TechgnosisWeb Prime

This is seriously some of the funniest shit I’ve read in months. Here’s a few choice examples:

Wear the condom. No, for the love of Pete, not the mint-flavored one. Jesus, that thing burns.

Try not to get too depressed. There?s always something to look forward to. Keep alert, and sooner or later you?ll see someone slip and hurt themselves.

Go and read the rest.

(And as an extra added bonus, when I looked at the comments, they had an ad in there for this: Mancatcher Voodoo Kit)

Well, anigaming.com still remains to be moved, but you are now reading this directly from my home computer! Techgnosisweb.com is now locally hosted on the one, the only, the multi-facted and multi-talented ultra Debian Linux box I call my own, my precious: the Pimprig. w00t! Let me know how site performance is, if it all works okay for you, you know the drill.

So PRTC, my oh-so-wonderful DSL provider, seems to have installed a proxy server in between me and the rest of the world, for no good reason. This means that when I try and update my dynamic IP address onto the domains that I’m trying to host on my machine, instead of seeing my actual IP address, the dynIP services see my proxy address, and the traffic never gets to my machine. Brilliant, no? And did they mention they were doing this? Did they send me an email letting me know about this major change in my service that would make it quite a bit more difficult for me to actually get my full $60 worth from this overpriced service? No, of course they didn’t. They simply changed it, and fuck ‘em if it breaks anything their clients may have been doing.

Well, little things like that never stopped me, I allready found a way to go around the proxy and access my real IP, so I’ll be moving those domains over right on schedule this week, but it’s both annoying and worrying that they can just make such major changes to their service and not tell anyone anything, and those of us who are advanced users only find out about it when our shit breaks. Not to mention that the proxy server they installed is a Cisco on that is *specifically* designed to let them monitor everything that goes through it in search of ‘innapropriate content’. So now they’re spying on us too, without telling us anything. Un-fuckin’-beleivable.

And so it lives again. It took me a big chunk of the weekend, but the Pimprig is up and running Debian once more. It was probably a good thing in the end, as I used a lot of the stuff I’ve learned about handling a Linux rig to make this re-install go as painlessly as possible, and everything worked like a charm. The system’s updated to the latest Unstable-branch software (don’t be put off by the name: Debian’s ‘Unstable’ branch is still more stable than most other distributions ‘finished’ branches), updated my kernel to the latest 2.6, and installed the Plastik (and Plsatig for GTK+) visual theme into KDE, which makes it look damn spiffy. So now my system is fully set up, and working better than ever… and that GeForce FX 5600 card makes everything look all *purty*..
In other news, I’m looking to save some money, and so I’m looking at costs I can cut. One of them happens to be my web site hosting fees. I own three domain names: anigaming.com, techgnosisweb.com, and hotnakedelfchicks.com (that last one isn’t being hosted anywhere right now, it’s just cool to be able to say I own it. I used to own paraleluniverse.com, but I let it lapse (it was misspelled anyway). Each domain is hosted on a different server, and each one charges me $10+ a month for the privilege. Now, I’m not really getting any truly heavy use out of those domains, as AniGaming is mostly dead and I keep it around in the hope that maybe someday I’ll do something more with it, as well as for the email address control, and techgnosisweb.com is where I keep my blog, which isn’t exactly the most high-traffic site on the web. So.. I’m thinking that if I can get those domains to point directly at my home box, I can just run those sites from home with the DSL line and save myself nearly $30/month. Problem is that I’ve got a dynamic IP address, and usually you need a static IP to run a decent server. So I’m looking for a dynamic DNS provider to keep my domains pointing to my ever-changing IP (like I do with katsushiro.is-a-geek.com). So far I’ve found two decent-looking ones: ZoneEdit.com, which is free for up to 5 domains, and DynDNS.org, which is where I currently have my dynamic DNS service for free with katsushiro.is-a-geek.com, but they charge $25/year per domain.

I’ll probably try the ZoneEdit folks first, seeing as they’re free and they let me have 5 domains, and if I find them too slow or unreliable I’ll start looking into the DynDNS.org service. I’ll likely start trying to move this domain first, so I can test what it’s like running a full-on webserver and mailserver for a fully qualified domain from my home box, and if it works, then I’ll move the other domains over too. So if you notice any weird behaviour or service outages on this site over the next week, now you know what’s happening. Wish me luck!

Want to render your Athlon XP 2200+/Geforce FX 5600 monster Linux box as weak as an average teletype? Just log in as root and run the following command from a terminal window:

find $PWD \( -name \*~ -or -name \*.o -or -name \*.log -or -name \*\# \) -exec rm -f {} \;

Yeah. That pretty much renders your nvidia drivers and a lot of the stuff that gcc needs to compile your software with completely useless. The killer part there is the one that goes -name \*.o. You should never delete all your *.o files. Never. Don’t ask why I did it (I was trying to clear some extra HDD space). Just.. just learn from my mistakes.

Guess I’ll be spending the weekend reinstalling after I backup my stuff to a spare comp.

Well, two things. First: finally broke down and bought myself a new video card since my old GF4 Ti4200 fried. I’d been keeping my hopes pinned on a shiny Radeon 9800 Pro, but, frankly, if I just sit back and wait till the next time that I have ~$500 just sitting in the bank gathering dust and waiting to be spent, I’ll never get a video card. So I stopped by my local wholesaler (working for a computer services company has its perks ) with every intention of buying a low-to-mid range GF4 MX 440 like Natalie has for about $60, so I can at least play some games under my Linux box. I get there, and they’re all out of those, but they tell me they’ve got a Radeon 9600 128MB for about $150. Now, the 9600’s a good card. Not quite a 9800, of course, but still good hardware. However, Radeon support under Linux is a little spotty still (which is weird, when their drivers are open source, while the Nvidia ones are closed.. but that’s a whole other rant)… I thought about it, and then said ‘What the hell’, and stepped up to the counter to get it… at which point they tell me that, no, they don’t actually *have* the 9600’s… What they actually have is a GeForce FX 5600 256MB, which is about equivalent to the Radeon 9600, but with twice as much video RAM, for the same price. Well, at least I know that the Linux Nvidia divers are fairly decent, so I decide to go with that one. And now I have a shiny new blue GeForce FX 5600 256MB DDR video card with dual monitor support and TV-out sitting in my Pimprig, for abot ~$150. As Wario would say: “Excellent!”

Was playing around with it last night, installing and the like, and I have to say I’m pleased. The drivers work well under the 2.6 Linux kernel, they install themselves pretty flawlessly and even compile themselves a new kernel interface all on their own. I just wish that there was an easier way to get X to recognize the video card without having to delve into the XF86Config-4 file. But after some judicious applications of the vi editor to that file, everything seems to be working fine. Running glxgears showed everything running fine (and some obscene 2000+ fps ratings), and I could finally play Chromium, which is a pretty decent and hardcore shooter game. Pretty graphics, and they finally move at a playable rate! I tried to test out WineX 3.2.1 by installing Max Payne 2, and ran int no major porblems, but was unable to finish the installation due to not having enough room on my HDD for it (turns out it’s mostly my log files that were eating up room, 3 of them alone had grown to over 1 GB in size). I’ll do some spring cleaning in there and try again tonight. If that one works, I’ll try out a few of my other games, like Homeworld and WC3. Maybe even some GTA3.

In other, less happy news, Natalie lost her job at the Julia de Burgos shelter. She’s pretty broken up about it, as can be expected, I suppose.. but on the other hand, I do think it’s for the best. From what she tells me, the place wasn’t really very good. They barely helped the women there, treated them often as badly as their own husbands had treated them, and the people who worked there were basically clannish, incompetent, and unwilling to let anything or anyone new make a difference. They never really cared for Natalie’s position there, seeing as it was forced on them from outside, and they did everything they could to keep her from doing her job, then fire her because she’s not doing her job. Well, fuck them. It’s their loss, because Natalie was doing her damndest to do her joba nd help the women there, and the current employees there stonewalled her every chance they got. Well, it’s their loss. They lost one hell of an employee, someone who wanted to make a difference. And I’ll be sure to go out of my way to tell everyone about the sheer level of incompetence that is shown there, and why that organization is not helping anyone.

So what’s next for her? Not sure yet.. she’s hunting for another job allready, but she’s also seriously considering going back to school and getting a second BA in Graphic Arts to go with her Psych one. I think that’d be a good idea. More preparation and flexibility is always good. Whatever it is, I’ll support her, though. We’ll see how it all works out. Either way… new video card! W00t!

I didn’t have the.. erm.. pleasure of getting to see the POTUS in his last (hopefully last ever) State of the Union address, but I’m told it was quite infuriating for those of us who actually have a working brain and some semblance of sanity. However, I did find this clip online of one particularly beautiful bit on it, dealing with the much hated (and rightfully so) Patriot Act:

GWB: ‘Key provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire next year…’
Audience: [Applause]
GWB:

Absolutely wonderful. Here’s a link to the 1.2MB DivX clip of this moment.

Trying to make up for the lack of entries, I suppose, but just thought I’d pop on real quick and say goodnight to anyone who might be reading. I also thought I’d take a moment to let y’all know that Alan Moore is the *MAN*.
Been reading a lot of his stuff lately, from Leadue of Extraordinary Gentlemen to Watchmen and his run on Supreme, (and I’m about to start going through his run on Swamp Thing) and the man is gold. Good stuff all around. Check him out sometime. Also check out Planetary by Warren Ellis sometime (the collection of issues #1 through #6 has an intro by Alan Moore ), it’s brilliant.

And finally, before I sign off for the night, I would like to have it recorded that Natalie rocks, for she has bought me the hardcover edition of Michael Moore’s Dude, Where’s My Country?. Most excellent.

So, yeah.. hi. S’been a while. I really do suck at keeping online journals.. or offline journals.. or just journals. Well, I’m back, inasmuch as that matters. I thought the site was broken, but it was just that it had been so long since I posted that MovableType had scrolled off all my previous postings and was displaying a blank page by now. Let’s try and not let that happen anymore, shall we?

Also, I did some cleaning of random idiotic comments. I’m all for free speech and all, but on the other hand, I also reserve the right of admission on my blog. I won’t begrude someone else the right to post up whatever idiocy they want, but I certainly don’t have to put up with that shit on my personal blog either. If you want to say whatever dumb bullshit comes into your head, go on and start your own blog and say it, and then link to this one. Go on, I won’t stop you, and it’s not that hard. Enjoy!

Help me live forever. Click on the banner below once a day for a few days. Once I get 80 unique clicks, Alex Chiu says he’ll send me a free pair of Eternal Life rings. I’ve always wanted a pair.
NOTE: due to some techincal problems, I took down the image.. I’ll bring it back up later. no rush, after all, if I become immortal, I’ll have all the time in the world.