Geeky Stuff

Space on my laptop is very constrained, so I ordered a Hitachi 7K200 200GB, 7200RPM hard drive. Not only will I have twice the space on the laptop itself, but this drive is MUCH faster than the one it's replacing.

The replaced drive will go into an external enclosure, bringing my total on-the-go storage capacity from 140GB to 300GB... 340GB if I keep carrying around the old 40GB.

My new toys should arrive Friday. Woot!

Verizon has a 5GB "soft limit" (in that they can go after you if you exceed it routinely) per month on their "unlimited" evdo broadband cards. Sprint doesn't have such a limit, but can still disconnect or warn you for "excessive" usage. Neither company wants you to use their wireless evdo cards as a substitute for a landline DSL/cable modem or for p2p downloading, watching internet television for long periods, and so on.

Is their bandwidth really that constrained? Or is this just an attempt to extort more money from "power users"? It seems odd that they would spend $billions building such an advanced data network, only to cripple it with so many restrictions. 5GB a month? I can go through that in a *week*. Not to mention the connection is $60 a *month*, which is much more than most land-line based connections.

These wireless cards must be a total godsend to those who travel a lot or are living in an area without cable or DSL; it's sad that the wireless providers cripple what you can do with them.

As some of you know, the first X1900XT that came with my Mac Pro bit it and I had to get a replacement. It just started becoming unreliable and generating artifacts, crashing the machine, etc.

The new one has been rock solid, but in the past few weeks I've noticed the fan on it has started spinning very fast and loud. So I opened up the machine tonight and...

There's a big cake of dust clogging the intake! There was hardly any airflow through the card. The fan had to run nearly full speed to keep it cool.

The old card's fan never sped up to compensate for the heatsink getting clogged up, so the card fried itself. This one spins faster and faster as it can't cool itself. Must be newer firmware.

In any case... I dusted the machine out nicely and the fan is now nice and quiet again. Yay!

I love open source. Freedom, you can do whatever you want with the code, and so on. However, open source development is generally lacking in one important area: User interface design.

After using Macs for the past few years, the problems inherent in open source software become that much more obvious to me. I think all open source programmers who can afford it should get a Macbook and play around with it for a while as an example of good design, so they can see all the niggling issues in open source desktops that can drive users slowly insane.

I made a short video that points out a very good example of bad UI design. I wrote "part 1" because I may create more such videos in the future as I continue to come across these issues. Many users of open source are quick to forgive these little problems; this is a bad attitude to take because the problems start to add up, making the user experience poor overall.

Wow, these are adorable.

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I'd guess these were from the 1980s. I wonder who sponsored them? It's amusing that this stuff existed, but computers wouldn't really go fully mainstream until the mid-to-late 90s.

Paying bills with computers? Wow, they were ahead of their time. Could you even do that in the 80s?

So Apple recently added a hash to the iTunes DB on the new iPods which broke compatibility with third party (non-iTunes) software such as gtkpod. They also announce intentions to try to stop iPhone hacking. The iPod hash has already been cracked, but it's the principle of the thing here.

They're also doing stupid things like charging 99 cents to turn a song in your library into an iPhone ring tone, when such things should really be free. And of course, when people find ways around this, they quickly update the software to foil them.

What the heck is going on here? Why is Apple suddenly doing this anti-customer stuff? Apple has always been somewhat expensive, but has always had a hands-off attitude when it comes to hacking their hardware. There's a fundamental right that everyone has to modify and do what you want with hardware you own. Their behavior as of late sounds like something Microsoft would do, not Apple!

Frankly, they are starting to let me down, as well as millions of other enthusiasts who want to do cool things with their hardware. I was actually considering buying an iPhone after hearing all the cool things being done with them, but now that Apple has announced intent to stop the developers from employing hacks to get their software working, I doubt I'll be buying one. If they took a hands-off "we're not responsible if you break it" attitude, that's one thing. But they're actively going to work to *stop* people from doing this stuff. That's a kick in the face.

Sorry Apple, you lose. And I'll surely have this stuff on my mind when it comes time for me to purchase a new computer. Because I want my vendor to support me, not actively try to stop me from doing what I want with my purchases.

This ancient SCSI NEC CD-ROM drive actually has audio CD transport controls on the front:

So if you hook a power brick and headphones to it, you can play your music CDs on it sans-computer! It sounds pretty damn good.

Heck, it even has a little illuminated LCD display on it so you can see what track you are on, and the strangest CD loading machanism (rotating door plus caddy) ever created.

It's the world's dorkiest Discman!

I've had this thing for years, but rediscovered it yesterday and figured it might give some geek out there a nostalgia kick. CD-ROM drives were actually SOMETHING SPECIAL back then (mid-90s). Oh yeah, and I looked up the MSRP on this thing when it came out: $599 (got it for much less at a hamfest when I needed a SCSI CD-ROM drive for some old project)

So Apple's new iMac has a glossy display. You have no choice; you can't buy it any other way.

This wouldn't be a problem for me at home or in my office, as I don't have bright lights behind me to reflect. However, for many people, I imagine this would be a huge problem.

How many people have windows behind them in their offices at work or at home? Is there any real advantage to a glossy screen? We suffered with reflections on CRTs for years before flat panels came along with their sleek matte displays which don't reflect at all, and now all computer makers (Apple isn't the only one; look at all the new laptops from HP and Sony too) seem to be obsessed with "glossy is better".

Is glossy better? In any way? I want to be open-minded about this rather than just say "IT SUCKS" without having tried it for long periods of time.

Feel free to chime in. :)

Krystal can't enjoy her sandwich...

...because idiots keep forgetting to remove useless warnings from the linux kernel tree.

(Read about the meme here if you're going "huh??" right now.)

Whoops, forgot this magic incantation.

[root@sarabi bin]# ./icecast -c ../etc/icecast.xml < /dev/null > /dev/null 2>&1 &

Ahh, and life returns to normal...