purrgatory

October 3, 2006

theme revamp 2

After looking at all the work I'll need to redo my theme, I've decided to just switch to WordPress. Reason being it has pretty much all the functionality I currently enjoy with Movable Type (except maybe QuickLinks and SpamLookup) AND it has Gallery 2 integration! And it's PHP; I like PHP.

I'll be exporting my entries over, but things like my moods and hypnotunes will most likely be lost. So I'll probably keep the old site up for reference purposes.

Posted by myuu at 12:10 PM in Tech | 0 TrackBacks

October 2, 2006

theme revamp

As you can see I'm back to using the default Movable Type theme. Apparently, SixApart has streamlined the theme format for MT, TypePad and LiveJournal to follow some particular standard, so I've decided to jump on the bandwagon and refresh all my templates to follow it.

Page regeneration on this site was also getting very slow (when posting comments, etc) so removing all those plugin code was also a good idea. At least now I have a somewhat clean slate to build my Doukutsu Monogatari theme.

Posted by myuu at 5:11 PM in Tech | 0 TrackBacks

almost a htpc

Gotta love forums.

There's actually a utility called MPTray that lets you start MediaPortal with the MCE Remote's Green button. And since I only use the remote for MediaPortal, that led me to uninstall HIP and the replacement MCE IR driver.

One interesting development though is a new MediaPortal plugin that caters for the HIP/MCE IR Replacement/MCE Remote combination here. However it requires a newer, more unstable version of MediaPortal not yet released to the public, so that pretty much puts it out of the running until a new stable version is released.

Now, all I need to figure out is how to keep my VGA fan from spinning loudly while MediaPortal runs in fullscreen mode.

Posted by myuu at 2:23 PM in Tech | 1 Comment | 0 TrackBacks

September 30, 2006

s3 resume again

Thinking how my overclocking is keeping my computer from S3 resuming properly, I went around looking for some utility that would overclock the computer on the fly when certain programs are run. So that my computer would only overclock when I needed to, leaving the rest of the time ready for standby mode.

SpeedFan has a function that lets you change the clock speed based on CPU load, but it didn't seem to work.

After scouring the net for a bit, I found a link to RM Clock via Guru3D. It somehow works on the power management features of the CPU/motherboard. So I set it to use a Power Saving profile that I had set to throttle the CPU to 50% when a standby/hibernate command is issued.

Either that made it work, or as Az aptly mentioned, a Systems Engineer solution of 'keep trying till it works'. :P

Yippie. Will test this further at my usual clock of 3.75GHz.

Posted by myuu at 9:40 PM in Tech | 2 Comments | 0 TrackBacks

September 27, 2006

mmm.. technology.

a radio station that learns what you like to listen to: http://www.pandora.com.

a Hamachi fallback: OpenVPN. i think i've set up my vpn server just nicely. now all i need are some guinea pigs.

i need to start working on my abandoned projects, namely the garage and myuucon. who knows, they might become secondary earners.

Posted by myuu at 5:45 PM in Tech | 0 TrackBacks

specialists are important because...

... i can't DIY for nuts.

here's a shout out to all plumbers and electricians! :)

September 22, 2006

so close, yet...

my pursuit for a successful S3 resume has ended in failure. it breaks cuz i'm overclocking my FSB, and might have something to do with the 865 chipset whose timings go haywire when a non-standard FSB is used.

it seems to work if I drop my overclock to 3.6GHz, but my wi-fi connection becomes erratic after that. haven't thoroughly tested it on stock settings, but i definitely need to overclock on my gaming machine. :P

i'll just have to wait for the remaining components for a proper htpc.

anyways, the tw-light thing we tried earlier failed catastrophically. azuan's ships were self-destructing upon respawn, so we didn't even get a chance to play a proper game. hopefully the developers will fix it. seems that they might try using a third party network library.

also, sydney photos are up! here's the link: http://www.bangsar.net/gallery/syd0608. i usually integrate pictures into the entry, but in this case the albums are nested, so nothing will show. too lazy to write myself a parser. :P

Gallery Links:

Posted by myuu at 9:16 AM in Life Tech | 0 TrackBacks

September 18, 2006

plentiful weekend

whee. sis came home. sydney pictures now in hand! MCE remote also in hand! :D saturday was spent in Shah Alam at her UiTM convocation. grats to her for getting the Vice Chancellor's Award, and grats to her on her Bank Negara scholarship.

sunday saw me started on my two washing machine intake project. while i've assembled all the parts a few times (acquired from Home-Fix) it's still incomplete cuz it still leaks despite the amount of Teflon i put on it. was supposed to try again today, but then i found this: http://timewarp.sourceforge.net/. me and azuan will be online more often now. :P

i was also fiddling with my MCE remote, trying to get it to work with MediaPortal. so far, i've tried a few configurations, but can't quite get what i want exactly. MediaPortal natively supports the remote, but since my pc is not a full htpc yet, there's no way to run/invoke MediaPortal in the first place. on the other hand, i can install HIP with the MCE remote plugin, but that means i'll have to reset the MediaPortal key assignments. so close, yet so far.

at the same time, i'm also fiddling with the remote's PC on/off button, which lets me put the PC on S3 standby mode via the remote, but so far i'm having trouble getting the PC back on again (well, it turns on, but as a complete boot instead of a resume from standby). Research shows i might have some non-ACPI compliant drivers, so i need to try and unplug as many devices as possible and see if the problem persists. if it does, it might mean a windows xp reinstall. we'll see how it goes.

S3 standby is desired for HTPCs because it lets your computer standby with minimal current. everything is turned off including fans, except your RAM which needs to store your session data before the suspend. It's basically similar to the Hibernate feature, but with your data in RAM rather than the hard drive. both types are actually part of ACPI.

so that XP reinstall is very possible. cuz how cool is it to be able to turn on and off your pc with a remote? :D

[ edit ]

because TimeWarp is such a huge download, and i only want to play the SuperMelee component, i'm going to get its TW-Light version instead.

mood: excited

Posted by myuu at 6:30 PM in Rants | 0 TrackBacks

September 14, 2006

shooting yourself in the foot

: host mx.tm.net.my[202.188.0.213] said: 550 Your IP address
219.95.159.xxx is being blacklisted by SenderBase. Please go to
http://www.senderbase.org to check for more details. (in reply to RCPT TO
command)

. . . . . I really don't know what to say.

Posted by myuu at 6:41 PM in Rants | 3 Comments | 0 TrackBacks

gnome 2.14 + 768mb memory = no no

server performance has been pretty bad as of late. i've been running portupgrade over the past few days to get all my programs updated to their latest versions. actually, it was mainly to fix the Scanerss plugin for Azureus that seemed to require the latest version of Java SWT, but that didn't work.

anyways, i'm now at Gnome 2.14. and i didn't read the upgrade FAQ. :P and i think my dependencies are shot (i just select the first option in pkgdb -F without realising there are others). so the server is pretty bloated right now. every morning i find the server running out of swap space, and i'm not sure what causes it. guess it's time to take out that 256MB ram and replace it with my spare 2GB set.

mom and i are still in cold war mode. oh well.