X-Geek

Extreme geekiness

There are 700 posts filed in X-Geek (this is page 51 of 70).

TV news van

tv-news-van
I don’t know exactly what I’d do with this but I’ve always wanted one and it looks cool.

From Craigslist:

We have a Will-Burt Pneumatic antenna mast to be sold. This is a working unit and is currently installed in a 1987 Ford van. This mast is one of the ‘heavy duty models’ designed to handle approximately 100 pounds and extends to about 55 feet. This unit includes the compressor that operates on vehicle or external power. This size unit currently sells by Will-Burt distributors for approximately $12,000.00 with the pump at an additional $1500.00. This is the link to their site showing the current models http://towermast.willburt.com/vmHDNLM.asp Continue reading →

Southwest Airlines tests in-flight WiFi

Sez here that Southwest is testing in-flight WiFi on some of its planes:

Southwest now has four aircraft up and running with Wi-Fi service—and so far, the testing is going really well. Southwest has operated the service on more than 500 flights and more than 9,000 Customers have logged on.

The four planes with WiFi installed have tail numbers N901WN, N902WN, N906WN, and N907WN.

QEMU 0.10 out

I noticed today that two weeks ago a new release of QEMU came out: version 0.10.0. This the first new QEMU release in a year. Good to see that this free virtualization software is still alive, well, and better than ever.

Here’s the changelog for version 0.10.0:
version 0.10.0:

– TCG support (No longer requires GCC 3.x)
– Kernel Virtual Machine acceleration support
– BSD userspace emulation
– Bluetooth emulation and host passthrough support
– GDB XML register description support
– Intel e1000 emulation
– HPET emulation
– VirtIO paravirtual device support
– Marvell 88w8618 / MusicPal emulation
– Nokia N-series tablet emulation / OMAP2 processor emulation
– PCI hotplug support
– Live migration and new save/restore formats
– Curses display support
– qemu-nbd utility to mount supported block formats
– Altivec support in PPC emulation and new firmware (OpenBIOS)
– Multiple VNC clients are now supported
– TLS encryption is now supported in VNC
– MIPS Magnum R4000 machine (Hervé Poussineau)
– Braille support (Samuel Thibault)
– Freecom MusicPal system emulation (Jan Kiszka)
– OMAP242x and Nokia N800, N810 machines (Andrzej Zaborowski)
– EsounD audio driver (Frederick Reeve)
– Gravis Ultrasound GF1 sound card (Tibor “TS” Schütz)
– Many, many, bug fixes and new features

Shuttle pass

According to this space shuttle tracking site, the space shuttle and ISS will be passing over NC at 60 degrees elevation at 19:36 local time. It may not be dark enough for a sighting but it may be in range to receive radio signals. Cool.

I just watched the shuttle crew enter the ISS, with the familiar nautical ringing the bell and the words “space shuttle discovering, arriving.”

Swarm streaming

The ACC Tournament started today and practically the whole office was consumed with watching it. Someone sent out a link to an Internet stream of it but I didn’t bother clicking on it, thinking it would be one of those horrible, unwatchable “buffering … buffering…” experiences

Then a co-worker announced he had it going in his cube. I walked over to see the game on TV clear as day.

“Where’s the antenna?” I asked him.

“There’s no antenna,” he replied. “That’s from the Internet stream.

Whoa! I couldn’t believe my eyes. It seemed pixel-perfect.

It turns out the streaming was done by a company called Swarmcast, using a swarm-type technology that predates BitTorrent. Unlike BitTorrent, Swarmcast allows viewers to watch their shows instantly rather than having to wait for the whole download. It was an impressive demonstration that had me marveling the rest of the afternoon.

Interestingly, Swarmcast began life as an open-source application, and Boing Boing’s Cory Doctorow was onboard in its early existence. Neither one applies today, however. I scoured the Internets today in search of Swarmcast’s once-GPLed code but could find no trace of it.

I’m now looking at the apps mentioned in Wikipedia’s Peercasting page to see what other tools might offer the same experience. This “swarm streaming” stuff has me hooked!

Raleigh to host international web conference next year

I’m pretty excited to learn Raleigh will host the 19th annual International World Wide Web Conference at the Raleigh Convention Center next year. A number of people who helped give birth to this thing we call the Internet will be in town collaborating with other techies to plot the future of the Web.

The conference will be a wonderful showcase for our area’s technology and talent. I’m psyched about it. Plus, the esteemed webmasters of the WWW2010 conference website obviously know a fine photograph of downtown Raleigh when they see one.

Sleep? What’s that?

It was a busy day yesterday. I awoke before 6, worked until 5, had dinner with the family, and headed back out to my RCAC meeting. I got home at 10 to realize our home fileserver was about to croak. Fortunately, I just upgraded the server I’d hoped to replace it with, so I spent the rest of the evening decommissioning the old server and setting up the new one. Bedtime was after 1 AM.

Ain’t life grand?

Replacable CFL parts

I had another CFL lightbulb burn out tonight. Once it went dark I was immediately treated to the unpleasant but all-too-familiar smell of a fried capacitor.

It got me thinking that there has to be a better way to design these bulbs. If the cheap electronics could be replaced without throwing the whole bulb away it would keep a huge amount of mercury out of our landfills (and air, and water supply, etc).

When an incandescent bulb dies there’s no choice but to throw it away, as the filament is gone and the bulb’s vacuum makes it almost impossible to replace it. There’s no reason a dead CFL bulb has to be tossed, however, as the electronics could be separated from the bulb while leaving the bulb intact. And the electronics are always the first to go on a CFL bulb.

Google’s FailWhale

Since I’ve been at the best place to work in America, I’ve noticed some quirkiness with The Google. Simple queries cause Google to question my manhood.

I did a simple search for “Malcolm Gladwell” and I got this screen:

We’re sorry…

… but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application. To protect our users, we can’t process your request right now.

We’ll restore your access as quickly as possible, so try again soon. In the meantime, if you suspect that your computer or network has been infected, you might want to run a virus checker or spyware remover to make sure that your systems are free of viruses and other spurious software.

If you’re continually receiving this error, you may be able to resolve the problem by deleting your Google cookie and revisiting Google. For browser-specific instructions, please consult your browser’s online support center.

If your entire network is affected, more information is available in the Google Web Search Help Center.

We apologize for the inconvenience, and hope we’ll see you again on Google.
To continue searching, please type the characters you see below:

Frankly I wasn’t aware there was a virus associated with Malcolm Gladwell, but I suppose I can’t blame Google for playing it safe. On second thought, yes I can.

(Its true I use a tool called Privoxy to block my web browser information, but that’s never caused a fuss before.)