zigg/journal

This is the end

2010-04-28T06:50:00.002-04:00

This is "the end"—and I guess it's also a little bit of a test. I received a final notice overnight indicating Google's intention to shut down (S)FTP publishing for Blogger, which I previously wrote about. I'm curious how long it will take for this post to go through, given the general lack of reliability of the publisher that I've experienced since I started this little thing here; how many

Closing up shop... for now

2010-03-05T18:39:00.003-05:00

You may or may not have heard of Google's decision to shut down FTP publishing for Blogger-based sites, of which mine is one. I actually use SFTP, but I still face the same deadline, recently extended to May 1.I have no intention of moving my journal to Blogger hosting. I suppose it's a bit of idealism, but I highly value the ability to keep full control of my namespace. The choice to use

Shiny black plastic: please die

2010-01-01T09:49:00.003-05:00

While everyone else is probably thinking this year about how to better themselves through laughable New Year's resolutions (a little tip from yours truly: to really commit to something, try not attaching it to an arbitrary date. Weight-loss in particular. You're giving yourself a ready-made "oh, well, I'll try again next year" excuse. Solve your problems now), I'm thinking about others'

Taking Lucid for a spin

2009-12-30T19:53:00.006-05:00

Back in September (I feel appropriate shame for letting the journal go for so long), I mused about the troubles I was having with Ubuntu Karmic.I didn't end up skipping it; I left it installed. I felt ext4 was manageable with regular backups, ath9k was manageable by flat-out replacing it with ndiswrapper, and whatever else I could deal with as it came up. One thing I did have to do on a

Maybe I'll skip Ubuntu Karmic

2009-09-01T06:50:00.004-04:00

Ever since I originally discovered Ubuntu—I think it was in 2007—I've followed every release, many early on. While it's true I've had a handful of problems over the years with various things (though no more than using any other operating system), Ubuntu has simply been the best Linux experience I've had. So much just... works.I've been testing the next version of Ubuntu, "Karmic Koala", since

A tribute to Chris Short, resurrector of Palms

2009-08-30T18:50:00.003-04:00

I was about ready to give up on my beloved Palm LifeDrive—which was already a refurbed replacement for the original—as it had recently kicked the bucket, refusing to turn on just like the last one and many others I've heard reports of. It was way out of even the extended warranty I'd bought. So I carefully extricated my data and started using an old Sony CLIÉ PEG-S320 to keep my life in

Getting my data back out of NVBackup

2009-08-20T23:17:00.006-04:00

I suppose I've never made this confession here yet, but I'm a Palm addict. It's been going on since the original Handspring Visor came out and my core Palm databases are the same ones that I created nearly nine years ago, brought from system to system.These days, I've been using Palm's disavowed LifeDrive, and mine just kicked the bucket. This is my second one; the first I got replaced through

mustafa downloads to PC at 70 KiB/s

2009-08-08T22:37:00.005-04:00

Okay, so 70 KiB/s that's not as good as your broadband. Heck, it's not even as good as my broadband, and I'm a cheapskate.But I'm pretty thrilled with it. My early TFTP proof-of-concept code was only able to manage a bit over 40 KiB/s—though you'll fall back to near that (maybe slightly faster? I have tuned a number of key things) if your client makes a request without requesting a larger

savehost's bizarre metamorphosis

2009-08-06T06:24:00.004-04:00

I think this is the first project I've ever actually abandoned—well, sort of—but I don't intend to do any more work on my previously-announced Nintendo DS Save Host.It isn't that I don't want to create that tool anymore, but I found myself wanting a different approach to the problem. I was spurred down this road by my finding that dswifi's TCP stack isn't quite up to the task of sending large

Geek adventure: getting Ubuntu's console to stay in 132×60 mode

2009-06-21T15:43:00.005-04:00

I'm sorry I haven't been "writing" writing here lately. I have been doing some writing over at N-Sider, though of course it's all games-related. Just been too busy, I suppose.Anyway, I wanted to drop a quick post to note the solution to a longstanding problem I've had with Ubuntu: getting the console to stay in 132×60 text mode (or, indeed, any other text mode). 80×25 may be just fine for

Ubuntu's missing crc32sum tool, in Python

2009-04-15T22:24:00.005-04:00

Did I hear you say "I want a crc32sum application for Linux that can not only output CRC32 sums for a list of files, but also handle stdin if I leave its argument list blank, and I don't mind if it's hackish, so long as it works?"#!/usr/bin/env python## A CRC32 summing utility that functions mostly like md5sum or# sha1sum.## Public domain by Matt Behrens with NO

Nintendo DS Save Host up on SourceForge

2009-04-13T21:12:00.004-04:00

Almost two weeks ago now, I uploaded the read-only code I had so far for the Nintendo DS Save Host (which I first talked about back in February) to SourceForge. Honestly this is kind of new to me, putting incomplete stuff out there, but I have at least one person I'm talking to already who is interested in early-access stuff.Having an audience helps a little. It doesn't magick time out of thin

Awww

2009-03-14T18:55:00.004-04:00

Lest you think my life is all excruciating torment...I just went upstairs to grab my fingerless gloves—hands getting a bit cold—and my wife and kids are parked in front of the iMac watching a movie on Hulu. And my two-year-old son, fresh from the tub and decked out in his footie jammies, is seated in his kid-sized director's chair, watching wide-eyed with his own little bowl of freshly-popped

The end of the saga with Dick's Sporting Goods warranty... or is it?

2009-03-14T18:12:00.005-04:00

Two months and thirteen days.This is almost, but not quite, the end of my saga of trying to get my recumbent bike fixed via Dick's Sporting Goods' "No Sweat Warranty". You can brush up on the saga's history starting with adventures in diagnosis, moving on to entirely bizarre phone calls, and the latest entry as to how I finally thought I might get my bike fixed at last.On March 11, the elusive

Sharing the wife's new iMac

2009-02-19T18:27:00.003-05:00

For Valentine's Day, I surprised my wife with one of the latest iMac models; specifically, the 20" 2.4GHz. I'm parked in front of it right now, typing this post... and I must say, I'm getting rather enamored with it. We're not new to Mac in this house; this iMac replaces her aging iMac DV+, which we were running OS X 10.3.9 on (and rather well, I might add)—it wasn't a horrible performer by any

Perfectionism slows progress yet again

2009-02-12T20:41:00.003-05:00

So, I spent a few feverish nights postponing paying contract work this past weekend to work on a little coding for myself for a change... something I really don't do much of anymore. I get it halfway done, it works great, I just need to implement the other half, and what do I do?I start not refactoring it, but thinking about how I should. I start thinking the protocol needs reworking, so I

Hope springs eternal: will Dick's Sporting Goods' warranty come through at last?

2009-02-12T20:21:00.007-05:00

This is a continuation of the saga of my experiences with Dick's Sporting Goods' "No Sweat" extended warranty, which began with a delay-fraught diagnosis procedure and eventually led me on a bizarre journey through call-centerdom... all in the hope that I could start getting some exercise again this winter.I'm slowly coming up on two months since I originally called in my recumbent bike as

Not so much like riding a bicycle

2009-02-07T09:32:00.006-05:00

One of the code projects I've wanted to do for a little while now (at least since the release of Daigasso! Band Brothers DX) is a save host for the Nintendo DS. A brief primer, first: unlike with disc- or online-based game systems, software for the DS comes on game cards with the software itself in ROM and some kind of EEPROM or Flash chip for saving. This is tremendously convenient for me, but

The continuing adventures of Matt the consumer

2009-02-05T22:02:00.003-05:00

Our third (yes, third) WALL-E DVD arrived today, from Disney. We bought the 3-disc edition (aren't we suckers? I love special features, maybe a little too much) back in December, then exchanged it shortly thereafter when I discovered that while all the special features worked, the actual movie did not. When that replaceme had the same problem, I sent disc 1 off to Disney, who swapped it for a

Extended warranty, or extended trial?

2009-02-04T20:11:00.004-05:00

Wow, it's been nearly a month since I last posted about my experiences trying to get my exercise bike fixed under Dick's Sporting Goods' "No Sweat Warranty". I guess it's sort of fitting that I have a pretty crazy story to tell today.When I updated that past post, I said "if I'm lucky, I'll be up and running within a week." I'm not lucky. After a little over a week passed, I followed up with

Facebook trusts your friends to decide on your privacy

2009-01-25T16:00:00.005-05:00

I've long suspected it was the case that Facebook applications were basically a backdoor to gather up info on you and your friends. I still almost choked on my iced coffee today when I saw, as I poked through Facebook's privacy settings, the following list:Profile pictureBasic infoPersonal info (activities, interests, etc.)Current location (what city I'm in)Education historyWork historyProfile

Social networking, the automatic gossip

2009-01-24T11:46:00.005-05:00

I rejoined Facebook the other day. I'm not sure quite what spurred it on, in retrospect, though I can point to a few catalysts.I originally left because of the Beacon debacle. I don't know why it'd never occurred to me before, but Beacon exposed a vector I'd not considered before: my e-mail address. Everyone who I'd registered with as matt@zigg.com (which isn't exactly private) could aggregate

A brief critique of the Blogger toolbar

2009-01-12T06:37:00.000-05:00

When I am signed in, there is no obvious button to take me into the bowels of the Blogger application to update my journal with.I can get in there, mind—I just have to click the freaking logo.How unintuitive is that?

The nonsense game

2009-01-12T06:33:00.001-05:00

In-between VPN hiccups and bills to pay yesterday, the N-Sider chat, as it is often wont to do, spurred a long-lost memory. This time, it was a game I used to play, oh, probably a decade ago now, on an IRC much like said chat. I'm proud to say I started it, though I can't be held responsible for where it went or whose lives it might have destroyed in the process. I'm not so proud to say I

Portable aural joy

2009-01-07T20:47:00.002-05:00

The last part of my holiday haul finally arrived on Monday: a set of Koss PortaPro headphones. If they look like something out of the '80s, that's because they are; they were introduced in 1984 and as I understand it have not been changed since. (Well, my pair actually come with a ridiculously small plug thanks to Apple's infamous flouting of the headphone jack standard, but that's really not