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2006.10.08 ~07
My First (Personal) Soldering Project
I applied my non-existent soldering skills to a little project trying to
fix a non-working dance pad (non-mainstream brand). Lessons I learned
in soldering today:
* tin the damn tip. It really really helps, even if it forms a gigantic
ball of solder on the tip.
* shortening wires that are too long is easier than trying to extend it.
* desoldering a mistake can get messy and crappy.
* applying iron to a wire's end can still burn the nearby insulation
because the conductive metal, of all things, gets hot.
* holding onto the wire near the heated end is a bad idea.
* the spent solder on the tip needs to get scraped off often.
* scraping it off with a wet napkin does weird things to the iron.
* breathing burnt insulation hurts.
* breathing burnt flux also hurts.
* using lead-free solder gives me warm fuzzies.
* using rosin core doesn't.
* diag cutters help with those spiky solder points. I should get some.
* when measuring the resistance of a trace, it helps if the trace is not
already covered in epoxy.
Now I need a cheap-o USB PC gamepad to hook up this puppy. And
remembering to attach the negative terminal properly so that the
electrolytic capacitors can do their jobs.
2006.09.23 ~15
So like there's this trip with a student group at UCLA that was planned
out three months ago, but somehow I marked Sep 29 and the date of the
trip was never mentioned again since, so when mailing list chatter about
the trip picked up a couple days ago, I got a bit suspicious, and got
confirmation that it's for today through Monday, not next week.
I seem to be really bad about synchronizing with group-known
information. I may need to work on that this school year.
2006.09.13 ~13
So I was reminded that I...
(a) have a .plan
(b) have a dead/resurrectable Q3 mod cvs respository sitting on this server.
I should do something useful about them.
2005.04.14 ~07 vidcap and 3D
Well, finally, I got video-capture and accelerated 3D both working
again, again.
Radeon 7200 vidcard with VIVO, latest X.org from CVS, latest Mesa from
CVS, latest drm from CVS, linux 2.6.11.7.
X.org CVS at this point has incorporated the video-capturing stuff of
gatos, so the ati.2 and ati.4.4.0 stuff from the GATOS project are not
needed, and in fact break the install.
A major snagging point for me was the kernel modules. Basically
km_api_drv.ko and km_drv.ko have to be loaded before drm.ko and
radeon.ko get loaded. Otherwise radeon.ko initializes the vidcard
first, and km_drv's probe() never gets called.
3D failed, but vidcap worked, using stable Mesa 6.2.1 (mesa_6_2_1).
Blindly jumping to Mesa CVS finally got 3D working. Furthermore,
glxgears runs a tad faster than I remember (1400-ish now compared to
what I think was around 1250-ish way back).
2005.04.07 ~05 another suspiciously scammish phone call
Got another suspicious phone call, this time offering $200 in coupons
for a shopping spree, mentioning enough department store names to
trigger Carnivore. Also, I was told this month was Consumer
Appreciation Month... but that it was really in March. When I pressed
about the previous "Consumer Appreciation Month" call from January, the
caller sidestepped the question quite overtly, trying to rush through a
script. Quite obviously a script, since he didn't seem to want to
sidetrack from his side of the conversation. The repeated words were
also a giveaway of a script; I kept interrupted and he'd keep trying to
resume with the exact same words. I don't know about other people, but
reading off a script gives me the impression of an ulterior motive in
play. The clincher was when he mentioned free movie passes in addition
to the coupons, good for ANY MOVIE (no exceptions!). When pressed for
names of which theaters, he listed so many theater chains, even those I
know aren't even remotely close to California, that all I could do was
just retort "That's bullshit!" and hung up right there.
Note: free movie passes, espeically those given to the unwashed masses
(me), have close to 0% chance of being honored for Super Duper Ultra
Premiere Specials, such as Day 1 of the next Star Wars movie. That, and
no way in hell every movie theater in the nation/world will
simultaneously decide to honor a blanket movie pass, franchising
notwithstanding.
TANSTAAFL -- Economics 101.
2005.01.18 ~08 Content-free ads of "Million Dollar Baby"
The ads for the movie "Million Dollar Baby" are fast approaching
spammish. First of all, I'm hearing it all over the place (radio in car
during commute). Secondly, there's nothing substantiative in the ads.
It's all "this person said...", "that group nominated us for...", "these
editors proclaim...", "look at how many thumbs up we got", and so on.
Not even a slight hint at the plot of the movie. The closest thing to a
plot hint was a comparison of its powerfulness(?) to "Mystic River".
But otherwise completely content-free and based on what someone else is
saying or doing. The movie makers aren't saying squat about it.
All this makes me seriously doubt the value of the movie. What the hell
is the movie about? No one's saying. Hrm... maybe it's a pointless movie.
2005.01.05 ~04 Gasoline vouchers?
So this is the second time I got a call offering vouchers for $200 worth
of gasoline. This time claiming to come from Shell Oil Company.
The first time I got such a call was a few months ago, and I got really
suspicious over it. I forget the details of that call, aside from that
the conversation somehow degenerated into a "what? I can't hear you!"
shouting match, then cussing the other end out as I hung up the phone.
This time, since it was the second of such calls, I decided to make a
note of it somewhere. As it only happened minutes before I started
writing this entry, the details ought to be mre recallable.
So, the call comes in, I answer it. First hint something was amiss,
there was a lot of noise/chatter in the background. In fact, I thought
the call was coming from an analog cell phone. The second thing was
that the caller, unlike the more legitimate telemarketers, did not open
with "is such-and-such there", but instead goes off with "Hi, my name is
Charles, and I'm calling from Shell Oil Company." For some reason, the
fact the guy gave his name (if that's his real name) right at the start
raised a red flag as well.
Thirdly, the caller mentions my phone number was selected to receive
$200 in vouchers for gasoline at any Shell station. The mention of
"number" rang in my head. Phone number, as opposed to name, address,
or a frickin' lottery ticket. It's a really strange way of selecting a
"winner", using a phone number.
Most of all was the material being pushed. USD 200 of gasoline is a lot
of money, a lot of gasoline, to be given away for free. With the price
of gasoline around here, that represents approximately 90 gallons; for
my car alone approximates to 2250 miles (um... 3500-ish km) of driving,
which I think is enough to drive to the nearest Canadian border crossing
and back. The sheer amount of money being given away for nothing was
just staggeringly ridiculous.
The other thing that got me thinking was the notion that my phone number
was chosen more or less at random. If that were the case, they (the
purported gasoline company) may as well just hand out gasoline lottery
at the pumps (station ownership issues notwithstanding). But even that,
being as random as it is, may as well be just a general price reduction
of all gasoline products. In other words, there something bizarre about
handing out vouchers/discounts to random people when that wouldn't be
much different from just an across-the-board price reduction.
The final straw was when the caller said, basically, that he needed to
verify my phone number, and read back my phone number. Or the number he
dialed. Something deep inside me felt very insulted by this reading
back. Perhaps because he, the very caller, said this, my, phone number
was selected, then asking if the number is correct. Couldn't he ask if
the number was correct *first*, then start the spiel? Asking later felt
like he was insulting my intelliegence (which he probably was, a google
search later). My response was silence. Utter silence. The guy
eventually hung up; when I hit the 'off' button, the display showed 1:05
of talk time; even if it's of minimal consolation, at least the caller's
phone bill got rounded up to two minutes (or is that even a good thing
in retrospect...).
Now for the google result. I googled for "Shell Oil Company gasoline
voucher". Lo and behold, the only hit that had all the terms in a
meaningful position was a warning about an identity theft scam:
http://www.wate.com/global/story.asp?s=2666657&ClientType=PrintableBasically the whole spiel about gasoline and vouchers is a ruse to
grease up the victim to start handing out personal information.
Detailed personal information, along the lines of every damned digit on
their personal check -- routing, account, everything.
Now, if this caller is part of a scam ring, then someone else's money
and life was used to pay his phone bill. Either directly (ID-theft
phone purchase) or indirectly, such as, oh, draining someone's checking
account down to, and perhaps even past ("overdraft protection"), the
last penny. Which is why now I'm now wondering if it was such a good
thing to deliberately crank up "his" phone bill to the next billed
minute.
Overall, though, my cynicism/pessimism, paranoia, and wandering thoughts
had stopped a dumb, and potentially dangerous, phone call early. Now if
only ATT would permit me to "reach out and strangle someone."
Life: No Life found.
Project:
1. Project FI, Quake 3 mod (
http://www.icculus.org/fi/)
a. provide an extensible environment for a Q3 mod. The intended notion is that of "mutators" in Unreal Tournament.
b. FI:WFC, a more faithful reproduction of Q2WF for Q3 than WFA.
2. QuakeScheme
* Extensible language for Project FI.
* Builds on TinySCHEME (
http://tinyscheme.sourceforge.net/)
* Deal with the idiosyncrasies of Q3VM not handled by most other Scheme impls.
3. Q3VM libc
* Implementation of Standard C Library for Q3VM bytecode.
* Implementation of a subset of Single Unix Specification v2 (SUS v2).
* Help import third-party library into Q3VM.
4. QuakeScheme GUI/widget set
a. Need to research advanced OO and GUI of Scheme derivatives and Common Lisp.
b. Replication/extension of boxy widgets in Q3TA (Q3 PR 1.27+).
c. Pie menus -- just to annoy theoddone33.
5. Q3 compilation toolchain
[X] q3lcc sources (official version out with Q3A SDK 1.32)
[X] q3asm - get static to work, dammit.
[ ] q3as - assemble-only (.asm to .o).
[ ] q3ld - link-only (.o/.a to .qvm).
6. ZBoxZ (PalmOS) rewrite
um.... hrm...
7. misc PalmOS stuff
a. PiNGer (gfx viewer)
* generalize interface to a "any-gfx" viewer (libpnm?)