Hardware
I officially have proof that brain cells can and do regenerate, despite what others may be saying. For the first time, I spotted more people reading on the train than were plugged into cellphones or MP3 players. Good job, humanity!
So I've been missing for over a month now, due to circumstances that I'll label with the blanket term "technical difficulties". Hosting my own server might have been a good option when I lived within a few meters of the computer, but when it's 650km in a different state, asking family members to crawl under the couch and reboot the server...
The recent launch of Google's Nexus One smartphone and the whole plethora of "Zune Phone" rumors have got me thinking - it seems like every day the tech industry is going further and further to try and become a singularity.
The way I see it, an established software-only vendor (i.e. Google/Microsoft) becoming a hardware vendor reeks of doom. Consider, for instance, the sizable Windows Mobile ecosystem - seems like every day I see somebody carting around a Windows Mobile-enabled phone. Despite the uniform OS, the device it's running on varies quite a bit - LG, HTC, and even Palm are making...
As of today I'm the proud owner of my own mail server. As I mentioned in my last blog post, it's comments like these that have prompted me to leave Google's services behind. My target is to have my Google account doing effectively nothing by June of this coming year - that means OpenID, Jabber, and others are similarly going to be migrated locally at some point in time.
This machine is actually running Debian. This was my first time ever setting up a Linux server, and might have taken some time to get the hang of, but was well worth...
I just got back in town and finally had a chance to fix my Web server. I had assumed the worst, but it looks like it'll be alright for now. Every time it boots, it tells me I have a different amount of RAM installed - and I tried different sets of modules, too. Things eventually have to die, and this laptop is going on 12 years, so I'd say it had a good life. In the event that something does happen to it, I have a replacement unit that, with some time and money, can substitute this one.
Some of...
It's been a long month! The end of the academic quarter brings with it final exams, final papers, projects, and of course the usual insanity brewing on my floor.
Throughout the month, my friends and I have made a habit of scouting for trash PCs on campus. We seem to throw out perfectly good hardware with no good reason, which is great for us, since we can capitalize on those sorts of leavings. Among my friends' pillages have been some recent-looking Inspiron laptops, rack-mountable switches, vintage IBM Model M keyboards, and dedicated hardware firewalls, among other things. As for me, I...
On Mondays and Wednesdays, I've been having an interesting problem: two almost-adjacent two-hour classes that require me to run back to my dorm after the first class is over, so that I can recharge my laptop. Annoying? You bet.
I researched an extra battery but found out that one would run me $180, and I wouldn't be able to use my docking station with it. So I came up with this:
"This" being a 180-watt-hour battery pack constructed from two UPS batteries and a car adapter. Now I can run around for eleven hours without having to plug in - although my...
Today I brought my watch to have the battery replaced - I figured that was a simple enough process. After trying Wal-Mart and Target, both of which told me they didn't service digital watches (strange, seeing as Wal-Mart is usually where I bring the watch to replace the battery), I brought it to a small local jeweler and ended up having to pay them eleven dollars just to replace it.
But it doesn't end there. When the jeweler's gave me the watch back, I found out that none of the buttons on the side were functional. Furthermore, part of the seal...
I managed to scrounge up yet another dead LCD monitor today. This one sat on a desk for about three years and had a relatively uneventful life, yet managed to fail anyway - with the exact same problem as the ViewSonic one I got a few weeks ago, no less. A real testament to how they don't make them like they used to!
(For clarifications, though I thought I had fixed the ViewSonic monitor, that actually turned out to be a side-effect of heating it up with the hairdryer. Once it cooled back down, it went right back to shutting off.)
A: What can't vinyl tape fix?
The button board had been acting flaky for awhile, and often to set the clock I'd just open it up and short the accumulator pin to adjust the time. It turned out that the material between the buttons and the board itself had dried out over the years, thus squishing instead of depressing as expected. I tore it out and used some tape in its place.
(to Antony: this is the same one I modified earlier. Why buy a new clock if I can just fix up what I have?)
While on my way home from the post office today, I found a relatively new-looking ViewSonic LCD sitting out on the road, so I picked it up and carried it home with me. I plugged it in and, surprisingly enough: "No Signal" flashes on the screen for half a second, then the entire thing shuts off. With a computer attached: "No Signal", and again shuts off half a second later.
I find it interesting that, of the six or seven CRTs I've found in this manner, only one hasn't worked. By contrast, the three LCDs I've found, this one included, have...
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