Archive for October, 2007

Happy Halloween

Posted by Rob in Photos on Wed Oct 31, 2007

This earned me a picture on the Muni this morning:

[photo]

Happy Halloween!

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My First Earthquake

Posted by Rob in Links on Wed Oct 31, 2007

I had always thought it would be exciting to be in an earthquake, but I was just in my first earthquake (ever) and it wasn’t that fun. Put me in the “sissies” column:

We were watching TV when Patrika suddenly just froze, and assumed an attitude like she always does when she’s unsure whether or not the phone or her pager or my cellphone is ringing. I paused the TV, then the house started shaking. It felt like a heavy truck or the subway was going by, except many times worse. The normal vibration one experiences from heavy traffic was made worse by the sensation of the floor moving back and forth sideways. Things on our shelves were rattling, although nothing fell off (this distinction is actually requested on various online earthquake reporting forms, so I guess things could have been much worse).

The whole thing lasted a very long 5 seconds, during which we were unsure whether to leave the house, or do nothing. And now I realize I don’t know what one is supposed to do in an earthquake. Do we stay inside under doorframes and such (and risk getting crushed by my refrigerator), or do we run outside screaming to escape the refrigerator, only to be electrocuted by falling power lines, or swallowed by holes opening up to the depths of hell?

As far as my first ‘quake goes, I had always thought that quakes were a San Francisco thing, with the ‘burbs of San Jose being relatively safe.

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Hyperion

Posted by Rob in Reading on Thu Oct 11, 2007

[book cover]

Dan Simmon’s Hyperion marks the first book I’ve completed completely on public-transit time, about 1½ work-weeks of commuting, about 50 minutes each way (total 1½ hours per day). It is the kind of science-fantasy space opera I like to read when I want to kill time.

On its own, the Hyperion has everything: romance, sci-fi military action, spaceships, alien races, and time travel. It is nominally a book about a group of seven people traveling together on a pilgrimage.

However, in the context of all the other books I’ve read (probably an unreasonable judgment to make), the book’s story uses the very clichéd device of having the travelers tell their stories to all the others, the series of stories punctuated by brief intermissions of travel incidents. By the time everyone has told their story, the book is over, and no forward progress has been made towards the end of the originally-offered plotline (you have to buy the sequel to get that).

Each of the stories is interesting to read, but I finished the book feeling more like I had read a bunch of novellas or short stories (The Bachman Books), instead of the expected epic space opera (The Stand).

But I do have the sequel (The Fall of Hyperion), and many bus rides ahead of me.

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TRENDnet TEW-432BRP

Posted by Rob in Computers on Sun Oct 7, 2007

[photo]

I bought the TRENDnet TEW-432BRP 802.11g router and wireless access point today. I am probably the last person in the world to finally upgrade from 802.11b to 802.11g.

The motivating reason is my 6-year-old wireless router doesn’t support PPTP VPN passthrough (PPTP is the little-used VPN protocol used at my work). At this point in time, an 802.11g wireless access point is hardly blog-worthy. But these are the blog-worthy points:

  • The power supply is the same powerstrip-friendly size as a cell phone charger; the plug only takes up one slot. FINALLY! That alone makes it a winner right there. The palm-sized router itself is also small. The Linksys WRT54G power supply still takes up three slots.
  • Only $3.00 at CompUSA this Columbus Day weekend, assuming all the mail-in rebates come through ($20 and $17 from CompUSA and TRENDnet). The purchase price of $40 is still cheaper than the normal $50 one pays for the Linksys WRT54G.

Other notable geek-friendly features:

  • It supports port-mapping. This means the router can be configured to expose SSH on some random port to the outside world, but forward those incoming connections to port 22 on my SSH server. Most home routers (like the Linksys WRT54G) only support basic port forwarding, where the public and private port must be the same.
  • Mixed-mode 802.11b/802.11g operation appears to work fine (I still have some 802.11b stuff running at home), and they don’t get in each other’s way. The Linksys WRT54G kept hanging when both types of devices were in operation at the same time.
  • It is theoretically hacker-friendly, being theoretically capable of running OpenWRT firmware. The new-generation Linksys/Cisco WRT54G models (all you can find at BestBuy, Office Depot, etc. these days) cannot run OpenWRT.

Update(s):

  • Dec 16 2007: $20 rebate check arrived.
  • Jan 2 2008: $17 Visa pre-paid debit card arrived.

Woo-hoo!

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