hi there!

This is where I post stuff that I find interesting (which is potentially a lot of things!). If you would like to reach me, send an email to jeremy (dot) 006 (at) gmail (dot) com. Thanks!

snow leopard: good stuff!

Today I picked up a copy of OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). Unfortunately, it seems I had bought a dud disc; after five sets of I/O error failures ("There was a problem reading the Mac OS X install disc") I rung up NextByte and asked if I could return it and get another copy. The guy on the phone told me that was a-ok, so I headed into the store.

When I got there, I was politely directed to the manager who asked me to explain the problem I was having. He listened, said "yep" and went in the back room for a minute to grab me another brand new disc. No fuss, no messing around, just helpful people. The new disc installed first time.

Thank you NextByte. You absolutely made my day.

2009-08-28 20:57:33 | comments

to everyone suffering the dreaded -15006 error with a G airport express

Jump into your router and set the wireless auth algorithm to TKIP+AES or AES. Apparently the Airport Express doesn't like TKIP very much.

2009-08-24 19:23:45 | comments

wikipedia races

How to play Wikipedia Racing:

  1. Choose a start and end page title (like "Gumpert Apollo" and "String Theory")
  2. Set all players up on the start page and yell "Go!"
  3. Using only the links on the page (no searching) each player attempts to make it to the finish page in the shortest time possible

For extra fun and for extra obscure titles, allow the use of the "Random Article" link.

2009-07-19 23:21:50 | comments

diy heater

  1. Open Terminal.app
  2. Enter in terminal: python -c 'while 1: 1+1'
  3. Hold hands on heatsink
  4. (Optional) Adjust temperature with time.sleep(n)

mmmmmmmm.

2009-06-09 11:59:58 | comments

psychology is neat

Jerusalem Syndrome. Awesome.

2009-05-26 23:44:30 | comments

compass: concentrated awesome

Compass is a real CSS framework. CSS might even be fun to write now!

2009-04-28 20:54:39 | comments

umbrellatoday on the desktop!

Today it rained quite a lot so I was stuck indoors. I was messing around with python after I finished my uni work, and I decided that it would be cool to hook up Umbrella Today to my graphic LCD module. The image display code I wrote a couple of days ago meant that this would be trivial.

def umbrellatoday(location):
url_stream = urllib.urlopen("http://www.umbrellatoday.com/locations/%s/forecast" % (str(location)) )
html_data = url_stream.read().replace("\n","")
url_stream.close()
try:
forecast = re.search("(?P<forecast>YES|NO)", html_data).group('forecast')
display_image(forecast.lower() + ".png")
except Exception, detail:
print "uh oh. \n" + str(detail)

And here is a picture of how it turned out.

2009-04-05 18:12:30 | comments

apologies to yahoo

Live Messenger install sucks. It sucks like a black hole.

Install Adium for mac: drag + drop, enter credentials

Install MSN for windows: run, wait 10 minutes for it to connect, tell me that it has connected, wait another ten minutes, ask me to install a bunch of stuff that I guarantee no-one actually installs, realise that even though i only selected one package it has to download 7 of them, wait 20 minutes for it to download the extra packages (we are still in the installer here), wait for it to download fonts (what is this, 2001?), then open, enter credentials and close all the extra windows that open; MSN today and all that crap.

Yahoo, you are relatively awesome.

2009-03-31 23:04:08 | comments

yahoo signups are a joke.

Dear Yahoo,

  1. You ask for too much of my time in order to sign up for flickr.
  2. I just want to get on flickr, not sign up for a yahoo email
  3. I DO NOT want a yahoo email address EVER. I will not check it and it will just waste your disk space, so why are you forcing me to register one?
  4. I entered my actual postcode (no fakes) and apparently I am not located in Australia. Well done form validation team.
  5. If there are rules governing usernames, PLEASE STATE THEM so I can try to pick a name that is appropriate and not just say that I can have my name with 96 or 52 tacked on the end. I am certain that no-one has registered "zbergdfsgrcxfeaerfsd@yahoo.com" and yet I cannot use it.
  6. Let me make my own secret question. I have so many "favourite musicians".
  7. I entered a 10 character password of complete gibberish (like "C$buX;#8Q4") and apparently my password is both very weak and contains my username.

I just wanted to create a flickr account and upload some photos. I like to think that I do not give up easily, but I felt that giving up was the appropriate response to that signup form. If you need to see how signups should be done, look at tumblr.

[no] thanks,

jeremy

2009-03-29 20:47:15 | comments

go go gadget broken gcc!

It turns out that my copy of avr-gcc fails with this code:

switch (rx_byte) {
     case 'U':
         int i;
         break;
}

Apparently, gcc has a bug that stops you putting a declaration directly after a label. Simple workaround:

switch (rx_byte) {     
    case 'U': ;         
        int i;         
        break;
}

Ugh, I want my hour back.

2009-03-28 14:05:59 | comments
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