Firehed’s Blog

http://www.ie7.com
Hmmm…..

Seems that the iTunes music store decided to start making recommendations to me based on my music library’s contents. Cool, great idea. But I sure as hell didn’t give my permission for any such information to be sent off, just like the whole ministore thing. Best part of all is that I don’t know which of my computers sent off the data (I think my desktop, since my laptop has a tiny library, and mostly podcasts at that), but I know that neither has the ministore enabled, and I don’t remember agreeing to any EULA updates.

Most uncool. I don’t care how effective it is or how I won’t buy DRM-infected content, but it’s one of another million privacy concerns.

Apparently transferring the latest Wikipedia dump over wireless is a stupid idea. Max of a theoretical 54Mbit/sec (6.75MByte/sec) for a 6+GB file. 1000 seconds? Yeah, right. Most networks are lucky to get half the rated speed. Then start talking about the unreliability of wireless. About two hours in, I wasn’t even halfway through. So screw it. Reach around back and try not to slice my fingers open on the exposed fan, and grab that gigabit wire coming into the room. Done in about three minutes. I really need a second gigabit switch, since the wiring in my house is abysmally done (of course, we’re moving soon and I’m headed to school in two weeks anyways) and to get my fileserver out of my bedroom, I had to move my gigaswitch with it. Which means that while my laptop is acting as a makeshift-DTR machine, I’ve gotta swap the single gigabit cord between that and my PC, or put them both on a 100Mbit switch. Gah.
They’re cheap now though. I saw one for about $18 shipped after a mail-in rebate. It’s probably a piece though. $35ish for one with some pretty solid reviews. I may have to treat myself. I’m sure it’ll look nice next to the fibre switch I picked up on ebay for $15 (toslink, not crazy home networking).

Ok, apparently someone at DHL took my math teacher’s jokes about going to Williston from Burlington through Montreal a bit too literally (if you don’t know the area, think from Boston to NYC through Chicago). Apparently once a package hits NYC from London, it’s now a great idea to send it off to fucking Ohio before my house. But, whatever, it’s only 2000 miles out of the way. I’ve never encountered that type of logic with UPS, FedEx or USPS, but I guess those guys want to show off their silly yellow trucks. I guess there won’t be much work on the cabinet this weekend.

It’s coming along surprisingly well. Not cheap, mind you. $120 in wood, about $330 in buttons, controllers, joysticks and whatnot, and who knows what for tools and such. Discounting the computer and monitor, of course; though, I’ve decided that my fileserver and my old 19″ CRT will fit the bill nicely (the horrible 800×600 quality on the old tube actually works very favorably in this situation, giving that retro-gaming feel).

All the wood is cut, and a lot of the frame is put together. I need to pick up a small backlight for the marquee, and I just ordered my wiring stuff. Buttons came extremely fast, and it looks like my joysticks and encoders could end up having been two-dayed to me from England. Radioshack-type parts will probably take a bit longer as they’re shipping from California and I only ordered them about three minutes agom but oh well. Props to SlikStik for great support so far - contacted me very quickly when they were out of black buttons (damn) and got it dealt with very quickly, and Ultimarc seems to have been great so far, even if I hate DHL shipping. Allelectronics has been good to me in the past, and has all sorts of cheap crap… I found just the switch I need for my manual USB switching thing, and figured I’d go with a keypad for my stereo controls instead of another set of buttons. We’ll see. If I get lucky, preliminary wiring could start tomorrow.