December 31, 2002
Happy New Year
Happy New Year!!!

Hey all, just wanted to say thanks for the support throughout the last year and for making UFies.org (and it's affiliated sites) such a great success. See you all in 2003!

Posted by Arcterex at 06:07 PM
December 30, 2002
Extreme Cooling Wow, some people will take their cooling to extremes! I guess a site called Extreme MHZ should have been my first clue huh? Anyway, this guy has a custom water cooling system with what looks like about 50 pipes, blocks and sockets. Wow.
All block are home made. And they are doing the job well. I have an axp 1600 oc. to 1950Mhz @2.1V for 24/7 folding and my top stable benching speed is 2020Mhz @2.3V I also made custom water block that cool complet front o the Leadtek Gf4 4200 64mb oem card, so I can run that card now at 350/650 for 24/7 and 360/700 for benching.
Posted by Arcterex at 05:28 PM
Linux Traffic Shaping Found Linux Advanced Routing & Traffic Control HOWTO site, with lots of info there for your traffic shaping needs.
Linux has very advanced Routing, filtering and traffic shaping options. This site attempts to document how to configure and use these features.
Posted by Arcterex at 04:31 PM
December 29, 2002
JWZ Rants on Linux Video JWZ has an excellent rant on the state of Linux video and more importantly, why it sucks so much. Some of his problems seem to fall into the "well, it works for me, I don't know why it doesn't work for you" category. I use mplayer but only from the console, because the graphical version (gmplayer) is not what I need. I have used it a few times though, and it didn't do the things he described. I don't use redhat so I can't comment on installing gstreamer on a redhat system, but I have used XINE and while it seems to play things properly, the UI designer did seem to be on some serious crack.

All in all I think it does go back to the fact that there are many projects trying to do the same thing. I don't think that the alternative of having only one way to do things (ie: the microsoft mentality) is a better alternative.

Comments?

Posted by Arcterex at 10:05 AM
December 28, 2002
Pass this on to all your friends... Another good one passed on from my school-dude-friend. Head over here and share the knowledge with all those people that send you email forwards!
Posted by Arcterex at 02:22 PM
World Geography This was passed onto me by a friend from school.... seems scarily true. Read more for the goodies. THE GEOGRAPHY OF A WOMAN

Between 18 and 20 a woman is like Africa,
half discovered, half wild, naturally beautiful with fertile deltas.

Between 21 and 30 a woman is like America,
well developed and open to trade especially for someone with cash.

Between 31 and 35 she is like India,
very hot, relaxed and convinced of her own beauty.

Between 36 and 40 a woman is like France.
Gently aging but still a warm and desirable place to visit.

Between 41 and 50 she is like Yugoslavia,
lost the war - haunted by past mistakes. Massive reconstruction is now necessary.

Between 51 and 60, she is like Russia,
very wide and borders are unpatrolled.

Between 61 and 70, a woman is like Mongolia,
with a glorious and all conquering past but alas, no future.

After 70, they become Afghanistan.
Most everyone knows where it is, but no one wants to go there.

THE GEOGRAPHY OF A MAN

Between 15 and 70 a man is like Iraq...
ruled by a dick.

Posted by Arcterex at 10:19 AM
December 27, 2002
Hello.... (again) *evenbiggersigh* Back up... again. This time (again) I think it should be ok (again).

A suspected faulty drive has been removed and the nice dual motherboard have been replaced with a slightly slower PIII-450 that was found. Assuming we're still up tomorrow (fingers crossed) that'll mean that the load problems have been fixed (they were causing crashing).

My huge thanks to Fred for troubleshooting and the spare hardware, and Tom (at the co-lo) for putting up with me keeping him there long after he should have been gone home and saving my bacon in a couple of cases (mkraid --dangerous-no-resync is your friend!).

Mail will be back up in a few minutes, as soon as I restore the mail spool from backup... some data (logs mostly it seems) was lost, so please email me if you find anything busted.

UPDATE: OMG! It's still up! Whohoooo!

Posted by Arcterex at 09:32 PM
December 26, 2002
Merry Boxing Day As you saw today, more problems. Something to do with hardware again, with a lovely message saying "ServerWorks OSB4 in impossible state" followed by a kernel panic. *sigh* I had to take two drives out and have them in the arcterhouse to test and see if it is a problem with the drives or not. There will no doubt be a bit of downtime in the next while due to rebooting for kernel upgrades if needed, and replacing the drives or any hardware that needs it. If you're not subscribed already, get on the ufies-announce list to keep up to date on forseeable downtime or changes. Thanks for all your patience.
Posted by Arcterex at 08:01 PM
December 25, 2002
Merry Christmas A huge Merry Christmas goes out to all the faithful UFies.org readers out there, my friends, family, the folks at the co-lo, and everyone that has gotten me here (both in life and in this server which I use to talk to all of you)! Have a safe and happy Christmas and hope you all get the presents you want!

(Oh, and the server is back up and no worse for wear (yay RAID) than a few bounced emails... will post the grisley details later)

Posted by Arcterex at 12:14 AM
December 24, 2002
Back Up and Alive! Yes folks, we're back up and no worse for wear, aside from some bounced email. There will be a reboot or two in the future to make sure that things are all hashed out, but aside from that we're good. Read more for the details.... See my blog for wha t was happening before. I came to the server farm with no idea what was going on. Booted up the box with some new memory (thanks Fred!, up to 1.5G now :)and had problems. One memory stick blew out, then the SCSI cable for /home was damaged and I had to run around looking for another (Fred came through once again), and then it was a disk error in the raid. The problem was it was the spare, so as soon as /dev/md1 started to reconstruct to recover from a currupt partition, it kernel paniced and died. I'll be rebooting to make sure things are cool, but we should be fine (touch wood) now :)
Posted by Arcterex at 04:17 PM
December 18, 2002
50 Reasons LOTR Sucked 50 Reasons Lord of the Rings Sucks is another gem from PWOT, definately no to be taken seriously. IE:
The Orcs were obviously stolen from PC game maker Blizzard and its Warcraft series. Too bad Blizzard is apparently too scared to sue New Line over it.
Posted by Arcterex at 05:17 PM
New Take on Harry Potter Here is a different take on harry potter, grabbed from alt.tech-support.recovery, posted by DaZZa who stole it from another newsgroup.
Posted by Arcterex at 01:08 PM
December 16, 2002
.NET Jabber SDK for Mono Winfessor announced today that their .NET jabber SDK was available.
Our SDK now lets .NET developers build cross platform instant messaging applications that target Linux, Windows, Solaris, FreeBSD, Windows CE, and Windows Pocket PC 2002.
Find the full press release here.
Posted by Arcterex at 03:34 PM
What Americans Think Of Canadians [via fark] What Americans think of us is quite interesting, and very amusing.
"Canadians are sort of a nation of Homer Simpsons."
Posted by Arcterex at 03:29 PM
Allo Allo Well, it looks like Allo Allo (a absolutely hilarious british comedy) is now available on DVD... but only in the UK (purchase it here). I've searched around for it locally in a legit, or non-legit, format, but no luck :( Anyone happen to have this series around, or ever even heard of it?
Posted by Arcterex at 12:10 PM
New (kinda) X-Men 2 Trailer The new trailer isn't completely new, but it does show a few funky new scenes. Anyone remotely interested in X-Men 2 should check it out.
Posted by Arcterex at 09:40 AM
December 15, 2002
10 Worst Search Engines 10 Worst Search Engines is a bit old, but still amusing.
Posted by Arcterex at 04:43 PM
Mitnik's Missing Chapter Mitnick's 'Lost Chapter' Found is a wired story about how Kevin Mitnik's book, The Art of Deception, had it's first chapter (detailing his early life and some issues he has with Markoff's famous NYT front page story) pulled at the last minute. Seems that the chapter made it to the internet, and it is quite a good read. I wouldn't mind picking the book up either.
Posted by Arcterex at 11:49 AM
December 14, 2002
Link of the Day Today's link, A Furniture Porn Movie!, is the sole responsibility of Silverstr, and not me. I blame him completely for this. Caution, may not be appropriate for younger viewers :)
Furniture Porn has inspired a movie! Well, a short film. But still! God help us and the creators of this inspired piece of intense furniture action! View and be amazed!
Posted by Arcterex at 11:42 PM
December 13, 2002
The Science of Harry Potter Science of Harry Potter
Although the biggest object lifted by Muggles is a frog at the Nijmegen High Field Magnet Laboratory, there is no reason why the grounds of Hogwarts should not be riddled with super-strong magnets.
Interesting things to think about. There is a similar book called "The Science of Star Trek" (or something like that). A search on google found me this page.
Posted by Arcterex at 10:54 AM
December 12, 2002
New Google Search Engine Well, everyone's favorite search engine has a new section. froogle.google.com is a way to search for items for sale online. More info can be found here. Just in time for the holidays!
Posted by Arcterex at 01:36 PM
December 11, 2002
Perl Poetry Perl Poetix has some quite interesting abuses of the Perl language to form poetry.
Posted by Arcterex at 02:22 PM
The Man with the Smallest ... Well, you know... The Man With The Smallest Penis. Definately not for children, definately funny.
Posted by Arcterex at 01:56 PM
December 10, 2002
PHP5 An article linked from somebodydial911.com has some interesting tidbits on what will be in PHP5.
PHP version 5, expected to appear in beta form by March, 2003, and released in the summer of 2003, could change all that. Significant performance improvements and a much more complete object-oriented programming environment will allow PHP to provide a powerful Web front end for enterprise-class .NET and J2EE-based applications.
Posted by Arcterex at 01:30 PM
December 09, 2002
More LOTR Funnies Another good posting on best-of-usenet with some Lord of the Rings humor.
Posted by Arcterex at 03:22 PM
Cheat Sheet The Programmer's Cheat Sheet is a nifty page with all the things that a programmer might need to know... bit shifting, calculator, ascii chart, etc. Similar in idea to my buddy Cuv's Linux Cribnotes page.
Posted by Arcterex at 03:21 PM
Shoe Tying Technique Ever wondered (as I do every day), if the way that you tie your shoes is optimal? Well, a New Scientist article says they have mathematic proof of the best way.
Posted by Arcterex at 09:27 AM
Seamless Tiles Apparently the propaganda project is still around. High quality wallpaper tiles for your desktop. Thanks to the Bowie timeline.
Posted by Arcterex at 09:15 AM
Lying Media Bastards Lying Media Bastards is a great weblog I picked off the MT homepage at random. A critical look at media, hype, and what not. Great site for cynical bastards like me :)
Posted by Arcterex at 01:17 AM
Make Your Geek Happy Ten Gift Suggestions for This Christmas - OSNews.com
Saturday evening here, nothing more exciting to do... let's suggest some geek/tech gifts for you or your loved ones, for this Christmas.
Yes, I think I'll have a few of those...
Posted by Arcterex at 01:09 AM
December 08, 2002
Episode III Fan Art and Info TheForce.net has a nifty fan art section that I hadn't seen before. In it they also have some neat fan art posters for Episode III.

There is also an all encompassing thread with every stitch of info that has been gathered on Episode III.

Posted by Arcterex at 02:55 PM
December 04, 2002
Perl Quiz of the Week Perl Quiz of the Week
Every Wednesday I send out Perl quizzes: Usually requests to write a program or function to perform a certain task. The 'regular' quiz can be solved using only techniques and functions found in Learning Perl (3rd edition) by Schwartz and Phoenix. The 'expert' quiz may be difficult.
Posted by Arcterex at 09:47 PM
B5 Humor The Babylon5 fans in the crowd might get a laugh out of this best-of-usenet post.
Posted by Arcterex at 11:49 AM
December 02, 2002
More Cats A couple of funnies below for the cat lovers out there passed on to me by Firefly. Cat Laws

Law of Cat Inertia
A cat at rest will tend to remain at rest, unless acted upon by some outside force - such as the opening of cat food, or a nearby scurrying mouse.

Law of Cat Motion
A cat will move in a straight line, unless there is a really good reason to change direction.

Law of Cat Magnetism
All blue blazers and black sweaters attract cat hair in direct proportion to the darkness of the fabric.

Law of Cat Thermodynamics
Heat flows from a warmer to a cooler body, except in the case of a cat, in which case all heat flows to the cat.

Law of Cat Stretching
A cat will stretch to a distance proportional to the length of the nap just taken.

Law of Cat Sleeping
All cats must sleep with people whenever possible, in a position as uncomfortable for the people involved, and as comfortable as possible for the cat.

Law of Cat Elongation
A cat can make her body long enough to reach just about any counter top that has anything remotely interesting on it.

Law of Cat Obstruction
A cat must lay on the floor in such a position to obstruct the maximum amount of human foot traffic.

Law of Cat Acceleration
A cat will accelerate at a constant rate, until he gets good and ready to stop.

Law of Dinner Table Attendance
Cats must attend all meals when anything good is served.

Law of Rug Configuration
No rug may remain in its naturally flat state for very long.

Law of Obedience Resistance
A cat's resistance varies in proportion to a human's desire for her to do something.

First Law of Energy Conservation
Cats know that energy can neither be created nor destroyed and will, therefore, use as little energy as possible.

Second Law of Energy Conservation
Cats also know that energy can only be stored by a lot of napping.

Law of Refrigerator Observation
If a cat watches a refrigerator long enough, someone will come along and take out something good to eat.

Law of Electric Blanket Attraction
Turn on an electric blanket and a cat will jump into bed at the speed of light.

Law of Random Comfort Seeking
A cat will always seek, and usually take over, the most comfortable spot in any given room.

Law of Bag/Box Occupancy
All bags and boxes in a given room must contain a cat within the earliest possible nanosecond.

Law of Cat Embarrassment
A cat's irritation rises in direct proportion to her embarrassment times the amount of human laughter.

Law of Milk Consumption
A cat will drink his weight in milk, squared, just to show you he can.

Law of Furniture Replacement
A cat's desire to scratch furniture is directly proportional to the cost of the furniture.

Law of Cat Landing
A cat will always land in the softest place possible; often the midsection of an unsuspecting, reclining human.

Law of Fluid Displacement
A cat immersed in milk will displace her own volume, minus the amount of milk consumed.

Law of Cat Disinterest
A cat's interest level will vary in inverse proportion to the amount of effort a human expends in trying to interest him.

Law of Pill Rejection
Any pill given to a cat has the potential energy to reach escape velocity.

Law of Cat Composition
A cat is composed of Matter + Antimatter + It Doesn't Matter.


PETS' LETTERS TO GOD

Dogs' letters to God:

Dear God, How come people love to smell flowers, but hardly ever smell each other? Where are their priorities?

Dear God, When we get to Heaven, can we sit on your couch? Or is it the same old story?

Dear God, If a dog barks all night in the forest and no human hears him, is he still a bad dog?

Dear God, If we come back as humans, is that good or bad?

Dear God, Is it true that in Heaven, dining room tables have on-ramps?

Dear God, Are there mailmen in Heaven? If there are, will I have to apologize?

Dear God, Are there dogs on other planets or are we alone? I have been howling at the moon and stars for a long time, but all I ever hear back is the beagle from across the street!

Dear God, When we get to the Pearly Gates, do we have to shake hands and beg to get in?

Dear God, Is it true that dogs are not allowed in restaurants because we can't make up our minds what NOT to order? Or is it that thing with the carpets again?

Dear God, Can you undo what that veterinarian did to me?!?

Cat's letter to God:

Dear God, Do you exist? Just curious. I don't really care.

Posted by Arcterex at 11:10 PM
Abstracting the Gnome Desktop from the File System There is a great article entitled Abstracting the Linux Desktop from the File-system which details how you use the desktop, and how GNOME has a good start, but really isn't using what they have to the full potential. This thing sounds like Engel wrote it or something! :) Lots of good idea, examples, and ways to work better.
Do you ever hear complaints from OsX users about the OsX file-system? Is the OsX file-system any more intuitive than the Linux one? Do you even know anything about the OsX file-system? Will you ever know anything about the OsX file-system? Probably not. Microsoft have added the My Documents Folder to Windows... Apple have abstracted the desktop from the file-system in OsX... Which OS is acclaimed for being intuitive and easy to use?
Posted by Arcterex at 04:17 PM
Random Linux Stuff Just wanted to put a wave out to a nifty site entitled Troy's Linux Stuff, which has lots of nifty things, including grub splash screens and a web based iptables firewall generator.
Posted by Arcterex at 10:16 AM
December 01, 2002
Cats A link for the crazy old cat man inside all of us.
Posted by Arcterex at 07:27 PM