Radified News for February, 2001
28.02.01
-
SatCP has a new & improved version of his EAC tutorial. More
info here.
Sanyo ships a 24X burner. Wow. Seems like just yesterday when 4X
was the rage. See here.
27.02.01 - Tried my hand at poetic prose last summer. See here.
Noticed that Tweakfiles dropped a link to my Ghost guide, under Off Topic. Also noticed that GL1-411 dropped links to both my Lessons from building a workstation designed to edit DV and Set up a streaming site guides.
26.02.01 - Pertaining to you CUSL2 owners, I received another note from Intel today, saying:
There
is a newer Beta version of the Intel(R) Ultra ATA Storage Driver
available, Beta2, on the Intel web site HERE.
We believe that any remaining CD-RW incompatibility issues have been
resolved, most notably CloneCD. There were also several minor fixes.
Please see the release notes for more details.
We still are not providing customer support for the Beta version of the
driver, but we are accepting any and all feedback concerning you
experience with our driver, be it positive or negative. Your comments are
always appreciated.
Thank you,
Intel Customer Support
02.24.01 - I was researching the topic of website promotion here .. more specifically here, where they discuss getting listed with Yahoo! .. and had this to say:
>>> "Help! I can't get listed on Yahoo! You are not alone. So many people complain to me about this that I've now banned the question from my message board to avoid repeating myself every two minutes. It's not uncommon for people to try unsuccessfully for well over a year."
I just checked with Yahoo!, and they have over 80 pages indexed from my site .. even tho I haven't yet submitted the site to any search engines. Weird. See here.
02.23.01 - Wendy posted a copy of RimaDreams .. a 5-min adaptation of a scene from the book Green Mansions, by WH Hudson. The Real video is encoded to broadband (Cable/DSL) bit-rate specs (for best quality) .. which means you can stream it if you have a broadband connection. Otherwise, you'll have to download. She shows it in class today.
02.22.01 - For those living in sunny Southern California, there's a great exhibit at the Laguna Art Museum. We've heard from numerous sources that Stephen Hendee's Presence Control is H-O-T hot! It opened Jan 21, and won't close until July 8.
Hendee was born & raised locally in Irvine, but currently lives in Newark, New Jersey. His constructions are built out of foam board, wood supports, tape, and florescent lights. Admission is $5 .. $4 for students & seniors.
02.21.01 - My webmaster buddy, Battman, informed me that he had to scroll side-to-side at 800x600 screen resolution when viewing my site (on his 17-inch monitor). Since I use 1280x1024 (on a 19-inch monitor), I rarely see how the site looks at 800x600. I had to re-size some of the (wider) graphics on the side columns to correct the problem. Should be okay now, at least at full-screen setting.
Battman also hooked me up with the Java script code for the Bookmark button. Gracias, amigo.
Received an email yesterday from Dr. Russo, who lives in Washington state. At 77 years of age (born October, 1923), the doctor claims he is the real World's Oldest Overclocker .. with some 3 years on Sidney.
Dr. Russo built his first over-clocked machine at age 74 .. based on the (legendary) C300a @450. He's now in the process of building his 3rd .. based on an Athlon 900 @1.2GHz .. and having himself a ball. Both men are an inspiration to overclockers the world over.
Sidney & Dr. Russo have been trading emails, comparing notes. I will update my article to include the new info.
02.20.01 - Saw the movie Pollack last night .. about the American Abstract Expressionist painter, Jackson Pollack, who painted the majority of his work in the 40's. Pollack grew up in Wyoming (born 1912), then moved to New York at age 18. He's famous for his drip & splash style, painting on the floor.
Pollack is the archetype of the tortured artist (alcoholic) who can only access wells of creativity after sufficient bouts of misery. Many artist seem to suffer from emotional (chemical?) imbalances. The tortured artist theme is common among artists, but scoffed at by happy artists.
Ed Harris produced, directed & starred in the movie. No doubt he liked the story, which was based on a book. The two men bear a similar resemblance. The theater had more people than I expected for a rainy Monday night. Some scenes were downright superb.
The movie would've been better if they edited out about 15 minutes of fluff. It got long in parts, but worth seeing, if you're even remotely interested in art or creativity.
A few links I found: one, two, three.
02.15.01 - Went to the Huntington today (Pasadena). Love that place .. 150 acres of botanical gardens. Wendy shot a scene for her adaptation of WH Hudson's novel Green Mansions (name refers to the primeval forests of south-western Venezuela). Lisa handled the cinematography while Wendy directed Rima (Dawn) & Abel (Rich).
They tried to shoot in the Jungle garden, but got busted by security .. violating signs that said: Please stay on the paved path. Security guy shadowed us afterwards .. making sure they didn't sneak back.
Eventually had to shoot at the Lily gardens, where no path restrictions existed. While they shot, I hung out in the Desert garden & the Australian garden. The Japanese garden is one of the coolest places at the Huntington, but we never made it there. You can take a virtual tour of the Huntington gardens here (you'll need Quicktime & Quicktime VR components). I had to hit Refresh on my browser to get it to work.
I learned that going guerrilla (as in, guerrilla tactics) refers to shooting without (filing for) permits .. & without notifying responsible administrators. They simply go in with cameras & tripods concealed in backpacks .. nonchalantly. But once in, they mount the shotgun microphone on the camera (on tripod).
Then it looks impressive. Draws attention. Several crowds gathered to watch the filming .. but the girls stopped shooting until crowds left. Have about an hour of footage to cut into a 5-minute scene. Afterwards we stopped at Tops (seems like everybody has a website) for one of their famous pastrami sandwiches.
02.14.01 - A 20-yr-old Dutchman has been charged with the infamous Anna Kournikova virus. CNN story here. I have long since disabled VBS scripting in all my Windows operating systems (Win2K, WinME & Whistler Pro beta1). You can find detailed instructions, complete with pictures, on the procedure here. It's quick & painless:
You can immunize your computer from all VBS viruses by simply uninstalling VBS Script Hosting. Around 95% of all Windows users will never need it, and if you do, you can simply re-install it.
Go to Start - Settings - Control Panel - Add/Remove Programs - Windows Setup - Accessories
Scroll down to the bottom, just above Word Pad, and uncheck Windows Scripting Host.
You have just uninstalled the mechanism that all VBS viruses use. It's the ounce of prevention that is more reliable than the pound of anti-virus software you hope is up to date.
02.13.01 - Notice anything different? Besides adding what many consider to be the world's most powerful search engine (Google), I replaced some boring text links with colorful images, coded with ALT, rollover info. After 8 months, I'm starting to get the hang of this webmaster stuff. Thanks for all helpful tips.
02.11.01 - Received a surprising number of emails from readers (the world over) who think Sidney is the coolest. Some want to meet him. Alex, who writes the code for Motherboard Monitor, posted a link on his home page here.
02.09.01 - World's oldest overclocker! Sidney Hatchl of Santa Ana, California, is the world's oldest overclocker. At age 74, Mr. Hatchl designed & built (from scratch) a system featuring a 700MHz Intel Pentium3 processor, that he overclocks to 938MHz (cB0 stepping, 1.75 volts).
In an Award's ceremony where he was honored with the new title by the Guinness Book of World Records, he's quoted as saying, "Rad rulez. I couldn't have done it without him." More info & photo from Award's ceremony here.
02.08.01 - Posted a list of 101 films from USC Film school's recommend viewing filmography. See how many titles you recognize here.
02.07.01 - Received an email from Intel today, saying:
Hello,
Intel(R) has released a beta version of the Intel Ultra ATA Storage Driver
on their support website here.
Please advise the regular readers of this page:
http://radified.com/Misc/cusl2.htm
that there is a beta available if they would like to try it.
Thank you for your patronage,
Intel Customer Support
I've already receive an HD Tach bench from Alain Proulx, at UWO Medicine, London ON Canada, who installed the beta drivers over the 603 drivers. He reports no problems. See his bench here.
02.04.01 - Wendy posted a 1-min (video ) school project titled Madre here (encoded to broadband streaming specs for better quality). Our MPEG encoder (from AVI) makes normally dark scenes overly dark .. so much so that you can't see anything in parts. She went back & lightened the dark scenes & re-encoded. Came out better the 2nd time. Real media doesn't look as good as the original, but you'll get the idea.
Her next project is going to be an adaptation of a scene from the 1904-book by WH Hudson Green Mansions.
Gorgeous day today. Like the most perfect of summer days .. in February. Days like today are why I live in SoCal. Laguna was packed. Had to take back streets to get anywhere. Ran the beach at sunset. Cadillac margaritas & tacos afterwards, at Olamendi's on the outside patio. Fernandez came by and played a few Mexican tunes for us. Wendy knows how to habla Espanole with him.
Linkage to -> News for January, 2001
Linkage to -> News for March, 2001