Month: June 2008

Solar-barbecued chicken

This sounds interesting.
As a sidenote, Thailand is more “green” in some ways than first world countries. For instance, they sell B5 diesel here at major gas station chains – B5 is 5% biodiesel. And Hi-octane gasoline (95) is all but gone around these parts, supplanted by its E20 (20% methanol) equivalent. Whether this is truly better for the planet in the long run or not is up for debate. It sure isn’t better for some older cars!
I met a fellow who has made a small-scale biodiesel production facility in his garage; this is an area I am interested in.
I also want to try building a solar chicken barbecue array – as cheaply as possible. Maybe I’ll attempt an Archimedes’ death ray out of bits of broken mirror.

Up and downtime

Events
(most recent first)
* 2008-05-12 20:48:53 : back_up
* 2008-05-12 20:26:41 : down
* 2008-05-01 08:47:43 : back_up
* 2008-05-01 08:23:32 : down
* 2008-04-23 16:44:38 : back_up
* 2008-04-23 16:23:35 : down
* 2008-04-23 11:04:06 : back_up
* 2008-04-23 09:42:43 : down
* 2008-04-23 07:25:46 : back_up
* 2008-04-23 06:22:13 : down
* 2008-04-22 21:58:23 : back_up
* 2008-04-22 21:38:37 : down
* 2008-04-15 09:32:48 : back_up
* 2008-04-15 09:07:26 : down
* 2008-04-14 20:01:38 : back_up
* 2008-04-14 19:15:55 : down
* 2008-04-13 19:27:38 : back_up
* 2008-04-13 18:33:51 : down
* 2008-04-12 10:52:25 : back_up
* 2008-04-12 10:20:14 : down
* 2008-04-09 15:04:10 : back_up
* 2008-04-09 13:55:31 : down
* 2008-04-07 07:28:48 : back_up
* 2008-04-07 04:49:12 : down
* 2008-04-06 16:21:53 : back_up
* 2008-04-06 15:56:56 : down
* 2008-04-06 12:47:18 : back_up
* 2008-04-06 12:24:23 : down
* 2008-04-03 23:34:56 : back_up
* 2008-04-03 23:13:55 : down
* 2008-04-03 16:07:12 : back_up
* 2008-04-03 15:23:11 : down
* 2008-04-03 13:44:23 : back_up
* 2008-04-03 13:21:35 : down
* 2008-04-02 16:10:30 : back_up
* 2008-04-02 15:45:28 : down
* 2008-04-02 13:13:02 : back_up
* 2008-04-02 12:46:49 : down
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Between this, the big Dreamhost billing escapade, and general site sluggishness, I’m thinking of jumping ship and already adjusted my billing plan to monthly payments in anticipation (when oh when will I have time to do this?)
It is such a pain in the ass to have to change webhosts again… Perhaps some company will figure out how to do it right some day…
The rest of my uptime reports are saved for posterity after the jump:

Continue reading “Up and downtime” →

hisashiburi no kabe

So in Japan-speak, a bunch of us ran headfirst into a cultural wall yesterday, and it was a rather bracing slap in the face after having conquered so many other challenges in the semi-distant past…
We went to the sports college next to my university, most famous for being the alma mater of the “Jackie Chan of Thailand” (Tony Jaa), in order to start a thrice-weekly regimen of swimming in their Olympic-sized pool. So we paid 40 Baht (adult price, about $1.20) admission fee, and were promptly rejected entry int o the pool for “not wearing swimming suits.” But the thing is, we were wearing swimming suits. So it ended up being a huge argument with us on one side showing mesh liners and insisting that these were, indeed, pieces of swimwear, and some hick-ass PE teacher on the the other side insisting that they were not (I’m convinced this backward inaka motherfucker thinks that mesh liners are just built-in underwear.).
Anyways.
We fought the law, and the law declared that only skin-tight swimsuits are suitable for use in this particular pool, i.e., the law won. Fags. What kind of sickos want to see my fat ass in a speedo, anyway?
P.S. I must admit it feels kind of dirty cursing on the same page I post the baby’s photos. I guess I’ll just have to pretend he isn’t looking at me.

Crude/Elegant S-Video connector hack for solving B&W output on Nvidia graphic cards

The title basically sums it up. I think it’s really stupid that Nvidia hasn’t fixed the TV output issues for several years, through tens of driver upgrades. Anyway, I tore my hair out screwing around with the Nvidia Control Panel after upgrading to the newest GeForce drivers (175.16) completely killed my TV output. Downgrading to version 169.21 drivers restored output, but it was – you guessed it! – frustratingly devoid of any color.
I tried so many things to fix this, I don’t even want to remember it, so to make a long story short, if you have similar problems, try the hack described on these pages: