Linux Geek's Journal

New Digital Camera
I got this new Sony digital camera that I've been playing with. It's the Cyber-shot DSC-W1. It has a HUGE 2.5" LCD monitor, the sharp Carl Zeiss lens, 3x optical zoom, and 5.1 Megapixels. I like to take black & white photos with it, but it takes great color photos too. I got the 4 year warranty on it. It's a very quick camera, and is ready to take pictures just a second or two after powering up. There is hardly any shutter lag too. In manual mode I can take night exposures as long as 30 seconds.

Online Photo Gallery
I've been adding pictures to my online photo gallery. I have some from Loch Raven Reservoir, and also a few of a lighthouse in Havre de Grace, MD. I love using my Sony digital camera!!!

Media Player Classic & Quicktime Alternative
I installed Quicktime Alternative 1.33 on my system today. I've been having problems with my quicktime software lately. When I click on a .mov file, it would have a "no disk in the drive" error, and I had to click cancel about 10 times for the movie to play. I've tried uninstalling/reinstalling without success. Then did a google search, and found others have been having problems with it too. I didn't want to do a Windows re-install, so I found this program that fixed my problem. It's bundled with Media Player Classic, but can be found by searching for quicktimealt133 in google. Now, I can open .mov files without a problem, and they can be viewed full-screen by hitting alt+enter unlike the apple software that doesn't have true full-screen playback. his website is http://gabest.org/ and http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/

more ram
I upgraded my computer memory this week on my AMD 2.5Ghz PC. I had 1 stick of 256Mb PC2700 (333Mhz) before, and now I have a new stick of 512Mb PC4000 running at 400mhz. It was on sale at Best Buy ($70 off!!!). I took out my old memory, because it isn't compatible with the higher speed. Now, my programs and games load super-quick!!! Windows XP Pro runs much faster on 512Mb too.
I just bought Lineage II and it loads & runs so much faster now, and doesn't lag when I travel to new areas in the game. That game is the greatest.

I hear www.DFI.com 's Lanparty motherboards are really good. I have to look more into them. They sound like the best overclocking motherboards with the most features. Plus, it looks like they moved the AGP slot over so it doesnt take up the 1st PCI slot in one of their boards. What do you think of their boards? Has anyone here had any experience with the Lanparty KT400A?
http://www.lanparty.com.tw/

PCMark04 results
Today I downloaded and installed the Futuremark PCMark04 benchmark.
You will have to also download and install Windows Media Encoder 9 for it to work. This software is pretty cool in itself.
I installed it using the free option, so it only gives me my PC mark score, which is 2826. What is your score?
(AMD Athlon XP 2500+ (333Mhz FSB), 256MB ram at 333Mhz)

NVidia nView desktop
I activated and setup nView on my video card today. I have a Geforce3 Ti200 64Mb video card. nView adds multiple desktops to your computer. I made 3 desktops with 3 different wallpapers. With it, I can run separate programs on different desktops, and switch between them using hot-keys (like Alt + ~). So, I can run photo editing tools on one desktop, web browser windows on another, and games on the third desktop. Linux has this feature built into the OS itself. Also, when I move windows, they turn 50% transparent so I can see whats under them. I can also run windows in transparent mode.

Activate Windows XP Once and Forever
Activate Once Forever
"Windows will require re-activation if several pieces of hardware are changed at one time. It makes sense to try to spread these installations out to avoid the hassle.

But what if the WinXP OS must be re-installed on the same system? To avoid having to re-activate, keep a copy of wpa.dbl from the System32 folder with your backups. Make sure to create a fresh copy with any hardware upgrade. Upon re-installing WinXP, just copy wpa.dbl back to the System32 folder to skip activation."
taken from http://www.sailcat.com/winxptips.htm

new computer
I upgraded my computer. Here are the specs:
Asus A7V8X-MX motherboard, 256Mb DDRAM PC2700 (333Mhz), AMD Athlon XP 2500+ (333Mhz) barton core 512Kb L2 cache, 40Gb 7200rpm 2Mb cache hard drive, 16x DVD-ROM, 32x12x40 CD-R/RW, GeForce3 Ti200, Windows XP Pro. The motherboard has an 8x AGP slot so I can upgrade my GeForce3 later. The board comes with cheap on-board graphics that share the system memory. I tried using it, but it doesnt play my 3d games. The onboard graphics would be good enough for business use. It also has onboard sound, 10/100 LAN, and 6 USB 2.0 slots.
Here is a picture of my new motherboard:
( Read more... )

distributed.net on Mandrake-Linux 9.2 problems
I got Linux loaded. It runs ok on this old PC. The network card was auto-detected, and I'm on the net using the Mozilla browser. I'm trying to get distributed.net running on the Linux box but it's not working. It needs another package installed to make it download new work units. It runs and I can configure it using the -config comand. I'll do some google searches about it in the morning to try and get it sorted out.

I just switched my CD-R/RW drive from my onboard IDE controller to an upgraded SIIG PCI Ultra ATA 133 controller, and my cd-rom burning time went down from 6 minutes to 3min 45sec! (at 32x). My Maxtor 7200rpm hard drive is on the newer controller too. Both drives are set on master and are running on separate channels. It really makes my PC (Dell PII 450, 384mb ram, 40Gb) run much faster now. Windows XP Pro boots up faster, my games load faster, My virus scan scans faster, etc...

I downloaded Mandrake Linux 9.2 last night (all 3 cd's). I'm installing it now on a 12GB spare hard drive on my other computer (Dell Dimension V350 =350mhz PII). It downloaded at 170Kbps! Woohoo! I love fast DSL connections!!!

I'm listening to an old .mp3 archive of the "Brain Damage" radio show that aired on July 6th, 1991. The main speaker is Eric Corely, aka Emmanuel Goldstein, famous for the "Off the Hook" radio show. It's quite hilarious.
http://www.2600.com/braindamage/
http://www.2600.com/offthehook/

This week I acquired 4 Pentium II computers ranging from 300mhz to 450mhz. They are Dell Dimensions. I think I'll install Linux on the fastest one & add it to my ever-growing home computer network. I'll install Windows 98 on one so I can use it for playing multi-player LAN games on my network. Then I'll probably sell the other 2... I'm not sure yet. They would be great server PC's with 256Mb of ram.
I played a little Ghost Recon -Island Thunder- on the XBOX tonight. Lots of fun! Especially playing with surround sound -using 5 speakers. You can really tell where the enemy is shooting from.

It's 13 degrees F outside now. I hope it gets warmer soon...

Well, Christmas has come and gone... I had a GREAT Christmas...
I got lots of chocolate, a power screwdriver, some games, a mini R/C car, a photo album, and some other stuff. How about you? What did you get for Christmas?

I installed Mozilla Firebird 0.7 today. It's a neat little browser. Basically it's a slimed down version of Mozilla (total install is 6.1 Mb). It doesn't have the security problems that Internet Explorer has, because it isn't integrated into windows, & there is no support for VBScript and ActiveX, two technologies which are the reasons for many IE security holes. No spyware/adware software can automatically install in Mozilla Firebird just by visiting a web site. Mozilla Firebird doesn't use Microsoft's Java VM, which has a history of more flaws than other Java VMs.
I also use the Opera browser, because I like the features it has, and the fast keyboard navigation.
There are many reasons to switch to the Mozilla Firebird Browser: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firebird/why/#accessibility
I wouldn't use it for mission critical data because it isn't even in version 1.0 yet. Better use Mozilla 1.5 for important tasks.

Current Mood: tired

Secure your wireless home network!
http://arstechnica.com/paedia/w/wireless-security-howto/home-802.11b-1.html
This article explains how to secure your 802.11b wireless network to make it very tough for unwanted people to get in.

It Snowed about 6 inches in Baltimore!

Woohoo! I get my new car this week (day after tomorrow)!!!
I'm listening to my MP3 Christmas music collection now. I have 2 hours of it. I'm going to burn it onto a CD-R and take it to work so I can play it there too.

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