The Tech Dragons Hax: 2006

Sunday, December 10, 2006

New Hardware

Ive now taken possession (abeit of a temporary and 'non permanant' fashion) of a 14inch iBook G4

So ive been around Mac OS X and ive been getting used to all the things more and more and im fairly convinced should apple produce a tablet i will purchase it. I just love how nice everything is on the Mac... i dont want one as my main workstation but as a laptop... i cant fault it. Everything works!

Expose above all is a pleasure to work with. Just flick to the corner and all your windows are at your fingertips... another corner and all the windows from your current application appear... its a joy to watch things flow so well when i work now.

Im looking forward to getting a lot out of this laptop over the next couple of months. And ill probably be mentioning some of the things here.

First things done were, setup, aquiring a .mac account good for the next 12 months, installation of firefox and the TigerLaunch app (quite a good one), and VLC to make up for some of the inadequacy of Quicktime as a general movie player.

Monday, December 04, 2006

Hardware Updates

To solder hax or not to solder hax, that is the question...

While working on my power cabling efforts ive grabed some solder and begun wrestling with the urge to Solder the IEC sockets from 2 power supplies to get my outside of case to insde of case 'passthrough'. Along the way toying with the idea of using the fan mounting on the back of the PSU for an extra fan for more drive bay ventilation.

Im not entirely confident of my soldering ability and dont know if i should procceed with the soldering of these wires intended to carry 240V AC. Theyre already soldered, so while its obviously not a bad thing... I dont wish to screw anything up and cause further damage to any components i cant afford to replace. Thus im deadlocked with myself on how to do this... likely ill wind up hacking around some more till something crops up thats a better soloution to my power supply passthrough... ideas are brewing but i cant check them while out at the moment.

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Hardware Work

Case Work Time!
Ive had a renewed desire to work on improving my machine since my acquisition of extra memory.

I'm planning on redoing my Power Supply layout (dual PSUs can be tricky to manage cables without modular cabling, which i don't have on these two) In addition to this im thinking of trying to obtain some rounded and longer cables for my UDMA5 cabling (ATA100/133 - IDE 80 Pin cables) to clean up the biggest source of cable clutter which is at the moment the large number of drives ive got installed. Powering them is second to this but with molex cables taking up only a fraction of the space of an IDE ribbon cable, and their lengths being far easier to manage, I'm beginning to get very frustrated by standard UDMA5 cables, so the search has begun for replacements.

With the extra memory in my system, I've put back the plans to purchase a 512MB module quite a significant way down the to do list, and shifting into 1st place on the hardware list is the purchase of a SATA hard drive of reasonable size. Quite likely a Samsung 250GB 7200RPM 8MB cache drive for about $90AUD. This is going to consolidate all 4!! drives I'm presently using and give me freedom to experiment a bit more with Gentoo since it will free up my 120GB PATA drive.

If I get a camera I'll take some photos of the before and after of my case through this work.

Monday, November 27, 2006

Apple Tablets

With my growing desire to have a tablet PC, tablet related news has increasingly grabbed my attention and I'm hoping to at some point be able to obtain one. With news like this only increasing the likelyhood that a future laptop purchase will be a tablet. Apple are apparently experimenting with a tablet concept for home & educational users.

This kind of untapped market would probabyl latch onto an affordable well built and attractive tablet PC and do nothing but bolster the growing support Apple has had of late.

Friday, November 24, 2006

Confirmed Suspicions

Blog This was the main source of my blog posts for some time when i started using Blogger and the issues ive had with it since starting use of the blogger beta are most annoying. Finding this confirms that theres an update needed an id realy encourage the developers to sort this out.

Amazing Art

Well this is certainly something to be stunned by.

500 Hours of work in MS Paint

Very Impressive

Friday, October 27, 2006

Busyness

Well I'm going through an incredibly busy few weeks at the moment and with a million things going on its hard to even work out what your doing when your doing it, let alone what else you need to do.

The short list for me includes distributed systems assignment work from university, Open Card framework development in Java for a wireless information devices assignment. As usual theres exams rolling in soon so theres going to be lots of study for those.

But along with all that theres a few spare time things... with what little spare time i do have.

Ive recently started experimenting with the Psyc protocol and it seems very interesting.

Among my server fiddlings, Ive installed Apache 2 and Mod_Python on my server . They were fairly straitforward to do and run well. Though compiling apache with the Threads useflag does fill up the output of ps -aux a fair bit.

Along with the regular apache fiddling every other admin does, ive also been setting up and testing out Subversion with some success so far, and begun looking at setting up Trac to go with the subversion server.

And in a fit of insanity i attempted to install the Zope and Plone stack. users of this amazingly powerful software incluide SGI, NATO, and NASA. Well i got it installed after the 4th try. But the hassle didnt end there, once installed i had to contend with rather developer centric documentation that did little to explain what i could do with the stack without custom coding. As well as having reams of errors for various reasons as i waded through the issues. The final error that killed it for me was that after getting a fully configured and setup, i began recieving errors when trying to simply create new content for the site. What good is an amazingly powerful web application engine to me if i cant post a single thing to the website Im running on it?
...
None. So Zope + Plone have fallen from my favour as i begin exploring Pylons.

Along with the various software experiments underway Ive got my hardware experimenting in full swing and will post a list of the hardware later.

Monday, October 16, 2006

E3 is dead

Well it was a long time coming but the news is official now. E3 as we know it is completely dead.

Now Invite only and dramaticaly different.

As for its replacement. This is looking promising.
http://www.go3.com.au/

Frustration.

Im very interested in the possibility of claiming some kind of medical diagnosis for this. Its an ongoing problem of mine. Technical related Frustration and Depression.

Then again its probable just University related depression.

Moving on...

Saturday, October 14, 2006

Desktop Hijunks

Its an old habit of mine, once i get something set the way i like im loathe to change it.

But it has come time for me to change something i much apreciated.

My desktop setup has changed.

While i used to run differential resoloutions and divide my desktop i have been pushed over the edge by a recently aquired game. X2 the threat proviedes a bunch of advanced dual and tripple screen graphics modes for people running with extra screens and cards powerful enough to run them.

BUT, the catch is you have to have the horizontal span mode enabled for nvidia cards. So with my old "dual view" configuration i wasnt getting them.

The time had come for me to sacrifice my 1158 x 986 res primary mointor and drop to 1024x768 on both. Its a bit of an ajustment but so far im much happier and beginning to fiddle with my nview screen options and reaquaint myself with the way my desktop behaves.

Tuneage

Well its finaly ticked over, a little while ago they hit the net, the new torrents from OCR and damn i cant wait to get them setup.

These guys have been legaly providing me the bulk of my music for years and i love em for it.

I highly encourage anyone who loved the music in any game theyve played to check this out and see if they can find some new life in an old favourite.

Major Props to the DJs behind it and Heres to many more releases in future!

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Updates

Well its been some time since ive updated... A number of things it seems.
This blog, my computer, my laptop, and a few chunks of my life too, have all gone in for major overhauls.

My desktop with its glorious new graphics card has left 2 smouldering relics of power supplies in its wake, and is at present running in a drasticaly reduced capacity, even with a second power supply modded in, Ive got issues to deal with. Ill make it blindingly obvious. Generic PSUs are becoming almost impossible to use for a gaming computer of any caliber and its most unfortunate that a few dollars of electrical parts difference seems to define a price gap between generic and name brand PSUs that is anywhere from dozens to more than a hundred dollars difference between a name brand psu and a generic one of equivalent wattage. The reason is that the total output of a machine is not climbing as it used to. the same 550W design that seemed ample years ago when it started manufacturing in some place in China, is today not suitable for the majority of people that need 550W or higher PSUs.

I Come Seeking Amperage! At the moment my Full tower is equiped with 2 power supplies, a sturdy 300W is powering all my drives at present leaving my CPU and GFX card alone on the far insufficent 250W psu i had spare after the 550W i payed for after the GFX card shot my 400W one, in turn died from unknown causes. The reason... Amps. The 550W is ample for the card to run. But it needs more current! modern cards can demand over 20A on the 12V and it seems only a handful of manufacturers are providing it.

Following my graphics card tribulations, ive mostly switched over to using linux on my laptop. I had a 2gb drive spare and decided to hell with it and i started installing gentoo. It has been an interesting experience. Ive noticed a number of things i didnt know previously and now have for the first time found a number of things where i know linux to be insufficent and inferior to windows. Alpha Channel Transparency and suspend to disk hibernation are both very far behind in linux.

I have fresh Xorg and a nice new kernel and yet i cannot have the same simple TRUE transparency i have on my laptop under win2k. I find it highly frustrating to have such a limitation on my laptop but have begun dealing with it as best i can with apps like Tilda and good WM setup helping offset the lack of transparency well enough im happy to continue using linux on it.

Leaving my life in the not enough room to talk about here category, i move on to some general updates. With various ideas stirring and a number of things ready to roll, just held up by some annoyingly troublesome required phases. Speaking of these, should an Electrical Engineer or someone very well versed with DC electronics read this, feel free to leave a comment and try and get in touch, ive got a pressing need for one i can discuss some issues with regarding a number of plans i have.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

eXpensive Gadgets and Accessories - Soldier Shoots his Printer - Hardware - News

eXpensive Gadgets and Accessories - Soldier Shoots his Printer - Hardware - News

Haha if only i could shoot a few of my least loved items so easily.

Starting up in 2012 - Network World

Starting up in 2012 - Network World

One of the funniest things ive read in a long time.

So need any more motivation to think about switching ?

www.gentoo.org

Elias Fotinis OverDisk :: Visualize Folder Size Allocation

Elias Fotinis OverDisk :: Visualize Folder Size Allocation

Having been a long term user of 'i.disk' i found this while attempting to show idisk to a freind.

Its got my vote for sure. Though its only a beta ive yet to have any problems, its not only faster and smaller than i.disk its also more intutive and provides a lot more detail than i.disks bar graph based views.

Saturday, August 19, 2006

Sabayon Linux 3.0 RC2 Public Release

www.lxnaydesign.net :: View topic - SabayonLinux x86/x86-64 3.0 RC2

Im not a fan of private internal betas but i can make exeptions, and i make one here, the team behind sabayon didnt hide it from us long. My earlier posts enthusiasm about testing it out was somewhaty dampened by the fact it was in a private beta, but the covers have come off and sabayon is now available to try. And try it i shall.

Ill have the results and my opinions in the next couple of days.

Sunday, August 13, 2006

Slashdot FAQ - Comments and Moderation

Slashdot FAQ - Comments and Moderation

FINALY THEY PUT IN THE DAMN SHOW HIDE

This tag trick was in my second favourite submission to the slashdot redesign contest, and im glad to see it finaly get into my favourite (the new slashdot look).

Unfortunaly it doesnt seem to be on the front page with show hide for articles yet. (this was the feature i loved most)

Index of /artist/andrew-jones/images/foxy_

Index of /artist/andrew-jones/images/foxy_

To metroid and samus fans.

Enjoy :)

Techgage - Review: Sabayon Linux RC2

Techgage - Review: Sabayon Linux RC2:

Head here for a solid intro to RR4s new future.

Sabayon linux, Gentoo as youve never seen it before, a highly polished slick livecd.

Ill be taking this personaly for a test drive sometime this week hopefuly, and ill post my full responses then.

Draino's Networking and Tech: Is Gentoo becoming more like Debian?

Draino's Networking and Tech: Is Gentoo becoming more like Debian?

In response to a freind of mines criticism of the release proccess i felt compelled to do some digging of my own, and ive realised that the gentoo "releases" were never terribly usefull to begin with. the shift of the standard install documentation to being stage 3 only, and the focus on the minimal cd method, fetching all the required parts from the web rather than getting them off the install cd both show the direction and territory gentoo intends to exist in.

This is my os, i compiled it, the sources are from the individual program cvs/svn reps, the package list was current from my very first boot and nothing is out of date, from the kernel to kde, all the sources are the latest, complete with all security and stability fixes.

Gentoo is meant to be always up to date, because its compiled from sources the user is given the latest system from the start. the pre built stages and "releases" are falling out of favour as gentoo based distros step in to provide "drop and go" prebuilt gentoo system instalations that are far better than the half yearly or so official gentoo releases.

Which leads to my next entry..... Sabayon linux ?

Friday, August 11, 2006

Desktop Delights

My desktops slowly undergoing a slow overhaul now i have returned to the Series of tubes

I felt like i should share some of the progress as the updates so far have been quite impressive when compared to my previous efforsts at improving my desktop.

First off we have a little gem out of the microsoft research department, an experiment with the concept of the taskbar that im sure many of you are familiar with GroupBar (now with a neat installer) is a nifty little program that you can position anywhere, and functions like a drag and drop taskbar with dynamic grouping, as well as the ability to save groups of programs and their arrangment for later use. Called "snapshots" theyre among the many uses of the little helper, but for me the sheer ease of use of having a second taskbar thats conveniently placed down the side of my second monitor is amazing.

Next up is a program that is obviously stealing some of the mac thunder, while i long for an Expose this little app is a major helper. Launchy as its known pops up whenever i hit alt+space and quickly lets me find a program after typing a few of the leters of its name. Both unclutering my desktop, and saving me from the terror of start menu scrounging spending a minute looking for that disused program 'conveniently' hidden from view.

Following hot on the heels of Launchy, is another peice of amazing graphical eyecandy that Ive totaly fallen for. Console version 2 is one hell of a program, if, like me, you spend plenty of time in the command line, working with remote shells, *nix, ssh, and command line network programs and tools. Youll love this little app for its true alpha blended transparency, tabs, multiple shell suport (so you can have say cygwin, and the MS windows shell as well in the one window in separate tabs) and overall clean simple style. At present, only a few minor flaws mar its excelence, such as lack of a maximise button (wtf?) and some minorly problematic default shortcut keys.

Onto the oddly named Qumana which has been used to draft this very post.
While its features arent entirely perfect, its quick and fully equiped for single topic posts, featuring multiple blog support and direct html editing. the UI isnt anything amazing and has a number of quirks that should be attended to, (resizing fo the right side pannel in the edit window, bad UI quirk) its a very useful tool for all those delving into the blogsphere.

And what desktop is without a good game!

Crack Attack courtesy of Daniel Nelson is an openGL Tetris Attack clone for windows and Linux that is both visualy gratifying and an excelent timewaster, as well as having all the addictive and fun gameplay of its inspiration.

This wraps up my latest and certainly not last set of changes to my desktop. Next thing that needs doing is cleaning out some more old files to recover some space for some experimenting with VMware ive been thinking of for some time.

Powered by Qumana

Monday, August 07, 2006

Vi vs Emacs vs ?

Whats in an editor...?

functionality, simplicity, flexibility? what is it that is most crucial...

I spent the morning looking for an editor, and i wound up simply enabling extra features of the same editor ive been using since i first touched linux. Nano, with syntax highlighting... It works, i know the few keys i need to, and its simple.

Vi is amazingly powerful and simple, its fast, it doesnt need meta keys and lets you keep your fingers moving as fast as you can. Emacs ... well what cant be said of emacs, it does everything, including Vi with its viper mode. it seems that the editor world is polarised, you have Vi, and you have Emacs, but what else is there?

Nano, JOE, Pico, and a host of others, as well as the graphicaly incumbent windows notepad and its relatives, but all these are minor players arent they, mere mortals no higher than the ankles of the 2 great ones.

Why must things be so binary, The right tool for the job as the Vi croud say, shouldnt there be others that do things better?

why is there no simple way to work out what your doing, why cant i just have a command, vim --python --folding

alas this sort of thing is always left up to someone else, the core userbase of these programs not caring for such features as they have either mastered the nature of their editor or been forced to become competent.

Long story short, I need a good editor, simple command keys, decent features, but without the nearly cryptic simplicity of Vi, or the dauntingness of the sheer size of Emacs OS and its nearly infinite capability. perhaps some time ill wind up making my own...

Nah, its to much effort, 'real' programers get it right first time with cat.

Thursday, August 03, 2006

I have no internet... Or do i?

Well it has come to pass that the place where i sleep no longer has internet...

Unsurprisingly this has me quite disturbed. Where do i get my gaming, where can i sit and relax and just do as i please online with my own desktop... that now sits idle... though GLMatrix does look so pretty.

I am eHomeless bound to wander from ap to ap in search of signal leeching any and all internet connections i can find.

This post is brought to you by my unsuspecting neihbour whos proffesional IT training (hes got a rack mount dell server running win2k server, its amazing what a few open ports shows) hasnt extended so far as to setting any security keys on his wireless ap.

But it has extended so far as to be very profficient in setting up a firewall.

Im online to chat ... Just.

His firewall has port 5222 blocked. I am natively jabberless. But firewalls are wonderfull things and my port scan showed he left 22 open on his firewall outgoing.

Shell acounts to the rescue!

Logging into my university shell acount i quickly got a stable connection past the firewall on port 22 (one of the only open ports) from the unviersity i proceeded to SSH via the use of the corkscrew proxy tunnel for ssh (the university firewall allows almost all ports it seems provided they authenticate with the proxy :-)

So from university i can ssh out to another more open box running on a higher port number ( Unixclan, i have to buy you a beer sometime dude )

And now the fun begins, Im now logged into a box i can actualy use as i please with plenty of open access, at last...
So up goes irc logging into im.bitlbee.org and connecting to msn and google talk.

Phew, the input is laggy, ive only got ascii (hurray!) but its the internet !

I with no permanant internet connection to call my own... am online.

Nothing Stops the Dragon Breaking Free

and nothing helps him out right now like a stiff drink! ;-)

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Google Shell?

YubNub - YubNub.org

Advanced google searching for all your power user needs, this is looking to replace google as my default search pretty fast.

Windows Port of Xscreensaver

Darren Stone - tron.lir.dk - software

Windows users always had plenty of neat screensaver addon
But never did they quite get the same level of coolness as the
XScreensaver Collection that sprung up on linux and *BSD.

But now! your windows box too can share the glory of the original BSOD screensaver, the fun of GLMatrix, Gears, and Flip Flop.

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