Thursday, December 29, 2005

Memory cards for the Nokia 770

In anticipation of the arrival of the Nokia 770 and also because I needed a larger card for my digital camera (which uses full-sized mmc/sd cards), I ordered an rs-mmc card way back in August. Turns out of course since this is the univserve with eternally changing memory card formats, That the 770 sensibly uses 1.8v rs-mmc or dual-voltage mmc cards which draw less power. So my existing card won't work and it's time to shop for a new one.

In the interim, rs-mmc dual-voltage cards, appear to have evolved into MMCmobile, which has a higher though still compatible pin count, and vastly greater potential throughput. What the deal with the 770 is eactly I don't know, The included 64MB card has 13 pins but simply states (1.8/3.0v) multimedia card.

http://www.flashrus.com/atp/web/mmcdifference.htm

Even if the doesn't support the enhanced features of MMCmobile the newer cards should work without trouple. At some point benchmarking is probably in order to determine if one mmc card is vastly faster than another.

So anyway cards (amazon affiliate links are italic):

kingston 512MB MMCmobile

1GB rs-mmc DV cards seem to be about $80-$90 via froogle

Basically 1GB is probably the acceptable minimum for an aftermarket card, if you're planning on storing mp3s on it. The other application I've seen recently is to use a small chunk of it as swap, though to my mind that might run into issues around flash memory longevity and perhaps battery life implications, though for all I know these new mmc cards might do write balancing and sector remapping like modern cf cards.

Monday, December 26, 2005

Nokia 770 mp3 audio streaming.


cimg0591
Originally uploaded by joelja.

Plays back internet radio stations with little or no effort. Given the limited amount of cpu it has, it surprising but it can run in the background while you do other things under most circumstances.

Nokia 770 with xchat...


cimg0585
Originally uploaded by joelja.

First thing I did after noodling around with the thing for a while was install some software, this is the xchat irc client.

Friday, December 23, 2005

Nokia 770

Now thar I've had it for a bit more than a week. it seems like quite a reasonable device. I haven't spent any significant time hacking on it, but not withstanding that. the things it was designed to do it does quite well.

Browser. mp3 player, rss agregator. email and anything that requirs serious typing is a little labor intensive. I would note however that I'm about to be pushed over the edge by all the devices that I routinely carry that require fairly regular charging and all have different power supplies.

Friday, December 16, 2005

New toy!

So it's been a long time in coming but my new toy has arrived. I didn't really know what to expect from the Nokia 770. but it appears to exceed even my most wild imaginings.

Pictures to follow shortly.

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

$100 pc goes to manufacturing...

Can't say much for the color scheme, though that's something you can probably fix with a rattle-can and some stickers.

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000920072549/

They do have one photo displaying actual text which I would think would be
the principle application...

http://laptop.media.mit.edu/images/laptop-ebook.jpg

It's slightly interesting to me from a design perspective that in one configuration or another some of the usb ports are allways covered. which means basically no permenantly attached devices. It also means to me the most if not all the electronics apart from the keyboard/touch-pad are located in the screen housing.

Monday, December 12, 2005

WTF!

Materialism as the road to abstinence

http://psych.colorado.edu/~gwebster/bling.jpg

Put out if he drops the rock!

Let's get this straight... If you can be bought for a tiny little rock, you're just a whore.

Friday, December 09, 2005

Dell powerconnect 5212 firmware problem

Got a dell switch that you can't upload a new firmware on?

That second config file is taking up to much space... Nuts! you think there would be enough room for an extra 1600 bytes.
http://forums.us.dell.com/supportforums/board/message?board.id=pc_managed&message.id=1045&query.id=400264#M1045

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Turn based space adventure games...

When I quit my job, or start commuting by train so that I have and extra 45 minutes to kill each day, I have to take up turn based space adventure games again.... New and promising are:

Weird Worlds
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/digital_eel/weird_worlds/6.htm

Sword of the Stars
http://www.kerberos-productions.com/sots.shtml

Galactic Civilization
http://www.galciv2.com/ScreenShots.aspx

Interesting hardware on the pvr front.

Not relevant to the hobbyist obviously:

http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS9968931411.html

I could easily see the bill of materials for a pvr built around this thing being well under $100.

So the tivo business model eventually makes money even if they have to give the pvr's away to get you to subscribe to their $12 month tv-guide xml meta-data service.

Either that or a pvr eventually ends up costing less than a vcr (currently $40) since it has fewer moving parts.

--

My knoppmyth pvr is getting a bit long in the tooth. So it's time for an upgrade, probably new disk is the first step, but freshening up the distro is something I've been avoiding for months now. Looks like knoppmyth has gone through two rapid releases since the last time I looked, so time to burn some iso's.

Thursday, December 01, 2005

Monday, November 21, 2005

Re: at&t now lower case...

On Mon, 21 Nov 2005, Dave wrote:

> On Mon, Nov 21, 2005 at 03:28:09PM -0800, Joel Jaeggli wrote:
>> talk about big changes...
>>
>> http://news.yahoo.com/photo/051121/480/sa10111211630&g=events/bs/102705sbcattmerger
>
> Can you say MFJ?

I can say deathstar...

> Dave
>

`

at&t now lower case...

talk about big changes...

http://news.yahoo.com/photo/051121/480/sa10111211630&g=events/bs/102705sbcattmerger

`

One step closer to futurerama heads in jars (redux)...

President Bush greets the new robot overlords.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/051118/481/apec82811181504

Sunday, November 20, 2005

It's Cringley so you have to take it with a grain of salt.

http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20051117.html

Most interested in the teu container thing (twenty foot equivalent unit) not in a taking over the internet. I've seen these in various places in Africa. Datacenters in trailers have been around since the early 70's, but tractor trailers are pretty large, and fairly delicate compared to containers, and now that basically everyone on the planet has container handling equipment, you can drop containers pretty much anywhere you want, ship them on airplanes etc.

See:

http://www.apcc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=318

for an example of datacenter in a tractor trailer.

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

nothing to say...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3345912591655921649&q=

IED's again...

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.11/bomb.html?pg=1&topic=bomb

Bit of a prisoners' dilemma involved in being a soldier in IRAQ. US military is happy participate in a technology escalation hot-war. But not change the rules in mid-stream. We're still fighting a war of pacification, that course of action is doomed. Being closer to the action, doesn't make you any more likely to be able to change the outcome.

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

burning them out of their homes...

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article325560.ece

Of course this article is totally and massivly confused on the differening effects of phosphorous vs napalm , chemical vs fire weapons, the possibility of it being a thermobaric weapon (likely since they've been used elsewhere in iraq), etc... picture and or attribution would be useful.

white phosphorous bomb

Sunday, November 06, 2005

Hans pointed this out to me...

Something to hide in the back 40...

http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/houses.htm#

Apparently there's a whole movement around tiny houses...

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

another take on the low cost edu pc

http://fourier-sys.com/product_data_nova.html

Basically a large screen windows ce pda, happens to have some data aquisition equipment in it as well.

Sunday, October 30, 2005

So I have this little project where I take pictures of vehicles whose purpose is essentially indefensible. one of the the more absurd one's showed up across from my office in the form a of a c4500 pickup truck.





So if you happen to drive a giant pickup truck for no apparent reason, with the Oregon liscense plate "rimrat" and you're on the U of O basketball team, and you wander around with a posse including some dork playing with a basketball, then you're a fucking moron. There are perfectly valid reasons to need a GMC Kodiak, like this:

ebay kodiak

But dragging the hommie's around isn't a good reason to drive something with a gvw of ~16,000 pounds, and the fuel economy and emissions to match.

Friday, October 21, 2005

I hate the world...

Just goes to prove, I guess that stupid bitches come in all shapes and sizes.

http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=1231684&page=1

Nice Hilter smileys... Might as well get the NSDAP logo on their too, or would that spoil the mock irony they're aiming for.

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/129/1310/1600/DSCN0105.jpg

Tyrolean dresses, and songs about race-war...

http://www.nationalvanguard.org/printer.php?id=4330

Fall on Campus


CIMG0336
Originally uploaded by joelja.

Earlier in october and on campus.

Fall in Eugene


CIMG0354
Originally uploaded by joelja.

Early October

Thursday, October 20, 2005

Shark!

Pretty much what I remember them looking like in 1989, except that Doctor
Pershing's was Red. He probably still has it, (he'd be around 80 I guess)
if he didn't wrap himself and the Carrera S around a power pole or
something.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/NO-RESERVE-COLLECTORS-GARAGE-KEPT_W0QQitemZ4583976847QQcategoryZ6129QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Even better than last week...

Burn the bodies on camera and call your enemies lady boys... Must be part
of a hearts and minds campaign.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/4359128.stm

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

More nokia 770 links...

Sounds like it should be shipping fairly soon.

maemo.org has a blog agregator:

http://planet.maemo.org/

some pictures for a developer that just got one are here:

http://xdev.org/gnustep/nokia/nokia.html

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

Ok this is badass...

The first page was hella lame, but the second is cool.

http://www.harmful.org/homedespot/newtdr/NEWtdrARCHIVE/TRADITIONAL/japantrip/j2shikotsuko.htm

Japanese foxes are a little friendlier than american ones...

http://www.harmful.org/homedespot/newtdr/NEWtdrARCHIVE/TRADITIONAL/japantrip/j5asahidake.htm

edison ac and dc transmission...

Topsy the elephant (Edison was a jackass)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topsy_the_Elephant

War of current (Fallout with Tesla, Edison was a jackass)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edison#War_of_Currents_era

High-voltage DC transmission is quite fascinating...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC

The Pacific Intertie which runs south from Celilo, through eastern oregon is one of the larger dc transmission lines in the US...

http://www.transmission.bpa.gov/cigresc14/Compendium/PACIFIC.htm

The modern AC-DC transformers for these things are actually solid-state silicon semi-conductor devices.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IGBT

Sony Ericsson 990 phone porn.

This was just introduced... I'm not sure if I'm supposed to lust after it or not.

http://www.symbian-freak.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=14714#14714

Good candidates for Rasterbation...

http://homokaasu.org/rasterbator/

Inside dust just photo of HST from "fear and loathing on the compaign trail".

Inside detail from a trainstation.
http://manga.clone-army.org/pxi.php?page=7

Clone-manga has some intersting projects, I find them slightly macabre and wierd, at the same time they are visually striking and iconic, sort of like falling in love why HR Giger at 14.

Any one of a number of frames from Warren Ellis's transmetropolitan comics

Obviouslly I have a few art-projects built up.

Thursday, October 06, 2005

itunes phone = ass

We knew this already (from reviews)... Now the stock market analyst's have figured it out. Eventually idiocy will be punished by the marketplace...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/10/06/slow_rokr_sales/

a review:

http://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_rokr_e1-review-50.php

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Someone-else's take on the $100 laptop.

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000620061996/

Also a device I missed, the dana wireless, a $400 widescreen palmos 4 (dragonball) device with wifi. You have to wonder why it costs as much as it does.

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

More musing on the simputer.

Some more thoughts on $100 handheld/portable pc's.

So, the Nintendo DS cost about $130, that's about right for a small simputer like pc. Two cpu's, one 66mhz arm-9 and one 33mhz arm-7, one graphics copressor, 4MB main memory, 650k video ram, and 2 x 256x192 color displays, one with touch panel. margins on the DS are presumably suplimented by the sale of games but it seems unlikely that they would actually choose to take a loss on the hardware given that their nearest competitor is either their own products (gb advance) or the the psp which retails for $250. Still, Nintendogs is not a productivity tool.



The zipit, instant messenger device is about $100, with a monochrome 320x240 display, 100mhz arm cpu, 16MB of ram and 2MB of flash, it has linux on it already, but it's pushing the limits of usability for something you're going try and install more software on. It's already been heavily hacked on.



Both of those devices have built-in wifi.

Palm hits $100 for the zire 21 with 8mb of ram and 120mhz arm. The palm has neither wifi nor a backlight for the screen, only a docking connector. The zire 72 gets you 320x320 color, bluetooth, sdio slot, camera, infrared and a 312mhz arm, 8MB flash and 32MB ram, but for $250...

There are a couple gsm phones from asian manufactures that hit the sub-100 mark fairly handily for a contract free handset. In cellphone land though a 200x160 screen is pretty big.


The we have the $100 computer (presumably that's how much it costs to make rather than post markup). For whatever reason they don't envision retail sales.

Nintendo DS, electroplankton...

http://ds.ign.com/articles/603/603336p1.html

I may have to get a DS just to play this.

Monday, October 03, 2005

backstory on the Indian simputer project...

Early simputer prototype - from edgereview


newer (faster, more expensive color simputer) - from wikipedia


http://mailman.edc.org/pipermail/digitaldivide/2005-April/002012.html
http://in.rediff.com/money/2003/sep/17spec.htm
http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS3539522586.html
http://linuxdevices.com/news/NS5108992809.html

Slashdot stories back to 2001

http://slashdot.org/search.pl?query=simputer

One could actually write quite a case study on how not to develop and deploy technology in the 3rd world. but spiraling costs, poor time to market, excessive expectations and politics probably play a part.

What does succeed? Well, Nokia has delivered 1 billion cell phones, given their market share historicaly that pegs the number of total phones on the planet at something like 2-3 billion. The nokia 1100 is probably in-line with a technology that can sufficiently penetrate the low end. That's the sub-$50 or sub-$40 mark rather than the sub $100 or $200 mark... Combine that with no costs for in-calls, cheapish sms, and prepaid services in rather small units $1-5-10 incremenets and it's something that a signficant chunk of the urban 3rd world population, can or will eventually be able to afford.



The rural and semi-rural "subsistence africulture economy" in africa and south asia lives a largely cash-free existance, so any price point that involves numbers may be largely meaningless.

There's another meta-level question. What do you get a computer for? We all know what a phone is for... What's a computer for? lots of things obiviously, however before the broad expansion in the internet, penetration of computers into american homes, had stalled out simply because the killer app hadn't arrived for a sgnificant chunk of the population. Spreadsheets, word processing and hobbyist applications drove adoption for most of the 80's, communication and web access drove the next wave, and the deep penetration of computers into the media space is driving another.

Where do devices like the simputer or the $100 pc fit in the scheme of things? One obvious problem that the simputer has beyond all others is local resellers, something cellphone companies and carriers have figured out. Anti-capitalist, grovernment run computer handouts seem like a predetermined failure. Computer adoption has been driven by precieved need and the economics of aquisition. Governments have a responsibility to lay out provisions for the it needs of their citizens, guide the educational process in their schools, and prime the pump when it comes to technology adoption, but that doesn't occur in a vacum.

Friday, September 30, 2005

uh...

Isn't there a get smart episode featuring a floating island with a really huge outboard motor?

http://www.inhabitat.com/entry_578.php

Thursday, September 29, 2005

Re: I want one of these... (fwd)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 29 Sep 2005 13:35:00 -0700 (PDT)
From: Joel Jaeggli <joelja@darkwing.uoregon.edu>
Subject: Re: I want one of these...

honda fit:

it's smaller sibling the life:


fit:

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/07/honda_ceo_outli.html

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/09/small_japanese.php

http://asia.vtec.net/Reviews/JazzVtec/index.html

http://asia.vtec.net/article/Jazz/

it's seems likely that the 1.5l one will be the one coming to the US rather
than the 1.3l

On Thu, 29 Sep 2005, Nat Jaeggli wrote:

> Maybe here in Spring 06...
>
> http://www.honda.co.jp/Fit/index.html
>

Germans to the rescue!

With pressure sensor beer mats.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8069&feedId=online-news_rss20

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

WTF!

American servicemen back to their responsible actvities...

Desecrating the dead, violating the geneva convention...

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/09/28/web.photos/index.html


I find it ironic that dead iraqi's end up on porn sites but journalists are barred from witnesssing the return of american war dead.

Monday, September 19, 2005

if you can't beat em...

Join em. I guess... So I've been trying to get this laptop to run at it's native resolution for a couple of months now, (1920x1200) and the best I've managed under fedora core4 was 1600x1080.

But there appear to be a couple people running ubuntu who've gotten both the display and acpi sleep working, on this or similar laptops so I figured I would give it a shot. What pushed me over the edge was yesterdays xorg pacakge updates in fedora core 4 broke my xorg.conf config which in all fairness to fedora was hanging by a thread anyway.

So my "old" 80GB 5400rpm laptop drive is swapped out right now and an "older" 20GB 4200rpm drive that sounds like death warmed over has been swapped in.

Sure enough, with a minor tweak to the video bios X comes up in 1920x1200, yeah baby 2.3 million pixels.

So, the folks that have the latitude d610 models and the inspiron 9300 models both of which appear to share common components with the 6000 have gotten acpi sleep to work on this thing. If that works, then I am really and truelly set on this thing, the fact that I may end up running some bizare debian related abomination not-withstanding. it's eitehr that or muck this stuff back into fedora, which I may or may not have the energy for.

anyway:

excellent latitud d610 page:
http://rdo.homelinux.org/ubuntu-linux-on-a-dell-latitude-d610

inspiron 9300 page with some kernel hacks:
http://www.rtr.ca/dell_i9300/

a slightly less useful ubuntu page on the 6000 which got me headed in the right direction at least:
http://www.antoniocheca.com/wp/content-text/ubuntu-inspiron6000.html

two debian pages:
http://clydefrog.plus.com/~rob/inspiron6000.php
http://eulex.0nyx.com/inspiron6000.html

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

sealions

are badass apparently

http://www.kesq.com/Global/story.asp?S=3848224

holy shit!

This guy leads the free world!

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/050914/ids_photos_ts/r2587077477.jpg

on kcrw

Now Playing:
I Will Follow You Into The Dark by Death Cab For Cutie at 11:29 on Morning Becomes Eclectic

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Seen on weblog

http://weblog.disgu.st/picture_cache/2005/09/07/146458_animal_shirt2.jpg

FEDEX delivers inside NOLA


<scannerlr> [FEMAr] fedex custom critical vehicle (unt) eoc, can you
coordinate to get them back to i-10 via (unt)
<scannerlr> [FEMAr] (unt)
<scannerlr> [FEMAr] rgr, you need a state police escort for a fedex to
get him out to i10 and us90?
<scannerlr> [FEMAr] stbernard eoc and getting down i10 and us90 westbound

Some url's

A wikipedia article explaining what all the new pentioum 4 variants are
since I can't remember. I can't keep track of all this shit anymore, I
must be getting old or something.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_D

Some photo's I was cruising yesterday so I don't loose the the link.

http://www.4u-jp.com/shintani/haikai/GEO/e_snap.html

keitai watch

http://k-tai.impress.co.jp/

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Seen this before I think...


http://www.n55.dk/MANUALS/SNAIL_SHELL_SYSTEM/SSS3.html

More of a nomadic structure than something like the parastitic homeless
shelter. The fact that it doesn't pack flat I guess makes it less portable
that it couple otherwise be.

http://www.n55.dk/MANUALS/SNAIL_SHELL_SYSTEM/SSS.html

The big question I have after seeing all their little structures, is where
do I buy plastic tetrahedrons in large quantities?

Spotted on irc...

#disasternews on efnet is a transcipt of the national guard and first responder radio chatter around New Orleans.



[FEMAl] nola air we sent seahawk out to 3 elderly
individuals and they were barbecueing on the roof and waved us off

Saturday, September 03, 2005

The best thing David Brooks ever said.

When he's not being a republican toady (oh wait, I'm sorry, appologist) on the evening news he's actually almost cogent. Today he refered to the hurricane response, as the anti-9/11 because of the way in which it will undermine (rightfully so) people's faith in government looking out for their interests.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/political_wrap/july-dec05/bop_9-2.html

...

DAVID BROOKS: This is -- first of all it is a national humiliation to see bodies floating in a river for five days in a major American city. But second, you have to remember, this was really a de-legitimization of institutions.

Our institutions completely failed us and it is not as if it is the first in the past three years -- this follows Abu Ghraib, the failure of planning in Iraq, the intelligence failures, the corporate scandals, the media scandals.

We have had over the past four or five years a whole series of scandals that soured the public mood. You've seen a rise in feeling the country is headed in the wrong direction.

And I think this is the biggest one and the bursting one, and I must say personally it is the one that really says hey, it feels like the 70s now where you really have a loss of faith in institutions. Let's get out of this mess. And I really think this is so important as a cultural moment, like the blackouts of 1977, just people are sick of it.

...

Friday, September 02, 2005

hitachi disks a a global brand

Hitachi trying to sell disks as something other than a commidity...
Follows the get perpendicular theme, disks as bling. I would suppose that they're trying to build a global brand, which is sort of an interesting thing given that they make so many other products.

http://www.hitachigst.com/portal/site/en/menuitem.fe21afe66959f26ed2e821f0eac4f0a0/

I see hard-disks as a necessary evil nothing more. The sooner we get off spinning media the better. If the bit error rate is still related to the number of write cycles, I'm ok with that but when mechcanical wear is still an issue, it just totally sucks. I spent the last week trying to get out from under a failing 1TB raid stripe, restoring the data only started at 1400 friday... By monday I should be golden unless another disk fails.

Well crap! spoke to soon... Another machine failed this evening or well probably about a week ago and it took this long to get really bad. yet another disk problem, or in this case two disk problems, mysql filled up the disk stripe, and one of the disks failed out of the stripe.

hm...

Maybe this works:

http://weblog.disgu.st/picture_cache/2005/09/02/145040_1.jpg

Looks like the taliban:

http://weblog.disgu.st/picture_cache/2005/09/02/145058_Picture062.jpg

looks cool (for a watch)

The right cross section of features, especially, two time zones...

http://www.knifecenter.com/kc_new/store_detail.html?s=DK26215

Also this:

http://www.knifecenter.com/kc_new/store_detail.html?s=DK38284

isn't bad though two dials is a little gimmicky, and I've never worn a watch that clipped to a belt that wasn't a phone.

Thursday, September 01, 2005

Some urls...

map geeks blogging nola flood:

http://www.kathryncramer.com/kathryn_cramer/2005/08/new_orleans_lev.html

The internet provides the information and you make your own tools... There needs to be more low cost sources of gis instrumentation though...

<rw-tank> one great thing about america is that people never exploit
tragedies for political gain:
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,372455,00.html



of course this:

http://www.hurricane.lsu.edu/_in_the_news/houston.htm

is from 2001

Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Re: I hate the news... looting, not looting

On Wed, 31 Aug 2005, Joel Jaeggli wrote:

> not:
>
> http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050830/photos_ts_afp/050830071810_shxwaoma_photo1
>
> looting:
>
> http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050830/480/ladm10908301723
>
> white people find, black people loot.



note that these are 2 diferent agencys - the "found" photo is from
Agence France-Presse (AFP) while the looting photo is from AP...

Spotted on irc...



<fearnor> what makes me wonder is how come we can't plug a fucking levee
but we can drop a bomb in saddam's eye
<AMAG> They were there to stop people from hurting eachother not to
protect property
<villan> ha
<duncan-> fearnor: not enough terrorists in new orleans
<villan> ah
<fearnor> duncan: war on hurricanes
<fearnor> "we will not let 300 dead americans be in vain"
<fearnor> "either you are with us, or you are with hurricanes"
<fearnor> bomb all nations harboring hurricanes
<arp> "we will shine the flashlight of justice into these tairist weather
patterns"
<fearnor> "bring it on"
<duncan-> "let's roll"
<duncan-> im sorry
<duncan-> "let's roll" TM
<fearnor> "they will never get tired of thinking how to hurt america.
neither will we".
<Sabboth> I will be the star that will shine by its own light

I hate the news... looting, not looting

not:

http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050830/photos_ts_afp/050830071810_shxwaoma_photo1

looting:

http://news.yahoo.com/photo/050830/480/ladm10908301723

white people find, black people loot.



http://kkknews.ytmnd.com/

HAK, childrens reading room...




Would you let this guy read your kid a story?

Seattle Library - Stanley Kubrick was here...




or Hans...

Sunday, August 28, 2005

Seattle public library...

A bit unlike pretty much any library you've ever been in... At least as far as the decor goes, it's like being on a non-fake movie set.

It's possible to have a stanley kubrick moment on the escalator.

Thursday, August 25, 2005

Things I've seen on dfw tv about walmart.

Ok, I'm in Dallas for two days....

Walmart opens it's 100th store in the dfw area...

Walmart is destroying west-virginia.... (on pbs).

Sunday, August 21, 2005

parasitic homeless shelters...

http://www.michaelrakowitz.com/

http://www.index2005.dk/Members/fybokunone/homeObject

http://www.gizmag.com/go/4455/1/

Saturday, August 06, 2005

Well so even if the population is a bunch of backwards hayseeds the supreme court isn't.
http://www.politechbot.com/2005/08/05/montana-supreme-court/

Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Hacking away on crap in paris...

The new laptop


1920x1200 is a lot of pixels

the old laptop


dell retired for a couple weeks now

Monday, August 01, 2005

Bob and Lucy at the Trocadaro

Big pointy thing in background

how to know that you're going in circles trying solve an audio problem

A fuxored pc


Some dumbass reversed the polarity of the xlr audio cable... my hack.


cable hack redux

Saturday, July 30, 2005

Yet another reason to hate congress...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time

Gosh you mean people have to patch millions of computers all over the US to reflect the fact that DST lasts an aditional month. In november that means on the 45 paralllel that we all get to travel to work in the dark, sunrise in portland will be at like 0753 on 11/1.

Saturday, July 23, 2005

Monday, July 18, 2005

Crazy...

While mining wikipedia for french terrorist related info...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Denard

Not one but 4 coup's in the comoros...

Leila Khaled
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leila_Khaled

Protective Imagination
http://www.infowarrior.org/articles/2005-01.html

Thursday, July 14, 2005

Nuvo and others

Nuvo stomps around the house.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/14/garden/14robot.html?8hpib

The uncanny valley, anthropomorphic robots, aliens monsters etc.
http://www.arclight.net/~pdb/nonfiction/uncanny-valley.html

Some thoughts for today...

fingerworks http://www.fingerworks.com has apparently gone down the tubes, so your opportunity to a get a wierd shaped smooth keyboard that's somewhat hard to use has diminished slightly. I'll post a picture of the one we have laying around sometime. After a couple days of using it my input speed never really improved so I gave up on it, but being able to use to mouse dirctly from the keyboard was pretty novel and performance enhancing, sort of like using a vary large touch pad except without have to change your hand position.

An iptables primer that I should probably spend more time with is here:
http://www.spotswood-computer.net/present/iptables2.html

I finally noticed that a new version of the BigSister monitoring daemon was released last month so I spent a couple hours this morning (wakeful at 0300 is not healthy), upgrading ours and hacking on it for a little while since it had grown some serious cruft since the last time I touched it. I'm still having problem with ranges on the thing with certain stats, interfaces and counters, servers are not supposed to be 400% idle nor is it possible to utilize a gigabit ethernet to 647% of it's capacity.

Wednesday, July 13, 2005

Some links about the Nokia 770

When I first heard about this thing I was slightly less than enthused. Now I'm not sure. As a Zaurus owner, I'd like linux pda's to work, it was just that with the Zaurus I spent more time noodling with it as a linux box then I did with it as a pda.

For me the compeling pda was actually the palm IIIx, long battery life, and not too functional, everytime I get something more functional I get frustrated when the input methods aren't good enough or it ends up being less than a general purpose computer. The hp winCE 1.0 device, the palm, the clie, the other clie, the zaurus, not one of them really lived up to the promise... The palm at least lived up to it's potential, which was limited.

anyway:

nokia 770 sdk
http://www.hackaday.com/entry/1234000923044772/
http://www.unmediated.org/archives/2005/05/nokia_770_sdk_1.php

Ari Jaaksi Interview
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/83511.php

linux devices
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS2723740399.html

jkontherun hands on
http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2005/06/jkontherun_gues.html

blogs (already, the thing doesn't even exist yet)
http://nokia770.com/
http://the770.com/

some screenshots from developed applications
http://maemo.org/screenshots.html

Friday, July 08, 2005

Some urls

nice beat
http://www.dublex-inc.com/
http://www.inthemix.com.au/reviews/music/18681/

Monday, July 04, 2005

Some product ideas I'd like to see come to market

solar charged patio lights with decent sized panels...

12" concrete tiles with integrated leds and collectors...

an open-groupware appliance.

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

fedora core 4, disk hangs on resume from apci s3 sleep (fwd)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 15:38:17 -0700 (PDT)
From: Joel Jaeggli <joelja@darkwing.uoregon.edu>
To: fedora-list@redhat.com
Subject: fedora core 4, disk hangs on resume from apci s3 sleep

I'm almost at the point where I can get acpi sleep to work on the dell inspiron
6000.

If I unload usb, (ehci uchi) the bluetooth modules, (which depend on usb) and
the ipw2200 module (for the 2915 wireless chipset). then "echo -n "mem" >
/sys/power/state causes the thing sleeps cleanly. When the power button is
pressed, the display, and interactive processes come back, but the disk light
stays solid... eventually the console displays "localhost journal commit I/O
error".

the disk in this laptop isn't sata as far as I can tell.

ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 cmd 0x1F0 ctl 0x3F6 bmdma 0xBFA0 irq 14
ata1: dev 0 cfg 49:2f00 82:346b 83:5b09 84:4003 85:3469 86:1809 87:4003 88:203f
ata1: dev 0 ATA, max UDMA/100, 156301488 sectors:
ata1: dev 0 configured for UDMA/100
scsi0 : ata_piix
Vendor: ATA Model: WDC WD800VE-75HD Rev: 09.0
Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 05
SCSI device sda: 156301488 512-byte hdwr sectors (80026 MB)
SCSI device sda: drive cache: write back
SCSI device sda: 156301488 512-byte hdwr sectors (80026 MB)
SCSI device sda: drive cache: write back

chipset in this laptop is i915gm

lspci is:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/PM/GMS/910GML Express
Processor to DRAM Controller (rev 03)

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML
Express Graphics Controller (rev 03)

00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express
Graphics Controller (rev 03)

00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family)
USB UHCI #1 (rev 03)

00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family)
USB UHCI #2 (rev 03)

00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family)
USB UHCI #3 (rev 03)

00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family)
USB UHCI #4 (rev 03)

00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family)
USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 03)

00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev d3)

00:1e.2 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW
(ICH6 Family) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 03)

00:1e.3 Modem: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97
Modem Controller (rev 03)

00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FBM (ICH6M) LPC Interface Bridge
(rev 03)

00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801FBM (ICH6M) SATA Controller (rev
03)

00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) SMBus
Controller (rev 03)

03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev
02)

03:01.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev b3)

03:01.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C552 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 08)

03:01.2 Class 0805: Ricoh Co Ltd SD Card reader (rev 17)

03:03.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 2915ABG MiniPCI
Adapter (rev 05)

--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joel Jaeggli Unix Consulting joelja@darkwing.uoregon.edu
GPG Key Fingerprint: 5C6E 0104 BAF0 40B0 5BD3 C38B F000 35AB B67F 56B2

T-Mobile Redux!

June 28 - T-Mobile response


    Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2005 21:24:36 -0700
    From: customercare@t-mobilesupport.com
    To: joelja@darkwing.uoregon.edu
    Subject: Re: Case 375291 Coverage.GlobalRoaming

    Dear Joel,
    Thank you for taking the time to contact T-Mobile.

    I understand that you were having problem roaming in Fiji on the voda phone
    network. Now that you are home I would suggest that you contact our
    customer care department and ask to be transferred to our tech department.
    This way they can trouble shoot the issue directly with you. Our customer
    care number is 1-800-937-8997. We are happy we could be of assistance. Keep
    in mind that we are here to answer any questions or concerns 24 hours a day
    7 days a week for your convenience.

    If you have any other comments, questions, or concerns, please feel free to
    contact us.
    Thank you for choosing T-Mobile.

    Sincerely,

    T-Mobile USA, Inc.
    Elaine
    Customer Care Specialist

Monday, June 27, 2005

One Tree Hill


Auckland 14:30 06/26/2005.

Long shadows, pointy monument, green so bright that it hurts.

Hervey's pictures from auckland

Mine will be up eventually, Hervey's are here:

http://ws.edu.isoc.org/workshops/2005/PACNOG-I/photos/personal/auckland/

Back to the house of pain...

Firmly rooted back in los estados unidos. Not sure what would make a more interesting story, the "my week in Fiji story" or the "my 12 hours in auckland" story. Probably the latter actaully.

Saturday, June 25, 2005

Oddly Enough (T-Mobile) Update!

I appear to have been escalated again. Hm, I leave at 0415 tomorrow, bet they can't get it working by then...

June 24 - T-Mobile Response

    Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2005 10:41:14 -0700
    From: customercare@t-mobilesupport.com
    To: joelja@darkwing.uoregon.edu
    Subject: Re: Case 375291 Coverage.GlobalRoaming

    Dear Joel,

    Thank you for taking the time to contact T-Mobile.

    We have forwarded your issue to our Web Data Specialists assist you with
    your question regarding roaming accessibility. You will receive a response
    from them soon.

    Have a good day!

    If you have any further comments, questions, or concerns feel free to
    contact us at anytime.

    Thank you for choosing T-Mobile.

    Sincerely,

    Michael
    Customer Care Specialist
    T-Mobile USA


Then this

June 26 - T-Mobile Response


    Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2005 11:18:25 -0700
    From: customercare@t-mobilesupport.com
    To: joelja@darkwing.uoregon.edu
    Subject: Re: Case 375291 Coverage.GlobalRoaming

    Dear Joel Jaeggli,

    Thank you for taking the time to contact T-Mobile.

    We see the account is provisioned correctly but are unable to find a ticket
    on this issue. Did you receive a ticket number?

    If you have any further comments, questions, or concerns feel free to
    contact us at anytime.

    Thank you for choosing T-Mobile.

    Sincerely,

    Matt
    Customer Care Specialist
    T-Mobile USA

Friday, June 24, 2005

T-Mobile Saga

I don't have the orignal text submission since it was into a web form. What follows is the exchange that results from that. I'm not convinced that I'm not really talking to an expert system rather than people, but if I was it succeded in not pissing me off for a couple days.

June 18th - T-Mobile automated response to my Request

    Thank you for submitting your question via T-Mobile.com. You should receive a response within 24 hours. Please reference case number 375291 in the event you need to update your request.

    Sincerely,
    T-Mobile Web Correspondence
    18-06-2005
    19:32:56 PT


June 19 - T-Mobile Human response


    Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2005 22:25:50 -0700
    From: customercare@t-mobilesupport.com
    To: joelja@uoregon.edu
    Subject: Re: Case 375291 Coverage.GlobalRoaming

    Dear Joel,

    Thank you for taking the time to contact T-Mobile.

    At this time we have reviewed your account and see that you do have theinternational permissions added to your account already. At this time we have deleted that feature and re-added it. Please try your phone again and let us know if it does not work. You may want to turn it off for three minutes then turn it back on also. If these processed do not work please let us know and we will further try to trouble shoot the issue.

    If you have any further comments, questions, or concerns feel free to contact us at anytime.

    Thank you for choosing T-Mobile.

    Sincerely,
    Thien
    Customer Care Specialist
    T-Mobile USA


June 19 - My Response


    From: Joel Jaeggli
    To: customercare@t-mobilesupport.com
    Cc: joelja@uoregon.edu
    Subject: Re: Case 375291 Coverage.GlobalRoaming

    On Sun, 19 Jun 2005, customercare@t-mobilesupport.com wrote:

    > Dear Joel,
    >
    > Thank you for taking the time to contact T-Mobile.
    >
    > At this time we have reviewed your account and see that you do have the
    > international permissions added to your account already. At this time we
    > have deleted that feature and re-added it. Please try your phone again and
    > let us know if it does not work. You may want to turn it off for three
    > minutes then turn it back on also. If these processed do not work please
    > let us know and we will further try to trouble shoot the issue.

    yeah I used it about 6 weeks ago in germany, south africa, and mozambique. In general I'm pretty happy with roaming.

    Currently I have network selection set to automatic. I have tried manually and that gives me the no access message.

    I have the cell info display turned on and it actually tells me which cell I'm not getting access from (nawaka at the moment though I get others if I move around).


    > If you have any further comments, questions, or concerns feel free to
    > contact us at anytime.
    >
    > Thank you for choosing T-Mobile.
    >
    > Sincerely,
    > Thien
    > Customer Care Specialist
    > T-Mobile USA
    >


June 20 - T-Mobile Response

    Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2005 17:38:32 -0700
    From: customercare@t-mobilesupport.com
    To: joelja@darkwing.uoregon.edu
    Subject: Re: Case 375291 Coverage.GlobalRoaming

    Dear Joel,

    Thank you for taking the time to contact T-Mobile.

    We would be happy to help you. However we will need more detailed
    information in order to help you completely. Where exactly is Nawaka, we
    will need to research location to see why you cannot get service. Please
    respond to this e-mail with your issue and our team will address this
    further.

    If you have any further comments, questions, or concerns feel free to
    contact us at anytime.

    Thank you for choosing T-Mobile.

    Sincerely,

    Delfina
    Customer Care Specialist
    T-Mobile USA


June 20 - My response


    Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2005 17:47:56 -0700 (PDT)
    From: Joel Jaeggli
    To: customercare@t-mobilesupport.com
    Subject: Re: Case 375291 Coverage.GlobalRoaming

    On Mon, 20 Jun 2005, customercare@t-mobilesupport.com wrote:

    > Dear Joel,
    >
    > Thank you for taking the time to contact T-Mobile.
    >
    > We would be happy to help you. However we will need more detailed
    > information in order to help you completely. Where exactly is Nawaka, we
    > will need to research location to see why you cannot get service. Please
    > respond to this e-mail with your issue and our team will address this
    > further.

    The town of nadi fiji, which is immediatly adjacent to the main airport. The cel that I am currently associated with which is also not giving me service is "votualevu"... given the number of places I've been in fiji I don't think this is isolated to any particular location. unfortunanly all my travel companions are based overseas and thus don't have tmob.us service.

    > If you have any further comments, questions, or concerns feel free to
    > contact us at anytime.
    >
    > Thank you for choosing T-Mobile.
    >
    > Sincerely,
    >
    > Delfina
    > Customer Care Specialist
    > T-Mobile USA


June 21 - T-Mobile Response

    Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2005 11:10:00 -0700
    From: customercare@t-mobilesupport.com
    To: joelja@darkwing.uoregon.edu
    Subject: Re: Case 375291 Coverage.GlobalRoaming

    Dear Joel,

    Thank you for taking the time to reply. We understand your frustration. I
    have reviewed your account and the specification on roaming in Fiji. You
    must be on the 900 MHZ frequency.

    As you are using a tri-band handset, you may need to re-establish your
    handsets ability to locate additional networks. To do this, please follow
    these steps:
    1. Change the band from GSM 900/1800 back to GSM 1900.
    2. Turn the handset off.
    3. Remove the battery and SIM card for a period of three minutes.
    4. Replace the SIM card and battery into the handset.
    5. Turn the handset back on.
    6. Change the band back to GSM 900/1800.
    7. Power cycle the handset off for ten seconds, and then back on.

    This should help to resolve the issue for you. If you continue to have
    difficulty, please let us know immediately so that we may further
    troubleshoot the issue for you.

    FYI: Here are the rates for Fiji:
    Local Calls - Peak: 1.99 per Minute
    Local Calls - Off-Peak: 1.99 per Minute
    Calls To US - Peak: 1.99 per Minute
    Calls To US - Off-Peak: 1.99 per Minute
    Incoming Call Rate: 1.99 per Minute
    Calls to other countries: 1.99 per Minute

    While overseas, you may dial +1-505-998-3793 anytime and request to be
    transferred to our Customer Care center for any assistance you may need with
    your service or your account. Keep in mind that if you call this number from
    a T-Mobile handset you will not be charged for roaming airtime or long
    distance. However, additional charges, such as country connection fees, may
    still apply. Also calls made to this number from any phone other than a
    T-Mobile handset will incur international long distance charges as well as
    other additional charges that may apply.

    If you have any other comments, questions, or concerns, please feel free to
    contact us.


    You are a valued customer and we want you to know that T-Mobile appreciates
    your business. Our goal is to provide World Class customer service and we
    hope that we have provided you with that today. We are here to answer any
    questions or concerns 24 hours a day 7 days a week for your convenience.

    Sincerely,
    T-Mobile USA, Inc.
    Adam
    Customer Service Specialist


June 21 - My response

    Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2005 18:11:03 -0700 (PDT)
    From: Joel Jaeggli
    To: customercare@t-mobilesupport.com
    Subject: Re: Case 375291 Coverage.GlobalRoaming

    response inline:

    On Tue, 21 Jun 2005, customercare@t-mobilesupport.com wrote:

    > Dear Joel,
    >
    > Thank you for taking the time to reply. We understand your frustration. I
    > have reviewed your account and the specification on roaming in Fiji. You
    > must be on the 900 MHZ frequency.

    Nah, I was frustated when I got off the plane and it didn't work, now I just
    resigned to having it not work. I would however prefer to be happy customer
    making and recieving calls on my us number. and I sure you folks rather bill
    me for $2 a minutes calls, that I'm happy to pay for, than not.


    > As you are using a tri-band handset, you may need to re-establish your
    > handsets ability to locate additional networks. To do this, please follow
    > these steps:

    > 1. Change the band from GSM 900/1800 back to GSM 1900.

    my phone doesn't have any problem seeing the network, just accessing it.

    This handset is a nokia 3650 and it doesn't have an option for band
    selection... system selection has been set back to automatic because setting
    it to manual and selecting vodaphone fails with a no access message.


    > 2. Turn the handset off.
    > 3. Remove the battery and SIM card for a period of three minutes.
    > 4. Replace the SIM card and battery into the handset.
    > 5. Turn the handset back on.
    > 6. Change the band back to GSM 900/1800.
    > 7. Power cycle the handset off for ten seconds, and then back on.

    yeah rebooting the phone doesn't make a difference.

    > This should help to resolve the issue for you. If you continue to have
    > difficulty, please let us know immediately so that we may further
    > troubleshoot the issue for you.

    > FYI: Here are the rates for Fiji:
    > Local Calls - Peak: 1.99 per Minute
    > Local Calls - Off-Peak: 1.99 per Minute
    > Calls To US - Peak: 1.99 per Minute
    > Calls To US - Off-Peak: 1.99 per Minute
    > Incoming Call Rate: 1.99 per Minute
    > Calls to other countries: 1.99 per Minute
    >
    > While overseas, you may dial +1-505-998-3793 anytime and request to be
    > transferred to our Customer Care center for any assistance you may need
    > with your service or your account.

    Doing that from my hotel is about $4 a minute. I could call through skype
    out on my laptop but there doesn't seem to a lot of sense in trouble
    shooting on my end since It doesn't really feel like a handset problem.
    since I got this phone in sept 2003 I successfully used it in something like
    29 countries. while this is not the only one where it hasn't worked it's the
    first one where it was supposed to and didn't.


    > Keep in mind that if you call this number from a T-Mobile handset you will
    > not be charged for roaming airtime or long distance. However, additional
    > charges, such as country connection fees, may still apply. Also calls made
    > to this number from any phone other than a T-Mobile handset will incur
    > international long distance charges as well as other additional charges
    > that may apply.
    >
    > If you have any other comments, questions, or concerns, please feel free
    > to contact us.

    I have plenty... :( (like why you don't sell the nokia 9300/9500) but they
    aren't relevant to this issue.


    >
    > You are a valued customer and we want you to know that T-Mobile
    > appreciates your business. Our goal is to provide World Class customer
    > service and we hope that we have provided you with that today. We are
    > here to answer any questions or concerns 24 hours a day 7 days a week for
    > your convenience.
    >
    > Sincerely,
    > T-Mobile USA, Inc.
    > Adam
    > Customer Service Specialist


June 21 - Additional Response

    Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2005 19:36:34 -0700 (PDT)
    From: Joel Jaeggli
    To: customercare@t-mobilesupport.com
    Subject: Re: Case 375291 Coverage.GlobalRoaming

    one more thing for debuging purposes. I borrowed a friends motorola v620 just to rule out the 3650 and that also won't register on the vodaphone network... with his sim card (optus one of the australain carriers) bothphone's work fine.

    On Tue, 21 Jun 2005, Joel Jaeggli wrote:

    > response inline:
    >
    > On Tue, 21 Jun 2005, customercare@t-mobilesupport.com wrote:

    ...


June 22 - T-Mobile response

    Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2005 12:26:51 -0700
    From: customercare@t-mobilesupport.com
    To: joelja@darkwing.uoregon.edu
    Subject: Re: Case 375291 Coverage.GlobalRoaming

    Dear Joel,

    Thank you for taking the time to contact T-Mobile.

    To better assist you with your question, we have transferred your issue to
    our Technical care group. You should receive a response shortly. You may
    also want to contact us directly at +1-505-998-3793 anytime.

    Thank you for your patience.

    If you have any further comments, questions, or concerns feel free to
    contact us at anytime.

    Thank you for choosing T-Mobile.

    Sincerely,

    Karen
    Customer Care Specialist
    T-Mobile USA


June 22 - Additional T-Mobile response

    Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2005 13:20:53 -0700
    From: customercare@t-mobilesupport.com
    To: joelja@darkwing.uoregon.edu
    Subject: Re: Case 375291 Coverage.GlobalRoaming

    Dear Joel,

    Thank you for taking the time to contact T-Mobile.

    Joel, I'm sorry that you still aren't able to use your phone in Fiji. We can
    offer you a sim unlock code that will allow you to use the local service
    provider. Please provide us with the following information so that we may
    request this for you. Once requested, it takes no longer than 48 hours to
    receive the unlock code via your email address. Joel, thank you for you
    efforts in this matter.

    Account holders name
    -T-Mobile phone number
    -IMEI number, press *#06# on handset to get the IMEI
    -Account Password or last four of the account holder's social security
    number
    -Customer's email address
    -Make and model of the phone
    -Carrier's name if the phone is from another carrier
    -A brief reason for the request

    If you have any further comments, questions, or concerns feel free to
    contact us at anytime.

    Thank you for choosing T-Mobile.

    Sincerely,

    Julie C
    Customer Care Specialist
    T-Mobile USA


June 22 - My response

    Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2005 15:57:45 -0700 (PDT)
    From: Joel Jaeggli
    To: customercare@t-mobilesupport.com
    Subject: Re: Case 375291 Coverage.GlobalRoaming

    yOn Wed, 22 Jun 2005, customercare@t-mobilesupport.com wrote:

    > Dear Joel,
    >
    > Thank you for taking the time to contact T-Mobile.
    >
    > Joel, I'm sorry that you still aren't able to use your phone in Fiji. We
    > can offer you a sim unlock code that will allow you to use the local
    > service provider. Please provide us with the following information so that
    > we may request this for you. Once requested, it takes no longer than 48
    > hours to receive the unlock code via your email address. Joel, thank you
    > for you efforts in this matter.

    That's a nice gesture but my phone is already unlocked. I think we can close
    this ticket seems it seems obvious to me that whtever is wrong is some issue
    between you guys and fiji vodaphone which isn't something that can be solved
    by me spending more cycles on it.

    When I arrived I checked into local prepaid sim cards and they go for about
    80 bucks $US ($60 of which is airtime)which probably would have been a
    reasonable deal at the begining of the trip but halfway through there's not
    much point. Having roaming was more about being able to recieve incoming
    calls on my us number and send sms than a desire to make phone calls which I
    can do from my laptop through skype-out if I have to.


    > Account holders name
    > -T-Mobile phone number
    > -IMEI number, press *#06# on handset to get the IMEI
    > -Account Password or last four of the account holder's social security
    > number
    > -Customer's email address
    > -Make and model of the phone
    > -Carrier's name if the phone is from another carrier
    > -A brief reason for the request
    >
    > If you have any further comments, questions, or concerns feel free to
    > contact us at anytime.
    >
    > Thank you for choosing T-Mobile.
    >
    > Sincerely,
    >
    > Julie C
    > Customer Care Specialist
    > T-Mobile USA


Oddly enough I would have though that the correspondance would have stoped there but it didn't.

June 23 - T-Mobile response

    Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2005 11:20:18 -0700
    From: customercare@t-mobilesupport.com
    To: joelja@darkwing.uoregon.edu
    Subject: Re: Case 375291 Coverage.GlobalRoaming

    Dear Joel Jaeggli,
    Thank you for taking the time to contact T-Mobile.
    We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused with regards to your
    handset.

    Upon reviewing your account you have the international feature on your
    account that will allow you to use the Nokia 3650 handset in Fiji, the cost
    per minute are 1.99 and the GSM frequency is 900MHz.


    http://www.t-mobile.com/international/roamMaps.asp?cc=fj&net=vo&c=FJ


    Does the handset display the signal and battery strength, with the handset
    powered on remove and replace the battery, when you replace the battery
    power the handset back on see if the handset is not automatically selecting
    the network are you able to manually select the network on the handset, here
    is the instruction to manually select the network for the Nokia 3650
    handset:

    Press the Menu button. Scroll to Tools; Press the center of the toggle
    button to Select.
    On Settings, Press the center of the toggle button to Select.
    Scroll to System; Press the center of the toggle button to Select.
    On System Selection, Press Options, Press Select on Change.
    Scroll to Manual, Press OK. Handset will display 'Searching' then show the
    available networks.
    Scroll to the desired Network, Press OK.
    NOTE: If you are in a T-Mobile network, always Select T-Mobile. 'Home System
    Selected' will then be displayed.


    To dial back to the United States while on a mobile phone, press the (+) key
    followed by the country code and phone number.

    http://www.t-mobile.com/international/faq.asp#10

    To send and receive text message while internationally roaming is at .35 per
    text and instant message.


    If you have any other comments, questions, or concerns, please feel free to
    contact us.
    Thank you for choosing T-Mobile
    Sincerely,
    Denise
    Customer Care Specialist
    T-Mobile


At this point I'm a bit pissed. Why bother me with more crap unless you have something useful to offer?

June 23 - My response

    Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2005 16:27:08 -0700 (PDT)
    From: Joel Jaeggli
    To: customercare@t-mobilesupport.com
    Subject: Re: Case 375291 Coverage.GlobalRoaming

    On Thu, 23 Jun 2005, customercare@t-mobilesupport.com wrote:

    > Dear Joel Jaeggli, Thank you for taking the time to contact T-Mobile. We
    > apologize for the inconvenience this has caused with regards to your
    > handset.

    Please consult the ticket. There is nothing wrong with my handset.

    > Upon reviewing your account you have the international feature on your
    > account that will allow you to use the Nokia 3650 handset in Fiji, the
    > cost per minute are 1.99 and the GSM frequency is 900MHz.

    Thanks I know that the issue I see, is that when I select vodahpone fji I
    get a no access message. if I set it to auto I get no access... The cell id
    display actually tells me which cell site I'm not getting service from
    (currently nawaka a neighborhood in nadi fiji)... If I change phones (same
    sim), I get no access, if I swap someone elses sim into my phone it works
    fine.

    Until you sent this message I was actually moderatly pleased with your
    support despite the fact that you couldn't resolve my issue. Now is clear to
    me that no-one is even paying attention to the history on the ticket.


    >
    > http://www.t-mobile.com/international/roamMaps.asp?cc=fj&net=vo&c=FJ
    >
    >
    > Does the handset display the signal and battery strength, with the handset
    > powered on remove and replace the battery, when you replace the battery
    > power the handset back on see if the handset is not automatically
    > selecting the network are you able to manually select the network on the
    > handset, here is the instruction to manually select the network for the
    > Nokia 3650 handset:

    Thanks. If you actually read the history on this ticket you would know that
    I throughly debuged the handset. As I said before since I got tmobile
    service again in sept 2003 I have sucessfully roamed in like 29 countries. I
    know how to use the phone.


    > Press the Menu button. Scroll to Tools; Press the center of the toggle
    > button to Select.
    > On Settings, Press the center of the toggle button to Select.
    > Scroll to System; Press the center of the toggle button to Select.
    > On System Selection, Press Options, Press Select on Change.
    > Scroll to Manual, Press OK. Handset will display 'Searching' then show the
    > available networks.
    > Scroll to the desired Network, Press OK.
    > NOTE: If you are in a T-Mobile network, always Select T-Mobile. 'Home
    > System Selected' will then be displayed.
    >
    >
    > To dial back to the United States while on a mobile phone, press the (+)
    > key followed by the country code and phone number.

    Unlike most americans I actually know how to make an international call.

    > http://www.t-mobile.com/international/faq.asp#10
    >
    > To send and receive text message while internationally roaming is at .35
    > per text and instant message.
    >
    > If you have any other comments, questions, or concerns, please feel free
    > to contact us. Thank you for choosing T-Mobile Sincerely, Denise

    > Customer Care Specialist T-Mobile
    >

Thursday, June 23, 2005

Played with the template like whoa!

Selected a new template that actually had columns, spent two hours today deleting almost all the color out of the template... Now that it doesn't look like fruit salad, I decided to play with google addsense just to see how it worked. It's the first time in 10 years of writing webpages I've actually placed advertising on one of them. It doesn't look to invasive actually so I might leave it if it actually manages to fill itself with themematically correct ads.

After all this noodling I can come to only one conclusion, I know almost nothing about css2...

Cowhead?


cowhead milk? The mind runs wild.

Wednesday, June 22, 2005

T-Mobile is teh suck again...

They claim to have roaming in fiji, seems plausible, after all people with money come here... But a week worth of debuging aside, not for me apparently.

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

So...

The thing that looks like a kinda of ugly squirrel that's wandering around fiji is actually a mongoose.

Also there are mina birds everywhere, which are quite loud. Both are apparently imports from India...

Sunday, June 19, 2005

The new laptop...

One of the problems I appear to encountered with the new laptop appears to be that desite what I thought I'd done ot the xorg.conf it still comes up in 1600x1200 instead of 1920x1200. That would kind of explain why eveything looks kind of wide.

My mistake here seems to have been assuming that intel inbuilt video would be better than a pci-express ati radeon for driver support. I might have been right in the normal couse of things but in this case it appears to be kinda not.

When I get back I see a week or so of intensive hacking along with fedora core 4 in my future.

T-Mobile may have disapointed me for the last time...

Even I'm shocked that they don't have a roaming agreement with vodaphone in Fiji... It's like there's one carrier here what's the problem?

It's not like nobody from the US or Europe ever comes here?

joelja

This was written while I was disconnected...

So something have gone horribly wrong with airtravel... My conculusion is a follows. Business and first class fares are the only ones that make money for airlines. So they collude with airports to insure that terminals are so miserable that you'll consider buying a business class ticket not because you git a bigger seat but becasue you want access to the lounge. airline loyality programs are the biggest screw-job ever because as soon as you don't travel enough to make their cutoff your sense of entitlement demands either that you fly more for lounge access or that you buy more expensive tickets. If neither is possible (neither is desireable), the all you're left with is the bitter aftertaste of some crappy perks that almost made the experience bearable.

Back before the place filled up with business class lounges terminal 2 at LAX had a couple restraunts upstairs where you could have a sit-down dinner and a cocktail before your flight... Now it's full of business class and international lounges that you can't access. All the food is crammed downstairs, with twice as many people as where intended in fit in the terminal are now there.

Also. boingo hostspot setup offers abysmal performance. and appears to require software to work properly... Thata'll work well on a linux box. Pig Fuckers. The boingo wireless webpage has been loading for about 10 minutes I see the signal level at -78dBm and the Noise Level at -86dBm so it ain't me.

In order to get power I'm am sitting againt a wall behind a trashcan.

Friday, June 03, 2005

theater

ballet where a bunny gets torn apart
http://www.harmful.org/homedespot/newtdr/NEWtdrARCHIVE/7diary/dfphotos/

jules verne bicentenial
http://www.nantes.fr/ext/royal_de_luxe_2005/

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Some observations on newer laptops

Well, so In that last two weeks I've setup Fedora Core 3 on a thinkpad x40 and a dell inspiron 6000, the IBM works fine, though for me it doesn't have enough display to be usable.

I've surveyed several modern distributions on the dell (fc3, fc4 test 3, man(drake/driva) 10.2. and I must say the honeymoon was pretty short lived. I still haven't figured out how to make the thing sleep which is pretty much a non-starter for me. display is nice, the thing isn't significantly bigger than the inspiron 4150, though it is wider.


Thursday, May 19, 2005

Some urls

japanese ass poking
http://outpostnine.com/editorials/teacher1.html

more ass poking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kancho

some guy who builds huge cardboard airplanes...
http://kancho.muncho.org/gal_f104.html
http://kancho.muncho.org/index.html

Sunday, May 08, 2005

Disks...



So uh... I have 24 x 400GB seagate drives, 8 x 73GB sata WD raptors all for the same box.

Friday, May 06, 2005

getting acpi sleep (s3) to work on thinkpad x40 fedora core 3

add:

acpi_sleep=s3_bios

to kernel line in /etc/grub.conf

create /etc/acpi/events/ lid.conf and sleep.conf

event=button/sleep
action=/usr/local/bin/x40-suspend.sh

event=button/lid
action=/usr/local/bin/x40-suspend.sh

create script /usr/local/bin/x40-suspend.sh

#!/bin/bash
rmmod ehci_hcd
rmmod ath_pci
echo 3 >/proc/acpi/sleep
modprobe echi_hcd
modprobe ath_pci

take a look at:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/Fedora-Core-on-Thinkpad-X40/

Thursday, April 28, 2005

I hate...

Europeans who smoke like they have a divine right to pollute the atmosphere. This little fat portugese dude was here a half an hour ago smoking, and he came back to the lobby (from outside), just to smoke.

Theses are the same people who are concerned about gmo foods, immoral wars, green power, and driving high mileage cars but, giving everyone around them cancer apparently isn't a problem... I hope you die a horrible lung wracking death and people use your tar filled sack of a body to poison feral dogs you little french cigarette smoking shit.

Smoking portugese guy...

So um...

In a couple hours I shove off from Mozambique via the South African Airways aluminum tube mailer.

I have a couple thoughts and how far that african isp situation has come since I first came to .za 6 years ago. connectivty is nowhere near as thin now, there are more options, bust in general the serive is really better. This is compound of the problems the rest of us face as well, spam, bot infested machines, aging slightly unsuitable hardware, and good old fashioned half-assed african engineering. We have people who packet shape their exchange point connections... We have people who shape tcp connections both directions over satellite links... We have all sorts of crazy port filtering... We have double nats... We have transparent proxy servers that don't deliver webpages... We have isp operators who spend all day tweaking their packet shapers and port filtering in search of imagionary performance gains...

It's a strange world we live in.

joelja-out

Sunday, April 24, 2005

Shopping for a laptop

Want three things critically.

A large display with a pixel count equal or great to the current one (1600x1200)

Acpi sleep to work in linux.

Battery life somewhere north of about 5 hours from the batteries in the box...

Said laptop doesn't appear to exist, but if it did, it appears that it wouldn't have a pci-express ati graphics chipset. it appears that nvidia has spent some time working on at least some acpi support. The one that will probably work best is the intel media accelerator 915 (maybe) at the expense of being really slow (maybe).

In terms of decent sized displays, Dell latitude d810/Precision Worstation m70 (nvidia) look like the best option, maybe the older d800 (agp nvida) or the inspiron 6000 (intel) are in the right range as well. the inspiron 9300 might with with it's top of the line graphics accelerator but not the lesser ones. the latitudes can hold a second battery, but the remainder probably aren't really all that great.

I've recently entertained the notion of a 17" powerbook but it just seems to silly, not enough pixels, one button mouse, no support for the airport extreme (broadcom) wireless in linux, the fact that it's not an x86 etc.

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Some URLs

guy follows cosplay girls around
http://www.juergenspecht.com/truestories/?number=5&page=1

more flooring
http://www.coveringsetc.com/pages/subcat_listing.jsp?i=153