hear of Bittorrent? It’s another clever scheme to help distribute popular content. Many of you are probably familiar with the fileplanet problem, ie you want some hot new download, a movie trailer, a demo of a new game, but when you go to grab it you discover the server hosting it is overwhelmed and you get 2k/second downloads, or it’s hosted in in fileplanet and you have to wait in line for your file. Bitttorrent is trying to solve this problem by using peer to peer distribution – the idea is a file is published in bittorrent, and when you click on a bittorrent link, you download the file from the collective network of bittorrent installs. Meanwhile you also begin to distribute the portions of the file you’ve already downloaded to others who are trying to download the same file. It’s a very effective scheme to handle instances of instant demand, like the release of the new Matrix trailer.

As it turns out it’s a good scheme for other scenarios as well, take for example recordings of popular tv shows. Why bother with a VCR or a tivo when I can just use bittorrent to grab any show I’ve missed/want to see and download it? I’ve used this approach for over a year now using other mechanisms (mostly dc++ of late), but bitorrent makes it easier to get ahold of the content you’re looking for.

Anyway it’s all worth a look if you’re interested. I still have the problem of how to get this content onto my bigscreen tv – plugging the laptop into the home theater system is a pain in the ass, as is the constant recording of CD’s, they just don’t fit enough content. But that’s a problem for another day 😉

I’ve complained many times here about how complicated home theater is. There are more wires by far coming out of my stereo system then there are coming out of my 5 computers and their associated devices (printers, routers etc etc). I’ve even posted pictures here of the mess that is the cabling situation. Cnet has posted a pretty good guide to all the different formats and what the bajillions of acronyms mean. For the record mine supports 6.1, all the Dolby formats with the exception of headphones, and DTS up to Neo:6.

This stuff is harder to keep up with than compyer stuff, I’m not exagerating.

Me wants. Mind you this is a babelfish translated page from the original Japanese so it’s a little tough to follow. Yes, I already have a great camera with a watertproof enclosure. Why would I want another? It’s mainly a size issue, mine is incredibly bulky. It’s fine for snorkling, though even then the thing is a little too bulky, but it sucks when I’m kayaking, it’s hard to paddle when I have this huge lump across my chest. This summer I am solving this problem one way or another, though I doubt I will solve it by buying a different camera, no matter how much it appeals to me.

Unless someone wants to buy my existing setup? Speak up if so.

The daily exercise regimen I’ve been following for the past 6 months has really been good for me in a number of ways besides the obvious physical benefits. I’ve drawn an interesting conclusion about self-discipline – I’ve used it to improve my physical health and decided it’s time to work on my faculties. If I can force myself to spend 1 hour a day exercising, I should easily be able to force myself to spend 1 hour a day studying technical materials that will help me with my career. So. First up is Linux, better Linux skills will help immensely at work and enhance my job prospects if the rug comes out from under. Starting tonight I’m spending ~ an hour a night reading this until I work my way to the end. I’ll give a progress report in a couple of weeks once I’ve worked my way through it. The Apache webserver is next on the list too (or possibly perl).

Without hardly trying. The Register is running a great overview on how to use Google and some clever scripting to completely screw over anyone who’s angered you by subjecting them to a deluge of regular old mail, literally 100’s of pounds of mail a day, so much mail that they will be unable to dig through it such that they can find their legitimate mail. Like bills for example. The mischevious imp in me loves the notion. It came to light because hacktivists subjected a spammer to such an attack. Mind you, this is almost definitely illegal, and far be it from to endorse such activity. And if my mailbox starts to fill up with fashionable footware and pet supply catalogs, I’ll know who to blame, so don’t even think about it! 😉

This site doesn’t get much traffic. I’m going to do some things about that this summer, but for now it’s mainly a place for friends and family. There are around a dozen or so regular visitors and on any given day only 1 or 2 stop by. In fact I generate most of the traffic to the site, using resources most of you don’t know about (yet anyway). So a couple of weeks ago I was bewildered when in the course of investigating why my network connection was so slow I discovered it was because my web server was completely swamped with incoming connections. Why was everyone suddenly hitting my site? A little investigation uncovered that fact that this post (the fucking mutants one at the top of the page) had somehow become one of the top search results in google’s search engine for folks using a particular phrase when looking for nekkid pics of Ms. Spears. I’m not going to say what phrase exactly because I don’t want the problem to recur, but when I figured it out man did I ever get a laugh. Imagine the poor horny teenagers showing up at my site clicking all over the place muttering ‘where’s the boobs! Damnit, Google is full of it!’

Anyway the problem seems to have gone away, or at least it hasn’t happened again in several weeks, so fingers crossed, no more porn hounds.

A simple recipe to make $25-50. This recipe requires you to have an ebay account with a solid positive rating, I would suggest at least +20 with no negatives.

Go to ToysRus. Pick three popular games. I would suggest Midnight Racing II, Splinter Cell, NBA Street 2, Def Jam Vendetta, or any of a number of other popular titles. Pay for them – due to ToysRus buy 2 get 1 free sale this week, your total cost will be around $105. Now head home and list your games on ebay. Use a 3 day auction format. Charge whatever you want for postage; I use priority mail $3.85, if you’re a chiseler you can charge more and pocket the profit. Watch as your auctions bring in a minimum of $120. If you’ve done your research and picked hit games your auctions will bring in ~$150, and possibly you’ll get an idjit or two bidding things above retail and you’ll bring in even more cash. Repeat as often as you liike but remember, this week only.

I’m not actually doing this, though I will sell the games I bought yesterday (Dragon Warriors, Primal and midnight club racing II, link above) for a small profit once I am done with them. I did the same thing around xmas the last time they offered this deal and it worked out great – I got to play the latest games essentially for free.

Anyway, best of luck with your auctions 😉

I spent basically all of Sunday proving I’m a techno loser. First I tried to reinstall WinXP on my laptop. The laptop is an engineering sample of a model that originated in Japan so support for it is non-existent. This is what you get for trying to save a buck 😉

Anyway everything goes smoothly including wireless internet, until i realize the video is unaccelerated. That’s right, Windows can’t detect the video card so it’s using its default driver. Ugh! many hours of fruitless searching later, still no joy. So I decide to proceed with a linux install (which was part of the reason I was re-installing XP to begin with, so I could get linux on the thing). Linux goes smoothly and even detects the video card, except it’s detected it incorrectly and has video artifact problems. Drag the mouse across the screen, leave a trail of mouse poop. Pull down a menu? There’s nothing in it! But wait, wave the mouse around over it and stuff appears. Oh joy.

Anyway 8 hours later I have a laptop with not one but 2 basically non-functional OS’s on it. I gave up in frustration and played Indiana Jones. Nothing cures a pissed off Dave like bashing Nazi bastids for a couple of hours (Indiana Jones is a blast btw).

Tonight I am back at it with the laptop, we’ll see how it goes.