Category

Tech

My interest in technology stems from computer gaming. I am and always will be, a PC Gamer. Trying to play multiplayer games brought me networking experience, new games required better and faster computer components, and so I learned out of necessity what it took to battle the demons of hell. While I was around, I got into AOL, website design, and programming as well. My first crappy job at the KSU airport brought me money to build my own computer from scratch, which is still the computer I use today. Even though every single part has been replaced at some time, its soul lives on.

Wednesday, June 04, 2003

merkur.sytes.net version 3 BETA

Ok, most of the coding for the new site is finished. You are looking at it. Might not seem like much, but the front page is pure php and mysql now instead of just html. This makes posting easy! Also, you can respond to entires and stuff. Another main point is that this page is wc3 compliant now. (Except the shoutbox, that only works in IE). Many of you have taken notice to my new hated of microsoft and to stop using frontpage for my site is a big leap for me. Viewing both previous versions of my site in netscape/mozilla/gecko would led to errors or tables that were the wrong color. Most of the site's navigation boxes have been refitted with wc3 java code, but some huge tables (like the anime page) are still in crappy frontpage format. (Need any more convincing that microsoft is forcing people to use its software?)

There is not yet much point to becoming a member of my site, because I allow anonymous commenting to my posts, but if you want to register, go ahead. It works. The member controls are at the bottom of the home page. All you can do at this point, if you are not an admin, is log in and out. Maybe later I will allow other people to post on the site, cause its really easy now :D.

Anyways, this is the third major revision of my site, and its still in beta cause there could be stuff i forgot to update. Thanks go out to PMachine for creating the blogger, Trancender for hosting, and the people who helped me design/test the site. :D If you find any bugs, feel free to leave a comment on this entry.
Goodnight, world.

Tuesday, June 03, 2003

Whempy’s Wireless Project

    The problem:  To fit 4 people and 8 computers (including 3 laptops  ) into 2 cars and arrive at the Whempy's LAN Party in Columbus, OH.
    The solution: Establish a wireless ethernet connection between the two cars and Microsoft NetMeeting for voice communication.

    Situation: Two cars, My (Eclipse's) Car took the point because I had driven there before, although it was last year, so we weren't too sure where we were going.

    Equipment List:
        Eclipse's Car:
            Passengers: Eclipse, Codex
            Computers: Eclipse's Desktop, Eclipse's Laptop, Codex's Desktop, Codex's Laptop, Codex's Server
            Wireless Solution: Codex's Laptop with external antenna placed on top of car for extended range.
        Swiftwulf's Car:
            Passengers: Swiftwulf, Krhainos
            Computers: Swiftwulf's Desktop, Krhaino's MiniDesktop, Krhaino's Laptop, AC Power inverter, Access Point
            Wireless Solution: Krhaino's Laptop next to access point, powered by AC Power inverter.

Figure 1: Access Point.  Obviously the backbone to a wireless network.  We chose to power an access point rather than connect the two wireless cards directly so we could get a larger wireless range.  Even with Swiftwulf's car directly behind, 802.11b doesnt have a whole lot of range.  Because Krhaino's laptop doesn't have a long lasting battery, the power inverter was used in Swiftwulf's car so he could use it to power the access point and laptop.  The access point was placed on the passenger sun visor for optimum range and we didnt trust it to be taped to the outside of the car.

Figure 2: Performance. Performance over the mobile wireless network was marginal.  This picture shows Krhaino's laptop which was right next to the access point.  The strange thing was he got pings of around 45-50 to codex's laptop, while codex got pings of around 2000 to krhainos.  Voice over the network worked after a brief setup period, however.  File transfer between the two cars also worked, as tested by copying the directions back and forth.

Figure 3: Netmeeting. Because there was no DHCP on this relatively simple network, static IPs were used.  The lead car was assigned 10.10.0.1, and the the other was 10.10.0.2.  Netmeeting was chosen as the communication software due to its simplicity, smallest setup time, and the fact that we didn't have much choice.  The problem we ran into was that Codex's laptop runs linux, and doesn't have netmeeting.  To solve this, we downloaded Gnome Meeting for him.  This connected with the windows laptop, but the two could not text chat to each other.  Voice chat worked though, and we ended up using that instead.

Figure 4: Execution Both cars did an excellent job of staying close enough for the LAN to work.  Codex had some problems connecting to the access point at the beginning, but it worked and the two computers could talk.  We found out that sony microphones must suck because we were having some problems hearing krhainos, but overall it was cool.  Even had a radio station going for a few minutes :D.  Next time, some improvements can be made and we hope to have wireless gaming during the 2 hour trip back and forth from Whempy's

Figure 5: Success! We arrived at the LAN Party just in time for Codex to get a winning ticket.  He won two Cold Cathode Lights.  Congrats, Codex.   View the short movie! Click here!

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Thursday, April 17, 2003

New Laptop w00000t!

Heh, its been a while since I said anything worth saying.  Well, I got my new laptop on Monday.  It’s pretty much the same thing as my old one. It’s model number is L400, and here are the specs:

Intel Pentium III 700MHz with SpeedStep (down to 500mhz)
128 MB PC100 SODIMM (plan to up to 196 or 320mb)
4mb ATi Mobility Rage M1 Video Card
Crystal Soundfusion CS4281 Sound card
20 GB 4200rpm Fujitsu Hard Drive
12.1” XGA TFT screen 1024x768
24x External CD-ROM
USB External Floppy Drive

Wednesday, March 19, 2003

Boring Weekends

Hey, I think this picture is cool, so it's going to be on the left side of the webpage until I think of something else to put here.  I had to write something or all my loyal fans would think that I have died or something.  I can't really think of anything, so I'll just write about what's up.  Last weekend I did nothing.  It was great.  I didn't have to go to a LAN Party or do massive essays or clean a lot of crap up.  I could sleep in.  I could play Quake 3 Arena all day if I wanted too. I was free.  Friday night was the anime club I always go to, because I have nothing better to do on Friday nights...nice to know a lot of other people don't as well.  Dan and Mike didn't show up, but it was still fun.  Went to dinner at subway with most of the club, and then Mark's dorm room afterwards.  Joe Yash and him played yugioh while I looked through his anime music videos.  We decided to make our own...yeah, I'll let you know how that turns out.  We were out really late, like 2am.  I went to breakfast with my dad at the Stow Cafe Saturday morning.  So much for sleeping in.  They make the best breakfast sandwich there.  It's scrambled eggs, cheese, and bacon all in a croissant bun that is awesome, and I hadn't had it in forever.  I really enjoyed it.  After breakfast, I played some games and played online, waiting for people to wake up.  Doing nothing sucks!  I was awake for like 6 hours before anyone else.  Finally, Jo came online and a little later we went to best buy.  Best Buy sucks.  We always go for some reason, but you always get there and it's the same old stuff at the same high prices.  The good thing was that we ran into Dan and Tim there and ended up at a makeshift LAN Party at my house.  When we walked into the house, though, my mom said "hey! you guys can move my couches into the basement."  Oh great, sorry guys.  We moved the couches out the front door and all around the ice patches to the back door, it sucked.  My mom's getting new couches on Tuesday...ok so that's yesterday, and the big couch went into my room.  Looked kinda crappy at the LAN, but I fixed it up after everyone left and it looks cool now.  I'll get pictures up at the end of the week.  I didn't have my camera there.  Codex and Trewr seemed kinda mad they weren't invited...but this wasn't your normal LAN Party.  It kinda ended as soon as it began, but we all had fun, I think.  Woke up Sunday morning to go to the computer show in Akron.  By myself.  It was ok, a lot easier to get around by yourself, so it didn't take me long.  RAM is really cheap right now.  Unlike gas.  Damn war.  This had better not affect Quakecon, is all I have to say.  Wait, wasn't I supposed to sleep in this weekend.  Oh well, I haven't slept in late for like a month, so I don't miss it anymore.  I upped my RAM to 512MB as well, a necessity these days.  Or I couldn't let Yash have more RAM than me. haha.  Spent the rest of the day getting a bigass cake from Yash and working.  Then it's back to school.  So hard doing nothing these days.  Oh, and I guess if you guys want, we could watch some anime movies at my house on Friday, since anime club is cancelled.  Tell me if you're interested.

Monday, March 10, 2003

Stuff

OMG I am so mad right now.  You see, I had this rant all written out and 3/4 of the way finished.  BAM! Blue Screen.  Thanks a lot Windows.  Windows XP Pro has been really bitchy to me lately. You don't often see a computer like mine blue-screening while typing.  Maybe if it was Morteus's Computer..  It all started at JelOH while I was playing Doom on my SNES Emulator.  Holy Crap is that game fun using a gamepad, its a whole new Doom.  But on E1M3, it blue screened and wouldn't boot for like 10 minutes.  Once I got it to boot, it insisted on running scandisk as slow as it possibly could.  It took 2.5 HOURS to scan my 100gb hard drive.  Luckily, they were still playing CS or Natural Selection or something, so I didn't care.  Jo and Tim took the opportunity to play a game of Q3 without me though.  Bastards.  I helped Tim out a little because Jo is getting much better and was owning.  Did I just say Jo was owning?  Congrats, Jo!  Anyways, my computer is a bitch and I might do the classic sell-everything-buy-better thing that everyone these days is doing.  Microsoft Longhorn is the devil (See why here).

   The new shoutbox technically works, but it throws out a lot of errors.  I made it all black so you can't see it unless you highlight it.  Hopefully that will work by next weekend.  You have to scroll all the way to the bottom, and then click the expand button to post.  Knock yourselves out.  The only rule I have is no posting under other peoples names.

   JelOH was ok, other than my computer having the problems I mentioned above.  It started with me driving past Fred Fuller park at 50mph in a 25mph zone.  It's awesome how Fred Fuller Park never has any cops around.  Shit, there's a cop.  You expect me to stop?  Hell No.  The light ahead is green, so the light in my head is green too.  I shoot around the corner and fly to Kent State University before I even see him pull out.  (I knew he had seen me)  Hiding in the Tri-Towers parking lot, I bought some food for the LAN and proceeded to go there.  Haha Cop, I win.  The LAN started slowly with a lot of CS, which I didnt really care for.  I talked to Big Ed while he was there, a whole 20min.  He got a new pickup truck.  Its not the same Ed without the blue neon-ness!  Then my computer died..  3 hours later it was back to normal.  Played some Natural Selection.  I was on the alien team the whole night and the first round, I rushed them as a weakling, before they could get their gun sentries up.  I took out the entire team and won the game 1 minute into it.  Normally the game takes hours to finish, but I am so l33t that I single-handedly won.  Ever see Monty Python's Holy Grail?  Imagine me as the killer rabbit, thats what it looked like.  No one could hit me.  It ruled.  Later, in the new game I used the weak alien again and managed to dodge every single sentry and slide my way past all their team to their command center and I destroyed it myself.  It didn't win the game, but boy were they f'ing surprised.  I am so good at the little alien its not even funny.  Jo helped me stealth my drives, which looks hella awesome.

  The KSU Anime club is meeting 6-10 Friday nights and they are showing Azumanga Daioh, which is an awesome comedy about some "average" schoolgirls.  You should come check it out.  They are showing it because I brought it in one night when we couldn't watch Jungle Wa Itsumo Hale Nochi Guu.  I have the whole series if people are interested.  Actually, BobOmega has it too, so ask him  :D

BobOmega click HERE