Thanks to lshw, I avoided buying too much RAM for my motherboard. I wanted to know for sure what type of RAM I was running, and luckily it also listed my motherboard RAM capacity: 2GB. It lists loads of other stuff too: detailed information on system devices, (PCI, USB) BIOS, and even disk partitions! This is more about my machine than I ever knew. I really wish I could find a manual for my eMachine’s motherboard. I’m not sure if it even came with one. I’m saving up to replace this with a self-built machine, but it’s going slowly.
Month: December 2008
Dyson
I discovered this amazingly well-done freeware indy game: Dyson. The player controls seedlings, which are spawned from Dyson trees. Dyson trees, as well as bomb-wielding defensive trees, grow on asteroids. The goal is to spread to other asteroids and defeat AI-controlled enemies. (No multiplayer.) It’s a very asthetically pleasing game. The interface is refreshingly simplistic. The dev team says updates are on the way, which is nice because currently there are some nagging deficiencies. It’s not possible to get anything but a very abstract idea of how long until additional seedlings grow ripe and fall off the tree. This can make it a waiting game. It’s also possible to take over an asteroid without destroying all the trees on it, which can very quickly eliminate a huge investment. Hopefully, as has been suggested in their forums, the game will soon require that all trees be destroyed before an asteroid can be captured.
Lenny
I installed Debian Lenny RC 1 on my 2GHz Pentium 4 that I just bought from dad. It boots from GRUB in about 18 seconds! That’s just out of the box, and I think I’m happy with that. One of the nice things I noticed is that it disables the netinstall CD in sources.list before rebooting. One of the surprising things is that it beeps for a bit before bringing up the main menu. Not sure why. It’ll probably be a BOINC Zombie and occasional game server.
Typing!
I found this typing program, Amphetype, that doesn’t care about your typing methods. I learned that I get around 60WPM. That might be a bit low, though, because I think I type faster when I don’t think about typing.
Switch Fan
My Netgear gigabit switch didn’t come with a fan, (“Silent operation!”) then requested to be kept in moving air. Jerks. I bought a 120mm from Vertex, and just now got around to setting it up. Zombie 3 gave up its CD drive so that the molex could reach outside the case.
I was reminded of my hasty job crimping the server cable when it went down with seemingly any nudge. -_-
I initially pointed it the wrong way because I didn’t bother to check the arrows, but the end result is a 120mm case fan taped to the top of the case adjacent to the switch with a partial boxboard air duct.
Fallout 3
I got Fallout 3. Unfortunately, because I was given a boxed copy, I am unable to tie it to my Steam account. I’ll get the disappointing things out of the way first: the animation is still stiff and unbelievable and it still isn’t funny. I would like more well-done humor in my games. It’s post apocalyptic, and dark humor should work very well. On the good side, the scale of the world is amazing, and I look forward to getting further in the game.
Stuff
I finished beta testing Altered Transmission Demo 8.
Popular Science has an article on a fusion reactor.
There’s a Ted talk on Bonobos, although later on in the video the audio gets out of sync.
Router
I swapped out the 80mm fan in the router, it had been making weird noises. It’s a Dell box, and the fan was encased in this weird plastic mounting thing. It has cylinders that go through each hole and connect to a grill on the back with “Dell” written on it. I got it off by wedging a small screwdriver in between the fan and the front at the corners – when I did so the front started to click loose. I got the new fan in there easily enough, and slid it into its slots in the case. The green plastic air duct thing snapped on to the CPU heatsink.
My Linksys router is now running DD-WRT. I downloaded my stuff from here, as it’s a WRT54GS Version 6, and followed this handy guide. I haven’t had connection problems since using it, which is nice, although I’m not entirely sure that’s because of the firmware, as I’ve changed other things as well. I wasn’t aiming for a scientific experiment, I just wanted my connections to stop dropping intermittently.
The other thing I did was print out this parabolic antenna. It looks kinda funny stuck onto my wireless antenna, and the downside is then that you have to aim it and sacrifice omnidirectional connectivity, but this might also be helping.
I had installed fresh drivers to see if I could get my D-Link DWL-520+ to support anything better than WEP. No such luck. The applet the driver installed didn’t even recognize my card, although the card still worked. It was strange because even though the icon said it was not connected to a wireless network, I could browse just fine. I uninstalled the D-Link Air Plus stuff, and the card was recognized and configured automatically, at which point things once again became sane.
When Mr. Smith talks about current events, he usually brings up listening to NPR in the morning. It occured to me that I would like very much to listen to NPR in the morning, so I set up mplayer to first play a tapered 440Hz sine wave, in case the connection doesn’t work, then connect to the URL conveniently listed here.
Stating the Obvious
Snow day! I get time to work on my essay and study Spanish vocab. I’ll have to read Frankenstien over the break, but I would have had to do that anyway. I need to study for the Brit Lit test, too. The econ test is online, so I’ll finish up my notes on that and head over.
Chem
I had an eventful day in Chem today. I accidentally dropped the top to the crucible a few times, then when we heated it part of it cracked and flew off. I hope that wasn’t due to my dropping it. After it was heated, I carefully and firmly picked up the top with the tongs, and one arm of the tongs slipped over the other, flipping the top and knocking over the crucible, spilling the barium chloride all over the table. Oops. Justin and I had to get our data elsewhere. 🙁