Hear Ye! Since 1998.

Archived Posts for October 2000

Please note: The posts on this page are at least 3 years old. Links may be broken, information may be out of date, and the views expressed in the posts may no longer be held.
31
Oct 00
Tue

Map Needed

I’ve got a favour to ask – does anyone have, or know where to download a copy of a world map? It has to be fairly large, and as plain as possible (no markings, except for country borders, is preferable – the plainer the better). Mail me, please.

30
Oct 00
Mon

Communal Crier

New
• The World as it Stands

Linux – The Coffee Maker

Renai sent me this link.

Home Networks and Internet Connection Sharing

A bit of a techie post this one. Ok, there are two main ways to share a dialup/isdn/cable/adsl connection: via hardware, and via software.

Software is relatively easy to configure and has the bonus of not really mattering what connection type you have (dialup/cable etc.) as this is handled by the O/S. There are various options:

  • Win 98/ME and Win 2000 all come with ICS which is easy to set up but pretty crap for configuring. If you have Win2k with DNS/DHCP and other services all nicely set up, ICS will stuff around with those settings. ICS is also hard to diagnose because in an attempt to be “user-friendly”, it hides what it does so it’s a bugger to tweak stuff.
  • Win 2000 also comes with NAT routing – preferable to using ICS, IMO.
  • You can use a proxy server to share net connections (eg: MS Proxy Server 2) but these don’t truly allow unfettered net access.
  • You can use a NAT server, such as SyGate or WinProxy. These are highly flexible in that they allow port range mapping and trigger maps so you can customise what packets go where.
  • If you use Linux, that comes with IP masquerading capabilities native.
  • For Macs… well, who cares about Macs :)

Using an old Pentium or 486 machine as a dedicated software-based router is a good way of implementing this.

A hardware solution in the form of a router costs more money, has to fit the connection type (dialup/cable etc.) but will work regardless of the systems you have on your LAN (Win/Mac/*nix etc.). Most home routers use NAT technology and perform routing faster than software solutions (theoretically giving better throughputs). For the more geeky among us, you may be able to telnet into or use a serial cable to access your router and appear really techy :) Not quite IOS, but hey :) However, compared to Sygate, useless you fork out a few grand for a “proper” Cisco router, the el cheapo variety tend to be less flexible in terms of configuration – port forwarding for example, is normally limited to a set number of ports, and range mapping may be unavailable.

Both software and hardware routers also act as primitive firewalls with packet filtering capabilities.

You’ve also got wireless routers like Apple’s Airport, Cisco’s Aeronet and Lucent’s Orinoco. Those are damn expensive though.

From the emails I’ve got (below), it seems that most people are using the Linksys SR41 router. I’ve been poking around and the Netgear RT311 Router and RT314 Router+4-Port Switch look the goods in both features and pricing. What I want to know is – how good are these routers at handling games? Do some games (playing and serving them) refuse to work over a router, or are they all able to work with some tweaking (without having to place your gaming computer onto a DMZ)?

Fuzzy’s mail below is quite informative… interesting things he says about Telstra’s traffic monitoring.

I currently use a Linksys router, and for the most part it works fine. Im usin cable. The one I got included a 4 port switch built in but can be expanded on, theres also cheaper ones that you haveto hook your own hub into. Theres a bunch of different brands…I saw a site that had reviews of like 6 different makes and models…but forget it…
Stuart

I use the linksys etherfast router with 4 ports.  It cost me like $150 dollars.  It works great, it took like maybe 5 minutes to setup.
Stephen

Hey.. Check out this piece of hardware.. http://www.cable-modems.org/articles/linksys_review/. It’s a cable modem (or DSL) router… I use it at home. It’s about $150 US, I think, but it’s *really* worth it. I had a proxy machine set up before, but I would have to mess with proxy settings in all my software, and some software didn’t even natively support proxies.. but just put the network through this router, and you don’t have to worry about a thing… everything works with it.. It even acts as a mediocre firewall. Just check that review in the link above… you’ll see.
G

I have internet on cable. every1 seems to have problems with their Rogers@HOME or Shaw@HOME service, i however do not. you’re supposed to pay for the sharing of the internet (not fuckin’ likely that u will though) but if you want to do it for cheaper you hook the modem up to a computer and then network the computers on a network faster than that of the modem (otherwise its pretty pointless) then u run windows 98 SE and ICS. it all works out pretty simple, whether u want IPX/SPX or TCP/IP protocol… (note: i know windows is shit, but linux-windows sharing doesn’t work easily, and too many ppl on my network have windows98) hope i can help.
Kevin

Ever since I moved into a share house I’ve been tinkering with connection sharing. To start off with we just used Microsoft’s Internet Connection Sharing which comes with Win98SE to share a 56k dailup connection. The modem plugged into my PC and left on most of the time, nice and easy.

However, if your PC is noisy (thus making sleeping while room mates are on the net difficult) this might not be the best way.

We changed from this setup when we went to optus cable. I setup a little P133 with NT4, installed two network cards, PC Anywhere and Winroute Pro, and taa daa instant gateway-proxy-firewall connection sharing that sits under our house. Best of all doing it this way makes it impossible for someone at Optus to know that it’s being shared. It’s always on, and we can use it to queue up d/l’s over night, host our mp3 share, run roger wilco and anything else we want.

If you plug the cable modem straight into a hub and share it this way the ISP can see the packets being sent between PCs (as they all travel up to the ISP gateway’s then back to the hub). As an aside, I’ve heard Telstra count all internal data in your throughput if you do it that way.

I am looking at making a few changes to our network though. While PC Anywhere allows me to work on the machine from anywhere (and means I don’t have to have a monitor on the PC) it’s not great. I’m thinking of rebuilding the machine and installing windows 2000 server with terminal server componants installed. But that will require better hardware than a P133…. I’ve got a dual celeron mobo, all I need is a matching celeron 466 for the one I’ve got.

Anyway, email me back if you need any other info. I find myself needing excuses to ramble since I closed my page :)
-Fuzzy

Heya, I just use an old Pentium running NT4… it shares my modem connection, and runs DNS/mail/web/etc…

works fine, but of course you need an old machine for it…
Shaun

I took a trip to my friend’s and they had a pretty interesting setup to share the net connection.  They have an old P2 400 with Red Hat 7.0 and some pmfirewall software on it.  It has 2 NICs, one to take incoming traffic from the DSL modem and the other to send it to a hub that distributes to the rest of the network. 

The cool part is the firewall software.  My friend wrote part of it, and it uses dynamic port opening and closing.  They went to that Shield’s Up! site and it couldn’t detect any ports or IPs of the computers (other than the dynamic IP the phone company gives them).  They also get insane download speeds, but that’s because they’re really close to the phone switch.  Those bandwidth testers claim they peak at over T1 speeds…
Sonic

Darn

Daylight Savings “started” over the weekend (of course it really started before the Olympics this year). The clocks on all the computers got set forward an hour (and Win2000 doesn’t even notify you it’s done this). I was wondering how time passed so quickly when I glanced at the clock and saw it was 2am…

29
Oct 00
Sun

Communal Crier

Moved
• b000
• Evil Oliver
• Gross National! Products

Hah

It’s …

Not what you think.

Permanent Dial-up

You’ve seen this (Oct 5). Shaun sent me a pic of his permanent dial-up connection. The NT dial-up box shows a 30+ day connection!

Home Routers

Just out of curiousity, anyone had experience with any that can be used to share a cable or ADSL modem on a network? And also, how does it compare to a software solution like Sygate? (Not that I have cable or ADSL *grumble*)

28
Oct 00
Sat

Busy

Wow, the academic year’s almost over. 7 assignments and 2 tests left to do in the next 3 weeks (craaaap), plus exams in the fortnight after.

Travel Site

It’s getting there. I’ve got to port it from my computer to the server and make sure the PHP doesn’t break along the way…

Microsoft Hacked

Some crackers put a trojan on a Microsoft computer and have been siphoning passwords and source code from them for about 3 months. MSNBC report.

Shaft

C’mon, you can’t tell me you didn’t enjoy this film… :)

25
Oct 00
Wed

Um… Interesting…

Gang Bang Feminism“. You’ve heard about the world record (251 men in 10 hours), now read about the sociological analysis of it. Thanks Kev.

Only Two

Only two people allegedly know the Coke formula at any time, and they are not allowed to be on the same plane at the same time. Is this true?

The Googlebot

Read up on it (info on the bot itself, using meta tags, robot.txt etc.). You can also manually add your site to be indexed by Google here.

24
Oct 00
Tue

Communal Crier

Already? It’s the 2nd E/N Day, guys! Time flies, eh?

And today, unfortunately, we also bid farewell to a long running E/N site (and another red-dot), Ramblings. Of course, we all know how much Ramblings kept “coming back to life” last year, but this time, perhaps not? It will be missed. You might want to check out EveryNothing which has posters from the Ramblings of old.

I’ve never posted at this time of morning before… so it’s rushed… got uni gotta run…

Communal Crier

Death in the Community.
Although I did not know the person, I was familiar with the site. On the 17th, this month, Matt “Salty-Dog” Baker passed away due to heart failure. My respect and best wishes go out to all who knew him. More info on BD.

Closure in the Community.
We also bid farewell to the red-dotted, ever interesting, 5-year-old Fuzzy’s Logic. Fuzzy has migrated to Spore’s Den for intermittent posting.

New
• Glimpse

Requested Plug
• Yank Election Polls

  6:40pm (GMT +10.00)  •  E/N  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Stranger than Fiction

Thanks Vic…

This is from an actual trial in the UK. A young woman who was several months pregnant boarded a bus. Then she noticed a young man smiling at her she began feeling humiliated onaccount of her condition. She changed her seat and he seemed more amused. She moved again and then on her fourth move he burst out laughing. She had him arrested.

Then the case came before the court, the young man was asked why he acted in such a manner. His reply was: When the lady boarded the bus I couldn’t help noticing she was pregnant. She sat under an advertisement which read “Coming Soon: The Gold Dust Twins”, then she moved under one that read “Sloans Liniments remove swelling”. I was even more amused when she sat under a shaving advertisement which read “William’s Stick Did The Trick”. Then I could not control myself any longer when on the fourth move she sat under an advertisement which read “Dunlop Rubber would have prevented this accident.”

The case was dismissed.

  6:40pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Humour  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Digital Photography

Really good site if you’re in the market for a digital camera. Its reviews are extremely comprehensive.

Coffee?

Coffee FAQ. Speaking of coffee, I went to the new-ish Starbucks next to Hyde Park last Friday. Nice beverages, and a nice place for a relaxing chat. (Yep, Starbucks finally invades down under).

  6:40pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Food  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Cinnamons?

New: Penguin Red-Caffeinated Cinnamons. What the heck are cinnamons?

  6:40pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Food  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 
20
Oct 00
Fri

Communal Crier

Facelifted
• ZokoSiman

Requested Plug
• CODE Adam

  11:00pm (GMT +10.00)  •  E/N  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Hey

Whaddaya reckon… do you think girls who post on e/n sites would be considered geek chicks?

  11:00pm (GMT +10.00)  •  E/N  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Ferrari Video

Ok, was talking to a friend about this video of a guy driving on a Japanese public highway in a Ferrari. The video camera is sitting in the backseat and records him taking the car up to an insane 300km/h while weaving in between traffic. I’ve only seen this on tv, but does anyone know where I can get and download this clip off the net? Mail me please.

Speeding

Something going around? Napalm got caught. RegBarc got caught. I got caught a few months back. It was dark and the back windows were fogged… didn’t realise the solitary car following behind was actually a copper. On a Friday, at 2.30am for 80 in 60. The very start of double demerit weekend.

I tell you what, after that, you become really conscious of your speed…

Got The Flu

Feeling pretty shit. Anyhow, watched all the Neon Genesis series in the last two days. Whoo that is some deep and weird stuff in the last few episodes… really an enjoyable watch though. Now I’m going to be thinking about it for the next week or so… Anyway while scouring about for NGE links, I came across this page. It’s entitled, uh, The Ugliest Clothes in Anime.

Also had a blood test, got vaccinated for polio, and received a tetanus shot today, all in preparation for the trip (which I’ve been busy creating a site for). Still got a meningitis shot, hepatitis shots, and who knows what other diseases I have to be vaccinated against, to go. It doesn’t help when dad broke out laughing (at something I said) while drawing blood from me… he started jiggling the needle because of it, while it was still embedded, damn that hurt. I hate needles.

  11:00pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Life  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 
16
Oct 00
Mon

Communal Crier

New
• APT207

Facelifted
• NFSV
• The Funhouse

  11:00pm (GMT +10.00)  •  E/N  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Haha

  11:00pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Humour  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Body Fat

Got my body fat percentage measured on the weekend by some sort of scales that send an electric charge through the body. I’m 10% fat… Sites on the net say that’s an “athlete’s level” of fat, although I can’t say that I exercise regularly.

  11:00pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Life  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Links

Thanks for Fuzz for all of these: Toilet Museum, Complaint Generator, and the “Real Sydney”.

Who’s That Man?

Obviously, the Indian Express didn’t know who was sitting next to Mr Samaranch. Thanks Kev.

Student Reveals: “I Was Bashed By Dildo!”

It made the front page in Sunday’s papers, that a few students from Trinity were up for assault charges. Trinity’s my old school, and it’s quite troubling that something like this could not only happen, but that it was actually publicised in national papers (bullying happens in all schools I’m sure – Trinity just had the misfortune to have this go public). Anyhow, the rumours that have been filtering through tell of a bunch of Year 10 boarders bullying a Year 8 kid. Among the “50 cases of assault” are things like tying up the kid with rope, opening the shower door on him and snapping photos of him while naked, and, also allegedly (and most disturbingly) beating the poor guy up with a homemade dildo created during woodwork class. What they were going with a dildo in an all boy’s school is another question that is probably best left unanswered. They are boarders, after all :).

14
Oct 00
Sat

Communal Crier

New
• Silicon Gelica (as if solo hasn’t been plugging her enough… :)

Revived
• Ramblings

Plug Requested
• The Spud

  11:00pm (GMT +10.00)  •  E/N  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Hmm

There are very few industries that compete with the IT industry in terms of the level of egos the majority of people working in it people have (especially the techies).

Glossary

A terse glossary of computer graphics terminology.

Saturday

I’ve just had the bludgiest Saturday afternoon. I decided to take the computer downstairs and hook it up to the home theatre amp downstairs. Also gave me the chance to try connecting the never-before-used SPDIF digital out of the SBLive to the coax in of the amp. Then I just laid back on the couch and listened to MP3s for the rest of the arvo. Relaxing :)

If you have the chance, try plugging your sound card into a hi-fi system (if you don’t have a digital out/in, you’ll need a 3.5mm stereo to dual RCA cable)… the difference between them and the comparatively pissy little computer speakers you’re probably using is huge (computers don’t normally have a 15″ sub).

  11:00pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Music  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

End of Year Trip

Instead of the middle-east, which is really beginning to heat up, we’ve decided to go to Kathmandu instead. I’ll be away for 2.5 months, so what’s going to happen to this site? Well, I intend to put up a site in place of Hear Ye! (a travel edition of it? :) which I can update from overseas. I intend to visit as many net terminals as possible and keep an online journal of the trip.

  11:00pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Travel  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Elevators?

Roland Harrison’s Elevator Pages. Someone decided it would be a good idea to write a web site dedicated to, as it says, elevators.

Cracked!

I linked to this non-fictional story-in-progress a few months ago. It has concluded in the meantime with Part 7.

Olym-Pics

More Olympic pics (off AJH).

  11:00pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Sports  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Gossip

Interesting film. Girls, gossip is evil. :)

  11:00pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Movies  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Reindeer Games

Not a bad film if you’re after a bit of light entertainment. Throws in a triple twist to imitate originality.

  11:00pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Movies  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

The Emperor and The Assassin

Went to Dendy’s down at the Quay last night to catch this Chinese film. It was a highly engrossing historical film about the unification of the Chinese kingdoms by the (later) Qin dynasty around 221 b.c. More intriguing than usual as it is about Chinese history, and I am, of course, of Chinese descent but know very little about its history, cultural roots and heritage. Made for a welcome change from the usual Hollywood flick at Hoyts. A highly recommended watch.

What I also find interesting is that the film earned in Australia, an MA (15+ restricted) rating. In Singapore, known for its tight censorship laws, it got a PG (parental guidance) rating. It’s not hard to see why that would have been the case, given the (Asian) cultural aspects expressed in the film.

  11:00pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Movies  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Doris Day Syndrome

Here’s an interesting article (PDF file) we had to read for law. It’s about the Doris Day Syndrome and its relationship to software theft (piracy). The Syndrome describes when the early software writers wrote their programs (like Lotus 1-2-3 and GNU-Emacs), they copied bits and pieces from other programs, citing that knowledge should be universal and not allowed to be under ownership. Upon their program attaining success and popularity, however, these writers did an about-face and declared there should be stronger laws regarding protection of intellectual works as they were property, capable of ownership (and thus, theft). Not a technical document, read it if you’ve got the time. It’s all very well and good to say everything should be open-source, but how many of you, if you made a program, that “killer-app” that could instantly make you a multi-millionaire overnight – would you be so quick to open-source it and forfeit that money?

11
Oct 00
Wed

Communal Crier

New
• Moronic

  6:00pm (GMT +10.00)  •  E/N  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

More Jokes

Just some Post-Olympic humour that’s being going around via e-mail:

1. The famous flaming ass pic (thanks Fuzz)
2. Signs you’re suffering from Olympic burnout (thanks Kyle)
3. Now that the Olympics are over… (thanks Pete)

  6:00pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Humour  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Joke

Passengers on a plane are waiting for the flight to leave. The entrance opens, and two men walk up the aisle, dressed in pilot uniforms. Both are wearing dark glasses.  One is using a seeing-eye dog, and the other is tapping his way up the aisle with a cane.

Nervous laughter spreads through the cabin, but the men enter the cockpit, the door closes, and the engines start.

The passengers begin glancing nervously, searching for some sign that this is just a little practical joke. None is forthcoming. The plane moves faster and faster down the runway, and people at the windows realize that they’re headed straight for the water at the edge of the airport.

As it begins to look as though the plane will never take off, that it will plow into the water, screams of panic fill the cabin. But at that moment, the plane lifts smoothly into the air.

Up in the cockpit, the co-pilot turns to the pilot and says, “You know, Bob, one of these days, they’re going to scream too late, and we’re all gonna die.”

Thanks Vic!

  6:00pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Humour  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

War in the Middle-East

I said before that at the end of the year I’ll be doing the round the world thing. We were going to spend 3 weeks in the middle-east (Egypt, Jordan, Israel) but of course the tensions are high there and war could break out soon. So we unfortunately decided to scrap that part of the journey and are looking at going to either Marrakesh or Kathmandu instead.

  6:00pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Travel  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Digital Cameras

Now this camera, with a built in MP3 player, is a great idea (4 megapixels too!). Great size so you can carry it around like a minidisc player, and also always have a camera on hand. Pretty nicely priced as well. Just a bit light on its feature set, but what can you expect for something this small? Maybe when I’m in Singapore/Malaysia in Feb next year I can pick one up for a good price?

Price vs Pixels chart.

How to get hits to your e/n/blog/journal site…

Be an attractive girl who knows how to design a nice-looking web site (like this one I just found, who seems to be the queen of scamming freebies). But since 95% of you are guys… too bad, heh.

  6:00pm (GMT +10.00)  •  E/N  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Haha!

That stats test I had today… I found out yesterday it was, (i) Multiple Choice and (ii) Open Book. Today I found out that (iii) Open Book meant not only text book, but also notes as well and (iv) They used slightly modified tute questions for the test and didn’t bother thinking up original ones. So I go from looking at a fail to a fairly decent mark :). Not only that, but we got a week extension on our law essay (the one about Napster).

Mum’s a legend, heh… there’s 60 cans of Dew sitting downstairs (well, 59 now)… they must have been on special.

  6:00pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Life  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Haven’t Asked This For a While…

Go sign my guestbook, if you haven’t already, please.

HTTP Headers

Made my own http header fetcher. It does what it does (which is not much).

Search

Added a search form to the sidebar, at the bottom. It only indexes Hear Ye!, and not Real.

Read Up

Securing a default linux installation.

Speaking of…

… girl bloggers, Fissure’s hosting one of ’em. Hi Kyp :).

10
Oct 00
Tue

Communal Crier

New
• The Chaos Balance
• Xamichee

Moved
• Evil Oliver

  7:00pm (GMT +10.00)  •  E/N  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Arabic Deciphered

Many thanks to James, who procured a translation of this for me:

This kid I work with is of Arabic descent and he can read it so this is probably pretty close to what it says. It makes sense for a yearbook.

Dear (somebody I can’t make out the name):
With the best and kindest wishes…with success and prosperity…and God willing I will hear about you all that is good.
Nabil.

The name is probably a transliteration of “Stuart” into Arabic syllables (in the same way we transliterate, for example, Chinese names into English words).

Yup

How to destroy your PC.

  7:00pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Humour  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

Caricature

It’s a caricature of me. Thanks to Rich!

  7:00pm (GMT +10.00)  •  E/N  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

HTTP Headers

Puckhead points this site out. Still looking for that site which displays the full header list though. You can simulate the effect by telnetting into a web server and entering a Get command manually through there. Eg: the web server on my computer (midkemia.levitate.org) returns these headers:

GET /index.cfm

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2000 07:29:41 GMT
Content-type: text/html
Page-Completion-Status: Normal

[HTML follows]

Some servers return more extensive headers, like Zipworld's Apache one:
GET /index.html HTTP/1.0
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Tue, 10 Oct 2000 06:48:22 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.12 (Unix) PHP/3.0.16 PHP/4.0.1pl2
Last-Modified: Mon, 22 Nov 1999 03:06:15 GMT
ETag: "2706fe-76a-3838b327"
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Content-Length: 1898
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html
[HTML follows]
Hmm... might write a header grabbing page for myself...
  7:00pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Internet  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

It’s Here

The first Bluetooth device, from Ericsson is out (their mobile phone headset thing).

Bios Mod 2

If you have a newer Award v6 Bios, you can have a full screen splash picture on bootup.

Well… I found out there’s a new Bios version for my mobo, so I decided to do the modded logo thing on it. The boot disk is ready… The next time I need to reboot I’ll give it a flash and hope Energy Australia doesn’t have a blackout while I’m doing it. I’ll grab a photo of it if it’s successful.

ASCII Star Wars

Telnet to: blekko.net and type in “starwars” at the prompt. Sit back and watch. Bit of time went into that one!

9
Oct 00
Mon

In Case You Didn’t Know

Typing “link:url” (eg: “link:hearye.fissure.org”) in Google will provide you with all pages in their database linking to the URL provided. Using “related” in place of link gives you all similar pages. More special search features here.

Currently…

Packing shit. I have a Stats exam tomorrow and I don’t know anything… have you ever tried to learn from scratch, 300 pages of maths in about 3 days? Don’t.

7
Oct 00
Sat

Communal Crier

New
• Derailed

Logo Mod

You know the Energy Star energy saver graphic that comes up on bootup? Change it. It requires changing the BIOS (tools for Award Bios modification are supplied, mobos with AMI BIOSes are out of luck as far as software goes, I think), and like all BIOS operations, make sure you know what you’re doing or you’re going to fry something you didn’t want to fry. I think I’m going to give it a try when I get the time.

Uni Restarts

Tomorrow. No more holidays :(

Olympic Pics

I put pics I took during the Olympics up.

Communal Crier

New
• Planet Mofo
• Positive Current
• Sonic Junkie (not affiliated with sonic junkie)

  10:10pm (GMT +10.00)  •  E/N  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 

“That System Works”

I was doing some law research and came across this interesting quote by Napster’s attorney, David Boies:

The DMCA also set up a notification procedure, through which service providers like Napster can say, “Look, if you believe somebody is infringing, you bring us a notice. We will then shut them down unless they give a counternotice. If they give a counternotice, it’s up to the court to decide.” And that system has worked with Napster. Hundreds of thousands of users have been terminated because of those notices. Congress set up a system. That system works. 

Depends what your definition of “works” is, I guess.

I Know It’s Out There Somewhere…

There was a site that enabled you to view the HTTP headers that get returned along with a web page (so you can see stuff like what the web server that serves the page is). I’ve lost the URL… anyone know it?

Translator needed

My chem teacher a couple years ago left a note in the Year 12 farewell book. In Arabic. It’s been sitting there, enigmatic, ever since. If anyone can read Arabic, please tell me what this means. Somehow, I don’t expect anyone to give me the answer in a hurry… :)

Search Engine

Search engine enable your web site. It’s pretty easy to set up and customise.

You Know This Summer is Going to be Hot When…

It’s October and the cold water taps are spitting out warm water mid-afternoon.

  10:10pm (GMT +10.00)  •  Life  •  Tweet This  •  Add a comment  • 
5
Oct 00
Thu

Communal Crier

New
• Antwon
• Gross National Products

Ugh

There are Liquorice Smints out.

DDR

You know Dance Revolution? “The dancing game”? The one all those Asians are perpetually crowded around in the arcades? People actually stick videoes of themselves playing it up on the web. They look freakishly good and stupid at the same time :).

New Article

Wrote a new article on a couple of web site tips you may or may not know (custom error pages, favourite icons, passwording directories and banning people).

Fatso the Big-Assed Wombat

Here’s something interesting that I didn’t know. Remember that old Aussie soapie, A Country Practice? (It’s off the air now, isn’t it?) A character in that had a pet wombat called Fatso.

CF/PHP/ASP Coding

Ok out of curiousity, Solo is running a little coding experiment to give you a chance to see how the same task is implemented in the three server-side processing systems of Cold Fusion (CF), PHP Hypertext Pre-processor (PHP) and Active Server Pages (ASP). There is a small, ordinary task involving database access and querying, output to html, saving output to file and transfering it off the server via the smtp (e-mail) and FTP protocols. If you know any of the above languages, and know how to do at least the first two steps (db query + html output) then give it a shot – it’s a good way to learn. I’ve mirrored all the information found off Solo’s site here – should contain everything you need. Send solutions to me or Solo.

4
Oct 00
Wed

Communal Crier

New
• Khyron.net
• Norch

Rebirth
• Evilnet

Facelifted
• Slanty

SMS

• “PHP: Web programming for programmers; ColdFusion: “Programming” for web /designers/.” –Mike

Hmm. Am I correct in saying the net has some people who are convinced that the best way to demonstrate how “1337” they are with code is to make things as difficult for themselves as possible? I mean, what else am I meant to draw from the above SMS? Let’s say that you can achieve exactly the same results in PHP as in CF (and that’s virtually true, give or take a few things) then why is CF, “programming” (in inverted commas) and why is PHP “real” programming? Does it make a difference? I don’t think so. What do you think?

I Need Broadband

… and why it has to be flat rate and have unmetered downloads. And no, I don’t want you cable/DSL users sending me screenshots of how you can transfer that amount in about 3 hours.

Typical dialup session...

Hmm

I think these people are still looking for jobs.

Deckmatch

Found offa Plutonia, some guys have devised a way of playing a Quake 3 deathmatch game with a standard deck of 52 cards.

DVD Ripping

Everything you need to have, to know, and to do to rip a DVD to an AVI file. A 2 hour movie took about 8 hours on my PC to convert to a 650mb avi using the DivX codex, and the video quality is still surprisingly good. It loses the AC3 encoding, too, since the sound is re-encoded to mp3.

E-Quill

As advertised on Kottke.org, E-Quill allows you to annotate other people’s sites like they were a piece of paper. After doing that, you can then send that annotated site to whoever. I’m curious to see this in action with this site… so if any of you has a few spare moments, I’d appreciate if you could install E-Quill, surf back to Hear Ye!, scribble notes all over the place (design suggestions? content suggestions?) and email me back the mutilated page.

Quizes

A set of amusing quizes from Brunching Shuttlecocks. The Christian Heavy Metal Band or Star Trek Episode? quiz proves I know too much about Trek :).

1
Oct 00
Sun

Communal Crier

New
• Everynothing – Run by G, formerly of Ramblings
• Hall of Nihilism – Kiwi run
• Planet Puck

Facelifted
• Headwired

Funky Backgrounds

Here.

Contact Lenses

I’ve got another appointment with the Optometrist tomorrow to try out some contacts. Those 24/7 month-long lenses sound good… I will have to ask him about them as he never mentioned ’em.

I hated them.  Couldn’t ever get ’em in my damn eyes.  I would stand there, like a gimp, in front of the mirror for like, half an hour gouging myself to no avail.  Apparently, this gets easier as time goes on, but I just stopped trying.  Mind you, I am the lazy sort who doesn’t bother to wear his glasses either, and prefers to walk around squinting all the time.  Anyway, good luck if you decide to go through with them. –-f

contacts are somewhat of a hassle.. at first, it takes a while to get them in.. but you get used to it.. hopefully, your doctor won’t be dumb like mine and get two different size contacts (i can barely see out of my right eye). anyway, after a while, it’s easy to just pop them in. you don’t have to clean them every night, but it’s good to clean them out at least once or twice a week. always have the little contact holder, filled to the brim, with you. it’ll be much easier if one falls out. –bry

I’ve had contacts for about 9 years or so.  They’re nice at first, but at least for me I’ve found that they really dry out your eyes.  Like after a couple years my eyes would be blood-streaked red if I wore them all day.  So I switched to glasses.  Yeah I’m also thinking about laser eye surgery.  Only thing that bothers me is that if your eyes get worse after the surgery, can you do it again a couple years later? –grv

Hi man, just replying to your post about the contact lenses question. I thought i may as well write and tell you about the experiences ive had with them.

Ive been through a couple of different types: Soft permanent lenses (they last 2 years – same lenses, and have to be taken out everynight and be put in every morning also have to be disinfected once a week). They were ‘OK’ and at the time they were heaps better than glasses.

Soft disposible lenses (last 2 weeks per lens and have to be taken out every night and be put back in every morning tho no disinfection is needed, they feel better  because you get new lenses every week, and you dont have to worry about loosing them).

Then about 6months ago i got these new lenses which you can leave in 24/7 for a month each lens. For me these are the next best thing to laser. Not having to take them out when you sleep and put them back in is fucking awesome. Like you can goto a party and sleep there and not worry about waking up with saw eyes. Or if you have a women, you dont have to worry about guessing what your touching (which is also a pain in the arse..) or having to take them out when you sleep.

From memory the monthly 24/7 lenses are about $120 for 3months supply (6lenses all up). So they are pretty good in that respect too. Im not too sure about the pricing for the other ones, sorry.

Id just go and talk to a optomotrist about what would be best for you. But until i can afford laser, the 24/7 ones are all good for me.

Hope that helps man,
Think

For the most part, I’ve found them worth the money. I’ve got disposable (as in monthly) lenses. The cleanings a breeze, when you take them out at night, squirt some solution into there case, put em in and there clean overnight. Once you get used to putting them in its easy, I mean like 30 sec for both. Do to aussie doctors do free trials? Up here in USA I got to test out a pair of them (though not exactly my prescription..trials..but were near-same) for a month. Also now they make those contacts that you can leave in the whole week and even sleep in, then throw away. I couldnt get those because of my astigmatism, but they look like there worth checking out. Like I said..you just gotta try them out to see if they work for you.
Stuart

Thanks to those who dropped me those mails!

Foo!

Stolen from Plutonia, is Mr T vs The Matrix.

MSN Messenger

I only recently found this out, because I use ICQ, but MSN Messenger allows you to make free phone calls to any US or Canadian phone. Great for international calls to North America. I’ve tried it out, and the phone quality over a 28.8k connection is surprisingly decent – there’s just a touch of lag between replies.

Oi…

Hey guys… I never said CF was better than PHP. Do you see a comparison between the two products as to which is superior in Friday’s post?? I just said I thought the code was cleaner… sheesh. I’ve got Linux weenies jumping up and down left right and centre claiming PHP is better…

But it does seem, looking at features sets, that CF is a more powerful backend engine anyhow (there’s a reason why it costs a few grand). I still am not saying one is superior or not… it’s like comparing Linux and Windows. Both have pluses and minuses.

And yes, PHP may be based on C, but C is not object orientated and PHP has classes. And since I don’t know C++, I said it was similar to Java.

Closing Ceremony

Great night, last night. We were originally going to catch the ceremony on the live screens at Circular Quay, but we left it too late and by early evening we already heard that it was all packed out, so after standing around for a little bit wondering where to go, we decided we should head for The Domain. As full as that was, we shoved our way into the centre anyhow and saw the ceremony there. The fireworks started going off around 10.30, snaking its way down from Homebush to the harbour. You can’t see the Harbour Bridge from the domain, and for a while all we could see was the sky lighting up with flashes from the fireworks, with the fireworks themselves hidden just over the treeline. A few seconds later, they sent the F-111 overhead which pretty much was like a loud fiery comet. Awesome sight… then the fireworks started in a position we could see. They were over and the Domain live concert kicked off with some Latin band and the whole area turned into one big mosh pit.

On heading home, George St had turned into a river of people heading for Central. The Quay and Town Hall stations were apparently chockas. When we reached Central, it wasn’t much better – one hour minimum wait to get on a train, which would already be full from its journey around the city circle. Eventually, we got into the station and onto a train. And that brings the Olympics to an end. The last 2-3 weeks in Sydney have been absolutely awesome. Rarely will you ever be able to scream out on the streets, “Aussie! Aussie! Aussie!” at random and have a crowd of people yell after you, “Oi! Oi! Oi!” I’ll have photos of stuff up this week.

Battler’s Prince, sold (of course, he still made it into the closing ceremony :).



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