Road trip(redux)

Drove to Maryland (semi-)recently. Makes it so that I’ve driven the entire breadth of the US in less than a year. Man, Kansas is boring. The one thing that seemed interesting was closed by the time we got there. The next day we got to Ohio. We passed through St. Louis along the way, and I snapped a couple pics of the Gateway Arch.

We stayed in Ohio for about a week, visiting my mom. My laptop was previously delivered there (more on that later). My sister was also there, visiting. We didn’t actually do much while there, but we had a good time regardless.

After Ohio, it was a relatively short drive to Maryland.

FIRST robotics competition 2008

Last weekend was the Colorado Regional for the FIRST robotics competition. This year I had volunteered to be Scorekeeper/Field Power Controller. Little did I realize that no one had volunteered to be lead for that job. So guess who gets asked to do the job. I’d never done the job before. That said, the competition went remarkably well. A few ID-ten-T errors on the practice day due to the fact that the length of the match constantly changed to provide extra practice time to the teams. After lunch, we changed to just having a double match with regulation times for each.

The teams had a fairly wide variety of designs in use. The most effective was team winnovation, which was capable of launching a ball all the way across the field. It also had a omni drive setup, which allowed it to go around without ever turning.

Unfortunately, I’m not going to be at the CO regional again. Moving to Maryland this year. Ah well, thus is life.

Super Smash Bros Brawl

Two weeks ago, SSBB came out for the Wii. Having played (but not owned) the previous two iterations, I had a good clue this one would be just as fun. So, for the past two weeks, I’ve been steadily unlocking all the different characters and stages. Today I finished that. The last one I had to unlock was Wolf O’Donnell. Fought him twice, and lost. Decided to try a different tactic on my third try. Used Kirby to suck him up, then walked off the edge of the stage. Worked perfectly. Kirbycide is a quite viable option for unlocking characters, so long as you’re on a platform stage.

It’s a fun game, especially in a party situation. Recommended.

Far too many wallpaper images

I have accumulated a very large number of wallpaper images. It’s currently hovering around the 2k mark. This poses the small problem of me never seeing them. So, I’m going to create an automated wallpaper changer. But first, I need to organize them into folders based on aspect ratio. This is because I have dual monitors, which aren’t the same aspect ratio. Thus, I wrote a Powershell script that determines the ratio, and then moves the image into the appropriate subfolder.

   1:  #sorts the files inside $loc based on aspect ratio

   2:  $loc = "G:\my pics\wallpaper\"

   3:  

   4:  #set the location, and grab the files inside

   5:  Set-Location $loc

   6:  $folder = (New-Object -com ("Shell.Application")).NameSpace($loc)

   7:  

   8:  Get-ChildItem | foreach {

   9:      $item = $folder.ParseName($_)

  10:      #check that it's an image

  11:      if($item.Type -like "*image")

  12:      {

  13:          # get the width and height

  14:          $dim = $folder.GetDetailsOf($item, 31)

  15:          if($dim -match "(?<width>\d*)\sx\s(?<height>\d*)")

  16:          {

  17:              $aspect = [int]$matches.width / [int]$matches.height

  18:              #move based on aspect ratio bands

  19:              if(($aspect -le 1.4) -and ($aspect -ge 1.2))

  20:              {

  21:                  Move-Item -Path .\$_ -Destination .\Full\

  22:              }

  23:              elseif(($aspect -le 1.8) -and ($aspect -ge 1.5))

  24:              {

  25:                  Move-Item -Path .\$_ -Destination .\Wide\

  26:              }

  27:              else

  28:              {

  29:                  Move-Item -Path .\$_ -Destination .\Other\

  30:              }

  31:          }

  32:      }

  33:  }

It’s pretty simple code. It would be a lot harder to write if I had to write it in C#, however. Fear the power! 😛

Wireless Networking and multiple SSIDs

So I got my WRT54G v3 router back from the friend that I lent it to. J’s been bugging me to get her DS Lite on the Internet, so she can trade Pokemon (*sigh*). Anyway, having done some research prior to this, I had determined that it’s possible to do multiple SSIDs when using a third party firmware called DD-WRT when using at least v24 (which is still in RC status).

First step: install the newest Linksys firmware. Then I install the mini generic DD-WRT firmware. From there, it’s on to the the standard firmware. So, I create a virtual wireless interface, which seems to have done so fine. Then I add the following commands:

startup:

fconfig br0:0 down
brctl addbr br1
ifconfig br1 192.168.21.254 netmask 255.255.255.0 promisc up
brctl delif br0 wl0.1
brctl addif br1 wl0.1
killall dnsmasq
dnsmasq --conf-file=/tmp/dnsmasq.conf

dnsmasq:

interface=br1
dhcp-range=br1,192.168.21.1,192.168.21.149,255.255.255.0,1h
dhcp-authoritative
dhcp-option=br1,3,192.168.21.254

firewall:

iptables -I INPUT 9 -i br1 -m state --state NEW -j logaccept
iptables -I FORWARD -i br1 -o vlan1 -j ACCEPT

And the net effect of all this? Nada. Can’t reach the second SSID. Nothing works. Try the RC7 pre-release. Still fail. Trying to get an answer from the forums, but I this isn’t solved by Saturday, I’m sticking Tomato on the box, and just using two routers to get the DS Lite on.

Laptop HDDs

The other upgrade J’s laptop received was a new 250GB hard drive. So with it, comes an OS reinstall. I’m planning on getting everything she wants installed on there, then imaging the drive so wiping the cruft off won’t be a heartache, but rather just a couple minutes work. With that, I decided to get the SLP 2.0 pieces, and see if I could get that to work.

First, I made sure she had the most recent BIOS from Dell installed. Without it, it almost certainly wouldn’t work, thus negating the entire SLP exercise. That done, I just installed it from the DVD (any Retail/OEM DVD works for installing any version). From there, I opened up an elevated command prompt (important that it’s elevated), then ran two commands:

slmgr.vbs -ipk ProductKeyHere

slmgr.vbs -ilc E:OEM.xrm-ms

Obviously, neither of those commands will work as is. After that, the system was activated. So I installed SP1, and just need to have J finish setting up her laptop. Which will likely be a couple weeks from now. Until then, she’ll keep on using her old HDD.

Bluetooth, laptops, and cellphones

So, J wanted a new cellphone. Ended up getting a Nokia 6126. Amongst other features, it was free. Big selling point. It also has Bluetooth and some media capability. She wanted to have a custom ringtone (Mario Bros). I didn’t really feel like paying for a ringtone (rip-offs, all of them). So my solution was to just transfer a MP3 on from her computer. Problem is, the only ways to connect are with a USB cable (which I also didn’t want to pay for), or Bluetooth (which she doesn’t have on her computer).

Off to EBay. Found a Dell 360 module, which was listed as compatible with the e1705 laptop she has. Couple days later, it arrives. Unscrew a cover, plug it in, and we’re in business. Well, except for the fact that I needed to download the drivers, and the Nokia software.

Long story short, she has her Mario Bros Ring tone.

Recommended Unusual Software

Essentially, this is software you didn’t know you needed. Everyone knows you need Firefox, and an IM program, and a word processor, but there’s stuff out there that’s really useful, but relatively unknown. Also, everything in this list is free. Sometimes free as in beer, and sometimes free as in speech. Also, this is Windows centric. I respect the fact that other OSes exist, but I like my Windows.

Paint.NET is the top of the list. People who know they need high powered graphics programs get Photoshop. However, not everyone can afford Photoshop, or needs the power it provides. Paint.NET is a better featured paint program that MS Paint. Plus, it has plug-in features, allowing third parties to add even more functionality

Switcher is like Expose, but for Windows Vista. It’s extremely useful when you’re a heavy multitasker.

WikidPad is handy whenever you’re thinking about something, and want to write it down, but what you’re expressing is non-linear. It’s a wiki in a can.

PasswordSafe is to store all your passwords. Everyone eventually ends up with 5 billion accounts on different sites, and because you can never remember all the passwords, you end up using the same password everywhere. A better idea is this program. You remember a master password, and after that, the program remembers all your other passwords. Thus, you can have different passwords for each site. You can set it up so it knows which website is associated with an account. It can also automatically type in your username and password, thus making it a simple matter of a couple of key presses to log in to any website you need to.

uTorrent – You pirate stuff. Everyone does. Or maybe you don’t, but in a number of cases, bittorrent is the fastest way to download a file. So, you need a client. uTorrent is that client. It’s well featured, but not bloated, like a number of other clients, such as Azerus.

Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP) – So you’ve… acquired video files, but you can’t play them, because you don’t have the codec required. This is the solution.

Media Player Classic – admittedly, this hasn’t been updated in sometime. On the other hand, it’s much better than all version of WMP from 7-10, in my opinion. Additionally, it’s bundled in with CCCP, so if you get that, you also get this. Pretty much the only reason why I don’t use it very often anymore is because I like the glassy eye candy that is WMP11 on Vista.

A Desert Called Peace and Carnifex

These are a pair of books by Tom Kratman. He’s a bit loopy politically, and it shows somewhat in the books. These books are essentially a set of what ifs. In them he rails against radical Islam, transnationalism (ex: the UN, Amnesty International, et al). The basic setup is that of an alternate Earth of sorts. All the undesirables are shipped off to Terra Nova, and thence start a new life on a new planet. Of course, since they’re still just like us, they have all the problems we do. One of the biggest problems with these books is that Kratman fails to diverge from history enough. Yes, history repeats itself, but he has it repeating itself too closely, including the Japan analog getting bombed by the US analog.

That said, it’s some excellent mil SF. The descriptions of combat are fairly believable, and well written. He also includes what could be called nothing other than a political tract at the end of each book. It’s definitely not going to be to everyone’s taste. Especially those of highly liberal leanings.

Recommended with reservations.

Amazon links: A Desert Called Peace; Carnifex

Um, yeah

Obviously, I haven’t been keeping up with the posting schedule I had… let’s go with promised. Deal with it. Since my last post, a whole host of things has happened. In no particular order:

• Watched a bunch of anime.
• Went to my sister’s wedding.
• Got married.
• Heard my other sister got engaged.
• Moved to my own apartment.
• Went to Airman Leadership School.
• Started watching Zero Punctuation Reviews.
• Had nothing to do at work. Again.
• Moved to a different building on base.
• Discovered Sabaton (Review later)
• Started playing World in Conflict (Review later, again)
• Lusted over the iPhone more.
• Lusted over the Asus EEE.
• Lost a hard drive
• Gained a hard drive
• Forgotten passwords.

I’ll get better soon. Probably.