2005-Nov-20 13:19:02 +0000 @596

Well, I haven’t posted in a while, so here’s an update on the things going on this month:

First, right after Phreaknic, I got sick. I don’t think it was the flu necessarily, but it pretty much drained my excess energy. I was still able to work 8 hours a day, but not the usual 12-14. At the same time, I had several good sized projects come in from clients. The result is that I spent most of this month working. The upside is that the income is nice and I’m pretty much set through the end of the year. December is usually a slow month, plus I have end of the year and end of the quarter expenses!

I did catch up on some movies while I was sick and highly recommend the Firefly series.

My laptop got fixed. The logic board was hosed and had to be replaced. It got a slightly faster processor out of the deal as well. I guess they are all one part. I’m waiting on the insurance company check, but all signs indicate they will pay the claim. It was about $450, I think.

I finished a model airplane. I built a Slowstick, which is just an aluminum rod and styrofoam wings with all the electronics held on with rubberbands. It flew well, however. I got it up to 2,000 feet or so. I’m not a perfect pilot, but made about 30 flights with it until it crashed this weekend. It crashed in a kudzu covered forest area and I was not able to find it. I’m glad it didn’t hit anyone or cause any damage, but at the same time I lost $250 worth of parts and didn’t learn anything from it. I have several thoughts on why it might have crashed. My main theory is that the elevator failed and it couldn’t hold the nose up. At the same time, it was much further down range than I thought it was. The setting sun also made it hard to tell which side of the plane was which. The light was bright enough to push the red color on one side through to the white side. As it was going down, I mentally lost which direction it was going and had to push it further out to avoid hitting a busy street. Anyway, I don’t think I’ll have time to build another one until next year. I did have fun with it, however, so I think I’ll stick with it for a little while.

My goal right now is just to get through all of the holiday and end of year activities while getting as many things off my task list as possible. Those include Christmas shopping, Christmas cards, deploying the new blog site (it’s almost done!), finishing some web site projects, handing off the Dragon*Con audio files, finishing the photos from Italy, etc.

2005-Oct-29 00:28:13 +0000 @061

At PhreakNIC, there seemed to be a lot of computers running Microsoft® Windowd® XP®. This is a group that, two or three years ago, expounded on how evil Microsoft was and how crappy Windows was. Apple and Linux laptops were all over, but this year I kept hearing the Windows reboot sound.

People I asked gave excuses like “oh, it has games” or “oh, I need it for work.” It raises the question, however, of whether hackers are getting soft or Windows is getting better. I do not know. I’m happy with my Apple iBook (back from the shop) and have no plans to switch back for a while.

2005-Oct-24 10:48:57 +0000 @492

Well, I’m back from PhreakNIC again, where a good time was had by all. The conference seemed a little tamer this year than previous years, yet it was a weekend well spent.

Here are some neat highlights:

• A nice briefing on extended WiFi links. Technical in nature with lots of math. Yum!
• A good demo of Blender
• Jason Scott’s BBS documentary
• Vehicular computing, demoed on a 1981 DeLorean, complete with flux capacitor (Sorry, no time circuits or Mr. Fusion.)
• MythTV demonstration
• Demo of Croquet
• Demo of the TinyURL file system from Acidus, in which he discovers there is no limit to the URL length you can use for tinyurl and ultimately creates a WORM file system from it.

As usual, the hotel was pretty good. The WiFi access was up about half the time and the staff was very tolerant, appreciative, and helpful.

I only have two comments on improvement. First, the t-shirts are thin. I have shirts from PhreakNIC 2.0 that I still wear, but I don’t think these will hold up as well. Second, some of the talks, while done very professionally, were below the scope of an event like PhreakNIC. For example, I don’t think a room full of social engineers and dumpster divers really gained much from the Identity Theft presentation. Of course, since I didn’t submit a paper, I should not complain.

Congratulations to everyone who put on the show this year. You all looked much calmer than in the past and I didn’t really see any issues, so you did a good job covering up. Thanks again for all your hard work. See you again next year!

2005-Oct-13 08:43:39 +0000 @405

Yesterday I spilled a little bit of bottled water on the keyboard of my Apple iBook. It ran for several minutes while I sopped up the water. Then I got the idea to remove the keyboard to shake the rest of the water out of it. This turned out to be a very bad idea. While the keyboard has kind of a membrane that prevented the water from going inside the computer, removing it spilled water through a cooling vent and onto the logic board near the RAM.

The iBook crashed with a kernel panic unlike any other I have seen since the days of the Amiga. Since the heat sink was still warm, I let it set for a few hours to dry out. After that, when you start the laptop it makes the “Apple Sound” followed by three beeps. It doesn’t even turn the monitor on. The white LED that normally “snoores” flashes short-short-short-long, which in Morse code is a “v.” I found an Apple Knowledgebase article that says three beeps is a RAM fault, so hopefully that’s the only thing that is seriously broken. Otherwise, it will also need a new logic board.

Surfing on-line, it looks like replacing it with a used one on eBay is cheaper than new parts – plus I would get whatever is left of their battery and a new charger. My charger is starting to wear out.

UPDATE:

I called Apple. They suggested that since the BIOS fault error still comes up when I remove the RAM that it is probably the logic board that is blown. The say it’s not worth repairing and might cost $1,000 or more – might as well buy a new one. To get the same size, etc., however, I’d have to fork out more money on top of my insurance claim. I’m not prepared to do that, plus, I have the operating system setup the way I like it.

Based on my googling, I think it will cost about $600 to fix. I shipped it to techrestore.com based on the recommendations from several bloggers. We’ll see what the repair bill will run once they put it on the bench.

2005-Oct-08 17:55:49 +0000 @788

I’m testing Gallery 2.0 and am pleased to report that it has many of the improvements I was hoping for in a previous post. It still seems to lag in terms of speed, and some features like watermarking don’t seem to work, but the fact that it is using a MySQL database makes it much easier for my to write my own display scripts and still use things like Gallery Remote without programming my own API.

The biggest thing that bugs me is the “Unpossible” link at the bottom of every page that links to an MP3 clip from the Simpsons. It’s a cute quote and I like that episode, but it’s not very professional. I also don’t know if we’re cleared to use that clip or if Fox is going to sue everyone. It’s not very easy to get rid of and I didn’t find much about it on Google. So, here’s how to make it go away. Hopefully the search engines will pick up on it.

It looks like someone added it as a joke to celebrate the 2.0 release. Here is how to remove it. In the modules/core/classes directory, look for a file called GalleryTemplateAdapter.class. Go to line 580, which says case 'gallery2-version': and change the case to anything else. In my case, I used case 'gallery2-version2': Save the file and you are done.

Good luck, and thanks again to all the hard workers who have made Gallery such a useful and successful product! Thanks!

2005-Oct-04 10:51:38 +0000 @494

While reading my RSS feeds yesterday, I came across these alarm clocks. They’re being blogged all over right now.

The sea urchin one (a concept model, not actually available) supposedly bounces around so you have to chase it down to turn it off. The puzzle “explodes” the pieces so you have to find them and reassemble it to shut it off.

I have fairly high sleep inertia. I can get out of bed early if I really need to (such as to catch an early morning flight) but if I don’t absolutely have to, it’s really hard to get out of bed (or to go to bed). I’ve often thought about what kind of alarm clock I could make that would force me to get up. Maybe something that could create a big mess I would have to clean up if I don’t get up. The problem for me is staying up. I can wake up, walk around, check the mail and crawl back into bed if I wanted to. Putting the alarm clock across the room does not present enough challenge to really wake me up. Maybe I should keep a Mountain Dew next to the bed and take a few gulps when I hit that first snooze bar.

I also thought this device was fun. My brothers are really hard to get up. You pull the pin and toss it in the room with someone who is sleeping. 20 seconds later it starts beeping and honking and won’t stop until you reinsert the pin. This means the sleeper has to find the person who tossed it in to get the pin back. It might make a fun gift for mom. I don’t think I should carry it on the airplane, however.

Since the blogosphere has exploded over these, it makes me think I should explore some of my ideas on building other designs.

2005-Oct-03 23:26:19 +0000 @018

I had about 4GB of data to upload today for several projects. My DSL at home, while reliable, is only 256k upstream. After hours of waiting, I loaded the files onto my laptop and went to Borders Books. I guessed that T-mobile had installed an actual T1 line and I was right. Full 1.5Mbps uplink, so I was able to finish all of my uploads in about 2.5 hours.

Of course, T-mobile’s service isn’t free, but it was a very clean connection and got my work done a lot faster. I only wish I didn’t waste half a day before I drove down and tried it.

Next time, I’ll test BitTorrent and some other peer-to-peer applications.

2005-Sep-22 18:46:55 +0000 @824

I saw a gas station today that has stopped publishing their gas prices. Their sign is now blank. They got tired of changng it all the time. They are trying to compete based on location and shorter lines. It’s an interesting strategy, but they are a no-name operation and I don’t think any competitors will notice and follow through. Anyway, save 5 cents a gallon and use the BP across the street.

2005-Sep-20 16:00:17 +0000 @708

Supposedly the State of Georgia passed a law authorizing a new “Share the Road” specialty license plate for cars. I think it’s a neat idea. I’ve been thinking about getting an Amateur Radio Tag (and license) just because the fees are smaller. I figure the $250 I save on the tag over the life of a vehicle is nothing to sneeze at and makes it a good excuse to study for the exam. But, if I’m going to do that I would want to get the highest FCC license you can get so that I get the elite callsigns. I don’t have time to study for that, so it might be a while. Supposedly they won’t start making them until at least 1,000 are ordered, but I haven’t found any information on ordering them. Anyway, as long as my car looks nice, I hesitate to put decals and stickers on it. A license tag, however, seems like a nice place to promote a cause.

In other biking news, I read an article today about a bike messenger in Canada who won the right to deduct extra food expenses as “fuel.” Supposedly he uses more than 4,000 calories a day. Here is a good link or if that fails, just Google for “Alan Wayne Scott vs Canada”.

2005-Sep-17 16:47:37 +0000 @741

The Home Depot near me has had 4 of the Self-Checkout machines for about two years. They function okay once you learn the various quirks of the machines like (a) they have vending machine cash acceptors, so pay with a credit card to save time, (b) you have to put a scanned item in the bag before you can scan another item, and if you have multiple of the same item, you have to scan each one instead of one multiple times, (c) don’t move once you start or it will mess up.

Anyway, when I was there this evening about three hours before closing, there were NO HUMAN LANES OPEN, only the Self-Checkout lanes were open. The world did not come to an end. So far, I’ve only had to stand in line to use them once.

Home Depot still has human checkout lanes, and I assume that when they are busy some of the human lanes are open. I just find it interesting that more low end jobs are being eroded away. I don’t know what people without college degrees will do in the future. Personally, I plan to get a robotic lawn mower with my home instead of hiring a minimum wage landscaper.