Dean Christakos« January 2005 | Main | July 2010 »
February 25, 2005
Which Villain Character Are You?
In my continuing quest to find ways to avoid work, I came across this:
Which Villain Character Are You?
Posted by Dean at 3:16 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
February 20, 2005
Yay ComiCon
My weekend in San Francisco happened to coincide with the WonderCon comic book convention. I came by only briefly and missed the Kevin Smith appearance, but I did get to see Keith Knight of The K Chronicles and pick up a Shadow(y) Government mug and stickers.
Sorry, Hello Kitty fans, outside of anime, there was little Japanese cartoon art, and Pochacco was nowhere to be found.
Posted by Dean at 1:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 17, 2005
Back from Seoul
So, with a free day after my work-related doings in South Korea, I got a chance to visit a few select sites in Seoul. I went to see the views of the city from the Seoul Tower in Namsan Park. After taking the cable car down the mountain, I headed over to the Itaewon district in order to get the full Korean-tourist experience. I finished off with a stop at Dongdaemun Market, apparently the largest shopping district in Asia.
At present, I am at Stanford University, where I have stopped on my way back to Cambridge in order to visit my sister.
Posted by Dean at 7:51 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
February 13, 2005
Yes, I said Korea
As a mentioned briefly at the end of yesterday's post, I was travelling to South Korea, and I have just arrived at the Shilla Hotel in Seoul. This is all in service of a business/research meeting I am having as part of my ongoing jobhunt as I finish my Ph.D.
I arrived at Incheon International Airport, and the trip to Seoul took me across the impressive Youngjong Bridge, apparently the longest suspension bridge in the world.
For the moment, however, I think I will spend my time recovering.
Posted by Dean at 7:19 PM | Comments (0)
February 12, 2005
On Not Making the Same Mistake Twice
After having experienced a catastrophic loss of data, upon receiving my data back, I finally decided to invest in the IOGear 250GB Combo Drive to back up the hard drives on all of my computers. So far, so good. I've backed up my computers, and should I have another catastrophic failure, restoration back to where I left off should be pretty quick.
On another note, I am on my way to Seoul, Korea, today.
Posted by Dean at 5:41 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 8, 2005
Occupational Hazards
As I recover from a bout of debilitating muscle and back pain caused by poor desk organization, let me give good credit to Bucky Products and their Neckwrap hottie for providing some major relief, allowing me to get work done today. The person who gave me some therapeutic massage today was a great help, as well.
Also, this basic guide to desk posture was a bit of a help to getting my body aligned correctly with my new desk.
Posted by Dean at 5:38 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
February 7, 2005
Getting Wireless to Work Under Linux with a Thinkpad X31
As I discussed earlier, I have recently acquired a Thinkpad X31. For research purposes, I placed a Linux partition on the machine and installed the Fedora distribution on it. My Thinkpad has a built-in 802.11a/b dual-band wireless card which unfortunately does not have drivers available that come packaged with my Linux distribution. My model uses the Atheros 5211 chipset for wireless which required me to get ahold of the MADwifi driver. The documentation was pretty long-winded, so here is the short version for how to get your Atheros-based wireless hardware functioning:
First, most of these projects in trying to get your incompatible wireless hardware working involve acquiring the Wireless Tools for Linux software. Fedora users will note that this is included in their distribution, so no worries there for me.
Next, get the MADwifi software. There aren't any official releases available on Sourceforge, yet, but you can download a copy of the source from the MADwifi daily CVS snapshot archive.
After that, it's simple. Do a "make install" to compile for your current kernel version, and then type "modprobe ath_pci" to get it started.
To get this all started on bootup, just add
alias ath0 ath_pci
to /etc/modules.conf, and in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts, create the file "ifcfg-ath0" with the contents
DEVICE=ath0 ONBOOT=yes BOOTPROTO=dhcp
assuming you're using DHCP for your wireless, which most of us do, anyway.
Specifics of how to set different options in the driver and how to compile and recompile for different kernel versions is covered in the sourcecode README.
Other resources:
Posted by Dean at 2:41 PM | Comments (0)
February 3, 2005
Pedestrian Traffic Report for Boston, part 2
After my last attempt at running the bridge circuit turned into more of an endangerment of life and limb, I remained on my own side of the Charles River for my jogging routine. However, a few days of warmer weather and my faith in the ability of Boston to do a little more snow removal compelled me to make another attempt at returning to my standard running routine. So, during another try at the Longfellow-Harvard Bridge circuit, these are my findings:
- The Longfellow Bridge is passable, with just enough room to walk in a single file, making me a big nuisance to the other pedestrians on the bridge as I jogged past them
- The Esplanade is finally fully shovelled, and you can jog out there without getting your feet wet.
- The Harvard Bridge is not as clear as it should be, but mostly fine.
Posted by Dean at 5:28 PM | Comments (0)