November 11, 2003
Yay For Non-Globalisation!
A couple of weeks back, I whined about the lack of CD-printing printers in Australia. Epson sell such beasties just about everywhere else in the world, but not in Oz, because the ink used is dye-based in will destroy the ozone layer or something.
Anyway, it appears that Canon have come to the rescue with not one, not two, but three shiny new models. Of course, the one I want* doesn't seem to be available anywhere...
But the really amusing thing is that the models sold in America can't print on CDs - apparently due to a patent dispute. Ha ha!
* The most expensive one.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:46 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Infectious Suckness
Telstra have stuffed their DSL network statewide. In a rather interesting way: packets up to 1144 bytes in size will get through; packets of 1145 bytes or more, basically, won't. Packet loss is 7% at 1000 bytes, 97% at 1200 bytes.
So ping and traceroute work, ssh mostly works, but http, ftp, smtp, pop, nntp and BitTorrent - in other words, all the good stuff - don't.
When I get home, if it's not fixed, I'll try fiddling with the MTU and see where that gets me. Probably the yacht will sink.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:04 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
A Poll Thingy!
So I've pretty much decided that I'm going to get a new computer. The only question is: What colour should it be? Oh, yeah, black. Makes it go faster.
Well, with that sorted, there are only little unimportant details left to decide, like what processor I should get. (Mac fans note: I'd love to buy a Dual G5, but it's just not on the cards this year.)
So, let me know what you think. AMD? Intel? Zilog?
Update: Oh, yeah. The machine will be running Windows XP, and will be used for web browsing and email... And graphics editing and web design. And video editing. (Video encoding is painfully slow on my current system.) And music editing (Sonic Foundry's Acid). The occasional bit of programming. (Most of my programming is done on Linux). Word processing. Watching videos. And games, of course.
In fact, mostly games. I already have a GeForce 4 4600 Ultra, so I'm waiting out the current confusion in the video card market. Wake me when the GeForce 6 is out. (Or the FX2 or the GX or whatever it turns out to be.)
I'm also thinking of upgrading my Linux box. That will almost certainly be an Athlon.
The reason I'm asking is that the last four or five systems I've bought have all been AMD - right back to the K6-2. I have a P3 box at work, and it's not particularly impressive. So I've never spent much time on a P4, and I don't know how they stack up.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:51 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
(32 bit mode with Intel compilers and 64 bit mode with GCC respectively.)
November 10, 2003
258,941 Down
108,671 to go. Or thereabouts. Then I just have to reformat the external drive and copy all of those files back again. I hope that runs a bit faster than the file recovery process. Stellar Phoenix seems to be thorough and reliable, but it is not fast.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:47 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Ouchie!
I'm getting prices on upgrading or replacing all of my main computers. Although the individual parts are nice and cheap, when you add them all up the number is surprisingly large. Particularly when you start specifying RAID-5 with a hot spare as the standard storage configuration...
But it would be very nice to have everything working properly for a change. Or at least, to have enough parts around so that anything that plays up can get swapped out and sent back without having to juggle things endlessly.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:18 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
November 09, 2003
Another Day
Another dead drive. IBM GXP-27 leaves behind the other three members of its RAID-5 set and all of its files. Thank G-d.
Look, you laws of physics/evil spirits/karma/planned obsolescence (delete where not applicable) this isn't funny anymore!
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:39 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
November 08, 2003
Bleah
Well, at least this one was brand new and didn't have any files on it when it died.
Also, it's under warranty.
Still: Bleah.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:54 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Unleashed, Unfound
Bum.
The other day when I was looking for Chobits 2, I mentioned that during my excavation I discovered the latest Sims expansion pack. As it happens, there is now a new latest Sims expansion pack: Makin' Magic. This allows you to turn your neighbours into frogs, which does much to explain the popularity of the Sims franchise.
Unforunately, my Sims installation fell victim to the Great Storage Crash of '03, so I need to install it all over again. Now, let's see:
The Sims. Check.
Livin' Large. Check.
House Party. House Party? Anyone seen House Party? Aha! Check.
Hot Date. Check.
Vacation. Check.
Unleashed. Check.
Superstar. Check.
Makin' Magic. Well, duh. Check. So off I go, install install install, only - This copy of The Sims Unleashed seems to be missing something. Like, one of the CDs. Rats! I do this from time to time. The problem is, after you install a game, you have to keep the CD in the drive to keep the copy protection crap happy. So the game box gets put away, you play the game for a while, and then you need to use the CD-ROM drive for something else. So you take the game disk out and put it somewhere safe™. And you never see it again. Now, I can either turn my study upside down looking for the damn disk, or I can pop out tomorrow morning and buy another copy. Guess which one is more likely?
Livin' Large. Check.
House Party. House Party? Anyone seen House Party? Aha! Check.
Hot Date. Check.
Vacation. Check.
Unleashed. Check.
Superstar. Check.
Makin' Magic. Well, duh. Check. So off I go, install install install, only - This copy of The Sims Unleashed seems to be missing something. Like, one of the CDs. Rats! I do this from time to time. The problem is, after you install a game, you have to keep the CD in the drive to keep the copy protection crap happy. So the game box gets put away, you play the game for a while, and then you need to use the CD-ROM drive for something else. So you take the game disk out and put it somewhere safe™. And you never see it again. Now, I can either turn my study upside down looking for the damn disk, or I can pop out tomorrow morning and buy another copy. Guess which one is more likely?
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:11 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
November 07, 2003
G Is For...
Web site of the day is Googirl.
'Nuff said.
Update: No doubt due to the flood of traffic I just sent their way, Googirl seems to have gone down.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:33 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Quokka In A Red Hat
The first release of the Fedora Project, the new home for the free version of Red Hat Linux, is out. I'll be giving it a whirl as soon as I've backed up the remaining 2.5 million files currently scattered around Pixy Central.
But from a quick scan of the package list, it would seem that Fedora suffers from one of Red Hat's major flaws: No Nethack. Dudley will realise how much of a problem this is, even if no-one else does.
There is good news on the Nethack front to be found here, at least.
Speedy and fearsome Q's, eh? What are they going to do, steal my K-Rations and throw up on my boots? Aiee! The worst attributes of nymphs and rust-monsters combined!
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:18 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
November 06, 2003
C Is For Camel
Travel advisory:
An over-friendly kleptomaniac camel named Twinkle is terrorising tourists in its search for love in Central Australia. Locals at Wauchope, 400km north of Alice Springs, say the five-year-old hungry camel cow is infamous for stealing and eating whatever it can get its teeth into from cars parked nearby.Hang on, Wauchope is where? Hey, how about that. There really is a Wauchope 400km north of Alice Springs, as well as one 400km north of Sydney. Anyway:
When unsuspecting motorists pull up outside the hotel the curious Twinkle pokes her head inside the vehicle, inspects the roof-rack and makes off with anything in sight. But Wauchope Hotel owner Lee Richard said Twinkle's already bad behaviour changes dramatically at the sight of a swag in a visitor's car.Really? How is that, Lee?
"She pulls swags out of the utes and mounts them as if she's copulating," he said.Um. As far as I am aware, girl-on-top is a novel position for camels. Not that I am any expert in camel sex, mind you.
"Whenever they pull up, if she's out the front she'll grab one. "I dare say that anything else left she grabs through an open window."Please keep your car windows closed while visiting Australia. Thank you.
Twinkle was sold to Mr Richard for $500 in 1999 after his goat died.Well, yes, I can see how... Uh, what?
"We've always had animals walking around the place," he said. "We were one short so we got the camel.It followed me home! Can we keep it?
"We let her out in the morning at 8am. She and the donkey wander around and come back around mid-afternoon."Donkey? Well, if Twinkle becomes too much of a problem, perhaps these people can help:
A Northern Territory company is calling for help to fill export orders, but it is not looking for coal, wool or any of the other commodities we normally send overseas. Over the past 12 months, demand for Australian camel meat from South East Asia has skyrocketed with the Middle East and North Africa also showing promising signs.Um, yeah, okay. Still, with an estimated 500,000 feral camels on the loose across Australia, it's clear something must be done. Can you imagine the damage half a million swag-stealing, ute-humping camels could cause? (News.com.au via Fark)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:39 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Even The BBC
Even the BBC is not entirely worthless, it seems.
Not only are they bringing Doctor Who back to the screen, they are now producing a third (and fourth!) series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The new productions will feature most of the original cast, and even a cameo by Douglas Adams himself (taken from a previous recording).
This is good. This is very good.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:09 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Q Is For Quokka
This is a quokka, a small kangaroo-like critter found on Rottnest Island off the coast of Western Australia. They are cute and tasty friendly.
But do not feed the quokkas, even if they have the appropriate coupons. They may become ill and throw up on your shoes.
This is a quokka, a small kangaroo-like critter found on Rottnest Island off the coast of Western Australia. They are cute and Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:23 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Left, Right, Up, Down
According to this little chart, I'm to the left of all but two of the current Democrat presidential candidates. (I'm also more libertarian than any of them.)
Difference being, of course, that they are idiots and I'm not. You can be an idiot no matter what your political persuasion may be. Though the reverse is not true: There are some political standpoints that are impossible to take unless you are an idiot. (Or actively evil, or insane. Or some combination of those three; it's never a good idea to forget that someone may be an evil, insane idiot.)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:47 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
November 05, 2003
Wildlife Report
Yesterday was Melbourne Cup Day. On my way to work I pass the Albert Tavern in North Sydney, and they had two shetland ponies out front. Real live ones, munching on hay with every sign of enjoyment.
What I didn't see was a shovel. Since I went past at 8 am and the race starts at 3 pm, I expect that they found one somewhere...
Also, this morning as I was leaving the house, I found [DON'T LOOK MOOKIE!!] a spider as big as my hand clinging to my front door. It was one of the long spindly ones, though, rather than one of the big fat hairy ones with enormous fangs and roughly three million eyes. It looked rather like the mothership for all the daddy longlegs you've ever seen.
I was running late or I would have gone back inside to get my camera. Next time...
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:22 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
November 04, 2003
Hal Clement
Damn.
I got to meet him once - really nice guy. Time to read Mission of Gravity again.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:18 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
November 03, 2003
Productivity Negative
Warlords IV is out. It uses the (very cool) Warlords Battlecry II graphics engine, but with good old Warlords-style turn-based play.
There's a new X-Com game out too. It's like 1990 all over again, only with better graphics.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:28 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
November 02, 2003
Cleaning Up
Cleaning up for me, after the incidents at school and at my house... It must have been hard. The school, your house, and the Great Seito Bridge. They all went through a mysterious collapse one after the other. So the media just went and conveniently connected them all.It's season three of Tenchi Muyo! Though it does suffer from a slight case of "show the whole of season one in flashbacks in the first episode"...
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:53 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Doesn't Suck
Pixy Misa's Doesn't Suck Award today goes to my new ISP, Swiftel. Of course, the truth is that they do suck, because they have to do with computers and everything involving computers sucks. That's Pixy's First Law. Still, they win the coveted Doesn't Suck award because compared to every other ISP in Australia (and never mind Telstra's Bigpond, which is galactic-centre-black-hole-grade suck), um, compared to the rest they don't suck at all.
They just upped my download allocation again. When I signed up, it was 6GB a month (my old ISP allowed me 2.5GB). That went to 7 the next month. Then 8. Then 10. Now it's 12. Only one month since I joined that they didn't boost the allowance. And the last two days of October were free because they were installing a new usage meter. And the new usage meter allows them to have free downloads - their news server is now free.
Plus all the usual goodies they've always had - free unlimited uploads, static IP address, freedom to run servers (I have a mail server and a web server running off that line... Of course, I also have a mail server and a web server running on the mu.nu box. Everyone needs two mail servers and two web servers, right?)
And $6 per GB for excess downloads instead of $149. That's still expensive, but it's just annoying rather than terrifying. Leave the line running all weekend and the most damage I can do now is $48... With my old ISP it was more like $7000.
Yay! Swiftel! Yay!
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:43 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Still Not Dead
Though I'm rapidly running out of DVDs to burn stuff onto. I ordered another hundred last week. Where are they? Where are they?
Bloody Australia Post. If they sucked three times as much, they'd be Telstra, but that's a whole 'nother story.
Where did all these blasted flac and wav files come from, anyway? I thought I had everything converted to 256k mp3s. No wonder my [entirely legal &mdash Ed.] music stash is taking up so much room.
Oh look, there's another episode of the live action Sailor Moon series out! The one I saw at Animania back about six years ago when I had a life was the funniest thing I've seen in oh, about six years. Must download. Haha! Damn, I'm already out of bandwidth. Need a faster connection. Except that that would cost me more less money. Less money? Damn Telstra and their insane ADSL wholesale pricing. So, do I go back to a crummy 256k upstream link just so I can download twice as much three times as fast? Or... Hey, I wonder if I can get a second ADSL connection here. I mean, everyone has two ADSL connections these days, right?
Or maybe those pissants at Optusvision have come to their senses and will hook me up for cable now. I'd call them and ask except I don't feel like waiting 45 minutes to find out that they're still a bunch of morons. After all, I've dealt with Optus for years, and it's a pretty safe bet how that will turn out.
Anyway, it's November now, and I don't have two full time jobs any more... One and a half, maybe. So I expect to be run over by a bus sometime next week. Or maybe the Earth will collide with Mars... Uh, no, that's not until July.
Meanwhile, Pibgorn:
In one of the strangest events ever to transfix the city, countless thousands of people, evidently citizens of New York from the 1930s, have been walking out of the Hudson River and converging calmly on Times Square. Overwhelmed by sheer numbers, police have ordered SWAT teams against the possibility of massive violence, although the invasion seems to be peaceful. Experts estimate that if the influx of river people continues unabated, all current residents of Manhattan will be displaced into the surounding waters by tomorow afternoon. The mayor has requested military backup, but warns that if conventional fire power is to no vail, the city may be forced to that last, grim recourse of modern civilization and summon Hollywood celebrities. Pictures at eleven.I told you to read Pibgorn! I told you! And you didn't listen!
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:24 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
November 01, 2003
Newblog Showcase
Oops, another week, another showcase. Since I'm in the middle of dealing with an omnidirectional computer meltdown, I'll just note that our own Daniel David Darren Daniel (I was right the first time!) has an entry in the contest, not for his MuNu blog, but for Bsurot Tovot, a blog dedicated to bringing the good news from Israel. Including - ahem - two articles on the new 8 teraflop optical DSP from Lenslet.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:17 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
October 31, 2003
You're Under Arrest
If I'm going to spend my weekend recovering files off my computer, I might as well have a bit of entertainment in between feeding it blank DVDs. So off I went to AnimeSuki, the galaxy's number one anime fansub BitTorrent directory.
What shall I download, I wonder. How about the entire second season of You're Under Arrest? Only 4.3 gigabytes.
Never mind the fact that I haven't got around to watching the first season yet...
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:58 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
October 30, 2003
Purr?
You are a tabby cat. The total home-body. You'd be
content just to stay at home all day and not
get up from the couch. You lazy sloth! Try and
make a movement every now and then, or someone
might decide to bury you in the back yard!
What color of cat are you?
brought to you by Quizilla (via Maximum Verbosity)
You are a tabby cat. The total home-body. You'd be
content just to stay at home all day and not
get up from the couch. You lazy sloth! Try and
make a movement every now and then, or someone
might decide to bury you in the back yard!
What color of cat are you?
brought to you by Quizilla (via Maximum Verbosity)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:22 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Yay-ish
I've recovered 37,000 files so far. That leaves about 210,000 files to go.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:01 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
October 29, 2003
Yay?
If your filesystem has become corrupt and Windows no longer recognises it, panic not! Delay not, but buy Stellar Phoenix. It doesn't suck. It recovers files, without (so far) error. Quickly - uh, well, not actually quickly. But easily. Reliably.
Hooray for Stellar Phoenix! Hooray!
Now I just have to work out what I'm going to do with this 230GB of files I'm recovering...
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:53 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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