repak shawahb
vive semper, sed morére sæpe

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Mon, 31 Oct 2005

quality ringer material

I've always thought the best cell phone ringers were NES game songs (evidence: I've got a good couple dozen of 'em on my phone), and now the hotness gets hotter: the NES Sound Format is basically a wrapper around the 6502 code that drives the NES sound system; the result is a perfect facsimile of the original songs. The OCRemix website has a reasonable archive of NSFs, and you can find more laying around in various places. Moreover, Zophar has a (windows only) utility that converts them to MIDIs. Swoot.

Of course, that one isn't quite good enough, so I'm planning on writing my own soon enough...


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Scott wrote


OMG ringtones!!!!!

repak wrote

don't give me any of that guff
Having my cell phone play NES tunes is supah excerrent.

This is not at all the same thing as the latest 50 Cent bullshit. Feh.

-repak

Sun, 30 Oct 2005

doom, doooom, DOOOOOOOOOOOOOM

It has the Rock and the BFG. What else does it need?

OK, it also has plot holes big enough to pass a chick with whom George might have slept after getting drunk, but you shouldn't attempt to pick apart the marvellous tapestry of plot placed in front of you. Instead, appreciate the hotness of the chick, watch the Rock discover "a big fucking gun," and note the altogether-too-long "first person shooter" homage scene.

Yeah, maybe you should see it in the theatres. Don't worry, once you tell people you went and saw Mortal Kombat with Christopher Lambert, they're not gonna bother making fun of you for this.

Also, go listen to the Doom Song. Edit: Alida points out, rightly, that I failed to mention that she's the one who finally sat me down and made me watch Invader Zim. It's hawsome.


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gwax wrote

what're you talking about?!
I'm going to do this as an itemized list because it's more stupider that way:
Item 1: The first person part of the movie was too short.
Item 2: The Mortal Kombat movie has an awesome soundtrack.
Item 3: Fuck you!
Item 4: Gir pwnzez.
Item 5: Also pants.

Fri, 28 Oct 2005

the ultimate song

Gonna be in Boston again. Getting in Wednesday night, leaving Sunday night.

Woot. SiLabs is paying for it.

If you understand the origin of the title of this entry (yes, it has a specific, semi-sensical meaning), one thousand bajillion ego points to you.


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Sherv wrote

Have it be you!
This is probably wrong, but...

He didn't walk down the street.

WEEWEEWEEWEEWEEEWEEEWEEWEEEWEEWEEWEEEWEE

Gautham wrote


"More Than a Feeling"?

Awesome...

repak wrote

NICE
The Goat's got it.

"But can it play the ultimate song, Boston's "More Than a Feeling?"

-repak

Sherv wrote

I always forget which
Ah, the Foreigner (Journey?) belt.

repak wrote

foreigner
...but that's a different episode.

E-Dork is the one with the Ultimate Song reference, whereas yours is Revenge of the Mooninites, IIRC.

I don't need no instructions to know how to ROCK!

-repak

Mina wrote

aimunHmP
This has made my day. I wish all posigtns were this good.

nczkft wrote

pZXNjAlbvV
1XKREB coupptfkhkkv

tsstzgnzdqz wrote

aeQVEGyUuvUoztDP
9yNHSf swewkvhofppq

tjqgtrf wrote

oicrhhMxueLMbF
m1o0UT , [url=http://qdmuqpnbroqp.com/]qdmuqpnbroqp[/url], [link=http://pyscxftuplum.com/]pyscxftuplum[/link], http://lqmgeiungeen.com/

Thu, 27 Oct 2005

late for a very important... rendezvous

The story goes something like this: Charles Lelouch, a French filmmaker, released a short film called C'Etait Un Rendezvous in 1976, apparently in an attempt to answer the question "what do you do when you want to see Paris and only have 9 minutes and a Ferrari?" There are apparently no special effects, and the speed of the film is not altered in any way.

Holy crap.


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hippo wrote

awesome
check out a breakdown of the cars speed

http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2005/Rendezvous.shtml

and its route through paris on google maps

http://www.renegadetourist.com/rendezvous.html

Mon, 24 Oct 2005

now I get it, George

Remember when you were completely addicted to Project Gotham? Now I understand. As of Saturday, I'm hooked on Gran Turismo 4.

Also, Soul Calibur 3 is coming out tomorrow. My week is shot.


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jim wrote


GTA:LCS, Ratchet:Deadlocked, SSX on Tour... crap

Sherv wrote

don't forget
Haxity Hax Hax: Grand E-Masturbation World Tour 8073

repak wrote

not only that...
...but Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, the reviews of which I've only recently read and which are overwhelmingly positive (the best MGS, so they say).

Also, Robert Jordan's new book came out on the 11th, so in addition to GT4, SC3, and MGS3, I have Thucydides, Jordan, Choke, American Psycho, Breakfast of Champions, and the entire Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin.

Oh yeah, and I'm supposed to be writing a Shadowrun for next week, too.

-repak

dmax wrote

hominid
Robert Jordan is still writing? I wonder if he's ever going to finish that goddamn series. They were decent when I was 10 years old. I bet they haven't aged well...

Also, that sounds like a fucklot of good video games coming out. Good thing I have no way of playing them...

dmax wrote

retarded
I thought that "title" bar was like, my title, not the title of the post. Now I'm an idiot.

Fri, 21 Oct 2005

Jeff Goldblum...

...is watching you poop.


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hippo wrote


lol. he is so scary. half-fly half-human

dmax wrote

hominid
I printed that out and put it up in my bathroom... y'know, so it'd be true.

the interviewee has become the interviewer

Sweet! I did my first interview today. It was kind of cool.

Last night, while trying to come up with reasonable interview questions, I got to thinking about how an emitter follower can have a negative real input impedance when driving a capacitive load. In particular, I wanted to show that it was the case, so I busted out the small-signal model and started burning through some lead. It only took two pages of engineering paper, but I decided that it made an exceptionally poor interview question (because it was all math and no intuition).

Instead, I went with a simple question about BJT device physics and a basic switched-capacitor integrator.

The BJT question is cute and quick: say we have an NPN transistor. OK, now consider that a diode is just PN, so if I have two of them back-to-back, I have NP-PN—somewhat similar, but does it act like a transistor? No. Why? Ohmic contacts; more specifically, what we get is infinite recombination velocity in the base, which reduces β to 0. So what does that imply about the relationship between base doping and β? Lower doping gives higher beta, because it increases the time before the minority carriers we inject recombine. We could also change β by making the base region narrower.


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Thu, 20 Oct 2005

UNIX admin?

I hear tell that we're presently looking to hire a "very talented UNIX admin to help support the design engineering environment." UNIX, in this context, means a mix of Solaris and linux.

Anyone want a job in Austin?


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Wed, 19 Oct 2005

fully fluxified

Rodin, your wishes are coming true: there is a complete Aeon Flux collection slated for release on November 22.

Mine's already pre-ordered.

Yes, that's 3 Aeon Flux posts in 2 days. Shaddup.


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spammers, begone

I finally got sick enough of the comment spam to implement one of those authimage things. I just hacked it right into the writeback plugin (a 5ish-line change) and made a script to generate the images with PerlMagick. Simple. If you want to use my kludge in your blog, let me know and I'll help you get it set up.


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repak wrote

and yes...
...it does work.

Tue, 18 Oct 2005

greasemonkey to the rescue

Have you noticed that the Aeon Flux website is broken in Firefox? It is for me, anyway...

greasemonkey is an extension that lets you modify web pages using JavaScript. Until now I'd dismissed this as total crap, but it turned out to be useful here. Observe: 

(function () {
 t=document.getElementsByTagName("table");
 for(x=0;t[x];x++) {
                t[x].setAttribute("width",768);
  }
 t=document.getElementsByTagName("td");
 for(x=0;t[x];x++) {
                t[x].setAttribute("width",768);
 }
 t=document.getElementsByTagName("th");
 for(x=0;t[x];x++) {
                t[x].setAttribute("width",768);
 }
 t=document.getElementsByTagName("col");
 for(x=0;t[x];x++) {
                t[x].setAttribute("width",768);
 }
 t=document.getElementsByTagName("embed");
  for(x=0;t[x];x++) {
                t[x].setAttribute("width",768);
 }
t=document.getElementsByTagName("object");
 for(x=0;t[x];x++) {
                t[x].setAttribute("width",768);
 }
})();

The above is a large hammer for a small problem, I'll admit, but it does what it needs to do.


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flux capacitor

OK, not really. But I did find the entirety of "Aeon Flux 1995," a two-DVD set that came out in (you guessed it) 1995. It's encoded as divx, but it still tastes good to my palate.

If you want it, let me know. You can either download it from me (1.4 gigs, so it'll take a while) or I can do the old burn shuffle. Or, if you're in the Cambridge area, talk to George, who will have it shortly on account of torrenting it.

"What doesn't kill us makes us stranger."


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Sun, 16 Oct 2005

certainly no Samus Aran

A bunch of us went and saw Domino last night. Yeah, she's a bounty hunter, and yeah, she's pretty hot, but no, this movie wasn't as cool as I'd hoped it would be. Lessons learned: wait for video, and always trust the tomato.

All was not lost, however: the Aeon Flux trailer looked pretty friggin sweet. I also want to go see Serenity at some point; maybe I'll just wait for video...


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gwax wrote

Firefly
If you're going to see Serenity, I highly recommend watching through Firefly first. Firefly is a great show and you can easily grab the episodes on DVD or torrent.

repak wrote

thanks man
will do.

Also, DOOM. That'll be good, I hope.

-repak

Sherv wrote

Doom, good?
HAHAHAHAHA

Gautham wrote


How was Christopher Walken in Domino? That was the only reason we even considered watching it..."Nunchucks!"

Oh yeah, follow George's advice on Firefly. Serenity totally kicked ass, but it wouldn't have been quite as good without knowing all the backstory.

repak wrote

Walken was
cool, but underrepresented. He only had about 10 minutes of screen time, but during that time he was pretty great.

Like I said, solid rental material.

May wrote


I agree w/ everyone else...see Serenity, after watching at least a few episodes of firefly. I could have told you Domino would be bad. Doom probably will be too. uh-duh.

Thu, 13 Oct 2005

rally addenda

For those of you who are fans of a certain Xbox driving game, another car which is comparable to the STi and the Evo is the Nissan Skyline GT-R (though both my Subee and the Evo are somewhat faster). The GT-R is not, nor has it ever been available in America (and why the hell not!?), but it would appear that the Infinity G35 (the US-spec Skyline equivalent, after a fashion) might some day be made in GT-R trim. Wouldn't that be hot?

Take a gander over at rsportscars.com for more on these and other cars you can take off of totally sweet jumps.


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Gautham wrote


You ever play Colin McRae Rally? My cousin, who's a racing nut, tells me that it's awesome.

What games are you playing nowadays? Besides those damn MMORPGS... :)

repak wrote

off the crack
...err, mmorpgs. They're dead to me.

Nowadays I'm mostly splitting time between fantasy football and Shadowrun.

-repak

road rally

Dagny, as I've named my STi, belongs to a class of cars known as rally racers. On the US auto market, only two other cars, the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution and the Audi S4, are similarly classified. Of those two, the S4 is the much milder-looking, lacking the gigantic spoiler and bigass (yes, that's a technical term) hood scoop.

Last night (really, this morning) driving home from Mike's, I happened to spot on the road ahead of me a fellow rally car driver piloting his Mitsubishi Evo. By happenstance we both took the same exit, and the same turn onto Southwest Parkway, a several-mile stretch of mostly-straight road. Having spotted each other's telltale "shopping cart" wings, we had no choice in the matter: it was pedal to the metal "lessee whose rocket is faster." After hanging more or less neck-and-neck for a couple miles at 120+ MPH, we both slowed down and drew abreast for a "slow" 80ish MPH conversation through open windows. We exchanged thumbs ups, a bit of the old "sweet car" kind of stuff, then waved good-bye just before he came upon his turn.

A single-serving rally buddy. Cool.


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Jason wrote


http://www.realautosport.com/nb_rallycars_world.htm

A New Beetle is also the right size for rallying, having a very short wheelbase. My 4 cylinder couldn't do it, but I'm sure the 1.8T would be better.

Ryan wrote

US Rally Information
The Subaru Impreza WRX STi and the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution are the only Rally cars for sale in the US. Audi has not officially supported Rally efforts since the late 1980's. There are a few other Rally cars available in the US as well, although now being sold as used, including the GC8 chassis (WRX chassis) Subaru Impreza 2.5RS (1998-2001) and Toyota Celica All-Trac. And Rally is not just for the turbocharged, AWD monsters from Subaru and Mitsubishi but is also for the 2WD Rallyists driving everything from Dodge SRT-4's to Volkswagen's.

And for everyone who is interested in Rally, it is one of the only motorsports in the world where the race cars have to be production based machines and have to be street legal. It is truly a "drive what you race" motorsport and in 2003 earned the title of "World's Most Popular Live Motorsport" with recorded live viewership of ~1 billion live viewers per event. That was the first time in history that a motorsport had more live viewers than Formula 1.

Rally in the US is alive and US Rally sanctioning body's are looking to begin bringing the US to the level of the rest of the world. Please follow the links below for more information.


http://rally.subaru.com
http://www.specialstage.com
http://www.rally-america.com
http://www.nasarallysport.com

Wed, 12 Oct 2005

data heaven

Yesterday I happened to stumble across a couple bittorrents on isohunt which together comprised a nearly exhaustive collection of Shadowrun books. As Stormy would say, "Holy bejeezus!"

So yeah. If you want me to burn you a DVD of all of 'em (upwards of 4 Gb, all told), let me know. So far, one's on the way to George, and one will live over at the Man House (wow... can you believe manhouse.org wasn't taken? It is now...)


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Fri, 07 Oct 2005

such dynamic range!

Less than a week ago, it was over 105 degF here. Today, it's been around 52. A factor of two in a matter of days... wow.


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gwax wrote

Not quite Mr. Science
By my figuring 314K to 284K is more like a factor of about 1.11.

repak wrote

eat...
...a dick.

But yeah, you're right. Damnit.

Sherv wrote

actually,
you're both right. On the Kelvin scale, the change is about a factor of 1.11. On the Fahrenheit scale, the change is about a factor of 2. If you use the Celsius, you find that the change is from 11.1 to 40.6, a factor of about 3.66. And if you use the dreaded Rankine, the change is from 511.67 to 564.67, a factor of 1.10.

Scale is what's what.

jim wrote

uhh
No, only George is right. Temperature is absolute, otherwise it makes no sense to talk about a "factor" of anything. And the factor is the whether you use Kelvin or Rankine. By your argument I can define a scale that's just like Fahrenheit but has zero at 52.0001 degF and OMGS, look, the temperature changed by a factor of -529999!

gwax wrote

I will not stand for such slanderous remarks
The Rankine scale is awesome! You take back your harsh words! Do it!

Sherv wrote

bullpucky!
Jim, you philanderer, you and I both know that, although temperature is absolute, we do not measure it absolutely. I will end you.

Wed, 05 Oct 2005

all you ever wanted to know about motor oil...

...can be found at Bob is the oil guy.

Wow.


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Jim wrote

Uhhh
I thought you said that everything you ever wanted to know about motor oil was at http://motorcycleinfo.calsci.com/Oils1.html

Yep, just checked, that's what you said.

repak wrote

I did, but...
...now you want to know more.

Tue, 04 Oct 2005

caffeine of the ottomans

Yesterday, Marissa gave me a superb birthday present: a Turkish coffee pot and some delicious coffee to go with it. I'll need practice to become a real pro, but I'd say my first try was a success.

My grandmother (on my father's side) used to make this stuff when I was little. I was still in the yummy phase (I owe you a dime, Hippo), so I didn't really appreciate it, but damn is it good stuff.


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hippo wrote


hehe keep it. whose marissa? nudge nudge wink wink

May wrote


Ditto. Who is this girl that gives great birthday presents?

How to make turkish coffee wrote

you will need a recipe for it
Hey;

I hope you get better on making turkish coffee.

Here is a turkish coffee recipe(http://www.turkishcoffee.us/) which will help you make more delicious turkish coffee.

I hope you get a pro asap.
Thanks




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