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Folding@Home has gotten more interesting lately with PS3 and GPU clients.  DCSig continues to be vastly ignored by me due to lack of time.  That’s unfortunate because interest has picked up lately.  At this time I’m still unaware of anyone doing anything as complete in terms of dynamic signature image generation for F@H but I can’t imagine why.  It doesn’t take much effort at all.

I noticed today that Stanford offers data in a few new flat text file formats (more info here).  This provides me a beautiful way to do team threat/overtake without parsing data for every team.  I wasn’t sure I’d ever be able to do that feature.  It may also replace my need to parse the dynamic pages.

But Stanford continues to haunt me in the following way.  Why, oh why, can’t they generate static stat files every few hours for *every* team with *every* bit of information they have on the dynamic pages?  The team text files only work for the top 1500 teams and even then there may be text pages with ancient data.  I have to reflect on the dynamic pages just to ensure the data is current.

Work on the next version of DCSig has been at a standstill for a while in the midst of my moving and gaming lust.  However, my $151 monthly server bill continues to inspire me to release the next version so I can operate with much less hardware.  Not to mention that it should be a better system overall.

I guess honestly though my heart just isn’t in it right now.  I code PHP and JS all day at work and I come home and I just don’t have the energy for it.  Also my free time is so precious it’s hard to put effort in to something for which I get very little thanks.  It’s not the kind of site that looks very interesting on my resume and there’s no real future for it financially or career wise.  It was a project I cut my PHP/MySQL teeth on but now I’m thinking Java is where I should be focused.  Or Python.  Or something else.

Perhaps releasing an entirely new version is too ambitious.  Perhaps I should backport some of my recent work in to the old code and just stabilize it so it can continue to run on smaller servers with less problems but just as is.  I don’t want to see it die altogether, I just don’t think I want to put a lot of extra time in to it.  My thoughts on this change from day to day.

Still no sign of my PS3.  Or the deposit check return from my old landlord.  Been playing plenty of FF6 lately, the PS Anthology version.  It really runs so much better on the SNES.  Unfortunately the SNES model 2 I ordered fails to work as I tested it tonight.  I should have plugged the damn thing in the day I got it in the mail.  Now I’m stuck with a dead SNESv2 and maybe I’ll be able to fix it myself and maybe I won’t.  If I’m lucky it just doesn’t like my universal A/V cable.  Why on earth doesn’t it have a power LED?

It’s a simple problem with no seemingly simple solution.  If you have a web form and a web script on the internet theres no easy way to ensure that ONLY the web form is submitting to the web script.

Take Google for example.  There is nothing to stop anyone from putting a web page up somewhere called Moogle that has a search form.  And when you perform a search on Moogle, it simply POSTs to Google and captures the results, filters them, and redisplays them.

It happens all the time.  On just about any site you can think of.

And you can sue these people assuming they’re in a country that will allow you to do so.  And others will come to take their place.  Or you can try blocking IPs or certain quantities of activity but then you’re just ruling out a few normal users.

Most people just try to obfuscate the process as much as possible by checking referer or IP addresses, using hash keys, user ids, cookies, or complicated JS encryption schemes.  None of which stop anyone who *really* wants to steal your service but will certainly rule out a few more normal users.

The only solution that seems to be absolute is being able to uniquely identify every human user on the internet.  The web developer in me really likes that idea while the privacy conscious consumer part of me really, really, doesn’t.

And the web is an all or nothing gig right now.  If some people on the internet don’t have Flash then we can’t use flash exclusively on our website where we need to generate revenue.  We just can’t afford to ignore 25%, 10%, 2%, 1%, etc. of our user base.  If only 95% of the internet users in the world sign up for some unique identifier service we’d still not use it because we’d loose 5%.

The problems in building that service are astronomical anyway.  Ask any government.

I am rough on furniture. I seem to destroy an office chair every 2-3 years at home. Even my couch is breaking down slowly. I’m a large bodied individual but I do have to wonder how many other people have these same sorts of issues with seating. I’ve seen people half my size fall on their asses when the backs of the chairs give way. Office chairs in particular just aren’t designed that well and even by spending $250 you’re not guaranteed to get something not made in China.

$250 every three years isn’t bad though when you start pricing out high end office chairs. It’s easy to drop a couple grand on one and maybe that’s not a horrible idea when you spend 10 hours a day in one. My current office chair was about, you guessed it, $250 and is currently being held together with some door hardware and deck screws since the arm braces supporting the back of the chair gave way several months go.

I thought $250 was going to get me a better chair over the $80 ones I had been breaking but I was wrong. So I’m giving a $400 chair a go. Assuming I don’t get ripped off by this company it’ll be the first chair I’ve purchased actually rated for well over my weight. I don’t have high hopes that it will last say five years but it’s worth a shot. If it doesn’t work out I’m going back to the $80 Chinese models.

The Chinese, by the way, seem to make terrible terrible steel. It shouldn’t bend like copper or crumble like a clump of dirt guys. Maybe they keep all the good stuff for themselves.

It shouldn’t be that hard to make a chair last a long time. In fact I’ve had several chairs from the 70s that never had a structural problem but really had some upholstery issues in the end. I can live with foam and fabric wearing out but it’s damn appalling when a wheel keeps falling out/cracks in half.

My biggest issue is with chair backs. They’re usually either supported by the bottom of the chair with a thin piece of L shaped steel or they’re supported by arms on the side. The L shaped steel is just stupid. It bends over time. So you sink farther and farther back until you use pillows to prop yourself back up. Worst case scenario here though is that you pop bolts out of the plywood bottom or crack said bottom in half. That’s pretty rare though. The arms is a better system if they’re not plastic. Plastic arms will simply snap over time as it dries out. Metal arms are quite good though. They’re usually boxed and arched so they’re particularly strong. The weak point is usually the bolts holding them in to the chairs which tend to loosen over time.

On the $80 chairs I had a lot of plastic chair legs just snap off. In the $250 range you can find metal legs and I haven’t had a problem with those. I’m fairly convinced that a chair made with metal legs and metal arms should last, again as you’d expect, quite a while.

Which is why the $400 chair I bought is made of plastic.

Yeeeaaah.

The good news is that I could have purchased this $799 chair at other stores for about $500-$600 and with $50-$130 for shipping. So I got a good deal maybe.

So, I don’t know. I’m nervous about spending so much money on a chair and I’m nervous about it being plastic. When it says it supports up to 450 pounds I have to wonder about how many seconds they intend someone of that weight to sit in said chair.

A certain someone who shall remain nameless dropped one of my Xbox360 controllers on the ground the other day. This caused the Y and B buttons to sink in to the controller so that they were really problematic to use. What a shitty controller design.

Anyway. I went to take the thing apart tonight and noticed that the Torx TH8 bits are the security version! Torx bits (the star shaped ones) aren’t all that uncommon and I happen to have a couple sets of tools for them. Only one set has the smaller TH8 size. Unfortunately the darn Xbox360 versions have a small stud in the center of the screw head which prevents a normal Torx bit from working.

Checking prices online reveals that one can get a special ‘Xbox360 screwdriver bit’ for something like $15. I’m poor and impatient. So I whipped out the cordless drill and a 5/64 titanium drill bit. Turns out that little tiny stud is very fragile and just by drilling it a little it will usually snap off. Yes you do damage the threads a little this way BUT you don’t need a lot of the drill. I got 5 of the 7 screws out of the controller this way.

Unfortunately the two screws on the very bottom are in recesses deeper than my Torx bit will go. I could have done the Bic pen lighter melted plastic trick to form my own longer bit. But the drill was handy so I just drilled the darn screws right out. Popped the casing off, pushed the circuit board holding the buttons back in to position, and screwed it back together minus two.

I think it’s fine missing the two bottom screws. It’s plenty solid. I could always glue it in a pinch, or better yet, go to the store and get 7 Phillips head screws to replace the Torx. I’m kind of lazy though. I wish I had a better selection of machine screws available at home though.

I went ahead and ordered a PS3 as a little post-moving treat for myself. They were sort of hard to come by online. I guess some older models are getting cleared out. I ended up ordering from Sony’s own site. Their cart doesn’t work with FireFox which is just appalling. But they had an 80G PS3 for $399 with a $15 discount when purchased with Soul Caliber IV and a second controller. That’s not bad at all.

I was excited and happy up until a couple minutes ago when I found out that the new PS3s have *no* PS2 backwards compatibility. The slightly older ones have software emulation.

SO! I can canceled my order and checked out Ebay. After checking out Wikipedia I learned that the old 20g and 60g models have hardware PS2 support. The 60g, apart from having a larger HD, also has built in 802.11g wifi and extra media card support. Oh and a chrome package which makes it look like an old Atari 7800. And the cost? Same as the new 80g I would have gotten. Sure it’s a little used but what can you do.

The reason I wanted to buy the PS3 in the first place was to play PS2 games. I have a huge PS2 library and a PS2 which is a bit past it’s prime. It died on me once but it started mysteriously working after I took it apart. Still it’s days may be numbered. I wouldn’t mind a BluRay player now that it won the format war. I have a PSP and there are some interconnectivity benefits. I don’t have an HDTV yet but that’s easily remedied in the future. And of course there are a few games I want that are PS3 exclusive. Ratchet & Clank, Disgaea 3, several JRPGs, etc.

I have really nothing to report.  My life has been on hold due to moving to a new home and having another kid. I’m happy to say that all of the PCs managed to make it to the new house unscathed.  I haven’t unboxed my games yet but I’ve been without a console for well over three months now I think.  I’m waiting for my MIL to leave this Friday before I can really unpack, relax, and unwind.

So instead of finishing work on my gaming rig I’ve been unpacking, hanging curtains, washing clothes, cleaning the house and grilling.

I do hope to be getting a new laptop within the next few weeks with my returned deposit check from the last apartment.  My budget is around $1500 and I’m hoping to get something that will run WoW, GTA:SA, SL, and some other relatively modern games without overheating.  And something with a keyboard that lights up.  I’m typing in the dark right now on my Dell Inspiron 600m (but really a Latitude) and I can’t always see the letters.  Mostly upsetting when trying to type some cryptic password.  I’m an okay touch typist but not at weird angles on a smaller than average keyboard!

I’m not sure what I’ll get but I am thinking Dell or Asus.  Dell business class laptops aren’t really all that bad and you get a lot for the money.  Asus gives you a lot too and is a bit smaller so more competitive.  I’m not sure there are any Lenovo gamers in my price range and as for something Apple?  Costly for the money and I want a GPU dammit.