Blogs

Microsoft's XBOX provides a great platform for the inner hardware-hacker in me. But by 'hardware-hacker' I mean taking stuff apart and soldering a couple wires. I'm definitely not a real hardware hacker, like some of the guys I know. However, I do enjoy playing around with a piece of hardware in the take-it-apart-and-then-reassemble-it Lego mentality.

After reading some articles a couple years back about how Andrew "bunnie" Huang first reverse engineered the XBOX and all of the cool things that were possible with an 'unlocked' system, I decided to buy one and hack it. This involved buying a 'modchip' (I choose the Xecuter model) and soldering it to the XBOX's motherboard. Doing the actual soldering was pretty straightforward, except one wire that was very difficult (the infamous d0 point).

A hacked XBOX allows you to run non-Microsoft approved/certified home-brew software (even Linux!). Over the past few years, several fantastic programs have been written to be run on modified XBOXs. My favorite is the XBOX Media Center (XBMC), which turns an XBOX into an all-in-one multimedia center for viewing pictures, movies, listening to music, and so forth. I like XBMC so much that I went out an purchased and modified a second XBOX to put in my bedroom instead of buying a normal DVD player. Hell, how else could I get a network-enabled CD/DVD/AVI/DivX/MPEG/MP3/Picture viewer for about $180?

I've helped a bunch of my friends acquire and mod XBOXs as well. After most people see the cool things that can be done with an unlocked XBOX they usually break down and buy one and modify it. Since my soldering skills are pretty weak, my friend Wayne has helped with a lot of the soldering, since what takes me about 30 minutes only takes him about 30 seconds. The picture for this article shows one of my XBOXs and my friend Andrew's XBOX, after it had been successfully modified.

My good friend Rick is an avid bicyclist. I suppose that isn't very out of the ordinary. However, he lives in New York City and when I saw him last he said that riding his bike is his primary means of transportation. After seeing how crazy the people in NYC drive and the wide variety of dangerous vehicles (like the taxi cabs with the tank-like armor bumpers), I was concerned about his health. I wouldn't be able to visit him as often if he was permanently lodged into the hood of a large delivery truck. After conversing with him and Robb, another friend in NYC who bikes around town, they assured me that most drivers are aware of bicyclists and that riding is quite safe. However, Rick forwarded me this link (local copy) today which now makes me think that the people driving cars are the ones who should actually be concerned.

One of my good friends David has an uncanny resemblance to someone famous. Every time I get together with him I always give him a hard time by telling him that he looks just like Dave Mustaine, the lead singer of the heavy metal group Megadeth. I dunno. Maybe I'm smoking crack, but if David had long hair and shaved the goatee, I think he'd be the spitting image of Dave. See for yourself.

I took another trip to Detroit a few weeks back (yes, I enjoy visiting depressing US cities) and found something I didn't expect: Romulans. It looks like the city has been overrun! I guess that means the neutral-zone is actually near the Detroit airport. I better inform the Federation!

It has been quite a while since my last entry here. I guess the reason is that this page really isn't a blog -- its more of a content management system for me. I only post articles when I have something useful to say or point out, not to document my life.

There are some blogs out there that I enjoy reading but in general I'm not much of a blog person. I like reading the blogs of my friends and those blogs where the author has a theme and consistently good entries. However, most of blogspace seem to be a wasteland. I suppose the reasons I'm not much into blogging are the same reasons I can't stand Reality TV. Reality TV is filled with random ramblings, forced situations, and superficial people who annoy me. I guess I'm just not interested in reading about where someone had their dog pedicured today, how bored they are, or how much their work sucks.

Anyway, I guess this entry itself is kind of hypocritical. Oh well. Back to some real content soon...

I went one of the events of the National Cherry Blossom Festival today: the Lantern Lighting ceremony. Although this event was one of the first of the festival, it looks like the trees are already in full bloom. It was a beautiful spring day and the trees were breathtaking. Click here to see some pictures I took. Make sure to read the comments of the pictures for more information about the Lantern Ceremony.

Today I came to the realization that Northern Virginia is full of burbclaves. I guess I always knew I lived in one, but today I was given solid evidence. I spent the afternoon walking around the new neighborhood going up near my house. This new neighborhood seems to be the epiphany of a burbclave. So, what is a burbclave you say? Neal Stephenson, in his cyberpunk-esq book Snow Crash, describes a future where neighborhoods don't really exist any more. In their place are self-contained city-states that are corporate run. He gave them names like Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong, Nova Sicilia, and New South Africa. So, while I was wandering around the snaking side streets that interconnected the rows and rows of generic-townhouses, McMansions, and drab apartment buildings, the corporate presence and homogeny of this new neighborhood was uncanny. With one entrance and a grand 'Welcome to blah blah blah' sign, the only burbclave item missing was the Rat Thing... What is the Rat Thing? I don't think I can do it justice in a summary, you'll just have to read the book.

Yep. More geek license plates. At this point, I'm surprised that the ones I write down aren't duplicates! Amazing!

CYBPUNK
UNIXGRU
ORCLGUY
PIXL8R
JAVAWZD
FATADMN
CODEHKR
3DES
DATACOM
MAC4ME

Check out the list for all of 'em.

A couple of years ago I bought a memory dongle. You know, one of those little devices you can plug into a USB port on your computer and it shows up as a disk drive. It is damn convenient and I always carry it with me. For a while, it was attached to my keychain, but the little clip that held it in place snapped. So, ever since I've been carrying it around in my pants pocket. So, I'm sure you can imagine what happened recently. When I was doing laundry last week I heard this nasty sound coming from the dryer. After the cycle was finished, I found the little memory dongle inside. I figured that there was no way it could have survived the soap, hot water, spinning, rinsing, and drying. But on a whim, I decided to plug it into one of my old computers. To my surprise, it still worked! Amazing! I guess if it ever gets dirty, I now know that its washer-safe. :-)

My friend Brian sent me this link to a very funny news article. Thinking about getting a 'cool' Asian tattoo? Think again! The tattoo artist in this article has decided to take matters into his own hands and label people appropriately with skin-art.

"Sakai, an award-winning tattoo artist, was tired of seeing sacred Japanese words, symbols of his heritage, inked on random white people. So he used their blissful ignorance to make an everlasting statement. Any time a customer came to Sakai’s home studio wanting Japanese tattooed on them, he modified it into a profane word or phrase."

LOL! Ahhh, poetic justice...