overall it is working. Well, that is if it has the MAC address of the router that it found while searching. And right there is the flaw. Without a huge database of MAC addresses this app is pretty useless. I’ve been working on adding MAC addresses that I find to my database and geocoding them, but that won’t really be fun for people not in Chicago, and even then people in Chicago wouldn’t have fun with it either. So that is why I contacted WiGle.net, who actually was a bit of help but not as much of a help as they could have been.

Also I was just informed that the server that HaxbyJaku.com is currently on, might not be up much longer. So I am going to end this post now and backup all my stuff and then move it.

K thx. Bye.

Been busy at work so wasn’t able to invest as much time today on the app as I was the past 2, however. I did get past the point that I wanted to reach by tonight. I had Jeff and Josh help look at the code. Maybe, I should just name it JGPS or JPS, since so far most of the people that have helped have names that start with J. Either way it’s almost ready for a public beta, I really need to get a bigger database of data, I have asked the administrators at Wigle.net for assistance with using their database, but haven’t heard anything yet.

Anyways, the app does look ups of the MAC addresses that are around it. Which is what I wanted to do. The next step after this is to make it not open Safari first, this would work already if the ? in the url didn’t get changed to the hex value. But whatever, I’ll try to find a way to call the Maps.app directly with the GPS coordinates. If I can’t figure that out, it’s not a big deal and I can let the community figure it out.

After I get the MAC lookup how I want, I’ll add the cell tower lookup. I’ll try to add that on the weekend or Monday. But don’t promise anything. Anyways, the app is at the state I wanted, the app looks like an official app or at least an unofficial 3rd party app, and I hope after I finish it that people will want to use it. No screen shots or anything tonight, as the only difference in the app is the code, nothing cosmetic has changed. Anyways, I need to sleep.

Another day, another post. So I got a little bit further than I was yesterday. Still a few annoying things that I need to figure out how to do. But by the looks of it, I got about 2 more real things left to do and then I can release as a beta or alpha. After that I might try to get the cell triangulation implemented in it. I found some code that I could use, but I’d rather focus on my first idea for now and work on that later. Anyways, here is a video for your viewing enjoyment. It is recorded sideways, so umm tilt your head.