25 Sep 2004
In the anarchy and chaos which has reigned since this “let’s sell the house” thing began, this geek has been feeling alone and screwdriver-less. Well, that’s not quite true. I did have the screwdriver, for a time, living discreetly behind my D-Link ADSL modem thing. At some point in time, one of the co-residents appears to have borrowed and not returned this spectacularly useful device to its’ temporary home.
This event saddens me greatly, as I maintain that this screwdriver was, without a doubt, the best in the world. Sadly, I can’t find a photo at this time — if/when we are reunited, I’ll be sure to post happy-snaps for all the world to see.
In the meantime, I must be content with using the world’s bluntest not-Swiss-Army knife, and the garden clips you see on the right of your screen (or, if you’re using a browser which sucks, the image located slightly above… at least, the alt description is “The Wilkinson Sword, garden clippers extraordinaire!”). Spectacular though these utilities may be, I miss my screwdriver.
Yes, I really did use those garden clips on a computer, and no, I feel no remorse. Someone whinged at me about blunting them, but I promptly started whinging back about how some horrible monster had swallowed my screwdriver, magnetic tips and all, so they soon shut up. The network card in question is no worse off, I’m glad to inform you all. And neither is the Voodoo 5, to the best of my knowledge… it’s currently sitting, quite unused, on my desk doing absolutely nothing.
Why? Well, it was sitting in my makeshift “router”, wasn’t it… and that’s just throughly stupid! In fact, that router was equipped with an overclocked Pentium 3 running at 560MHz (112MHz FSB), 256MB of RAM, a 64MB Voodoo 5 5500, and a Creative PCI soundcard, the model of which I haven’t bothered to ascertain… although, from vague memory, I think it’s a Vibra 128. Oh, yeah, and an intel Pro NIC and another generic Realtek 8139 card. Does that seem utterly pointless to anyone else?
I know, other people are (or were, once upon a time) running equally stupid Smoothwall system configurations, but that doesn’t make it any better — I have this vague dream in which I manage to build a router that is actually QUIET for once! Shocking, I know. Well, this Pentium 3, when I grabbed it from the shelf, was already so much quieter than the old router was — despite having a graphics card which needs molex power, and has two fans running at full bore… not to mention the extra case fan or two.
That doesn’t matter, though. The old router sounded much like a jet engine when starting up… I’ve been meaning to ask an environmental audio guy if I can borrow a meter for the weekend some time, just for the fun of having some real numbers. At any rate, even the new system was more noisy than it should be; let’s not start on power consumption.
I opened it up, removed the sound card, which was UTTERLY unnecessary, using the painfully BLUNT knife as a screwdriver. Next up? That graphics card has to go! Unplug molex (why is that always so hard?!), try to unscrew with knife. This isn’t working. A few minutes before, I’d tried to remove the graphics card from the old router, to swap out (yeah, I had plenty of others around, but I knew this one worked, and couldn’t be bothered sorting through those which didn’t… that’s another activity for a rainy day) with that in the new Pentium 3 system. Bzzzzzzt.
Hurray for burred screws! Of course, they were only so burred that it would cause a problem for anything that didn’t fit the hole nicely — my usual screwdriver would have! Logical solution to the problem? Pliers. Had any of them survived the garage-stuffing holocaust? Unlikely!
I furtively glanced around the kitchen for an implement suited to the purpose. Someone had been outside, gardening, and brought the snips inside when they finished. VICTORY IS MINE!!! I don’t care that they’re garden snips, if they work, score 1 to Josh! Needless to say, they did.
The cards were swapped, and all lived happily ever after. Now, if only I could figure out how to make Smoothwall APM aware…
24 Sep 2004
Hmm. My original post about this thing didn’t exactly go as planned, so I’ve addressed the only feedback I recieved, and am back again with the results.
If you were one of the three who commented previously, it’s probably worth wandering over to the old post, and reading my ammendment (after all the comments were made, but hey). There were two or three technical problems at that stage, but really, I was perfectly aware of them, and it wasn’t intended to be a permanent situation by anyones reckoning.
The three things, in no particular order, were as follows
- For a decorative image, this thing was seriously hefty. 23KB is nice, but seeing it’s part of a CSS element, users won’t even know it’s LOADING, let alone wait for it to do so.
- It was a PNG image, a fact which caused Internet Explorer users some consternation. You know what? Big deal. I don’t care. Get a better browser, or go somewhere else that does care — this is my personal website, and if you think it looks like crap because you elect to USE crap, then that’s your prerogative. The rest of us plebs will be stuck with our dodgy Open-Source, standards-compliant software, whilst you laugh at us from afar, enjoying your DirectX CSS extensions and DSO exploits… I mean… okay, stopping now.
- The image was hosted on my workstation at home, a system for which I have no ambitions of uptime. It gets turned on, and off, as I desire and use it — if you were looking at the
blockquote and wondering what on earth this rambling soul was speaking of, that’s probably because the image wasn’t displaying, as my computer was turned off. Apologies if you’re in another timezone and were trying to view it… the problem is fixed now, so hey
And they’re the three. I’m a little curious as to how Stuart managed to form an opinion of the graphic, seeing I’m moderately certain my computer wasn’t on, and hadn’t been for several hours, at the time he posted, but hey… I can only presume that he was simply agreeing with previous statements about the size of the image.
So, here’s what has happened. I cut a production version of the image, which (predictably) did very little for the filesize, as it was all whitespace anyway, something modern compression algorithms deal with quite effectively. That shaved a grand total of 1KB from the total file size, when saved as a PNG. There wasn’t a whole lot else I could do, other than screw with compression options and hope it did something useful. The file got bigger, inevitably… that’s what happens when Josh doesn’t know what he’s doing!
Time to give the dreaded, horrible GIF format a go. Yay, I’ve got 255 shades of grey to play with. You wouldn’t believe it, but that isn’t enough… I’m sure there is all kinds of stuff I could have done fiddling with indexed palettes, were I using something more powerful… The GIMP is great, but a tad obscure with some things. That said, the last time I played with indexed palettes was mid-2003, when I was working over at Designate — and even then, it was only because the archaic version of Flash I was using at the time didn’t like what various Adobe packages were throwing at it. Plus, I was surrounded by people who lived and breathed that stuff, so it’s not like I was stuck out on a limb, negotiating unfamiliar software territory alone.
So, the GIF image, with transparency, ended up at an impressively tiny 891 bytes for a 200 by 200 pixel image. The only problem was, it looked as though that were the file size compared to the purer PNG and shop files, too. Scrap that idea, it’s a complete corruption of all design which went into this element! Not that there was a substantial amount, but for a concept sketch and a 10 minute implementation… still, I’m fairly proud of the aesthetics of it, and conversion to GIF format completely destroyed that.
There is one option left, at this point, for web-distribution. And it doesn’t involve transparency, or alpha channels, or any of the fun stuff which I’d really prefer to use in this case… yes, I’m speaking of JPG images. I just changed the colour of my backing layer to the background colour of my blockquote element, and it worked… nothing particularly amazing or special about any of this, so I won’t detail it. For those who are curious, the hex code for the backing colour is #D3D3D3 — in RGB-speak, that’s 211 for all (obviously, that means HSV would be 0,0,211).
And the outcome? At 7.51KB, it’s still a little bigger than perhaps it should be. I’m over it, though. It’s a non-essential element of the design, and can load in however long it wants… if people see the graphic, great. If not, well… I’d hope that other elements of design make up for it.
This time around, I’m inviting all comment, technical or artistic. If you have some idea how to use indexed palettes in The GIMP properly, let me know!
To see this blockquote element in action, take a look at either of these two posts:
http://www.joahua.com/blog/2004/09/24/killer-photography
http://www.joahua.com/blog/2004/09/22/solid-linux-rss-reader
24 Sep 2004
I just stumbled upon Andy Budd’s Travel Photography website, and it’s incredible, both in terms of presentation and photography/content itself.
Next time I’ve got a free hour or four somewhere with a Flash install (Steve?), I want to see if I can figure out a way to automate the cool presentation style he’s got happening over there, using Flash/ActionScript or something… of course, my photography is garbage compared to his work, but hey! I’m hoping something will crop up so that I can justify spending time on such a project… I can think of a few immediate applications off the top of my head, but it’s pretty unnecessary, if very cool. We shall see.
On a standards-related aside, the folks over at Web Standards Group have been clawing at each others throats for the last few days, regarding the best way to implement Flash in a standards compliant manner with XHTML. Umm. Okay, whatever. The answer, as best as I’ve understood it, is simply to revert to HTML 4.01, or just to get over it. I throughly agree with David McKinnon’s response on the issue, which I’ve reproduced in part here:
This may sound like heresy in this list, but the goal of using Web standards
is not to get your site to validate. (Wait, put down that pitchfork!) The
way I see it people, is that it’s all about people. The goal is to make it
better for people. Better for viewers, who don’t get things looking like
krud because they choose the ‘wrong’ browser or platform. Better for people
with special needs. Better for people who build and maintain the site and
better for the people who will redesign the site when it comes to that.
Then, when the forces of good rise up to crush the forces of tyranny all
people will live in…
Er… sorry, got a bit carried away there…
Anyway it may just be better to use the flash default code because it works
even if it doesn’t validate.
Amen.
23 Sep 2004
An MSN conversation snippet, for your amusement, regarding frogs.
- [21:13:44] Ben:
- if frogs go pop in the microwave what do you think they do in the oven?
- [21:14:05] Josh:
- gas or electric?
- [21:14:19] Ben:
- both
- [21:14:22] Ben:
- not at the same time, but yeah
- [21:16:00] Ben:
- ok for example in the gas oven?
- [21:16:45] Josh:
- well, that depends on whether the frog was directly exposed to an element or not…
burning frog is bad.
overcooked frog isn’t great, either
but at least it doesn’t smell immediately.
also, is the frog fresh from the slimy pond, or has it been cleaned first?
further, has it been killed whilst cleaning occurred?
or are we talking a live, jumping frog in the oven?
because it would, you know. (jump, that is)
right before it got cozy, and probably went to sleep, before waking up, thinking “it’s getting hot in here, i’m going to take my clothes off”, like a bad R’n’B track, before realising “hey, I’m a frog, I don’t do the whole ‘clothes’ thing”
- [21:18:35] Ben:
- well you do know if you boil a frog from room temperature in water it doesnt realise until about 3 secods before it dies that its getting hot
- [21:18:43] Josh:
- and then starting beating on the door, screaming “LET ME OUT, LET ME OUT!”
- [21:18:49] Ben:
- hehe
- [21:18:53] Ben:
- i can see kermit doing that
- [21:18:53] Josh:
- hence, it is possible to draw THIS conclusion: “we all know frogs go “POP” in the microwave, “POP” in the microwave, “POP” in the microwave. We all know frogs go “POP” in the microwave, they don’t scream “LET ME OUT, LET ME OUT!” as they do in ovens!”
- [21:20:02] Ben:
- ahhh
- [21:20:05] Josh:
- adjust tune to suit, cook at 210degrees for 20 minutes, salt to taste.
23 Sep 2004
Has anyone else noticed the potential new gadgets seem to have for wreaking havoc upon a geek workspace? I’m really struggling here after the latest toy arrived today. Things are un-cool, but supremely gimmicky.
As you can see, it’s a KVM. Or, if you can’t see, then the description should have informed you. Anyway. That little goody wasted a LOT of my time, this afternoon! Not that this is necessarily a BAD thing, mind, seeing I’m now struggling with the purpose of my existence in a post-exam world. Well, not really. But you get the idea. Hmm.
So, I’d originally decided to get a KVM or three (well, okay… two) because there were computers enough to justify it. I was planning to use two computers, one as a dev machine, and the other as a miscellany/office/timewasting platform, both of which (for the present moment) running Linux. Of course, then the house decided to sell itself, so Josh’s random technology crap flew away to the graveyard in the sky, also known as my garage. This meant that my number of production machines decreased. A time of great sadness, no doubt.
But I digress. Long story short, shoving all nostalgia, eulogies and poeticism aside, the reason I once had for purchasing this equipment had faded somewhat, at least in the interim, until a new place of residence is acquired and I can go back to being messy again (well, it wasn’t even messy… just cluttered. You couldn’t see the floor, but the cases were only one layer deep, so that’s acceptable by my reckoning). This means, of course, that the only other thing I really had to use this darn switchbox on was my trusty router, used for routing IP packets, not reptiles from drains. Yes, there is a story behind that, and no, I don’t care to tell it now.
In an unfortunate turn of events, the aforementioned trusty router is something of an archaic beast, using an old AT power supply (for those to whom that means nothing, let’s just call it analog — you turn it on, you turn it off; there’s no power management special crap), and all the peripheral support that this entails. Well, guess what. Seeing I bought this KVM in the last decade (well, okay, seven to eight years… close enough, AT is dead), there aren’t any AT keyboard ports to be seen on it. Fortunately, I can still use it just for switching VGA, but this just isn’t anywhere near as much fun.
Enter the nightmare.
So, I waltzed out to the garage, negotiated with spiders of all persuasions, drifted between dust and precariously stacked furniture, to the cupboard, at the very back, which I have claimed for myself as the Fortress I.T. at 70 Lenthall Street. There, if you’re an interested thief, you now know where to look. It’s not worth going past the spiders unless you’re desperately in need of some fairly specific hardware, mind. The newest thing in there is a Pentium 3 system, and even that has Alzheimer’s. I emerged with the older of the two Pentium 3 systems (because this one had a nicer case), although I didn’t know which I had chosen at the time — it was a bagged system, in an attempt to keep rat excrement from falling into it. Okay, it’s not quite that bad, but I’d rather the rodents (and, more realistically, spiders webs) had as little to do with my gear as possible.
And what an opportune time for a hard drive failure! The system I’d extracted had a 3200MB hard drive, once hard at work in a BDC server (not mine). Apparently, too hard at work. Graagh!!. That’s the second drive around that size I’ve lost in recent months, and it’s starting to annoy me. I need a new fleet of smallish (hey, largish is good, too) drives, which haven’t been abused in servers without enough memory flogging at swapfiles for years on end (I happen to know, because I was the guy who de-commissioned the machine, that the server that drive came from only had 32MB of RAM, and was used for too many years, with too many users. Die, stupid I.T. departments, die. That’s German for “The, stupid I.T. departments, the.”). So my plans for world domination using an elegant distro and a relatively spacious (considering all the thing would be doing is packet forwarding, and web caching/filtering for five-odd users) were once again foiled. And, unlike Soolie, it was nothing to do with my sleeping patterns.
Those were the causes. These are the effects.
I shutdown my router. You may have noticed a period of a few hours when Josh would normally be online and talking in 3rd person, but wasn’t. This is why. The router (note that I’m talking about a converted desktop PC running a slightly hacked version of Coyote Linux, not a “hardware” router) was then moved into a conveniently located spot of floor, and dismantled. This is a more challenging procedure than it sounds, seeing my weapon of choice for such matters, the blue screwdriver which I would worship religiously, were that not against my real religion, had gone missing in this great shuffle of crap into the garage.
And so, I embarked on a dangerous voyage of case-unscrewing, using only my teeth. Well, okay. My teeth, and the worlds’ bluntest imitation Swiss Army knife. Or maybe just the worlds’ bluntest imitation Swiss Army knife. At any rate, it was far more difficult than it should have been. I ended up using the knife as a lever, to PRY the screws out, simply because I forgot which was I was trying to unscrew (you have no idea… this seriously took me fifteen minutes for six screws). Note that the six screws include hard drive screws, not just the case… honestly, who has six screws on their case that they use?!
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, on topic. So, this hard drive, right. It’s a 420MB Connor beast. They don’t make them like they used to. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say a kind thing about Connor drives, so I’ll break the mold. Guess what, folks? This is my most enduring hard drive. Having said that, I’m bracing for it’s imminent death, some time next week, at which point I’ll be completely out of small hard drives, and back to searching for floppy-router distributions. Long live FreeSCO.
Hardware is only ever the first half of any good I.T. geek’s nightmare, though. I hadn’t STARTED on the software aspect of things.
Right. I now have a hard drive, and a Pentium 3 system with PS/2 ports for keyboard and mouse, respectively. I don’t need the mouse, but that’s irrelevant, as I’ve always kind of been a keyboard guy anyway. Goal number one achieved! I can now double-tap “Scroll Lock” and flick between displays! How cool is that?! Not cool enough, I’m thinking.
Next up, pick a software package of choice. Yeah, well. Dale seems to always be ranting about “his smoothie“, so I figured I’d give that a shot. Why not — it was also the first router-related ISO I found sitting in my downloads directory. This computer even has a CD drive in it now! I know, ridiculous for such a device, but hey, you get that when it’s haphazardly built from spares dug out from amidst the spiders webs three inches thick in Josh’s garage after storage for one week. Hyperbole rocks.
Install, take one. Looking good, looking good. I figure out how you’re meant to setup PPPoE on these things, after a few goes. I discover I’ve got an Intel 10/100 Pro NIC in there (the genuine PCI article, not one of those crappy integrated things! ;-)), which is always cool… I remember when they used to cost $80.00! Oh, the nostalgia. I discover I can’t remember my DynDNS password for the life of me. And that I’m equally struggling when it comes to recalling my username. But that’s okay. The software is working, isn’t it?
Bzzzzzzzzt.
Well, it was working fine until I patched it! Hmm. Four patches, apparently not cumulative, and not to be installed simultaneously. Maybe I’m just a stupid user, or maybe I got lucky… maybe it’s Maybelline.
So, take 1 with software. Once I (manually, at command line, seeing I couldn’t guess the interface correctly — I’ve since figured out that the Realtek cheapie looks cheap on the backplane, and the Intel Pro NIC has an impressive array of no fewer than FOUR flashing LED’s! That made life easier, but I’m wishing I’d noticed sooner…) managed to get interfaces up, it worked great, until I patched it. At which point, I had a system refusing to boot. In retrospect, trying to simultaneously upgrade FOUR kernels probably wasn’t the best of ideas. Learning experience. *cough*
Take 2, it’s going okay. I haven’t had to reboot yet, so I’m a tad nervous about what it’ll do to me tomorrow morning… I’ve been sporadic enough in answering email lately, due to Exchange server being stupid with my work account (heh, a switch back to IMAP fixed everything… telling, no?), and further downtime certainly won’t help matters! I still haven’t patched this version, so if you know some l33t exploits to let you get an über root-kit on my b0xen, now’s the time. Oh yeah, is now the time. Because I’m locking this sucker down tomorrow morning, assuming it comes back up at all.
This KVM is very cool, but I’m currently hating it for making me do what I just did to my network!