The Linux Blog

2/7/2005

Lights

Filed under: — Clete R. Blackwell 2 @ 9:20 pm

After having a burned out tube, I finally received and put all the lights in my case. Since my case is ultraviolet reactive (blue), it glows with the ultraviolet lights I bought.

Click to enlarge:
Lights

Lights

It looks pretty cool to me and after I get a few scratches buffed off of the case, I’ll be pretty much done modding it. For a long time, at least ;).

2/1/2005

Days I’m Around

Filed under: — Clete R. Blackwell 2 @ 10:10 am

Just to let you know:

I’ve been cutting back on computer time by personal choice and there are just some days I don’t have much time at all to be on AIM/MSN/Yahoo or anything of that sort.

So, here’s mostly what will happen:

Sunday - Mostly gone, maybe on before 4:00PM EST.
Monday - Same as sunday, except I might be on a little more than that.
Tuesday - Normal.
Wednesday - Not really on, see monday ;).
Thursday - See tuesday.
Friday - Depends on what I do.
Saturday - Most likely gone. See friday.

If you want to contact me:

AIM - CleteBlackwell
MSN - [email protected]
Yahoo - CleteBlackwell2
E-mail - [email protected] (you can use [email protected] if you like, I have 2 addresses, one being other, then another that’s more personal and then anything else goes to “[email protected]", which is a catch-all. [email protected] should work as well.)

By the way, happy Febuary :). In January, I had a link to my Linux distribution choice post, where I had tons of hits from the single source of linuxtoday.com. Awesome :).

1/6/2005

Radeon X800 Arrives!

Filed under: — Clete R. Blackwell 2 @ 6:58 pm

Today, I eagerly awaited the arrival from FedEx of my new Sapphire X800 XT PE!

Upon opening the box, I saw a packing slip and a little box with the card in it (hey, it’s OEM. Check out my comment on the other post for reasons of what I do if it breaks). I checked the packing slip – just what I wanted, “XT” (Sapphire’s XT’s are XT PE’s as well as far as I can tell).

After a quick swap out with my old Radeon 9600 in my snazzy clear-blue case (note to self: Plug firewire back up (had to unplug it and forgot to plug it back up)), I was ready for boot. As expected, it detected an X800 series card. So, let’s check ATITool. All looks good here, framerates are fifteen miles above the roof. Hm… 12 pipelines. X800 PRO?!?

Weird. So, time to overclock to XT PE speeds and look up the flashing tool. Good so far, no artifacts (except the time someone messaged me… can’t do anything wile scanning for artifacts). Time to flash. I used the first Google result and came up with a nice guide on flashing an X800 PRO to an X800 XT PE. Make floppy (hah, couldn’t find a good one, had to use an old Internet Explore for Windows 95 part 1 of 2 floppy or something). Reboot. Save old BIOS. Write new BIOS. Reboot. Windows (sorry… games, you know) XP Home boots up and detects a “Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition"! YES! Checking pipes… 16!

So… I highly recommend buying an X800 PRO and flashing it to XT PE. Follow the guide correctly and you will do just fine.

After further investigation, I think that the person who had the card before me had an X800 XT PE, but flashed it to PRO for some reason.

By the way, I have World of Warcraft as well. Look for me as “Clete” (stupid thing won’t take a 2 on the end) in Khadgar.

1/1/2005

Stuff on my mind as of late…

Filed under: — Clete R. Blackwell 2 @ 11:48 pm

Ok, so as being one of my unusual posts (or rants), sorry about that. If you’re a first-time visitor, this is an unique post. ;)

Well, I have a few annoyances right now.

Firstly, I am/was trying to sell Final Fantasy XI: Online. Apparently, there’s some small print on the box “not for resale by a prior owner” and probably something in one of the 3-5 license agreements I had to accept to subscribe to the game in the first place. EBay removed it on request of Square Enix (what, they check eBay?) and gave me NO details, effectively leaving me in the dark on my “copyright infringements” or whatever they want to say.

Secondly, stuff disappears from the news. Anyone remember SARS, the anthrax scare, and the mad cow disease scare? I probably forgot to mention something, as the news only covers it as long as it’s “cool” and gets users scared enough to attach themselves to the television all the time. Especially to attract them to “the best news network” – NBC, ABC, and what ever else have you.

I suspect it’s like this throughout the world, but most will probably just bias it to be part of what they might call “American stupidity and naiveity (spelling? ;)).” It’s terrible how much many people have wrong views of the USA and are so prejudiced against Americans. Many people will tell you we are a bunch of propogandists who assume that everyone else must be American or talk like they are American or want to be American.

Hey, we talk less about other nations, on average, than others, simply, I think, because we only border two countries. Mexico isn’t talked about because not much happens there and Canada isn’t because… I don’t know. In europe and such, countries border many, many more and are smaller.

12/25/2004

Merry Christmas!

Filed under: — Clete R. Blackwell 2 @ 6:23 pm

Merry Christmas to all!

I’m going back to play, but here’s an almost-full list of what I got:

Wireless keyboard and mouse combination, remote control robot, uv blue clear computer case, deoderant stuff lol (my mom’s like “YOU STINK… just kidding"), a set of recordable CDs, Sid Meier’s Pirates!, RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door, Tetris Tower 3D, candy, and some of those weird shaped balloon kits (um, you know, the ones you make stuff out of). Oh and I got a football, binoculars, a calendar, a pennant (CLEMSON!!!), and a new GameCube controler (cool clear blue). I also got a NICE wallet :D. Also forgot a Clemson shirt (says “Death Valley"). :) Forgot about the Clemson socks.

Might have missed something.

I got much more than I asked for and everything that I asked for except for World of Warcraft, which I plan on getting in a few months. Yay! It’s been an awesome Christmas :D.

If you want, you can check out pictures (sorry, kind of blurry) of the case, mouse, and keyboard here. (they keyboard is ultra silent, too)

12/22/2004

Ordered My X800 XT PE!

Filed under: — Clete R. Blackwell 2 @ 1:29 pm

Well, finally, I was able to order my Radeon X800 XT PE. :)

More when I get it or when it ships. Stupid backorder…

Edit: By the way, I am better than SOMEONE SOMETIMES (hah sometimes) at Halo 2 on Xbox (you know who you are and you will most likely never read this ;)). :) (finally got to play it and I did about 15 minutes worth of single player too)

12/21/2004

RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 + Paper Mario!!!

Filed under: — Clete R. Blackwell 2 @ 2:42 am

Well, tonight, we convinced our parents (yes, I am young ;)) to let us open one Christmas present early.

So, anyways, I opened up a present with RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 and Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door in it :D. YAY! Ok, I’m off to play now. :)

12/7/2004

I am Cool

Filed under: — Clete R. Blackwell 2 @ 6:46 pm

Inspired by IsVery1337, I have made an entry about how cool I am.

Also, check out my poll and vote to have your say if I am cool or not. (right side of the page a little way down)

Proof that I am cool

Proof that I am cool

Proof that I am cool

Proof that I am cool

Proof that I am cool

Proof that I am cool

Proof that I am cool

Proof that I am cool

Proof that I am cool

Proof that I am cool

Proof that I am cool

Proof that I am cool

Proof that I am cool

Proof that I am cool

Ok and here is the person who thinks I am mean:

Proof that I may be evil

Proof that I may be evil

Also, I now have a (1 minute job) wallpaper. It’s VERY ugly, but proves that I am cool.

Get the COOL wallpaper.

Please take no offense if you didn’t make the wallpaper, I won’t bother to update it (unless I feel like it).

12/6/2004

Jeremy and Guessing

Filed under: — Clete R. Blackwell 2 @ 9:20 pm

Remember the guy who auctioned himself off as a blogger for three months to a company? Just so happens that I (along with 2 others) got second place in guessing the final price. I guessed $3,600 and I was $150 off (USD). Someone else said he is equally apart from me but on the lower side (I guessed $150 upwards), but we will see.

Great job/idea, Jeremy :).

Runner Up Post

12/2/2004

Power of Torrents

Filed under: — Clete R. Blackwell 2 @ 8:54 am

Last night, around 11PM, I uploaded a torrent for DarkSpace, a MMORPG. It was approved at 4AM on SuprNova. At 6AM EST, we had 150+ seeders. Wow, talk about publicity.

A few people recommended I get a reward for my idea, but I don’t think I should.

By the way, to get the torrents, here’s what I have:

Torrents.

Also, check out SuprNova (gave a link so you don’t go to SupERNova or .com/.net, the other ones are scammers). You will notice quite a bit of illegal file sharing, but all of my torrents are quite legal.

You may also read my topic about it in the forums.

11/28/2004

Beat Half-Life 2

Filed under: — Clete R. Blackwell 2 @ 12:33 am

Well, I just finished Half-Life 2. Best first person shooter – ever.

Amazing. Wow. I won’t give any spoilers, but we all know there will be a Half-Life 3. I can’t wait.

Also, VALVe will be releasing the SDK next week along with a surprise. My guess besides the patch for the stuttering, we will get some models for Counter-Strike: Source and some maps (I’m hoping for cs_assault).

11/24/2004

BlogShares

Filed under: — Clete R. Blackwell 2 @ 1:05 am

I’m keeping this post short (it’s 1AM EST, which is where I am).

Now yesterday (though still while I was awake), I found out about a cool site called BlogShares, which is basically a stock market type game based on… not companies, but stock. :)

Check it out.

11/18/2004

November 2004 Desktop

Filed under: — Clete R. Blackwell 2 @ 9:13 am

Well, here they are. My desktops for November (wow, I typed December about 3 times already when renaming the files and typing this, before erasing it), that is.

Windows XP Home:

Nothing special here. Wallpaper Just a Kill Bill (Linux look too) wallpaper with Gates on the end (added by me).

Gentoo Linux:

Now here’s something special. All (Super) Karamba themes found here. It’s a Gentoo Linux wallpaper with a nice theme also from the link above. I have a cron job set to do nightly updates.

Basically, it turns on automatically at 1AM (set in BIOS), the cron job executes at 1:05AM (gives it 5 minutes to boot, which is safe for if it has to do a fsck), which is:

emerge sync && emerge -uD world && rm -r /var/tmp/portage && mkdir /var/tmp/portage && rm -r /usr/portage/distfiles && mkdir /usr/portage/distfiles && shutdown -h now

So, it shuts down after it finishes updating. I’m working on getting it to only run if the computer is idle (I wouldn’t want it turning off on me once it finishes updating).

Next step would be to check for kernel updates, build them, and automatticly apply them.

Anyways, those are my screenshots for this month :). If I find a cool new look before next month, I may or may not post it until then, so look out next month. I also might love the look so much that I keep it next month too ;).

11/12/2004

Nice Feature on MP3-CD Player (weird too)

Filed under: — Clete R. Blackwell 2 @ 12:31 pm

Well, the other night, I went out to buy some more headphones and came back with an MP3-CD player (it plays CDs with MP3s burned on it. I also added $5 to buy one that used ID3 tags too :)) . Anyways, my old headphones broke (sort of, one of the pads fell off in the dark one night), so I just decided to get a new CD player – with MP3 support (hey, I said that twice. It must be important.) (the old one was about $50 4 years ago and I got much, much more value out of it than $50). (all prices USD)

It’s quite a nice one. I paid the same price I did for my CD player – $50. I have now combined all my CDs into MP3 CDs by artist. I’m quite pleased with not changing CDs unless you want to change artists. One disadvantage is that I still have to change CDs. I would have bought an iPod, but I didn’t feel like spening all that money.

So, off to the weird part. I turn on the CD player with ESP off (skip protection. In the manual, it says this:

200 seconds skip protection for WMA files (64kbps)
100 seconds for MP3 (128kbps)
45 seconds for a regular music CD)

So, anyways, back to where I was, I turn it on with ESP off. After about 10 seconds of playback on the inital song, the CD slows to a stop and after about 20 seconds, it completely stops until 35 seconds, where it reads for 10 mmore seconds and repeats the cycle. What’s this? It has ESP even when ESP is off (also note I use 192kbps MP3 files).

As for ESP on, the process is almost the same, except the CD stays stationary for about 5 seconds instead of 10 and it spins faster. I also tried turning ESP off after it did the 5 second stop while previously on ESP and it didn’t spin for quite a long time (over 30 seconds, I didn’t time it).

For the headphone quality, WOW! It’s much better than the old ones in that it can handle the double Dynamic Bass Boost (the others sounded horrible with the second one on) and can handle much more decibels. They are much tighter fitting so they don’t slide off like the others would, but are not too tight. The player plays MUCH louder than the other at maximum.

I highly recommend this player. It’s made by Philips and says Expanium on the front. (psst, it can take either 2 AA’s or 2 AAA’s :)) Advertised battery life is “Alkaline AA Audio CD: 10 hrs MP3/WMA: 20hrs. Alkaline AAA Audio CD: 5hrs MP3/WMA: 10hrs". Note that this is ‘powersave mode’, not ESP mode. (weird how they both are shock resistent, as I have repeatedly tried to make it skip when in powersave but was unable to, though I didn’t continuously drop it for 3 minutes or anything)

The manual is telling me that longer file names == less songs able to burn. What? It shouldn’t change anything, can someone explain this?

By the way, if you have iTunes protected files, search Google for hymn m4p or something like that. It’s quite legal, as it leaves your account information in there, but allows you to convert them to MP3.

Edit: I noticed this ESP when ESP is off only works on MP3 (makes sense) and I assume WMA. I never plan to burn a WMA CD. The CD on a normal one will spin all the time and no ESP is on when in powersave mode.



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