The collected works of sybrfreq - Page 2

go to meijers if you have one, they will print anything.

here's an nvidia mousepad I had them make about 6 years ago:
rather faded and dirty but well used as both a mouse pad and drum pad.

I presume they still have a similar lax attitue toward copyright and are more concerned with helping customers than pissing them off.

cool, thanks for the link

is this it?
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=16721380&p=7303948&hilit=next+mousepad#p7303948


added:

I had my family tree poster made at kinkos. About 3 minutes from me handing the guy a flash drive with the pdf on it to him handing me the poster. The B+W print full size was about $7.

I find local places are the best to go for these sorts of things, that way they can see you are just making a fun project and not some big operation profiting off of counterfeit items.

cool, I want one

easily carried by two people and requires no special power or air conditioning... a "fixed" installation is not required.

does this mean that errors per # of bits are staying the same, or that errors per system are staying the same? Memory is growing; my current PC has 16GB of memory and it's 4... almost 5 years old.

There are new PCs that have room for 192 GB of memory. (although IIRC that requires 16GB dimms which are not yet common) That's bigger than my system disk! In several years there will be PC systems with 1 TB of memory... perhaps there will be a need to increase error correction overhead in the future?

Thanks, that answered my question exactly!

that is a nice machine. I really like the older macs with their curvy see-through cases, especially compared to the bland aluminum ones (powermac g5 and up).

I'll spare the junk peecee case and red spray paint but you get the idea.

A triple-tower could look pretty cool, if done right.

I use wolfram mathematica for this and... well everything. A computer without mathematica is not much of a computer at all. I'm pretty sure the student version is under $100 I have and use version 7 on windows and also a couple classic versions for fun.

I dunno, I like it. There's a bunch of similar programs out there so use what you are familiar with. If you are a college student it is (or at least used to be...) possible to get enough discounts and promotions so it is free.

Anyway, the OP also said he had access to a computer lab. Surely they have some sort of math system (maple, matlab, etc) and if you are lucky they will even be able to show you how to use it. Nothing good will come out of using excel; even if you get it to work right it will still look like crap.

sorry, I couldn't finish the article... just blew another bullshit detector. I made it to this sentence:

I'd like to buy a copy as well...

I don't understand... electricity is getting cheaper and cheaper to generate and batteries have ever-increasing capacity. re the environment IMO it is better to use something already existing than throw it away and buy something new.

I suppose this came from SGI themselves?

might as well throw in an SSD while you are at it...

I have the kingwin 64gb ssd in my thinkpad, it is a little eerie to have a computer that makes NO noise at all. (in fairness, the original IBM drive was a real clunker, some of the noises it makes are very unnerving... and I am pretty sure even an ipod has a faster drive) BUT there is no gyroscope so the fun little demos and games don't work anymore.

You can't replace an RM6 with an RM5 or you'll let the magic smoke out.

the camera I use most often doesn't have a microphone. Well, it does, but it sounds like shit...

No 'screen door effect', ability to use crystaleyes stereovision, and the badassness that comes with a couple 100 pound vacuum tubes sitting on your desk.

"it's so thin, there's no way it could do 3-d graphics! where do they keep the 3rd dimension?"

I would go with one of the ion boards. Yes, it's a geforce, but it should be a little better than intel graphics.

I'm willing to bet we are talking about one of those 'weather stations' that measures temperature, windspeed, barometer, etc, all in one. From the likes of columbia weather systems or weatherhawk. You can probably get something cheap at radioshack or home depot.

Hopefully Mr. Cow can give us a little more detail about the hardware he is using

Spending a few hours lost in the transit system would probably do you some good.

The only problem with my PC laptop (IBM) now is that the battery is 6 years old and has 800+ cycles on it, so it only lasts for about 2 hours

The build quality is far better than anything apple could ever hope to deliver. Then again, apples are so cheap build quality doesn't really matter... look at their competition (dell, acer, gateway, consumer HP, etc). These companies try and charge less than the sum of the parts so quality is the first thing out the window.

It's all fun and games until the machine gets knocked off the desk or a cup of coffee spilt on the keyboard. My thinkpad has been dropped exactly twice... once the dog got tangled in the charging cord and sent the machine flying into the next time zone, actually just across the patio maybe 15 feet; and once I had it sitting on the coolant reservoir of my car when a gust of wind got a hold of it, or maybe vibration from the engine revving, tipped it into the driveway.

I'm pretty sure the mac would have been sent in for service after the first time. The typical catastrophic event that causes the death of a mac is when it is dropped two feet onto foam-backed carpet resulting in a cracked screen or the "yuppie mac user" spills his fruity drink into the keyboard (look at the bottom of a mac, you see there are no drainage ports. Where do they expect the liquid to go?). When you plan on keeping your machine 20 years or more (which I do, I bought it to last and there is no reason for it not to) you have to expect something like this to eventually happen.

I even put it in one of those wetsuit-sleeves before putting it in my bag and always keep it in its dock whenever possible. I also don't carry it around with me every day. What the hell do you need to carry a computer for 24x7 anyway?

I don't care about OSX, it is fun to play with but all my applications work the same on either OS so there is no competitive advantage.


edit: I just ordered a new battery. $27 (with free shipping) for a lightweight 4-cell with brand new sanyo cells. Since you only replace the battery and not the whole machine it is much better for the environment. Also, the old one is still good for 2 hours so it might be useful as a spare.

The best warranty service I ever had... a few weeks before the 2-year extended warranty was due to expire I had them put a brand new motherboard in my dv8000 because of random hangs and crashes. Well it took them a day to send me a box and they made me take out the HDD and memory before shipping it to them but it left my house Tuesday night and was back on Friday morning, with new motherboard.

IMO, the best way to measure build quality is to see how hard you have to throw it at the wall before it breaks

BUT... Do a web search for dv8000 if you want to see a good example of "cheap, low-quality, consumer laptop". It runs great though, and should stay that way since it is very rarely moved or handled at all.

really? because I've seen lots of thinkpads that are nearly 20 years old and still going strong. I have a magnavox 386 laptop that is 22 years old and runs fine. 4 D-cell batteries will power it for about 5 hours.

alright, you got me, I can't top that one. but ... My dad had his thinkpad t43 stolen and we haven't seen it since.

Well, at the time I bought it (early 2006) it had a very fast 64 bit CPU and radeon graphics, 17 inch screen, and two hard disks for about $600. It was among the fastest and also among the cheapest machine in the store. I didn't buy it to carry around, I bought it to replace my 166 mhz pentium. I was in high school and my primary source of income was mowing my neighbor's yard.

So for the price of one thinkpad x40 (when new) one could have bought 3 macbooks or 4 and a half dv8000s.

heat gun + tin foil + braid? soldering iron? pentium did a how-to a few years ago:
http://www.rotteneggs.com/r3/show/se/321442.html
Maybe he will chime in with how he got it off... or maybe he did the mod with the chip still on the board?

You just answered my next question.

that sounds about average for a typical computer, no idea if the PM MDD is supposed to run hotter or cooler than that though

On my xw9300 each processor is typically at about 50 degrees C, a little lower when idle.

They have issue #2 out. So if you missed the first one now is your chance to jump on it.

holy shit. I have one of these:

It was $12. Waterproof, lifetime warranty, made in USA, et al.

But seriously... for my zune I have a clear polycarbonate belkin case. It features a belt clip that can be rotated to form a movie-watching stand. With a little hot glue and electrical tape it is reasonably sweat proof.

I have also heard good things about the rubber skins for iphones and blackberrys that add a good amount of grip and protect the case from scratches (unfortunately not the screen!)

Sooooo... to combine leather, skins, and belkin, I believe we are left with this product: http://www.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage. ... Id=510020# supposedly the ipad screen is glass and therefore doesn't scratch

As far as backpacks go it is pretty small, and IMO that black and green man-purse you posted is pretty ugly. I would never be caught out in public with it; for tastes there are colors.

Some of the gelaskins look pretty cool. I wonder what Gaia or Infinite Oz would look like on a silver psp 3000. (all the demo images have a black machine)

Actually the color is fine, but given the choice I would go with black/red (school colors). I am assuming the whole bag is designed to fit an iPad in the main compartment. It's too small to wear. That same bag scaled up to fit a regular laptop and a few books would be not too bad. I'm just under the impression that the whole thing is at most 12 inches wide. Also, those outer pockets are rather distracting and make the whole thing look very busy.

Why not get one of their "ivolution Grip" cases (or something similar) for iPad and treat yourself to one of their real bags? Their grips are cool, much nicer than the belkin one and not even double the price... and it's leather. not just made-in-china leather, but handsewn argentinean leather . (oooh!)

BUT I'm not going to buy one of those fancy-pants bags; occasionaly exposing my bag to torrential downpours, hot sparks, corrosive chemicals, and everything in between, it's nice not having to worry about getting a spot or scratch on it.

problem^2

to run an executable that isn't in your path type ./ beforehand; ie. type ./blender in the directory that has blender.

Do I even have to say it? Buy a zune *ducks*



After seeing experienced ipod users occasionally abused by itunes, ie: lose all their music, have the quicktime updater pop up in the middle of a presentation, etc... any affection you feel towards ipod/itunes is likely a result of stockholm syndrome.

That being said, let me think of the basics: Is your player OS up to date? Did you try a newer/older version of the itunes software? Have you considered buying an ipod shuffle which plays your music in random order (thus freeing you from worry about playlists)?

funny, I bought my zune in 2007, and haven't had any trouble since.


Sorry I can't give any better advice, but I have yet to see any feature of the ipod that makes it worthwhile, unless you already have an apple computer. I am curious why you would keep trying different ipods, which keep failing you, rather than move on to a different mp3 player (ie sony or sandisk). I've had lots of mp3 players over the years, and apple is second worst only to perception digital (old enough to require SmartMedia cards, and a 64MB one was huge)


edit: wait, wait... I seem to recall now, yes. If you get a new ipod/computer you must "unregister" an old device with the itunes servers. There is an arbitrary limit to how many devices you can have. I went through the same thing when my sister got her new computer. I think it is called unregister, it's up there under account settings or somesuch menu like that. Of course, you must unregister the old device that you no longer wish to use... could be tough if it is completely dead!

It looks like the same problem this guy has. viewtopic.php?f=3&t=16718092&start=29