Wireball.com

Download webmail to files on your local computer

2006-09-11T20:57:00.000-07:00

I've wanted to clear out my extremely full Excite.com e-mail account for a while, but as it's web-based e-mail, it has no way of batch downloading/saving messages, nor even batch forwarding. If you're a Gold subscriber, you can access your messages via POP3 e-mail, but I'm not.

However, I discovered a way that works for Excite, and should work for other webmail accounts such as Hotmail and so on. The Firefox web browser has an extension available for it called DownThemAll! that is a mass downloader. This can be used to hit links to e-mail messages in your inbox, and download the html page containing the message. One drawback is that you get the webmail code as well as the message itself, so your files are larger, but it sure beats clicking on and downloading each one of them individually.

Details:
Once this extension is installed and you have restarted Firefox, in your webmail inbox folder, right-click on an empty space, and select "DownThemAll!" The DTA interface will prompt you to make your selection. Scroll down until you start seeing links with Descriptions (in the Description column) matching your e-mail subjects. In Excite, all of my messages begin with the URL "http://e19.email.excite.com/msg_read.php?...", but I usually just match the Description to the subject of the first message.

Click the first matching description to highlight it, then scroll down to where descriptions matching your e-mails stop, hold down shift (don't release it until after you release the mouse button), and click the mouse once on the last description matching one of your messages. This will highlight all your messages. Next, right-click on the highlighted messages, and select the green "Check selected items" option. This will mark them all for downloading.

Pick what folder you want to save your files in - usually I store mine in a subfolder in Documents. For the renaming mask, enter in the following: *text*.htm <--This uses the name of the link for the filename (what you see in the Description column of DTA), which is usually the message subject, and gives them all a .htm extension, which will open with your web browser. I leave Inclusive filters and Additional filters alone.

Then click the Start! button, and it should start bulk downloading your e-mail messages into the folder of your choice. It may ask you what to do in the event of messages that have the same subject - I just tell it to automatically rename the file (e.g. add _001, _002, etc to the end of the filename for each additional download with the same subject) and use these settings for this session.

Tips:
This also works if you want to save a forum thread. For example in phpBB, after you're in the first page of the thread, look for DTA links described with numbers (page numbers of each page in the thread). Select those. Since the individual page links on phpBB don't have descriptive names, usually use a mask such as topic name - pg*text*.htm <--So I get files named "topic name - pg1.htm" (and ...pg2, etc).

Under the Advanced tab in DTA's preferences, I have my max chunks per download set to 1 (Disabled). To avoid placing excessive load on your e-mail service or forum (and also to avoid being banned), you may want to set yours this way.

In Firefox, you can find the DTA preferences under the Tools menu -> DownThemAll -> Preferences, or just click the underlined Preferences link at the very lower right-most corner of the DTA window when you're selecting links to download.

If you find yourself needing to rename a large group of files*, because you have redundant beginning filenames, I suggest using Peter's Flexible Renaming Kit (PFrank). It can do batch rename jobs under Windows operating systems, and it received a 4/5 rating on Tucows with 92% popularity. I've used it and I can see why. The preview feature is quite effective.

*-Of course, Linux and *NIX users that know how can do this right from their command line. Yet another reason to abandon Windows and go to Linux - the extreme limitedness of Windows' rename.exe command ;)

STOP 0x0000006F error during Windows XP setup

2006-05-15T20:06:00.000-07:00

While helping a client install Windows XP Home Edition (Upgrade) over the phone, we encountered a stop 0x0000006F error during setup (even before it got to the interactive part) repeatedly. Trying it from Windows ME resulted in a CD read error. I had the customer take a look at the CD, and there was a thumbprint on the data side (with no printing). He cleaned the CD with a clean cotton cloth, reinserted the CD, and it worked. So if you're encountering this stop 0x0000006F error, it may be a small smudge or scratch on the disk. Try cleaning it.

If that doesn't work, you may need to obtain a CD drive lens cleaner (basically a CD with a small brush on the underside that cleans the CD-ROM drive laser lens) or try a new CD or DVD drive.

trueSpace message windows hidden behind the program?

2006-04-15T23:17:00.000-07:00

I ran into this recently, with Caligari trueSpace 4.3 acting like it was always on top, no matter what, even on top of its own "Load scene" and "Load object" windows, or any error messages, to name a few (this would also make it appear to be frozen). It was annoying, because you couldn't load or save anything (unless one worked blind, using the esc and enter keys, for example). This is under Windows XP Pro. I did some searching and it turns out this occurs if the Windows XP Taskbar is set to Auto-Hide. If you disable auto-hide on the taskbar, trueSpace behaves correctly.

Polyphasic Sleeping, Days 8-12 (Tuesday through Saturday)

2006-03-11T13:40:00.000-08:00

It's been a somewhat chaotic week for staying on the sleep schedule. I think what started it was taking extra back-to-back naps during the wee hours of the morning on Tuesday - I should space out naps from each other by at least 90 minutes. Twice now I've ended up sleeping through the night (including last night, between Friday and Saturday - I went to bed at 1:30AM [late for my nap] after eating a large meal and woke up at 8:30AM), while other days I've successfully slept only polyphasically. Either way I've felt fairly functional, and I've been napping during the daytime (8AM, 12PM, 4PM, 8PM, etc) regardless of how much or little I slept the night before.

I'm going to try sleeping on the couch or floor or something for the night portion of my cycle starting tonight. I think my bed is making it much to easy for me to fall asleep and stay asleep. I found another mode for my watch that causes it to beep once a minute in the five minutes until the alarm goes off, and then beep for 20 seconds; that might be more likely to wake me up. 20 seconds is kind of short; I've slept through it before even when I wasn't trying polyphasic sleeping. I need some sort of alarm that's much more insistent and has a tendency to repeat at five minute intervals unless some fairly sophisticated process is used to disable it (requiring a fairly awake and thinking brain).

The front living room has also been rigged up with curtains blocking it off from the bedrooms, and it has a full-spectrum 80W flourescent light, so I'm going to try spending the next few nights in there so I hopefully don't feel so sleepy from 2-6AM. I'm trying to eradicate the day/night rythm, and go entirely to a 6-7 times per 24 hour period sleep cycle, regardless of light/darkness - that's the theory, at least. We shall see how it goes!

Polyphasic Sleeping, Days 6-7 (Sun afternoon, Monday)

2006-03-06T23:59:00.000-08:00

Day 6 (Sunday late morning to end of day)
Since I took that extra 30 minute nap on Saturday around noon, and then forced myself to take all my other naps for that day at the regular times, I haven't felt as tired, even when running past my regular nap time by as much as an hour. I think that it might have repaid some of the sleep deficit I incurred when I was first adjusting to this sleep schedule. In the afternoon I completed some more of the website project I'm working on (something new for TerranRobotics.com, though it won't be going live for a week or two yet), played with the cats, watched a video, et cetera, and felt fine. Also answered some more e-mail (or maybe that was this morning).

(I also tried to find a used 20-40GB Quantum Fireball Plus, Maxtor D740X/similar, or Seagate 7200.7 (a particularly reliable model, according to StorageReview's Reliability Database) hard drive on eBay for no more than $0.50/GB, but no luck - it seems that there's been a bit of an upswing in demand this past week, and the drives are all pretty consistently going for $0.75-$1.00+ per gigabyte. Oh well, demand has to trail off eventually. Yes, I couldn't resist talking a little bit about computer equipment :)

Day 7 (Monday)
I figured out how my brain is trying to trick me into going back to bed sometimes when my alarm gets me up. Somehow, when the alarm went off, I found myself fiddling with the alarm trying to turn it off and thinking that it was signalling that it was time to go to sleep. This happened around 4AM today, if I'm remembering correctly. Once the rational part of my brain chipped in and said "Wait a minute, how does an alarm indicate that it's time to go to bed?!" I didn't have much trouble waking up and getting up. Funny ;)

I gather that it's a very good idea to start off on polyphasic sleep with no sleep deficit. So the idea is to get a good night's sleep the night before, then start napping during the day after a good nights sleep to kick off the polyphasic sleep schedule. When I made the decision to try the polyphasic sleep schedule, it was late in the afternoon, and I hadn't been napping that day, so I had to wait until the following day to start it (although I was chomping at the bit to go). I'm glad I did wait until the following day and then start taking the naps after my full nights sleep - I think it made things easier. I can't imagine what it would have been like if I'd been any more tired while trying to adjust to it.

For the most part, adjusting to this sleep schedule wasn't as bad as I had expected*, but some times I had to be very mentally determined to make myself get out of bed. I think one of the things that kept me going was that I was determined to keep at it even if I slipped up and overslept a few times, or "fell off the wagon", so to speak, and I knew that if I went back to sleep now it would only prolong the agony of the adjustment period.
* - (Bear in mind, I'm completely abstaining from caffeine and stimulants, and during the most difficult part of the adjustment period I was staying away from sugar - something I think I'm going to resume doing anyway, since sugar tends to make me irritable regardless of what my sleep schedule is).

One of the nice things I've noticed about this sleep schedule is that since I'm taking breaks for a nap every four hours, my performance doesn't decline appreciably the longer I've been awake. Contrast to sleeping from 11PM-7AM, and then being up all day - as a monophasic sleeper, I tended to grow more tired after about 3PM. Furthermore, since I'm getting refreshed every four hours on the polyphasic sleep schedule, if I get into a foul/depressed mood during one of my waking periods, chances are I'll feel better after my next nap, and it won't have a chance to last the whole day.

Polyphasic Sleeping - Days 4-6 (Fri & Sat, Sun morning)

2006-03-05T06:26:00.000-08:00

Day 4 (Friday)
Involved a bit of sitting and staring off into space trying not to think about how tired I was, but mostly I worked. I'd passed a pretty lousy night the night before, having eaten more than I should have during the wee hours of the morning (hey, I was hungry!) Not feeling quite as desperate for rest when I lay down to take a 30-minute nap as before, mainly because I'd accepted that I can fall asleep in the first ten or fifteen minutes.

Day 5 (Saturday, yesterday)
It feels a little weird calling it yesterday, because I can remember it - it feels like last evening was in this waking period, even though I've slept twice since then.

During the wee hours of Saturday morning, I spent most of the time learning about the Drupal CMS and installing it on my testing webserver. So, although I may feel tired at times, it mainly affects my motivation to work and makes me disinclined to try to make decisions (though I am very cautious by nature), but I can still absorb and put to use technical information (my brain is functional).

I was awfully tired on Friday, and had been planning on adding in an extra (seventh) nap sometime during the day on Saturday. However, instead of putting at least a 90 minute gap between the two naps, I ended up having my noon nap and then resetting my alarm for another 30 minutes right after it. I guess my tired brain can rationalize anything when it's just been woken up by an alarm. I felt groggy after that, but I livened up again after my 4PM nap.

Saturday evening, I was talking with some people about computers, and had difficulty breaking away (computers...too much fun...to resist talking about). After I passed my 8PM nap time, I started feeling progressively more tired, until I made myself head home, and ended up arriving home just a few minutes before 9PM. Then I felt compelled to wait for an eBay auction that was ending in the next 22 minutes. The eBay auction exceeded the price I had been willing to pay, so I turned in at about 9:15PM. When my alarm awakened me at 9:45PM, once I woke up I felt fine.

There has been some grogginess in the first 5-15 minutes following the naps, but it seems to be growing weaker, so the temptation to go back to bed is much easier to resist now. (Note: never, ever, lie back down.) Furthermore, it feels like I'm sleeping longer during the nap times, even though the actual amount of time hasn't changed. The first few times it happened I jerked awake when my alarm went off thinking "Oh no, I've overslept!" even though my alarm was plainly still beeping.

Day 6 (Sunday morning)
I wasn't particularly productive this night, but that would probably be mainly because I didn't start working on something that would keep me engaged. Getting started is the main thing.

I've noticed the past few nights, each night the deep point of my former sleep cycle has been growing less pronounced. The first couple of days, I could really feel it hit at 4AM - I wanted very much to stay in bed (I didn't, because I knew I would sleep through my next alarm if I did). Now, I just feel a little more tired when I wake up from my 4AM nap than my other naps, and it wasn't particularly distinguishable this morning. Pretty soon, I'm hoping that my day/night sleep cycle will be balanced out, so that I feel as awake at night as during the day.

I confess when I started writing this post I was having a hard time keeping track of how many days it's been since I started this experiment. Do I count from when I woke up from my last full night of sleep (Tuesday at 8AM), or do I count from when I would normally have gone to sleep but instead started doing the polyphasic thing? (Tuesday at 10PM) I'm going to stick to what seemed to be my original assumption, flawed as it may be, that Day 1 began when I woke up from my last full night of sleep (and so, of course, I would have felt entirely normal on day 1, having had eight hours of regular sleep the night before). If you think it should be the other way around, feel free to mentally subtract 1 day from all my day numbers (so my Day 1 would become Day 0). If I didn't think it would change my post URLs (OK, it doesn't), I might modify the titles myself.

Polyphasic Sleeping - Day 3

2006-03-02T23:50:00.000-08:00

In my previous post, I talked about beginning an attempt to become a polyphasic sleeper. I'm now on day 3 (roughly 64 hours since my last full night of sleep), sleeping only three hours per planetary revolution, and I don't feel that bad. Perhaps a bit more brain-dead than day 2, but still quite functional.

Today, I swapped circuit boards between a couple of hard drives (this required going to Sears and picking up an appropriate T8 torx screwdriver) and got one hard drive functioning, tested a failed hard disk and recertified it, studied an Adobe Photoshop book, took a walk, disassembled and tested a laptop battery pack (risky - may explode if shorted), retouched and file-size optimized a bunch of images and then converted them into a PDF document, read through a new 54-page webcomic, and posted a new piece of art to my deviantART account, among other things.

I still have to update my website, but I think that will have to wait for "tomorrow" (next waking period, from 12:30AM-4:00AM). It's about 11:50PM at the moment, so I'll be going to sleep at 12AM, and up again at, you guessed it, 12:30AM. It's a good thing I have dual alarms on my watch - I've been using a 30 minute countdown timer, backed up by an alarm set to go off at a specific time about 2 minutes after the countdown timer, and several times I've only been raised by the second alarm going off.

Polyphasic Sleeping - Day 1 & 2

2006-03-01T14:21:00.000-08:00

I'm currently trying to become a polyphasic sleeper, which is where instead of sleeping for one block of roughly eight hours in one night, one takes six or seven short 20-30 minute naps in a twenty-four-hour period (the Uberman Sleep Schedule). Allegedly the body will learn to go into REM sleep, which is the most necessary form of sleep*, almost immediately when one starts a nap, and one will need much less sleep overall (3 hours or less per planetary revolution). However, there is an adjustment period of at least a week, more like two.
* - (However, cravings for certain nutritional supplements, such as grapes, to make up for the lack of other types of sleep are reportedly common, and one is well-advised to take heed and serve the cravings)

It's currently Wednesday afternoon. I started taking 30 minute naps at four-hour intervals throughout the day Tuesday (yesterday). I was already used to taking a 30 minute nap at 4PM most days prior to starting this, which may have helped somewhat. However, I tend to have a lot of trouble falling asleep most of the time, especially at night, oddly enough. 2AM-6AM was the worst; as you can imagine, there was much groaning when my alarm went off after a mere 30 minutes at roughly 4 in the morning.

One of the worst things one can do on this sleep schedule is to miss a nap, or be more than an hour late for a nap, especially twice in a row. I'm pretty flexible on timing at the moment, so that doesn't pose a difficulty. If I manage to land a full-time job (8hrs/day), however, I'm going to have to use part of my lunch to catch a 12-noon nap. One of the positive aspects of this sleep schedule is that you can fall asleep (deliberately) almost anywhere when it's time for a nap, even if you weren't previously accustomed to sleeping outdoors, say, or in a moving vehicle.

Another one of the worst things you can do on this sleep schedule is to sleep late. Longer than 30 minutes (or even 20-25 minutes for some people) will tend to leave you feeling somewhat groggy for the next waking period. It's especially inadvisable to oversleep during the acclimation period, as it will slow the process and just make things more difficult. So I was rather concerned when I woke up from my noon nap today not sure whether I had slept through my alarm or whether it was still going off or what. I was pretty confused, but once more of my brain came online it appeared that I'd only overslept by 2 minutes.

Still, I'm going to have to be careful. From what I hear, I'm going to be getting really tired tomorrow, and I don't want to stretch this adjustment period any longer than it needs to be - I hate being short on sleep, and I really want the quiet time during the night so I can work without interruption. My watch has dual alarms, so maybe I'll set a backup alarm to go off a minute or two after the first, in case I sleep through one. Once I've adjusted to the schedule, from all accounts, I should sleep 20-30 minutes and wake up naturally without even needing an alarm, as long as I'm taking my naps on time.

One last thing - I'm abstaining from any stimulants such as caffeine or chocolate, at least during the adjustment period. Caffeine wouldn't have time to wear off in the 3.5-hour period between naps, and I don't need it decreasing the quality of my naps. Furthermore, I'm eating when I first get up from a nap, and never within two or three hours of my next nap - the theory being that if one is still digesting when one tries to take a nap, the digestion will tend to keep one awake longer.

We'll see what kind of a mental state I'm in for day 3 (or 4).

Flaky Power Supply, or external factors? (Round III)

2006-02-26T01:53:00.000-08:00

In a previous post, after the crashes returned despite swapping in a new power supply, I disabled the onboard sound, and that seemed to fix it for a while. But then the crashes returned again. By this point I'm thinking this is ridiculous.

Then I noticed my desk lamp seemed to be flickering a bit. It occurred to me that maybe I was getting dirty power, especially since this room has had power problems in the past (I run all my monitors on an extension cord from another room, because I sometimes get ripple in the picture when plugged into the outlets in this room).

I ran an additional extension cord from another room and hooked up the PC that has been crashing. Then I re-enabled everything I'd disabled - primarily such features as onboard sound and AGP fast_writes. Firing up the PC, I started Prime95 up, launched the Mozilla web browser, and got Winamp playing some music while I browsed. That usually suffices to crash it quickly. No crashes in the past several days.

Darn dirty power. I think that might be what it is. I've factored out just about every other piece of hardware, except for the motherboard, and given the variability of the problem and the complete lack of effect adjusting motherboard settings has, I suspect that it may be outside stimulus.

Update to Flaky Power Supply (Round II)

2006-02-17T21:47:00.000-08:00

In my previous post, I explained my solution to my system crashing (blue screening) all the time was to swap out power supplies (it was a somewhat odd case, in that the system ran fine with a different CPU, but it wasn't the CPU).

Well, I started experiencing BSODs again. Now bear in mind the system is entirely Prime95 and MemTest86 error-free, at least until it blue screens. One of the crashes occurred when I loaded up and tried Rollercoaster Tycoon* on the system, and the blue screen referenced the sound driver. So I tried disabling the onboard sound. It's now been running for 48 hours continuous with no BSODs.

I guess maybe it was the onboard sound driver or hardware. I'm going to see if Realtek has an updated driver in a few days (most likely the current one just got corrupted in a power failure-induced crash, but I like new drivers - they usually work better). If the crashes return with the onboard sound enabled, I'll try a discrete sound card and see if that works any better. I have rebooted once or twice just to make sure it wouldn't start doing it again after a reboot.

I'm still pretty suspicious that the root cause might be something I haven't identified yet. The crashes seem to come and go, and are affected by the strangest things (swapping CPUs made them go away, but the CPU that I was crashing with worked fine in another computer). So we shall see what happens.

* - (Rationale: "Since I can't do any real work...")

Flaky power supply causes problem with one CPU, but not other

2006-02-06T14:32:00.000-08:00

The past few weeks, I've been having a problem with my main computer, in that it would crash, no matter whether I had the AMD Athlon XP 1800+ (1.53GHz) Thoroughbred B CPU overclocked and overvolted or not. I tried everything. I even tried swapping CPUs between my main computer and my secondary computer. The Athlon XP Thoroughbred ran fine in my secondary computer; no crashes for over a week, and my secondary computer's CPU (a Thunderbird 1GHz, overclocked to 1.45GHz) ran fine in my primary computer.

So I tried moving the CPUs back (Athlon XP in my primary, Thunderbird in my secondary). Instantly, my primary computer starts crashing again. By this point, I've verified that the CPU works fine on another motherboard, and that this motherboard runs another CPU fine, so it must be something else. I've ruled out the video card (I tried exchanging my AGP Radeon 9800Pro for a PCI Matrox Millennium; same problem). I've tested the memory (no errors in Memtest86), and I've even tried swapping out DIMMs with no change - still crashes. Prime95 has no errors right up to the point where the computer blue screens.

By this point, I'm pretty sure that it's the power supply. It's even been making some funny noises, despite running fine with the secondary computer's overclocked Thunderbird CPU. Problem is, it's a PC Power & Cooling Turbo-Cool 300W, and none of my other power supplies match it in amperage ratings; not even my Antec 300W power supplies. However, it is pretty old (>3 years), so yesterday I decided to bite the bullet and try a lower-rated Antec 300W in the system. Lo and behold; no crashes, even overclocked. I guess the Antec meets my amperage requirements. The PC Power & Cooling has now been relegated to the system I took the Antec out of, and it's running that fine (with another AMD Thunderbird, as it so happens).

I guess that the PC Power & Cooling, after several 100-degree days, and running an overclocked system, had finally become somewhat marginal; enough that a 0.13-micron Thoroughbred B CPU that might be somewhat more sensitive to voltage fluctuations would crash, where a 0.18-micron Thunderbird would continue running fine, even overclocked.

I also found that most of the system's heat was dumping through the power supply, despite the dual 80mm exhaust fans behind the CPU. Turns out that using 1.4W exhaust fans behind the CPU, and a 2.0W exhaust fan in the power supply, will tend to suck most of the heat through the power supply, at least in the manner I have my tower case set up. Opening one of the top drive bays (by removing the front 5.25" cover) and inserting a cardboard divider (without blocking any of the power supply vents, since the PCP&C only has front intake vents) between the power supply and the lower portion of the case got the power supply running a lot cooler (since the air flowing through the power supply was coming directly from the front of the case), and all the hot air from the CPU, hard drives, and video card was exhausted out through the lower 80mm fans. The CPU temperature didn't even go up appreciably.

The Antec may have bottom vents facing the CPU, but it also runs its fan slower, and I still have the 5.25" drive bay removed, so air flow and heat seems to be going fairly equally out through the power supply and the lower rear exhaust fans. And the computer I stuck the PCP&C in has a different arrangement - it's in a Micron mini-tower case, and it already gets its airflow through an open 3.5" drive bay past the CPU and out an 80mm rear exhaust fan. Plus, the 80mm rear exhaust fan and the power supply fan match - they're both 2.0W Sunon 80mm ball-bearings. If anything, the rear exhaust fan has slightly higher airflow than the power supply fan, because I cut out the grill behind the rear exhaust fan, and the power supply still has to pull air in through its front intake vents.

So, in conclusion, a marginal power supply can cause really weird behavior, even to the extent of running one CPU fine but not another. Of course, 300W is already cutting it fine for an overclocked AMD Athlon XP with a Radeon 9800Pro and multiple hard drives, but if one uses quality power supplies, it's doable. And I can't afford a replacement power supply at this time, though I sure would like to upgrade to a 400W or better Antec, FSP Group (Fortron Source), PC Power & Cooling, or Seasonic eventually (all good, reliable manufacturers of power supplies, unlike most generic and many other brands).

Wireball Assassin

2006-01-09T20:31:00.000-08:00

The Wireball Assassin, a high-performance bleeding-edge computer I built in 2000 that was reviewed in MaximumPC magazine and received a 9/10 & Kick-Ass! Product Award, and only sold one unit, last surfaced in mid-2005. Looks like a Debian user!

From the description ("uber-buggy"), it looks like the capacitors might have begun leaking on the ABIT KT7-RAID. ...the IBM Deskstar 75GXPs are long-dead, though. The replacements were either Maxtor or Seagate 40GB 7200RPM drives.

Things like that are one of the reasons I've started using equipment that's been around at least a year or two in my personal computers - bleeding-edge technology is an expensive pain in the ars. Although, given how much I overclock my personal computers, I tend to have problems from time to time anyway :)

And, given that most of my equipment now is surplus or used, I can't be a chooser; I actually have both a KT7-RAID and a KT7A motherboard, both of which are in use. Performing ok so far; whoever last used them must not have left their computers on very much, because the capacitors aren't leaking yet. Nice overclockers, too.

First Bicycle Ride in a Long While

2006-01-06T22:23:00.000-08:00

So, I took a several mile bicycle ride this evening. We took some important bits out of the car*, it appears, so it wouldn't start, and some videos needed to be returned tonight. Friday night.

My bike is a European racing road bicycle, with 700x23c narrow tires and no reflectors. Park Pre brand. The handling is pretty sensitive and twitchy - very unlike the old Huffy road bike with 24" wheels I owned when I was younger. I seem to have misplaced my front headlight mounting bracket, so I lashed it on with high-stick masking tape. Lacking a taillight, I applied some layers of clear tape over a white 5-LED headlamp I have, with red permanent marker applied to each layer of tape, and taped it to the seatpost facing back. When I was finished, I had a quite decent red rear light (conveniently, it even has a flasher mode).

I left at 8PM, and the ride went quite well. Traffic was light, and what traffic there was kindly gave me a wide berth (this is in Pasadena, CA, for reference). It only took me about 30-40 minutes round trip to the video rental and back, which is a great improvement on walking. We walked there and back once, and it took a little over two hours and was extremely grueling - though I certainly wasn't (and still am not) in very good shape (skinny, sure, but sedentary). Back in the old days it wouldn't have bothered me in the least.

I just looked it up on the map, and boy am I out of practice - it's only about 2.5 miles each way. Sheesh, I've got to ride my bicycle more; this is ridiculous. In Seattle in the '90s a 3-mile bike ride was a mere jaunt for me, and walking that far wasn't that big of a deal either.

* - Edit 09-Jan-06: Important bits = the computer under the passenger side. Plugging the larger unit back in got the car starting again, and the smaller unit apparently controls shifting, because I wasn't able to shift out of park until I plugged it in (while the car was turned off, of course). '91 Honda Accord LX 4-door sedan.

Zapping Memory Sticks

2005-11-28T23:18:00.000-08:00

I was vacuuming the huge quantities of black dust that rapidly accumulate out one of my systems today (there are downsides to running 24/7, especially with highspeed fans), and when I hooked it back up, it refused to boot 2000. After some checking around and running Memtest86, I noticed it was only detecting 16MB of my 512MB of RAM.

Before I noticed this I had been thinking that maybe it was something static-related, because it was a very dry day today, and I was generating static electricity every time I moved. Although I was careful not to touch any electronic components and grounded myself on the case, maybe it had somehow conducted from the vacuum cleaner hose to the memory. In any case, I wanted the system up and running Folding@Home again, so I very carefully (with the system plugged in but the power switch on the power supply switched to off, and the capacitors discharged), grounded myself, then without shifting position (so my clothes wouldn't generate any static) removed the memory, cleaned the contacts with some rubbing alcohol which picked up a lot of black dirt (both on the DIMM and the board), and reinserted it. This time it detected the full 512MB, but Windows still wouldn't boot completely (though it would get farther) and Memtest86 would hang with funny numbers at about 1% on test #2 (not even any errors reported; just hang).

Now it won't boot; just one long, repeating beep, indicating memory issues. Rats. I found a special deal on 1GB (512MB x 2) Corsair ValueSelect PC3200 DDR400 2.5-3-3-8 DIMMs at ZipZoomFly.com for slighly under $80 (before tax) with free shipping, so replacement memory is on the way (maybe I should have ordered from Mwave.com - Mwave has a somewhat better reputation, deservedly so). However, I'm not going to handle it or even work on anything until I spray the area and my clothes down so they're damp with anti-static spray. No worries; I won't get it in the vents of the computers.

Further testing will be performed at that time, but I'm pretty sure it's the memory. (Edit: no, something must have been loose, because it all works perfectly now - I guess there was good reason to be suspicious)

Update following day:
The memory seems to be fine now - passed two or three cycles of Memtest86 without error, and over 2 hours of Prime95 with no error. Well, I can't complain with upgrading two of my computers from 512MB to 1GB of RAM, and I'm glad I didn't burn the memory after all.

Convenient text books on the PDA

2005-11-11T21:45:00.000-08:00

I just installed a free reader for the highly popular "Pilot DOC" text format on my PDA (Palm Vx, 8MB, greyscale), and converted* some free eBooks from Gutenberg.org that I put on there - 12 volumes of the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and the complete (according to the title) notes of Leonardo da Vinci. Plenty more where that came from, too. Now I'll have something to read when I'm trapped on set (say for background acting), or stuck somewhere for a few hours with only my PDA.

*-The converter I'm using is an extremely old program called MakeDocW 0.71, freeware, that still runs fine under XP**, and converts TXT (text) and HTML (web) files into Pilot doc files. A lot simpler than any sort of proprietary solutions that need a matching reader, or want money. I can always create text files out of anything using notepad or wordpad, even just by selecting a bunch of text and pasting it into notepad, and then after converting the documents (which takes about a second) and downloading them into my PDA, I can read them using any reader that reads the standard Pilot doc format - CSpotRun in this case, which is also freeware.

CSpotRun also lets me turn rotate the text in 90 degree increments, so I can read it in any orientation on my pda. I favor landscape mode, because the lines are wider and it puts the controls under my left thumb. And one aspect I very much like about CSpotRun is that it returns to the place where I left off***, so I don't have to remember to set bookmarks (although I can), unless I want to read another document (since it loses its place when you switch documents). It also uses a lot less storage space than TomeRaider, and seems much snappier.

**-I found that it crashes if the file you're trying to convert has a long name or oddball symbols in it, such as quotes, commas, ampersands (&), etc. Rename the file before trying to convert it, and it works fine (remember to add a title before hitting convert, or it will only be known by its filename on your Palm). Turning off auto-install may help too, if you still have problems, and then just double-clicking the created .prc file to add it to the Hotsync queue.

***-I have my PDA buttons mapped; most of them are assigned to what you would expect, but since I use DateBk5 for my To Do lists, I assign the checkmark button to CSpotRun. Since my PDA power switch doesn't work, I turn it on using one of those four program buttons, so it's nice to be able to kick directly into what I want. If I had a fifth button I'd probably assign it to SpellCheck (see Palmgear.com -> Spellcheck search results), but I use it rarely enough that having it under Applications on the home screen is ok.

Terran Robotics Site :: Musing Out Loud

2005-11-10T14:55:00.000-08:00

What to do with TerranRobotics.com? It used to be a company building high-performance multi-monitor workstations (I still like building those). But now that the company has ended, well, I've got some robotics links with comments on there, but it doesn't really have very much compelling content, let alone any sort of regular updates so far.

I'm thinking of putting further robotics-related content on it, such as pictures of robots I'm building, but I have to start building robots first before I can do that :) Another possibility is pictures of and information on various home electronics I've pulled apart and taken photos of, disassembled cell phones, and things like that. That one works well, because I like taking things apart and putting them together. No telling how it would do traffic-wise, however. And maybe stories of our time in the Asian-Pacific field (NZ, Phillippines, Pohnpei Micronesia, Saipan Northern Marianas Islands).

Kind of silly to have it sitting on the web hosting costing money, and not making advertising income off it. Maybe I'll redesign it with something quick (using the server-side include wisdom I've learned on Wireball.com) and then get my dad, the jack of many trades and master of some, to start giving me articles to post on there.

Just musing out loud. Comments and suggestions are welcome, though unfortunately you'll have to register to post, since I've been having trouble with anonymous-comment spammers.

Best reason for buying a CPU near Christmas...

2005-11-06T23:40:00.000-08:00

...is the cooler weather so you can overclock it.* I'm considering buying a used AMD Athlon XP Barton 2500+ (1.83GHz) CPU, AQXDA or AQXEA stepping, and overclocking it to at least 2.2GHz (11.0x multiplier), if not 2.3GHz (11.5x) or more. My motherboard is voltmodded to put out ~2.05V, as well, so as long as I can keep it cool, I can really crank on it.

And hey, this CPU will finally let me exceed 200MHz FSB on my ASUS A7N8X2.0 nForce2-400 board! My current Thoroughbred 1800+ (1.53GHz) is multiplier locked at 11.5x and tops out at about 1.8GHz (156MHz FSB). I could really use a 30% boost to my FSB.

On the other hand, if bidding goes too high, I'll probably hold off and wait for the prices to drop some more on Athlon XP-M (Mobile Barton) CPUs. I hear some of those can get to 2.5GHz, or 2.6GHz if you really work at it / get a good stepping.

Edit 12:05PM Nov 7: Eh, a mere 31% speed boost is not worth it. Better I wait and get an Athlon 64 in 2006 or 2007. Aren't I cheap? (so to speak) :)

*-(assuming you're in the northern hemisphere - however, it did once snow on Christmas in New Zealand, so it isn't necessarily entirely dependent on being in the northern hemisphere)

Installing Cygwin, even with Cygwin.com down

2005-10-01T16:15:00.000-07:00

Interesting thing about the Cygwin UNIX shell for Windows - with the Cygwin.com site down at the time of this writing, due to a server disk crash, one can't easily do the Web install of the program, because it wants to look on Cygwin.com for its "mirrors.lst", even though it downloads all the program and package files from mirrors on other sites.

My simple solution: edit my \WINNT\system32\drivers\etc\HOSTS file with two new lines, pointing to my local network webserver:
192.168.0.11 sources.redhat.com
192.168.0.11 cygwin.com #(the updated installer complained that it wanted cygwin.com)
...so, any requests for the above two sites are automatically redirected to my local webserver. I found that the mirrors.lst file resides in /cygwin/, so I got an old copy off of the Internet Archive (although I probably could have used the Google cache), placed it in my webserver's site directory, and went to it.

Then I discovered that my copy of the cygwin setup program was not up-to-date. So I used Google's cache to grab a recent copy of the installation program. Google search term/keyword (just remove the quotes): "cache:www.cygwin.com", visit site, hit download link - it's only about 298KB, so it was cached. So, once I did that, I was able to successfully download and install the packages from one of the mirrors.

I had the idea already, but finding this post helped me get the necessary URLs without having to poke around much.

Lucent/Orinoco Gold is my favorite Wi-Fi card ever!

2005-09-24T00:15:00.000-07:00

Ok, so it's an ancient 5V/16-bit card, but it's the only card that has installed on my 98 laptop on the first try and worked perfectly, using the drivers I found here from Driverguide.com (*). Sure, it only supports 64-bit WEP encryption, at least under 98 (128-bit WEP, which isn't much better, under 2K/XP), using the drivers I found, but it works!

My Linksys WPC11 ver.3 Instant Wireless Network PC Card works, but by contrast is a pain to install (you need to install the drivers before the card, or it won't work), has an exceedingly flaky and cumbersome Wi-Fi control panel / interface (even under 2000 and XP - I marvel that anybody, including myself, buys their crap), and has an annoying tendency to crash the machine if you try to hotplug the wireless card, at least under 98. I won't even go into how the installation broke under 98 after just one month. I think it works better under 2000.

And last of all, the horrible, horrible D-Link DWL-650+ I have. I'm not sure this thing is even electrically operational. The light lights up and the machine detects it, but the utility that's included with the D-Link drivers never detects the card, can never communicate (probably for the afore-mentioned reason), and appears to have been programmed in QuickBasic or something, judging from the way it works (or doesn't work). When I tried to install it this time around, it just locked the computer up every time, and yes, I installed the drivers first, before inserting the card. Friends of mine have had similar experiences with D-Link Wi-Fi cards.

*-I would make a German-speaker proud (assuming they aren't a grammar police-type); "Throw the horse over the fence a bale of hay". Isn't "using the drivers I found here from...etc." kind of odd? But hey, I have excellent reading comprehension :)
Also note that you must be signed in to Driverguide.com to download the driver. I suggest signing in and then visiting the driver URL again.

Edit 9/24/05 3:30PM:
I find that WEP encryption is exceedingly weak - 64-bit is crackable in about 1-10 minutes, and 128-bit can be cracked in an hour and a half, tops. I'm going to have to discontinue using wireless until I can get at least WPA encryption (along with at least a 20-character password, to ensure cypher strength), because using WEP exposes my wired network to the possibility of attack.
If only my Linksys AP allowed me to block off the wireless portion of the network to all but Internet gateway access. I can segregate it on a separate network if I use one of my computers as the gateway, but one of the reasons I'm using the Linksys AP is that the Internet access doesn't go down if the computer goes down.

Feelings of annoyance

2005-08-30T01:19:00.000-07:00

I hate having to listen to trolls sexually harass other players when I'm trying to play a game, even when said player has asked them to shut their trap several times. Worse yet, when people won't vote yes when said player starts a vote to ban said troll. I hope said troll gets something better to do with his time. If any of you know people like this, please, for the sake of humanity, sever their Internet connection.

Regarding the players who voted no or cancelled when a vote to ban an obviously obnoxious player came up, I don't know what they were thinking. Perhaps they weren't native english speakers and didn't know what was going on.

(I was angry when I wrote this post; it has been slightly revised since then but kept up for posterity)

Musings on Backups, IPIP-NEO Personality Test

2005-07-30T16:35:00.000-07:00

I've been musing on a lot of things lately -- well, I always have, but I have lately found a lot of interesting reading material and links. I've also been experiencing some hard drive crashes and file dis-organization, making finding even what I have backed up lately difficult.

Regarding backups, and the difficulty with which I've been getting cross-OS file transfer working between Linux and Windows, I've been thinking of backing up some of my more critical files to my Pair Networks webhosting, since their storage is significantly more reliable than anything I could do. Things such as my latest bookmarks, my most interesting e-mails received and my more useful responses (maybe saved as Unicode), small hard to find programs and utilities, and original artwork - things like that. Compressed and encrypted, of course, with passwords that are little more than random line noise. Then I'd be able to access it from any online computer, and all my most important data would be backed up in one place, offsite.

I recently ran across the IPIP-NEO Personality Test. It's apparently intended to assess one's standing within five broad personality domains, and the consequences of such standing. It's interesting. Certainly isn't pleasing or flattering, at least not in all respects.

Taking it while depressed will skew the results - I did that Monday, and got 1 out of 100's for five out of seven aspects of extraversion - in other words, very withdrawn. On the plus side, strangely enough, I did cheer up after taking the test - I guess mental stimulation will do that to me.

I took it again this Saturday and got somewhat more average results on some of the aspects, though I still certainly deviate from the general public a great deal (which isn't necessarily a bad thing in my mind). Two things that I feel willing to relate in a public (potentially; is anyone reading this?) venue, and might help people to get to know me better:

"Your score on Extraversion is low, indicating you are introverted, reserved, and quiet. You enjoy solitude and solitary activities. Your socializing tends to be restricted to a few close friends."

Comments: This is largely true; I tend to wait for invitations and hope for people to initiate contact because I can never tell how they'll react otherwise. I think there must be something about Humans, or the particular culture I'm living among, that I am not getting. I also find large crowds excessively tiring if they come within my personal space. However, I do enjoy events with up to about twenty people ;)

"Your high level of Agreeableness indicates a strong interest in others' needs and well-being. You are pleasant, sympathetic, and cooperative."

Comments: Also largely true. Ask me a tech support question and you'll get a long response, after I have time to think about it*. Bear in mind, though, I only scored high, not maximum - I rather prefer polite interactions :)

* -I also rated high on caution. I can override it if I need to, but I won't often do so.

Which OS Are You?

2005-07-30T00:18:00.000-07:00

I came across this link (among other interesting reading) from the Changelog (.complete.org) after seeing a blog entry about some sort of "OS Test" on my Debian XScreenSaver (phosphor) and looking up John Goerzen on Google. Poor fellow; he got Windows XP.

However, I was surprised (and a little gratified) at my result. Maybe it was answering "If I end up Windows ME someone is going to be hurting." to that last question that did it.

Which OS are You?

Experiences of a Linux Newbie: Screensavers

2005-07-10T01:15:00.000-07:00

I've tinkered with Linux before, but never really got into it until just recently, when I started using it on my main machine as a way to force myself to learn. One of the things I like best about computers is the gadgets and gizmos built into the programs. So, coming from Windows 2000 to Debian/GNU Linux, it didn't take me long to discover the vast array of screensavers built into XScreenSaver. I started off with the famous BSODs screensaver (blue screens of death from various operating systems), which kept me entertained for a couple of days. I also tried lightning, but that didn't hold my interest long - I like information!

Then, a couple of days ago, I discovered Phosphor, a screensaver that imitates an old vt100 green phosphor screen terminal, rather reminiscent of the text behavior in The Matrix, and displays various log entries from Linux experts and enthusiasts. I assumed that they were programmed in whenever the software was released, and that it was reading from a text file; that was what I was used to. After a while, looking one of the entries up in my web browser, I noticed that it was dated less than two days old, and matched the one on my screensaver. I found that the screensaver is getting information from an Internet URL (a user-configurable RSS newsfeed, to be specific).

I find that very cool - it reminds me of when you see the blinking consoles on the computers and the scrolling information on the monitors in the background on TV and in movies - not only do I have something like that now in my computers (photo will follow, if I can get a good picture), but it's actually potentially useful, up-to-date information in easily-digestable blocks that I can pay attention to or ignore, as I desire. Also, Phosphor usually repeats logs a few times, so if I ignore it once, chances are I'll see it again later before it gets pushed off by newer log entries.

Solving the Firefox/Mozilla tiny font problem on Linux

2005-07-08T20:15:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned on Wireball.com, I recently suffered a hard drive crash, and took the opportunity to install Debian/GNU Linux on the new disk (I've got to learn sometime - I can't keep using Windows 2000 forever).

Installation went smoothly, and it has some nice software installed by default (including the latest version of the Mozilla browser suite, and the fully functional OpenOffice.org word processing suite). However, one thing I noticed was that once I installed Firefox (just to my /home/wireball/ directory, in its own directory/folder), the fonts were too small. For example, when visiting the Tech Report, the font was so small as to be practically unreadable - 11pt looked like 8pt.

I thought it had something to do with TrueType fonts (and I'm still not entirely sure it doesn't), but after futzing around for nearly four hours trying to install msttcorefonts, running into something about needing to configure Xwindows to use Defoma fonts, and supposedly the easiest way to do that was to use the x-ttcidfont-conf package, which I couldn't figure out how to get working, I had made little progress. I even tried to use alien. At least I learned to use the basics of Debian's apt and apt-get, which is truly a nice package management tool (automatically determines and takes care of dependencies, as well as installing packages so they work).

However, it turned out ultimately that I just had my Firefox dpi resolution setting under Edit->Preferences->General->Fonts and Colors->Display Resolution set incorrectly. I had tried changing it previously, but I hadn't exited and restarted the browser after doing so, which is necessary to see the changes. I found my error when I followed a suggestion and selected the "Other..." setting, measured the onscreen line as accurately as I could with a precise metric ruler, and entered in the value - it told me my display resolution was 96dpi (not 72dpi like it defaulted to). I OKed it, exited, restarted, and the Tech Report rendered at the correct font size.

I haven't installed Thunderbird yet, so if you've e-mailed me and are still waiting for a response, there's my explanation. I'm a packrat - I keep everything - so when I lose my old e-mail archives it drives me crazy. I remember when I lost four years of Eudora e-mail archives (from roughly 1998 to 2002, covering the height of the computer workstation company) - corrupted somehow so no e-mail client could read them - it kills me that I don't have easy access to those records. So much work and information. I still have large blocks of the files, but text editors take forever to load them up and sort through them, so it's impractical to refer to them. Maybe someday I'll find a solution. Hopefully something in Linux can parse through them and produce a usable output.

DNS Server and ISP Troubles

2005-06-27T14:05:00.000-07:00

I'm beginning to see why people sometimes want to run their own DNS (Domain Name System) servers. My SBC DSL's DNS servers keep flaking out from time to time, more often lately. So when I'm surfing the Web it suddenly starts telling me that the site I'm trying to visit, such as Slashdot.org or Wireball.com, could not be found, and when I try to ping them, they report "unknown host ...".

I got sick of this today, so I reconfigured my Internet connection from SBC DSL's auto-configured Los Angeles DNS servers to a couple of OpenNIC's Public DNS Servers (one in New Orleans, LA and one in Tokyo, Japan), and since OpenNIC doesn't recognize .biz domain names (I gather), I put down SBC/Pacbell's Houston, TX primary DNS server as my third static DNS server. Using OpenNIC servers also lets me access such domains as .glue, which I could not access before because my SBC DNS servers do not support OpenDNS.

Of course, I could have tested it by trying to Telnet into my ISP's DNS servers on port 53, as detailed in this article. I did try it on the OpenNIC DNS servers, and it turns out that the San Francisco California and Phoenix Arizona servers were not responding at the time I did the test.

So far it seems to be working well - it's quite snappy, in fact. At first I had configured it without checking to see if the DNS servers were up, and it was taking a 2-4 seconds to resolve hostnames; I checked the DNS servers and it turned out that the first one I'd entered (in San Francisco) was not responding. Fixing that speeded it up greatly. Nice to have it working and not claiming that common sites do not exist (and since I'm using wildly different servers in different geographical regions, they're not as likely to go down all at the same time, unlike SBC Pacbell's local DNS servers).

From what little I know about DNS servers, it sounds like running one's own software/Linux- or FreeBSD-based DNS server (or cache/proxy) would be nice - you would know and be able to see what was going on, you could request name resolution from multiple servers if the first one failed to respond promptly, and have many more than just two or three DNS servers to choose from, so you weren't as subject to the whims of flaky servers, and even do statistical analysis on the different servers so that it tended to request name lookups from the fastest and most reliable servers more often. At least, I assume that's all possible. Yet another reason for me to learn Linux more thoroughly.

91 Honda Accord Maintenance - Keeping It Running

2005-06-17T22:32:00.000-07:00

I thought it might be interesting to write a bit about my used '91 Honda Accord LX 4-door sedan, and what I have to do to keep it running. Some of the maintenance info may be useful for those of you with similar vehicles or problems. Even if not, it may be interesting from an anecdotal standpoint.

So this Wednesday, I got a phone call from one of my family members - the car had refused to start in the mail service parking lot, and since I have some technical aptitude with cars as well as computers, they wanted to know if I could head over there and see if I could get it started. I hemmed and hawed a bit, because it was three (3) miles away and I wasn't used to walking quite that far, but in the end I stuck some tools in my pack, and headed over there.

It sounded like it might be a repeat of a problem we've had a number of times with this vehicle, and which is common with a lot of Hondas, including relatively new Hondas such as the CR-V. The vehicle turns over when starting, catches, and then as soon as you release the key, dies. This is caused by dirty contacts in the ignition keyswitch. The tools I brought were primarily a pair of pliers (to disconnect the battery), philips screwdriver (to get the steering column cover off, and unscrew the ignition switch), a piece of sandpaper (for cleaning the contacts), and silicone grease (for protecting the contacts after I was done sanding the corrosion off).

When I got there, the car wasn't there, and I couldn't find the family member at the agreed-upon spot. I finally headed back another three miles to home, and when I got there, the car wasn't there either. There was, however, a message on the answering machine - the family member had gotten the car started, headed home with the groceries, and then after dropping the groceries off had driven over to the second-nearest Arco gas station (which was a mile away). And now it was stuck at the gas station and wouldn't start. Nggh!

When I got to the gas station, the car was there, and not only would it not start, it hardly wanted to turn over. All the indicator lights on the dashboard lit up brightly, and the headlights were plenty bright; however, when I tried to start it the indicator lights would practically black out (not merely dim), and the engine would only move about half a revolution. Figures I forgot to bring my tools this time. So we pushed it over by the curb, because it was getting dark, and decided to come back in the morning.

In the morning, we brought an electronic multimeter with the rest of the tools, and measured the voltage both while the key was in the ignition and while trying to start it. Merely sitting with the dashboard indicators lit up, the battery measured 11.7V - a bit under the 12.8V it normally reads. However, when I tried to turn the engine over, the battery voltage dropped to just 2V! The battery at this point was over three years old, and past its warranty, so we figured it was a safe bet that the battery was probably at the end of its lifespan.

We didn't want to pay for a tow or a taxi, and Sears was unfortunately 2 miles away, so we thought we were going to have to lug a 50-pound or more battery 2 miles back from Sears on foot. Luckily, it turned out that Orchard Supply Hardware, which was just a couple of blocks away, sold car batteries, so we got a nice 12V with a 1-year warranty for about $74USD after tax, and carried it back between the two of us (switching arms once). We measured the voltage (over 12.8V), installed it in the car, and it fired right up!

In the weeks prior to this, the car had been taking more and more cranking to get started, and I thought it seemed like it wasn't cranking as fast as it used to. Well, with the new battery, it was cranking at least half again as fast as with the previous battery, and it caught in much less than a second, compared to the old battery at around 2-3 seconds. Also, the voltage dip while starting it was pretty small - it dropped to about 11.5V momentarily while cranking the high-amperage starter, and then jumped up to the 14.5V alternator voltage.

So, there you have it. Not a serious problem after all; just a dead battery. Seems pretty obvious in retrospect, but we had been getting pretty worried about the age of the components in the car; a lot of them are well past their recommended service interval, and it just seemed natural to assume the worst :) Next week: how the car behaves when the alternator is malfunctioning, and how we fixed it ourselves for $25 (hint: the brushes were just worn out).

Windows 98 and Wi-Fi / WPA encryption

2005-05-18T21:31:00.000-07:00

So, it turns out that my Linksys Instant Wireless Network Card (WPC11 ver.3) does not support 802.11b WPA encryption under Win98; only 2000 and XP. There is a free WPA add-in program for 98 available from Wireless Security Corporation, but so far I haven't been able to even get my wireless adapter to see the access point with or without it (unless I set it to flawed WEP encryption).

I'm thinking I might just upgrade to Windows 2000 to get better support and avoid this junk of not being able to get WPA to work. Further updates as discoveries/conditions warrant.

Update 11:00PM: I did get my laptop to connect at last using WEP (but not WPA). I had to uninstall the Wireless network card (I also uninstalled the wired network card, but that's probably irrelevant), reboot, install the drivers with the card out of the machine, then insert the card after the drivers were installed. I also installed a 98 networking hotfix, but I don't have the number handy right now - will post it later.

I noticed I had to set the access point to broadcast the SSID; otherwise the Linksys Wireless Configuration Utility couldn't connect to the AP, even if it had been connected a moment ago. For the time being, I've restricted wireless access to the MAC address of my wireless card, but that just means that the wireless AP will reject any communications from other cards; my communications are still out there, protected by inherently insecure WEP encryption, and readable by anybody willing to do some wireless packet sniffing. Maybe I'll just run an encrypted VPN session through the WAP to one of my wired desktop computers.

Gradual Hard Drive Failure

2005-05-15T00:17:00.000-07:00

I have two matching Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 40 7200RPM ATA-66 30GB hard drives that I've been running for a little over five years now. Just last night, I was running into some problems with one of them - Windows 2000 was refusing to upgrade it to a dynamic disk, and kept giving me a LDM Configuration Write Error (iirc). So I copied all my data over to the other one and tried reformatting the first one - didn't do any good, but it's a good thing my data was able to copy over.

I downloaded and ran Maxtor's PowerMax drive-testing utility on the flaky drive, and I didn't find anything until I ran the complete test, at which point it reported that it had found bad sectors, the drive was failing, and gave me diagnostic code ce97917c. I then tried doing a complete low level format on the drive, which took half the night. When I got up in the morning, it had finished the low level format. Running another complete scan on it didn't turn up any errors this time.

So I rebooted into Windows 2000, and tried to write a signature to the drive in preparation for upgrading it to a dynamic disk and writing partitions to it. It wouldn't even write the signature. However, I was able to run Simpli Software's HDTach3 on both drives, and then superimpose the graphs. The results are interesting...

(click image to enlarge)

...Guess which graph belongs to the failing drive. :)

Restoring Athene to Operational Condition - Mirroring Disks

2005-05-09T20:58:00.000-07:00

Athene, the computer I tend to do most of my work on, had a problem with its OS hard disk - it had been making a progressively louder high-pitched whining noise over the past couple of weeks. The noise was most noticeable at night when I was going to sleep. This weekend I decided to replace its hard disk with a "new"* Micropolis Tomahawk 4345AV 4GB 7,200-RPM SCSI HDD I had lying around. It turned out to be a bit trickier than I expected.
* - New to this computer, anyway.

Note: this is a two-drive system, with an 8GB IDE drive C:, and a 2GB SCSI drive D: (before I upgraded it), running Windows 2000. Drive C: is considered a "System" disk by the OS, but drive D: is the "Boot" disk according to the OS. IDE devices get lettering priority over SCSI devices, at least on my systems.

To avoid reinstalling my operating system and all my programs, I decided to mirror the operating system to the new drive using PowerQuest DriveImage 2002. I installed the new drive as SCSI ID 2, leaving the OS drive at ID 0 for the time being, booted up, and started the mirroring process (direct disk-to-disk copy). It required a reboot, since it couldn't mirror the OS drive if it was in use (DriveImage was installed on another drive in the system).

Everything seemed to go fine with the mirroring process, but when I booted up again, the new (destination) drive was blank. So I tried to create an image file from my operating system disk. This time, it gave me a CRC error 98% of the way through the process of creating the mirror. After extensively checking the destination disk, and finding nothing wrong, I decided to sleep on it. I should mention at this point that the old (source) disk actually had a dent in it from falling off a shelf in storage.

The following morning, I decided to check the old disk using the SCSI host adapter's built in surface scan. It turns out that the old disk had a few bad sectors within 98% of the end of the disk. I remapped those, tried DriveImage's disk-to-disk copy again, and lo and behold, it worked! I had assumed that DriveImage would be more robust and check the source disk for errors and work around them if so - apparently that is not the case.

I verified that I could see the mirror image on the new disk when I loaded up Windows, so I removed the old disk and tried to boot off the new disk at SCSI ID 0 - but it didn't work. Hmm. Checking with PartitionMagic 6.0 (iirc) for DOS, it turned out the partition was hidden. I tried to unhide it, but PartitionMagic reported "Error 627 Drive geometry obtained from windows environment does not match that seen from boot mode" or something like that. I've run into this problem in the past and I haven't seen any solutions to it using PartitionMagic, except perhaps to upgrade.

However, while searching, I ran across this thread that mentioned using a free utility called Gdisk to unhide the partition. I downloaded it and ran it from a DOS bootdisk using first the /? switch for a listing of commands, then /STATUS to see the drive listing, which told me that disk 2 was the SCSI drive. Running "Gdisk.exe 2 /status" showed me the partition info for disk 2, and I found out that partition 2 was the NTFS partition (yes, I had another partition on the disk - more on that in a moment). Finally, running "Gdisk.exe 2 /-HIDE 2" (the first number refers to the disk, the second to the partition) unhid the partition, and lo and behold, it worked perfectly! Take that, PartitionMagic for DOS!

Then I tried to boot again, and it still didn't work. Remember that other partition I mentioned on disk 2, partition 1? It was a 500MB Primary partition I'd created for a swapfile on the disk, before the 3.5GB I intended as my main partition, completely forgetting that the computer would be expecting the first Primary partition to be the one with the OS. So, once I realized this, I loaded up fdisk (I probably could have used Gdisk again, but I'm more familiar with fdisk), and deleted the 500MB Primary partition. Upon rebooting, it found the 3.5GB Primary partition that had been mirrored (and resized) from the other disk, and the operating system began loading. Oh, happy days!

At this point, I had everything working again, but I wanted my high-performance beginning-of-hard-disk swap partition, so I created a 500MB Extended partition at the beginning of the disk, with a ~500MB Logical drive inside it for the swapfile. Rebooting convinced me that this worked fine (since the bootloader skips over Extended partitions to the first Primary partition when looking for an operating system).

Tip: if you already have your disk formatted and software installed, you may be able to use Powerquest PartitionMagic, if you have a copy, to move the partition up a bit, and free up some space at the beginning of the disk to create a swapfile partitition. I can rarely be bothered to plan ahead, so I usually do this.

Then, it occurred to me that I could have two 500MB partitions, one at the beginning of my 8GB IDE disk and one at the beginning of my "new" 4GB SCSI disk, and stripe the two partitions together using the Disk Manager under Win2K (right-click My Computer -> Manage -> Disk Management). I just had to convert both drives to Dynamic disks. I did that, and I was able to create a new Striped volume between the two disks (with 256K cluster size, if you're curious - I figure it's a big swap file, and hard disks read faster in larger chunks), assign it drive letter W:, and put a near-1GB striped RAID 0 swapfile on it.

So, there you have it. If you're running into problems with PartitionMagic for DOS, try Gdisk. Want an unfragmented swapfile? Give it its own partition at the beginning of the hard disk.

Webcomics links page for Wireball.com

2005-04-22T15:55:00.000-07:00

Regarding Wireball's Daily Reading for Webcomics - originally I sorted the list according to my relative reading order with more favorites being at the top. But now that I'm adding to it, it would make it hard for people to find new additions if I did that, so for the time being I'm adding new additions at the top.

I don't have support for dynamic pages on my server, which makes it harder, but at some point in the future I would like to design two versions of the page - one sorted by date added, and the other sorted by (my) affinity for the webcomic (which may be influenced by a number of factors, including how well I think the listing fits at a certain point).

The joy of spam bouncing at the mailserver level

2005-04-19T18:21:00.000-07:00

This post regards the spam-handling features built into my Webhost, Pair Networks.

I get a lot of spam addressed to senator12@terranrobotics.com, as the sole administrator of the domain, ever since someone stole the company credit card information from a verification server (not from us, interestingly enough) and for some reason used that e-mail address to sign up for pornographic sites. I'd just been filtering this at the client end (my end), but today I finally noticed that I can set up custom mail handling "recipes" right on the mail server, and one of the options is to bounce e-mail addressed to a particular address.

Since I never get any legitimate e-mail at this address, I set it to bounce, waited a few minutes, and then sent my spam-plagued e-mail address a test message. It came back undeliverable, just as I had hoped. Since this is at the server level, as I understand it, it avoids the problem of replying to forged "From:" addresses.

Wireball.com new wider page design

2005-04-07T17:04:00.000-07:00

I'm experimenting with a wider, more flexible page design on Wireball.com (80-90% of the browser width), which should require less scrolling. The effect should be most striking on www.Wireball.com/armada_1750_repair.htm. Comment here if the wider page design bothers you (and why, if so), or if you like it.

Anonymous comments welcomed. Off-topic posts will be deleted.