Tech

Pin-outs.com: because I can never remember the pin-outs for RJ-11.

I’ve been playing with N.A.G., which is an “automated remixer” for audio files downloaded via Gnutella. It runs on both Windows and OSX.

N.A.G. (Network Auralization for Gnutella) is interactive software art for Mac OS X and Windows 2000/XP which turns the process of searching for and downloading MP3 files into a chaotic musical collage. Type in one or more search keywords, and N.A.G. looks for matches on the Gnutella peer-to-peer file sharing network. The software then downloads MP3 files which match the search keyword(s) and remixes these audio files in real time based on the structure of the Gnutella network itself.

My pool pump is powered by an ancient, rusting Intermatic mechanical 24-hour time switch. The entire case is rusted, and the On/Off switch is conveniently located right above the two screws that terminate the live electrical wiring, which makes for great fun when attempting to turn off the pool pump with wet hands.

Today I added a cute little CSS pseudoclass to my stylesheet. If you mouse over the link boxes on the sides, you’ll see the box color change to highlight the selected box.

Unfortunately, this effect only works with browsers that support the CSS :hover pseudoclass properly. I recommend Mozilla, or Safari, if you’re running OSX.

This effect does not work in Internet Explorer 6 for Windows.

Consider this article: “IE6 SP1 is the final standalone installation.” … “Legacy OSes have reached their zenith with the addition of IE 6 SP1. Further improvements to IE will require enhancements to the underlying OS.”

Sometime Sunday, Laura‘s MoveableType barfed. Any MT action, such as posting or editing posts, yielded the following error message:

Statement has no result columns to bind (perhaps you need to successfully call execute first) at /usr/hosted/abracapocus.org/cgi-bin/mt/lib/MT/ObjectDriver/DBI/mysql.pm line 224.

After some investigation, it appeared that the problem was with the actual MySQL database, rather than the MT backend.

The solution was to use the myisamchk utility, from the command line, to repair the tables:

If you’re a tech, you’ve probably run into Windows NT, 2K, or XP machines that have had unknown Administrator passwords, especially in the case of job turnover. This situation can be extremely frustrating, and can waste a lot of your time trying to fix.

Check out pnordahl’s Offline NT Password Recovery Disk. It’s a free Linux-based boot image that can be written to either floppy or CD, and allows a tech to change passwords for any account on a Windows NT-based machine, as well as perform registry editing.

Does your top-of-the-line Pentium II 233Mhz machine beg for the the high-class ghetto look?

Upgrade its case to Lupo.com’s Boxmaster manufactured cardboard case!

Sorry, -nese only. English translation, anyone? Bueller?

I find it interesting [and highly suspect] that the RIAA is suing a college kid for billions of dollars — money he will never be able to repay — when there are bigger, meatier targets available.

For years, NetIQ has had a product called MP3Check. MP3Check does just what Dan Pheng’s “wake” application did: it indexes a LAN and lists all the available MP3s.

So why isn’t the RIAA suing NetIQ for billions?

One of the drawbacks of having a transparent Apple Pro keyboard is that when a bug somehow crawls into the shell of the keyboard, you can see it, twitching. The bug, not the keyboard.

After a few minutes of banging and futile attempts at debugging my keyboard [HA!], I’m left with a very dead and very visible bug, right there, in my keyboard.

I could disassemble the keyboard and remove the insect, but in some small way I find it grimly satisfying, as if my keyboard is some horrible machine that feeds upon the souls of dead insects.

In OSX, certain apps, including Safari, have access to the ‘Summarize‘ system Service.

Summarize provides a fairly accurate way to create short summaries of blocks of text.

A test sample, from Matt Rossi’s site:

Indeed, modern evolutionary theory is very respectful of the power of death. After all, in that theory it is death that prunes and directs the otherwise boundlessly chaotic, mutable explosive flow of life. Death is the mechanism of selection, death the means by which certain mutations are deemed fit to survive and be passed on to future descendants. The tension between the urge to procreate and the possibility of dying before passing one’s genetic information forward to be combined and developed is what, according to Darwin and his disciples, helped create that massively diverse biosphere in the first place. Taken still further, there are schools of thought that regard evolution as punctuated by bursts of sudden adaptation which may well be explainable as the influence of sudden drastic shifts in environment placing additional selective pressure on life…in essence, the death rate goes up because a rock falls from space or continental drift changes the climate, and as the deaths pile up the remaining life forms are pared down to a few hardy forms, which then explode into new forms as soon as the playing field is stable enough to be exploited. Whether you view life as a closed cycle that can only bear so much before necessary collapse or a fractal with the potential to expand indefinitely, it’s clear that death provides a necessary service in simultaneously producing fodder for future expansion and allowing room for new development by carving stagnation away.”