Matt Refghi

While I was in Atlanta for Dragon*Con 2011, I found myself using their metro system on a fairly regular basis. Over there, they call it the MARTA, which stands for “Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority” – it happens to be the 9th largest metro system in the United States. Unlike Montreal, their trains use a combination of underground and outdoor rails, the latter made possible by the subtropical climate. On one particular day, I found myself waiting for a lift at a MARTA station. Since I had nothing else to do, I began reading a sign that described some of the rules and regulations behind the MARTA. I was particularly curious about whether they allowed eating or drinking on the … Read more

Over the past month, I’ve been working with Joseph Pereira to create a web-based review show. Primarily intended for YouTube, the show is titled “All Too Convenient”, and will start with us reviewing the first season of a particular TV series. At this moment, we have one episode completed; however, due to the comments we have received, we decided to return to the drawing board, and start anew. It was a tough decision to make, mainly because it took us a month to get one episode fully edited and ready to go. This delay was largely due to Joseph’s hectic schedule, as it interfered with his ability to edit the video. His job was further complicated by the fact that … Read more

Earlier this month, I attended Dragon*Con 2011 – in full compliance with a personal ritual of mine. It was my sister who initially suggested we attend Dragon*Con for the first time, and that was last year. I knew after attending that I wanted it to be repeated on a yearly basis. It was a great excuse to spend time with my sister, and at the same time, it was a lot of fun. It also resulted in three blog posts, and that means the experience was significant enough that I felt it was worth sharing. That is a powerful statement, given my own obsession with posting only the non-mundane. One of those blog posts listed my Top 5 favorite costumes, … Read more

A little over three weeks ago, I discovered a user on Reddit who was giving away invites to a site called SteamGifts. I had never heard of it, but the idea of a site that focused on giving away games appealed to me. I remembered that I had a few extra game copies on my Steam account, and figured it’d be a good way to make sure they were put to use. After all, sending a gift using Steam is quite simple, since it exists purely as a digital credit of sorts – no files have to be sent around. With a use for the site, I requested an invitation code on Reddit, and received it shortly thereafter. Once logged … Read more

Back when I was a 19 year-old college student and still living with my parents, I was really enthusiastic about video games. So much, in fact, that I felt the need to create a clan, website and all. At the time, we went by the name “Infamous Butchers”, also known as Team IB. Yeah, I was pretty serious about it… it all seems somewhat silly today. After a while, I decided I would put advertisements on the website, in an effort to support the team. Naturally, I looked to the most recommended service, AdSense, as offered by Google. I signed up, and despite how small the site was, I received a confirmation e-mail a couple days later. Shortly thereafter, I had the advertisements … Read more

Back in mid 2009, I discovered an unexpected shipping confirmation in my e-mail inbox. It was sent from my cellphone service provider, and was letting me know that the iPhone I ordered had been sent out to me. Thing is, I never ordered an iPhone, and though the confirmation showed my name, it was being shipped to another address, and was associated with another phone number. It didn’t take long for me to realize that this was identity theft. I immediately called my provider, and realized that I would likely have problems authenticating with them. You see, the provider usually asked for two key items whenever I called: birth date, and postal code. Anticipating this, I first told the agent … Read more

Ah, yes, Livemocha. If you haven’t heard, Livemocha is a site that allows you to learn languages with the help of a community. While it does offer exercises and quizzes that are similar to Rosetta Stone, the most powerful feature is the fact that other users review your submissions. That alone is worthy of a recommendation, so check it out if you haven’t already. The community support goes a long way towards motivating a person, and also ensures only native speakers of a language are the ones reviewing. This idea is a very powerful one, but unfortunately, the interface that they offer – the website – is flawed in many ways. Today, I’d like to share my experiences with one of … Read more

Back in 2007, my MattRefghi.com domain served primarily to power my solo development experiments. Behind the scenes, it was hosted by 1&1 Internet – the price was low, which was necessary at the time. All was well in the world of 1&1 web hosting for a while, until I eventually encountered a problem when uploading PHP files to my server. When I ran the files on MattRefghi.com, they would fail – but on my local development machine, everything was working as expected. Eventually I called their tech support team to see if something was wrong with their configuration. The agent helped me resolve the problem, but in the process of doing so, he started modifying my PHP files – without … Read more

Transcript: Hi guys. In this video I have two tips I’d like to share with you, and they’re dealing specifically with how to make the properties dialog appear faster in Windows. You’re probably all familiar with right-clicking files in Windows and selecting Properties. What I’d like to show you is a quicker way of doing that – two quicker ways of doing that, actually. The first way involves hovering your mouse over any file on the desktop or anywhere else in Windows, and simply holding ALT and double-clicking the file of your choosing. That will make the properties appear. The other way involves clicking on the file, actually selecting it – not just hovering over it – and then simply … Read more