Flaunt my inner geek

Yesterday’s Google hoax and corresponding blog has “crashed”, not surprisingly. Or has it?
Not entirely!
http://www.google.com/intl/en/landing/cadie/tech.html

Some sites getting into the act:
This was my first Fooling of the day: APOD (permanent link)

Wikipedia main-page getting into the fun

Hello NEO…the Matrix is gonna get you

YouFlip over YouTube. Add (or remove) &flip=1 to the link of any video. (Tip: mouse over links to see if it’s there.) Example: Flipped – Unflipped (this is probably a CSS trick)

I don’t know what it is, but it seems some people involved with computers and technology seem to come down with some sort of syndrome that makes them forget or disregard that there are real people using these devices and they deserve to be interacted with and “spoken to” by the device in a respectful manner. (A big part of why I’m becoming increasingly disenchanted by a lot of tech stuff.) The biggest offender I’ve seen so far are Scientific Atlantic “set top boxes”. (These guys could really learn a thing or two from DirecTV in this respect. Even though the current DirecTV models have some interactivity issues, at least they don’t “talk nasty” to their users.) Ugly messages for unsubscribed channels is the main problem. This thing’s full of doozys it turns out; for example when setting the channel-changer timer for a long period, you’ll get this long tirade about how this time period is “longer than any known videotape”, when it’s not operating a VCR but rather doing nothing more than changing the channel and turning off afterward. Assuming I’ll actually be taping, umm, maybe I’m using both VCRs, or taping two shorter programs within that time frame and it’s pointless to set separate events. Sometimes the idea of the thing simply being in my home makes me want to throw it out the window. It’s already shoved back behind other stuff. Anyways… one or two buttons on the remote I’m using will cause an ugly message and other bad bahavior because of bad design, and just minutes ago I finally got sick and tired of being of being sick and tired of it, and did what I originally meant to do. A small screwdriver, some electrical tape, and…
See the picture. Problem permanently solved. :)

One set works. The other are duds. The upper-left + lower-right are from one camera. The upper-right + lower-left are from the other. OK, I didn’t actually forget or get the two mainboards mixed up (fortunately).

The short version is: I now have a working second camera to use as a backup. And, of course, one camera’s worth of parts on the side. :-)

my speedometer isn’t calibrated that precisely. Whatever will I do?

internet access severely lacking for the next week. These don’t seem to mix—go figure…

At least I have 56K now :-) better than the 28.8 the old--and now non-functional--modem was.

A: You beat the crap out of it. :-)

My usual computer has a dead power supply so I’ve been using my other one, which is most of an old off-the-shelf VAIO that was given to me second-hand last year. A P3-650 w/128MB; all it needed to be usable was a hard drive. It functions, which is all I care, usually that is: there were these obnoxious habits such as jittering badly in some situations, and wigging out during more intensive things like games. The last time this happened I became angry again and delivered a good whack. And then I was still angry and roughly wiggled the memory boards, connectors and everything else I could find plugged into the M/B by feeling around. After sqwaking for a while, it resumed proper operation. Sometime shortly afterwards I caught a look at the POST, and saw that it now has 256MB…

Go figure; those two SD’s are 128MB, not 64 like I thought. Obviously this computer could benefit from being pulled apart and given a thorough cleaning-out.

(Inagural entry :) )