Tech

Tech-focused ramblings. Computers, blogs, and whatever else fits.

Redesign in progress

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Well, I did a bunch of coding tonight, and have v1 of my site redesign up and ready to beta-test.

More details on the redesign are in the rest of this post. Unfortunately, as all I’ve re-coded so far is the main Long Letter page, they’ll revert to the current design. Still, at least I’m started, right?

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It just works

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Nathan Torkington, one of the staff over at O’Reilly is documenting his experiences as he moves from a Windows-based PC to an Apple iBook. Gotta love articles that state:

I plugged in the digital video camera (editing be damned!) and it Just Worked. I built wget and it Just Worked. I downloaded VM and it Just Worked. I plugged in a three-button mouse and it Just Worked. I came to realize something: I’d been with Microsoft for so long, who are complacent and hoard their customers, that I’d forgotten what it’s like to use an operating system built by people who want it to cooperate with the rest of the world. It’s good.

(via Daypop)

Well, I’m not surprised

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Those who surf the Web using a Mac tend to be better educated and make more money than their PC-using counterparts, …tend to be more Web savvy, with more than half having been online for at least five years…are 58 percent more likely than the overall online population to build their own Web page and also slightly more likely to buy goods online, according to the report.

(via MetaFilter)

Terrorrism of the future

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Here’s something interesting — a group called the Experimental Interaction Unit has created what they’re calling an “I-Bomb” (I’m assuming that the ‘I’ stands for ‘Information’). When activated, this I-Bomb creates an EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) that destroys all electronic equipment, yet is physically harmless to structures or living beings.

Were units like these set to a high enough power output in the right locations, they could cause incredible amounts of damage, without having to physically harm anyone. Hints of terrorism to come?

Music industry wakes up

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It’s about time some of the music companies started realizing that, cliched as the phrase may be, “if you can’t beat ’em — join ’em!” According to a story in the LA Times, Universal and Sony will be offering low-cost, unencrypted music downloads over the ‘net. Individual tracks for 99 cents, albums for $9.99 — and they can be freely (and legally) burned to CD once they’re downloaded. Hopefully it will work well enough that the other studios will follow suit….

Faster than a speeding bullet

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Major benefit to having my own DSL connection: because it’s up 24/7, I can run this website out of my own house, off of an iMac I have here.

Major downside to my DSL connection: at the level I can afford to pay for, while my incoming speed is great (1.5Mbps, equivalent to a T1 line), my outgoing speed bites (128kb/s, about twice the maximum theoretical speed of a 56k dialup modem).

This has been bugging me for a while — while my outgoing speed is great for the majority of my site (text and graphics are small enough to transfer quickly), the .mp3 mixes I have available for download on my dj propaganda page take forever to download whenever someone decides to grab one. I was whining to Casey about this yesterday, and he pointed me over to a friend of his.

So, at this point, I’d like to give major thanks to Karim, who graciously let me use some space on dragonshed.org to host my .mp3 files. As dragonshed sits on top of an OC3 connection (155.52 Mbps — insanely huge pipe), anyone who wants my .mp3s will now be able to download them at the maximum possible speed of what ever line they are using to connect to the ‘net with.

So, I’m in the process of uploading all my mixes to dragonshed now. I should have them all transfered over to the new server by the end of the weekend. Thanks again, Karim!

(Update @ 12:48 am Saturday — they’re all transfered over now — woohoo!)