Author: Steve Dougherty

Router

I swapped out the 80mm fan in the router, it had been making weird noises. It’s a Dell box, and the fan was encased in this weird plastic mounting thing. It has cylinders that go through each hole and connect to a grill on the back with “Dell” written on it. I got it off by wedging a small screwdriver in between the fan and the front at the corners – when I did so the front started to click loose. I got the new fan in there easily enough, and slid it into its slots in the case. The green plastic air duct thing snapped on to the CPU heatsink.

My Linksys router is now running DD-WRT. I downloaded my stuff from here, as it’s a WRT54GS Version 6, and followed this handy guide. I haven’t had connection problems since using it, which is nice, although I’m not entirely sure that’s because of the firmware, as I’ve changed other things as well. I wasn’t aiming for a scientific experiment, I just wanted my connections to stop dropping intermittently.

The other thing I did was print out this parabolic antenna. It looks kinda funny stuck onto my wireless antenna, and the downside is then that you have to aim it and sacrifice omnidirectional connectivity, but this might also be helping.

I had installed fresh drivers to see if I could get my D-Link DWL-520+ to support anything better than WEP. No such luck. The applet the driver installed didn’t even recognize my card, although the card still worked. It was strange because even though the icon said it was not connected to a wireless network, I could browse just fine. I uninstalled the D-Link Air Plus stuff, and the card was recognized and configured automatically, at which point things once again became sane.

When Mr. Smith talks about current events, he usually brings up listening to NPR in the morning. It occured to me that I would like very much to listen to NPR in the morning, so I set up mplayer to first play a tapered 440Hz sine wave, in case the connection doesn’t work, then connect to the URL conveniently listed here.

Stating the Obvious

Snow day! I get time to work on my essay and study Spanish vocab. I’ll have to read Frankenstien over the break, but I would have had to do that anyway. I need to study for the Brit Lit test, too. The econ test is online, so I’ll finish up my notes on that and head over.

Chem

I had an eventful day in Chem today. I accidentally dropped the top to the crucible a few times, then when we heated it part of it cracked and flew off. I hope that wasn’t due to my dropping it. After it was heated, I carefully and firmly picked up the top with the tongs, and one arm of the tongs slipped over the other, flipping the top and knocking over the crucible, spilling the barium chloride all over the table. Oops. Justin and I had to get our data elsewhere. 🙁

Published
Categorized as School

Surround Sound in Intrepid!

I’ve been wanting surround sound in Linux for a while. My XP machine at mom’s flips stereo to the back, which I really like.  Thanks to the Ubuntu forums, I found that I had to uncomment the default-sample-channels line and change it to 6 for 5.1 sound. (5 speakers + subwoofer) I also changed the sample rate because I noticed it complaining in the PulseAudio logs (it was changing it to the correct value) while I was fiddling with getting it working, but I don’t think that’s needed. I added myself to the pulse-rt, pulse, and pulse-access groups.  It still wasn’t working, and I was getting upset. I found this post, and sure enough, the volume on the other channels was zeroed out in the volume control. I set all my sound output preferences in System > Preferences > Sound to PulseAudio Sound Server, but when I put it back to Autodetect it still worked. I’m happy now.

Published
Categorized as Software

WordPress Upgrade, RSI, and the LAN

I upgraded to WordPress 2.7. The admin interface is now really slick. It’s gotten an overhaul and is now a pleasure to use, although it seems like it’s slower.  The main page just took an ENTIRE MINUTE to render! This is unacceptable, and hopefully I can get it sorted out. [EDIT: I enabled WP Super Cache, and it seems better. That’s odd because it didn’t seem to enable last time.] Unfortunately, I forgot, although I understood I was supposed to, disable my plugins before the upgrade. Result: white screen of non-loading death and me panicing. Luckily, Google revealed a very helpful page on how to disable plugins by editing the MySQL database, so now the site is back up.

I was hoping to get into RSI, which is an MIT research program. The first sign was that it wanted people who already knew what they wanted to do for their PHDs. (I seriously almost wrote “PDFs” there.) I checked my PSAT and ACT scores and they didn’t meet the minimum. Even though they said that lower scores could be balanced with strong recommendations and whatnot, I decided not to continue the application process. That saves my teachers writing recommandation letters then. It made me feel strange to request an essay from a teacher.

I’m holding a LAN with 8 people on January 2nd. I say 8 because we would need that many for a full game of Versus Left 4 Dead. Pat might not be able to come due to a New Years thing, but I hope it works out.

EDIT: Hmm… The delay in response time looks like it’s limited to default_socket_timout in php.ini…

NTP and genetic algorithms

The pfSense box now syncs to the NTP pool. The service doesn’t show up under services, which made it confusing. It’s running now though. All machines on the network sync to it. This is nice because they’re all synced and I suppose there’s less bandwidth usage although I wasn’t getting the feeling it was a bandwidth how anyway.

I’ve found, thanks to Reddit, this mezmerizing implementation of a genetic algorithm. The purpose is to get a vehicle that consists of four circles, two of which are wheels and two that cannot touch the ground, to go as far as possible in a seemingly set time. Suspension, angle, length, and stating position of the circles (I suppose through angle) are varied, as well as circle size. It’s really interesting and is making me seriously concider starting a project of my own in this nature.

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Categorized as Software

Source Dedicated Server

SRCDS is now working with pfSense. I ended up deleting all my SRCDS-related NAT port forwardings and firewall rules. I then added:

Port forwards:

27015 TCP/UDP

27011 TCP/UDP

NAT outbound:

27015 (Static port yes)

27011 (Static port yes)

I’m happy that it’s working now. That leaves the only remaining issue as the xfire file transfer. It’s weird because the UPnP service is running. Maybe I have to change the max upload/download rates from their defaults of blank? That’s for another day, though.

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Categorized as Software

Modem

My DSL modem (even though I guess it’s actually a bridge, but modem is what is says on the box) crashed. I knew something was wrong when a request to Google timed out. I couldn’t ping the modem, even from the router. I have homework to do and I haven’t started any of it yet. Tomorrow will be busy. 🙁