Month: August 2006

this old house

losing phone jacks here, one at a time. the Internets were offline earlier until I tried plugging the DSL interface (no, I won’t call it a modem since it doesn’t do what modems do) into a phone jack in another room. It stayed online, so now I have a snake of Cat5 cable running through a couple of rooms to get everything working again.

Lost the phone jack in the bedroom ages ago, but didn’t care all that much. Now I think it may be time to call in some professionals. The spaghetti-tangle/spider-web I can see looks too messy for my rusty telco skillz. I don’t even have a set of punch tools anymore.

So if your DSL connectivity gets squirrelly, that’s one diagnostic step you can try.

fear is the mind-killer and election-winner

Flying Under Security Level Red:

I thought they were saving red for another horrific day like 9/11, when there’s such a heightened state of emergency that planes are grounded, government officials head for safety, people scramble to account for loved ones and TV goes 24/7 terror.

Well, you might do that. But you’re not watching your party’s hold on the levers of power weaken, or the stain of corruption creeping ever-closer. So you wouldn’t need to use terror and fear as weapons on your own people.

public access via public transport

Hiking via Metro:

Samantha Mastridge sez:

I am not in the habit of, uh, hiking, but I realize that this is the Northwest and that lots and lots of you like your nature not fenced in. And y’know, we’ve also got a fairly extensive, if sometimes slow and unreliable, bus system hereabouts. So why not combine the two?

Apparently it can be done. A fellow named Jay Pinyon has put together a list of hikes that can be reached by public transportation. He seems to have thought of everything, with detailed descriptions of the hikes, maps, and information on how to get home. It’s all so thorough that I feel like I’ve been there already.

The thorough introduction explains all of the reasons behind the list, along with how to be a good hiker. Make sure you take lots of pictures while you’re out there so I can see what it looks like.

This bears looking into. Getting out of town (not too far, though) is on my summer ‘to do’ list. Time to stop procrastinating on at least one thing.

the other end of the audiophile spectrum: a DIY turntable

DIY Turntable:

Altmann Turntable
Stokes writes “I’ve seen scores of homebrew MP3 players, radio receivers, et cetera, but this is a first for me: a totally homebrewed turntable. Even the tone arm was DIY. The fact the thing is built largely out of plywood, thread and Harley-Davidson parts yet looks quite professional makes it even more exceptional.” – Link.

buying time

At this point in the life of my iBook G4, I am rebooting every couple of days. It seems that as I open more and more applications or do more stuff, the kernel requires more RAM than I have, swap files are created, stuff is paged out and paged in on a s-l-o-w disk, and things get really tedious.

In 7 hours, we have already needed 1/2 a Gb of swap.

0:05 up 7:05, 2 users, load averages: 0.28 0.78 0.78

-rw——T 1 root wheel 67108864 Aug 8 17:00 swapfile0
-rw——T 1 root wheel 67108864 Aug 8 22:18 swapfile1
-rw——T 1 root wheel 134217728 Aug 8 22:21 swapfile2
-rw——T 1 root wheel 268435456 Aug 8 22:56 swapfile3

So it looks like some people have managed to squeeze a 1 Gb DIMM where Apple only offered a 512. Meaning this little beast could accommodate 1152 Mb of RAM.

iBook G4 800 MHz [12.1 LCD] October-2003:

Apple’s ibook G4 800 GHz comes with 128 MB soldered on the logic board. The system has one memory expansion slot. The main memory of the system can be upgraded to 1152 MB [maximum].

Not all vendors claim to be able to do this in an 800 MHz, ca. 2003 iBook G4.

Bears investigating.

help?

So this pinhola/Holga contest closes on the 12th. I am trying to figure out what I should submit.

I get 4 entries, and would like to diversify. My pinhole shots are here and the Holga stuff is here.

Any suggestions? You can just comment on the stuff at Flickr, if you see anything you like.

Thanks!