I try not to post stuff that Chris posts on his blog because, well, it seems kind of silly. At times I have to make exceptions when he finds something that may be of interest to people that read this blog regularly. This site is one such exception, and it is exceptional. Some guy trawled through heaven knows how many YouTube videos and edited bits of them together–both their video and their audio–to create new music videos. The results are amazing. Bear in mind that these videos were compiled from other videos which originally had nothing to do with each other, except that they were musical (loosely speaking at times) videos posted on YouTube. read more

Sorry for the lack of blogging. It comes as a surprise to me that it’s been ten days since my last posting, which is probably mostly a reflection of keeping busy with Audio Damage’s latest product.

I managed to fry one of the chips on the PCB I described in my previous entry. I was measuring something with a DMM and the probe slipped off the pin and shorted two adjacent pins. Unfortunately one of those pins was connected to the +12V supply, and the other pin was connected to one of the outputs of a $20 DAC chip. That was the end of at least one, if not both, chips. Oh well. read more

Just in case you haven’t noticed–and I hadn’t until a day or so ago–some computer memory is stupid-cheap these days. I just ordered two 1GB SODIMMs for a laptop (the most it can hold) for $26, shipped free, from Amazon. Oddly enough the same capacity of RAM on DIMMs for one of the desktops here was $71; don’t ask me to explain that difference. A 2GB SODIMM for my netbook was $23. (If I’m really lucky I can take the 1GB module out of the netbook and put it into the tablet, bumping its total up to 2GB, and gee, I should consider moving from 2GB to 3GB in my main PC, mumble mumble…) read more

This is going to sound completely like a scam, so feel free to ignore me in skepticism. I’d try to assure you by stating that I draw no benefit whatsoever from posting this information here (other than generating some website traffic, I suppose) but you’d probably dismiss that with well-founded skepticism also.

Nonetheless:

There is a website here that provides links to a bunch of state goverment sites for unclaimed property. To quote the FAQ from that site, “unclaimed property (sometimes referred to as abandoned) refers to accounts in financial institutions and companies that have had no activity generated or contact with the owner for one year or a longer period. Common forms of unclaimed property include savings or checking accounts, stocks, uncashed dividends or payroll checks, refunds, traveler’s checks, trust distributions, unredeemed money orders or gift certificates (in some states), insurance payments or refunds and life insurance policies, annuities, certificates of deposit, customer overpayments, utility security deposits, mineral royalty payments, and contents of safe deposit boxes.” In short, it’s money or other valuable stuff that has somehow become disconnected from its owner. read more

There’s a video here that’s quite funny if you’ve ever been frustrated by some new consumer-electronics gadget. (I’m guessing that this applies to anyone who reads this blog, i.e. anyone with a computer.) Note that the soundtrack is heavily laden with profanity, so use headphones if you’re at work or otherwise within earshot of someone who might be offended by colorful language.

I realize that postings here have been a little sparse recently. I guess I haven’t had much to say lately. Here’s a post that doesn’t have much to say either.

I was reflecting upon how it’s been 25 years since the Macintosh made its debut, after its eyebrow-raising advertisement ran during the Superbowl. 25 years later many of the user-interface concepts that were made popular by the Macintosh, such as moveable windows, pull-down menus, icons for files and folders, etc., are still in use, virtually unaltered. (Note that I said “made popular”. Apple didn’t actually invent most of these concepts, nor was the Mac the first product to use them.) Contemporary computers are faster are more colorful than the original Mac, but fundamentally they’re not all that different. On the other hand, the Mac was very different than any computer that was around 25 years before it. So if we’re all ostensibly being carried along by an exponential curve of technological growth, why have computer-human interfaces stayed more or less the same for the past 25 years? read more

I ran across Wubi last night. Wubi is a utility that installs a full version of Ubuntu on a PC running Windows. It’s nice for several reasons:

1. It’s much easier to use that the usual way of installing Ubuntu. You don’t have to repartition your drive, you don’t have to fiddle with a bootloader, you don’t have to know how to set up a Linux filesystem. Basically it’s a one-click operation. You download and run it; it downloads Ubuntu and installs it for you.
2. It installs a really-truly installation of Ubuntu. It’s not a form of virtualization (which is slow) nor is it a live boot CD (which is slower).
3. Once it installs Ubuntu, you can uninstall it like you’d uninstall any other Windows application.

I just used it to install Ubuntu on my Thinkpad X60 tablet. I’m a Linux neophyte but am interested in having a Linux system around for doing some development that appears to be simpler under Linux than under Windows. (Why, oh why is it so difficult to access the RS-232 ports from software running under XP?) Much of what I’ve seen of Linux strikes me as still not quite ready for prime time, but I’m betting that the development tools are quite good, given that the only people that used Linux up until recently were developers. read more

UPDATE: Sold!

In the somewhat unlikely event that you’re looking for an old Apple Studio Display 17″ LCD, I have one for auction here. I suppose it’s of historic significance if you’re an Audio Damage fan; I used it for all of my Mac activities for the first couple of years of the company’s history, and then used it to test all of our products for G4 compatibility after I migrated to an Intel iMac.