Washinton Post Botnet Article - Dump Internet Explorer Now!

You know when your computer suddenly slows down? You ever wonder what's happening? You ever have to reinstall windows, or run a spyware remover?

Most people would answer 'Yes' to at least one of the above.

This article in the Washington Post tells you what's happening at the other end. A hacker is being paid $7000 a *month* to install adware/spyware/crapware on *your* machine. These programs install themselves though Internet Explorer (the Internet) when you browse. They can do almost anything on your machine. However, like a parasite, they may not damage your data, though they have the potential to, they can and do spy on your surfing habits and online user accounts.

Chances are if you have strange windows popping up on your machine, it is infected. Your passwords, kids details, names, addresses could all have been sucked back to guys like this.

Dump Internet Explorer, maybe dump Windows entirely, and switch to a computer system or browsing software such as Mozilla Firefox, that makes this harder for the hackers.

3d Real Time FFT Analysis Software

I have a decent pre-Alpha version of my audio analysis software running. It displays a real-time FFT plot from any supported audio input source. Pre-Alpha in this case means non-feature complete, but fairly solid, crash and leak free. The pic shows data being displayed on a labelled plot with the settings window up and displaying the current settings. Through the magic of Cocoa, changes to the sliders adjust the plot in real-time allowing easy setup for different sound sources. I have kinda written this software before, but in assembler on a Commodore Amiga. Luckily the Mac OS comes with a built in vector processing lib and though my G4 is hardly a Cray, it does a pretty good job from Objective-C using threads to bury the sound capture, and regular old events to perform data analysis and screen plotting. Any enquiries about this software can be directed to Highland Innovation Centre Limited in Scotland.

Re-enacting The Dodge "I Smell a Hemi Ad"

Remember the ad ... guy goes "I smell a Hemi!" then jumps out of his car to look under the dustsheet covering a dodge on a transporter ...

Yeah, you guessed it, I managed to reenact the part of the ad where the dustsheet catches on the windshield of the moving car and the guy can't see.

Yep, it was a big piece of plastic and I managed to drive right into it at 70 mph on the Houston Beltway driving to work. Sucks. It was really scary because there was a slap of plastic and the entire windshield just went opaque. Slap! Just like that! And it really covered the whole windshield. I swore, panicked for half a second, then wound the window down and drove for a mile with my head out the window. Managed to pull the mess off my windshield at the toll plaza at Westheimer.

Scary!

Paris Vacation Pictures - Reprocessed

I reprocessed my Paris vacation pictures to be a bit brighter. Fixed the 'Made with a Mac' logo also.

Click on Paris Vacation Pictures to go directly to the new pictures. You might want to hit 'refresh' to clear out your cache if you already looked at the previous upload.

p a r i s v a c a t i o n 2 0 0 6

Travel day, and First Day in Paris

Notre Dame Cathedral and Eiffel Tower

Cemetery Pere Lachaise and Musee d'Orsay

Invalides and the Louvre

La Madeleine and St Chapel

Sacre Coeur and Montmartre

Catacombs, St Sulpice and St Germain

All these destinations a photographed at my paris vacation pages on my website.

Paris Vacation Day 4 - Pictures are up

We visited Invalides and the Louvre. Pictures are up here.

Hope you like them.

My Paris Vacation Pictures

The first three days of my Paris Vacation are posted on my web-site. Click on www.jonathanwatmough.com and follow the portfolio link on the lefthand side of the page, then click Paris Vacation.

The remaining pages are in progress.

New Web Page at Jonathan Watmough.com

Finally, I fixed up my old 1990's era web page into something a bit more contemporary looking. The old page, above, has become the new page below.

Back in Texas

Safely back in Houston after a lonnnnggggg, lonnnnngggg 10 hour+ flight from Paris. Had a great time apart from getting sick with a bad cold/cough for the last few days, but still managed to go out despite that. Even though I was generally trashed by the afternoon.

Pictures will be up somewhere, soon. ;-)

RSS - What is it ?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.

Instead of relying on users to browse to the page and look for new content, RSS uses a feed of links, called an RSS Feed to identify when new content has been added to a web-site.

This allows a new breed of slim-line web browser called a News Reader. A great example is shown in the picture. NewsFire is a brilliant little application that allows users to subscribe to RSS Feeds and to continuously track when new stories become available.

For web-sites like Slashdot and Digg, which are used by many people, and have fairly unpredictable posting frequencies, a news reader allows you to read the stories when they appear, rather than fruitlessly rescanning Slashdot every 5 minutes, like some of ... errrr, scratch that!!

Google PageRank

Here's a great post about how Google PageRank works.

In summary, the number of pages on a site adds up and gets distributed to the pages that the page links point at. So, I just contributed a small amount of page rank to web workshop. Cool.

Things you can do to improve your page rank, which governs how high your web-site appears in Google results, include planning the way you link carefully, and having plenty of content ... the kind of content that other people link to.

New Intel Core Duo iMac - Reviewed by Walt Mossberg

Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal has reviewed the new Intel Core Duo-based iMacs.

His conclusion is that the iMac is by far the best available computer for the average user. The convenience and reliability of Mac OS X, and the brilliant design of the Apple / Intel hardware make this a machine that's a pleasure both to own and to use.

Damn Speed Channel

Will I hope the tobacco-chewin', duct-tapin', gear-jammin' hillbillies of Numb... sorry NASCAR are happy. My highly enjoyable 'Legends of Motorsport' on Speed was pre-empted again. The upcoming schedule looks great, with the Alpine Rally, Niarobi Rally, Le Mans all coming on.

For those who haven't watched it, the program features a varied set of archive footage with either updated commentary or the commentary of the day. many times the old commentary is absolutely hilarious. My favourite so far has been a deadpan Tony Pond racing a Nissan against the much more powerful cars of larger factory teams.

When interviewed and asked whether, like the other drivers, he would be off to warm baths and masseurs, the laconic Pond merely replied that he just 'fancied a cup of tea'. Understated by highly able guy.

TCU Horned Frogs vs Iowa State Cyclones

Thanks to BW3 and a local radio station, I won free tickets to the TCU Horned Frogs game against Iowa State at Reliant Stadium here in Houston. Had a pretty good time. The game when I left it was 24 - 24 in the 4th quarter.

Here's a shot of a horn frog going down right near to getting a touchdown.

Universal Remote

I just managed to replace 3 of our remotes with a RadioShack universal remote. The universal remote has a cool light-up screen that lights/shimmers the appropriate selected device, and allows key functions to be controlled. It's trial and error to program, since you have to try a bunch of codes from the manual for each device. So far, the Phillips TV, the satellite receiver and the Panasonic DVD player are working. I couldn't find a code for the Phillips DVD player, or the HDTV tuner, but I think these can be programmed by recording the actual remote controls.

But dumping three remotes (so far) for one (cooler) remote is a pretty good start. This is a great piece of hardware.

Leaf Day

I proclaim today leaf day !!

We spent the morning raking leaves from the huge tree over the backyard. Then we ended up with huge leaf piles all over the lawn. Most of the effort was spent putting the leaves into bags, the second picture shows the 22 or so trash bags full of leaves that we collected.

Back Garden Nature Photography with Nikon D70 and Nikkor 80-200/4 AI

The attached pics on this post are of a squirrel that the cat was attempting to stalk. The 80-200/4 is an AI lens, so it was manual focus and non-metering on the camera. However, with the instant feedback of having a digital camera, it was easy to home in on f4 and 1/400 sec for these exposures. Since the light didn't change, I stuck with the same exposure for all the shots.

Winter In Dearborn, Michigan

Duckpond at Fairlane Woods


View across to the Trees

Working in Detroit this week, and experiencing quite a lot of snow. I went out this evening and took a few pictures in the last dying of evening.

Houston Downtown Aquarium

Spent Sunday morning at Houston's downtown aquarium. This is a pretty cool attraction. Here are some of my pictures:

Tokina 12-24/4 Lens for Nikon D70

I have the Tokina 12-24mm/4 ultra wide angle lens for my Nikon D70. I'm not sure about the color rendition though.

This picture was shot at 1600 sensitivity so you can see some noise, but it's still better than having no picture at all. I think I like this lens a bit more than my 18-70mm Nikkor. It's actually the first non-Nikkor I've purchased.

The big drawback for my shooting is that if you want to use fill flash, you have to zoom in to at least 20mm otherwise you will get a big shadow in the bottom of the picture. I guess I'll be able to work around this, maybe by keeping any foreground detail away from the shadow, but it's annoying if you permanently have slow/rear/-0.7ev (my fill flash settings) always in the camera. Actually this problem would be even worse with larger lenses like the 2.8 aperture lenses.

Lunch at Pei Wei - Sunday

Had lunch at Pei Wei on Sunday. Haven't eaten there for a while. Quite enjoyed the coconut curry and pork.

The picture is taken with my Nikon D70 and the Nikkor 18-70/3.5-4.5 lens. I'm really enjoying this camera, and the only downspot is the fairly large (conspicuous) size and fair degree of complexity.

Looking at a New Camera

I think it may be time to update to a new camera. The shiny new Nikon D200, the shiny Canon PowerShot S80 are looking pretty good compared to my old PowerShot S40.

This is as good an excuse as any to point at Amazon, and say:

Find the Perfect Holiday Gift at Amazon.com Gift Central

Detroit Airport Tunnel

Detroit Metro airport has a fantastic 'light tunnel'. It also plays cool music. Here's a picture. It's a bit monochromatic looking, but I'll try and get another picture when I'm up there.

This picture was taken with my Canon Powershot S30 set on aperture priority, with about f10, to guarantee a nice blurry effect.

U-Hauling -- Good Experience

Just moved the contents of my life, in crate form, to my girlfriend's place. Despite all the bad press, the natural choice for a 'cheap' move was U-Haul. I used Private Mini Storage of Sawdust Road Spring Texas, and we reserved a large truck a few days in advance, picking up on Saturday at 11am.

We arrived about 10:30am and went through some basic paperwork. My quote was $39.95 + $14 insurance + $50 mileage estimate coming out to about $120. This really is quite a lot cheaper than hiring movers, especially when moving lots and lots of small boxes which are easy but time consuming to load.

The Tiptons were couteous and business-like, and Randy pulled a 24' gas truck round the front for me. I guess they are used to people renting trucks, so there wasn't too much mollycoddling. The truck was a gas-powered 24' with AC and automatic. It had 194,000 miles on it and started up fine. As usual with any big, fairly well-used piece of equipment, there were a variety of hisses clunks and squeaks, shakes, lurches etc. But, the truck had a good vibe going, being extremely clean, and having all gauges working. I asked, and the truck was a 'one-way' truck, from Arizona. Apparently these trucks are the best maintained ones, having to do long hauls across the country.

I put 20 gallons of gas in it, since it only had about 1/8th of a tank according to the gauge, and the drive down to my apartment went fine, with 45 and beltway 8 passing beneath the big wheels at about 55-65 mph. I kept a good eye on the gauges and the truck never lost charge, or got hot, though the gas sloshing around in the 40 gallon tank (my guess) sure made the gauge go up and down.

Once down at my apartment, I loaded the entire floor of the 24' truck with boxes and plastic crates. Some of it was stacked up, but there was enough space to have most of it one layer. At least nothing was going to be falling around.

The drive back up to Spring was pretty uneventful, until the ramp onto 45, when two guys in a truck got somewhat of a scare when the wheel came off (!!!) their truck. The people in an Explorer on the 45 feeder were pretty lucky not to get killed, as I watched the wheel from the other truck just miss them.

Made it back and unloaded, then returned the truck on Sunday morning about 10:30am. Final mileage was 80 miles, so the bill was just over $150 bucks (+fuel), so I was pretty happy. Overall, if you're happy driving a big truck, that doesn't go very fast, or at least aren't scared, then go for it. It took about 6 hours to do the whole move, so I saved probably a couple hundred bucks on movers. Recommended.

Sunday Night + New Week, New Mac App

That was some busy weekend. Spent a bunch of time on Saturday and Sunday packing boxes in my apartment. Actually, this time, I'm using sterilite tubs from Target, which are a lot nicer (and more expensive) than cardboard boxes. It's pretty nice to be able to see what you have in a tub though.

The picture above was cropped out of a digicam original taken in crappy lighting and enhanced using Graphic Converter. It's definitely feeling like every time I do something with this mac, I find some more cool software. GraphicConverter is like a Mac version of PaintShopPro. It supports lots of file formats and has a pretty comprehensive toolbox, and list of effects.

NASCAR in High Def

Fox are showing some NASCAR. It looks kick-ass in high def. The screen cap shows that it really does test a G4 pretty much to the limit. It'll stutter and suck down lots of battery, but it's fine at Normal performance settings.

Elgato EyeTV 500 on the Mac

Wow! I just hooked up my Elgato EyeTV 500 to my Powerbook G4 and was watching HD TV in about 10 minutes. This is quite an advance on the near hundred hours it took to get a Linux 2.6.11 kernel custom built and compiled so I could run MythTV with a PCHD-TV card.

Really, like 10 minutes.

I opened the box and pulled out the 8 x 5 x 2 silver box with the HD decoder in it. Pushed the software CD into the slot on the right of the PowerBook and dragged the app and docs to my Applications folder.

The amplified Terk HD antenna ($40 from Radio Shack) screws into the back of the Elgato box and a firewire cable connects between the box and the mac. This cable also powers the box, so if you are running on battery, expect it to drain a bit faster.

Displaying HD also takes a lot of power, so expect your fan to be running and your G4 to get a bit hotter than normal. Incidentally, the picture looks great, with so far no glitches. Recommended. Mine was about $240 refurb, directly from Elgato.

TiddlyWiki

There's a great piece of software called TiddlyWiki. It builds an entire (tiddly) wiki into an HTML file. You can save a new file to disc, then open it and start adding posts. The posts get indexed and linked, just like a real wiki, but everything lives in one file.

The overall effect is like the old outlining software that used to exist before it was embraced and extended by Word.

Click here to play with and download a copy.

New Video iPods

I already ordered a black 20 Gig iPod. Having TV shows to watch on the go will be fabulous, especially spending time hanging round airports and the like that I do these days.

Here's a pic of the quality (on a G4 PowerBook) of watch Night Stalker. For a relatively crappy resolution of 480 x 320, the picture is great. Bit of pixelation, but it'll look great on an iPod. It's fine for watching at double size.

Isn't that awesome.

Surreal Night

It's a funny night. Apparently Coronation Street (Corrie) goes down ok in Canada. I know this cos' I'm sitting in Detroit watching CBC and there's an hour of Corrie on't telly. I've been in the US that long, that I'd forgotten this entertainment existed. Ooh, that Martin's on, and his daughter's pregnant. Oooh, maybe dreadful Deirdre'll be on.

The following video came off of slashie dot. Bear with it ...

Funny video

Warning, it does contain some bad language.

Apple iSight First Impressions

I bought an Apple iSight camera for my Mac Powerbook G4 this morning. I've wanted a web cam for a while, and finally, discovering all the cool video software on my mac pushed me over the edge.

Unpacking

As usual with Apple gear, the packaging of the iSight is superb. The plastic wrap comes off and the content box slides out of the outer cover. The main box then folds into two, with 'Enjoy' and 'Designed by Apple in California' the first things you read.

Inside the box, the iSight itself, a carrying tube and various holders and other gubbins await.

Plugging In

The iSight clips to its firewire connection, which is in turn clipped by a cool looking but slightly precarious clip to the top of the powerbook screen. After a slight pause, the iChat setup runs. I cancelled this the first time and went straight for Quartz Composer.

The video quality is damn good for webcam type hardware. 640x480 at 30 frame per second doesn't sound that great, but the image quality is clean and smooth. I was very impressed. I'll post some more images later.

Quartz Composer is a live video patch panel that makes it really easy to patch live video, images, clips, RSS, text through visual effects onto the screen. See the picture of me on a cube. ;-)

Isn't that teh cool !?!?!?!?!

Power Back on in Spring 8:34PM CDT

WOOOOOO HOOOOOOOO !!!!!!

Power is back and we have AC again. We made it through the day using sterno(tm) to heat water for tea, and heating soup. There was no damage, unless you count a few leaves being blown off the trees around the house.

So, yeah, dodged a bullet on this one.

Man, it sure is nice to be under AC again. Sweeet!

Buffy Character Test

Just sitting back enjoying a beer and doing the 'Buffy Personality Test', linked to from Epiphany.

These are the results:

Faith

63% amorality, 72% passion, 36% spirituality, 36% selflessness
Faith is a powerhouse, and you might be, too. Passion-driven, down-to-earth, and willing to do what it takes to get things done and have a good time doing them, she is tough and sexy. Now, this test didn't rate your sexiness, but with these kinds of traits, that's probably true as well.

You rate as one of the most dynamic characters of the Buffy universe.

Congratulations!

Spring Texas - Rain Starting

Up here in Spring, Texas, we were treated to a great sunset under the clouds, and the rain and wind is picking up just a little.

According to the satellite pictures we are pretty much just right under the first outer bands. So nothing too serious happening yet on this side of town.

The story is a bit rougher down in Galveston where some flooding is occurring with winds gusting up to 50 mph or so.

Estimated time of arrival for the worst of the winds is about 3am local time.

Winds Not So Bad - So Far

NOAA provide a Java applet for report METARS. These are automated report from airfields that are used primarily by pilots. The picture shows 30 knot winds in the worst affected areas.




Local 2 are reporting that Rita will hit landfall well inside of Louisiana. This is borne out by the pressure readings on the METAR.

Look at the western Louisiana coast, and you see the lowest pressures well inside Louisiana, right at the Eastern edge of the projected cone of uncertainty.

Rita Weakening Further

From the Weather Channel, Hurricane Rita has weakened further, to a category 3 storm.

Ninth Ward of New Orleans Under Water

According to Fox News, the Ninth Ward of New Orleans is under waist deep water again, due to a levee break.

This is due to the heavy rain bands in advance of Hurricane Rita.

No Direct Hit on Houston ?

Local 2 Houston weather is showing that Hurricane Rita has moved to a more Northern path. Estimates as of about 10:30am CDT show the eye of the hurricane coming onshore much nearer the Texas Louisiana border than was previously thought.

This is good news for Houston, and Galveston especially.

Governor Rick Perry praised the evacuation airlift effort in both Beaumont and Ellington, where many people with special needs, the infirm, elderly, bed-ridden, have been airlifted out of the immediate path of the storm.

Storm Imminent

By mid-afternoon, Houston and East of I-45 should experience hurricane force winds. Rita has weakened somewhat but is still listed as a category 4 storm.

Winds have dropped to 140 mph, although these should come down as the pressure at the storm has risen to 930 millibars.

The storm is 100 miles off the Texas coast and moving at 10 mph, so we can expect the start of this within 10 hours or so.

Mayor White is advising that if you has not already evacuated, then this it is now too late, and you should shelter in place. Basic requirements include a gallon of water per person per day, and adequate non-perishable food. Please remove loose items from around your house and help to make your neighborhood a safer place when the winds hit.

All our thoughts go out to the victims on the Metro Bus.

Driving Around Houston - Thursday Night

I just made a trip from Spring down to Westchase. This is about a 70 mile roundtrip. I took Spring Cypress and Steubner Airline down to the tollway then round to Westheimer. Traffic was extremely light with very few people out and about. Ironically, it's a beautiful night in Houston. Warm and breezy. No sign yet of the impending storm.

I saw only one gas station that had gas, on the way down, and it ws closed a couple of hours later when I returned. I saw no other gas stations that still had gas prices up. Obviously if you have an empty tank, then you are SOL right now.

No power problem yet in Houston, but the lack of people lends it an eerie feel. Once I reached my apartment, I shutdown my computers and moved them to the kitchen, and bagged up some documents and stuffed them and some other items into my cupboards. To be honest, as long as I make it through the storm, I'll survive everything else getting trashed. I wanted to be fast just in case there's any impending lawlessness starting, and I felt kind of exposed leaving a car full of gas in an apartment parking lot in my part of town.

I picked up my old IBM Thinkpad on the way out and made an extremely uneventful drive back up the beltway, Bammel, Steubner Airline and Spring Cypress.

In case anyone is reading this, the beltway is near empty, and 249 and 290 look empty, at least as much as you can see from the beltway. I think I counted about 20 or so stalled cars between Bammel N Houston and Westheimer, so it's maybe not quite as bad as the media are making out.

Definitely no gas around though. And not too much sign of the Guard yet, though I saw a couple of trucks heading South on the beltway.

Gas Available in Houston

The news is full of how little gas there is available. I flew into IAH last night and filled up at the airport. It was busy but no panic. I took Lee road North to 1960, then West to Kuykendahl. On 1960, on the East side, there were plenty of gas stations. it's not a major route from anywhere else, so it might be worth a try if you need gas badly. Most traffic in Houston seems to be on the West side of the Hardy toll road.

Hope this helps someone out. Maybe tanker trucks in Houston could 'siphon' from gas stations on the East side that still have plenty of supplies.

Vacuuming ...

"Honey, I think want to vacuum the floor."
"Evacuate the floor! Are you crazy?!?! There's vacuums stacked up all the way to the bedroom!"

Just a little light humor ;-)

Hurricane Rita Weakening But Still Category 4

Still looking at 150 mph winds with gusts to 180, and coming onshore just east of Galveston, with the worst storm surge to the east.

People are basically being advised to shelter in place since evacuation is so difficult due to grid lock on the freeways and fuel shortages. Many have been stuck in their cars and trucks all night.

Mayor Bill White advising that '...being on the highway, is a deathtrap...'

Shelters need to be put in place, near the freeways, so that people can be removed to safety prior to the storm starting to hit tomorrow evening (Friday).

Detroit

I have been quite enjoying my current job in Detroit. I am based in the main power company there working on a software implementation for running their gas pipeline.

Detroit downtown is much different that Houston downtown. For a start, it's much smaller. It doesn't seem like the main downtown area is more than about 10 x 10 blocks or so. From my office windows, I can see all the major sport stadiums easily, and sadly, all the vacant lots and gravel parking.

I have an apartment in Dearborn. It's an older complex, but it's quite comfortable and I have a washer dryer and good cable TV and cable interweb. All the comforts really !

I'll definitely be posting some pictures of interesting sights in Detroit and Dearborn.

Thanks Everyone

Thanks to all the people who've called me to say 'hi' and good luck. These storms don't normally get such wide press, but thanks for thinking of us. Let's hope that this all doesn't turn out too bad ;-).

I am kinda expecting the power and interweb to be down after the storm, so unless Houston gets wiped out, don't worry too much. CNN might be showing a mess, but it's going to take the house being flattened before I expect to expire. Spring, Texas is way outside the flood plain, so the main danger is winds and rain, and the small tornados that accompany this kind of weather. But, hey, that just sounds like a normal Houston summer hurricane season.

It definitely is fairly quiet in the neighbourhood. People are hunkering down, making sure they have flashlights, water, and supplies for a few days. We are getting set by making sure we have clean dishes, food, water, paper towels, basic first aid supplies and cash.

Projected Path Moving Eastward

As the morning goes on, the project path of Rita is moving Eastwards. This is very good news for Houston. And as I sit here watching Buffy, errrr the news, I'm really very glad not to be stuck in the evacuation lines heading North at 1 mph, running out of gas, overheating, and getting extremely cranky.

Rita Traffic Jams

The traffic on I-10 is still a zoo. Maybe 12 hours to get from the coast through to the North or West sides of Houston. The main deal is just to get out of the storm surge and potential strike zone of the eye of the storm. If the storm keeps changing path to the east, then Houston is going to get damaged, but with some luck we will not have too many deaths.

Rita

Here's a link to what the weather channel looks like just now. The news on KPRC is also reporting that people are getting dehydrated and overheated on the freeways, and there have been a few injuries.

As time moves on, it looks like Rita is gradually going to hit the Texas coast at a more easterly point and have reduced winds. Already, the category 5 has relaxed to a category 4 storm.

KPRC are reducing the potential storm surge forecast. Current weather says 12-17' at Galveston, and less further away.

Hurricane Rita on it's Way

It's Thursday morning and I'm holed up at my girlfriends place in Spring. Weather here in Houston is forecast at 90F for the next couple of days, with the rain starting on Friday night.

TxDOT have started opening both sides of the freeways out of town since so many people are evacuating. The gulf coast around Houston is largely under mandatory evacuation, so a constant stream of traffic is stuck on the freeways. Many cars are overheating and running out of gas due to the slow speeds, so that may become a worse problem as more gas stations in Houston run low on gasolene supplies.

We just went round the garden and moved stuff into the garage to try and minimize the chances of plant pots, tables etc coming in through the windows. At this point, I don't really want to evacuate since I think that would add even more risk. As far North as we are in Spring, it's going to get very wet and windy, but unless we get a direct hit on the house from a tornado, we should be ok.

Polynomial Coefficient Finder

This problem comes from the brain of Valentin Albillo on the HP Calculator Museum.

Given a polynomial Ax^3 + Bx^2 + Cx + D = 0 find the coefficients A B C D that give a root at x = pi.

A is in the range 1 to 9
B, C, D are in the range -9 to 9
Use a range [3.1, 3.2] for x

Here's a program for the HP-41cx (Run-time is about 80 minutes) :

Registers:

01 A    hardcoded to start at 1
02 B    -M to M
03 C    ditto
04 D    ditto
05 x1   3.1
06 x2   3.2
07 f(x1)
08 f(x2)
09 M    9

Labels:

LBL SM start of program
LBL 01 main loop
LBL 02 compute f(x1)
LBL 03 compute f(x2)
LBL 04 success!

The program:

01 LBL SM  set up variables
02 1
03 STO 01
04 RCL 09
05 CHS
06 STO 02
07 STO 03
08 STO 04
09 3.1
10 STO 05
11 3.2
12 STO 06
13 LBL 01  main loop
14 XEQ 02  calc f(x1)
15 XEQ 03  calc f(x2)
16 RCL 07
17 RCL 08
18 /       divide them and look for -ve
19 0
20 X<>Y
21 X<=Y?   -ve?
22 GTO 04  success !! x1 and x2 straddle the root
23 RCL 04  
24 1
25 +
26 STO 04  D=D+1
27 RCL 09  
28 X<>Y
29 X<=Y?   <=M ?
30 GTO 01  loop
31 X<>Y
32 CHS
33 STO 04  else D=-M
34 1
35 RCL 03
36 +
37 STO 03  C=C+1
38 RCL 09
39 X<>Y
40 X<=Y?   C<=M?
41 GTO 01  loop
42 X<>Y
43 CHS
44 STO 03  else C=-M
45 1
46 RCL 02
47 +
48 STO 02  B=B+1
49 RCL 09
50 X<>Y
51 X<=Y?   B<=M?
52 GTO 01  loop
53 X<>Y
54 CHS
55 STO 02  B=-M
56 1
57 RCL 01
58 +
59 STO 01  A=A+1
60 GTO 01  loop -- should be a check here
61 "FAILED"

62 AVIEW
63 LBL 04  we come here if we find a root in [x1,x2]
64 "FOUND IT"
65 AVIEW
66 RTN
67 END
68 LBL 02  Calculate f(x1)
69 RCL 05
70 3
71 Y^X
72 RCL 01
73 *
74 RCL 05
75 X^2
76 RCL 02
77 *
78 +
79 RCL 05
80 RCL 03
81 *
82 +
83 RCL 04
84 +
85 STO 07
86 RTN
87 LBL 03  Calculate f(x2) 
88 RCL 06
89 3
90 Y^X
91 RCL 06
92 X^2
93 RCL 02
94 *
95 +
96 RCL 06
97 RCL 03
98 *
99 +
100 RCL 04
101 +
102 STO 08
103 RTN
104 END 

Take a Stand Against Software Piracy

This blog linked to from slashdot talks a great deal of sense about the crazy numbers coming from the Microsoft and other big company shills who disparage software piracy.

Keep reading, I'm not going to condone software piracy. I completely believe that companies that write software deserve to be paid for that software if it is their choice to license its use commercially. I work for a consulting company. My job is to design and implement software to perform tasks as specified by clients of our company. I'd be a complete hypocrite if I believed that people shouldn't earn a living from software.

Did you read the link ? You should.

Welcome back!

Here's why the shills who declaim software piracy are wrong:

- People who have money to buy software will invest their money in software if it is worth it. For example, Microsoft Office costs hundreds of dollars.

- People who don't have money, or who just want to test a piece of software may download a cracked copy in order to test it. Or they may 'borrow' a copy from work. They may believe the software is not worth using, or may just not be able to afford it. For example, Microsoft Office costs hundreds of dollars. (!)

As well as being factually wrong, they are also killing the very hand that feeds. Every time Microsoft adds product activation, or treats users as criminals by default, a few less users will feel inclined to buy their software.

Now, about me. The main reason I don't have Microsoft Office on my computer is that I don't want to blow that kind of money on a software package, and I am sick of being treated like a criminal by Microsoft. For example, copies of Office at Schlumberger don't have to be activated. Wow! No key. No scrabbling for a license. Schlumberger have the muscle to say "We don't like your BS, give us software that we can install easily." On the other hand, if I buy a copy of Office, I have to type a long, easily lost or mistaken key code to allow me to use the software. If I install the software on a machine that subsequently dies, then I have to phone Microsoft and grovel to some nameless minion in order that they allow me to reinstall the software on my new machine, hard drive etc.

But, the most positive reason for not buying Office, is that it forces me to install Open Office. Open Office is an Office compatible suite that grew out of Sun Office. This used to be a slow, bug-ridden app, rather like a software version of a 1920's automobile. It worked, kinda.

However, Open Office really did grow. The 1.1.3 versions are pretty good, but much much much better is the new Office beta. For the first time, Word and PowerPoint documents can be loaded and edited using a non-Microsoft package that in some cases has better compatibility with older versions than Microsoft Office itself.

Using a pirated version of Microsoft Office *is* wrong. As well as being illegal, it promotes the Microsoft monopoly. Microsoft write some fantastic software, but sometimes their tactics leave a bad taste in the mouth.

A word processor is an appliance. Try a different brand for a while. It'll be refreshing. Go to Open Office and download it today.

My New HP41cx

This is the start of an occasional series of postings on cool stuff (I've bought) from Ebay ...

HP41cx - The Citroen DS (DS is a French pun for Godess ;-) ) of Calculators

I think as long as I've been a gadget geek, I've wanted an HP41 of some description. My first experience of any calculator at all was in about 1975 or so when my father brought home some kind of TI calculator. Sadly it wasn't working reliably, and I wasn't smart enough to work out what was wrong.

The HP41 series of calculators was the keystone of a complete computer system, including the HPIL serial interface bus (similar to USB), various printers, backing store and other equipment. Every 41 has four module slots which allow additional memory and pre-programmed 'pacs' to be plugged in. Most surveyors are probably using HP48gx's or laptops by now, but back in the day, the HP41 was a great tool for people who needed a tough, preprogrammed calculating asistant.

Here's a pic of a HP41cv (This pic lives at the wonderful Museum of HP Calculators) :


My HP-41Ccx is physically the same, but has some additional features inside, including a timer and alarm facilities.

The display on the calculator was Hewlett-Packard's first foray into using liquid crystal, and they did a great design job. The display is very very clear with good contrast and a very distinctive font.

The keyboard is fairly soft to the touch with a nice soft over-center action. There is no audible click, mechanical or otherwise, but there's no doubt that a key was pressed.

Unlike other calculators of the time, a button is used to toggle the calculator on and off. This is great since the switches on many calculators from this era have most likely failed or getting ready to.

Aside from the on/off toggle, the other buttons on the top row provide the 'user' mode, 'prgm' mode and 'alpha' mode. These allow a customised keyboard, program editing and alphanumeric input respectively.

It is a little smaller in the hand than it appears in pictures. The main thing though, is the sheer quality and appeal of this great design.

This is really hard to believe, but this calculator was designed back in the late 1970's. As a further testament, production only ended in 1990. It really does seem that great pieces of design never, ever go out of fashion.

I'll post some more when I've worked out how to do some programming.

Date adopted: 06/14/2005
Condition: Mint, with HP zipper case, original manuals, keyboard overlays, stickers and HP promo materials.

BROWSER WARS
EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE

It is a period of civil war. Open Source spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Microsoft Empire.

During the battle, Mozilla spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the INTERNET EXPLORER 7, a tabbed browser with enough market share to destroy the entire open source movement.

Pursued by Microsoft's sinister agents, BEN GOODGER races races home aboard his starship, custodian of the stolen code that can save his project and restore freedom (both libre and beer) to the internet...

Shamelessly stolen from Slashdot. I modded it 'Funny'.

This Page is F****ed-Up in Internet Explorer

I often hear, "Dear Jonathan, your web-page does not display correctly in Internet Explorer ...".

My response would be "Install a browser that supports web standards correctly, rather than some old, virtually unmaintained, obsolete, insecure, piece of crap.

In all fairness, I make my money with Microsoft software, but web browsing shouldn't be the mess it is. Think of the people you know who have 300 pieces of spyware on their machines. "But I didn't download anything !!"

Microsoft illegally leveraged a monopoly to wipe out Netscape. Luckily for them, Netscape's browser was a bloated piece of crap, that turned web-browsing into something like trying to use System 7 on a Powermac 6100. A crash a day experience that probably turned people off the Mac forever.

Now, there is Opera, and Firefox. Both are free as in beer, but Firefox is free as in speech.

More people hit this site with Firefox than with IE. Thank-you. And 20% are on Linux! Windows are the SuXx0rs !!

Download Firefox !
Download Kubuntu !
Download OpenOffice !

Serenity: Joss Wheedon' Firefly Movie

I think I remember seeing a couple of the Firefly shows on Fox over the short period it was on, but it never really managed to register with me.
However, the experience of watching the shows in the right order, from the available DVDs proved wayyy more rewarding.
Firefly shows us a future in which humanity has colonized a new solar system. One in which the central planets are civilized and law-abiding, and the outer planets are wild west frontier of moonshine, freeloaders, ruffians, preachers, outcasts, well you get the picture.
Anyway, Firefly the TV series was cancelled ... but as with many things that are briefly shown, then taken away ... a small spark leads to a guttering flame ... a flame that if the circumstances are *just* right, can grow.
According to Joss Wheedon, "Shows that get cancelled don't ever get made into major motion pictures."
But, this time, like winning the Texas lottery, the unimaginable has happened. Serenity, the movie of Firefly has been made. And it is good. Very good. Worth a 10 hour roundtrip to Austin for a pre-screening good.
The movie starts with a scene with River. River and her brother Simon are fugitives from the Feds. River is part of a government experiment and they want her back.
In broad terms (so as not to *spoil* anyone's fun) the movie deals with a large plot based around River, and many subplots and characters that will be familiar from the original season episodes.
The feel of the movie is 'kinda gritty' with the effects feeling almost sandpapered into the movie at times, contrasting with the somewhat sterile effects in other movies and TV shows.
This grittiness blends right in with the rough frontier nature of life aboard Serenity and some of the other locations in the movie.
Humor is shot through the movie like gold pellets in a claim scam. The prescreening audience clapped and laughed at pretty regular intervals.
From the first few minutes, right to the end, this was a great movie to watch. Go and see it when it comes out !!!!!

Blinkenlights...

If you like the old demo scene, i.e. know what an Amiga 500 is, and dig German kids doing cool stuff with buildings ... check this out :

Blinkenlights ...

Hit the 'Arcade' video near the bottom of the page...

Hitachi Launches New 'Perpendicular' Storage Hard Drives

Here is a GROOVY flash movie :

Get perpendicular ...

Sing it kids ... "Get Perrrrpennndiccuuuular ! Yeah !!!"

Video Scaling Problems in MythTV - FIXED

On 1920x1080 HD content, I was getting a badly stretched out picture in MythTV. This makes watching WB and NBC pretty bad, as the picture is distorted off the right side of the screen.

The solution was really simple. My xorg.conf file had insufficient HorizRefresh / VertSync values for my TV.

Here's the old values :

Section "Monitor" # Works ok for 720 width, sucks for 1920 width
Identifier "Monitor[1]" #TV
HorizSync 31.5 # 31.5 and 60 for NTSC
VertRefresh 60
EndSection

You will get a stretched picture, with the right edge somewhere about 6 inches outside the TV which kinda sucks.

However, if you crank up the sync and refresh, then the scaling works correctly again.

Section "Monitor" # Works for 1920 yaaay !
Identifier "Monitor[1]" #TV
HorizSync 60 # Not liable for a damaged TV but it works for me
VertRefresh 30-150
EndSection

Photo Reprise

Here's a picture I took a few years ago that I stumbled upon again ...

There's quite a few more in that group, but I think that one is my favorite.

Kubuntu Linux LiveCD

I have been playing with the latest version of the Ubuntu Linux distribution. Unlike the earlier 'Ubuntu', 'Kubuntu', as you might guess from the name is based on the KDE desktop rather than the Gnome desktop used in Ubuntu.

I have used Ubuntu before, but even though I run Gnome on all my machines, Gnome from a LiveCD seems to lose something, and I general prefer the command line for most of the tasks that the Gnome developers might expect me to use Gconf etc for.

So far, I am very impressed with the K Desktop Environment compared with Gnome. Apert from the 'K' fetish, everything seems very crisp and nice kompared (oops) with Gnome which is a bit more staid looking.

Here's a screenshot of Kubuntu from a few minutes ago taken with KScreenShot :

Here's the best thing about Kubuntu, it detected *every* piece of hardware on my girlfriends Dell Dimension, so the sound works, 3d graphics work really nicely, the network works. Just an fantastic performance.

The only tiny blot is that the fonts initially looked krappy (sorry, won't do it again) because anti-aliasing was turned off. Turn it on and they look great again.

There's too much installed to list, but the highspots for me included open office, and being able to boot from a CD and ssh to my home linux box, and have the mythtv front end come up and be able to browse my 'taped' shows from over the weekend. Rockin'

Here's a link to i386 Kubuntu LiveCD:
bittorrent i386 iso live cd
i386 iso live cd
AMD and PowerPC iso are also available here

Bug-fix for ATSC Channel Changing on MythTv 0.17

Finally managed to nail the channel-changing bug on MythTV that had been bugging me, and more or less making mythtv unusable for me.

You can reproduce the bug by switching channels when on (on my setup) a ATSC (OTA HDTV) source. On switching channels between two channels that have the same pid/stream type (not toooo sure of this), the old pes won't get cleared out properly.

The proper fix would be to ensure that the pid/pes stuff gets handled properly in av_remove_stream in utils.c. Anyways, here's my crappy fix (well, more of a hack)

In the file libmythtv/avformatdecoder.cpp, change the file to look like the following. The real bug is that this doesn't fixup the pmt_pid tables in the ts context thingymajig. This works great now, well for me anyway.

void AvFormatDecoder::Reset(void)
{
SeekReset();

// Clear out the existing mpeg streams
// so we can get a clean set from the
// new seek position.
// for (int i = ic->nb_streams - 1; i >= 0; i--)
// {
// AVStream *st = ic->streams[i];
// if (st->codec.codec_type == CODEC_TYPE_AUDIO)
// {
// if (st->codec.codec)
// avcodec_close(&st->codec);
// av_remove_stream(ic, st->id);
// }
// }

m_positionMap.clear();
framesPlayed = 0;
framesRead = 0;
seen_gop = false;
seq_count = 0;
}

PC HD TV 3000 Working Config

This is mainly for my own benefit, since I managed to break my config and it took me a while to get it working again.

• Video For Linux - configure as a module, with nothing else
  
• Reboot ...
  
• /root/pcHDTV1.6/*2.6*/driver - make clean && make && make install
  
• modprobe cx8800 - You need to see the following ...
  

  
  Module Size Used by
  tuner 17924 0
  cx8800 73056 0
  cx88xx 18628 1 cx8800
  video_buf 16068 2 cx8800,cx88xx
  v4l1_compat 12260 1 cx8800
  v4l2_common 4704 1 cx8800
  btcx_risc 3592 2 cx8800,cx88xx
  videodev 7168 1 cx8800
  wlan_wep 5440 1
  ath_pci 49824 0
  ath_rate_onoe 6696 1 ath_pci
  wlan 100028 4 wlan_wep,ath_pci,ath_rate_onoe
  ath_hal 146576 2 ath_pci
  nvidia 3458748 12
  

  
  
• dtvsignal /dev/dtv 27 - should show some signal with antenna pointed 162o
  

Cheap Network Card for Linux

Fry's are doing a pretty good offer on the DLink DWL-G510. This wireless-G PCI card works using the atheros linux driver. I bought mine for $37.99, but there's an additional $20 rebate which drops the price to under $20 ;-)

I just did an 'emerge --sync' from Gentoo, which is a pretty good network test, and it showed 145 Kbytes/sec download speed, so I'm pretty happy with the card.

Some notes on Installation

The following are kernel config requirements for building the atheros driver :

- CONFIG_NET_RADIO=y
- CONFIG_NET_WIRELESS=y
- CONFIG_CRYPTO=y
- CONFIG_CRYPTO_HMAC=y

These enable support for wireless in the kernel, and also enable linking a few crypto calls for WEP support in the driver. You should build, install and reboot with your new kernel at this point !!! If you don't you may see errors when you build the atheros driver.

To download and build the driver, on Gentoo, you simply type 'emerge -a madwifi-driver'. When I did this, the package was masked by ~x86, implying it is still considered unstable. However, it seems to work good for me in a 2.6.9 kernel, so if you want to install it, use :

ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge -a madwifi-driver wireless-tools

The second package on the command-line above builds the wireless tools you'll need to configure the card.

Once these packages have downloaded and been built, do an lsmod to see if they loaded. You may see a listing from lsmod that looks like :

# lsmod
Module Size Used by
wlan_wep 5440 1
ath_pci 49824 0
ath_rate_onoe 6696 1 ath_pci
wlan 100028 4 wlan_wep,ath_pci,ath_rate_onoe
ath_hal 146576 2 ath_pci
nvidia 3458748 12

If you don't, then the following worked for me to load the drivers :

# modprobe ath_hal
# modprobe ath_pci

Both commands should complete silently. If you get errors, try typing :

# dmesg | less

This will display a list of messages including kernel, driver and module messages. Scroll down to the bottom of the list and look for why the modules failed to load. If the modules built cleanly, then this *should* work.

Note that you can use the lspci command to list the devices found by GNU/Linux :

# lspci
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce3 250Gb Host Bridge (rev a1)
0000:00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 00e0 (rev a2)
0000:00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation nForce 250Gb PCI System Management (rev a1)
0000:00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation CK8S USB Controller (rev a1)
0000:00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation CK8S USB Controller (rev a1)
0000:00:02.2 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation CK8S USB Controller (rev a2)
0000:00:05.0 Bridge: nVidia Corporation CK8S Ethernet Controller (rev a2)
0000:00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation nForce3 250Gb AC'97 Audio Controller (rev a1)
0000:00:08.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation CK8S Parallel ATA Controller (v2.5) (rev a2)
0000:00:0a.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation CK8S Serial ATA Controller (v2.5) (rev a2)
0000:00:0b.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce3 250Gb AGP Host to PCI Bridge (rev a2)
0000:00:0e.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce3 250Gb PCI-to-PCI Bridge (rev a2)
0000:00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
0000:00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
0000:00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
0000:00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5200] (rev a1)
0000:02:08.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc.: Unknown device 001a (rev 01)
0000:02:0a.0 Multimedia video controller: Conexant Winfast TV2000 XP (rev 05)
0000:02:0a.2 Multimedia controller: Conexant: Unknown device 8802 (rev 05)

If you still have errors getting the modules to load, check the following :

- did you configure and build your kernel correctly ?
- did you reboot ?
- did you build the madwifi drivers ?

Skimping on any of these steps may cause problems.

Configuring the Card

It's not too hard to configure these cards. I use WEP for privacy on my network, and have retained the default ESSID of NETGEAR. I use a NETGEAR WGR614v4 wireless router.

First verify that you get something from running iwconfig :

# iwconfig
eth0 no wireless extensions.

ath0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"NETGEAR"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
Bit Rate:54 Mb/s Tx-Power:50 dBm Sensitivity=0/3
Retry:off RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:xxxx-xxxx-xx Security mode:restricted
Power Management:off
Link Quality=26/94 Signal level=-69 dBm Noise level=-95 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:295361 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:84 Invalid misc:84 Missed beacon:0

If you don't get something for ath0, which is the atheros driver, then you need to go back a stage.

If you got something similar, here's a minimal set of commands to get you up and running :

# iwconfig ath0 mode Managed
# iwconfig ath0 ESSID NETGEAR
# iwconfig ath0 key 00112233 <-- substitute your own WEP key, or skip
# ifconfig ath0 up
# dhcpcd ath0

The first three commands configure the card. The next command brings the card up and makes it active, and the last command tells the card to request an ip-address, and dns info from your router. This works with my basic home networking setup. Yours may differ.

Woo hoo !! PCHDTV HD-3000 card WORKING !!

Some obvious progress on my media center PC ...

Fantastic !! The quality is fantastic, and I am in an apartment and 30 miles from the transmitters with a $50 Radio Shack antennae.

I have logged my experiences with the HDTV-3000 card.

Video Box

My Media PC is starting to take shape. Mainly as a small pile of boxes and a dented credit card, but it's a start. I have an old Pentium III 500 which used to be my primary machine. The case, scsi drive and controller, and power supply will live on, but the mainboard and other junk will be binned. The current component list is :

• Asus mainboard (Nvidia nForce 3 chipset)
  
• Athlon 64 3000+
  
• OCZ Premium 512M on one stick
  
• 36 Gig WD Raptor harddrive
  
• Generic NVidia 5200 video card (VGA, DVI, TV-OUT SVID/COMP)
  
• NEC Dual Layer DVD drive/burner
  
• Apple white/clear USB keyboard (cute and has USB inputs)
  
• Logitech media player mouse
  
• Firewire for iPod, DV camera
  
• ... Not yet purchased ...
  
• Big harddrive ;-)
  
• HD TV card
  

Software stack will be Gentoo GNU/Linux custom-compiled. Mplayer. VideoLan, plus whatever else I need to build a kick ass media computer. MythTV might be cool to use, but installing it looks pretty involved.

XP Windows Media Center

I just spent a bunch of time trying to resolve 'codec hell' and actually get Windows Media Center to play actual video files. Here are a couple of solutions if you are having similar problems ;-)

1. Buy actual software to decode mpeg2 ...
Microsoft buypacks

2. Download Videolan
Get videolan !!

Does Microsoft Really Support MPEG2 ??

Well, not really. Read their page about Media Center supported formats and go 'hey, shouldn't there be something about mpeg2/divx ?' ... I guess at least it's possible. Note that Media Center uses its own proprietary format for encoding timeshifted TV, so it's 'unlikely' to be able to be played on other machines, e.g. across a lan, without being transcoded and copied first.

Luckily the Videolan software 'just works', though I haven't used it much yet, it hasn't refused to play anything yet.

Yahoo! on Linux

Finally got Gaim working on Gentoo. It was my problem all along. I didn't know to configure the 'port' to 5050. Quite a few different numbers work for communicating with Yahoo, but 0 is *not* one of them ;-)

Posting this from Firefox running on Gentoo Linux 2.6.10.

millenium falcon 

transport1 

at-at 

transport2 

Y-wing 

Star Wars Lego

The Star Wars lego is pretty damned cool. I've posted some shots of the baby Star Wars models. My favorite is the Y-wing. If you buy all four of the kits, the Y-wing comes free, as you get a few extra bits in each pack.

Tuning Mencoder

Well I finally got round to playing with mplayer/mencoder on my new athlon64 3500+ box...

Playing DVDs

On Gentoo GNU/Linux, you'll need to set your /etc/make.conf flags appropriately, or mplayer won't be able to play dvd's. Here's my setup :

#/etc/make.conf
# These settings were set by the catalyst build script that automatically built this stage
# Please consult /etc/make.conf.example for a more detailed example
CFLAGS="-O2 -march=athlon -fomit-frame-pointer"
CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"
MAKEOPTS="-j1"
USE="X gnome dvd dvdread dvdlib"

To be honest, I'm not sure which of the dvd flags turns on the appropriate support, but mplayer now manages to play from dvd.

Also, you may need to create a /dev/dvd node in /dev :

ln -s /dev/hdc /dev/dvd

In this case, my dvd player is setup as /dev/hdc, but I think mplayer needs to see it as dvd.

Mencoder

I initially ran mencoder on my test .vob data and got a crummy 35 fps encoding rate. And this is after cranking my memory bios settings to 2,2,2,5. But looking at the initial status page from mencoder showed that the program was compiled with only basic i686 support.

To remedy this, it was necessary to change

CFLAGS="-O2 -march=i686 -fomit-frame-pointer"

to

CFLAGS="-O2 -march=athlon -fomit-frame-pointer"

Now mencoder ran at a much better 80 fps. This is more than twice the 35fps encoding rate of my Compaq (HP) Presario AthlonXP 3000+ machine !

I think this certainly shows that the mplayer folks are right when they recommend building it from source.

Encoding Rates

Computer	Estimated fps encoding rate	OS
Compaq Presario Athlon 64 3500+	80 fps	Gentoo Linux
Compaq Presario Athlon XP 3000+	35 fps	Windows XP Home
Dell Dimension Pentium 4 2.2 GHz	24 fps	Windows XP Pro

* These are approximate only, and the windows versions were *not* recompiled for the specific processor. However, on Windows, the pre-built mencoder binaries will use SSE etc., I believe, though it is not optimal.

Getting Linux Running on New(ish) Hardware

I am a great believer in Free/Open Software, so for this machine I'd really like to have it be based on GNU/Linux. The goals are :

- support any programming I want to do
- support media, movie watching, multiple screens etc
- play nice with my wireless network and windows machines
- be relative easy to setup new software

Here's some of the trials I experienced in a couple of nights of hair tearing with various Linux distributions :

Ubuntu LiveCD
Boots up ok.
Only works with my old NVidia GeForce
GNome works good
Couldn't install NVidia 6629 drivers
Couldn't get samba to do anything (maybe not supported in LiveCD kernel?)
- smbtree works great on my laptop with debian

Ubuntu Install CD
Booted fine
Hung during install, but indicated a bad CD.

Debian
The Debian install images I found didn't support SATA, so I was screwed on that. I do like Debian, and have it setup on a laptop using Knoppix, but they need to update the install images.

Mandrake 10.1
Mandrake 10.1 booted but failed in the install at the detecting my SATA drive. I think this is pretty common in 10.1.
- Mandrake 9.2 apparently is fine in this situation

So with all those problems, and I can't be that unusual in having these kinds of problems, you'd think most people would be scarred for life, and not able to look at a Linux installation again... enter ...

Gentoo Linux

Gentoo GNU/Linux is a 'from-source' distribution. The install CD includes a *very* slick and polished boot up, a comprehensive kernel build that seems to detect everything (except prism wireless cards - doh) and the best documentation of any of the GNU/Linux's.

It took a couple of evenings of doc reading, but I finally had a bootable kernel, stable OS and a very basic gnome installation running.

PC Build

Here's the main points I had problems with when I built the PC.

- forgot the IO connectors backplate
- forgot (once) to plug power supply into graphics card
- forgot the 4-way block connector to the motherboard
- had the bios misconfigured (IDE off - well I have SATA)
- had a hard time getting CDs to boot (IDE, didn't burn as ISO etc etc)
- had a really hard time with the cabling from the front panel to main board

It took a couple of nights to get all the bugs ironed out, but it's running like a champ now on the default settings.

Linux reports ~4900 bogoMips, not sure if that is any good or not. I expect to get round to trying to optimise the memory settings etc., once I have my OS setup stable and working.

Working Hard ... Playing Hard

Just built (finally) a new computer. Here's the component list :

MSI Neo2 F 939 motherboard
Athlon64 3500+ processor
1Gig Corsair RAM (with flashing LEDs)
Chempro Gaming Shark 2 Case
500 W PSU with lights
Dual layer DVD burner
MSI Nvidia GT6600 graphics card
SATA WD Raptor 73 Gig hard drive
Apple USB keyboard

All the bits as listed total about $1500, and were delivered in about 8 days from www.newegg.com. I did get an extra dvd burner, so the order wasn't perfect, but it wasn't too bad.

The display is a Sharp 17" flat panel which were on offer for $249 after rebate from the local Fry's on I45.

Houston Restaurants - Lunch

I work pretty near Wesleyan and Richmond, so here's a rundown of some of my lunch haunts :

Thai Spice (Richmond and Weslayan)

Worth a visit for the excellent Red, Yellow and Green Curry's. Most of the other lunch entrees are kinda ho-hum, but the curry's, served in bowls, on a plate with rice are really good.

A small salad liberally doused in peanut sauce is a welcome starter whilst waiting for the entree.

Good value at about $7 ish.

Chipotle

I didn't really think I'd like Chipotle. Being owned by McDonalds and all. But the food is great. The main deal is burritos and tacos. But with lots of different options on meat (pork, steak, chicken) and rice or salad, you can have something different every day.

Definitely good stuff.

New Job

Well, got a great new job working for a consulting company in Houston. I'm working on gas pipeline transaction software using C++, SQL Server, Oracle etc. Excellent stuff.

Got a new car. Went ahead and got a 2005 Dodge SRT-4. Tripod seems to have given up letting me host pictures there, so that kinda sucks.

Unemployed Again

Didn't sell too many cars in July .... You are the weakest link, goodbye ... actually, that was actually said to me. Not at the exact point when I got fired, but it was said about a week before. Man that stings.

Anyways, taking a few days off and relaxing. Then I guess I will have to work out what to do next.

That wasn't the only nasty thing that happened Tuesday. I think I got a bit close to some dude in the apartment parking lot and he came on all threatening and started calling me a motherf*ck*r and threatening to kill me. Yea! B*sket**ll loving f*c**r.

Tues 20 Jul 7am

Start of another day. Had a late night yesterday, working on a Corolla XRS deal. As always, driving the XRS rocks, plenty of power, smooth shifting, good ride, revvy engine. And the one we have available priced well under $19k !!!
I have a bunch of customer post-sales stuff to do today, including dealing with a paint scratch (Corolla), a minor trim problem (Avalon), and setting up a Toyota-Used certification for a already sold pre-owned car (Corolla again). Hopefully all this legwork will net a few referrals from happy customers.
After a slow (stalled) start to the month, I think it's picking up a bit. I'm certainly glad to have sold a car on Saturday (unusual), and one on Monday (also unusual). Also, I think I have sold at least one of most of our lineup, with Tundra, MR2 being the ones I haven't done yet.
If you're in Houston, and you'd like to work with a salesman who'll listen to you, and really do his best to help match you up with the right car, give me a call on (832) 244 2444. (New Toyotas, or pre-owned everything ;-) )

Wed 14 July 2004

Spent a bunch of time last night editing down the John Peel show from last Thursday, into just the music. I love my MD player/recorder. Gonna go grab a mains adapter for it from CompUSA , so I can save some money on batteries.
The last few days have been crappy in the world of car sales. Only sold 2 1/2 cars so far this month. All three customers were be-backs, so I haven't had a fresh customer all month. That is pretty sad and unusual. The weather has been totally brutally hot, which doesn't exactly help. I've done a load of prospecting, but not much seems to be working.
Maybe I can sell cars to all the eHarmony potential dates I've been getting. I think I'll suspend my eHarmony membership, as 10 matches a day, combined with eHarmonys horribly convoluted process of communicating is just a total pain in the ass, unless you have the 4 hours a day that is probably required to keep up with it. I may write some more about my experiences with eHarmony, hahah, if something actually useful happens.
On my day off today, but I will be working later. Can't take a full day off with where I am on the sales lists :-((. I will sure try and enjoy my morning off though.

Digital Recording with Sony Minidisc

Went out to dinner at the Barnaby's on West Gray with my friend Laura last night, and she brought the Sony MZ-R700 minidisc recorder I gave her ages ago, as she doesn't need it anymore.
I managed to print out the manual last night, and I've been using the MD to record the John Peel [RealAudio: feed] show from a RealAudio feed on the UKs BBC Radio 1. The MD recorder is a MZ-R700. Features include :

• Line in / Mic in / Optical in
  
• Easy play/review
  
• Manual record level control
  
• Track naming
  
• Track editing and deletion
  
• Long play (LP2) recording (160 min)
  

Took me a few minutes to learn how the menu system works, but when recording from a potentially flaky source (like RealAudio feeds) the easy reverse play/review feature really helps to go back and be able to recue up at the right spot for recording. This type of thing is a nightmare with cassette, which is how I used to do this.
Feed quality on RealAudio is ranging from about 11KBps - 32 KBps which not too much breaking up, which is pretty good for a dialup connection. But I think I need DSL !!!!

Saturday Morning

Long, busy day ahead !! 9:30am - 9pm shift. And Saturday is always busy.
I sold a minivan yesterday to some great people. My month is getting a bit better, after a very very slow start. I'm at 2 1/2 cars in 4 days (Tue-Fri), so I am really going to try and keep it up today.
Hopefully, my friend from College Station will call me and I'll get to go out tonight or tomorrow. I haven't been dating since I got dumped for starting this job :-((

Practicing Self-Control

Man, it's funny when you can't sleep and have some web-surfing time ... Do NOT click this Mormon guide to Self-Control, unless you are over 18, and you can take a joke. The page is about self-control and avoiding 'onanism'. Any fans of League of Gentlemen will be ok with it though. Incidentally, here's a good backgrounder on LOG.

Thursday AM

I have no idea how I will survive today. Got in late last night from work after selling a car, then fell asleep on the sofa watching Seinfeld. Woke up about 4am and haven't slept since. I have been reading the Aberdeen Press and Journal, and getting all wistful reading Robbie Shepherd's column.

Little quine, ye'll tak a wheen O fortune's loups afore ye're deen
Ballater Bairn - Betty Allan
ES LAST twa wikks wi ma radio producer, I hae been stravaigin the highways an byways o oor ain country in the company o weel-kent fowk in oor simmer series takkin's tae some o their ain favourite haunts.
Mair nor aften it's back tae their reets, bit that can wyte for some ither Monday.
The day, it's Deeside Reets, as I hae jist been readin a maist fascinatin wee beuk wi that title written bi Mary Munro, o Ballater, fa follas on the skeely screivin o ither Ballater wordsmiths like Sheena Blackhall an Betty Allan.

There's nae near enough Doric on the web!
I am up to 1 1/2 cars for the month. I can still do pretty good if traffic picks up a bit, but both those cars I have a hand in are from people that came back and asked for me.
I think I am going to have to give up on my Netflix account. I can still recommend it as a great service if you have time to watch 4 or 5 dvds a month, but at the moment, there's just no way I have that much time. Any free time, I have, I can fill very very easily.

Friday 07/07

Just checking email etc., before my 12pm start today. Sold 1/2 a car yesterday, as one of my customers came in when I was off, and bought a car from one of the guys. I had another couple of 'Ups' too, and did a couple of test-drives. I have started paying real attention to tracking how many people I talk to, how many test-drives, sales; so I can get some idea of how well I am doing. Obviously the best measure of success is happy customers.
Talked to MazMax. I got a dodgy top on the Miata, so they're going to change it out for me at the first chance. It's not a huge deal, but the plastic window is separating a little at one corner, which shouldn't happen.
Found out that one of the guys at work has a friend who runs a spec miata. Hmmm, that looks pretty darned cool form of racing. Might have to go along and take a look. The only motorsport I ever particpated in was 1/8th IC on-road racing. 0-60mph (real speed) in 3 secs. 4WD. Here's a Serpent Sprint car.

Hmmm, that one has non-standard pushrod shocks at the front. I always ran mine standard as the special shock setup never seemed like it gave much advantage, plus it was just another thing to break.

New Edition of Code Complete by Steve McConnell

This book,Code Complete, Second Edition (Dv-Professional) [Amazon.com], by Steve McConnell is the best programming book I have ever read.

I believe that my own productivity increased by about 50% at least after reading it.

Code Complete answers many of the questions that nag the working programmer, and busts through much of the BS that people spout about programming.

The book covers a huge range of material, from code formatting and style, to how to build teams. Clue: don't put all the programmers no one else wants in a team to build an important project ;-)

The writing style is friendly and peppered with hilarious case studies such as 'Escape from Gilligan's Island', where the same mistakes happen over and over again.

Everyone who has worked on large programming projects will recognise some of these anecdotes. In one case I watched from start to finish as an 'experienced consultant' ruined a perfectly good project with secrecy over his bad and undocumented code. All the warning signs were there. If the manager had read this book, a programming catastrophe might have been averted.

I have bought this book a few times, and given it to management in-duh-viduals to read. Sometimes it helped.

If you are a programmer or a manager, or just interested in software, buy this book and read it. I guarantee you will learn something.

This review/recommendation appears on /. [Slashdot].

Great Thai Food in Houston

I ate at Thai Spice Express [b4-u-eat.com] on Friday night. Excellent food there as always. I had the chicken curry and my companion had the fishcakes with dipping sauce and the fried rice. The fried rice was the weakest dish, but still really nice, and my chicken curry was superb, as were the fishcakes.

The whole baked tilapia is a standout dish that is worth a visit all on its own. Other items I like are the spicy shrimp soup, coconut curry chicken soup and bbq pork and sticky rice. Yum. Good service also. Highly recommended.

As always the food came to about $22 for two, including a couple of bottles of sapporo.

Happy 4th July !!

Happy 4th of July !!!!!!
Bah ! Humbug etc !! Usual Sunday of not doing much except housework and misc crap.
Updated my toyota page a bit with the new incentives, and downloaded some PalmOS software onto my Sony Clie.
Also updated my customer stats for my sales job. No sales so far this month, but in theory I should be getting some. I am on the curve as far as my 4 fresh customers a day is concerned. Sadly, the value of used cars is not always what people like.

Car Sales 101: Trade-in Values and Negative Equity
When you buy a new car, you borrow the cost of that car. If the value of your trade-in exceeds what you owe on it, then you are in positive equity on your trade, and you can reduce the amount you borrow to pay for your new car. If you owe more on your trade than its assessed value, that difference is called negative equity and has to be paid by the customer or added to the loan amount. However, lenders can be nervous about lending more than the cost of a new car, and will insist on some money down, or will increase the interest rate. This can be a deal killer.

Miata Stock Air Intake Temperatures

SOTP testing and a RadioShack temperature probe taped near the
intake end of the air snorkel the other day :

Headlights down, 50-60 mph :

Ambient temp: 80oF
Temp near stock air intake: 110oF - 130oF
Typically 30oF above ambient

Headlights up, 50-60 mph :

Ambient temp: 80oF
Temp near stock air intake: 90oF (rapidly climbs to 130oF at stoplights etc)
Typically 10oF above ambient when moving

Findings

1. Drive with headlights popped up.
2. Don't stop at stoplights. JOKE !!!
3. The engine/computer/ECU cuts power when ambient air hits about 120oF.
4. Even 80% humidity doesn't seem to hurt power as much as intake air > 120oF. These are wet June Houston temperatures.
5. YMMV, but I think I will just have cold air from around the windshield plumbed to the stock airbox. Lot cheaper than anything else and should avoid the crazy intake temps you get from underhood air when at stoplights etc.

Wednesday

Had an ok kinda day. Talked to a few people. Had one real up. Really nice people looking for a small truck. I like this kind of day. Didn't sell anything, but met some new friends. This is way better than sitting behind a desk. Did that for 15 years already.
Sold a 4Runner yesterday to some more really good people. So much time spent standing around, but when this car sales job is good, it's really good. And it's not always about selling cars.
Miata running great today. I have Radioshack temp probe near the air intake.
Headlights down: Ambient 80oF Intake air 110oF - 130oF
Headlights up : Ambient 80oF Intake air 90oF - 130oF
That sure tells ya that having the headlights up helps the performance. I figure the 10oF difference is from engine heat / radiator. And a cold air intake at ambient would really help the car.
The power loss with intake air >= 120oF is extremely noticeable. Reluctance to rev. Rougher gear shifts etc. Worse than the difference with AC on vs no AC on.
Saw a Scion tC yesterday. Beautiful. Here's a few pics from my PDA cam. This car is one of the prettiest little cars I've ever seen, and the quality inside is great too. I WANT !!!!!



Wasn't that beautiful !!! $17,3 auto $16,5 manual both with 2.4 engine from Camry.

Sunday

Just off out for a drive somewhere I think. May go look at PepBoys for the bits to make a cold air intake. The new muffler and Cat ("No muffler for you") works great as long as it's not too humid, in which case I seem to lose quite a bit of power. I'd like to get some kind of humidity and temperature sensors on bluetooth, so I can track intake temperatures on my car. That would be pretty cool to have logged on a PDA or something.
I spent the morning playing with my Google AdWords stuff, and my BUY A TOYOTA webpage.
Yesterday was a bust as far as car sales were concerned, but you always look to the future in sales and I have some good leads and appointments.
John's Log: Supplemental ...
Where do you go when you need crazy crap that no one else sells ??? Why RADIO-SHACK of course !! Click here for a wireless thermo-hygrometer !!

Friday

Wet thundery Friday in Houston. Had quite a few ups (walkup customers) and wrote up 2 or 3 deals during the day, but no sales. Did manage to sell a SUV late at night from an up though. That was pretty good.
Collecting red 90 in the morning. New door, rebuilt ac, new plugs and wires, and I should be set for the next few months. The bill is gonna be scary though.
Sunday I will try and finish cleaning the wheels, and maybe paint them black. That should recreate the look of those Porsch/Fuchs rims that are black with shiny outside rim.

A/C Rebuild

Ouch !! Rebuild on the a/c needed. All the o-ring seals are trashed so that will be about $150 or so. It'll be worth it if I can get lots of cold air again.

Image from Wikipaedia

A/C Rebuild

Ouch !! Rebuild on the a/c needed. All the o-ring seals are trashed so that will be about $150 or so. It'll be worth it if I can get lots of cold air again.

Abother Maz Max Visit

Well red 90 is in for the new door, and new plugs and wires, and an ac evacuate/recharge. Hopefully I will have a cold a/c, dent free, good running car again tomorrow.
I did 'fess up to washing the engine. General agreement that the wires were trashed. Plugs are probably due anyway seeing as they have 30k miles on them at a guess.
Ironically, I'll probably keep the car now I have it in better shape. This whole maintenance catchup only really started because I was thinking about selling it, but an on-form miata is still a great car if you can put up with the noise.
My loaner car is a 626 ESv6. Love it, great stereo, leather and the v6 is real nice too. Almost got a chance to test the ABS when someone dodged a puddle right in front of me, but had just enough room to get slowed down enough.
Was thinking about going into work later, but it may be super quiet because it's raining like hell in Houston just now. I got on at least one deal yesterday, and helped sell a Scion which was pretty cool. I hadn't actually driven an xA before, but I showed all the same stuff I'd show on a Corolla, then let the customer drive it, and they liked it enough to buy it.


Scion xB - Microbus for the New Generation

I also drove the xB 5-speed, which was like driving a little bus. The xB looks small on the outside, but those alloys are bigger than they look, just like the rest of the car. The inside has loads of space and the pickup is pretty good. The car felt really together and tight, super easy to drive, with a nice crisp feel to the shifter and also the engine response. It's funny, but I had a big smile on my face for about half an hour after just driving it round the dealership. Owning one would be great.

When Spark Plugs Attack

Well, I think I screwed up at least one plug. Running with a misfire seems to have lead to more misfire. Here's some information about spark plugs, heat ranges and how good spark plugs can turn bad.
Also, the famous miata drooping idle seems to be related to the misfire. This miata.net article recommends some different plugs and has some user experiences that specifically mention the idle droop.
I'll have MazMax change the plugs and maybe wires today when I get the door done. Also, Brian is gonna have the a/c evacuated and recharged. Hopefully the air will be properly cold again by the end of today.

Monday Night - Miata Misbehaviour

Kind of a fun day. Didn't sell any cars, but had a good time anyway, somehow. The weather was great, pretty hot, but not too hot for once. And fun customers, though they didn't buy anything.
I got to drive a Tundra. Somehow it's more fun than Sequoia, especially having that great big bed behind you. Also drove a 4Runner which I love. I think 4Runner is my favourite big truck. It's more high tech than Sequoia, and rides beautifully, and accelerates smoothly and quietly.
After clocking out, red 90 started up and seemed much more stuttery than usual. It sorted itself out, then started misfiring under load below 3000 rpm. Just a burbly misfire and serious power loss. I pulled into a gas station down highway 6 and opened the hood. At least a couple of plug leads had moved a bit, so pushing those back on fixed the problem. I guess me washing the engine on Sunday might have got some water/steam under there, and pushed the leads out. My dad's Astra used to do that a lot, so I wasn't too worried, and nice and easy to fix a problem you've seen before.
Working 12-9 tomorrow, so almost like a day off !!!

Sunday Night

Just getting ready for sleep and another day tomorrow. My nails are filthy from changing the air filter on red 90 and making a start on cleaning the engine bay up a bit. To some relief, the car started first time after my gentle jetwashing of the engine. It's not much cleaner but it still runs at least. I used to own a Peugeot 205Gti that hated water like a cat.
Here's a pic of a silver 205Gti 1.9 :

Mmm, that was a great car. Sadly mine consisted partly of lesser 205 front suspension parts and used to fall apart. One time going over a hump-backed bridge the front passenger side track arm disconnected from the wheel hub letting the wheel come up in the wheel well. That brought me to a stop pretty quick ! It was fixed and running again 3 hours later. Thanks Granty.

A Day of Rest at Last

After a dreadful Friday and Saturday for me: intense heat, humidity and no cars sold, finally I get a day off. It's about 7:30am and I'm planning to pretty much just lounge around and try and catch up on my dvd watching. I gained a couple of future potential customers, so I guess it's not a total bust, but a couple of cars on Friday/Sat would have been nice, especially as just standing upright for 12 hours in 100+ oF heat was pretty hard. My feet hurt. My back hurts. Whine whinge whine etc etc .
Think I'll go shoot some pictures and try and do a few constructive things today.
Back later...

Saturday Morning

10 past 7 or so here, and getting ready for work. Shift is 9-6 today and I have a customer from yesterday coming in, and my customer from wednesday bringing some paperwork.
Thursay was pretty rough day, but yesterday was mad busy in the morning, but quiet from 3pm through 9pm.
Today we have a band and catered food on the main patio / delivery area, so that's going to be fun. Also, people get free water park tickets with a test drive, so that should bring some extra traffic.
Just read through the installation instructions for a new ECU for my Miata that should improve it, and also handle the supercharger upgrade better than the stock ECU. It's a flyin' miata ECU and comes recommended from Miata.NET so that's good enough for me. The wiring changes don't look too bad. In the UK I used to own an MG Metro which had something like this, and that was one of best running cars I ever owned.


Click image to read about MG Metro

Wed Night

Toyota Salesman and blog author
Well, went back into work. Didn't manage to reach the two customers I wanted to, but still managed to get a cool looking Corolla out the door. Didn't get home til 11:30, and forgot to clock out, which is about par for the course for me. Oops.
Still thinking about the XRS Corolla as a sensible but quick new car. Though I'm gonna drive the Matrix XRS too, and maybe a regular 5 speed Corolla S too, just to see what the pickup is like.
My new Sony Clie has the mp3 player installed and can be hooked up to my car stereo. That is pretty kickass for a regular PDA. The memory stick has 128Megs on it, so that's quite a lot of music. To download music, you just connect the clie to the computer and copy the files on. My PC thinks the Clie is a USB drive. Plus it takes VGA quality pics too.

Family Stuff

Scotland - Where most of my family live
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;-)

Rain

Another damp morning, and logged on at a very retro 4800 bps. I think the rain from yesterday gets into my phone junction box and does nasty stuff to my line. If I dial up and get dumped, I can pick my phone up and hear a dial tone AND the modem that I was connected to. It's weird and re-connecting usually fails, but sometimes manages some pathetically low speed.

Rainy in Houston

Slow, rainy day. Got up early and did my washing, then spent the morning calling customers, leads etc. Spent a bunch of time filing guest-sheets then looking for specific cars for customers. Managed to get horribly caught in the rain and totally drenched, but drove to WalMart to dry out and buy a decent umbrella.

Had a couple of new people come in, but the rain pretty much kept people from being out shopping for cars.

The new top on my Miata seems to not leak, but it does dump a load of water when you open the door. Still thinking about a supercharger, but we'll see. Waiting for a quote from my insurance company on that before I get too far down the road.

Day off tomorrow, but seeing as I haven't sold a car since saturday, I will be working until I do.

Night folks, clink of beer bottle...

Morning

Good 7 hours sleep last. Bed at 10:30, then up just before 6am. Washing on, and waiting to go put it in the drier. Car still looks great. My ASM is off today so hopefully will be able to close at least one deal on my own.

Weather looks real humid. Yesterday was horrendous. Humidity rather than temperature. Like the jungle really.

Wax Job

WOW !!!! All I can say is "Go Meguiars !!!!" My quick wax of red 90 last night has brought the paint to looking better than it has in about 5 years. That is absolute truth. I used to use NuFinish 2000 (Miata.net review), but it was really hard to get anything other than a badly swirled finish, and it was hard to apply.

The Meguiars (Miata.net review) is fabulous, very easy to spray on, I used the trigger bottle applicator, very easy to move about with a soft cloth, then very easy to buff to a fantastic deep smooth shine.

Click image to see a bigger version.
If your paint is looking a bit oxidized, you need this stuff.

Day off - Over

That was a pretty quick day off. Hung out down at the airport (AXH) chatting with Chuck and watching the planes for a while this morning, then headed for Wally World to buy some car cleaning supplies. Wax, wheel cleaner etc.


Had a BBQ sandwich at ex-President Bush' favorite BBQ place, Ottos, then washed the car at the Meadows car wash, and cleaned the wheels a bit though they still look a bit neglected.

Did some web surfing and filing this afternoon, then showered and met my friend Rebecca and drove to Thai Spice Express on Bellaire for some Thai food, including whole baked tilapia.


Waxed the car after getting home, so it should look pretty good tomorrow. The main drawback of waxing a car at night is that you can't really see what you are doing. It sounds mad, but night is the only time right now that the temperature is getting down to about 80 oF or so. Waxing in direct sunlight at about 90 oF is probably not a real good idea.

Not just hot, damned hot !!!

Miata Mania

Red 1990 has her new top, radio, and bezel. Lots of new bit to do with the top also, like rain seals etc.

Sadly, I am prohibited from putting the top down until it shrinks onto the frame properly. This will be 2 weeks or so. Aaaarrrggghhh !!!

Brian at MazMax didn't believe it until I pointed it out, but the shifter in my car sits about an inch higher than in any other miata, so we are blaming Jay Marks Mazda (who did my prev clutch job at 98k) for putting something in upside down. However, the car has driven fine for the last 50k miles, so it's probably not a catastrophic deal. Another Miata mystery. We'll find out in maybe 10-20k miles at the next clutch change. This next one will be a racing clutch which will allow me to drop the cash for a turbo or supercharger if I can raise it, the stock clutch being the main weak point for tuning Miatas.

Loooooonnngggg hot day

Another long hot day on the lot. Got my two cars from yesterday signed over to their new owners, and delivered. Sadly didn't manage to sell any more between 3pm and 9pm but did meet some cool folks, and have a few leads of future Toyota owners.

Drove the fabulous little Corolla XRS. This is a Corolla with lower suspension, and the engine/transmission from the Celica GT-S, but returned to deliver more torque lower down. The transmission is close ratio and overdrive 6-speed, so you have 5 gears + a cruising gear. It feels like a Corolla when you sit in it, and it will be reliable like a Corolla, but it pulls away and accelerates like a whole different class of car. The engine is super sweet, and after some of the lukewarm reviews of the Celica GT-S transmission, I was pleasantly surprised by the light clutch and superfast shift 6-speed. This is one of those cars that just wants to GO !! It's really hard to write this, but it's true ... The SRT-4 is fabulous, the Corolla XRS is fabulous, but the WRX, fast as it is, just doesn't quite do it. Man, it's a crazy world.

Good Morning

11:02am, got my Miata in for its new top, radio, bezel, and hopefully a door if Brian at MazMax can fit it in. This is a lot of $$$, but the car deserves it. Be nice to have a decent looking top and a fully working radio again. Having to jiggle the radio to get both speakers working is more hassle than even I am prepared to tolerate.

Also managed to print up a bunch of business cards (some with a Lion Rampant and Tartan Swatch) and send out some thank-you cards to my most recent customers. If you nice folks are reading this, referrals are always greatfully received, and will be looked after very well, just like I did my best to look after you !!

Got the AC^DC cranked up in my living room, never quite realised how many double-entendres are in the song 'You Shook Me All Night Long'. Absolutely hilarious, and to think I listened to that as a callow youth.

Beautiful day in Houston, and joy of joys I can drive to work in a loaner car that has REALLY COLD AC, woo hoo !!!!

Miata Getting Some Attention

My miata is booked in for a new top at MazMax, finally. Maybe I can get the new passenger side door too, after the little bump I had last year. Grrr. It will be nice having a non-leaking car, that might be worth something to someone if I can get it valeted up to something resembling cleanliness.
I've owned this miata since Sept 97. It's a 1990 Red B package (power windows, cruise, alloys), in good mechanical condition, and has been my reliable daily transport for the last 7 years. $3000 and she's yours, just email me if you are interested. Don't bother to offer less, the car is worth more to me, just to avoid a car note.

Thursday - hot and slow. Dateline 10:34pm

Sloooowwww day today. Very very hot and very rainy in parts of houston, though up on 290 it was clear skies and calm with extra heat, all day.
Just back and checking my email. Got two viruses, and a nigerian scam letter. Hahah, my very first one.
Ate a fantastic dinner from Boston Market, sirloin with corn and zuccini cheese bake. Only about $8 for a really nice dinner. Certainly beats out most of the alternatives.
I am absolutely wiped out at the moment. Doing my washing and having a beer.
Ex-gf Pam was in town, but just flying though. Would have been great to see her, but never mind. Would have been nice to sell a couple of cars too. ;-)

Hot hot hot hot day

Man it was hot in H-Town today. Felt like 100 oF. Started at 12pm at work, and worked through until 10:45pm or so. Really tired now, missed all the TV. Time for bed.
BTW, I recommend Netflix, assuming I had enough time to watch all the great dvds I can get. 15,000 available dvds, way better than Blockbuster, and only $20/month for 3 out at anytime, and free mail envelopes for returning them.

Tonights Simpson's Quote

"... And NO death racing !" Homer to his father after he gets his drivers license back.

Dodge SRT-4 Test Drive

Seeing as I just posted my WRX test drive, I thought I'd add my Dodge (neon) SRT-4 test drive impressions up here too.

Outside, the car looks great. The 17 inch rims (race style, thin spokes) and painted on tires look fantastic. Big red calipers visible through the wheels add to the look even more. The front is more lumpy than the standard neon with a scoop to pull air over the engine. A bare metal intercooler can be seen through the slot in the front of the hood. A HUGE sleek upside down U shaped wing is mounted on the trunk lid. The car looks kinda like a WRX in profile at first glance. Disappointingly, the standard crappy looking neon rear lights have been retained.

Opening the door, the first impression is that the paint job and finish is excellent. I sell Toyotas, so to open the door of a neon and notice how nice the paint finish was, was quite a surprise. Sitting down into the big Viper style seats, you see from left to right: power window controls (front only), locking, instruments, leather wrapped steering wheel (Ithink, mine still had plastic wrapping on it), vacuum/boost gauge, handbrake and ball topped shifter for the 5 speed manual. The quality inside seemed very nice to me, though a bit gloomy.

Starting the car, the engine emits a brief whoofle, then settles down to steady idle. The clutch is light and smooth and the shift notches slightly into first, without grinding, unlike the (used) WRX I drove. Moving off is easy, the clutch is easy to modulate and the engine makes a kind of throaty burble that I found very pleasant. Aside: I bought a Miata 7 years ago, with a trashed muffler, and have NEVER yet replaced it ... hehe you can always hear me coming.

Driving the car, the throttle response is easy to handle, and shifting is easy but slightly slow and notchy. The shift gate is slanted slightly front and left, but you get used to that after a few shifts. Now for the best bit, this engine makes peak torque as low as 2400 rpm, that translates to serious muscle at highway cruising type speeds. You push the throttle down and instantly the car rushes forward. I had to drive the Subaru to compare, but I can tell you, the Subaru felt great, and gently fast, but the neon at normal highway revs completely thrashes the subaru. For a regular driver like me, I was involuntarily swearing every time I pushed the gas. To put it in perspective, this car is THREE times quicker in the in-gear 30-50 and 50-70 than my miata is, and the miata isn't completely pathetic by any means.

Handling wise, sometimes the things you don't notice are the most spectacular. The SRT-4 rode great, way better than my miata. It felt glued down, and totally safe and secure. The steering was a decent weight and had great feel. All the more surprising when you look at the super low profile tires on the considerably uprated suspension.

Conclusion, I loved the car to death. I just reviewed a used WRX and it's gonna very hard to choose. Faster SRT-4, or potentially more solid (and cheaper) used WRX with known weak transmission/clutch issues. What a choice to have to make.

(Used) 2002 Blue Subaru Test Drive

I just drove a used WRX wagon. 2002, 35k miles, $17k, Blue.

Engine, looked about right for a couple of years old. Air intake from pass side wheel well. (standard ?) Didn't look like it had been cleaned up specially or anything.

Inside, pretty good condition with boost gauge. Some button on mirror (outside temp ?) didn't work, and compass was wrong. The car had a slight baseball glove kind of feel, maybe a bit too used feeling for only 35k miles. Seats very comfortable.

Driving, clutch was pretty heavy feeling. First gear kind of crunched in a couple of times, though all the other gears were fine, including backing it up in the parking lot after driving it (first gear synchros?). Gearshift was short throw and pretty foolproof on the go with a slight notchiness, but definitely fairly quick shift. Engine felt very strong with most power above 4000rpm or so. Plenty of turbo whistle on full throttle. Boost typically showing 0.06 I think, though it was hard to note with stuff coming towards me at high speed.

Impressions, well worth $16k unless someone else knows different. In which case, please post a reply.

Background, I am looking for a fast car. I already test drove a new Dodge SRT-4, which felt stable, solid and a heckuva lot faster, but the Subaru is fast enough and more machine for less money.

Travels With Samantha

Travels with Samantha was one of the first web articles that really captured my attention.
With a similar name is Travels with Lizbeth. I just started reading Philip Greenspun's review of it, so I can't say much, other than it looks like a great social commentary.

Jonathan Watmough, Photographer
I've been trying to tidy up my modest footprint on the web so that my blog links to most of it. Here's my photo portfolio on photo.net, Philip Greenspun's proto-site for web community collaboration, see the fabulous book Philip and Alex Guide to Web Publishing. Sadly photo.net has kinda buckled under it's own popularity and demands subscriptions at every turn, like PBS and community radio.
Maybe it's time for some kind of micro subscription mechanism. Jakob Nielson had a somewhat ahead of its time article about Paying Customers.

Colossus
Here's a fantastic article about Colossus, the computer that the Codebreakers at Bletchley Park in the UK used to break the German Lorenz cipher. The Lorenz cipher is a pseudo-random XORing of 5-bit baudot code, but capable of being broken from multiple message texts. This makes it weaker than a one-time pad which, I believe, needs the pad material to be stolen to be broken.

Melatonin and Getting up Early
I've noticed that since I started my job I can't sleep past about 7am, even getting to bed about my usual 11:30pm or so (after Seinfeld on WB39). This is a big change for me, as I am normally more of a 9am riser. Also, I am sleeping way better and feel I have a bunch more energy than usual.
The one big change in my life is that as a car sales guy, I am getting about 10x more sun than usual for my life. According to this website about melatonin, the extra sun inhibits any melatonin production during the day, so no afternoon naps for me any more.
I think this little story points something out. When people don't get enough sun, exercise, good food, it creates problems for us. The human body needs a lot of sunlight, a lot of exercise, and a good quality balanced diet. When you don't get these things, we turn into the kind of people you see clogging up doctors' surgeries. Always tired, often obese and with a list of chronic minor complaints, that cost the country billions of dollars every year, and only profit the pharmaceutical companies.

Man that was one hard Memorial Day. The heat was incredible and ended up getting so hot, I had to buy another top shirt, though I was smart enough to bring a spare undershirt with me. DO NOT BUY the Jerzees shirts from Walmart as a undershirt. They are 80% 20% cotton poly and do an extremely effective job of pulling moisture straight onto your outershirt. A cotton tee is better as it will soak up any sweat and let it evaporate without making it look like you just ran a marathon or something.
Today (Tuesday) is my day off which is pretty welcome, even though I didn't manage to sell anything yesterday. Hopefully I can get started with some software development on my Clie, or at least get the desktop software installed and be able to sync images onto my PC / Blog.

Simpsons quote of the evening :

"Remember me as I am now ... filled with murderous rage."

by Homer, when he and Bart get left behind in the evacuation of the earth. Perhaps the most cringingly cringy episode ever. Especally the Rosie O'Donnell sing-a-long.

Blogging from Gmail
Man that was a pain in the ass. Blogger/Blogspot doesn't like img tags very much. It can work, but only include the src attribute to pull up the image, nothing else seemed to work.
I guess this is a bug and I should check the issues. Email me if I have got this horribly wrong.

Blogging images from Gmail to Blogspot

Blogging a pic from Gmail to Blogspot. Uses an img tag linked to the
google file. [NOTE 06/06/2004] ERRRRKKK !!! Darn it, it only works whilst logged into google. Images in this blog now hosted on my Tripod website.

Outraged of Houston
AND ANOTHER THING !!!!!!!!! I visited Starbucks today to test out my new Sony Clie TJ37, and they charge 10c a minute for wireless access !! You'd think that a skim iced grande mocha at $3.63 would be enough to snaffle some free wireless, but no, they want $6 an hour. Jakob Nielson already wrote about the level of micropayments that people are typically prepared to tolerate, and 10c a minute is NOT it!
Hopefully other people will see this and complain. Here's my complaint to Starbucks :

I'd like you to reconsider the high cost of wireless access in your stores. I can drink $3 of coffee an hour, and snacks, and have friends around ... but the $6 an hour cost if I want to play with my Sony Clie is too much.
Please think about this. You have a fantastic opportunity with this.

Let's hope a few people pick this up and flood Starbucks with complaints.

Here's a link to a pic of my old friend Alison from Aberdeen, on Kenny Campbells blogsite, slick!

Sunday Afternoon
Drove down to Skyline Aviation and hung out with Eldad for a while. Course I can't afford to fly/am too damn tired to fly at the moment, but my baby was in the hangar ... lots of dials and stuff
Went to Wally World and bought some cool plain white t-shirts that I can wear under my shirt at work to stop any sweat before it gets to my shirt. Man it's hot outside the dealership, I've seen 96oF on the outside temp reading when demoing cars. That's pretty bad when you have black pants and a shirt and tie on.
Slashdot have a cool story about a guy who reviews TV dinners. So... in the spirit of that, I just had a delicious Michael Angelo's Vegetable Lassagna. Very yummy, with a good layer of cheese, and nice vegetables, and fairly substantial pasta. Available in Kroger for $2.50, so that may make up a few meals this week.
Grrr, stupid NASCAR is delaying the Simpsons, and sadly it's the first Simpsons I've had an opportunity to watch this week. Grrr.
So far in my car sales job at Joe Myers, I've sold a (all Toyota) Solara V6 SLE, Matrix, .5 of a Camry, V6 Highlander, Sienna CE and 2 Corollas. That's 6 1/2 cars, so not bad. Pretty happy with that.
Note to Eldad: Your web site does NOT work in Mozilla which is unacceptable ;-)

Back in Blog (Apologies to AC^DC)
After a bit of a break and the usual hassling of trying to get into my account again ... :-( sigh, I am back. It's Sunday, and my one day off since last Monday.
I have a new job selling cars which is a whole bunch of fun. I have been experimenting with using Google AdWords to direct people to my Salesguy webpage, but it is not effective yet.
This week has been mainly 12 hour days, though the shift pattern has a mix of 9am and midday starts, so at least I get some late mornings, which is really nice.
I am going to have to talk to my brother's friend Ross in the UK and see if he has any cool sales tips, being that he runs at least one car dealership, if not more.
Haven't done any flying since coming back from ATP in Florida, but hopefully I can get back to it on my days off, though if today is anything to go by, I'd rather be on the sofa watching the golf.
Hi to anyone that knows me, you can always email me using kabz@pilot.pprune.com

Monster
Saw the movie Monster on Sunday. This is a good movie, but a few people walked out during the show, notably when the Charlize Theron character started to go ballastic after being knocked out and brutally beaten. There is quite a lot of blood and strong language in the movie.
After this point, I started to lose some sympathy for the character as she started killing largely just for money and transportation.
Christina Ricci as a naive and demanding lesbian does ring particularly true, and her portrayal was probably the weakest part of the film for me.
I won't spoil the ending but it's not very happy.
Overall, I thought is was a pretty good film, gritty and sometimes unlikeable, but a film you can respect for what it is.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Saw the new Jim Carrey movie on Friday night. Excellent, especially the very nice Kate Winslett in sultry multi-colored hair mode. The movie follows a somewhat totured relationship through to the point of both characters having memories of the other removed from their brain.
A large part of the movie follows the experiences of Jim Carrey as he hides in his own memories trying to preserve his own recall of the Kate Winslett character. During this sequence there are some very scary moments that certainly reminded me of some of the scarier moments of the classic British Sci-Fi series
Sapphire and Steele.

Houston Rodeo
I visited the Houston Rodeo and Livestock show on Saturday with other members of the Bayou City Outdoors club. Great fun seeing the huge carnival, animals, shopping, bull riding, bronco riding. Sadly I didn't think much of Brooks and Dunn, but the rest of the show was a lot of fun.

Who is Jonathan ?
I am a UK guy with a computer science degree from St Andrews university in Scotland. My personal web-site is here on tripod.

Home Monitoring applications for Cellphones
Why haven't home monitoring devices taken off ? What do they need ?
What are the core needs :
o Data gathering / Image capture
o Connectivity
o Easy programming
Well, maybe all that is here now. Some of the current cell phones have connectivity, built-in java, cameras, IR serial ports, in short all of the required attributes to be useful for controlling and monitoring your home. This page gives some of the Java/Linux applications on small devices.
I'd love to have a device in my home that I could text message to 'look-in' now and again. This may be easily doable.

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