Tag: tech

Technical victories

First, I finally got my Powerbook to stop miscellaneously slowing to a crawl several times an hour, and also got it to stop hanging on “Open” dialogs. The solutions were 1) completely and utterly disable Spotlight and 2) turn off syncing the iDisk. So I had to disable two useful features of my operating system because they were buggy and painful, but at least I’m not swearing at top volume every 15 minutes.

Second, Jeff Eaton was kind enough to post on his blog the solution to a horrible Photoshop problem I’d been having. All my pictures would look lovely in Photoshop and then get washed out and crappy as soon as I saved them as web-optimized jpegs to put on Flickr, etc. I couldn’t figure out what the hell was happening, and it was making me something something. Turns out there was a bad preference in the “view” menu in Photoshop under “proofing”. End of problem.

Man, it’s like taking a rock out of each shoe.

Free Opera browser day

party

If you’ve wanted to try the Opera browser and you want the no-ad-banners version for free, today only you can get it. Get the Windows version at download.com or the Mac version at versiontracker.com, and if you use a unix version you no doubt know where to get it.

I’m going to try it on Mac again. I really liked it on Windows and Linux before.

Edit: Wow! I can browse my lame-ass HR website with it!

Then go to this Opera.com page and get your reg code.

via Sachmet.

mac tech question

Mac heads –

My shiny new Powerbook is a delight, but it does something that I hadn’t noticed previously. I’ll be working along typing or browsing and suddenly it will just grind to a halt doing something like updating articles in netnewswire or starting a program or copying files. I get the beach ball in that app, whatever it is, and nothing happens for quite a while, maybe 15 to 30 seconds. If I can see load it’s normal, and the machine has enough RAM, and doesn’t appear to be obviously I/O bound (no disk grinding).

Any ideas what’s causing this periodic hangup? It’s so frustrating, especially since the machine itself is so fast and everything else about it is great.

HOWTO: Wireless Internet at 17th St. Diedrich Coffee

Original author: substitute

The Diedrich coffee houses offer free wireless internet access. When access fails, it is often the result of the wireless access point failing to give out addresses and other information. This document describes the procedure for connecting during such service failures.

  1. Introduction

    The arrival of free wireless Internet access at the 17th St. Costa Mesa Coffeehouse was welcomed, but reliability has been spotty. In most cases, a failure to connect is the result of the wireless router’s DHCP server behaving unpredictably. One can see a strong signal, but cannot get to any Internet sites, and service that has been working properly can suddenly stop. To make matters more confusing, other laptops will have connected just fine but not your particular one. Here’s how to fix that.

  2. Document History

    This is the first issue of this document, version 0.01, August 2005.

  3. How to use this HOWTO

    If you cannot reach the Internet but have a wireless signal, follow the instructions in this document. If that does not work, you are S.O.L.

  4. General Information about Wireless Networking at Diedrich Coffee

    The Diedrich coffeehouses offer free 802.11b wireless access to the Internet. They do this by installing open access points made by Linksys, which are connected via NAT to the DSL router; upstream is handled by Covad Communications. In theory, anyone with a standards-compliant wireless card can easily connect to the network and enjoy Internet access along with a beverage or pastry. In practice, it is common to connect and find the network inexplicably unable to route out to the Internet.

  5. Network Configuration when DHCP is not available

    Open your operating system’s network configuration program. On the Mac OS X system this is the Network Preferences Pane in System Preferences; on Windows it will be the Network Control Panel. Other operating systems are not discussed here, since the general information below should be sufficient for users of Unix-like systems.

    Find the screen for your wireless adapter’s TCP/IP connection settings. Change the configuration method from “DHCP” to “Manual”. Insert the following settings:

    IP Address: 192.168.199.200 (see note 1 below)
    Netmask: 255.255.255.0
    Router Address: 192.168.199.1
    DNS Server Addresses: 64.105.132.250 64.105.166.122

    Note 1: If this does not work, choose an address ending in 201, 202, 203 etc. until your operating system stops telling you that the address is already in use.

    Make sure that you have applied these new network settings. At this point you should be able to browse the web, read email, etc. If you still cannot do so, go back to your network settings and change everything back to DHCP the way it was before. You are S.O.L.

  6. Glossary of Terms used in this document

    DHCP: DHCP stands for Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. It is a system by which a pool of Internet addresses can be handed out as needed to client computers by a server. A client set to connect via DHCP sends out requests in a predefined manner to the server, which then returns the appropriate configuration information to the client.

    802.11b: The 802.11b standard defines a wireless network access method with a maximum network throughput of 11 MB/sec. It is of the “Wi-Fi” wireless access standards the most available and most compatible.

    S.O.L.: Shit outa luck. Go do something else today.

  7. Acknowledgments

    I would like to thank Lauren Maddox for letting me rant at her tonight about how messed up the wireless is there.

  8. Copyright

    The Diedrich Coffee 17th St. Coffee House Wireless Internet HOWTO is © Copyright 2005 substitute.

    This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the: Free Software Foundation, Inc., 675 Mass Ave, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.

Two words: goatse opportunity.

I’m sitting at D’s right now and there’s a tech guy here installing things. A 37″ flatscreen LG monitor is up on the wall with the root@localhost prompt. There are driver messages all over the screen. He looks sad. It’s like a trip back to 1996, when everything was done by hand. Apparently the mode lines aren’t quite right.

Soon this will be one of those scrolling news/sports/ads/bullshit things on the wall; the others have them mostly already. It’s not nearly as bad as a TV, though.

Linux kernel 2.6.10 on Redhat Fedora core release 3 (Heidelberg). ATI driver. Ça ne marche pas. I wish him luck.

overdrawn

Watching the iDisk sync on my Mac, i’m alarmed to see it syncing “item 27 of 26”.

Later on, I’m still more alarmed to see it syncing “item 1 of 0”.

This is about the dark matter that makes up the unseen universe, isn’t it?

Today’s amusing email

First, I received a very important swank invite from Sun Microsystems to their Executive Summit for Wireless and Entertainment at SFMOMA, business/cocktail attire! 7-11 pm! I bet there will be big shrimp! This rules! Then, shortly afterwards, I get the item below. Awkwaaaaaard! Name of sender removed because I’ve been there and I don’t want to be shitty to the poor guy.

From: [REDACTED]
Date: June 23, 2005 11:31:13 AM PDT
To: me
Subject: APOLOGY: Reminder: JavaOne Wireless & Entertainment Summit

Dear substitute:

Please accept our apologies as you were recently sent the below message in error. Sun Microsystems deeply regrets any inconvenience this may have caused. We are taking action to update our processes to ensure that this does not happen again.

Thank you,
Sun Microsystems

JavaOne Mobile & Entertainment Executive Summit Dinner
An Exclusive Event from Sun Microsystems
You are confirmed to attend:
Topic: Mobile & Entertainment Executive Summit Dinner
Date: Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Time: 7pm – 11pm (Reception 7pm, Dinner 8pm)
Location: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
 151 Third Street (between Mission and Howard Streets) (view map)
Dress: Business/Cocktail
For additional questions, contact [REDACTED[

We look forward to seeing you there.
Best Regards,
[REDACTED]
Vice President of Foo, Bar, and Baz

GOD DAMN SON OF PIECE OF MOTHERSHITTER SLUT SACK BITCH DICK CRAP CAN

1. My DSL provider gets an area-wide outage

2. Unrelated to this, my domain registrar sends out notification to everyone that my domains point to dyndns.org. They don’t. I disappear from the Internet.

3. Work pages me to help them manage users on Mac OS X on the command line which is mind-bogglingly stupid and complex. Thank you, NextStep. Thank you, NetInfo. FUCK YOU, STEVE.

4. I call support for #2 and it says they’re close and leave a message, but instead I get hold music and can’t leave a message. I then leave an email support request marked SUPER FUCKING URGENT YOU FUCKS and get a call back to my cell later, which I can’t answer because T-Mobile’s coverage includes all of California except my house. They don’t leave a message.

5. GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR FUCKING WAR. DO YOU SPEAK IT, MOTHERFUCKER?