2 Bit Hacker

Happy Independence Day!

Was playing around with my Canon SD870 last night, using the CHDK firmware to do long exposure images of the fireworks. Some of them turned out nicely, I think.

Not bad for having no idea what I’m doing anyway. See the rest of them in my gallery.

Not a lot going on at the moment, and I feel like typing, so it’s time for another general life update. Things are generally going pretty well, though there are a few annoyances at the moment, like the busted TV. My current plan is to get it repaired again and then sell it and buy something non-LG. There’s a Sony Bravia 40″ that’s not terribly unreasonable, but it’s a good chunk of change, so I’m not really sure what I’m going to do. I’ve got a stack of old electronics to sell off too. I should get on that and put the money toward the new set.

My birthday is coming up next week. Delia already got me my big present, a few months back, an Amazon Kindle e-reader, which I’ve been using almost continuously for my nightly reading. There’s nothing else I really want at the moment, but I’ve tagged a few things on my want list for good measure. Thinking about picking up Soul Calibur IV if I don’t get it otherwise.

I was also thinking of dragging Delia down to Easthampton, to go wandering around on Mount Tom. Haven’t been down there since I lived there with my mom when I was like 7. We’ll see how the weather goes.

Oh, and I finally got my home storage server/gateway up and running. Seems to be doing pretty well, though with 512MB it’s a little under powered in memory, but otherwise it’s doing the job nicely. Also picked up a Netflix Player, which is a pretty slick device. The movie selection on Netflix’s streaming service still isn’t that great, but they do have a pretty good selection of TV shows and documentaries, which is nice.

That’s about it for now, I guess. I’ll try and think of something interesting to write.

Okay, LG is going on my personal vendor blacklist, at least for LCD TVs. I bought this LG 37LB5D LCD television back in December to replace my Sony WEGA CRT, and initially I was very happy with it. Then it started having audio issues, which I worked around. Then it started having video issues, where the screen would blank out randomly. I called a repair place, and the guy came out and swapped in a new power supply and control board, and everything was happy once again.

And so it went till today. The audio issue just resurfaced. I’m sitting here watching History HD off my TiVo, with no audio. First it was quick cut outs, now it’s just totally silent.

I suspect it’s something with the HDMI audio decoder. My suspicion is that it overheated and did some permanent damage to itself. I should probably contact the repair guy again and find out if the replacement parts were also under warranty, as it’s probably going to take another set of replacements to make this thing work again.

At this point though, I’m tempted to chuck this one off the balcony and go buy a Sharp AQUOS. We’ve got three of those at work and they’re running great. I suppose this is what I get for trying to save a buck and going with the cheap brand.

Recently someone pointed out that the contents of my e-mail signature are getting somewhat outdated, which stuck an idea into my head to update it. For a while now I’ve been using the following:

Chip Marshall <chip@2bithacker.net>     http://weblog.2bithacker.net/
GCM/IT d+(-) s+:++ a26>? C++ UB++++$ P+++$ L- E--- W++ N@ o K- w O M+
V-- PS+ PE Y+ PGP++ t+@ R@ tv@ b++@ DI++++ D+(-) G++ e>++ h>++ r-- y?

That jumbled mess is a Geek Code, a somewhat out of date, condensed representation of me. Given that the guidelines of the Code haven’t been updated since 1996, I’ve started looking into alternatives.

The first one I came across was OmniCode, which offers a similar syntax and a greater flexibility. However, the actual guidelines don’t seem to be well thought-out and the resulting code takes up too much space.

My second finding was the Hacker Key, which is again inspired by the Geek Code, and provides a further condensced format with updated parameters. I created a key pretty quickly, and tried the following on for size:

Chip Marshall <chip@2bithacker.net>        http://weblog.2bithacker.net/
v4sw5PUhw4/5ln5pr5FOPck4ma4u6FLOw5Xm5l5Ui2e4t4/5ARWb7HKOen6a2Xs5IMr2g6CM

It’s a little wider, but only two lines overall, and conveys approx the same amount of information to someone who knows what they’re looking at. I thought it looked kindof odd though, so I shuffled the components around and added in my PGP key ID, resulting in:

Chip Marshall <chip@2bithacker.net>
v4sw5PUhw4/5ln5pr5FOPck4ma4u6FLOw5Xm5l5Ui2e4t4/5ARWb7HKOen6a2Xs5IMr2g6CM
http://weblog.2bithacker.net/                        PGP key ID 43C4819E

It’s still a little wider than I’d like, but I could trim out a parameter or two to bring it back down. Haven’t decided if I really like it overall though yet.

Maybe I just spend too much time on these sorts of things…

PS: Oooh, what if I put the Hacker Key under the URL/PGP key line?

Chip Marshall <chip@2bithacker.net>
http://weblog.2bithacker.net/                        PGP key ID 43C4819E
v4sw5PUhw4/5ln5pr5FOPck4ma4u6FLOw5Xm5l5Ui2e4t4/5ARWb7HKOen6a2Xs5IMr2g6CM

Hmm…

Been making a few changes on the website. Did the upgrade to WordPress 2.5, which seems to be working fine, though I’m not a big fan of the new admin interface. I also finally fixed the CSS for the text boxes on the sidebar in this theme, so they have the proper background and bottom decoration.

Some of you may have noticed that I switched to the CLI theme for a bit. I liked it, but decided to go back to Connections Reloaded. One of these days I’ll get around to writing my own theme…

Also, I added an Amazon box to the sidebar, the top item is what Amazon thinks you want to buy based on your purchase history and the content of my site supposedly. The bottom item is a link to the Kindle e-reader. If you want to buy a Kindle, please use the link over there, they give associates a huge cut of the purchase price on those.

It’s getting to be that time of the month again, when I start whining about how no one donates to the Hindenburg fund. Unfortunately, it’s gotten to the point where it looks like Jason and I are the only ones really using it, and it’s hard to justify the $90/mo to keep it operational.

So, I’m starting to think I need to start selling some services on the box in order to get a regular flow of money coming in. Cheap virtual web hosting seems to be the easiest to do, if I can find buyers who would rather go for my little locally hosted box over one of the larger services. $10/mo seems fair to me, and at that rate I only need to get 9 customers to cover the hosting costs. If I could even get 3 or 4 it would be a big help.

If anyone has ideas for other services, or would be interesting in hosting, let me know. I suppose I should do this in some sort of official fashion via 2 Bit Hacker Consulting.

I’m off to San Jose, CA till Thursday to attend the NANOG conference with my boss. Should be a fun trip, my first NANOG and my first time out that far west. If anyone out there wants to try and meet up while I’m out there, drop me an e-mail.

Also, my eee PC is cool. Using it in the terminal to write this.