A couple weeks ago, I ran across an amazing deal for a cheap 7 inch android tablet. I had been thinking about getting a tablet, but hadn't bitten as I'm saving up for other things at the moment. However, this particular tablet was $20 after rebate, so I couldn't pass it up.

When it arrived, I was surprised and pleased to find ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich aka Android 4.0) installed, and the tablet was pre-rooted. This meant I could do whatever I wanted to it. My first thought was to find a ROM update to install Jelly Bean (Android 4.1).

Amazon S3 is a paid service many websites use to host their media files. For example, my church (University Reformed Church) uses it to store mp3 sermons.

Most websites will use Amazon's flash player to stream the video to the end user. This makes it difficult to get access to the original video. This is the feature I will show you how to circumvent.

I was surprised to find the other day that my new blog already had comments. The comments turned out to be spam, and I deleted them right away. Thankfully, I have already turned on comment moderation, which means all comments must be approved by me before being shown to other users. I imagine if the site were to grow, comment moderation would become a chore, but for now, it is a small price to pay to keep the site looking clean.

This website now has a valid Class 1 SSL Certificate! And this came at no cost (monetarily) to myself, thanks to www.startssl.com. StartSSL gives away free Class 1 certificates to anyone who wants one and can verify ownership of a domain.

This wouldn't be a big deal in and of itself, as you can easily create your own certificate authority, site cert, and private key.

This was originally posted on my first attempt at a blog, which has since disappeared. It was posted on September 15, 2011.