Just another useless personal blog
Today, while organizing bills and accounts and all that fun stuff, I remembered that my Visa card has some sort of points program. Curious as to just how far it had progressed, I checked my last statement against the rewards listing on the bank’s site, and…
I could redeem them for a clock radio! WOOHOO!
My iBook is being weird again. Well, some combination of the iBook and the rest of the network, anyway.
If I fetch a file from the Internet, I can get 300+ KB/s down to the Linux server. I can get 300+ KB/s down to the iBook. But if I transfer a file between the iBook and the Linux server, on the same switch, I get 4 KB/s.
It *used* to work just fine, so I’m not quite sure where the problem lies. While the transfer is in progress, the ‘frame error’ count on the network interface on the Linux side increases, which generally indicates a hardware problem, but swapping around cables and ports doesn’t change anything. A second Linux box can talk to the first one just fine at full speed but is also slow with the iBook, which would seem to put the blame on the iBook side of things, but the iBook is fine when talking to the Internet at large. It happens under both OS X and Gentoo on the iBook, so it’s not something in the OS. It affects Samba shares too, so it’s not FTP-specific either. Duplex settings are consistent.
I’m running out of ideas here… About the only other thing I’ve changed recently is the firmware on the router (a Linksys BEFW11S4), but this is supposed to be a stable version and the trouble didn’t start back then.
I’ve been trying to rip just the audio stream from each chapter of a DVD I have, but none of the tools I’ve tried so far (transcode, mplayer) seem to work, and just produce noise instead. The disc uses 48khz 24-bit PCM audio, but it keeps getting detected as 16-bit, and the programs don’t even seem to support 24-bit audio at all.
Maybe if I can at least get the raw PCM stream I can manually massage it into a usable form, but it looks like other useful conversion tools like ‘sox’ don’t support 24-bit audio either. Maybe I should just write a trivial app to just knock every third byte off…
Update: Worked around it by playing it in the DVD Player on the iBook and capturing the audio with WireTap (found via Matt). I’m still lacking an automated batch method, but this is good enough for the one chapter I really wanted for now.
One of the most highly anticipated games expected to be released soon is Half-Life 2, and the recent announcement that people could start downloading parts of it ahead of time only increased the frenzy. Then when Gabe Newell, head of the company, announced on a message board that it was ‘going gold’ (i.e., ready for mass manufacture) on Monday, everyone went nuts. Nearly every single forum I checked that day had at least one message like “OMG OMG HALF-LIFE 2 GOLD MONDAY!!!!!1!!1”
Except it wasn’t true. Turns out that Gabe had his message board account compromised and it was some prankster responsible for the message. And the L33T hacker tactic which allowed this security lapse to happen? He guessed the password: ‘gaben’
No wonder they had their source-code stolen…
I received a couple packages this week, and one of them had a fair bit of water damage along one edge. I don’t mean discoloured-and-wrinkled either; it was still fairly damp and easily tearable when I took it out of the mailbox. The mailbox itself is inside, so I’m not sure if water got in the drop-box, or delivery van, or sorting centre, or what.
Fortunately it’s the first time it’s ever happened, but too bad it had to be to someone else’s artwork originals… At least they seem to be mostly repairable by reflattening them under a stack of books.
The other package only suffered bent corners, but it seems that happens to nearly everything that gets mailed, no matter how well it’s protected.
I just started up two terminal windows and got these for the login fortune cookies:
I usually keep an ssh session open to my server at home, so I can check in on e-mail and such during the day, and every once in a while the connection breaks and I can’t get back in. My mind instantly starts conjuring up scenarios in which my server is being stolen, or the apartment is burning to the ground, or hackers have locked me out of my own systems, but after quickly popping back home over lunch to check on it, it’s inevitably just a cable connection problem, hardware crash, or power outage (today’s culprit).
But what if my systems really had been stolen?
Continue reading “Paranoia”
Not only do I have a stack of games to work through, but I have a stack of books waiting, too.
Currently I’ve been trying to get through The Eye of the World, the first book of the Wheel Of Time series, and it’s been slow going. So far there’s been a lot of Vague Hinting, people constantly Running Away From Imminent Threats, and descriptions of the world and people as they travel, but it still doesn’t really feel like anything interesting is happening yet. There isn’t anything that really compels me to continue reading.
Admittedly though, I am only reading it in small bursts as time allows, which is potentially making a somewhat slow stretch seem even worse. It’s a beloved enough series (the first few books, anyway) that there has to be something more to it, so perhaps it just hasn’t reached the good parts yet (maybe things pick up once they actually reach Tar Valon), or has to be read at a faster pace.
It probably doesn’t help to be reading multiple books simultaneously, either. I’m also reading A Fire Upon The Deep by Vernor Vinge, and it at least always has something new or interesting happening in order to retain your attention. Maybe I should finish it first and then go back to EotW…
(Yes, it’s a news-as-filler day.)
Woman Dies After Six Years On Couch
How the hell do you even let yourself get into that kind of state? Did she just think to herself “Y’know, this is comfy, I think I’m just not going to get up ever again…”? And if the guy living with her wanted to help so much, why not call the cops to forcibly remove her for her own good? Yeesh…
While I was walking to the office this morning, headphones on and the PocketPC playing, a slightly-dishevelled gentleman standing by a bike motioned to me as I passed by. I paused a moment and took the headphones off, mentally preparing a polite apology that I could not help, but instead I was surprised to see him reach into a pack and bring out a CD wallet, which he opened to reveal a number of CD-R discs. He then asked if I had a CD player, to which I mumbled something like “Er, no, not really, sorry…” and then went on my way. I’ve heard of the old cliche of someone selling copied video tapes out of their trunk, of course, but this is the first time I’ve personally run into anything like it, and a bit higher-tech even.
Looking back, it doesn’t even make much sense. If I’m so desperate for cheap, pirated music, I can get nearly anything I’d want easily enough for free. Oh well, it helped make the day a little more surreal, at least…
There, that’s better. I hope Mr. King doesn’t mind if I make a slight adjustment to his theme (from 3 columns to 2), but there just wasn’t enough space for the main text.
Yeah, I hate it when things complete successfully…
I may lose guy cred points for this but I finally got around to seeing Titanic, and for all the jokes it was the butt thereof, it was actually pretty decent. I’m not really much of a fan of love stories, but it still works reasonably well as a semi-historical drama with a love story thrown in.
Although it may have been a smooth upgrade at the office, XP SP2 isn’t quite so happy with my home system…
Today I finally finished Morrowind: Bloodmoon, and it was a lot like the previous expansion, Tribunal. More-of-the-same of Morrowind, but with better map, dungeon, and quest design. The new map was large enough that there was a lot of new stuff to see, but not so large that huge chunks of it were left unexplored, like the mainland. The only real complaints are that the story wasn’t all that interesting (Some Guys: “Ooooh, behold the prophecy…” *do stuff* “Yay, the prophecy is fulfilled!”), but it was still fun to work through it and there was an interesting diversion in overseeing the development of the Raven Rock colony.
Although there are still a bunch of unfinished quests, unexplored areas on the mainland, and zillions of player-created mods available, I think I’ll leave it off here. I’ve still got a lot of other games to finish off, and ending Morrowind here puts me -1.5 games closer to catching up.
Why -1.5? Because yesterday I went out and bought two more and an expansion pack (Thief 3, Beyond Divinity, and Simcity4: Rush Hour). Yes, I know, I’m horrible… I’m just lucky I didn’t cave in and pick up Doom 3 and City of Heroes, too…
