Category: moved from livejournal

TiVo…

February 23, 2005

So I’m thinking of getting a TiVo. Here’s why… Costco has 80GB (80 hour) TiVos for $269, with a $100 mail-in rebate. The monthly charge is $12.95. I’ve been thinking of resubscribing to Netflix, but that’s $20/mo, and I mostly tend to want content to watch while eating dinner or whatnot. This means :30 tv shows or so. Netflix has a harder time providing this…

I’ve thought about building a MythTV box, but with the cost of a large hard drive, memory, quiet case, and a MPEG2 video capture board, I’m looking at around $400 to get things going this route, plus my time. At this rate the break-even point would be 17 months… Granted, MythTV would allow me to do more with the captured files, but if I want a captured show, I’ll be doing it in DV, not MPEG2, and thusly using the capture device on my Mac. So, that’s kinda out the window…

Hmm, does anyone who reads this have a Series 2 TiVo and actually use it? The price isn’t too bad, and I think it’d be pretty handy… Costco’s price is also a lot cheaper than buying it from Best Buy or Netflix.

One other neat thing… Hopefully Tivo will get around to releasing a new Mac version of TiVo Desktop fairly soon, which will allow me to watch recorded shows on my Mac. Right now it’d be PC-only. Poo.

Tie Rod

February 21, 2005

Hmm, so $179.40 later and my car has a new passenger side outer tie rod. $75 for the tie rod itself. Looking now I could have purchased this from Jim Fresard for $58.05, but labor to install it was $30. That seems pretty reasonable… Then with a four-wheel alignment was $69.95. Looking now, my alignment was a fair bit out of whack.

That said, my car now drives considerably better than it had been. For maybe the last six months I’ve noticed a small knock when going over very small bumps, and I’d noticed what felt like the car was pulling, but it wasn’t consistent. When I’d take my hands off the wheel, it’d stay within the lane, only moving like there was a cross wind.

After doing some reading, this appears to be consistent with a worn tie rod. Now the slight clunking / knocking sound is gone, and the car drives as if it’s on rails. I also don’t have to fear for the tie rod breaking, and the wheel ending up damaging everything near by while I skid to a halt against a concrete barrier. I think this is a good thing.

automotive moved from livejournal

Tie Rod + Tee Vee

February 21, 2005

Well, it seems that I’ll be going to get a tie rod replaced after work today. When at Belle Tire on Friday to get an oil change, tire rotation, and alignment check, it was noted that they could do nothing about the alignment because I have a worn passenger side tie rod. After doing some driving and paying VERY close attention today, it appears that my car shuffles around the lane as if it were windy, even when it isn’t. I guess I’ve just been subconciously correcting for this and should get it fixed before the tie rod breaks. The quoted price was $75 for the tie rod, $35 for labor, and $69.95 for a four-wheel alignment. $49.95 for the alignment if only a two-wheel version is needed. I guess I should get this done, eh?

Also, I’ve been thinking about getting a new TV. I’ve been looking at this Philips 30PW8402 (PDF Specs) set from Costco for the last few weeks. It’s a true 16:9 HDTV 30″ tube, with HDMI inputs. This would allow me to hook a computer to it fairly easily, and with it being an HDTV, the resolution would be high enough that a PC (or Mac mini) could be used with it properly. It’s $599.99 for the TV, and they have a stand that seems to match fairly nicely for $99.99. There is a picture of the box shot of the stand here, and here is the front and rear if the TV itself.

The price seems pretty good, and I’ve heard real good things about it from a friend of mine who has one.

Also, if I get this, I’ll be selling my current TV, if anyone is interested. It’s a Sony KV-32FS13, 32″ flat screen Wega TV. It’s a very, very nice model, but I want to replace it with an HDTV. I’d like $400 for it, with the matching stand. If anyone is interested, there is a picture of it here, and it comes with the remote (of course) and I’m fairly certain I’ve also got the original manual and receipt. I paid around $1200 for the TV, and $80 for the stand when I first got it. It works great, but I really want something that is natively widescreen.

So, if you’re interested, let me know… This price seems to be the going rate without the stand, but since I have no need for the stand, I figured I’d just throw it in anyway.

UPDATE: Hmm, I just realized that acquiring this TV would necessitate the purchase of a component video input switcher, a component output cable for the Gamecube, and a progressive scan DVD player. I guess it’s at least a reason to pick up a nicely region hackable Daewoo and sign back up for Netflix.

acquired things automotive moved from livejournal

…

February 20, 2005

Hmm, this is kind of disappointing. I acquired the Broadcom BC5805 SSL accelerator and I’ve got it installed in a test machine. While it seems to accelerate rsa and dsa signing under OpenSSL, it doesn’t actually accelerate des and md5 stuff like I had expected.

So I did some digging, and it seems that OpenSSL is actually looking for /dev/ubscrypt and /dev/ubskey so that it can hook into the card itself and accelerate things.

I find this disappointing, because there is not a driver available for providing such things under FreeBSD, only under Linux.

computers electronics moved from livejournal

Pecan Sticky Bun & Fresh Coffee

February 19, 2005

[Cross posted to and …]

Clicky for HUUUUUGE…

As I tend to do, I’ve taken another photo of a mid-afternoon snack. This time it’s a pecan sticky bun from Ridley’s Bakery and Cafe (in Troy, Michigan) and some coffee that I had just roasted. The coffee is a 50/50 blend of Organic Mexican and Organic Sumatra and is absolutely wonderful. When it was placed in the press, the coffee had been ground for about two minutes, and was still warm from coming out of the roaster. Mmm.

Oh, and as is demonstrated by the picture above, the new camera doesn’t suck. It’s much, much more flexible than the Coolpix 3200 I briefly had. While the CP3200 isn’t a bad camera, it’s just not very good for detailed shots of food and the like.

food moved from livejournal

Ice!

February 14, 2005

Clicky for more…

Well, as most people in the Detroit area know, we had some mighty freezing rain tonight. Well, on my drive home from ‘s wonderful Big Sonic Sunday, my car picked up quite a bit of ice. In fact, it was so much ice that I figured I had to take some pictures of it…

Shiny ice pictures include…
· Ice on antenna
· Wind blown ice on driver’s side fender
· Crooked whole-car shot
· Icy windshield wipers

The driving really wasn’t too bad, except for the people who insisted on doing 50% of the speed limit, even if the ground was just wet. Ah well, I’m home safe, and hopefully everyone else made it just fine too.

Goodnight!

PS: Yeah, those definitely were quick snapshots… Depth of field is waaay bad. Ah well… Now I sleep.

automotive moved from livejournal weather

!!!

February 9, 2005

Hey all you Windows-using people… Be sure you run Windows Update and get all your updates and such. Some of the recently released bulletins from Microsoft (specifically MS05-011 and MS05-012) point to some pretty nasty things that could be lingering on the horizon. I’m sure you don’t want your machine randomly infected just because it’s sitting there connected to the interweb.

(Gee, can you guess what I’m working on today?)

computers moved from livejournal

Weird Referrers…

February 8, 2005

Any of you out there who run webservers… Have you ever seen anything like this? It appears to be grabbing lots and lots and lots of images. In tailing the nuxx.net log I haven’t seen it grabbing anything else yet.

207.155.199.163 – – [08/Feb/2005:23:28:38 -0500] “GET /albums/wallpaper/collectiveextension_1024.sized.jpg HTTP/1.0” 200 32768 “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.0; Windows NT; ……/1.0 )”

It’s a really weird referrer, and I’m getting it from a bunch of IPs all at once. I’d normally say it’s someone indexing my site, but some of the IPs it’s coming from are:

207.155.199.163 (UUNET)
12.17.130.27 (AT&T)
65.164.129.91 (Microsoft Sprintlink)
208.252.91.3 (UUNET)

None of those reverse, and the addresses aren’t allocated to any customers, they are just held by the big ISPs.

Seems kinda weird to me…

UPDATE: Upon more digging, I’ve found this:

207.155.199.163 – Concentric Dialup, run by XO.
12.17.130.27 – Traceroute seems to just stop, like it’s part of some absolutely massive netblock.
65.164.129.91 – Similarly weird traceroute result. Weirdness after Seattle.
208.252.91.3 – Another oddly terminating traceroute. Weird stuff starts happening after Seattle.

Sounds like someone is trolling through my site looking for addresses. Possibly from stolen netblocks? I haven’t bothered to look up weird routes because it’s bed time.

UPDATE2: It almost seems to be coordinated… Check this out:

65.164.129.91 – – [08/Feb/2005:23:46:34 -0500] “GET /gallery/livingroom_speakers HTTP/1.0” 200 15551 “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.0; Windows NT; ……/1.0 )”
207.155.199.163 – – [08/Feb/2005:23:46:42 -0500] “GET /albums/livingroom_speakers/speakers_hung.highlight.jpg HTTP/1.0” 200 6193 “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.0; Windows NT; ……/1.0 )”
12.17.130.27 – – [08/Feb/2005:23:46:50 -0500] “GET /gallery/livingroom_moulding HTTP/1.0” 200 15701 “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.0; Windows NT; ……/1.0 )”
65.164.129.91 – – [08/Feb/2005:23:46:56 -0500] “GET /albums/livingroom_moulding/DCP_0920.highlight.jpg HTTP/1.0” 200 6225 “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.0; Windows NT; ……/1.0 )”
65.164.129.91 – – [08/Feb/2005:23:47:05 -0500] “GET /gallery/livingroom_painting HTTP/1.0” 200 52236 “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 4.0; Windows NT; ……/1.0 )”

It’s like a distinct set of addresses are rummaging through my site, one request per second.

computers moved from livejournal nuxx.net

Photo People…

February 7, 2005

Hmm, here’s a question. It seems that my new camera does a resolution that when resized to 25% of it’s original size, it’s 648 x 486. My gallery currently resizes photos to 640×480 for their normal, standard-viewing size.

I’m wondering if I should change it so that the photos are done at 648×486, because resizing to 25% original size could possibly produce a better resized image, as it’s exactly 4:1 instead of 4.05:1. I’d think that sampling exactly four pixels down into one would just be better and less likely to induce moire.

Thoughts?

computers moved from livejournal nuxx.net

Detroit Zoo

February 7, 2005

Click for more…

Yesterday I woke up earlyish (for a Sunday) and headed out to the Detroit Zoo. I hadn’t been there since 1995, so I figured it was time for a visit. That, and I wanted a chance to use my new camera. I would really like to get a good feel for it before I go on a more lengthy vacation. Taking a bunch of crappy photos wouldn’t be much fun, nor would not having a good grasp on how to properly handle the camera.

So, if you click the picture above or this link you can check out the whole photo gallery from that trip. Most of the photos aren’t so great, but some came out pretty well, I think. After picking through, I ended up with 167 total images.

The photos which I find notable for either their quality and/or content include:

· Tiger
· A Seeing Eye Dog puppy playing with the otters: 1 – 2
· Snow Monkeys fighting over a stick
· Baby Elephant Sculpture
· Wanda, one of the two elephants to be moved to Columbus
· Giraffes visiting
· An Ass (I think)

moved from livejournal outdoors