Blrg

I don't understand this obsession with widescreens. I don't.

No, I don't like widescreen at all. It has it's uses, but for me, I'd rather it stick to TVs. Leave my monitors and especially my laptops alone! Arg!

The only laptop I could find that was still being sold that isn't a widescreen is Eurocom's D700T Enigma. A fine laptop, but I'm having an incredible amount of difficulty with them and getting a working laptop. (When I bought it, I had to bring it back the "next" day to get it fixed. Only about three weeks later did they finally stop trying to fix it and basically gave me a new system; Even so, the video card appears to have issues and I may have to bring it in again!)

I'm still looking for a portable media player that can be truly customized. First one to suggest an iPod will be shot. It may seem silly, I want to load the 10+ different file types that I use and not have any problems playing them (companies looking for small codecs may be interested in looking at the source code of foobar2000). Bonus points if it comes with (or there is, somewhere on the internet) software that can re-encode certain formats to lower bitrates (since you aren't going to get full sound quality from a P.A.P. anyway) automatically and still manage to handle changes on both sides transparently (e.g. if, on another computer, I change the tags or add/delete files, those changes will affect the library on my main system).

What? I can dream, can't I?

On a related aside, I've been looking at the GP2X (official) (which has found it's way into my wishlist) and VirtualCogs - specifically, the Portable Computing COG which I may yet use to build and sell a mix between P.A.P. I'm looking for and the GP2X. Hmm, I could sell that. I wonder if Virtual Cogs Embedded Systems Inc. has anything against that sort of thing.

So I've gotten a new Palm.

My reasoning for this purchase was that I could use it to write while on the go, or even just if I felt like writing somewhere other than at home. Naturally, I got a keyboard for it as well as I wasn't going to be able to write all that much using the stylus (it has character recognition (at least technically), but I don't enjoy handwriting). Sadly, I neglected to notice that it didn't include a sync cable/cradle in the bundle, and had to get that separately. While waiting for it to arrive, though, I've been fairly impatient about getting programs on there.

Especially the driver for the keyboard!

Thus, I decided to try the only two other methods available to get data onto the Palm: infrared and SD card. I don't have a card reader/writer, so I thought that option was out (turns out it isn't quite - more on that later), so I proceeded with trying to communicate using the infrared port. You see, I eventually remembered that the Lego Spybotics kits that I have came with infrared transceivers; I figured they'd be good enough to transmit data to the Palm.

I first thought of trying it with my Windows system, but the transceivers connect on the serial port and I didn't bother putting a panel for one (the onboard ports of this motherboard don't actually include a serial port), and didn't feel like going through the hassle of adding it (not that it's that much effort, mind you). Instead, I used my laptop, which currently has Zenwalk Linux installed on it. Getting the infrared support was fairly simple (new kernel config plus the tool package), and one reboot later I was in business.

Sort of, anyway.

Linux seems to receive the data from the Palm just fine, and it seems to respond in kind; However, the Palm makes no sign of receiving anything, and eventually gives up on the connection attempt. It seems the problem stems from the most unlikely-seeming source: The Spybotics infrared transceiver. It's not meant for this sort of thing, really; When you use it to transmit data to a spybot, it's actually plugged in directly. I think you can use it to "broadcast" infrared signals to it too, but I don't really remember how that works and if it actually transmits any information. Therefore, I believe it's only meant for really short distances, and the problem with that is that the transmitter and receiver on the Palm aren't spaced the same as the ones on the Spybotics transceiver, and thus one doesn't see the other in one way or another.

I might try putting a much larger distance between the two and see if that works better... infrared is supposed to be able to do more than an inch or two, after all, but unless I had a very specific distance between the transceiver and the Palm, nothing showed up on either side... it's weird.

A few things I thought were interesting:

Slght [sic] of hand: How to fold a t-shirt in 1 easy step

A short video depicting a simple way to quickly fold a t-shirt. I wouldn't call it one step, exactly, but it is very short: Even the movie itself is ~20 seconds (or one minute if you see the English version). It's pretty neat - I might start using it myself. Sleight of hand, indeed.

Best Buy Confirms It Has Secret Website

Now, every company has it's intranet, but this is just sad. That they'd stoop so low to commit fraud - yes, I consider this fraud - and deny customers of specials by having their intranet display different sites than their Internet site... makes me... I don't know, really. I just hope they and their brother (Futureshop) go out of business.

What? One can hope...

Vista brute force hack update: it might work, if you let it run for a year

Much controversy behind this one, but it all boils down to:

1. Yes, it works.
2. You may need to run it for a long, long time before it comes up with anything, or it may take less than two minutes to come up with something.
3. Anything it generates is potentially valid, not guaranteed to be valid.
4. Really: Buy Windows, or go Linux. (Or stick with XP... WFM. So does Foresight, so far :>)

Thanks to the help of my good friend Mereo, I've gotten my wireless card working spotlessly in Ubuntu Linux. Now to see if I can get it working in another distribution - I really don't like Ubuntu all that much, even if Foresight also uses Gnome :P
(Thing is, the whole time, I think all I really needed was a more recent copy of Gnome's network manager. I'm going to have to poke at rPath (Foresight's package management) and figure out if they've got outdated packages, especially concerning the ndiswrapper driver.)
Kudos goes to Kolmeck for helping out as well.

Continue reading "Le gaspe, working Linux wireless?!"

Space Cowboy!

As mentioned in my previous short post, I've been playing an MMORPG lately (*gasp!*), called Space Cowboy. Oddly enough, I'm finding it to be somewhat interesting and time consuming enough that I can jump in and come back out a few hours later feeling refreshed and without so much time (Which is an odd thing to say, but there it is.).

There's something nice about blasting things out of the sky.

Must be the the gattling thunka-thunka-thunka-thunka-BOOM...

Anyhow, this company apparently has not one, not two, but four free MMORPGs to which you can use the same account for. Interestingly, all of them claim to be free for life, which is kind of an interesting promise - not that I disbelieve it, mind you (Gunz is still alive) - and I wonder how long it'll last. GPotato (the company) does get income from these games, I imagine, given some of the paid options that are available. So far, though, it seems that these paid options are nowhere near necessary to be able to enjoy the game which is, it hopefully goes without saying, a very nice fact indeed.

I get spam!

So recently, my main e-mail address was a target for spam. At first it came slowly - an e-mail or so per week - but then it began to grow, more and more e-mails per day. Originally, I wasn't too concerned, but then I got really annoyed - I'd managed to keep all my e-mail addresses entirely spam-free. Why did this one start getting spam all of a sudden?

Eventually I remembered a bug which was spotted in my ICQ client, Miranda: Recently, for some odd reason, the "Do not publish primary e-mail address" option would always switch off, causing anyone to be able to collect your e-mail address off your profile.

I removed my e-mail address from my profile (I doubt I'll be needing to reset my password any time soon anyway.), and the spam dropped almost magically.

Server updates on forum

To give my forum some use (and I think I had decided some time ago to do this, and didn't stick to it), I'm going to post any updates relevant to the server itself only on my forum rather than cluttering my personal blog with that information.

This will be the last post on my blog in that category.

Gallery changes done

All the changes to the gallery have been done. All galleries are completely available again. I'll remind once again that some galleries and features may require registration.

Looking for an apartment

I said I was moving out last year, and I haven't yet! I'm looking for an apartment, and my future roommate Eth has spotted one near St. Laurent that might be good for the two of us.

He works in Orléans, and myself downtown, so we're looking between those two areas.

Xmas gifts

For the curious, I've updated my wishlist, showing what of it I've gotten as well as including a new thing or two that I'd like. It seems I'll have to buy the Okami soundtrack myself (and probably soon before it goes out of print). I got lots of chocolate again, but at the time of this posting, it's already all gone ;>_>

Joe's Goals - What my own goals are

I'd spoken about Joe's Goals beforehand, but I hadn't really mentioned what my goals on there are. So, without further ado:

• Chores (+1)
• Exercise (+1) - Last check 7 days ago
• Wrote (+1) - Last check 31 days ago
• Coded (+1) - Last check 11 days ago
• Blogged (+1)
• Added todo item (+1) - Strange as this item may seem, this is to encourage myself to remember things, especially things I need to do.
• Completed todo item (+1)
• Been outside for a while (+1)
• Cleaned / Cooked (+1) - Placed separately from "chores" as expansion, not chores with that description
• Filtered Mom's e-mails (+1) - This one is likely to get archived as now most of the spam in her inbox gets correctly tagged as "bulk" anyway, which her OE now has a filter (or "rule") for.
• Been to Joe's Goals (+0) - Used as a tracker
• Socialised (+1)
• Changed bed sheets (+1) - Set as valid for only one particular day (Saturday); I'm trying to get myself to do it always on that day, and not on other days, for various reasons. Mostly a question of routine.
• Ignored things to do (-1)
• Ate Out (Alone) (-1)
• Haven't been to Joe's Goals (-1)

So now you know what influences the graph, and why it doesn't go negative all that often (I think).

An amusing error message

My job requires me to keep, among other things, lists of documents up to date; Documents of all kinds that have something or other to do with situations and people in other countries. At some point I came upon some links which were no longer valid, and gave this error message:

There is an end-user problem. If you have reached this site from a web link,
- Through your internet options, adjust your privacy settings to allow cookies or
- Check your security settings and make sure this site has not been blocked or
- You are probably using a very slow link that may not work well with this application.
Otherwise you have reached this site through unauthorized means.

Seriously, considering you get this very same error message accessing their index page, can any of those really be true, including it being unauthorized, of all things?