Herein lie the stories sung of Nikhil when the world was young.
01-26-2004, 1:44PM
Met a nice girl, Mallory, when we were the only 2 people left on campus after it closed. Guess it pays to check ahead.
(Oh, and backfills for the last few days will be added tomorrow.)
01-25-2004, 3:26PM [BF]
Found some pretty interesting info on flexible LCD displays. Apparently, Philips Electronics has a working prototype of a thin, flexible display that can hold an image with no power. Could this be the infancy of the TV's we were promised that would wrap around 3 walls in a room?
Even cooler, is a video you can download that shows an interview with one of the high-ups talking about the technology.
01-24-2004, 2:00PM [BF]
Writing a full help file for a product is quite a lot of work - I'm still going, and I'm not even halfway yet. Yikes!
01-23-2004, 10:35AM [BF]
Project SideMinder is progressing, albeit slowly. We have gotten our interface board for our microcontroller up and running, so we should finally be able to start prototying software designs.
Unfortunately, our sensors have not yet come in, and they are the key to our project, and the key to the software implementation, so stay tuned for some frayed nerves.
01-22-2004, 9:45PM [BF]
Work is going well on DriveCatalog, the new name of CD Catalog. After I realized it could catalog floppies, CD's, hard drives, DVD's, network drives, RAMdrives, and so on, I figured it was a better name.
I also have a spiffy new design up for my business, DoubleStrike Consulting. Of course, the rest of the site is under construction, but check it out anyway.
01-18-2004, 2:44PM
Just finishing up my relaxing weekend at Mal's house. Thanks again for the hospitality. Unfortunately, the drive home will suck badly.
01-15-2004, 11:40AM
Want to see some of the coolest watches around? Like a GPS golf watch that tracks your stats? Or a ski watch with descent and run timing? Check them out, at Suunto USA.
01-15-2004, 11:11AM
Dropped in a few back-fill entries. And, tonight is supposed to be the jam session of the new band I'm sitting in with for a day. Should be fun.
Now I just have to decide whether to go pure acoustic, or pseudo-acoustic, since I'm not into these acoustic guitars with a pickup in them - after all, that's just cheating! :)
01-14-2004, 11:00AM [BF]
So what do you teach a bunch of EE graduates on the first day of a Masters-level course? Yup, how to solder. Dear god.
01-13-2004, 9:26PM [BF]
OK, turns out NVidia's latest drivers can cause instabilities. If you've been bitten by this bug, check out this place, the GeForce FAQ.
01-12-2004, 7:02AM [BF]
Classes for Spring 2004 semester begin today. Back into the fray once more, my friends...
01-11-2004, 11:59PM [BF]
Well, I just heard back from Annette! It's always a nice feeling to get back in touch with an old friend. She's doing great and is currently plodding her way solidly through law school.
01-11-2004, 10:02AM [BF]
A good day to sleep in and relax. Gotta love lazy Sunday mornings.
01-10-2004, 1:02AM
Well, I'm back in town, and almost back to 100%, too. A day of rest and hot soup, and I should be rocking and rolling.
01-10-2004, 10:43PM [BF]
A nice night out on the town with good old Malchorious. Indian food always tastes good when you're hungry.
01-09-2004, 10:11PM
Just finished dinner. Gotta love Betty Crocker. Seriously.
As for my reaction to my new heat-pipe heatsink, cable routing, and fans? As Christopher Walken would say,
Wowie-wow-wow-wow!
A 30+ degree drop in temperature, plus a HUGE increase in stability. AND my machine no longer sounds like a hairdryer. It just makes an intimidating dull hum.
This upgrade was all I could have hoped for and more. Well worth 7 solid hours of cleaning, vacuuming, and cabling work.
01-09-2004, 11:22AM
FedEx just delivered my new heatsink and fan setup. This time, I'm tearing the entire machine down to parts, and cleaning it out so it looks brand new. Then, all new cable management and IDE cable routing.
01-08-2004, 10:46PM
Got one more cool link for you... It's some putty, but made for adults. Really cool color options, and you can even get it magnetic.
This guy is pretty whacked - The Putty Guy.
01-08-2004, 2:30PM [BF]
I just found two links to some of the coolest and most powerful "flashlights" that you could ever own. These are actually military grade portable arc-discharge spotlights. Yes, spotlights, like the giant 5-foot-diameter kind you see at store openings.
Sure, they cost a month's salary, but you get 7.5 MILLION candlepower of light! You can read fine-print by the light 3 miles away!!!
The MegaRay 175 is a ridiculous rechargable unit.
The Current Corporation has the Maxa Beam.
UPDATE (10:28PM): Oh, yeah, and if you need TEN MILLION CANDLEPOWER (10,000,000) for 45 minutes then, try this. And get this - only $70! Not bad.
01-06-2004, 4:06PM
As I wait for my badass new heatsink to arrive, I search for meaning on the Internet. (OK, not really, but go with the narrative thread!)
The lead developer of Apple's Macintosh interface, which has been stolen/inherited/ripped-off by everyone from Microsoft to Gnome, has a new idea. He's working on a project called The Humane Environment, or THE. It's a revolutionary new computer interface. Well worth a few minutes. Check out a demo of one of his ideas here.
01-04-2004, 10:03PM
OK, so put yourself in my shoes. You have a giant server tower case. You have a fast Athlon processor. You have a solid-copper heatsink that weighs 3/4 of a pound. What do you get the hacker who has everything?
Simple, a heatsink that weighs more than a pound and has HEAT PIPES. Yes, I said heat pipes. Essentially, using a fluid for heat transfer is not an old idea, but it is relatively new to computer CPU heatsinks.
Oh yeah, and you get a fan that has almost 2.5 times the surface area. Classic Nikhil, you say? I think so, too.
01-02-2004, 7:51PM
I just recovered from one hell of a scare... Observe:
I wanted to get a new fan for my heatsink that's quieter, so I powered off and unplugged the CPU fan (I left the heatsink on) to check the noise level. Good news: nice and quiet - it was the culprit. Bad news: no more boot up after that.
Long story short... I ended up having to blind-flash (no monitor signal) my BIOS from a boot disk. Luckily, it came up after that, so god only knows what happened to screw up the BIOS/CMOS. Whew!
01-01-2004, 10:24AM
Well, it's the new year already! Time to recover from last night.
