May 31, 2004
Intel Playing Copy?
In a painful move, Intel has copied the AMD64 architecture due to the flop of their own IA64 technology.
Ouch.
:-D
May 30, 2004
Stupity keeps itself off
Thankfully we here on the internet are protected from many people by their own stupidity.
May 29, 2004
Return from Trip...
Tonight I returned from my brief day with Sharon. We visited the Museum of Science and Industry. It was neat. It was awesome to be with Sharon. I got my digital camera in the mail just before I left. I still need to swap its broken LCD with the working LCD from the identical but broken camera I have. Regardless, I took lots and lots of pictures. Some of them were of the museum...
Thus you can all expect a mini-tour of Chicago, with a few key pictures to highlight pertinent aspects of my journey. I'll try not to overwhelm with pictures of the Beautiful Girl I was with, but I'm not making any promises. For now, I'll see what LAN gaming goodness can come my way...
May 26, 2004
Adventures in Life
Today I discovered that small peaches make great skid marks.
Specifically, properly sliced a half peach may, on occasion, be applied as thermal paste. No any kind of thermal paste, but rather of the specifically fruity variety. Thus....
Part One: The Hunt
Searching for the perfect gift,
Without the monstrous bill,
Through store and website did I sift,
And found the Weasel Mill,
They come in sizes, large and small,
And even in-between,
They come in flavors, spring and fall,
Hand-made or by machine,
And I inspected every one,
With practiced buyer's skill,
This gift was sure to bring great fun,
The perfect Weasel Mill!
- David Moore
May 25, 2004
May 23, 2004
Ziggy Speaks
Most of you have seen this, but for the benefit of all:
-----Original Message-----
From: Spooner, Paul
Sent: Sat 5/22/2004 2:57 PM
To: Scholl, Joshua; Hoyt, Ardith; Moore, David; Olson, Anna; Harclerode, Cara
Cc:
Subject: ----- and Dickens
I found this great passage in Charles Dickens' "Bleak House" and
couldn't help thinking about Dr. -----. Page 78, lines 25-30"The present representative of the Dedlocks is an excellent master. He
supposes all his dependents to be utterly bereft of individual
characters, intentions, or opinions, and is persuaded that he was born
to supersede the necessity of their having any. If he were to make a
discovery to the contrary, he would be simply stunned---would never
recover himself, most likely, except to gasp and die."How's that for ----- to a T?
Ziggy
You all know who...
May 22, 2004
The Project Completed
The title of this post is a lie, because a project like this is never really complete. It has, however, reached the stage I envisioned in its first days. Thus, I present without further ado my new MP3 Player!
It runs happily, and you need nothing more than speakers, the keypad, and a power cord.
The "case" is two sheets of 1/4 inch Plexiglass and several bolts from Lowe's. The motherboard is upside down, mounted on the "roof" to keep the thing compact. Theoretically the thing could, with the installation of a DVD drive, play DVD's via the onboard video. I would need to write about two more lines of script. But before I get Technically, I really ought to go to bed. Hmm, I'll take it to my room and put it above my amp, plug some speakers in, and enjoy it as it was meant to be enjoyed!
May 20, 2004
Yeah Buddy!
I have just completed my great project.
I have before me a small computer. Its only drive is a cd drive. It boots from a cd to a linux micro-kernel. The only input is a numeric keypad. The only output is a headphone jack. If you hit number "n" on the keypad, all mp3's and waves in the n-th directory on the currently inserted cd is played. You can adjust the volume, skip forward and backward, stop playing, pause, jump back to the main selection state... all the goodness you could want. W00T!
Oh, and I really ought to go to bed.
May 19, 2004
A Brief Moment in Life
As part of my work at HCJB, I'm studying up on digital audio. Here's a quote from the book I spent yesterday perusing.
"Before ending our discussion of discrete time samplng, consider a hypothesis concerning the nature of time. Time seems to be continuous. However, some physicists have suggested that, like energy and matter, time might come in discrete packets. Just as this book consists of a finite number of atoms and could be converted to a finite amount of energy, the time it takes you to read this book might consist of a finite number of time particles. Specifically, the indivisible period of time might be 1 x 10^-42. The theory is that no time interval can be shorter than this because the energy required to make the division would be so great that a black hole would be created and the event would be swallowed up inside it. If any of you out there are experimenting in your basements with very fast sampling frequencies, please be careful."
- Principles of Digital Audio, Third Edition
Ken C. Pohlmann
I think Dr. Graff is in serious danger. Perhaps we ought to warn him...
May 18, 2004
A work in is progress...
So I've spent a good deal of the day working on my latest project. It utilizes mplayer and CiNeMiX heavily, and hardware hardly. Thus I've spent most of my day figuring out how to mount floppy images, compressed ram-disks, and cdroms. I've also gone deeper into the realm of Linux CD burning. Soon I'll be up to my neck in scripting, but its all for a good cause...
In other news, I'm going to be looking into the HCJB job in greater detail tomorrow. The project: break an analog signal into digital packets and decode them for DRM (Digital Radio Mundial). Essentially, its the really nasty parts of Circuits II in real-time, Fourier transforms, Cn's, digital carriers, and more fun.
Now I really ought to go to bed, as I will be up to run at 5:45. I saw two deer this morning and many rabbits and birds. Its just a good way to start one's day.
May 15, 2004
The Goodness Floweth
The Dayton Hamvention has brought some great computer Goodness to me. Let me count the ways...
- For only $5 I picked up a K6-2 300 and baby ATX mobo with 2 sticks of SDRAM
- For only $2 I picked up a geForce2 MX and for another $2 a CL PCI128 4 channel sound card
- For only $5 I picked up a TV, FM, S/Video, and Composite input card
There are other good prizes, but those are the biggies. I had a lot of fun wandering about, and it was just plain goodness. I also acquired a XP 3000+ to replace my fried CPU.
I saw, for the first time, a motherboard with a directly mounted processor. It was a XP3100+ with AGP and 2 PCI slots, integrated assortments, and 2 DDR400 slots. The price: $109. And yes, this was the little Indian man who doesn't understand the principle of sales tax.
I am going to have lots of fun projects to work on when I get home. The only problem will be finding the time to do any of them.
Oops...
Clearly I should have continued at The Stony Brook School and never returned to Elkhart Baptist Christian School.
May 14, 2004
"I make all things new."
I watched "The Passion of The Christ" tonight.
This one phrase sticks with me more than any other.
Jesus falls.
Mary looks into his eyes.
"Why?"
"I make all things new."
That is what drove him.
That is why he chose to die.
"I make all things new."
Jesus Christ, Son of God
"I make all things new."
Through death
"I make all things new."
Our bodies, our spirits
"I make all things new."
A new creation
"I make all things new."
May 13, 2004
The Net works
Today was a day of much networking goodness. I present, as the fruit of my labors,
With much effort I have determined the color of each cable and its end connectors. I have also measured each (not an easy task, it involved much crawling under desks.) I ordered a few extra cables to streamline the system, and they will arrive next week. It will need to be prepped for the introduction of my main system, Josh's system, and Enoch and Daniel's laptops. Oh, and possible an AMD64 on my Dad's side.
Furthermore, I am going to the Dayton Hamvention tomorrow afternoon. I'll be there until sometime Wednesday. There I plan to get a processor to replace my lost one, and possibly pick up generally cool items. It will have nearly as many computer items as radio items. Now I will say goodnight to the beautiful Sharon, and you should all go to bed!
May 10, 2004
A Lynx Post
As an exercise in coolness, I am posting from Lynx, a text-based web browser for Linux. Right now I am downloading and install XWindows, the graphical part of Linux, on another terminal. Wonderful Goodness...
Linux Haven
As I type I am surrounded by Linux computers.
On my right, a 21" monitored PIII 500 running RH9 and Fluxbox has just finished burning a CD.
In front, I spy my PII 450, happily watching AIM from it's Gnomish Slackware land.
On my left, perched atop a 32-port hub, a PII 350 is install Debian off the internet. (My Dad is watching, and very happy and joyful about how wonderful Debian is.)
The RedHat system is the DHCP server, and all the rest (including the laptop I'm typing on) are its lackeys. Hurrah for Linux-ness!
And now a short Linux poem:
Linux, OS of happiness,
Bring us your bounteous joy,
Linux, OS of fun-times-ness,
You are my computer toy.
May 09, 2004
Linux in Quantity
After a day of much Linuxing, it is now time for much sleeping. Ah yes, I shall enjoy rest unfettered... or something like that.
I've finally got my RH9 system handing out IP addresses, getting it to actuallly forward IP packets and let computers behind it on the internet is a different matter. Hurrah for great fun times.
Oh, and I love my new/old curvy keyboard. Its just so handy!
May 08, 2004
Moore Developments
An opportunity has been presented for me to work down near Purdue for a decent bit of the summer. I would be configuring, installing, and troubleshooting 17 PII class systems as parts of a radio station network. Its for a little Christian radio station. They would all be running RedHat 9 and dialing into eachother, with the exception of a small LAN at the church. I'd probably head out in a week. It would be lots of fun, not pay too much, and involve much Linux learning and computer messing. I'd appreciate if you guys could all pray for me, this is a unique and suprising opportunity.
Oh, and I traded a 36" Gateway Destination monitor for a 24" Sony Flat-tube widescreen today. The Gateway only went to 800x600, the Sony does 1920x1200.
W00T.
The Summer Begins!
So much has happened in just one day,
I have a job for the summer, I'll be working at Oh's, a computer store with buku goodness of used parts. Today I picked up two PCI 3Com cards, a monitor extension cable, and a ergonomic keyboard with a built-in touch pad all for under 7 dollars. The keyboard is great because I can use it to swap amongst systems.
I hung out with Cass and the Spanish IV class a little, they have gotten wierder since I left. I think my sane and controlling influence was holding them back. So, I propose a poem to summer, computers, and Spanish.
The summer college student finds
Amusing things, its true,
But with passing time he pines,
He just gets rather blue,
And so he must endeavour long,
To find some wholesome fun,
Perhaps in smoking with a bong,
Or robbing with a gun,
But this poor college student is,
Stranded in his home state,
Although he's glad its not Texas,
He cannot celebrate,
And so he turns to other joys,
Spanish, Computer, Food,
With mastery he forms these toys,
And sees that it is good,
Hola gringos, CPU,
Banana and donut,
Knock back another Mountain Dew,
And so life seems good, but...
He knows its not right, something's broke,
And his life seems so troubled,
He'll die without it, its no joke,
He needs Smothered and Covered.
There you go, folks, I'm all poesied out now. So goodnight!
May 04, 2004
Integrating Faith and Learning
"The conversion of high-level code to machine language involves a multi-stage translation process. The high-level code is not suitable for running directly on the CPU, which only understands basic machine instructions. Describe an analogy of this translation to the Christian Life."
I'm so glad I'm learning spiritual things in finals...