General

Rawr! I really need a Firewire hub that’s shaped like Godzilla!

How you can tell that ‘Unxmaal’ is Evil:

U   N   X   M   A   A   L

  85  78  88  77  65  65  76     - as ASCII values

   4   6   7   5   2   2   4     - digits added

  \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/ \_/

   4   6   7   5   8             - digits added

Thus, "unxmaal" is 46758.

Turn the number backwards, and add 1986 – the year a postman in Okhlahoma gone postal, killing 14. The number is now 87750.

A friend of mine recently asked about a way to format a hard drive in such a way that “noone would be able to retrieve the information with any special tools.”

The problem with security is that, depending on your level of paranoia, no method is safe.

The CIA-approved methods of destroying disk data include pulverizing the hard disk platters and then burning them. Even then it is hypothetically possible to recover data from burned chunks of hard drive media, if the recovering organization has enough resources and the will to do so. For example, if you’re concerned about the Illuminati recovering your info, chances are they already have it, or they’ll use their super secret MKULTRA mind assassins to haunt your house and capture your data with spirit familiars.

YES! NCSX is going to do another batch of dreamcast Ethernet cards. You can Preorder the unit here. If they get 1000 preorders they will start production.

I’ve always said “avoid computer products with ‘pack’ in the name, like “Compaq” or “Packard-Bell”. I didn’t follow my own rule this weekend, though, when I got a Hewlett-PACKard Scanjet 3500C.

The box advertised it as being OSX-compatible. The Compusa sales droid assured me it was OSX-compatible. However, when I got the scanner home, installed the software from the included CD, and connected it to my iBook, nothing happened. After a few more gyrations, I decided to download the newest updated driver. Holy crap! At 200MB, this ‘driver update’ weighed in like a Microsoft service pack!

This is why TV sucks: if there’s ever a good show that doesn’t quite fit the mainstream lowest-common-denominator viewer, it gets axed. Sci-Fi’s ‘Farscape’ is quite possibly the best sci-fi television show I’ve ever watched, and apparently Sci-Fi execs have opted out of the fifth season and decided to cancel the show.

Perhaps some well-placed calls to Sci-Fi Programming [212-413-5821] or comments [212-413-5577] would help.

Last weekend, Laura and I took a mini-vacation to Chattanooga. We stayed at The Chattanoogan, which is a pretty nice hotel, even though the shower was weak. Within moments of entering the room, Laura had discovered the ethernet port and was bouncing with as much glee as could be expected from a geek on vacation.

Saturday afternoon we went to the Tennessee Aquarium and looked at weird fish and turtles and other fishy turtley things. [Tuna are some really huge, really scary fish. Really.]

For those of you who are interested, or who are sad to see the “Happy Mac” icon abandoned in Mac OS 10.2, Ryan Schmidt has posted a mildly complex method of changing your OSX boot logo.

Happy birthday to me!

For all you raging Dirt Worshippersr there is Vegan Erotica. They claim that it is aimed at anyone who wants to be a compassionate purchaser. But the real truth is that only people who want animals to be cuddly and not useful will buy this stuff, that among other weird people looking to try out new things I guess. I’ll refrain from my VEGAN RANT. You know who you are out there, and you are missing some brain cells.