USB Fast Chargers

I've been a bit confused lately at what constitutes fast charging versus normal charging, and why newer Android devices complain repeatedly if you use the wrong cable, or the wrong charger, or the wrong cable AND charger. How does it know?

Then I found an article on LifeHacker that partially explains it, but this comment thread clarified in an excellent manner: http://lifehacker.com/theres-a-bunch-of-misunderstanding-around-charging-via-1532885435

According to this article and the super helpful comment thread, the multiple things that affect an Android's ability to fast charge are:

1. Battery current rating - I have a 3000mAh / 11.4Wh battery capacity (it is able to provide 3 amps at a nominal voltage for one hour or 11.4 Watts for one hour). P/I=V = 3.8V which is what this battery indicates it's able to deliver. This battery also has a minimum rating of 2940mAh / 11.2Wh (also 3.8V).
2. USB Spec - Normally USB is supposed to output 5V +/- 0.25V. To convert from the 3.8V battery, we simply draw less current at the USB and convert it accordingly: (3.8V x 3A) = 11.4W. (11.4W / 5V) = 2.28A. So ideally my battery wants to present a current draw of 2.28A on the charger when acting as a load. With the 0.25V allowed voltage margin, this could be anywhere from 2.17A to 2.4A.
3. A standard USB 2 port on a computer is rated only for 500mA (0.5A). If too many devices hang off of a USB port, you could start current limiting and the voltage to each device will drop, usually below the allowed 4.75V. This is why powered hubs are recommended. Even with a single device trying to draw more current than the port is capable of, this is when you get those errors that "your phone is charging slowly. Please use the charger and charging cable that came with your phone." A good charger should be able to provide all 2A needed for a standard charging rate the phone requires.
4. Diameter of charging cable - USB 2.0 has five lines that it uses:

• Rx
• Tx
• V+
• V-
• GND (braided shield)

Normally the four main lines are all 28AWG. According to http://www.powerstream.com/Wire_Size.htm, this means that the charging lines will provide 0.23A before they start heating up and creating an appreciable resistance (higher than 213 Ohms per km) which will in essence place a second, noticeable load in series with the battery. The power lines (V+/V-) in the wire can be increased to 24AWG to allow 0.58A at 84.2 Ohms per km and thus decreasing this second parasitic load. Additionally, the load of the charging cable can also be reduced by shortening the cable itself.

Gauge	Test Current	Impedance (per km)	Wire length (km) (~6 feet)	Cable Impedance
28AWG	0.23	213	0.002	0.426
24AWG	0.58	84.2	0.002	0.1684





	Volt drop (test)	Voltage Left for Phone
28AWG	0.09798	4.90202
24AWG	0.097672	4.902328





	Volt drop (0.5A)	Voltage Left for Phone
28AWG	0.213	4.787
24AWG	0.0842	4.9158





	Volt drop (2A)	Voltage Left for Phone
28AWG	0.852	4.148
24AWG	0.3368	4.6632


With a standard 0.5A charger, even a 28AWG 6-foot cable will be able to charge the phone at a standard voltage (4.79V being higher than the minimum allowed of 4.75V). However, if we wanted a full 2 Amps for fast charging, we would need a bigger cable (24AWG), which would even then present enough of a load to drop the voltage on the battery to 4.66V which, while better than 4.15V on the 28AWG wire, is still out of spec.

5. Androids have the ability to detect a "fast charger." Fast chargers indicate their ability to provide 2A by a simple short between the unused Rx/Tx lines. If the android sees this "loop-back" connection on its data lines, it is programmed to assume that whatever its connected to is able to provide 2A. Otherwise it will only draw 0.5A.
6. Additionally, some fast chargers which are paired with a standard length and gauge USB cable are able to do some rudimentary current sensing and output a voltage higher than 5.0V to compensate for the drop on the cable itself.

So in short, for a proper fast charger, two things should be used:

1. A cable with higher diameter power lines
2. A charger that is able to output the current required by the battery being charged

And an additional feature that could be desireable:

• A charger that is able to sense the current, calculate the voltage drop across a known cable and boost its voltage output to compensate.

Ruby on Rails for Windows

It was only recently that I FINALLY figured out just what Ruby on Rails is. From most of the posts I saw all I could make of it was "it's the thing that runs Twitter." Okay..so what's it DO?

Well as it turns out, from what I can make of it, Rails is a new web framework designed to streamline web design...BETTER than PHP/ASP/Javscript. So basically it's a new kind of webserver.

Well I decided that I wanted to try it out. Unfortunately, I don't run on Linux, and every time I do I get very frustrated. So I decided to try and get it going on Windows (XP to be exact). And I did it! Of course, I had to use an online tutorial (which is fairly outdated by about 2 years) located at All About Ruby on Wordpress.

And with a few modifications and updates to the main system, I was able to get it to work as is right now!

And this is as follows:

Install MySQL (or any other SQL engine, but I already have MySQL installed, so that's nice.)

Install Ruby (I had an old version 1.8.7, so I upgraded to 1.9.3p0. The tutorial says you'd also need to install gems, but I didn't have to. 1.9.x came with it pre-loaded. The installer for Windows is located at RubyInstaller. I installed to C:\Ruby\ (they recommended C:\Ruby193\, but I might want to upgrade. And what's next? Ruby194? Ruby200?).

I also made sure I included C:\Ruby\ in the windows path, and associated *.rb files. I also installed the TCL/TK addon, which I doubt I'll ever need, but hey, it's America where more is better!

One thing I also noticed later on in the installation was that I needed the optional DevKit located on the same page at RubyInstaller. At the time of this writing, the file is called DevKit-tdm-32-4.5.2-20110712-1620-sfx.exe. Otherwise the "gem" (a friendly name for ruby add-on methods).

The GitHub tutorial states that DevKit was written under MinGW. Now I'm not too happy with Linux frameworks in Windows (MinGW, Cygwin, etc), so I was a little worried that I'd have to install the actual framework. Not so! If you look at the GitHub tutorial, you'll see it has installing boiled down into three nice easy steps.

Unzip (from 7zip format) into a nice friendly Ruby-Dev folder (I chose C:\ruby-dev\) and navigate in via cmd window. By the way, I've learned it's never good to run ruby scripts from Windows Explorer. If it fails, the resulting command window closes automatically and you never see what's going on, so it's better to Start/Run/cmd.exe and navigate in via the DOS window.

Once in the Ruby-Dev directory, you could run
ruby dk.rb.

This by itself will just display a help screen with what you're actually supposed to do.


ruby dk.rb init
This generates a config.yml (a configuration file which in this case just tells the installer where the actual Ruby installation is located). You can open this config.yml in a text editor and see what's going on. There should be an entry near the bottom that says something like
- c:/ruby
or some such. If this line doesn't match your Ruby installation, change it so that it does. Remember you only want to go as deep as Ruby's top-level directory, not "bin" or anything deeper.

Next you run:
ruby dk.rb review
and get to see exactly what it's going to do based on your config.yml. It's not too detailed, so you could just skip this step and go straight to:
ruby dk.rb install


It worked for me, even when I did the confirmations listed in the Devkit tutorial on Github, but I won't tell you how to do that here. You can just read it for yourself (see the link above).

With this done, I could now begin the Rails installation. Remember rails is simply a new way of web developing. Basically, underneath all of the sparkles, it's nothing more than a webserver. Sure a webserver with a completely new way of writing the actual pages, but a webserver nonetheless.

According to Rails On Windows, you can now install the Rails gem. Remember gems are just add-ons for Ruby, much like you can install Android development kits to implement for the Java language. Except gems are just little default programs that can be called from any other program you write yourself to add functionality.

So anyway, install the Rails gem with dependencies included by running from the command window:
gem install rails --include-dependencies


If all goes well, the script should download all of the gems required to run rails out of the box, plus all of the documentation (ri and rDoc).

Once this is done, you'll be able to create a new directory for your rails project(s) (I put mine in C:\Rails), navigate there and run:
rails firstproject


This will set your project up and hopefully not stall out and crash when it tries to install JSON support (it did when I tried, but that's why I set up the DevKit detailed before, and after I did, it worked fine).

Once it's completed and you have received the 'finished successfully' message, you can now navigate into that project folder (cd firstproject), and run:
ruby ./script/rails server


Rails will now start up and you should see a few messages such as:

=> Booting WEBrick
=> Rails 3.1.1 application starting in development on http://0.0.0.0:3000
=>Call with -d to detach
=>Ctrl-C to shut down server
[2011-11-12 13:17:03] INFO  WEBrick 1.3.1
[2011-11-12 13:17:03] INFO  ruby 1.9.3 (2011-10-30) [i386-mingw32]
[2011-11-12 13:17:03] INFO  WEBrick::HTTPServer#start: pid=952 port=3000

It may take a while for all of these messages to appear, but once they have, you can now go into your browser and navigate to http://localhost:3000 and HOPEFULLY see a 'Congratulations and welcome to Ruby on Rails' or some such title screen.

That's the extent of THIS tutorial. I still have yet to figure out how to set up the database and tables and make it all come together that way, but at least I got the server up and running and displaying something nice in my browser!

My Router-Modem Setup

!Here's what I've figured out with my router/modem setup:

The router has two sets of plugs in it. One set is the regular ethernet ports to hook in single computers to. However, there is a single yellow port known as the WAN or Internet port. What really is the difference here? I've figured it out. The WAN port actually is the interface to a second half of the router. Just as the router communicates with computers so that the computers can communicate each other, all pieces being in a single "network" the WAN port on the router functions in exactly the same way with the though, though the modem now acts as a DHCP server and the router functions as a regular old client computer on the MODEM'S little LAN, known by the router as the WAN. From there, the MODEM creates a WAN network with Qwest...and who cares what THEY do? The configuration for the modem's LAN is an interface ONLY for the router, and the configuration for the router's WAN accesses the same exact interface, only from the other side.

So in short:

Modem WAN = Qwest Connection

Modem LAN = Router WAN

Router LAN = Computer 1, Computer 2, Computer 3 etc LAN

...

...

...

at least with my setup, this is how it works.

The way I found this out was with the strange way I could somehow access the modem THROUGH the router, even though the modem had a different base IP than the router was assigning to my computer. Of course, the best way to configure a modem is to attach it directly to a single computer and edit its stuff that way, but for some reason I was able to access it through the router. I had also figured that, well with two DHCP servers, one of them could be turned off and the router could assign them all. WRONG. I have to leave BOTH of them on! Why? Because when plugging the modem into the WAN (Internet) port on the router, that network created is entirely separated from the LAN that the router creates with my computer. They are TWO SEPARATE NETWORKS and any single one cannot be terminated, nor can their dynamic IP addresses conflict.

I had tried turning off the DHCP on the modem. This made the modem completely unavailable, because the Router cannot assign IP addresses via the WAN port. It is only a client there. I tried changing the IP address of the modem to the same IP address the router had on the LAN. This made BOTH unavailable to the ultimate client: my computer, because to my computer, these addresses were conflicting. I tried changing the IP of the Modem to something a little more friendly than the industry standard 192.168.0.1. In fact, in each case, I changed it to something like 161.0.0.161 or 161.0.0.200. But this was in the thought that the modem existed on the LAN. It does not. The modem exists on its OWN network with the router only.

So, as I lay awake at night, I thought, "What if I were to keep everything on, but change both the IP address of the modem and its DHCP assignments to the same, but completely different network? My router right now is on the LAN address 161.0.0.1 and it assigns clients IP addresses from 161.0.0.2 to 161.0.0.254. Those are two different screens on the router configuration. The modem has almost the exact same screens. A place where you can set its IP and a place where you can change its DHCP." Then this two-network configuration dawned on me and I knew it would work. There is also a WAN screen in the router configuration which shows its own DHCP-acquired IP address on the Internet.

Thus, when I got up this morning, I decided to play around with it, but with this knowledge in mind.

Going into the modem's DHCP settings, I changed the assignments to 160.0.0.2 to 160.0.0.254 (different from the router: 161.0.0.2-161.0.0.254). I got an error saying that the modem's own IP address was not on the same domain as I was trying to change the DHCP settings to. So I went into the Modem's LAN screen, where you can set its local IP address, and changed it to 160.0.0.1. I then in turn went BACK to the DHCP settings and tried again. Nothing changed when I hit apply, no error..and the numbers did not change. However, I figured that it was probably stuck, as a popup had occurred when changing the IP of the modem, saying that it needed to be rebooted. This time, I tried a software reboot via the menus. It worked, I hit refresh, and it errored out.

Oh yeah. Its IP isn't 192.168.0.1 anymore. It should now be 160.0.0.1. So I changed that in the browser's address bar. Lo and behold, it came right up! No problems at all!!

Now then, I've figured out that with this configuration, I have a two separate networks in my system. The router sees the modem's network as the "Internet" and serves to the computers the -real- LAN, while the modem sees the router as -its- LAN and pulls the Internet in as it should be, through the phone line with authentication. With this in mind, it is my new hypothesis that the router will NOT need to be configured to connect to Qwest. It is working thus far..I can connect to the modem through the router, and really, the modem IS the entire internet as far as my router is concerned. At least until I get the modem to connect to the internet and pass information through. So in my router's WAN setup, I should think in terms of "it is only communicating with the modem in this network. Everything should be left as off or default."

And in the same manner, I must consciously remember that all the INTERNET security features are pretty much up to the modem to block/allow/forward on to the router, because in terms of the modem, the router is the only computer connected to it!

Actually, theoretically, I should be able to place a switch between the modem and the router, giving me access to three more ports that will exist in the modem's network. I do have a switch. A switch is pretty much just a passive ethernet splitter, with a few hard-code smarts to make using it faster for all computers. There is no host plug, no client plug...everything just connects to the same string of ports and all interfaces through it function as parallel clients, even the Internet feed (server via router or modem). So, if I were to place my switch between the router and the modem, I should be able to attach a client computer to that switch and sit on the modem's network. In fact, with a switch, I should be able to take the router out of the equation completely. Of course, this would also take my router's wireless interface out, and the laptops would not be able to connect, but the modem would create the LAN network for both the router and a computer.

Now...there IS a feature in the modem configuration. It is called RFC Transparent Bridging. This basically turns off EVERYTHING in the modem and simply passes the DSL signal directly through to the router down the line. If I were to turn this on, my entire web interface to the modem would disappear (requiring a hard factory reset in order to get it back), and my router would be able to be configured with username/password/connection protocols directly to Qwest.

What if...I were to take the above two scenarios and combine them? What if I were to turn on the modem to transparent bridging mode AND split out the signal with only the switch? What if I were to make my LAN completely irrelevant? What if each computer was allowed to directly access the internet on its own?

In this case, each computer would need to be authenticated via their Local Area Network settings to work directly on the internet and authenticate with Qwest's servers. But in each case, the computer would be able to have their own IP with the rest of the world and function on their own! Of course, with this in mind, they would also be tying through the same switch, and so would be able to access each other, even with domain names (or in this case, workgroup names, because I don't have a computer with a DNS server).

Oooh!! With that last sentence, I just came up with another setup! If I could program a single whole computer as a server, I could buffer the Internet from the switch and essentially make that computer my "router."

And the possibilities go on. I could attach a router to the switch, making a wireless subnet (with a different set of IP addresses, of course). I could turn the modem back on, put a server in between the modem and the router and make a three-stage LAN...although this would be rather pointless unless you wanted to serve stuff up with minimal security.

So back to my first and currently-working scenario. What makes accessing the modem, and hopefully the Internet through the modem so easy if a router is buffering the signal and splitting the network into two? My hunch is what is called Routing Information Protocol or RIP.

RIP is defined by the router (modem's client) as allowing a router to exchange routing information with other routers. The RIP direction selection controls how the router sends and receives RIP packets. It can do Both, In or Out. There are two versions for RIP: RIP-1 is universally supported and is sufficient for most networks. RIP-2 allows for more information, uses subnet broadcasting (RIP-2B) or uses multicasting (RIP-2M), but is not as well supported.

RIP is not defined by the modem, but the setup says that "If a gateway or router is set up behind the modem, consult the documentation that came with the router to see if dynamic routing is needed and what version." And in turn, you can change what your router's RIP version is (1, 2 or off).

It is my theory that RIP (termed Dynamic Routing by the modem), is what makes passing information from the router's network into the modem's network (and the internet by extension), and vice versa. It basically bridges the two and says, "Yes the computers on the router's network can access information on the internet. And the computers on the router's network should also be able to access computers on the modem's network...if there are any." And I just tried it. From a computer, I typed in http://160.0.0.2 (the router on the modem's subnet), and it came up smooth as silk. I can get the exact same screen with at http://161.0.0.1. COOL!!! Now to see if I can turn off RIP on either of the devices and still make this work...

With the RIP on the modem off and on the router on, I can still access the modem's subnet (160.0.0.x). When turning off RIP on the router also, I can STILL access the modem's subnet. Okay. My concept of this is off..however, the modem did say that RIP should be enabled if a router is buffering its signal with the LAN, so I will turn it back on. I guess the fact that I can access 160.0.0.x means that this subnet looks like the Internet to my computer. Hopefully it won't conflict with another network on the real internet.....though it shouldn't matter really.

I expect the modem to be assigned a single IP, or at least with the arrival Qwest's documentation, to be given four IP addresses that are assigned directly to me (after all, I did say to the guy on the phone that we would have four computers on the internet at once). And in my modem's DHCP settings, I will make my little window of real-world internet IP addresses available to any client that connects directly through the modem. This means that my own router will have an Internet IP. But in my current setup, none of my actual client computers will. They will rely solely on the router IP for all transactions with the world. This means that my 160.0.0.2-160.0.0.254 will probably have to change.

But...since none of the client computers will have IP addresses on the network, unless they are connecting directly with the modem, it is likely that I will need to set up Port Forwarding for anything I want to serve from a client..web page, Telnet game, etc.

Port forwarding exists in both the modem's and the router's configuration screens. If you refer to my above configuration examples, let's take config 2.

Port forwarding a webserver from C2 through the router would make available to C1, a webpage that by typing in "160.0.0.2:80" it would be able to access. The port from the client would be passed into the router, but it would appear on the modem's network that the router was hosting the entire server, when in fact the client behind the router was forwarding port 80 through.

If I in turn turned on port forwarding in my modem's settings (Security/Port Forwarding) for a single computer, I could pass the router's Port 80 through to...the internet and the IP which is assigned to the modem will be able to be typed in to the web browser and C2's webserver SHOULD pop up!!

This brings up another issue though. While looking for Port Forwarding in the modem's config menus just now, I ran across the modem's IP address config. Does the modem also buffer with another IP address? Will the IP addresses it assigns to the router not be valid on the internet? Ignore Line 182. In the modem's config under the Status button (currently the modem is NOT online), and under Broadband status, it has a place for WAN IP, Gateway IP and modem model/MAC,etc. This means that the modem will be given its own IP which will itself buffer the rest of the network underneath it from the internet. Meaning that with my statement to the guy about planning on four computers connected at once (because there's a limit of five, which doesn't make sense), they're probably going to make me put my modem in Transparent Bridging mode and assume that I don't have a secondary router behind it. They will also assume that my modem is the same box as my router, so really it will be a wireless/wired switch in bridging mode. This will NOT be the case. I SHOULD be using only one of the four assigned IP's at a time and I'll just forward the services through as is required. The end. Deal with it!!!

So far, this is all I have that I could document..next up, what really IS RIP? What is NAT? I don't know...let's find out! :P

Oh hey. I just had a thought. If I forward port 80 from C2 through the router, that should mean that I should be able to access 160.0.0.2 (router's WAN connection) via C1 (or C2 as the case may be), and see C2's webserver rather than the router config! But going from the other way and accessing 161.0.0.1 (router as a server), I should get the router's firmware configuration.

Same with the modem. If I forward the router's new (or old) Port 80 through to the internet, I should be able to plugin the modem's IP address on the internet, and see the router's webserver (or configuration screen) rather than the modem's config. But I should be able to come in from the LAN (160.0.0.1) and see the modem config just fine. This could be cool!!!

DSL and Networking

I've always hated self-help books you find at B&N or the library on how to set up your own home network. In short, they always would assume that you had high-speed internet coming into your house and that you could create a standard configuration. However, up until about 30 minutes ago, we were using dialup for our main internet connection.

I purchased a wi-fi router a few months ago which was able to tie all of the computers in the house together so we could theoretically manage LAN games, streaming audio from one computer to another and sharing a gigantic hard drive. The only thing I had to consciously do was ignore every instance of "how to hook your router to the internet" because routers don't really take into account dialup connections. Here is how it looked:

If you notice, I had a nice little tie point for the four computers (actually, I couldn't make Laptop 2 connect due to Windows Vista finickiness, but it would have worked if I'd been able to sit down and fix it up). But this tie point was not at all able to access the internet. Instead, I had to run a proxy on Laptop 1, which has a built-in dialup modem. That way, Computer 1 and Computer 2 could route THROUGH that proxy via the internal network I had set up and access the internet just fine. Very nice..and workable.

Of course, everybody who has anything to say about anything will say that running dialup through a proxy or internet connection sharing is pretty pointless, and I have to agree. 28Kbps (3.5KB per second) running on even just one computer is painful to deal with. Splitting it between two or more would be one of the most annoying problems you'd run in to. BUT my point was, I wanted to make it work! Putting annoyances aside, will it even WORK? Of course. The picture above shows the configuration that actually worked for me.

In fact, Laptop 1 and Laptop 2 both had dialup modems to connect to the internet, as you can see, but if I had successfully been able to get Laptop 2 onto the wi-fi network, I could have routed that through the proxy so that Laptop 1 would have been the only machine with a real internet connection.

However, just 30 minutes ago, Mom and I got on the phone with our phone company and had them add DSL internet to our landline phone service!! FINALLY I can standardize my router and use the modem port on the back of it...and forget all this proxy and internet connection sharing nonsense that I had to work with.

At least, they said that by Wednesday the line should be activated with DSL. And by Wednesday, they'll have the self-installation disc with all the tutorials on how to make sure it works. I'm excited. We're planning on stopping by Best Buy this afternoon to pick up the $40 modem. Of course, that's a whole new snag. People assume that you don't already have a standalone router that cannot connect directly to the internet. They think that you don't have ANYTHING and that you'll just buy a router-modem combo, which is very true in the STANDARD case.

Of course, the combination router-modem box will cost $100 or more. And the standalone router I have now was $100 by itself. Via marketing logic, you would think that my $100 router by itself is of a higher quality than a router + modem that costs $100. That's my guess.

Anyway, I went to Best Buy earlier this week to check out what was possible and it turns out that for a mere $40, they also have a standalone DSL modem. Of course, there's only one choice in that sense, meaning a DSL modem is a DSL modem. There probably isn't a lot you can do with it apart from hooking it up. And by hooking it up, I mean, attaching it to the phone line, running an ethernet (CAT5) cable from the modem to...the router or a single computer, which I can do both, installing whatever software on that computer (or a computer that can access router functions), and accessing the modem from inside the home network.

This I am very excited about...but still somewhat confused. The phone company, in order to set us up, had to know how many computers would be connecting to the internet at any given time. But..why do you need to know? I can put a TON of computers in my home network. My router is a very nice one and can take probably hundreds of simultaneous connections. Why does the ONE wire that comes from the modem and that plugs into the WAN plug on the router need to know how many computers are behind it?

Unless somehow the router and the modem together are going to give each individual computer its own internet IP address. I don't know! I guess we'll find out. I had almost hoped and was at least planning that the router itself would be given an IP address on the internet and that the computers behind it would be able to "route" through to access the internet, but any What's-My-IP web scripts would only see the router's IP as accessing their sites/services, not the Laptop 1, Laptop 2, Computer 1, Computer 2 that's accessing the router.

Maybe there's something I don't understand, but that's how I thought this was going to work. But really, I should know by Wednesday how everything works. I told them that I was up for installing it myself instead of having a tech come out and fix us up for $50. Save money...and learn the ins and outs yourself. Not that I'd want to hack my connection. I just don't want to be one who stands around hoping the tech knows what he's doing because I don't. I want to know what he's doing also!

All in all, I'm excited. And you should be too. After all, if this is a success, I'll be able to finally host a website from my very own computer!! No more of this Brinkster stuff for me.

Idea for new computer

So we're having this BIG thing at church where a group of probably seven to ten guys are going down to Argentina in about a month or so. They're trying to set it up so that the Tuesday when we're meeting and they are gone, they'll Skype us during service and we'll be able to put it up and talk with them live. I think this is pretty cool. However, we were running into a few security bugs last week when we tested (security locked me out of being able to open Skype up). We'll be testing it again tomorrow night, and I think the IT guy at church fixed it. Anyway, he said he'd look into it this last week.

This all got me to thinking: what would be the ultimate media computer? I thought, everybody goes for Mac as a media computer, but what if I were to just completely create my own? I thought I'd probably use Windows as an operating system, since I know that one best. However, the very basic distribution has SO many background processes to keep everything running it's almost annoying. But I think I'd go for Windows in spight of everything.

Actually, my idea was this: what kind of computer could I build that would be the ultimate in speed, capacity and technology while being affordable? And what kind of cool peripherals could I put on it to make it completely media and Internet-based? I thought, maybe I'd create a whitebox (custom desktop) computer with all the latest video/audio hardware. I'd have a nice big GEForce or NVidia video card plus maybe a 6-channel audio card. Of course, I'd also have the option to mix everything down into 2-channel stereo, but 6 channel would be nice to have just in case. On top of that, I might try to set it up with three monitors. Yes, two is cool but three is cooler!

Then I thought maybe I'd get a permanent webcam and possibly attach it with a Third Hand sort of mechanical device. Maybe ball joints or something. I also thought that maybe I could manage a good quality scan converter so I could pipe one of the monitor outputs to a composite video feed.

Of course, I also considered making it portable. Maybe a nicely carved wooden box or a steel crate with air vents would be sufficient to cart it around. Or I could go for one of those official media boxes with the twist-clamps. Also, a box would mean casters, because with all this stuff I'd add to it, it would become quite heavy.

Let me go back to audio. I'd also want a fairly decent audio mixer so that I could control volume of the output audio. And probably I'd want another for inputs.

I'm probably going crazy here and have racked up around $3000 worth of stuff...but I'll keep brainstorming.

Of course, I'd have a high-quality (everything is high-quality) network module or two..wireless and wired. And maybe a dialup modem, since we're still on a phone line at home.

Actually I should put this all in perspective. This was an attempt at making the ultimate Skype experience. Webcam, audio input and output and a video output for the overhead projector setup we have at church.

I seem to be rambling. But of course, I'm into it! This is what I'd do if I could. Of course, at the moment I can't but if I COULD...yeah.

Then I have to think about weight. So far, I've really really enjoyed having a laptop to cart around everywhere. It's VERY portable. I couldn't imagine taking this giant box to the library every day for school..of course, who says this is a school computer? I don't want to store EVERYTHING I ever have had on this thing. That would clog it up and it's primary purpose would be bogged down. No. It's only for media broadcasting and stuff.

I just had another brainstorm: video inputs? Maybe. Maybe not. That's a tossup. All of the video stuff I've seen so far is HUGE and that'd detract from the good speed I'd be getting. This is going to take some thought, but I definitely want to look into it.

Okay. I am probably done rambling. Have fun reading!!

On Speaking

Wow. That was a 'profound' title. However, I just got out of speech class so my blood pressure is spiked..or it was about ten minutes ago and it's been slowly decompressing. Today we got in what they call 'impromptu speeches.' Here was the format: Think of a one-sentence topic that matches the following sentence of "If you could ________." Then hand your idea in and then grab a different one from the bag.

That's about as impromptu as I could think of. When I walked in, I thought, "Huh, I'm going to do something like 'If you could do any extreme sport, what would it be,' and my answer would be 'I would go in a hot-air balloon' and then tell them of how I turned my dad down when he offered to get me on the Remax balloon when I was four." But then she said we were going to trade topics so I really stressed out. Turns out my question was "If you could buy anything what would it be?"

Now I don't want to get religious on materialism, but I chose an Alienware computer. Did I mention those here a few years ago? I don't know. Of course, a house would be my FIRST choice, but what's there to talk on on buying a house that will take up three minutes worth of talking? So I talked about the Alienware computer and why I wanted to buy it.

Okay. Rant. I am not one to get up in front of people and talk or to jump up and say, "Now everybody pay attention to me because it's my turn to talk." I hate the spotlight and I'd rather disappear into a corner and enjoy listening to everybody else. So speech class is a big bleh thing. But I have to do it in order to get my piece of paper.

Anyhow...that reminds me. I wanted to research the Alienware and see what was the norm for super-fast computers. I know the standard is probably superfast compared to what I'm working on right now, but I'm sure Alienware is developing way beyond that like they do, so I want to see what that is.

M11x Desktop starting at $1200....ouch. That's a big fat no right off the bat.

But I'll go for the top-end M11x at $4000:
Intel Core I7 960 - 3.2GHz, 8MB Cache - This is the microprocessor....and that is pretty fast.
Dual 1GB GDDR5 ATI Radeon HD 5870 CrossfireX - Video Card...None of this makes any sense except for the 1GB VRAM. And I'm not sure how much better that is than everything else.
6GB DDR3 1600MHz (3x 2GB) - This is -regular- RAM. 6GB is pretty big. About....12 times bigger than what I'm running.
1.2TB Raid - Hard Drive. Raid is SUPER cool but if you use the Raid technology (with backup), you only actually USE part of what's there, so this would be more like 1TB worth of usable space, which is still really good, especially for a primary hard drive
24X CD/+-DVDRW Burner - Fairly standard..okay.

11-27-09

Wowee!! So I get comments from people I don't know at all. Now THAT'S something. And I also had a request to turn on 'Blogger Follow,' which I think is crazy. I like simplicity. Little mandatory pictures all over the place make for clutter. But in light of popular demand, fine. I'll do that.

On a similar note, I'm going to remove the Daily Dilbert, even though it's cool. It takes way too long to load and it's again a big blob of mess at the top of every page. So goodbye, even though it's cool.

On yet ANOTHER note: PennMUSH - I've been looking at the idea of sql control within Penn. I've never gotten MySQL to work properly, so I've never gotten website packages such as Wiki or Mambo to install. But Penn allows for other database types such as postgresql and sqlite. I'm grabbing the packages for those. Oh..postgre is 40MB, but sqlite is like 500K. So guess which one I'm grabbing on a dialup connection.

Anyhow, I'm not sure HOW I'll use it, but I want to at least try to make a db work with Penn, just to see if I can.

What else? Sister and I've been home all week, as Dad and Mom went to Estes Park for their anniversary (29th). So it's been a time of Star Trek and boredom. Well, not so much boredom. There's plenty to do, but it's not all FUN. Anyway, they're coming home later this afternoon I think.

Good note about my computer re-image: I've finally installed all updates and software back to what it was, minus a few things I never used. Of course, I've always had problems with bootup and things, and I've always meant to isolate the problem child, but I never have. And with this re-image, I STILL didn't. I've a few large software packages I always install, such as Photoshop, DVDit, MS Office, Messenger, etc.. and always somewhere between then and the next re-image, either bootup takes forever or the computer freezes for the first five minutes after connecting to the Internet. So I'm not sure who the culprit is, even now. But we'll see if I can't catch it this time.

Ugh..so I just about killed my computer. I picked up malware sometime yesterday at the library and managed to run it at home. Well, it installed itself, force rebooted the computer and loaded under the virus scanner and disabled it.

Then it proceeded to lock me out of any other scanning software, my modem and a bunch of other things got super-slow. So I reinstalled windows..or tried to. My internal cd player is dead, so I had to use my external one, but my computer won't boot off of that without help,so I ended up wiping and installing Ubuntu. Unfortunately, I can't get it to recognise my modem, nor does Grub (the bootloader) recognise cd boots. So I asked Dad to bring home the floppy drive and I'll hopefully force the Windows install disc to load that way. I hope.

Oh. And we're having wings and pizza for supper. on a good note ;).

Linerider 2 Unbound

Linerider 2 Unbound is out! And I bought it! New features? Spline tool to make perfectly smooth track. Background tool with layers to make a 3D looking world. Track coloring, game mode, free-design mode, on and on and on. It's a huge program (2GB of free disk space) for the computer I'm using it on, but it still seems to work okay. Local installation allows for offline editing, saving, etc., and it even has uploading and video capture capability! Sounds..I could really go on and on!! It is rather amazing.

They're online user account tool even has been integrated with the new version of the game so that if you do an upload in-game, it will be reflected in your online profile. Also, you can download other's tracks from the website and they will go directly into your game with a few extra steps in between.

Alright..on to more useful information. My Linerider profile is at http://linerider.com/en/user/depwl9992. AND, if you want to see sample videos, I've created a Youtube playlist of most all my Linerider tracks, viewable here.

Enjoy..

Uru Complete Chronicles Fly Mode

Okay, so I was looking Myst Uru pictures on Google, and saw that it was possible to get into the big volcano in New Mexico. Plus a bunch of other places that I had never been. Well, I started looking and discovered that it was due to a developer tool called Flymode!

Now with the demise of Uru Live (which I never got to experience), I found that this tool is pretty rare out there and most websites have been taking them down. However, I found that someone on the UruObsession website found it and posted it on SendSpace. The flymode tool can be found here, thanks to highwaykind.

Here is their post that was included with the link:

After a disastrous attempt to install the POTS add on I bought when it came out ( I have my box, not the CD -> no key to activate the thing, no option to GET the key since I "live outside some area where, legal stuff"), I bought Complete Chronicles on Ebay (for 10 bucks), which arrived today.
And I'm very happy to report I'm FLYING!!!

Since it's so hard to find the patch online (probably too old?), here's a link of all the patches I found.

for CC I used the 1.3 one

Unzip, copy exe to game folder. backup python.pak, run patch.exe.

In game: hit ESC to enable fly mode. Space for up/down, ESC again to "drop" (exit flymode).

Enjoy!

Standard disclaimer; use at own risk, ONLY use OFFLINE (if URU comes back as MORE ) :)

I have yet to test it...and I just made the huge mistake of uninstalling Uru from my machine, but I WAS running a bit low on diskspace. Maybe another day.

Photoshop Flaming Text

This tutorial, by far, takes the cake as the best tutorial I've seen yet showing how to setting something on fire. The two techniques I've seen in the past are:

1. Difference Clouds Coloring with erasure and coloring


2. Smudging a blurred layer of the text and coloring three times

But this tutorial is different in that they use actual flame brushes to make it look so realistic, you would almost think...

Programming

So I got a JFrame app the other day for a plugin on a program. I found out how to change variable values in a text file without a recompile of the java class. Here it is (I did not include the preliminary java declarations/import classes, but they must also be included as usual).

The var declare portion of app.java file

Static int varName = Integer.parseInt(readData("config.txt", "WindowWidth"));

The config.txt file

WindowWidth = 205

After compiling the java file (cmd "javac app.java"), you will be able to change the initial value of varName by changing the value of WindowWidth in the text file. It works great!!