NickStallman.net Where the Cheater prowls

You are now reading this on my new Virtual Private Server. :)

I used to have a CentOS VPS with cPanel for $60/month at Liquidweb.
This new VPS is with SliceHost and its only $38/month.

Fun details about its setup:

• Running Gentoo unstable
• Apache 2.2 with mpm_event
• 512mb ram/20gig space/200gig bandwidth
• Backed up daily to Amazon S3

What on earth is Kevin Rudd doing?
He wants to save the environment AND reduce petrol prices - at the same time.

Motorists are a major green house gas contributor and people like their cars.
The only way to change their habits is to make it prohibitively expensive.
People are going to keep driving otherwise.

You cant save the environment when its convenient. It has to be all in or all out.
Either seriously save it or boost the economy by ditching all the money going towards environmentally friendly stuff.

Well I'm designing a expansion board for my NGW100.

It will have Audio (CS4202), PS/2 ports with the required level shifters, VGA (ADV7125), a 128x64 monochrome LCD and some interesting power circuitry.

Whats interesting about the power circuitry is it will be able to take half a dozen different power sources to power the NGW100.
They include USB power, Solar, Wall wart and power from a lead acid battery.
It will be monitored by a ATmega32 (which also runs the LCD) and the NGW100 will be able to inquire about voltages and battery capacity. :)

Well QUT was very apologetic about sending me spam. :)

Now I'm going to set my sights a bit higher and make a formal complaint to the Australian Communications & Media Authority.
I know that many universities in Australia send the same spam so this should be a decent blow against Microsoft.

They are going to be pissed when their student mailing list is shut down. :D

Well I've finally snapped.
After three years of receiving Microsoft marketing email from QUT, I've finally told them that they are infact breaking the law.

Over here it is illegal to send:

• Unsolicited commercial email with a Australian link
• Commercial email without a unsubscribe link (including solicited email)

The law also has a few other points. QUT was breaking those two.

The email in question was for a $75 copy of Office 2007 Ultimate, RRP of $1150.
Marketing crap straight from Microsoft about their 'Its Not Cheating' campaign.
I did not ask for the email nor did it allow me to unsubscribe.

Lets see where this goes. :)

Well I got a replacement NGW100 to replace the one I borked.
That was a expensive mistake. :(

I've got it successfully modded so it can now be USB powered. :)
There is a convenient hole next to the USB port which is the USB's 5v rail.
You just need to run a wire from there to the positive pin of the power supply, next to the double set of IO pins.

I put a diode in place as well so I can swap power supplies on the fly and 12v cant go and fry the USB port. ;)
I also put some heatshrink over it to make it look professional and reduce the chances of shorts.

If you haven't read the His Dark Materials series then you really should.
The trilogy (at the moment) includes The Northern Lights aka The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass.

Its a sci-fi fantasy series written by Philip Pullman and they integrate a wide range of issues including religion.
The books have won numerous awards. The Northern Lights was selected by judges for the Carnegie Medal to be one of the ten most important children's novels in the last 70 years.

Well on the 31st of March there was Earth Hour.
The general jist of it is at 8pm you turn all your lights off for a hour to save the planet.

In Sydney, the power reduction was 8.4% which is....crap.
C'mon people if your going to 'save' the environment you've got to do a tad better than that.

So now there are hundreds of thousands of people world wide with a nice fuzzy feeling inside because they are helping to save the environment.
Which would be really great if they weren't the only person in their SUV on their daily commute.

Well I got my NGW100 last night. :D

If you dont know what it is, its basically a tiny board which runs Linux.
It features two network ports, SD slot, serial pot and a slave USB port and its designed to be a simple yet powerful Network GateWay (NGW).

Ugh. I put my website up and then wake up to two emails from Club Penguin people.

Club Penguin is too simple to hack. Its no challenge.
No I wont make more hacks.

Talk to RancidKraut, not me. :P