Stewart’s Images :: Groovy Computers are some images scanned from a 1975 programming manual. I remember when computers looked like this …
Category: computers suck
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Stewart’s Images :: Groovy Computers
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the outside world
Finally got something useful done with the Thinkpad with the broken backlight. Thanks to lots of help from Paul, and a critical bit of advice from Stephen, it’s now living on my network and visible to the outside world.
What had me initially confused was that both my modem (a SpeedTouch 546) and my Netgear router have NAT firewalls. I had to declare the router as a DMZ on my modem, and the Thinkpad a DMZ on my router. Also, the router’s DynDNS support was only reporting its IP address as seen behind the modem, so I had to turn that off and use dynDNS from the modem.Security hole? Perhaps; but it’s not as if OpenBSD is the least secure or most widely-used OS. I’ve really only got sshd and thttpd running, so there’s not much to chew on …
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free food from Dexit
Though I still hate Dexit, I have found a place to use the remaining balance — the Pizza Pizza at the corner of Vic Park and Sheppard. Yes, their pizza is still like damp cardboard, but they have passable salads.
They still need to work on the reliability of their terminals, and training staff. The other day they said my debit was authorised, when clearly nothing had come off the tag. They wouldn’t take the cash I offered (their screen showed a green thing), so yay Dexit, free food!
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Here do books lurk
Catherine has a project involving Toronto’s libraries, and so I, for no particularly good reason, compiled a geocoded list of the Toronto Public Library system: libraries.gpx
You can thank MapSource for the bloated GPX file. It quadrupled in size when I changed the symbols to look like buildings.
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big trash
wish I could have carried it out; there was a HP 5000 GN (huge network printer) marked out as trash on the same floor of our office.
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Stewart C. Russell – scruss.com
The move to Teksavvy has finally goaded me into moving my old Sympatico pages to scruss.com. Considering they’re still using 2003-style markup, I think they look quite smooth.
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pocket mail
Gmail works flawlessly on the BlackBerry. Wish I could find a general POP3 client for my other mail…
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convert an angle to a bearing in excel
I can’t believe I had difficulty with this one for so long:
 =MOD(450-angle,360)
This assumes you’re measuring the angle in the usual Cartesian way; anticlockwise from the x-axis. -
it’s *safe* harbour, you spammy morons
Just received a phishing e-mail that purports to come from eBay Pearl Harbour Security Departament. That’s pretty dumb.
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new connection
Switched ISPs from Sympatico to Teksavvy today. Couldn’t keep paying Bell $46 a month for something I could get for less elsewhere. I’m not (yet?) getting faster service, but the Speedtouch modem has all the admin stuff I’d need.
Must remember to copy over my old Sympatico web pages … -
Well, that was quick …
I started installing OpenBSD 90 minutes ago on the old Thinkpad, and that’s it done. When I get my static IP, I have plans …
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zeiss it ain’t
For no good reason, I bought a very cheap ($20) mini digital camera at the airport. Its limitations make it quite fun to use:
- has the astonishingly high resolution of 352 x 288
- fixed-focus lens chock-full of chromatic and spherical aberration
- no display, except for a cryptic 2-digit LCD
- takes 20 images, then it has to be downloaded
- grossly inaccurate viewfinder, which shifts when you press the shutter button
- images have pronounced scan lines
- refuses to take images in low light
- weird non-standard USB connector
It is very small, and can also work as a webcam. It also works as well as it could under OS X (use macam to download the pictures, or enable the webcam). Using the webcam does seem to delete the pictures, so make sure you download ’em first.
I’ve made a minicam gallery, which I’ll add to until the novelty wears off.
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the commitments
When I was testing BlackBerry typed-alike words (dactonyms?) I found that sqlite was averaging about 1 insert per second. This is by no means good.
It turns out that, under Perl, sqlite auto-commits after every write. This slows things down terribly. Here’s how to fix this:
When opening the database handle, turn AutoCommit off:
my $dbh =
DBI->connect( “dbi:SQLite:bberry2.sqlite”, “”, “”, { AutoCommit => 0 } )
or die “$!”;Then, only commit occasionally — say every thousand writes:
while ( … ) {
…$id++;
$dbh->commit unless ( $id % 1000 );
…}
$dbh->commit;It works out about 1000 times quicker this way.
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best beat neat nest
Beware, nerdiness follows: I generally like my BlackBerry 7130e, but its multiple letters per key can sometimes give the wrong result. Using word frequency lists from the British National Corpus, sqlite, and way too much programming time, I determined that the key sequence with the most possible word results (81?2) produces best, beat, neat or nest. The device itself suggests also brat and bray, so I should try a longer word list — in my copious free time, of course.
The longest (common words in the corpus) that have the same key sequence are employers and employees, which might briefly cause hilarity in an HR or legal context. -
… with raspberry vinaigrette!
Paul and I often talked of doing this, but I see someone’s done it for real: they hacked the GO Train scrolly LED signs to read Stephen Harper Eats Babies.
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geo mashup
I should probably introduce my Geo Mashup page. It shows where I’ve been blogging from, using Google Maps. It’s quite a fun WordPress plugin,and you can get it here.
