Category Archives: geek

Dark magick of firmware hacking

My job right now is to figure out whether I can change the firmware and load it onto the toaster. So I make a simple change to it: there’s a string which gets displayed when the system boots up. Using my hex editor, I change it to something noticeably different, being careful to keep it [...]

SDL GUI libraries mini review

I’m starting to play with SDL again so I’ve embarked on finding a nice GUI library that builds on top of SDL. This process is made somewhat more difficult by the fact that I’m living on OS X now. My environment consists of OS X 10.5 (that would be Leopard) and the standard development tools [...]

Books books books.

I don’t think I’ve read nearly enough this past year. The trend continued in that I’ve mostly read trashy sci-fi.. I did fit in a number of “good” books though. Rapid-fire impressions below, in reverse chronological order.
One of the most notable scifi books that I’ve read was Vernor Vinge’s “Rainbows End”. The reviews on Amazon [...]

Naive view of the world

Windows is like a domestic minivan — ugly and slow. The trim is cheap and you can’t change the radio presets because the MinivanCo knows what’s best for you. But, it can carry the groceries and the kids can watch DVDs in the back.
Linux is like a custom race car that your crazy mechanic [...]

Waiting for presents on xmas (or new year’s) day has been replaced by waiting for IMAP support on gmail. I know some people have it, so I keep refreshing the page every few minutes. Where is my access? Refresh. Nope.
..sad.

Podcast consumption

I’m years behind, but I just discovered the world of podcasts. I don’t know how I’ve managed to overlook it but there’s so much
good content out there. Basically instead of grinding my teeth in gridlocked traffic I’m now enjoying listening to something interesting on my iPhone. I’ve got a couple of software engineering related podcasts [...]

Removing HPA

I ran into a strange problem recently with my new 320gig HD. Nothing above 137 gigs was visible. Turns out that for some strange reason HPA was enabled on this drive. I tried (unsuccessfully) to remove it using setmax.c. Instead of removing it, setmax ended up decreasing visible space to 40 gigs or so. I [...]

Second Life

На AskMefi сегодня попросили рассказать про то как плохо работает Second Life (это такая виртуальная среда/игра, фиг его знает). Самый последний пост:
I tried SL a year ago and didn’t get it, but I read about NOAA creating an island with all sorts of weather related exhibits the other day, so installed it again.
I logged on [...]

The art is gone.

I found a fascinating article by Rob Pike (of Unix/Plan9 fame), “System Software Research is Irrelevant“. He claims that there has been very little innovation in software (OS and computer languages specifically) since the 70s and that most of the stuff that we have today is simply a repackaged/copied/ripped off version from yesteryear. The following [...]

Crazy haxors: DNS Tunneling

So apparently some crazy german hax0rs came up with an idea to tunnel network data through DNS traffic. That’s intense. Basically, arbitrary data is stuffed into the haxored DNS packet. The DNS packet travels through the legitimate channels to a DNS server under your control where the haxored packet is dealt with accordingly. Brilliant. This [...]