a gthing science project

Posted by Sam at June 17th, 2006

Some Apple customers who have purchased macbook pros have complained about a high pitched whine emanating from the notebook when the CPU is at or near 0 CPU load. I myself have this issue, and I can tell you it is ANNOYING. I found a small program that keeps a little load on the CPU and keeps the noise at bay.

This solution is almost enough except that I have to manually start it every time I reboot my computer. Also, every once in a while it will get out of hand and start eating major CPU cycles, making the notebook overheat and the fans kick on. Also, this hack eats into my battery life.

Apple has brushed off this issue saying the noise is “within spec” yet only have subjective tests to determine what the spec is exactly.

Point 1: The noise is fixed in new macbooks. If nothing was wrong why was it fixed?

Point 2: Apple engineers are old. It is a well documented fact that old people don’t hear high pitched noises as well as young people. Some stores in Europe even play high pitched noises to keep teenagers away, while the older people can shop unaware of any such noise. This leads me to believe that “within spec” just means that the old apple engineers simply think all us youngsters are crazy. We can hear the noise, loud and clear - and it’s annoying.

Point 3: So many people have complained. Forums are full of people complaining about this issue, yet Apple has been silent. One customer was told that “thats what he gets” for being an early adopter! Come on, Apple!

Point 4: The issue can easily be fixed with software. There are several hacks out that can eliminate the sound. Some are more questionable than the others, but the simple fact is that the CPU throttling software is flawed. It’ s not like Apple has to repair every single macbook, they can simply release a software update to fix this - it’s not even hard.

That’s all I have for now.

Posted by Sam at June 16th, 2006

I can remember a game on my Apple II gs as a kid - it was an adventure game, although I have never been able to remember what it was called. My forgetfulness makes me one sad panda.

In the game you would wander around, it was set up much like the “quest” games that activision did (space quest, kings quest, etc.). I remember the part that I got stuck on. There was a man who lived in a dome house, and you would go talk to him and he would give you a riddle, hinting that the next part of your quest had something to do with a “bottomless lake.”

This would inevitably lead me to wander outside his house, find a lake, jump in, and drown. I remember contemplating what the riddle meant, and always coming to the conclusion that some lake somewhere would be bottomless (which in my child’s mind meant there was a secret room down there).

I never did beat the game, but I would kick it’s butt now if I could remember what it was.

That was a random thought, and the point of this post was to talk about something else. Sort of. First, I think I need to write here a little bit more. I really enjoy it, but it is hard to do after populating DIY:happy with a day’s worth of content. My little bro should be helping out a bit soon, and Jake claims to be close to getting an internet connection at his new place (see map at right), so that will take a bit of the load off.

But I am thinking of starting another blog. This one would be a story blog and it’s purpose, among other things, would be to sharpen my skills in fictional writing. I have always been weak in this area. Every time I write a fictional story I think to myself, wow - that was a load of crap.

So my new blog will probably be a load of crap too, but I plan on making one entry per day, reporting on the events of the previous day, from the perspective of the main character. I don’t think it will be written like a journal, which means it probably won’t be first person either. I’ll probably do it in normal third person style, but still from the perspective of the main character, if that makes sense.

That’s what all that adventure game stuff was about. My story will be an adventure story. I’ll try to mix some humor in there (if you could call my sense of humor “humor”) to keep it, you know, semi-readable. Each day will be a story in itself, but tie into an overall bigger story.

Tonight this all seems like a really good idea to me, but I’m not going to act on it until tomorrow, because often times I will have a really good idea at night and think it’s total crap in the morning.

Anyway, this new blog will be on a new domain (perhaps one from the handful I own that have gone to neglectful custodians - I’m looking at you, Rex and Rachel). Neither Rex nor Rachel read my blog, so looking at them right there will do no good. However, when there domain turns into some lame story blog they’ll get the idea.

Posted by Sam at June 14th, 2006

Well, for the first time since it’s inception DIY:happy is down, down down. For some reason my host decided to shut it down because I got within 950GB of my bandwidth limit … which doesn’t even make any sense. Especially when you consider I throttled my bandwidth at 100GB.

I am working with them to get it resolved, but they were pissed yesterday because the NES Controller Phone story was getting so much traffic.

Here is a mirror of the story.

Anyway, if you go there now you will see a short message saying we’re down - which makes me one sad panda.

Posted by Sam at June 13th, 2006

This is the most amazing tape recorder in all of nature. It’s a bird that sings sounds that it hears - near perfectly. This includes not only other birds, but camera shutters, car alarms, and chainsaws. Crazy.

Posted by Sam at June 11th, 2006

Finished up on V. 1 of the NES Controller phone. Here is a video.

A full write-up of this project can be found on DIY:happy. NES Controller Cellphone.

Posted by Sam at June 11th, 2006

I got home tonight with the intention of maybe watching an episode or two of the office and retiring early. As is usually the case when I set such a goal for myself, I got distracted staying up surfing the web. Somewhere around 3am I got a great idea.

I have already made a retro bluetooth handset, so why not make something else totally weird and arbitrary into a bluetooth handset? I went to my workshop to grab the bluetooth headset and shiver me timbers right there next to the phone was the perfect device - an old NES controller!

I have removed the rest of this post and done a complete writeup of the project on DIY:happy.

See the post here: NES Controller phone.

Posted by Sam at June 9th, 2006

Getting your plates renewed is like a holiday that comes but once a year. I don’t remember every having to renew my plates in Colorado - but that could have something to do with the fact that I never had a car that lasted over a year.

So I got my inspection done. my front suspension link bar is bustedor something. $42 part only available through a dealer. Figures. Add $15 labor and its still actually not a bad trip to the mechanic. I knew something was wrong and was expecting a thousand dollar bill.

So I’m now sitting in the dmv. Very exciting stuff. Nicely cooled at least.

The number system here is weird so you never know when you’re coming up. It’s like they just choose arbitrary random numbers to call out. “now serving 324, 742, 900, umbrella.”

Here I sit alone and wonder how much this will cost and … thunder. uhhh …

yea my plates 2 months expired.

Posted by Sam at June 9th, 2006

Inspired by a post on DIY:happy (which will appear in the morning) on using jewel cases as picture frames, I set out to make an art piece using the picture above. Combining the power of the rasterbator, which I have previously used, and the picture you see above, I created a 12 jewel case piece of art for my wall. The picture is one of the logos from the pirate bay.

My room has somewhat of a pirate theme, with pirate flags acting as closet doors (there’s two), and so this goes along with the theme. Ultimately I decided I didn’t like it. I am going to come up with something different to contrast the two pirate flags I have. Something with color.

But for know, this is how it stands.

I also realized I never posted my previous rasterbation experiment, so here is a picture of the one I did at the end of last year and is now hanging in our living room. This one uses actual frames that I bought at Wal*Mart.

It’s from “Where the wild things are,” in case you couldn’t tell.

Posted by Sam at June 6th, 2006

I awoke promptly at 4:00 this morning to go open the irrigation gate behind our house.  As I walked back, I noticed our neighbors backyard, which is a farm of some sort, had already been flooded.  I also heard the sound of rushing water coming from my backyard.

I got halfway back and suddenly realized that I was standing in ankle deep water in my backyard.  Fortunately I was wearing sandals so no big deal (’cept it was quite cold).  Anyway, someone had already knocked down our fence and opened our irrigation gate to flood our lawn.  I’m still not sure what the point of this is, as we don’t grow anything but grass - and we have a sprinkler system.

Anyway, since our lawn looked pretty well flooded I closed our gate and opened the public gate to let the water pass on by.  Boy, was it exciting.  I then went back to bed.

Posted by Sam at June 6th, 2006

So I have been given the awesome task of waking up at 4:10 in the morning. Why, you ask? I have to open the irrigation ditch for 45 minutes, because it is the time the city allotted for us to flood our lawn. Don’t ask me why, since we have a sprinkler system, and oh yea - we live in freakin’ 2006 not in 1800 on some crazy farm. But whatevs.

So I’ll see you all at 4:10 in the morning, at which point I will be waking up, opening irrigation ditches in my backyard, and then laying in my hammock for 45 minutes staring at the stars. If you would like to come, I’l see you there.