borking videocard and lockpicktools
So… I’ve been busy the last couple of days… but another reason for not updating is that I thought I was without a workstation…
My videocard borked out and after searching my employers’ warehouse (with a gazillion videocards, but I’m a little picky I guess…) I didn’t find anything I’d like… So I ordered a card online and it should’ve arrived today but didn’t… So, then I took another look at my old videocard and fixed it… for now…
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Here you can see what I did, I guess the old Zalman heatpipe-cooler got a little loose on the core of the videocard, and that’s why it borked out… When I got my current motherboard, I had to change the position of the big heatsink on the back of the videocard, because it got in the way of a heatsink on my motherboard… (...if you’re really interested, you can find pics on this projectpage of mine: another dual Xeon…) Oh, I did put in 2 extra modules of 512MB, making it a total of 2GB, weeeeeeeee!
Anyways, this afternoon (since the mailman didn’t bring me my new videocard) I decided to take another look at my old one and deassembled the Zalman-set and put it back on, with some fresh thermal grease… And for now I left the back heatsink off, as long as I’m not going to play Q3 Arena I should be fine for the weekend…
But… what did the mailman bring?
ADDED:
§ 3002a. Nonmailability of locksmithing devices (thanks William!)
...and this is what the envelope looked like, with the locksmithing devices inside… probably a coincedence, but I can’t recall I ever received an envelope opened up this much (I was able to take the devices out pretty easily…)
Anyways, this is what was inside the envelope, ...
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these beautiful tools! :D I’m busy getting a little experience in lockpicking this weekend…
What is Lockpicking?
Lockpicking is the art of opening a lock without damaging it or using a key. This ‘opening without damage’ can be done in various ways, but is generally done with special tools for that purpose.
I did attend a workshop at the WhatTheHack-festival and was able to pick my first lock right there… But even with the amount of hours I’m going to put into this, this weekend, I will be quite novice in this… I’m sure ;-)
Oh, and why you may ask? Well, for a new article I’m writing, that’s why…
Oh(2), and what videocard did I order?
Actually, it’s not new at all, but a very old one, especially considering it’s a videocard and they tend to pump out a new generation of videocards every 6 months or so…
Anyways, this is the one I ordered. Instead of the $2000 in 2001, I paid EUR 29 for it… and it’s new, never used, bulk packaged, probably old stock from some OEM-manufacturer or such I reckon… I’m gonna see if it’s capable of normal desktop-usage anno 2006… It’s an exotic card, AGP pro, dual DVI, no DirectX whatsoever(I like that! it’s a feature!) and with stereo-connector for… shutterglasses! (which I have…)
...to be continued…
Beatles/Beasties mashups
dj BC has released a second album of “Beastles” (Beatles/Beastie Boys) mashups called Let It Beast. It’s one hell of an album and next to that I so enormously like the fact it’s just up for download, no DRM, no Sony, no nothing! Just like it should be! You should support it any way you can, regardless if you like it or not! :-) (imho of course)...
Although, the site of dj BC is down at the moment, and the downloadlinks/mirrors over at Boing Boing don’t seem to work also. So I guess it’s pretty popular and that’s a good thing!
So, how to get it? Do like me and use this torrent, I used it and I share it now (probably for a long time).
Enjoy!
related:
Grey Tuesday
partly related post about The Grey Album (and for Dutch readers, never mind the hilarious comment…)
Grey Album mirror over at retecool
first article in print, more stickers, etc...
I had a wonderful day in Amsterdam yesterday. First of all I was over at Mediamatic, for some *coughcough* investigation on a future article *^_^*
I was sitting at a desk, next to Nadya, whom I knew from the Maker Faire and BarCamp (which was held at Mediamatic)... and next to getting my mind on some *coughcough* serious stuff, Nadya gave me some stickers to put on my iBook :-)
Later that day I went to the office of BRIGHT, for their one year anniversary and introduction of bright nr. 7… also with an article of mine, weeeeeee! (never mind that picture, promise?)
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So, here it is, my first article in print *^_^*
I must say they did a wonderful job with the graphics and stuff, it looks very nice (imho). So, if you’re in Holland, go out and buy a BRIGHT!
Chances are I’m going to do a write-up about the hand-crank-charging of the eMate. It’s not quite sure where that’s gonna be put online, but as soon as it’s finished, I’ll link to it from here (if it’s going to be somewhere else than on this page, that is). I did promise myself this, for now, is the last hand-crank-project (for a while at least), I don’t want to end up as some hand-crank-charge-one-trick-pony ;-)
Oh, and of course… the stickers!:
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The skull-sticker is one awesome design from nijne, I’m totally delighted with it :D, I also put it on my phone
...and yes, that’s a plazes-sticker… ain’t that cool?
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links:
B R I G H T 1 jaar (tagged in my Flickr-album)
MediaMatic (tagged in my Flickr-album)
Sony Revolution Interactive Table
Yeees… yet another interactive table… ;-)
This time it’s a Sony, at least, that’s what the link said I came across. I don’t have any other information on when/where this is or who made it… but one thing’s for sure, it’s cool! pretty damn cool if you ask me…
click any one of the images to go to the video
It all looks like a table with predefined places where you can put these magic transparant squares (called ‘timemachine’ for instance). If you have a selection of these transparant squares to choose from, you can continually change your table to your specific needs at that time… Make it a video-editing table or a shopping table or well, whatever you want… I like it! ;-)
You can find the video overhere (darlugo.com)
today i am a pear...
click to read about the foody internet subculture! (*^^*)
meet
purple pussy
betty bunny
roofie racoon
foxy fox
poopy puppy
shelly squirrel
scarlet skunk
spooky the scary goth
they’re slightly lesbian, violent, moody and totally hilarious
read about their adventures at purplepussy.net
i actually took the time (yes it was sunday and it kept me from being bored :p) to read them all, and i have to admit these characters made me LOL several times.
roofie is a slightly depressed nerd, with a NES obsession, and her dream is to be a damsel in distress in a videogame someday :D
anyway i won’t spoil anymore, just read the damn comics, they’re totally awesome <3
Proactive Desk II: a force-feedback table
I keep having this obsession with interactive tables somehow… (maybe it’s time to build my own :D)
Anyways, now there’s a force-feedback interactive table! (this keeps getting better and better all the time! I’m serious!)
It seems there was an Proactive Desk One, which could only apply force on a single object on it. But this one can simultaneously apply different forces on multiple physical objects on it.
click images to go to the website
click image to go to the corresponding pdf-file
my pdf-reader didn’t do a very good job on this file (of which you can see a partly result above), but being in Japanese, I guess I wouldn’t be able to understand a lot of it. (absolutely no pun intended)
Atari 2600 graphics goodness
Imagine what you could do with a circuit-bent Atari 2600.
Multiply that by a thousand. That’s what you can do with the jit.atari2600 external for Jitter.
(btw, jitter-link is down at the moment of writing, try the web.archive.org-link if it still is down…)
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About Jitter:
Jitter is a set of 135 brilliant video, matrix, and 3D graphics objects for the Max graphical programming environment. The Jitter objects extend the functionality of MaxMSP with flexible means to generate and manipulate matrix data
Wow, running an Atari-2600 emulator inside this matrix-data manipulator…
And talking about Atari 2600’s… how about this ancient link? If you like Atari 2600 graphics, how about turning Quake-III (also ancient already) into some Atari 2600 3D game :D:D:D
(if you can find the map that is…)
Before:
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After:
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first link via, second link is from my bookmarks
no rest for the bored...
i know i blogged about the amiga emulator before,
but say you’re feeling lazy and/or bored and you’re not willing to install an emulator whatsoever…
then i’ve found the perfect website for you!
at game-oldies.com
perfect for the lazy sunday afternoons :D
the bitter*girls
This is a nice follow-up to the previous post I guess…
I came across this (japanese) page last night and it’s this hard to explain surrealness which kept me on this page for quite some time…
It seems a combination of pictures of scalemodels and real-life pictures. Very striking, but don’t ask me how or what cause I can’t explain anything about it to you*... :-)
* read a little further, since these aren’t scalemodels at all!
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the bitter*girls (quite a heavy flash-interface, if you somehow have trouble viewing it, try one of the next links)
the bitter*girls as a blog…
the bitter*girls mini some photos blogged on blogspot to get an idea…
Oh! it seems that it’s ‘still photography of real places, using tilt shift lenses (in motion pictures, we use swing-and-tilt lenses, which are essentially the same thing), made to look like models.’ Wow… I would’ve sworn that these are models… geez… amazing…
Google Translate and Japanese craft
Makewrite has a nice article explaining how you can find the crafty stuff you’re looking for on Japanese pages.
Personally I like to strawl around Japanese pages every now and then… Normally I’m not searching for crafty stuff, it can be just about anything, but I guess this explains it:
It may actually make less sense translated into English than it did in Japanese, but that’s half the fun.
Exactly! :-)
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