Lovely Unintentional StarburstI love the unintentional starburst on this image which was taken while acquiring photos for my Trashwall article.
I didn’t do anything special for that… It’s just my standard Tokina 100mm macro lens at ƒ/18 pointed into the case of the computer, and no other processing.
Ah well, now it’s time for bed. My alarm rings in seven hours, and I have a long day of work ahead of me.
So, I won this eBay auction for some Compact Flash to IDE adapters. As you can see in the image, those adapters are supposed to plug right into a 40-pin ATA port. In the Trashwall I was hoping to plug one of these right into the main board and use it for booting the OS from a compact flash card.
Unfortunately, the seller instead sent me a normal end-of-cable mount adapter, similar to the one used in my MAME Cabinet, except without the second slot. At least it was the newer version which supports DMA transfers, which was one of the big things I wanted.
This evening I took the adapter, screwed some old motherboard standoffs into it, then screwed it into one of the Power Mac G4 AGP’s drive trays. Despite being something other than what I wanted to use, it has worked out pretty well.
It turns out that the two fastest (specification) cards I have are my Sandisk Ultra II 2GB and the el-cheapo Micro Center-branded 2GB card, which are both DMA Mode 2 devices. While this isn’t too slow, it’s not as nice as what I’d get if I were to shove one of the newer Transcend 133x as
Now, I just need to install OpenBSD on it again, fit it in the rack, and get it integrated into the network here. Hopefully I can do that tomorrow. For now, beer and relaxing.
Bike in StandToday I ran by Fraser Bike with Danielle and picked up second bottle cage for my bike. While there I asked if they also sell the stands used on their floor models, and it turns out that they do, for $41.99. This stand, the RK-B RAKK STORAGE STAND is just a nice, simple roll-in stand which is extremely stable.
You can also see the rear rack, snap-in bag, light, and second bottle cage there.
I questioned getting the rack and bag (and basket) for a while, but it’s pretty light weight and seems to work out quite well. Unfortunately that bag there, the Topeak RX TrunkBag EX, is the smallest one which will latch into the rack. It holds everything I’d want to bring with me (spare tube, pump, Cliff bar, multi-tool, patch kit, phone, wallet, keys, lights, etc) with plenty of room to spare, so (for now) I’ve had to stuff a inflatable packing bubble thing in there. At least it’ll be good when going for multi-hour rides down the trails near here. I can stick a sandwhich or whatnot in there and stop to eat a bit before continuing on.
Now I think it’s time to go get some dinner. I’m thinking some decent beer, and maybe pizza… although… that’s not sounding so hot either. Hrm.
New Tires!On Wednesday I left work at about 11:00 PM, and took almost an hour to drive home, turning my car almost sideways on M-59 twice. It was only once I got home that I noticed the main reason: my tires are down to the wear marks, leaving very little tread.
So, I hurriedly sorted out getting new tires and had them installed Friday morning. By the way, if you are in my area and need car work done, I suggest Shelby Tire over in Utica. Their prices are reasonable, and they are an independent shop which does both tires and other car repairs. This is where Danielle had a new wheel bearing done as well, and the price was good and the service was really quick (~2.5 hours).
Anyway, here’s a bunch more moblog photos which I uploaded this morning:
· Mushrooms on toast, farmhouse cheddar, and cheap red wine. This is the perfect dinner after working until 11pm. Danielle prepared the mushrooms while I was at work.
· The Burger King breakfast menu board, as I stopped on the way to work after getting new tires on my car.
· My car at about 11pm after leaving work really late one evening in the middle of a snow storm.
· Lil Tater! at Penn Station in Rochester, MI.
· Two hunks of farmhouse cheddar, a dulce de leche brownie, and some jamón ibérico, all from Zingerman’s in Ann Arbor.
· The coffee roaster at Nino Salvaggio in Troy, MI.
· Sending the lens for Danielle back to the person I bought it from via eBay. It doesn’t work right (front element is loose).
· Wow. A Mac running OS 9. I haven’t seen one of these in years. (In Bob’s basement at IPM.)
· Inside of the U of M Dearborn SLRC, where Danielle works.
Thanks to this certificate I can now tell everyone I know the FCC’s DTV Deputy Program Quiz I am now able to “…to educate others on DTV.”
Flag Waiving Souvineer MoneySometime last year (or maybe the year before) my coworker Brian brought me some rather odd souvenir fake dollar bills from somewhere in the UP. I’d intended to scan these for a while, and tonight I finally got around to it.
Go ahead and click on the image up top to see ~300dpi† versions of them.
† They were scanned 600dpi, adjusted to not look washed out, cobbled together, and exported 3000px on the maximum axis, so the non /2 resizing took care of moire.
Compaq NC3134 / NC3135The NC3134/NC3135 set purchased via eBay for the Trashwall arrived today. It’s in such good shape (likely new, as described) that it threatens the Trashwall idea. Thankfully it clearly wasn’t wanted by someone so they let it go for cheap…
Now…
# ifconfig | cut -f1 | sed '/^$/d' | cut -f1 -d":" | paste - - - lo0 fxp0 fxp1 fxp2 fxp3 fxp4 fxp5 fxp6 fxp7 gem0 enc0 bridge0 #
That’s a lot of network.
I also took a few photos of the various bits (photo gallery retired), including the G4Port (1, 2, 3), all the ports on the back of the case, all the NICs in the case, the console cable, and a few other things (photo gallery retired).
Many of these photos were integrated into the main Trashwall article, and now I just have to wait for the CF reader so I can finish putting it all together.
When I went to use my TiVo for some audiovisual entertainment while eating dinner, I’d found that it was stuck at the starting up screen. It was stuck here for a while, so I pulled the power cord and put it back in. After not very long I received the error shown above.
I then proceeded to watch a bunch of broadcast TV (some thing about Viet Nam on THC, I think) while eating. After finishing eating, the TiVo seems to have fixed itself. This is probably good, because I was so unhappy with the advertising and such on TV that I was about to go sort out grabbing torrents via RSS feeds. (No, I don’t know how to do this.)
At least it’s working… for now…
Do any of you happen to have an old Apple AirPort card you’d like to sell (or give) me? I’m looking for the old PCMCIA one with the white label which was used in older iBooks, Power Mac G3s and G4s, and other machines like that.
I want to use it in the Trashwall to provide an open, public access point.
Thanks!
(A similar Orinoco card will work too, provided it can fit inside the Power Mac G4 AGP and use the internal antennas.)
Hrm. My Mac Pro is distinctly faster than the Trashwall at the OpenSSL Speed Tests:
Click for lots of text…
