Xmas platter:

What do you do when you have too many spare HDDs?

Create a Xmas tree out of them!


Check out the page my pal Trigger put up with pictures and videos. It even spins!

http://www.nzgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=81672

Good work!

Kubuntu 8.10 with KDE4

As we are winding up here in Holland (only 3 more days of work for me), I am consolidating all the data I have scattered over 3 laptops down to just the old Acer.

I did a clean install of Kubuntu 8.10, and upgraded with to all the latest updates. I had a few reservations about KDE4:

• Is KDE4 going be fast on this hardware? Though badged as such, this is not "Vista capable" even with 2Gb RAM.
• Will it support hardware accelerated video? If not, is the performance in 2D mode OK?
• Is it usable yet?
  

Well the answer is YES to all; KDE 4.1.3 is surprisingly good!

The whole UI runs smoothly with hardware accelerated video and compositing. KDE4 is complete: it has all the major features going, and is very stable, no crashes or lockups.

In short, I am really impressed! Theres not many widgets, themes etc. yet. I want a widget that does CPU and network statistics if anyone knows of one..

But build it, and they will come. Give it a few minor point revisions and KDE4 could be suitable for most desktop situations; I would be comfortable developing with it.

This release of Kubuntu, which has a recent current kernel, supports all the important hardware in the Acer. The webcam is the only problem hardware, still only experimental drivers.

The US bailout:

according to bloomberg.com , on the subject of US "bailouts":

The money that’s been pledged is equivalent to $24,000 for every man, woman and child in the country.

Hmm so where is that money coming from? Yup, they will borrow it from overseas at interest. So the American taxpayer has quite a tab to pay off! If 100% of your tax money went into only servicing this debt, how long would it take you to pay it off?

In practice, this will never be payed back because the govt won't pour 100% of tax revenue into paying back the debt. It really is the yoke of debt slavery for generations of Americans.

Graphics Nirvana

http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/10/nvidias-quadro-fx-5800-with-4gb-graphics-memory-is-the-most-po/

240 GPU cores and 4 gigabytes on your graphics card... nerd-tastic cluster within a computer!

Not designed for gaming; the unit is more for complex and high volume calculation.

Bald alert

One of my old colleagues is being sponsored to get his head shaved.

http://www.fundraiseonline.co.nz/John_(Andrew)_Thomson/

Sponsor him, its for a great cause!

Ubuntu 8.10 out:

Ubuntu 8.10 is out, upgrade at will. I found a great pointer for those keen to upgrade.

The strain on Ubuntu servers and its mirrors is always noticeable for the early days of a release.

Bit torrent file thrive on quantity (and of course quality) The more the better, and its popular enough that your pipe will likely be saturated.

Max downloads!

You can, of course torrent the ISO, but even better you can dist-upgrade using bit torrent to get awesome speed with minimum time wasted - it only get needed libraries, not the whole back-catalog of stuff included on the install CD.

Max Efficiency!

I have had mixed experiences with dist-upgrades, but keen to try this. After backing up my data that is! Check the article:

http://torrentfreak.com/use-bittorrent-to-upgrade-to-ubuntu-intrepid-ibex-081029/

Nice one TorrentFreak !

The best way to pick your US candidate:

It seems no one in the US wants to talk proper policy or real issues. Why waste your vote based on personality, or who has the nicest clothes?

If you are wasting your vote on trivial attributes, at least vote based on a cool attribute...


Unbelievable McCain Vs. Obama Dance-Off - Watch more free videos

Oh, and if any Americans are looking at my humble blog; vote 3rd party. Obama may be the lesser of two evils, it may be a historic event for a Black man to run for president, but unfortunately hes still part of (and therefore controlled by) the Democrats.

The rest of the world can hardly distinguish between your 2 major parties; they are both conservative in the global scale and have both lead your nation to ruinous debt: spending on wars with no clear stated goal, spending on defense against an imagined enemy (You guys have ALL the guns BTW). Go read some international press and see what the rest of the world thinks.

JAOO 2008: Java conference in Denmark

A group of us guys from JTeam traveled up to Denmark to attend the JAOO conference. The drive is about 9 hours from Amsterdam, and is motorway all the way. And yes, we did go on the Autobahn...



Thank you Allard and Rob for driving me. Here is the team when we stopped at a rest-stop somewhere in Germany.



Eventually, we arrived in Aarhus. It took a few U-turns and questionable driving moves in Aarhus, but we eventually found our hotel and got ourselves settled.



We headed into town to find a nice meal and maybe a quiet drink...



Yes, we enjoyed our meal. Some of the speakers that the guys knew arrived at the restaurant and encouraged us to keep drinking. Ug..



The next 3 days were spent in this building.



The venue is very scenic.



There were keynote speeches in the morning for everyone, then elective sessions on a multitue of subjects. My professional blogl has a writeup on the technical content.



The first night included a scheduled party, compete with complementary drinks!



The JTeam lads enjoying the atmosphere.



Erik and I dissected ideas picked up from the first day - it may not make sense in the cold light of day.


Aarhus is a beautiful city, and JAOO was really enjoyable. I have come back with inspiration and so many new areas of potential learning/investigation.

Cool cars around Amsterdam:

I love Europe, so many nice cars around. Check these sweet cars that park in the basement at work:



Thats a Maserati Quattroporte I think.



And thats definitely a gun metal grey Ferrari 308 GTB.



I keep seeing this sweet Fiat 500 Giardiniera wagon.



This badass supercharged Range Rover sport parks outside my house. Mmmm.

Annoying recessed iPhone workarounds

So as you may know, the first gen. iPhone (like mine) has a recessed headphone socket and so many headphones don't fit. I looked at my options - stumpy adapters thru to headphone extension cables that fit. I decided on the Griffin SmartTalk, an extension that has a few features.

1. Most important: its designed for the iPhone so it fits in the socket, and I can use my headphones!
2. It has a mic, so I can talk hands-free.
3. It has a button so I can pause, skip tracks and answer the phone without looking at the iPhone.
4. The mic got reasonable reviews, and I'm happy with it so far
   

It is well made and has a thin cable with a rope-ish fabric weave. My only grumble in its design is the lack of tensioner on the headphone jack. In my pocket it gets bent 90 degrees and I worry that it will wear out or something.



Oh yeah, there is one other thing...

What do I do with the 2 meters of headphone cable?



I could zip-tie it to the top of my headphones.



From that angle, you hardly notice it. Unfortunately from other angles it looks dorky as can be.



Take 2: I built a short cable from some spare wires and cables.



This prototype is great, but its not soldered and won't be till I borrow or buy a solder iron :| The mechanical connection is good, but it sometimes makes audio crackles when I move.



Instead, I'm riding to work with the cable in my inner breast pocket for now. The mic has come in handy a few times already - its nice to have a hands-free bike kit !

Freedom Fry

No not that stupid American renaming of "French Fries", I'm talking about Stephen Fry.

Its GNUs 25th birthday, and Stephen is showing his support of free software by wishing GNU a happy birthday, and explaining why it is so good.

http://www.gnu.org/fry/


Check it out, and go GNU!

How awesome is MacGyver?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_problems_solved_by_MacGyver

MacGyver used to be my hero - who else "defuses a highly advanced nuclear warhead using a paper clip to short circuit the timing device" in their pilot episode? He also made "a thermite torch using aluminium filed from a racing cycle frame and rust held in a long tube and lit with a roadside signal flare. "

What a guy!

I can has iPhone?

My pal upgraded his iPhone to a 3G, and his carrier nicely left him the old handset. Not only that, they unlocked it for him - rather decent.

That mean that I got my greedy little paws on a first generation iPhone for a super good price.

Aside from the annoying recessed headphone jack, I really love it. I could grumble about the lack of support for Linux (unless I roll back to the V1 firmware) but I won't, and heres why.

I got a BSD toolchain and ssh server running on it! Also, I have a terminal app on it. This means that I can ssh from my iPhone to any ssh box on the network (internet), and also ssh the other way into my iPhone. I can scp files to my iPhone. I also have an ebook reader on it and really liking that. Oh and anyone who hasn't tried shazam really should - thats a great app!

The phone is in good condition, just a little gnawing on the edges. Maybe the previous owner liked to chew it?



Zing: NZ wallpaper.

Things I thought would were in the "too hard" basket:

First up; check this video analysis and enhancement link:

http://grail.cs.washington.edu/projects/videoenhancement/videoEnhancement.htm

That shows a system that can take pictures and map them to moving video to upscale the resolution of videos. The processing can also do other depth based interpretation and correction. Amazing stuff there!

Also, Echonest audio analysis:

http://the.echonest.com/analyze/

It can take an audio sample (eg. MP3) and spit out a comprehensive XML giving you beat, timings, spectral and timbre quantities and timings (== separate instrument musical notes). It really is listening and transcribing audio with impressive precision.

Hardcore awesome.

Slingshots technical difficulties:

Via Stuff: http://www.stuff.co.nz/4657074a28.html

An error ... left the TradeMe, Bebo and Facebook accounts of its customers open to strangers for a time.

The error meant some Slingshot customers were randomly able to view other people's accounts when accessing these websites ...

TradeMe ... said the fault didn't allow people to bid on auctions, change details, or view passwords or financial details.

Slingshot ... said the problem ... was the result of a new caching configuration ...

Abridged for brevity. So that sounds like a pretty crap cache if its mixing up its end users! Guess maybe it just had NO discrimination so everyone got the single last cache item for a given URL. Maybe it was not considering the parameters at the end of URLs, to tardme.com/home.rar?IGNOREDID=dontMatter

Anyways, LOL !

My home cheapo mods:

Our flat is full of cheap mods that I have busted out. Example 1:

My Logitech x230s sound really good, but the sub control doesn't go low enough. Its quite boomy sometimes, so ...



Stuff it with a sock! The port looses its resonance and the cutoff is effectively brought above the (tuned) frequency (which is so boomy) - much better :)

My hackjob at fixing the laptop power has me worried because there is not much in the way of cable tug-proofing sensitive the laptops' tail.



I got a tug resistant know going so the tail doesn't get any rugged tugs.



I also managed to aquire a nice (free) USB light that was obviously a giveaway from Rabobank; (example shown)



Used to look like this, but unfortunately as its a lampshade, you couldn't point the light very easy. I didn't want it that way, so I did a few "mods":




I chopped and ghetto-glued it to point like a desk lamp should, and it is much better !




Blammo! it goes!

Fixing my cheap Acer 3680 laptop

Here is the problem: no center pin on the DC connector. I tried to take it back as it was under warranty, but apparently this isnt covered - damn crappy Acers :|

The cost for fixing in Amsterdam is over 100 Euros, which is about 1/2 the laptops' value. This mean that either technology construction (laptop) is very cheap, or that European labor is very expensive. Or maybe both.



I assembled everything I need: tools, laptop and disassembly guide. Also had a improvised anti-stat wire to keep me grounded.



The disassembly guide I found was excellent - I knew exactly which and what order to undo every screw. For anyone else thinking of disassembly, you want these kind of guides if possible.



I followed the guide and got the unit apart quite easily.



Its really just a motherboard with an upper and lower cover wrapping it. The tricks are in getting the right order of removal, and knowing which wires to unplug

I put the screws in jars with labels to help ensure they found their correct homes. The guide also detailed this :)

I eventually had the lappy in enough pieces to locate and remove the connector. Here is the connector in place.

This connector was on a small board that was separate to the motherboard. I unplugged it and got out the power board.

I couldn't find a replacement part for the connector, and so was planning to solder some wires directly to the board.



Upon inspection, I found that it was a multilayer board, and I only had a cheap solder iron. This meant I probably couldn't unsolder the socket. What to do? I had to change my low tech solution:



I broke the connector and removed it, while leaving 2 pins to solder to. My technique is non-destructive and hasn't affected the actual board so I can place a new part if/when I find one.



I used a rubber grommet to hold the wires in place. This is very tight, and is the first (and only) defence against yanks of the cable.



Here is the soldering. Not very pretty but it will work.

Here is the final solution. It is not pretty, and I am a little worried that it might break one day. I'm thinking about v2 plans, any suggestions welcome.

I added a standard connector to the other end of the cable, and had to hack the power adapter cable end off too, so its not quite non-destructive...



But I can now charge and use it (and get my datas!), which is whats most important. And it only cost $10 Euro to fix.

You can teach an old computer new tricks

There are lots of novel uses for old computers; this radiohead mashup done with a ZX spectrum (My first computer) is super-dope:


Big Ideas (don't get any) from James Houston on Vimeo.

As is this rendition of Funky Town, running on a C64 and dot matrix printer:




And for all those who thought that the ZX spectrum had crap graphics and sound... you are right. But look at what some leet Russian demoscene hackers have coded up - very nice, especially when you know how limited that old hardware was/is:

Left brainers and overthinkers...

... should read this post to help boost their creativity. Nice ideas.

10 Ways to Help Left Brainers Tap Into the Best of Their Creativity

http://www.ideachampions.com/weblogs/archives/2008/07/right_ways_of_w.shtml

The joys of F1

Its great to be here in Europe and be able to watch F1 at a reasonable hour. Unfortunately the broadcasts are in Dutch. My good pal, ATech, often gives me a skype audio feed, as everyone shares the same video feed.



This is us doing some serious F1 watching. This time, ATech was getting the video from me - the webcam pointing at the TV. If you look closely, you can see him enjoying it.



I love that I can download (cough) onboards, lap data, as well as the ITV coverage, and run them all in sync the next day. Pain to setup sometime, but great once lined up. I have been thinking of attempting to weave them into matroska files sometime.



This is ITV on one laptop, onboards on the other. Awesome.