end of an era
That sounds dramatic, doesn’t it? Any way, I’m referring once again and now probably for the very last time to my funky seventies tablecloth I’ve been using for quite some time on my kitchen table, which has been visible in a lot of my projects (this one for instance) and which even travelled with me to Brussels to the last Make Fest. (you can find my Flickr-set of the Make Fest here)
a lot of junk on top, but if you look carefully you can see I indeed took my tablecloth with me
click to go to the corresponding pic on flickr
Somehow this cloth became geektechnique at it’s fullest and geektechnique somehow became a little bit of a funky seventies tablecloth I guess… ^_^
click to enlarge
The whole idea once started when I began to put projects online and I didn’t want to watermark all of my pics with a geektechnique text or logo. Pics of projects get ripped and reposted on forums and such. Now, that’s no problem at all, only quite often the reposters seem to totally forget to credit or such and watermarks get cut away… Sooooo… Next to the fact I truly like the tablecloth in all it’s funky glory, it also seemed like a nice idea to have it very visible in almost any of my projects so there’s no discussion on which kitchentable the making of the project took place. Easy does it eh? ^_^
But… last weekend I visited the truly amazing and wonderful Nadya in Amsterdam and with only a small bit of all the talents she possesses, she made me what’s going to become the protection for my powerbook 12” and the fabric we used for this powerbook protection is … the geektechnique tablecloth…
click to go to the corresponding pic on flickr
Now the powerbook itself is going to be modified quite drastically any time soon and this protection will be the perfect accessory for that. I need to do some work to the protection and a lot of work to the powerbook, but you’ll all see that any time soon.
Any way, I guess I now need a new tablecloth for my kitchen! Geez, I guess this is one of those moments in life where you start wondering how you got there. I mean, the current late tablecloth was more or less accidentally given to me, but now I need to go around and shop for something like this… Ah well, I’ll survive ^_^
...and about getting sentimental...
For the previous post I was digging through my pics for that one pic of my ATI 9700 PRO. Now it surprised me that it already had been two years since I got the card, but digging through the pics I also found out it has been two years since I made iNO, the pics were in the same map.
click to enlarge
Well, it all figures I guess, I made that one at a time I had just been watching a Stevenote, where he then introduced the Mac Mini and the iPod shuffle. And somehow, a little while later, my little iNo got a lot of attention. (and I still think it’s a little miracle my wonderful little SGI Challenge S could cope with it all back then!)(I still got that machine btw, also one of those pieces of hardware I can’t imagine I ever get rid of)(but maybe I’ve got a few of those too many *^_^*). Since then, what can I say? Time flies when you’re having fun I guess ^_^
...and yes, yesterday I have been following (and later on watching) the latest Stevenote, but don’t worry, I haven’t got anything up my sleeve this time, so no iNoPhone (as in “I know that you know that I got no money” Phone) or such…
...now wait a minute… let me think about what I just said one more time… I mean, I’ve got six months before the real iPhone will hit the market… hmmmmmz… *^_^*
Let's hear it for AGP! *^_^*
Weeeell, overhere at geektechnique
They just published a solid article online called:
AGP Platform Analysis, Part 1: New Cards, Old System
...which tries to finally give some valid facts to an endless discussion you can have about if it’s still worthwile to upgrade an older system with a newer AGP-card or go the extra mile (and dollars) to go out and buy something with PCI-express.
Now don’t get me wrong here, of course PCI-express has more potential in it than AGP ever had, but something you see way too often is that the old standard is sort of thrown away in favour of the new way too quickly. But read it all in the first part of this AGP Platform Analysis
Frankly, I’m still impressed with the old-but-revolutionary Radeon 9700 PRO we used in these tests. Paired up with an Athlon XP 2500+, there wasn’t a title the old girl couldn’t play at 1024×768. The benchmark scores didn’t look very impressive, but the card delivered playable performance, better than a lot of new cards like Radeon X300s or Geforce 6200s. Not bad for a card released 5 years ago.
I have to admit, though, that I do believe that in the next 6 months there will be game titles released that it won’t be able to handle at 1024×768. I’m hopelessly sentimental, though, so I’m going to miss that Radeon 9700 PRO.
my own good old Hercules ATI 9700 PRO
click to enlarge
Or is it just because I happen to have such a 9700 PRO, (which I’ve gotten two years ago and even back then it was considered old) in a fairly similar system as their test system?
Any way, I’m not gonna miss my 9700 PRO, since it’s not going anywhere ^_^ It performs quite well still. I watch my TV/movies on there and play a game every once in a while. At this time and with my current TV-setup, it would be plain silly to buy something else for that.
burning iBook for sale! *^_^*
Decisions have been made, the iBook I have been fixing in such a spectacular way, is now for sale!
click to enlarge
specs:
- 12” iBook G3 700MHz (this one)
- 384MB of RAM (optional 256MB installed)
- 20GB disk
- CD-rom-drive
- original Airport-card (not even my own low-budget solution, I’m gonna keep that one. If you look around on eBay or such, you’ll see this card alone is worth quite some… I’ve seen ‘m go or over a $100)
- poweradapter (which has seen better days, but it works)
- battery is in so-so condition. I haven’t timed it, after charging it says she’ll hold for 2+ hours, but in reality it will be one hour I guess.
- iShirt (not the original or such, one I’ve been making for Bright, I’ll include a copy of the magazine in which it’s featured, oh and it features a OMGWTF-patch as well!)
- original CD-set of Mac OS X 10.4.1 included and Mac OS X Panther (10.4.3). Although this machine will happily run Tiger as well. I’m using Tiger on a machine with almost similar specs and this machine has been my main road-warrior for the last two years. (I’ve just, and only just, gotten myself a fairly quicker machine)
- S-video adapter
about the repair
Well, you have all been able to read how this baby got a repair. It’s been over a week now and the repair holds just fine. Even though I can still not guarantee a thing on it, I’ve been adding shims on top of the videochip so it will stay in place. This is one of the other repair-methods people are doing to this series of iBooks. It’s a precaution I’ve been doing because I’m selling it, to make sure I’ve done everything in extending the life of this iBook. But I repeat, I can not guarantee a thing on it!
click to enlarge
about the sale
I’m selling it here, on my own page, not on eBay or such. I want to make sure people have seen the repair before bidding on it. Next to that, I don’t have a creditcard (it’s a little less common over here to have a CC than in the States, simply put, I don’t want one and as long as I can keep that up, I’m not getting one either.)
I’m located in The Netherlands so a sale within The Netherlands would be preferred. But if you’re very eager to get this iBook, of which the repair at one point hit the frontpage of Digg and of which the video at one point got a #10 spot on the most viewed Science&Technology videos on YouTube, you’re able to do so. Bidding can be done in the comments, in euros or dollars, whatever you prefer, make sure you state the currency you’re bidding in!
click to enlarge
disclaimer and conditions
First, I can not guarantee a thing on this iBook. If I need to ship this iBook, shipping costs are added to the price you have bidded. Money needs to be transferred first to my bank account or paypal before I ship this thing. (hopefully that keeps or Nigerian/Ghanesian friends or whoever from bidding like $1500 on it or such).
Bidding can be done in the comments. Please leave a valid email address in your comment, it is not visible and/or published. If the auction is about to end, I’ll contact the highest bidder by email. If he/she seems to be full of sh*t, I’ll contact the next one, etcetera etcetera… :-) There will be no discussion about who will get it in the end. It’s me who decides that.
Bidding starts at 200 (euros or dollars, whatever you prefer, I’m like the Apple Store… exchange rates? what’s that? *^_^* )
This ‘auction’ will end two weeks from now, so that’s on sunday the 21st of january 18.00 or 6PM CET. If you’re really eager to buy it, the ‘buy it now’ price is set on (weeeellllll, what shall we say?) ... a thousand dollars! (original conditions do apply, so payment up front) *^_^*
happy bidding!
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OMG! I'm getting DDoSed!
...or, oh no, it’s digg *^_^*
Well, luckily I’ve been doing some reconfigurations to my server a couple of days ago and I guess I finally hit the sweetspot. This isn’t the first time my server is handling a lot of traffic but I don’t think she has ever run this smooth, while in the middle of a frontpage of digg.com (at the time of writing)... yay!
like it should be, no swap! hardly a load and serving!
click to enlarge
As you all can imagine, we’re very excited out here!
click to go to the corresponding pic on flickr
and since it’s 2007… a youtube-vid as well! (the other one has been viewed 5500+ times, most of it in the last few hours)
Thank you all, this is fun! *^_^*
(don’t get me wrong, I’m not being sarcastic or such, I mean that!)
Added: beautiful DuggTrends Graph
I can see where they're having a laugh...
Last night my latest project got blogged on the MAKE:blog and after a while I noticed some traffic coming from one specific place…
In a timespan of about two hours I counted 149 different IP-addresses, all from apple.com… So my guess is, they must have a lot of broken iBooks out there!
*^_^*
for those who haven’t seen it, the project is right here
the youtube-vid is right here:
if the video somehow doesn’t work, here’s the link
and you can Digg it right here!
happy 2007!
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Let’s make it a nice one, shall we?
*^_^*
the geekiest of techniques
This will be my last post… of the year! *^_^*
Last friday I’ve been picking up what will become my new road-warrior, a powerbook 12” G4 1500. It has some minor damage but I’m not afraid of doing some work to it. Next to that, I really would feel uncomfortable walking around with a stock Mac, so plans are made to do, well, something more to it than just fixing the minor damage… *^_^*
And talking about work on my beloved 12” Macs… I just published a new project:
DIY obsolete iBook logic-board repair
click to go to the projectpage
Repairing that iBook involved what must be the geekiest of techniques on this page, but see for yourself.
Judging by what I did to that 12” iBook (and the ones earlier), I really must make a masterpiece of my new powerbook but we’ll see all about that and more in 2007!
For now, I wish everybody a splendid New Year’s Eve
take care! and be careful with fireworks, especially on your kitchentable! *^_^*
DIY trackback
MAKE:blog
Digg: Get your iBook working again with fire
MacUser: Repair your iBook… with FIRE!
The Consumerist: Dude Fixes His iBook By Lighting it On Fire
Gizmodo: Screw Geek Squad, Just Use Fire to Fix the iBook
Cult of Mac: Major geekage: Fix an iBook with FIRE!
a little update on our friend air
Well… regular readers must’ve spotted this guy called ‘air’ who commented a little while ago on this page.
This fine fellow started a little earlier, on november 29th to be exact, when he thought he could flood my mailbox with this message about a gazillion times. Then the comments made about three weeks later are exactly the same. Talking about originality.
And last week he thought he could carry on with this crap, thinking he’s god or something. Well, he’s the first commenter I ever removed from this page and I will continue to remove his crap if necessary.
For the ones who really want to read his latest rant, here it is.
Any way, guys like this don’t make me stop. In the worst case I need to switch to commenting in which I have to approve any and every comment and that’s about it. How he and alikes think I will stop is beyond me, I run and own my own server (number two is on it’s way), I’m totally independent, so even if they would DDOS me, then what? Well, I tell you what, I will still be there… ^_^
And kiddies like this, thinking they’re the leetest hax0r on the block (and this air-guy is running windows and outlook, I kid you not) really need to get their head checked up.
Any way, for some other website I developed this little technique. On that site there was a troll, also using anonymous proxies and really annoying the shit out of everybody. For that guy and now for air too, I used a little technique, which I’m not gonna explain into detail. Not that’s it’s hush hush or anything, any unix administrator should be able to come up with this, but I don’t want to put these kiddies through some learning curve.
Any way, it allows me to exactly pinpoint and somehow fingerprint a visitor and it doesn’t matter if he’s visiting this site through an anonymous proxy or anything. And I can decide what to show this one visitor…
So… I’ve been redirecting air the last couple of days to disney.com. I thought he might like that. But, I thought, maybe he figured he ‘won’ and I really put down my site. I mean, I don’t expect a guy like air ever leaves his basement and/or really has friends he can ask if this site is really down…
So, I changed the behaviour and guess what popped up in our little friend’s browser tonight? (and my logs confirm he saw it…)
He will probably find a way to get around it, I just wanted to let all of you know he probably shitted his pants tonight when he saw my little Bates…
(and now he has to explain to his mummy why his basement smells so funny)
*^_^*
and back to... what actually?
Well, after the wining and dining of yesterday I spent my day today as almost any other sunday. Finally I got to grips with a Cisco 2610 router I have. Now I’ve been willing to configure a Cisco-router into my network for quite some time but somehow I never took the time to sit down and configure this thing. Next to that, I’m a total newbie at IOS. A while ago I did update the IOS on there and I did get a second ethernetboard for it, so I could actually use it as a router in my setup.
...and today I finally managed to get the thing to NAT in between both interfaces and we’re up&running now. yay!
I was a little worried this old (but unused(!), the one I have must’ve been spare or something, the thing looks new) but very stable router wouldn’t be able to cope with some nowadays bandwidth and I couldn’t find decent literature on that as well. But… first tests show everything is fine. My download speed is around 600-700 Kbytes/sec and that’s what it always has been (I’ve got cable overhere). Now I know I’m probably gonna slow this thing down when I load’er up with rulesets, but… I’ve got a dual bridge around it, on which I can load any ruleset I want and that’s the real experiment I want to continue with… Only thing is, I really gonna need more time (off) to be able to make some progress there…
I’ve been using stock images for this post… cause I don’t think you want to see my closet at this time, it’s a mess… but if you insist, here you go.
that’s my encrypted fileserver, a SUN Ultra 1 Enterprise with quad 100mbit NIC (quad happy meal) on top (the dual bridge) and the Cisco 2610 on top of that. The Cisco is parked this way because there’s a fan underneath. On top of the Cisco is a small LCD-screen I bought on a fair for 25 euro, it comes with a designated PCI-card which also feeds the screen, probably useless for anything else than a console… (it’s a console to my fileserver btw)
