I went to unplug my flash drive, and the circuit board pulled right out of the flimsy plastic case.
It looks like I’ll have to break out some glue.
Archive for the 'Technology' Category
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- 2Fort dispenser
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- Dustbowl vista
Fortunately, switching out of TF2 long enough to save the screenshot seemed to resolve the problem, at least temporarily — the break gave the video card a chance to cool down.
My TF2 glitches, now available as a gallery! (This is a handy test for the WPG2 plugin.)
You can also see the gallery here.
From a news item today:
WASHINGTON - Multiple congressional computers have been hacked by people working from inside China, lawmakers said Wednesday, suggesting the Chinese were seeking lists of dissidents.
Two congressmen, both longtime critics of Beijing’s record on human rights, said the compromised computers contained information about political dissidents from around the world. One of the lawmakers said he’d been discouraged from disclosing the computer attacks by other U.S. officials.
Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., said four of his computers were compromised beginning in 2006. New Jersey Rep. Chris Smith, a senior Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said two of the computers at his global human rights subcommittee were attacked in December 2006 and March 2007.
Wolf said that following one of the attacks, a car with license plates belonging to Chinese officials went to the home of a dissident in Fairfax County, Va., outside Washington and photographed it.
These kinds of security breaches are not only preventable, they are inexcusable.
It’s easy to blame the attacker, but real problem lies at home. Congressional computers should be some of the best-secured PCs on the Internet. The fact that they apparently aren’t indicates a problem with Congress, not with China. I don’t know whether the blame lies with lax or crappy admins, or with ignorant congresscritters who inevitably will get their way when they whine, “but this anti-virus thingy makes it too hard!”. If action on the floor of the House and Senate to address the latter is necessary, then the more technically-sophisticated members of Congress need to get busy.
Slashdot post here.
In pursuit of my Team Fortress glitching, I’ve added a PCI slot cooler to my computer — the Antec VCool. In general, a PCI slot cooler mounts into one or two PCI slots (the VCool occupies two), and either draws air into the case or exhausts hot air out of the case. The VCool, positioned directly below the video card, draws cool air into the computer and blows it directly onto the video card. So far, I’ve measured about a 10°C drop in video card temperatures under both idle and load.
With the extra cooling, will the X800XT behave? We shall see.
Well, I replaced my old router with a Linksys WRT54GL. I immediately flashed it with Tomato, and it’s running quite nicely. Hopefully this router will last for more than 2 years.
A test of Wordpress 2.5’s new Gallery functionality, using my favorite subject as of late: Team Fortress 2 rendering glitches!
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- Scout at warp speed
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- Glitching of furniture in a spawnroom.
Sigh.
The Netgear WGR614 saga continues. I discovered yesterday that the router’s power adapter was putting out 16 volts; it’s only supposed to put out 12 volts. A ha! The source of my troubles? Heat seems to be the major issue: when it gets hot, it stops working correctly. Of course, being driven at 16v instead of 12v would make it run too hot.
I stopped by Radio Shack and picked up a new 12v power adapter. When I plugged in the power adapter, the router started right up and felt cool. It routed at full speed (I ran speed tests) and was giving no trouble. Of course, the real test wouldn’t come until the router had been running for a few hours.
In the evening, I went to play some Team Fortress. By now, the router was feeling warm. Hmmm. And sure enough, it started dropping connections. Damn.
I now have two choices. Either, I can crack that router’s case open to keep it cool, or I can replace it. The Linksys WRT54GL is looking pretty good — especially if I flash it with Tomato firmware.
My Netgear router that I wrote about previously is acting up again. I’m seeing the same symptoms as before: dropped connections, etc. I know it’s the router because:
- When web pages stop loading, I can’t access the router itself either (at 192.168.1.1). Once webpages start loading again, I can also access the router.
- I’m seeing no slowdowns or stalled loading of pages when I connect the computer straight to the cable modem (bypassing the router).
It’s probably time to shop for a new router. First though, I’m going to try and open the case to see if there’s dust accumulation; that could keep it too hot.
Maybe I should start a new Gallery dedicated to Team Fortress 2 rendering glitches. I saw these glitches tonight:
This engineer’s dispenser is showing the same type of glitching that I’ve seen before.
This is a new one: There should be water in the bottom of this sewer. Instead, all we see is wireframe polygons where the water is supposed to be; obviously, those polygons are missing their “water” texture map.
The Windows desktop itself continued to glitch after I closed Team Fortress, so I had to reboot my machine. After that, TF2 ran fine.