Friday, February 24, 2006

Good Samaritan Loses His Top

Jaguar with top cut offThe Jaguar X Type pictured at right was put up for auction as a salvage vehicle this past month. The posting from the auction tells the tale of a good samaritan whose efforts went quite vigorously punished. You gotta feel for the guy. I can only imagine the scene as he jumped up and down, probably held back by the police while his car was being cut in two.

Given ebay's penchant for pulling down listings shortly after they close, I've reproduced it below for posterity.


JAGUAR X TYPE 2.O D - DAMAGED SALVAGE

THIS VEHICLE HAS COME TO US VIA AN INSURANCE COMPANY, IT HAS TRAVELLED 32,000 MILES AND IS ONE NOT VERY HAPPY OWNER FROM NEW.

THE VEHICLE IS REGISTERED AS A CAT C AND REGISTRATION DOCUMENT NEEDS TO BE APPLIED FOR.

THIS VEHICLE WAS DAMAGED BY THE FIRE BRIGADE (MUST TELL THE STORY)

THIS VEHICLE WAS TRAVELLING ALONG AND IN FRONT OF HIM THERE WAS AN ACCIDENT, HE PULLED OVER TO THE HARD SHOULDER TO ASSIST THE INJURED PERSON FROM THEIR CAR AND PLACED THE PERSON ONTO THE BACK SEAT OF HIS FOR COMFORT WHILST EMERGENCY SERVICES ARRIVED.

ONCE AMBULANCE AND FIRE BRIGADE ARRIVED ON SCENE, THE INJURED PARTY SUDDENLY COMPLAINED OF BACK INJURYS, SO THE FIRE BRIGADE KINDLY REMOVED THE ROOF OF THE INNOCENT BYSTANDERS CAR (I BET HE WON'T EVER STOP TO HELP AGAIN).

ANYWAY VEHICLE NOW HAS A REMOVABLE ROOF, SEATS HAVE BEEN REMOVED AND ARE IN BITS, BOOT LID HAS BEEN PRICED OPEN AS OWNER HAD PERSONAL BELONGINGS INSIDE.

ALL DOORS ARE PRESENT, BUT SOME HAVE DAMAGE, NO CARE HAS BEEN TAKEN IN REMOVING THEM, DOOR HINGES HAVE BEEN CUT.

BELIEVE IT OR NOT THIS VEHICLE STARTS AND DRIVES, BUT IS NOT DRIVE AWAY.

TOP SECTION OF DASHBOARD HAS SMALL MARKS AND TEARS FROM THE GLASS.

PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT THE ROOF HAS BEEN REMOVED BY FIRE BRIGADE SHEERS, AND THEIR IS OBVIOUSLY WIRING THAT NEEDS REAIRING, LOTS OF BITS AND PIECES, PLEASE TRY AND VIEW VEHICLE AS TO BE SURE WHAT YOU ARE BIDDING ON.


Via Random Acts of Reality.

Awesome Multi-Touch LED Sensor in Action

Multi-touch LED display in actionJeff Han, in the NYU Department of Computer Science has a wonderfully enticing video of a multiple-touch sensor built using the bidirectional capabilities of an array of LEDs. The video is enchanting and worth repeated viewing. The mind boggles at the possibilities. Tragically the minimalist presentation leaves us wondering as to many of the practical aspects of constructing the array. Casual observation shows it is composed of 256 individual sensing elements.

This technical report by Paul Dietz, Darren Leigh and William Yerazunis of Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs offers all the practical knowledge one needs to actually construct something like this. What I wouldn't give for some time to play with such things.

World's Largest Windows Error Message

Times Square Windows ErrorHere we have a wonderful example of why you don't run a general purpose OS in an embedded environment. Adam Gaffin was visiting New York and came across the world's largest windows error message when he was visiting the famous Times Square.


...across the square, I saw it: the world's largest Windows error message - on a two-story high e-billboard (I guess everything really is bigger in New York). It was the only billboard in the entire square with absolutely no movement - since the PC running it had obviously frozen.


If this were a framebuffer on a unix system, perhaps controlled via SDL, this sort of thing simply wouldn't occur. I can only imagine how much time on a jumbo video display costs to buy. I'm sure that a few hours of lost broadcast is worth far more than a linux box.

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Oonts Oonts Oonts Oonts...

Half of a Ferrari This is an awesome story of how Stefan Eriksson's Ferrari was torn in half by a utility pole while he was "just a passenger" (who happened to have a BAC of 0.09). The tragedy truly is the loss of a beautiful Enzo.


Eriksson said he was a passenger in the Ferrari, which he said was being driven by a German acquaintance he knew only as Dietrich.

...

Eriksson told authorities that "Dietrich" ran up a hill toward the canyon road and disappeared. Brooks said detectives are far from convinced they have the whole story.


I'm just glad that Stephan had the sense to hand over the keys to a $1,000,000 US car (660 BHP!) when he was too tipsy to drive. Though one must blame the alcohol for his failure to inquire as to who, exactly this Dietrich was. An honest mistake.

Frankly, if someone did that to my Enzo, I would not be sitting on the side of the road when the Sherrif rolls up. I'd be still in the front seat punching "Dietrich" like a pinata until a new Ferrari falls out.

Monday, February 20, 2006

1920x1200 Multi Head Working

I've finally got my multi-head setup back. I went from a triple 21"@1600x1200 plus a single 1920x1200 to merely three 1920x1200 flat panel displays. It took a ton of doing and nearly eight weeks of effort, but I now have two nvidia 7800 GT boards driving two Apple 23 inch cinema displays plus a single Apple 23 inch Cinema Display HD. (Two of the new aluminum ones, one of the old plastic ones.)

Bad X2 CPU All Along

Well, after fighting with my motherboard, ram, power supply and bios for two long weeks, I finally determined that the problem was, in fact, the CPU itself. I had a defective AMD Athlon 4400+ X2. This being my first AMD box, I had no spare to swap in its place to verify it worked. I ended up purchasing a second power supply, using the ram out of my old computer, heck I even switched keyboards thinking it could be some freaky effect of my ancient Kinesis Essential. Once I had essentially a brand new system with a different power supply, different memory and a different motherboard that exhibited the exact same symptoms, I knew it had to be the CPU.

This is probably the biggest benefit of going with an integrated system--they're less likely to suffer from a single fault that becomes very difficult to diagnose. Having planned on going SLI, at least I had two video cards to work with while trying to fix it.

Saturday, February 18, 2006

Delicious Links 2006-02-18

caskey's del.icio.us bookmarks for 2006-02-18

  • People on Food --
    A wonderful collection of photos depicting miniature people exploring foodscapes. The blog page isn't the original artist's (and is in russian).
    Tagged as: art cool paralipsis photography photos pictures

Monday, February 6, 2006

Delicious Links 2006-02-06

caskey's del.icio.us bookmarks for 2006-02-06

  • Free Online Graph Paper / Grid Paper PDFs --
    This is a brilliant web site which contains PDF generators for a large number of different types of graph paper. I may never buy graph paper again.
    Tagged as: architecture art bookbinding cool paralipsis rpg software tools utilities web

Sunday, February 5, 2006

Suspect A8N-SLI Deluxe was bad

When it comes to my efforts to build an AMD based system, I'm pretty much back where I started.

Here's what I can reliably reproduce on my A8N-SLI:

Using a stick of ancient DDR ram (from a ca. 2003 box) IF I clear CMOS and cold-boot, bypassing bios setup (bios defaults loaded, F1 to continue), I can boot off of a floppy. I've successfully booted a Dos 6.22 floppy, tomsrtbt and memtest86+. Dos was perfectly happy (and quite fun to play with). Tomsrtbt worked fine for several hours, even with a system load of 2.00 via a dd of /dev/urandom into /dev/null. And memtest ran through four passes w/o error.

HOWEVER, a warm boot (C-A-DEL), would elicit the same hard lock right where I'd expect the BIOS logo to appear. For all purposes it seems to be hard locking during post. If I pull power to the system and turn it on cold, it boots fine.

Friday, February 3, 2006

No love on the Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe

Finally giving up on my video upgrade woes, I decided that they only way to drive my three flat panels is a new video card that uses the PCIx slot format. Alas, this means a new motherboard. New motherboard means new CPU/RAM/Power Supply, and at that point, you're only a couple bucks from a complete system. Therefore I went to a reliable vendor and ordered up a complete set of parts. This was the start of my troubles.