wolfwings

...I don't know means just that. I don't have any further information in response to your query.

Asking "where is X at?" then trying, "Is X by Y? and "What city is X in?" and even "Ya' know the zip code for X?" when I've said to the first (and most generic, wide-reaching info-request version) question, "I don't know," then badgering me with another ten more-detailed forms of the question only gets me annoyed. If I don't have any information to return on a super-generalized search, do you really think I'll have any information on a more-detailed version of the same search topic?

If I know what city X is in, I'll say to the first question, "Somewhere in City Whatever, I don't know where exactly." I won't say, "I don't know where X is." If I know the phone number, I'll say, "I don't know, but I have the phone number in my phone if you want to call and find out." If I know how to get there by landmarks but not the street address, I'll say, "I don't know where it is on a map, but I know how to get there. Want directions?"

This isn't just a "where is X?" gets me annoyed post, but specific examples of a more general pet peeve I have, as anyone that's queried me repeatedly when I say, "I don't know," initially can attest when I eventually reach a point where I snap something along the lines of, "When I say I don't fucking know, I don't have any fucking idea about the fucking topic you're asking me about. Kindly fuck off for now until I calm down now that you've gotten be throughly pissed off."

...finally got most of the last 'fiddly bits' working under Linux. Feels good to finally have everything fully converted to 64-bit.

SD card-reader works. Like the majority of users, I don't have any xD, or any of Sony's propietary format cards, and neither do any Linux devs working on code for internal card-readers it appears. That alone says volumes to me as to who's winning the format wars there, and once again it's not Sony.

Can use my cell-phone as dial-up GPRS internet.

Screensaver just shuts off the screen entirely, and when I'm on battery it automatically kicks everything down as low as it can (1/3rd speed both the CPU and GPU) to save power.

Hibernate and all that shiny goodness work, and unlike Windows it doesn't force me to save out a 2GB file if I'm only using 100MB of RAM, so Hibernate is speedy and useful instead of being glacial and pointless.

3D graphics work. Call it minor or obvious, but I've learned not to take anything for granted with trying to get it working in 64-bit mode. :-)

WiFi/Bluetooth work. I can sync my cell-phone phonebook, though I'm still experimenting with what software to do that with until I find the one I like best.

What's left?

Getting the Volume Up/Down/Mute buttons working. I just need to sort out how to get it all working, minor hastle really and questionably useful since the only thing I'd use it for is muting MPlayer if I get a phone call.

Finish setting up Bluetooth profiles for a handsfree kit so I can download my voice-mails through my cell-phone. Might experiment with running the downloads through non-realtime voice-recognition transcription programs to build summaries.

...but it looks like the One Laptop Per Child project is officially off and running, with four million laptops ordered already! =^.^=

They just plain don't work, and give insurance companies a reason to deny your claim if you get your car swiped.

News flash: Honda's not the only company that stuffs handbrake-and-ignition codes into their cars. Just about all newer cars have these sorts of funky 'codes' to disable or enable various features such as stability control, or in this case, a VIN-specific code to bypass the built-in key-ID system. One that I'm willing to bet isn't highly unique and that someone with some brains could reverse-engineer or find a pattern in pretty easilly.

But this is all another reason why I look at car security as pointless once someone is inside your vehicle. You might as well just remove the ignition key entirely and replace it with a simple kill switch under the dash and a push-button wired to the starter. Nothing you can do will deter a criminal once they're inside your car.

Ran across this by accident while searching for possibly Mitsubishi Mirage's for sale, and parts to find out how much my 'pie in the sky pipe dream' engine would cost.

Japan Partner, Ltd.

Surprisingly easy to navigate (aside from their penchant for NOT filtering out sold cars from their results) and very up-front on costs, including shipping costs to and from other countries and listing prices in various currencies right on each search page instead of forcing you to use an external currency-converter.

Hell, they don't focus on the uber-profitable stuff either. They'll even sell you a bus if you want it. Or a tow-truck or crane-truck. They're not focussed on the 'import ricer' market so their prices look reasonable to me. Something for you folks out there in case it's useful to anyone. :-)

I swear, I break protection systems just to prove to myself that nobody's made anything difficult to defeat yet, let alone remotely secure.

Tip to artists I won't name: I love the artwork, but if I buy a CD of art, it's probably to use some of it for things like wallpaper, or to make a collage of the images for a wallpaper if nothing else since I use a wildly non-standard screen resolution (1280x768) thanks to having a widescreen laptop. It's not to load your custom application and stare at the pretty images until I press any friggin' key at all and have the app go away. Stop trying to treat me like a criminal, if you're that paranoid, only sell prints and use scan-resistant paper as that is currently the only way to prevent someone from copying or modifying your artwork. And at least then I don't expect to be able to do something like use the artwork for the desktop of my computer like I do if I buy an artwork CD.

And so far I've yet to find anything that requires more than ten minutes to pull all the images from using automated tools that just search for standard image-format headers, occasionally with the occasional single byte errors I need to manually correct.

...what happens if you throw out the crankshaft, and rods?

Well, you need something to move the pistons up and down now, that can handle huge stress and the full RPM of the engine. Wait... we already have that in most modern engines. And... wait, yeah, we have camshafts specifically because they allow for a much smaller mechanism that moves in only one direction, instead of moving in two directions.

Great idea, though I think it's mostly an evolution of existing camshaft/valvetrain tech being moved down to the short-block, much akin to how camshafts have mostly replaced pushrod tech in valvetrains, I think this could mostly replace rods and cranks in the lower-end. And it's really a win all around, smaller engines, easier to modify performance, smoother running, and more even torque.

Revetec hopefully won't turn into a flash-in-the-pan with the idea. It's mechanically sound as far as I can see, and could have huge wins for how smooth an engine runs, especially with how simple it makes the engine mechanically for the lower-end.

When your municipal water is so over-heated I physically can't tell the difference between the hot and cold water even when I leave both of them running... your fucked.

Thank GOD I slapped extra-dark limo-black tint on the back windows of my car, or I'd probably have gotten heat stroke due to lack of shade when my fuel pump fried near as we can figure.

talesin drove out and picked me up, sitting at the PS today.

And as a side-note on the water-stuff, I rented a hotel room while waiting for batty for somewhere to put my stuff, and got some sleep. When I tried to take a shower, spending more than five minutes on each of them I gave up trying to decider which unmarked knob was theoretical 'cold' and just took a shower. Both were the same temperature, and both were at least 20 degrees colder than the surrounding air I think.

Keep your Jesus off my Penis

~~...it's available for viewing/download here as a commented but unfinished component.~~ It WAS available, I've taken it down.

The current 'framework' is centered around my rebuild to integrate it into zSNES, though it's still as generalized as the original HQ2x/3x/4x code thanks to careful planning of separating calculating 'edge points' from the core logic of determining what to do with those edge points. (I honestly don't know what else to call the difference-checks the HQ system runs on. Is there a proper term for them out there?)

At the same time this 'inner loop' with all the data tables compiles down to only 180 bytes of data, and 160 bytes of code on i386, and fits entirely in-register on x86.

Though looking over the code, I feel like I've attacked a small nest of ants with a fuel-air explosive or something. At the same time, the code is lacking in detailed in-line comments below block-level notations of what section of code is doing what.

I have been doing exhaustive testing against the original HQ2x code each time to verify I'm getting the exact same results as it though, and there is fairly detailed commentary beside each data table to describe it's function and format, so the code is documented. I'm just not sure the initial layout of where I placed the documentation (beside each application-specific compressed data type as I built it) is appropriate, and may re-arrange and possibly re-write sections of it. Input from other coders appreciated.

Also, I believe I can re-use the same framework to process most of the other common emulator enhancement filters by only replacing the data tables used. I haven't researched this yet to prove it, but I believe the other filters can be mapped as subsets of the HQ set.

...but love or hate Bush, Pink's song Hello, Mr. President is turning out to be remarkably good background music to program to. I can't even tell why, but for some reason that particular rendition it just right that I can 'fade it out' in my head and still enjoy the background stimulus without concentrating on 'understanding' the words.

So what am I working on? Well... I'm mostly pulling apart the Linux video-card drivers to sort numerous things out. What things? ( That's a little technical... and goes into why there's actually FIVE drivers you need to load for a given video card. )

Current Mood: working
Current Music: Pink - Dear Mr. President

...it's only taken you what... a decade since uber-rich people have been importing your Smart's from Canada and Europe because they like them so much to realize there might be a market for them in the US?

Gods, what arrogant, stupid, greedy pricks. At least they cancelled their original plan, to bastardize the Smart name in the US by planning originally to create an SUV with the badging to try to cash in on the rumbling buzz around the line.

Hell, right now there are places selling (not just advertising, actively selling and getting buyers) for the Smart's at well over double the actual raw price, $30k and up for a car that sells in Canada fully loaded for under $18k. And people have been practically begging on hands and knees for DC to import the Smart's ever since they were first released.

And the best part to me? They're rear-wheel drive. And they'll have a turbo-diesel model available. I smell french-fry-powered burnouts coming in a couple years. =^.^=

...I can get the open-source video-driver for my video-card in my laptop to compile.

It even loads correctly.

The windowing system refuses to activate it. Why? Because it detects the chipset as being in a set that it doesn't support.

Duh, that's why I got the bleeding-edge driver installed, shit-for-brains program.

I truly love software that refuses to do what you tell it to, and does 'what you want it to' instead. Especially when I have every single flag set on my system saying, "Gimme the unstable stuff! GimmeGimmeGIMME! I'll deal with the crashes!"

Then again, some would say that even having an Athlon 64 Linux Laptop should by default set those flags for me. =^.^=

Seperately... I'm still trying to sort out how to install the bleeding-edge wireless drivers. There's a minor glitch in the version that's easilly downloadable in the form of not being able to initialize on Athlon 64 systems that have more than 1GB of memory installed.

Yeah, I have 2GB. The hardware supports it, the software driver just doesn't yet. And there's no simple 'download this file and go' approach I've been able to find yet, unfortunately. They're moving their publically-available source-code repository from one server to another, so I can't get at the patch that fixes this. So... I either run cabled at 2GB, or run wireless at 1GB of RAM available. Meh. :-P

Me equipped with a Linux computer is... dangerous.

I've been optimizing the same fragment of code cheerfully in my spare time for the last month approximately.

Results? 256KB of lookup tables and another 60KB of object code... is now ~1KB object code... and 204 bytes of lookup tables. Brute force unrolled switch statement, meet hand-packed, hand-picked lookup tables. I still need to get hard figures for the code size, and finish rebuilding it into a state to finish submitting upstreak to zSNES, but for now I'm REALLY happy with myself. :-)

Secondary counter in the kitchen cleared and scrubbed. Need to box the boxes (no joke) under that counter, and file all the paperwork on the inside corner of the counter before I can declare that area 'finished' but for now I have to wait until people wake up to move filing cabinets around and stuff.

Found the Miracle Whip, finally able to make myself a proper sandwich. =^.^=

YERF! *scampers off to grab a bird to cuddle and finish replying to e-mail*

...wait for July 24th and start getting ready to order from the import stores.

Why? Opera for Nintendo DS is why.

I'm sure some of you out there heard about this, but to me it was news. So... passing it along.

EDIT:

DS Lite ONLY version of the browser

DS Universal version of the browser

free shipping

...minor stuff these last few days.

Re-ran the garden hose that has to cross the pathway between the hot tub, Dojo, and covered walkway. Coiled up the other hose in the same area. This vastly improved the area, and let me much more easilly adjust most of the pathway stones so they don't wobble anymore.

Finished the computer-part shuffle with HP, they have their 6-cell 4aH battery back, I have a proper 12-cell 8aH battery. Also finished getting Linux operational, just finished installing the majority of KDE (kOffide, kPlayer, etc) and I've verified that most various movie formats Just Work™ now, though the really essoteric crap won't play simply because I can't load Windows Codec's since I'm running pure 64-bit and have NOT installed 32-bit emulation software.

( Also finished re-factoring the HQ2x code further. )

Male circumcision cuts heterosexual AIDS transmission drastically

Though amusingly nothing I've done so far affects my coverage, nor does it count against parts I can get replaced at least once in the warrenty of the laptop either.

At just two months shy of the one-year anniversary I've now, through no subterfuge or fault of my own, had the following replaced on my laptop due to a defect that HP owned up to:

Entire screen due to failed hinges and a screen-module that is bonded closed at the manufacturing line so you have to replace the entire thing when the hinges fail. ~$400 to get it replaced out-of-warrenty.
The Li-Ion battery was left at the repair center on accident, they verified that, and are shipping me a new battery. $180 to buy another at retail.
And they replaced the lower case shell because the battery-latch mechanism didn't pass muster. This part is a $20 component to order out-of-warrenty, so it's unsurprising they'd replace it.

And I officially had a Case Management Worker (one of the folks sitting in a small office of cubicles over here in the states, lady had a nice southern accent without being hard to understand at all) tell me the same thing the sales rep did just under a year ago: My, that's a strange configuration for that laptop.

Specifically, I maxxed out the battery (8 hours), RAM (2GB), and CPU (2.0Ghz), and got the SD/MMC/MS/SM/XD integrated flash-media slot. I didn't upgrade the screen for $10, as the hi-gloss screen is much harder to see in direct sunlight. I didn't upgrade the hard drive for $50, as I purge frequently and the smallest drive was the only 4200RPM drive so it saves power. And I opted out of the DVD-RW ($50), instead sticking with the CD-RW/DVD-ROM option as I have no interest in recording DVD's and CD's are much cheaper still. So skimming over the longest-title items on her screen, the CD-RW drive in particular and satin-finish screen usually indicate their bottom-rung laptop model, the RAM amount and CPU speed and battery size are a total of seven letters spread across three lines, so they just don't jump out and warn them as easilly. =^.^=

So... now to get Linux re-installed properly and relax until my new battery shows up. In the meantime, I'm stuck to a power cable. =-.-=

Pet Peeve...

And the laptop is shiny and happy now...

Recently discovered... but OH SO TRUE!

Sorry for first-thing-in-the-morning spam...

Why I don't believe in 'car alarms' anymore.

Japanese Cars... importing and other costs.

muttergrumbles

Interesting idea...

Hey, Arizona?

Grabbed from elfs

Might as well show off the code for my new HQ2x core...

A couple days late punting this along...

It's about !@#!@#%! time, Benz...

Meh... so close...

Gods... I've found my addiction in full force again...

Screw Spring... I'm doing SUMMER cleaning!

For anyone that owns a Nintendo DS...

Puttering along...

Yanked from meowse

Well I'm thankful I payed for the extra warrenty.

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