Hanoi Coding (2005/01/13)
There's a game, called Towers of Hanoi. The basic idea is that you have a bunch of disks of varying thickness, and with holes in the middle, and you start with them stacked on a central pole, and you move them to another pole. You can only move one disk at a time, and you must never place a disk on a smaller disk. There are three pegs. [read more...]
Treo 600 - least reliable phone I've ever owned. (2004/10/21)
So. My Treo 600 ($600 phone!) failed a while back. And I got it replaced, and the replacement didn’t work at all; the digitizer was useless. So I got it replaced, and the new one, scheduled events and alarms didn’t work. So I got another. And here I am, with my fourth Treo 600… And it’s failing again.
[read more...]What a piece of crap! HP DVD Writer dvd630i (aka 630c) is AWFUL! (2004/10/15)
Okay, this is just plain ridiculous.
[read more...]Learning C. (2004/09/16)
Wow. This brings back memories. I just found an article describing how I learned C.
[read more...]The "space travel is way cool" discount. (2004/09/15)
So, my company (Plethora Internet) builds computers. Not very many. We don’t do much in the “we need a computer for under $700” market. We don’t do swarms of identical 1U servers.
[read more...]More thoughts on the DMCA (2004/09/13)
Well, I talked a bit to someone at the ESA. They acknowledge that the notice they sent was in error. Apparently, a person did actually “review” that message, but… They also said they send out hundreds of thousands of messages a month. That would imply an awful lot of people, or very very cursory work. I suspect the latter.
[read more...]Cryptography is fun. (2004/09/11)
So, I’m playing a game called Morrowind, and I got a “coded message”. And of course, all I have to do is take it to the set of pixels representing the quest-giver, and I have completed the quest.
[read more...]Usability, applied. (2004/09/05)
I just found this example particularly interesting.
[read more...]Can they really be this stupid? (2004/09/02)
Here’s a delightful message I just got. It’s funny enough to be interesting, so I’m including it.
[read more...]What a COOL TOY! (2004/08/11)
So, I got another embedded systems gig. This time, it’s actually more a network appliance thing; firewalls, built on Soekris Net4801 boxes. These boxes are great. Three ethernet ports, one serial, power, USB. CF drive for booting from. Pluggies for a standard notebook hard drive, and a second serial port, and a MiniPCI slot for expansion.
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