Hex Wallpaper

It's time to switch up the wallpapers again so I've come up with a new concept for everyone to enjoy Hex WallPapers (in the same vein as the carbon fiber wall paper before it).

Download

MKV to MP4 conversion for PS3 playback.

This is the newer version of the MKV2M2TS conversion script I previously posted. This new version is faster and has less dependency plus the addition of HandBrakeCLI into the mix means that even when all else fails the script can still do a slower but guaranteed to work full encoding.

Windows Carbon Fiber Wallpaper

I decided today that I needed a new carbon fiber themed wallpaper. After failing to find one that I wanted I decided to create my own.

1920:1080 (16:9 aspect) Download Zip Here

1920:1200 (16:10 aspect) Download Zip Here

And here's a bonus one for android.

I've included a blank carbon fiber so you can use it with the windows login changer for a clean login experience.

Radeon HD 5870 Quiet Mod

I noticed that the squirrel cage fan in the HD 5870 can at times make a medium pitched wirr. After some messing around I realized it was the plastic shell that was very good at transmitting the noise.

So I got out some foam board and created a sound damper.

 

 

 

 

 

The end result is that frequencies are now isolated to much lower end of the spectrum and the video card generally remains barely audible.

This also has not yet shown to affect thermals in any way so it’s the best of both worlds at the moment.

My Opposition Letter to The CRTC regarding UBB

There are several major problems with UBB I will outline them for you below.

1. Independent ISP's already pay for the infastructure congestion is on the bell end and is not caused by the "strain
of independent ISP's" as they only get their agreed upon rate.

2. There is no free ride happening independent ISP's pay for infrastructure upgrades just like everyone else.

3. Accountable metering is needed if we go with UBB: For metered internet to be viable each house will have to get a certified meter installed of which the measurement is validated and government approved. Similar to the requirements of retail scales, gas meters, electricity meters, water meters. In the current model Bell can claim the user used X capacity and the user has no recourse as bell can claim whatever they want. This meter must be readable without requiring logging onto Bell's website (aka must not use bandwidth to check it).

4. Bell is not penalizing the "Bandwidth Hogs" the problem of capacity lies in what is known as "peak hour capacity" that is when everyone is trying to get online. Bell penalizes a 5Mbps plan more by giving them a lower cap vs a 25mbps plan. But the 5mbps users is far less likely to cause congestion because they simply cannot be as demanding as the 25mbps user.

5. UBB is a discouragement for network upgrades and continue investing. If you were Bell and you could just simply penalize your customers for using the service they paid for as a way to make your users demand less would there every be a need to upgrade your infrastructure? Nope. In fact if you knew every customer was capped at 25GB why would you even bother investing any capital at all in improving your network infrastructure? You've essentially frozen all possible future demand.

6. The tariffs don't reasonablely match the cost to produce each GB. Most of us understand there is some markup but Bell's markup model is insane. The price to deliver a GB including network upgrades done annually is less than 3 cents / GB. Yet bell turns around and charges of $2? The cost / GB would be reasonable if UBB was implemented at a rate of 5-10 cents / GB.

7. The tariff's don't reward the non-bandwidth hogs. If we have these tariff's in place what happens when you don't exceed the 25GB of allocated bandwidth? Surely bell will give you a refund or a credit for unused GB? You can carry them over to the next month right? Nope this 25GB just dissapears you don't get it back.

8. Canada already has the highest internet prices in the world. And yet we still can't keep up with our internet? The USA is already offering fiberoptic to the house while charging their customers far less. The argument that Canada needs to charge more to keep it's network running is completely fictitious.

10. Conflict of interest: Bell's own TV service isn't metered in any way. They are using UBB to effectively prevent new errants from entering the market like Netflix.

11. There is something seriously wrong when filling up 6 hard drives then overnight shipping them, and simply throwing them away will cost less than if the same data was delivered over the internet. http://www.canadiandownload.com/ is a business model that shows just how backwards our internet is.

12. Innovation will leave. Why in the world would companies that are creating new and innovative experiences on the internet stay in Canada when the Canadian public will be completely unable to utilize their services?

Usage Based Billing : The Fight Isn't Over Yet

As many Canadian's breath a sigh of relief I would like to remind them the fight isn't over yet. In this CRTC hearing the behaviour is shameful.

Admist the 400,000+ now that have signed the petition against Usage Based Billing the head of the CRTC is still ignorant a belligerent and insistent that their stance is pro-consumer and not for the telcos:

http://www.cpac.ca/forms/index.asp?dsp=template&act=view3&pagetype=vod&hl=e&clipID=5030

In addition when asked "How do you come to these figures" Referring to statistics regarding how much internet (GB) consumers use and what impact it would have on consumers Fickenstien continuously reiterates "Bell told us the average user uses 15GB", "Bell told us this would only affect 4% of the population".  The same was applied to overage charges they admitted they just took Bell's figures for their retail customers and applied a discount instead of actually calculate how much it costs for a gigabyte and see if the markup is reasonable.

How does the CRTC a regulatory body even do any regulating if all they do is take data that Bell claims and doesn't so much as do a little verification?

Stop Internet Metering In Canada

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are about to impose usage-based billing on YOU.
This means we're looking at a future where ISPs will charge per byte, the way they do with smart phones. If we allow this to happen Canadians will have no choice but to pay MUCH more for less Internet. Big Telecom companies are obviously trying to gouge consumers, control the Internet market, and ensure that consumers continue to subscribe to their television services.

These Big Telecom companies are forcing small competing ISPs to adopt the same pricing scheme, so that we have no choice but to pay these punitive fees.

This will crush innovative services, Canada's digital competitiveness, and your wallet.

We urgently need to send a clear message to Ottawa, saying that we won't stand by while some of the most profitable companies in the country indiscriminately add new fees to our Internet bills. Enough is enough. 

Click here to sign the petition and tell Ottawa your against Usage Based Billing.

Mass Exodus of Facebook

It's interesting from a long ago Facebook quitter to observe this new mass exodus that is now occurring. 4 Months ago me and my group of friends discussed privacy concerns over Facebook and since then deactivated our accounts.

It would seem that the world is catching up to our tech savvy movement. Recently in the last few weeks the Internet has been in an uproar about privacy concerns over Facebook. Facebook has introduced a service that allows you to be logged in to share data over various services. Once again like all Facebook introductions everything is defaulted to public for their entire network.

As the patterns build up it seems to all point to what me and my friends assumed 4 months ago. Facebook it would appear doesn't really care about privacy and will never learn from their mistakes. The act of opening all your personal information to the public is not a mistake so much as a conscious business strategy. It is very much to Facebook's benefit to make all your information public. As such they will continue to try and open up every last piece of data you put on it until you finally delete your account.

PS3 Firmware 3.21 Update Process Impressions

Like may people out there I was a bit disappointed when I heard that firmware 3.21’s only feature was the removal of Linux. I used it from time to time but I will admit it was not in steady use on my system for day to day operations.

That said I disagreed heavily with Sony’s underhanded approach of removing features that were obviously advertised on the side of the box my unit came in.

This is not about Sony’s update decision however there are plenty of posts on the internet about that, this is about the update process.

First off if you have another OS installed before you update you are required for format your HDD. Formatting your HDD removes all user settings, saved games, movies, music and photos you’ve loaded on. For me that’s 60GB.

I looked around for a “Just delete Other OS partition and resize” option but alas there was none.

Any sane user at this point would offload the data to a backup hard drive. So I went to the backup utility and selected backup to external HDD. This is where Sony’s lack of care for this release is made obvious the backup will take 2 hours to complete. I’m guessing since I’m in the middle of it that the restore will also take 2 hours.

4 Hours for a firmware update is by far the worst customer experience ever. I’m sure I’m not the only one that’s greatly disappointed in Sony for this.

It would’ve been possible to just wipe the OTHER OS partition and expand the main partition without losing user data. But no, Sony decided that he customer’s time is not really worth anything.

A very poor rollout Sony as much as I’m usually negative about Apple, their iphone and ipod releases are done far better. Major releases although they wipe your phone, automatically make sure everything is back the way you left it before the update is done.

In order to ease customer suffering Sony could’ve also implemented a prompt to insert an external HDD and have the user data reloaded when the update was complete. But to be honest a simple delete partition and resize main partition would have been much more effective and much faster.

Take note people this is NOT how to update consumer devices.

Dell battery Died for Good

Well after several conditioning runs today the battery decided it wasn’t going to charge anymore. After opening it up and forcing a few more manual charges the battery finally developed a failure.

Now when you plug it into the laptop instead of getting the battery status you get “Error Communicating with Battery” suggesting the SMART charging circuit is damaged. I guess it won’t hurt to keep these cells around for some other projects but I guess they are no longer good for laptop use.

It does seem suspicious that each battery lasts only slightly over a year and dell only offers a 1 year warranty on it’s battery. It’s almost as if there’s an internal timer that’s programmed to fail after a year.

If anyone else has a Dell 9400/e1705/ or XPS 1710 and would like to tell us about your battery experience feel free to comment.

Laptop battery acting up.

My Dell laptop battery is acting up again. It's giving me the 4 amber 1 green flashes suggesting temporary battery failure. Last time this was fixed with a couple of full conditioning charges.

(full discharge and charge cycles)

I'll do a few more but it is taking significantly longer to charge than discharge.

Dual Speaker Setup

Theory: If speakers all have their weaknesses (High, Low, Midrange) then would combining speakers with different strengths improve things?

 

Setup:

(outer)

Logitech Z-2300 THX speaker set:

Strengths: Highs, Lows,

Weakness: Speech, Mid range, Rumbling bass

 

(inner)

Yamaha MS201:

Strengths: Mid-Range. Accurate but weak bass

Weakness: Highs, Ultra low

 

(Connector)

Standard single 3.5mm to Dual 3.5mm splitter jack.

 

 

Result? Well I've yet unconfirmed a true result but I do notice slightly improved midrange when compared to the stock Z2300 setup the vocals come through clearer and are more center stage rather being drowned out by the accompaniment.

I wouldn't recommend you go out and buy a setup to get this effect though the reality is that the Logitech Z-2300 does a pretty good job already. The Yamaha's do a very good job of filling in the mid range which was lacking in the Logitech. In particular the bass is now not only loud and thunderous but also accurate and fast which would be impossible with the vented setup. But now with two subs one vented one unvented I get the best of the mixing.

The satellites are more interesting it takes a bit of adjusting to get the mix right depending on your preference the mixing is about 40% Yamaha 60% Logitech now.

Do I see a sizable gain?: A slight gain yes, a sizable gain no certainly not if you didn't have the extra equipment on hand. However if you do have 2 speakers that you both like different qualities to it might be worth a shot to bring them together.

Dell Laptop Owner's Beware

If you have an Inspirion 9400/e1605 chances are you video has went on you. It's not new news anyone with an nVidia card either be Go 7800 or 7900 GS will fail. The 7900GS has a far higher failure rate with most of these cards dying from artifacts that look like lines going up and down the screen.

If Dell offers to extend your warranty DO IT! I'm already on my 4th card.

My first card was a Go 7800 by far this card lasted the longest as it worked fine in my system for the first 2 years.

Upon failing the Dell service depot did not have any of the parts in stock, so they substituted it with a Go 7900GS video card. I was happy that I got a free upgrade to a slightly faster card but unfortunately after 2 months this card failed.

The third replacement was again a 7900GS this by far was the shortest lifespan as within 1 month and 1 week it also died (you can confirm this by searching the archives).

Now I'm on my 4th card, I'm a bit disappointed that Dell replaced my last fancy Go 7900GS with the older Go 7800 which generates a lot more heat and performs weaker. That said after contacting Dell several times to get this remedied I just decided it was too much hassle and most likely this Go 7800 judging from how much heat it generates will just go up in smoke before the 1 year warranty is up anyways.

Video cards for the dell Inspiron 9400/e1705 are becoming ridiculously expensive on ebay now with prices now well into the $400 CDN range. If you were to upgrade to a 7900 GTX or a 2500M be prepared to shell out at least $500 now. That said I've heard that the 7900 GTX has much better cooling and will not go up in smoke like the Go 7800 and 7900GS.

For those that are interested I'll be sure to update the blog the next time this video card goes up in smoke, I'd also like to hear any horror stories you might have had as this is very a very common design flaw. Maybe if anyone has a solution to this it would be nice as well.

Right now I just needed to get this down for those of you wondering if you just got a lemon of a laptop. Let's just say all Inspiron 9400/e1705 are like this and you should expect to have to have your video card swapped out regularly.

Laptop Revived

Well the laptop arrived back 2 days ago after some more through tests I can confirm that the new video card is working fine.

Unfortunately I do feel like I can't endorse Dell anymore 2 times failure is now a pattern. I've ordered some thermal gap fillers from the other side of the world these are the same ones that go over some laptop IC components in order to dissipate heat. I'm hoping I can replace my current pads with these ones which are suppose to perform better.

When these pads arrive I will also put a new layer of OCZ freeze on which is generally 5 degrees better than my current Xigmatek brand thermal compound.

I also have another GPU I'm bidding on with a dual slot cooler provided the bidding doesn't get out of hand this will become my primary while the current card becomes the spare.

Laptop Video Dead

It would appear that after my recent laptop video replaced under warrenty this new one also died.

I'm starting to suspect nVidia QA issues with my GeForce Go 7900 GS as well. What's strange is both GPU cards died from a vram related issue. I suspect that the cooling pads for the vram are not sufficient to cool down the chips. Unfortunately I don't really see a way of correcting this issue.

Perhaps with my next unit I will put better thermal compound between the GPU core and the heat shield but I doubt that will fix the issue because the ram chips are the ones that are dying no doubt due to thermal expansion and contraction of the solder joints.

if you have a Dell Inspiron 9400/e1705 with an nVidia or ATI graphics card and suddenly get a BSOD with a NMI: Memory Parity/Check error, you can be pretty sure your video card is starting to go bad and the memory in question is vram.

For my next mod once the video card is back I will try and replace the thermal pads with a solid aluminum block along with buffing the surface to hopefully improve the thermals just enough to prevent another premature failure. Failing that my only solution is to continue buying new video cards off ebay as they are a "hot" item (excuse the pun) for this model of laptop.

SpeedStream 4200 Cooling MOD

After having the SpeedStream4200 around for about 2 weeks I decided that the tiny diminutive DSL modem has serious cooling issues. Under normal conditions when it's allowed to lie flat on the table the bottom will get too hot to touch.

 

The problem became more serious when the modem was taken apart, the main processor on the board was hot enough to give you a burn.

 

Although I have no doubt the modem is operating within operating ranges it's still inexcusable how sometimes a simple heatsink that would've cost less than a dollar would've remedied the situation and greatly reduced the number of these modems that have been known to fail.

An easy fix for those of you DIY'ers is to take some aluminum thermal duct tape and to fold your own semi-pro looking heat sink.

 

 

Remember the trick when trying to create your own is to start with an accordion fold. The higher you can get the cooling fins the better your cooling will be. The denser you can pack them together likewise will help as well. Passive cooling is a function of surface area so when designing your heat sink try and maximize that. Although I haven't done it another good idea is to mount a cooling fan nearby to encourage airflow over the chip.

I hope in the future manufacturers won't take shortcuts after an hour of testing temperatures appear to be dramatically reduced.

Lego Tat-Tat-Tat-Tat-Tat!

With the early details of the capstone project in hand we know it'll be lego and we know it will be mindstorms.

I was thinking of markets for our project (part of our assignment) and I realized that if I build one of the lego attachments below then I'd definetly be scooped up by Darpa.

No Cisco Clean client

Here at McMaster they introduced a new annoyance called cisco clean access. Basically it's spyware that scans for other spyware (fantastic!). However not many here at McMaster are aware that you can technically connect to the internet without any additional software.

On Windows XP all you need to do is connect to openport.mcmaster.ca via a PPTP tunnel, this method is still confirmed to work.

Linux users also can avoid installing cisco drivers and go with a standard vpn that supports pptp passthrough.

Encryption will be up the the user, and the whole connection is slightly less secure then IPSec but hey your just checking your email right?

EDIT: Ok I was asked to provide more specific instructions so here goes:
1. attempt a wireless connection to verify you get an ip and are on the Mac wifi
2. XP users click start "connect to", win 2000 users click networking.
3. Add a new connection select "connect to network at my workplace" (hit next)
4. Choose "Virtual Private Network connection" (hit next)
5. Call this "McMaster Openport"
6. If the next screen presents you with "Dial an inital connection" select "no connection".
7. In the hostname section enter: "openport.mcmaster.ca" (without the quotes)
8. hit finish.

Your username should be your MACID, your password should be your MACID pass if you have problems check that your connected to mac wifi first as this will not work off campus.

Additional considerations (security)
Without the cisco clean access client you are running a more insecure network so it might be a good idea to turn off a few features like file sharing if all you need is internet. To do this goto your "McMaster Openport" connection right click and goto "properties". Goto the networking tab uncheck "client for microsoft networks" and "file and printer sharing"

In doing this you won't be able to share files or be able to let other's use your printers while on mac connect but this isn't something normal users want anyways. It's probably a better idea to upload your files for pickup anyways.

Unfortunately UTS will block you if you use any ports that viruses spread from such as RPC ports so it's up to you to keep your machine virus free.

Finally A Non-Wimpy Electric Car




It took a long time but someone finally made an electric car that beat out my inital enthusiasm for the TZero from ac propulsion. It's called the Tesla and it's a serious electric car, it looks like one too however what's really impressive is that it can go 0-100km in less than 4 seconds and has a range of around 400km. I have to say that I don't care much for the first figure but the second figure is mighty impressive and if it were available I'd seriously consider it over a conventional combustion engine. What's more impressive is it runs about 2 cents / km. So let's compare with a modern econocar raitings.

The Tesla Roadster: $0.02 / km = $2.00 / 100km (Theoretical Max Range 400KM)

We'll assume the price of Gas is 100.0 / L even though it's currently 106.3
We are taking best case highway numbers as well to give the Gas cars an advantage and calculating the max ranges with an assumed 50L fill at those best case numbers.

Mazda3 GS 2.0L : 6.1L / 100KM @ $1.00 / L = $6.10 / 100KM
Estimated Max Best Case Range: 810KM
Honda Civic : 5.7L / 100KM @ $1.00 / L = $5.70 / 100KM
Estimated Max Best Case Range: 870KM
Honda Civic Hybrid: 4.3L / 100KM @ $1.00 / L = $4.30 / 100 KM
Estimated Max Best Case Range: 1160KM
Toyota Prius: 4.2L / 100KM @ $1.00 / L = $4.20 / 100 KM
Estimated Max Best Case Range: 1190KM

As we know sports cars are huge gas guzzlers so let's take a quick look at some exotic cars to compare:

Lamborghini Murcielago: 18.1L / 100KM @ $1.00 / L = $18.10 / 100KM
Estimated Max Best Case Range: 270KM
Aston Martin Vanquish: 13.1L / 100KM @ $1.00 / L = $13.10 / 100KM
Estimated Max Best Case Range: 382KM
Porche Carrera GT: 11.7L / 100KM @ $1.00 / L = $11.70 / 100KM
Estimated Max Best Case Range: 427KM
Bugatti Veyron (Highway): 14.7L / 100KM @ $1.00 / L = $14.70 / 100KM
Estimated Max Best Case Range: 340KM
Bugatti Veyron (City): 40.1L / 100KM @ $1.00 / L = $40.1 / 100KM
Estimated Max Best Case Range: 125KM

As you can see the specs look good if the Tesla delivers on what it says it'll deliver on paper it'll be the speed and range of a sports car, with the running cost of an econocar. As long as you can find a spare power plug every 400KM and can take 3 hours to charge it seems like a great deal, and a huge plus is no green house gases.

However part of the package for an exotic sports car is the looks and to me at least this one's got it.

The Tesla was designed by Lotus Elise engineers and it shows.


Low component count makes the Tesla mechanically simpler than most cars.


Notice the car only has forward and reverse, there is no gear changing since electric motors work well from 0rpm all the way to 13000+rpm.


Here's the car's powerplant, significantly smaller than a modern car engine and much less complex. The electric motor is infinitely more efficient as it is simpler than the internal combustion engine.

A few caveats though because the car uses laptop batteries after the first year the car will lose 20% of it's charge if stored at 100% charge level which is probably what everyone does if given a car like this. That means that after year one your range will go from 400KM to 320KM and after year 2 it's looking like 256KM by year 3 you will need a replacement since your now doing 204KM that's half the original range. So if you were going to own you must consider battery wear as a part of the cost, although everyone these days is a "right now" society and might just ignore this running cost.

Two types of computer users.

It has recently come to my attention that there are two major types of computer users. There are the ones that prefer the all in one suites and the ones that like lightweight applications. This was brought to my attention with a discussion on Maxton vs Firefox. For those that don't know Maxton, it's a up and comming browser based on IE rendering engine but incorporating many useful tools like tabs.

Maxton's design philosophy from what I can tell is the suite design philosophy. Bundle as much useful funtionality as you possibly can into this application for the user so the user never has to customize the application or get plugins because the popular ones will be integrated in the next release. From what I've seen suite users tend to be suite users for all applications, they prefer large "full featured apps" that try their best at doing everything. They also don't mind the idea that they start off knowing only 20% or less of what the application can do. These end up being the users that will prefer the full version of messenger to gaim outlook to webmail, and don't generally go to the task manager to check how much system resources a particular application is using. A general philosophy for these users is "a good application should predict and include all the tools I need without me having to go out and get them."

Firefox's design is quite different from Maxton's. Firefox has always gained popularity over it's suite program Mozilla by remaining simple and light. Firefox doesn't try and anticipate the functionailty from it's users but rather allows each user to go out and fetch plugins to extend the set of tools Firefox has on their own. As such Firefox attracts the lightweight users, or users that hate over bundling of functionality no matter how efficiently done it might be. The design philosophy behind Firefox seems to be, provide a very strong and basic core application, then allow the users to extend it any way they might like. Users of lightweight application design philosophy might use notepad as opposed to a heavier text editor just because "It's all they need". A general philosophy to these users might be, "just give me what I want with none of the bloat".

I won't debate the merits of either of these solutions because sometimes efficient bundling can cause the package to perform as efficiently as a non-bundled application. I'm purely pointing out these two divergent groups of computer users which I find intreguing. Being in the second group I can't understand the attraction towards the suite packages, but I cannot fail to acknowledge their popularity.