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Looking For Quacks In The Pavement

Category: Geekery

  • Verizon xv6800 Upgrade: The Good & The Bad

    I received a text message early this afternoon with the news that the long- (long, long, long) awaited software update to Windows Mobile 6.1 is finally available. So, like the versionitis-afflicted waterfowl that I am, I hurried off to upgrade. There were some difficulties at first, such as the USB connection to the laptop going sour early on in the first attempt, but eventually the update installed and ran.

    The upside? Overall, WM6.1 evens out many of the rough edges from the at-release version of the OS on this phone. Among the nifty new items is a built-in feature that you used to have to hack in: The ability to configure the “X” button so that programs actually quit instead of merely hiding in the background. On a device with not nearly enough RAM (is there ever enough?) to run more than a few apps, this is a gift from heaven all by itself.

    The downside? Somewhere in the process, my phone’s authentication code with Verizon got wiped out. I can’t send or receive calls or text messages. Even better: In order to fix the phone, I have to call from… another phone! Since I’m not about to try juggling two cellphones, I think I’m going to simply wait until I get to work tomorrow.

    Here’s hoping that there aren’t any personal emergencies in the next eleven hours…

  • Not Incredible, Not A Machine

    The Fantastic Contraption, a Flash-based device-building game, is a suitable facsimile of The Incredible Machine. It’s good enough for my purposes, anyway. I spent some time building machines that achieve the goal plus a bit of something extra for fun. Please, allow me to demonstrate (in some cases the full amusement value requires clicking the “Back” button once the challenge is technically completed):

    • Kick The Can – A nudge and a bridge. I could’ve just flung the ball straight over, but what’s the fun in that?
    • Carrion Luggage – Everything must go! Well, everything in my machine’s path…
    • The Ball, Too – Who says you can’t take it with you? This one took more time than you might think, but c’mon. I had to do it!
    • The Ball, Also – I couldn’t leave it alone. I mean, it was just perching there. Mockingly, I might add. If I was crazy.
    • Roomba Falling – Once I got onto the “orange ball” kick, I couldn’t just take the easiest way out of this challenge.
    • Backflipper – Not only did I clear all of the orange balls in the path, I even collected four of them within the build area, leaving none on the field elsewhere. Hah!

    There may be more to come, or I may grow bored before getting a chance to stretch my brain further. Still, I hope you enjoy my silly contraptions. What can you come up with?

  • Small Tweaks, Big Boost

    I noticed Thursday evening, while working on the two mixes, that this site was loading very slowly. I removed some plugins and dynamically generated content to compensate but that only made things tolerable instead of actually peppy.

    This morning the page load timed out just trying to get to the WordPress “dashboard,” so I dug in deeper and researched the problem. Restarting Apache (something I should’ve done Thursday night as soon as I noticed the problem) made a night-and-day difference in performance. Based on my research I’ve also tuned Apache’s configuration to better utilize timeout values and keep-alives. As a brute-force measure I’m also restarting Apache every week; that should clear out a lot of cruft and clutter in processes and memory that accumulates and bogs the system down.

    A server admin’s work is never done… and that’s just the way I like it. Good for you, eh?

  • Happiness is… modest, some days.

    Some days, happiness is simply a clean set of bedding and clean bathroom fixtures.

    Okay, happiness is also a working pair of LEGO seige weapons.

    In related non-news, guess who this Sinfest comic reminds me of?

  • Summer Project 2008: Mic Test & Preview

    I don’t know if I’m ever going to get used to the way I sound when recorded.

    [audio:Summer08/00-PreviewMix.mp3]

    The original plan was to use parts of three different tracks for the music bed so that this would be a proper preview of the Summer Project. Alas, I couldn’t bear to cut away from Yuki Kajiura’s “Melody (Salva Nos version)” and so you get the whole thing. Shucky darn, eh?

    Mind you, I also didn’t realize until I’d performed the final mixdown that I completely failed to refer to the music in any way… which is sort of the point of the project in the first place! It just figures.

    Enough of playing coy, here’s the deal: I want to highlight fourteen musical artists every Friday from the start of summer until the beginning of autumn. Part of the plan is to record introductory and interstitial material for three songs per week, but I could scrap the voice thing and rely on the written word instead. Hence this test.

    So, give it to me straight. Should I do it? Could you stand to listen to my voice once per week for fourteen weeks?

  • Quick Vista Tech Tip

    If you’re trying to install Windows Vista’s service pack number one, you absolutely positively must have the prerequisite little patches installed first.

    Mind you, it’s impossible to tell from the Windows Update display which of the little patches are the prerequisites. They all talk about “performance improvement” and “stability enhancement” and blah blah blee, but none of them say, “Oh by the way, if you don’t install this update then your Vista SP1 installer will simply fail. Silently. Leaving you wondering what the hell you did wrong.”

    Cute, Microsoft. Very cute.

    Of course, once the 16 little updates are installed and you reboot… then SP1 actually appears in the updater display. Gee. I’m sure glad that I downloaded the standalone installer, all 450 megabytes of it.

    The kicker? “Service Pack 1 includes all previously released Windows Vista updates.” So… I had to install all of those updates even though I’m getting all of those updates all over again? Stellar.

    I’d better be able to get my games working once this is all over or else I’m going to be a cranky little grey duck.

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