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Article posted on Sep 26

Damnit.

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on September 26, 2005, 3:39 am

I can't sleep.

Update: To pass my insomnia, I can't play video games either. While the Radeon Xpress 200 is a decent chipset, the onboard IGP sucks ass. I can't get HL2 performance to acceptable levels, and I'm not even a hardcore gamer. Then again, how many times have you heard people say "wow, that's a kickass onboard video card"? I'll have to pick up a PCI-E X700 card, they've really come down in price lately.

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Article posted on Sep 25

No Title

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on September 25, 2005, 1:39 am

Remember when Apple computers were made in America? I've been googling the intricacies of international shipping (namely, HP has shipped my new laptop from Shanghai via Fedex; it is currently in Anchorage[0x03]). Google BlogSearch has been useful for this particular research, but damn if the results aren't all about people tracking their iPod shipments from China[0x01].

[0x01] For all you anti-globalization guys out there, I'm not necessarily agreeing with you[0x02].
[0x02] For all you pro-globalization guys out there, I'm not necessarily agreeing with you.
[0x03] From my research, it seems Anchorage is the Fedex equivalent of a router with a single default route. Whenever a packet, err package arrives from somewhere in the world (say, Shanghai), its only job is to forward the package to Indianapolis, despite the fact that Reno/Oakland/Seattle/etc is closer. Once in Indianapolis, a better Fedex routing protocol takes over (say, BGP for packages), and gets routed accordingly[0x04].
[0x04] Yes, I know that 0x03 is before 0x01 in the main post. I added it as an edit. So there.

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Article posted on Sep 24

No Title

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on September 24, 2005, 6:20 pm

I am about to make a Freedom of Information Act request.... for the Denver Broncos cheerleaders.

More information will be forthcoming.

Update: If I disappear one day, this is why. I am about to uncover a crucial conspiracy between the United States Air Force and David Copperfield.
18:33 <@CrackMonkey> having an FOIA request with the words "David Copperfield" are worth the effort, even if you never send it

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Article posted on Sep 23

How does that make you feel?

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on September 23, 2005, 11:09 pm

Today I was playing around with the Bot::JabberBot perl module. This module sucks (I will eventually rewrite stuff to use the Jabber modules directly), but it let me get an automated system up on jabber quickly.

Now, what to do with an automated system on jabber? My first thought was Eliza, so I grabbed Chatbot::Eliza and integrated it into my script. The result is mildly amusing, but the default eliza script set is incredibly boring, and not many people have tried to make better scripts.

Next I found MegaHAL (AI::MegaHAL), which actually learns and adapts based on your input, sometimes for good, sometimes for bad. You "train" it with a set of sentences, and it diverges from there. The default training set is very nice, but you can use anything. I tried feeding it Bush's 2002 state of the union address, but nothing it replied was that interesting (I imagine any sort of speech would produce similar results). So I went back to the default set, but let it continue to evolve the set between bot sessions.

Read the rest of this entry »

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Article posted on Sep 19

Lazy CPU manipulation

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on September 19, 2005, 1:34 pm

In case you have a Pentium M/P4M or Turion notebook.

BTW, GTK programming sucks.

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Article posted on Sep 16

Woohoo! I'm a blogger now!

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on September 16, 2005, 7:32 pm

In response to the controversy surrounding Google Blogsearch and Livejournal, I have decided that Livejournal is old news, and created my own blog.

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Article posted on Sep 16

Fucking buy.com

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on September 16, 2005, 2:24 pm

I've had some great ordering experiences from buy.com in the past (when I worked in SF, I would order and pay for ground shipping, and it would usually be there the next day). But on monday, I ordered this laptop, and at the time it said "order now! almost out of stock!" So I did order. And they confirmed my credit card. And my order was "sent to warehouse". And it just sat there for the entire week. Between then and now, the stock status went from "order now! almost out of stock!" to "hahaha, you're fucked!"

So I cancelled the order and placed a customized order direct from HP. And I saved about $50 in the process, at the expense of time.

Thank you for placing your order with hpshopping.com.

- Compaq Presario V2000Z Customizable NB
- Microsoft(R) Windows(R) XP Home Edition with SP2
- AMD Turion(TM) 64 ML-30 (1.6GHz/1MB L2 Cache)
- FREE Upgrade to 14.0 WXGA BrightView Widescreen!!
- ATI RADEON(R) XPRESS 200M
- 512MB DDR SDRAM (1x512MB)
- 60 GB 5400 RPM Hard Drive
- DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive
- 54g(TM) 802.11b/g WLAN w/ 125HSM/SpeedBooster(TM)
- 12 Cell Lithium Ion Battery

XP home instead of pro, 1MB cache instead of 512K, 1x512MB memory instead of 2x256MB, 60GB 5400RPM instead of 80GB 4200RPM, DVD/CD-RW instead of DVD-RW-DL/CD-RW/kitchen-sink, and 12 cell battery instead of 6... for $50 less ($900 after rebate).

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Article posted on Sep 15

No Title

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on September 15, 2005, 8:16 pm

Never, ever get rj45 plugs with load bars. We're in the middle of a project to clean up our telco closet's cabling at work. While it's a comparatively small office, we also have a cisco voip network, and as a result there are a shitload of cables going through the patch panels. All in all, we're looking at replacing about 200 cables. "So why not just make our own cables and save a ton of money?" And off I went to order a spool of cat6 and plugs.

I came across the plugs with load bars and remembered hearing that they help you make very good cables, so I ordered 2 bags of 100. (Yes, we need 400 total, but we're doing this project in phases.)

Worst. Decision. Ever. The holes are damn small, and are a pain in the ass to get the wires into. And pulling the bar down is hard. And I have blisters on my hands. And it ends up taking about twice as long as creating a normal cat5 cable. HOWEVER, they do make very nice cables. The sheath ends up going MUCH farther into the plug than a normal cable, and as a result, there is much less of a chance of the sheath slipping out of the crimp.

Even with that in mind though, the next batch will be normal plugs.

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Article posted on Sep 12

Wow.

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on September 12, 2005, 2:09 am

I know a lot of people, myself included, said to themselves, "god, I wish I could just go down there and help". Al Gore did just that.

And then he did the macarena.

(Obligatory Red Cross donation link)

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Article posted on Sep 9

No Title

• Posted by Ryan Finnie on September 9, 2005, 11:25 pm

My nifty network tips page has been updated:

* A continuity tester has been built, with pics.
* The private network tips section now lists randomly-generated example private networks.

For the last item, I intended on doing a shortcut, something like 10.[rand(0,255].[rand(0,255].0/24 (and similar for the other RFC1918 ranges). However, I actually figured out the necessary bitwise math to do random networks across any range. As a result, with the function I created, I could, say, get a random /27 within 63.172.128.0/20 (my company's old network range).

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