Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Igor's LiveJournal:

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Saturday, July 18th, 2009
12:59 pm	I have gone the way of the Apple. At least for now, that is. I have obtained an IPhone 3GS, so that I can see how I like it, and consequently if I decide to keep it or not. So far, it has provided a very unique experience, with regards to gesturing in order to efficiently navigate the screen. And then I think to myself; if I wave at the phone, can it make my coffee? I think not, but one can always dream anyway. Sending SMS messages is still not something I have mastered yet, mostly due to the fact that I haven't quite memorized the keyboard orientation yet. I still have the N73 in case I decide to ditch the IPhone, but for now I'm playing with it, and seeing what comes of it. (Comment on this)
Thursday, June 4th, 2009
3:24 pm	Metered usage is stupid Was talking to a few friends/acquaintances of mine yesterday about the possibility that all ISPs will eventually have implemented usage-based billing, and their thinking is that this will be the case in about 5-10 years, including on dedicated links. On the other hand, I do not possess this belief. While I can see this somewhat making sense in the case of shared media i.e., cable connections, this really does not technically make sense when applied to a dedicated link. In the case of such a connection, the ISP provisions you at a given maximum rate that you pay a flat fee for, you only send and receive data at a maximum of said rate, and that's it. The only additional costs incurred in this case would be maintenance, and overall constant costs associated with running the overall network infrastructure. You wouldn't have the problem that is all too often experienced on shared cable networks, where one of the users can use all available bandwidth on the link constantly, and the ISP would need to allocate more bandwidth to the rest of the customers on that node, in order to increase throughput for the customers that are using somewhat less bandwidth, but still want their page loads to remain relatively fast. This sort of network management does incur additional costs, which is why I can somewhat understand the rationale of the cable companies; on the other hand, if their reasons are purely based on pushing non-TV customers to their cable TV offerings by metering their internet connections, that in my opinion is a death sentence for them. If it doesn't affect them at present, it will definitely start affecting them in the future. They will eventually have to face the fact that they are in the business of bit delivery, not content. A couple of links that can demonstrate the above points are this, and this. (Comment on this)
Sunday, May 10th, 2009
4:30 pm	Happy mother's day? I was sitting online, and amaena pointed me towards this. I haven't stopped laughing yet! (Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009
10:37 am	Lol How stupid can it get? Apparently, it's not over yet; rather amusing nonetheless though. (Comment on this)
Saturday, April 18th, 2009
2:33 pm	I lol'ed at this. Perhaps if I lol enough, I might be able to turn it into something useful. (Comment on this)
Sunday, April 12th, 2009
3:10 pm	Can hardware really sing? Apparently, yes they can. I was talking to garrettk17 yesterday, and he found some quite amusing Youtube videos. Here is one rendition of Starwars by a floppy disk, some Bethoven as performed by an HP Scanjet, and a singing Commodor 1541 floppy drive. And what do you know? Easter eggs on Easter! (Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 7th, 2009
8:36 pm	Yay network outages...Not. I haven't been up to much lately, except having to deal with these intermitent network outages; fortunately, they are not on my end. Some stuff at the local CO seems to be having issues (perhaps it's a wavelength card gone bad or something), and a Verizon tech told me today that they should have everything resolved by tomorrow morning. Hopefully my server doesn't disappear off the net again, but it could happen. (Comment on this)
Sunday, March 8th, 2009
1:14 am	update Yup, because I am oh so creative when it comes to subject lines. Not a whole lot has been going on lately, except work pretty much. Although, I have been on rather something of a programming craze lately; I started reading through a C++ tutorial, and sort of re-learning what I started learning of X86 Assembly back in 2002 or so. I probably won't be doing a lot of major coding in Assembly, but imo it's good to still retain the knowledge when or if it becomes necessary to use it at some point. Plus, I get to play around with it if I get bored sometime. Hey, it might be fun to write to random memory addresses, to see what I get. (Comment on this)
Friday, February 20th, 2009
7:12 pm	We did it! 19:12:36 up 200 days, 4:23, 10 users, load average: 0.17, 0.08, 0.02 Now hopefully we don't get any 7 hour plus power outages, which would drain my batteries completely. (Comment on this)
Thursday, February 19th, 2009
7:05 pm	Almost at the magic number, can we do it? 19:02:44 up 199 days, 4:13, 10 users, load average: 0.06, 0.03, 0.01 About 19 hours to go, until the server hits 200 days of uptime. It's quite amazing really, since the only access to it I have is remote, and the fact that all sorts of stuff has been moved around in that basement as of late. I guess the parents are trying to make sure nothing happens to the machine or its connectivity, since it means them not getting online for a while if something does happen. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, February 14th, 2009
7:07 pm	Here come the capacitors! We've probably already seen the patent; I am rather guilty of not having read it, but that's not the point is it? I hadn't thought we'd be seeing a device with one of these capacitor-based batteries until who knows when; however, I have been proven wrong. ANd now, the world's first ultracapacitor-based electric screwdriver. It charges in 90 seconds, you get 30 minutes out of it, and these batteries last far longer than conventional lithium ions. I might get one of these, just to have. Here's to hoping I'll be using a capacitor-based battery in my laptop soon. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 11th, 2009
6:54 am	Cloning RFID passports Not that this is anything new, but this is yet another case demonstrating that this sort of thing is still possible, and that having RFID chips in any sort of sensitive personal document is a really bad idea. (Comment on this)
Sunday, January 25th, 2009
8:12 pm	DRM is dead It's about time DRM died for stored content. I guess it remains to be seen how long it stays around in streams. (Comment on this)
Friday, January 9th, 2009
2:55 am	Windows can piss me off, or it can be amusing at times. While I was looking for some info that would possibly help me in installing some stupid network drivers, I came across this. At least I managed a laugh out of that one. (Comment on this)
Thursday, January 8th, 2009
4:01 pm	I can breathe again! Had to do a bunch of code cleanups as a result of some updates, but now it's all working correctly now. The only thing left now is the performance problem; hopefully it doesn't get too bad though. (Comment on this)
Monday, January 5th, 2009
12:10 am	Package managers This package manager takes a rather interesting approach. In other news, I hope everyone had a happy new year! Mine was ok I suppose, I mostly spent it trying to finish Legacy of Ashes, which I was not successful in doing. Although, I did get to part three, which I suppose is a good sign. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 31st, 2008
12:19 am	oops I let the-bofh.com expire, so it hasn't been resolving properly now for a few weeks. I renewed it today though, so things should return to normal in another day or so. It's really hard trying to keep domain expiration dates straight, when you have two different ones to worry about, and no reminder mail. Ah well, I'll get them straight eventually. (Comment on this)
Sunday, December 21st, 2008
4:51 pm	watching 60 Minutes Because Bruce Schneier is going to be on it. I hope Kipp hawley also gets what he deserves this time around, and in public. (Comment on this)
Friday, December 19th, 2008
8:15 pm	update Quite honestly, not much has been up lately, which is why I haven't been updating much as of late. Recently though, I have started taking up the effort of integrating AMR-WB+, an enhanced version of the AMR-WB (Adaptive Multirate Wideband) codec, into Ffmpeg, Libavcodec to be exact. I think I am understanding a bit more about how to get the job done now, so I might try another build this weekend. Today was mostly spent handling normal day-to-day stuff, and continuing to clean up the mess the original LP developers left behind. And that pretty much wraps it up for now, if I find some interesting links they will be making their way over here most definitely. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008
6:09 pm	Traveling anytime soon? If so, I highly recommend watching your luggage very carefully. I had recently thought that an item of mine was grabbed out of my bag on my last tryp to the airport, but thankfully I figured out where it was in due course. Unfortunately, some people may not have been as lucky. (Comment on this)