User Blogs

I finally managed to find time to assemble my Maker Shed Brain Machine Kit, and knocked it out today in spite of not having instructions until I finished. Since it is based on the Lady Ada MiniPOV3, this is a less difficult task than it sounds.

As a regular contributor to Katherine Noyes' Linux Blog Safari on Linux Insider, I was recently asked to comment on the NSA recommending Vista for best security. For those who don't already know, Vista is a train wreck, but the situation is at least slightly more insidious than simple stupidity.

Ubuntu has set the system clock to UTC since the Intrepid Ibex (8.10.) I didn't notice because I had upgraded through several other versions. Using UTC for the system clock is cool if you don't dual-boot, but I do. The functionality exists in at least Vista and later to use UTC for the system clock, but I'm using XP and don't trust it to work even if it appears to.

I decided to revisit Startopia, a nifty Windows XP game. I had trouble because they don't use Direct3D correctly; they make assumptions about your card. I had to teach it about mine to prevent a bluescreen every time I ran the game.

For some time now I have been using PS3 Media Server to stream video to my Xbox 360. Since solutions for playing various video streams on various devices have become more convenient of late I've become less picky about what I transcode to, except that I like to achieve fairly high quality. ogmrip has become less useful of late, failing on most source video on which I try to use it, so I've gone back to Handbrake, the most competent and arrogant of DVD transcoders.