May 2008 Entries
I almost feel guilty about not updating, regardless of the fact that I'm talking to a massive network of computers, which are being stared at mostly by people I've never met in my life.
I wanted to hold off on this post until I received some parts I ordered last week. As you already know, I upgraded to digital TV earlier this month. I decided to take things one step further and finally order the component-VGA transcoder I've been talking about for the past year or two, along with appropriate cabling to hook up the gadgets I have that can run...
Driven mainly by the under-the-hood rendering improvements and the availability of a substantially more recent x64 build, I decided to give Firefox 3.0 another try today. Oh boy.
Compatibility problems are still running rampant throughout my Firefox 3 install. I managed to fix the some of my issues through unofficial updates, hacking around with Firefox's RDF control files, and in the case of the classic and self-preferred Googlebar, turning to underpowered alternatives. DOM Inspector isn't an optional component anymore, and I can't seem to install it directly from the "Firefox Add-Ons" page, so I assume I'm going to have to go...
Having uncomfortably finished three term papers earlier this month, I decided to buy a PS/2 to USB signal converter so that I could use my IBM Model M keyboard with my notebook.
(Yes, I colored in my Model M's cable such that it's PC97-compliant. =D)
This turned out to be somewhat difficult, for two reasons. First, the Model M is based around en entire Motorola 6805 CPU rather than the standard-issue Intel 8048 microcontroller. Rumor has it that the keyboard was designed as such to facilitate a hardware terminal emulator, though I've never been able to confirm this. As a result, the...
Earlier today, Antony informed me that I hadn't yet shown the world my cheapskate version of a high-gain 2.4GHz antenna for 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth. So here's the antenna in all its duct taped, rabbit ear pole glory:
So it may not be the most attractive antenna up there, but I can get roughly +5dBi off this when it's fully extended and properly positioned (it's directional, unfortunately). I pulled one of the poles off an unused pair of television rabbit ears, lashed it up to the side of my monitor with duct tape, and then connected it to the antenna pad on...
I suppose it's rare to find me discussing television in a positive manner, so savor the moment. In preparation for next year's analog TV switchoff, I purchased an Insignia NS-DXA1 digital tuner at Best Buy today (with some financial aid from W, of course).
I get the idea that I don't give digital technologies as much credit as they deserve. Yes, sometimes they fall awry of their intended purpose and almost always are used to satisfy some purely monopolistic restriction. This year, though, I've transitioned to digital sources twice. The first occurred earlier this year when I switched from the AMPS...