happy holidays!
click to go to the corresponding pic on flickr
(that’s what you get, when you put hats and beards on other people… ;-))
(in english, there’s an explanation overhere)
Any way, Bates and I want to wish you all a very happy holiday season!
click to enlarge
Now where did I leave the kitty candy?
Bates already feels much better now…
*^_^*
cheers!
one for the holidays, SNES on your iBook
With Christmas coming up and the whole world standing in line for a next-gen console, I thought it would be a good idea to spend some time on retro-gaming.
I succesfully turned my old iBook into a SNES-emulator. Now that alone is not very special, emulators are around for ages of course. But I also hooked up Sony’s dualshock2-controllers!
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On the right you can see my friend Nine, who turned into a professional streetfighter just like that after laying eyes on my retro-console-setup! *^_^*
click to go to the projectpage
the projectpage:
How to make a 2-player SNES of your iBook
gimme back my audio!
good old 16-bit PCM-coded 44kHz aka the compact disc
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A little while ago I found myself reinstalling my fileserver and while I was doing that, I had no access to my MP3-files, which are all stored on there. So, for the first time in, what must’ve been years, I took a CD out of my collection and put it in my media center. For a long while already my media center is my only source for playing audio/video-files. Now, I did improv(is)e on getting the best possible quality out of my MP3s, but still, I fell out of my chair when I played some of my old CDs, I was stunned by the quality(difference) even though I played them from a DVD-writer in my media center…
So… on a day where Bill Gates let the world know DRM is lame (d0h) and his advice is “People should just buy a cd and rip it. You are legal then.”
...and a week where iTunes sales where collapsing, even though later on, they were not.
...I thought it would be a good idea to check one of the audio-stores here in town for a second-hand (this technology is around for 20 years with little to no improvement in the last few years from what I can tell, so why buy new?) CD-player with digital out and preferably a NAD... This is what I came home with:
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It’s a NAD 502 (pdf-link) and from what I can see in reviews it’s considered to be quite a respectable CD-player… The one I found is in total mint condition, really, all over it looks like new (including the remote).
Even though this is equipment I didn’t really really really need, I think I’m gonna be quite happy with it. Now I actually have a reference for my SoundStorm-setup and even though I can trust my own ears, sometimes music just sounds different, probably depending in what kind of condition I am when listening to it…
So, before I find myself yet another time doubting if everything’s still okay with my soundsystem, strung-out on coffee with way too little sleep and such… I can now make sure what it was intended to sound like, more or less, without having to check up on a gazillion audio-options in my media center… *^_^*
I hooked this player up to my Sony DSP, digitally. The DACs in the player itself seem to be all right also, but I would need a pre-amplifier to hook this player up in analog fashion since my DSP/pre-amplifier only accepts digital inputs…
With this player around, it doesn’t mean I won’t listen to MP3s anymore. Oh no, not in a long way, but whenever I feel like really listening to music, instead of having some background noise while working, this player allows me to do so. On a first test, this sounds immaculate.
click to enlarge
Any way, on a more long term scale, I can see myself going out and buying CDs again. Something I haven’t done in a long time. DRM-downloads are out of my question and illegal/semi-legal downloads from questionable sources most of the time have a questionable quality as well, next to that, I totally had it with the latter.
So, I think I’m gonna shop mainly for second-hand CDs, sold by people who thought it would be oh-so-hip to give up their CD-collection (and had to share that with everybody at social gatherings since… “CDs, honey, I mean c’mon, I’ve got an iPod!”)... I will feel sorry for them when I buy their CDs… *^_^*
...it will probably only be a short while before I find myself buying a turntable again… ^_^
tschüss Gentoo, hello Ubuntu!
...need I say more? *^_^*
Well, last thursday I gave myself this awesome videocard (well, from my PoV it’s awesome, a gamer will think different maybe…)... Anyway, because of this card and because I had some free time, I thought it would be a good idea to update my Gentoo-install before I continued in having fun with this new card. Even though this install was a couple of months old, there was a whole lot to update, including packages that block other packages etc.
But, somehow when I removed packages that blocked the ability to update others, something went downhill and it kept going that way. I kept having compiler-errors, no matter what I did. glibc wouldn’t compile, make(!) wouldn’t compile… In the end I decided to install from scratch but even that gave the same errors on glibc/make/gcc when I tried to update/upgrade Gentoo 2006.1 to current.
Bates somehow liked the compiler output better than I did…
click to go to the corresponding pic on flickr
Well, after almost two days of console-output and such I decided that this is too much pain for the potential gain, so goodbye Gentoo, it’s been nice (and this server still runs on it…). With my busy schedule lately I really can’t afford myself having a workstation that needs that much work to keep it going, even though I, most of the times, loved it. And I’m pretty sure this could be solved, but for me, maybe some other time. The Gentoo/*BSD-development seems promising, but for now, I really have some work to do…
well, the logo rocks!
When I read the following, I really asked myself if Gentoo is the best ‘workstation OS’ for my needs…
“After problems with a bug on his own system Robbins (the creator of Gentoo) halted Gentoo Linux development and switched to FreeBSD for several months”
Gentoo on Wikipedia
I’m a Gentoo user for almost three years now, but lately I hadn’t gotten much fun out of it. I even started to postpone updates on weekdays even though I really wanted to do them, simply because I really didn’t know where it would end up this time. And somehow, that’s not an ideal situation for a workstation. So, I now chose something that just works and boy it does. This afternoon I put in a Ubuntu Live-CD for AMD64 and now, a couple of hours later, I’ve got my full-blown desktop back, almost exactly as I had it before (in my case both on Gentoo and on Ubuntu, it’s Gnome on top).
Well, I’ve been paying attention to the workstation-part of this workstation first. At this time I’ve got Firefox 2.0 with Flash9(!) running, which is marvelous. I was able to move over a lot of my settings and files, so from a user-PoV, hardly anything changed, everything is just there! SMP on Xeon EM64T, dual monitor, nvidia-driver, GIMP, OpenOffice, Thunderbird with all my mail, the whole shebang… Now, tomorrow it’s sunday, let’s see if I can get at least one game running…
After more than two days with this new videocard, this is what I got… *^_^*
In the mean time, I’ve been playing Need for Speed Most Wanted on my other setup, my Media Center, so it’s not all work and no play cause you know, that keeps the doctor away makes Jack a dull boy…
*^_^*
some fresh graphics for my workstation
It’s that time again, time to update the graphics performance of one of my machines, my workstation in this case. I just saw it’s almost two years ago I last bought a graphicscard (not counting a a very cheap and obsolete ATI Fire GL).
old and new, MSI ti4200 and XFX 6800GS
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Since I’m not much of a gamer, true gaming performance alone is not the first thing I look for. In deciding on a card, future upgrades for my monitors have been the reason I chose the card I just bought. So, what did I buy?
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Well, I almost bought a XFX 7600GT AGP with dual dual-link DVI, but today I could get a very sweet deal on the card I bought, a XFX 6800GS AGP with dual DVI (single-link).
About the single/dual-link thing, a single-link DVI can do 2048×1536 as a resolution(on each monitor), while dual-link DVI can do 2560×1600. Well, I bought this card so I can go look for two nice TFTs but the chance I’ll end up with 2 Mac 30” Cinema displays in some garage sale is, well, near to nothing. (a 24” display can be driven from a single-link DVI)
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Since the card I bought is a GeForce 6800, I also get some nice graphics performance, which enables me to experiment a little further with gaming on Linux. Geez, that’s also already more than two years ago I’ve been experimenting with that… Oh my, time’s flying I guess…
Well, any how, my workstation which has been in the making for almost one and a half year nears it’s completion (just before it’s obsolete! ^_^)...
Before I can play with it any further, I’m updating my Gentoo-install… next thing after that will probably be installing Quake III, it’s been ages since I played that one *^_^*
click to enlarge
earlier on this site:
a ‘new’ graphicscard
borking videocard and lockpicktools
videocard blues
...and again, it's sunday *^_^*
...even though it’s still sunday, it’s been some weekend…
click to go to this pic on flickr
Last friday I attended Brightlive and last night I visited Clash 06 in my hometown Groningen.
Clash is a kind of one-night festival with a great line-up. Some of the performing artists were Audio Bullys, Dave Clarke, Dr Lektroluv and last but not least… Krause, which you all know from this very site of course… *^_^*
click to visit my Clash set on flickr
...and yes… that’s a very pink ibook on stage, next to the Mac SE/30 visualizers (which again were used in the VJ-set, by Motion Sickness) *^_^*
earlier on this site:
LED throwies at Brightlive
Yesterday I attended Brightlive in Amsterdam. And what a day it was! I left my precious laboratoryhouse at 6.30 am and made it back home at around 1.15 am… But it was worth it!
I’ve been ‘teaching’ people how to make GRL’s famous LED throwies…
Because of the throwie-campaign we(as in Bright) did earlier we all thought it was a good idea to let visitors make their own throwies, to get them into the DIY-mindset! *^_^*
click to enlarge
How to make a LED throwie on flickr
...and it seems that’s been quite a success! *^_^*
The visitors helped us to get rid of 800 throwies!
click to go to this pic on Erwin’s Flickralbum
click to go to this pic on Tonie’s Flickralbum
click to go to this pic on Francisco’s Flickralbum
click to go to this pic on Francisco’s Flickralbum
...and this is one of the ways people helped us to get rid of 800 throwies (after throwing them first of course…):
click to go to this pic on my Flickralbum
*^_^*
Of course, LED throwies are courtesy of Graffiti Research Lab. That’s also the reason you won’t find it in my Projectlab, it’s their project, not mine. But I’m more than happy to get people enthusiastic about the DIY mindset and this is one of the ways to do that. It’s a whole lot more efficient than teaching people how to make 800 ipod-bike-chargers for instance… ^_^
If anyone inside the Netherlands needs help to get the right parts for a throwie-campaign, feel free to contact me. I can hook you up with addresses/contact-info and such.
open source gift guide
If you happen to know an open source geek and you’re wondering what to buy for him/her this holiday season or for some other occassion… don’t look any further than MAKE: Magazine’s Open Source Gift Guide
...but a lot of time you actually don’t own it, you can’t improve upon it, you can’t share it or make it better, you certainly can’t post the plans, schematics and source code either. We want to change that…
hear hear!
click to go to the giftguide
There’s a lot of excellent stuff in there, but I personally love this one:
click to go to the MAKE: store (this warrantyvoider will be there once it’s available)
That one just says it all, doesn’t it? *^_^*
if it doesn’t, check out this awesome Owner’s Manifesto
click to go to the manifesto on the MAKE: blog
pink dust...
Weeeeell… I’m not sure what it is, but whenever I paint something, especially an iBook(...) I go through a process of doubts etcetera. Now, after three days of restarting, lots of hours, lots of alcohol (to get the paint out, not drinking it…) this must be it for now.
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this is what my shower looked like for the last few days (I’ve been cleaning up in between to be able to shower, if that’s what you’re wondering about).
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And this is the current end-result (mocked up on a defective iBook)
On the pictures it looks almost red, but believe me, it’s not. There’s so much fluorescent pink paint in there, in real life it’s almost too much to look at. So even though Susanne decided pink it should be, we didn’t want it to become a total girly pink… Well, this isn’t, that’s for sure.. ^_^
I also did paint the bottom, but that came out much lighter than the top. Somehow those two together don’t match and I guess it’s best to only change the top-cover of her G4-iBook with this ultra-pink topcover…
Well, I wasn’t 100% satisfied with this result actually, there’s little cracks in the paint, because of the amount of paint that went in there and I should’ve spread it into more sessions… I did plan to do it all over again, but maybe it’s the wisest thing not to do that right now… In every session there’s always one thing not going like you want to and it gets harder every time to go back to the beginning because there’s more and more paint involved that needs to be cleaned before you can have another go.
One of the reasons I decided to not do it all over again (I did the topcover twice, there were hairs in the paint after the first run) is that I really started to dislike the pink dust that comes off the process of spraypainting…
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Believe it or not, but this is my topfloor (where also my shower is) and even though I didn’t spot the dust at first, look at what my finger looks like (this is not a joke, really… ^_^)
So, even though I at first planned to do it all over yet again, I’m now pretty sure I won’t (for now). The amount of paint now in the topcover is massive and to get that amount out will take a multiple of the two/three hours it takes to get out the original paint. I tried it this afternoon on the bottom, that one had way less paint in it than this topcover and that was a total b*tch to clean.
Soooo… I guess we have to decide this won’t become 100% perfect. Something which is also almost impossible cause the shells (since there being used) are already have trackmarks of usage before we begin this process. Anyway, I did learn a lot in this process and another try probably has to wait till I find a third iBook and of course, there are more and more (defective or not) G3 transparant iBooks hitting the market so also with that thought I leave this one as it is now…
I think I need to let this rest for a moment… *^_^*
time for a number two...
All I can say for now is…
click to go to the corresponding pic on flickr
there’s more here btw
after a number one, it now, most logically is time for number two…
Colour already has been decided by the way, and no, I’m not the one who’s going to use this/these shells… I’m way too fond of my green ibook for that.
