Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Recent Fun on the Computer

For the past few weeks I've split my hard drive into its fourth and final partition, formatted in HFS+ (those who know what that is probably know what I'm doing ;]) (Partition 1 = Windows XP SP3, Partition 2 = swap, Partition 3 = ext3 for Ubuntu 8.10, for those who are curious). I've been wrestling with this operating system, getting Time Machine working was no biggie but I still don't have Wi-Fi (3945ABG wireless card not supported...drivers are being developed as we speak though), line-in/internal microphone, or the built-in Thinkpad Active Protection System working. Sleep doesn't work either. I tried to get that to work and the result was first a kext error and then a kernel panic. Joyous. I then reinstalled using iATKOS 5i and got rid of all the crapware that I had installed. It seems stable now, but I still wish sleep worked.

In the physical world, I took apart 3 hard drives and harvested monstrous neodymium magnets and 3 spindle motors. And lotsa shiny aluminum disks.

I also tried cauterizing nerve endings on a painful sore/cut wound. I used a piezoelectric igniter (lighter-grade), grounded another finger, and zapped the wound. The pain was white-hot but it became numb afterwards.

Not much more happening b/c of FRC season. Just random shooting moths with plastic BB guns. Planning on revamping that butane gun made from a crayola marker, making the combustion chamber a bit bigger to make it a bit more menacing. Hee hee.