Izumi Blog: Ralf - The Blog

My blog is moving

2009-08-30

Yeah yeah I know, I don't blog a lot. That's because most of what I post goes on the private blog for the kids, which purpose is mostly to keep grand-parents updated. This is my public blog and as such I only post non-personal generic stuff, or it's cryptic enough to annoy the heck of everyone (except me, I actually enjoy that.)

Plus I write my own blog software and I keep changing. This was coded using Izumi and now I moved on to a new static photo-blog generator called rig3. I've been using rig3 for a while on the kids blog and MM has been using it too for a good while now (as well as pestering me to add specific features to go beyond it's original scope.)

So the bottom line is that the next posts won't happen here. They will happen at http://ralf.alfray.com/weblog -- there's an atom feed too.

This site is not going away. I might back-port some entries later, although that's quite unlikely because the feature set is quite different, especially for the text formatting syntax.

Reviews

2009-08-12

I've been writing some Amazon product reviews recently, so I though I'd share.

Let's be honest: I love Amazon, first because they have a web site that does not suck and that is full of useful features. Once you've used them, all other e-commerce sites look disappointing.

The next best thing is when I became a prime customer. Sure, prime is not free, but if you factor the shipping price you'd pay, it all makes sense. Sometimes an item price will be a bit more expensive than elsewhere, but the resulting price after shipping and handling might be better on Amazon. And you get it in two days. No brainer.

There's something cool also about getting a UPS truck deliver stuff to you in the middle of a forest where there is no postal service delivery. It's faster than going to the nearest town -- although the DoItBest hardware store of Dallas, PA is nothing to be ashamed of and can be quite competitive.

So anyway, I thought for the fun I'd put here a selection of my reviews. It's quite a wide range.

KeyTronic 104 Key PS2 keyboard

This is a KeyTronic full-size PC keyboard. It's one of the best things you can attach to a computer.

If you do a lot of typing, that's the kind of keyboard you need: it has a nice feeling, the spacing and the layout is just fine, and contrary to laptop-like keyboards there's some real depth to the keys.

Contrary to some modern keyboards, like the Microsoft "ergonomic" one, all the keys work the same, even the space bar. You won't have a key that feels different or gets stuck because of bad plastic. They have all a similar pressure and feedback and all make a wonderful noise when pressed. You can type lightly or literally pound on it and it will work the same.

Note that this series of KeyTronic keyboards is a quite noisy. That's part of the product. If you want a silent keyboard, move along. It's not as noisy as the old IBM pounding-metal keyboards from the 80's or 90's, though.

It's durable too. My last KeyTronic lasted 10+ years before one of the keys started acting up from time to time. There's supposedly a lifetime warranty on it, but let's face it, after 10 years or so it's cheaper to get a brand new one than get the membrane replaced. It's also trivial to open it and service it yourself, if you're so inclined.

Tool House 770002 52 Piece Metric and Fractional Bit Tip and Socket Wrench Set

That's a nice thing to keep around for a great cheap price.

The case is convenient but it doesn't qualify of "durable". One of the closing tabs of the case broke when I tried to open it the very first time. It comes with a tiny piece of foam inside, which keeps everything in place, yet still when I hold the case vertically things tend to shift and move inside. Mere details -- you're not buying this for the case, are you? The case is just here to help put it away and avoid loosing all these pieces :-)

The two ratchets are nice and feel sturdy enough. The yellow screwdriver is quite narrow and lacks grip. There's a nice number of sockets, covering a whole lot of ranges. The sockets are good fits and I have yet to break or ruin one.

Overall it's nice to have this around, handy and at that price you don't have to be too careful.

Fiskars Chopping Axe 23.5-Inch #7857

This is a rather good axe and it's nice to use. I used it as a felling axe to clear some paths in the forest.

I used it to replace a very very old steel-head axe with a hickory handle (the head kept coming off and I don't have the tools to hang it again.) Being new it was nice and sharp, didn't get stuck too much. It was a bit shorter than I expected -- my old axe was a 25- or 26-inch, so 24 seemed a tad short whereas 28-inch seemed too long. Going from a hickory handle to synthetic, the feeling is not the same when it hits, it gave a much harsher feeling in my arms. It was also a tad lighter than my old axe. Fine, I had to adjust a bit, I got over it and the result is that I cut some hard old wood faster than before and it was a lot of fun.

Motorola T9500XLR 25-Mile 2-Way Radio Pair

I got these radios to keep a safety contact when I'm nearby in the forest, with hills and of course lots of trees in between. The effective range was about 2 miles in this condition, which was good enough for me. The radios are light to carry, they come with a handy belt clip. There's a dock for easy recharging. Using it was rather easy and intuitive, although the menu key that has several functions seem a bit confusing at first -- just adjust all settings with the manual in hand and then don't touch them again :-)

I'm not sure how long the battery lasts: I've used it for whole mornings or whole afternoons mostly sitting there on standby with maybe a few minutes worth of chat and it took several days like this for the battery indicator to get down to 2/3rd. It's a NiMH battery so it *will* have aging issues after a few years but by the time they start loosing their charge it will be more economical to simply buy a new set than replace the batteries.

I do give it 4-star instead of 5 just because of the "iVox" hands-free feature: I just couldn't get it to work and the manual is not too helpful on that one. I kept setting the mode on, then later when I'd try to use it nothing would happen and I'd realize the iVox mode had gone off in between. I'm dubious of the utility of that mode anyway, so it doesn't really matter.

If there's one feature I miss: I wish the radio would also display the current time. Like that I could skip carrying a watch. But then most people probably don't care about that :-)

Sony MDR-NC40 Noise Canceling Headphone

Overall these are good headphones. I use them when I travel, mostly to cancel airplane noise. If you've never used cancellation headphones, they are great to remove constant background noise, so in a plane that means you can better listen to your music/movie without having to put the volume insanely high. Note that noise cancellation does not cancel voice chatter, so don't even try to use this in an office -- in this case you want over-the-ear cups for good isolation.

They fold easily but folding the whole thing in the accompanying case takes a bit of practice and patience at first. It's a tight squeeze but I now manage to store my iPod nano in the case too. It then stores easily and it is pretty light to carry around.

Otherwise they are OK comfort-wise, just a tiny bit tighter on the ear than my older Sony noise canceling headphones. Sound-wise, the bass is a bit too much boosted even for my taste; a bit of equalization on the iPod fixes that easily.

Panasonic BL-C131A Network Camera Wireless 802.11

Overall this is a good camera. Setting it up with my wifi was trivial. Price is a bit steep but you get a quality product with good support, for once. I found a few limitations, your mileage may vary:

I wish the lens was a wider angle; the field of view is 49� (according to specs), which is standard but I've been spoiled by my Logitech Notebook Pro webcam with a 70� wide angle.
I wish the horizontal motion also had a wider angle. The exact pan angle is described in the spec as 100�, so a tad more than a quarter of a turn. Given the protruding design, I think they could protrude it a tad more and go all the way to 180�, that would be really nice.
You really need Internet Explorer to use the full capabilities, audio and video. I used IE7. I prefer to use Chrome or Firefox but in this case the video works in MJPEG mode, with no sound. I also successfully used "IP Cam Viewer" on my Android phone to connect to the camera using my wifi, at least for the video (here again there is no audio).

MIU Connoisseur Corkscrew

This is a really good "rabbit" like wine opener. If you've never used one, you'll be impressed the first time you use it. Not only is it faster but it is also more reliable and it's hard to break a cork with such an opener, even an old cork. That's a gift that will keep on being appreciated.

Price is really good and quality is on par. I generally use it once a week and I have no problem with the corkscrew. The screw itself is replaceable and I have yet to use the replacement after several years of use. The foil cutter broke after several months, but that can be easily replaced -- or just use a knife to remove the foil, as it is customary to do.

Sleep Better 3-Inch Visco Elastic Memory Foam Mattress

We have this on our queen bed, which mattress was good but now feels a bit too hard to our aging backs and has saggy spots. This foam topper fixes both issues, as is to be expected. The 3-inch is a good size and it's a pleasure to sleep -- or more appropriately "to sink" -- in it every night. At 2.5 lb/ft^3, the density is medium, which is good enough.

The foam arrived rolled in a big box. It was not as compressed as I thought -- some reviews make you think it's compressed in a dark hole and then will expand to fill your whole house... it's not that dramatic!

However the smell of new foam toppers is a known issue -- all foams I've seen do that anyway, it's not just that one. The original smell is not only nauseating, it gives me immediate headaches. I can't stress that enough: you must let the mattress air and expand in a *ventilated* non-living area for at least 2 or 3 days before using it. Don't rush it -- in case of doubt, let it air one more day rather than be deceived by the chemical smell, as it will be nauseating at first. Put it somewhere out of sight in a ventilated area, such as in the basement or the garage. If after 3 days you can stick your nose on it and not feel the urge to run away fast, then you can consider moving it in the bedroom.

After a month or so of use, there's still a slight curious smell the first time I'd get in bed, but nothing dramatic. It's such a pleasure to fall asleep and wake up on that thing, it's totally worth it.

I know what I did last summer

2009-08-06

Outside. Nice green forest. The beaver was gone. Everything was as I left it last year.

So instead I found an old axe and used it to clear the old trees fallen on the paths. By old axe I mean in good condition yet 2 generations behind; and although the head was of really good quality it kept coming off the handle. A practical ax expert would just tell you you have to know how to hang your own handle to the ax head.

Although that sounded attractive for about a microsecond or two, I just got myself a brand new Fiskars Chopping Axe which was really so much more efficient yet shorter and lighter. I got the 23.5-inch one, which is the closest to the old 25-inch one I had been using. It's a tad short, but the only other choice is a 28-inch, which is really too long.

I also had some fun with the Craftsman Lawn Mower 917.288700 and did some maintenance on it, simple stuff like changing the oil and all the oil/gas/air filters.

The older Craftsman Tractor 917.256544 was out of commission but after removing the mower and adding a new battery that now makes a working tractor and I can attach it to my dumping cart.

The other thing I did was explore the 250 or so acres of forest, trying to match the deed description (in perch and rod units, no less) and I ended up with some nice tracks on Google Earth.

My main tool was mostly MyTracks, to record the tracks and upload them to Google Earth but eventually I also ended up writing my own Android Bearing app to compute the compass bearing between two marked points.

It's the first time I actually play with a GPS. On one hand it was nice as it actually worked fairly well it the medium-dense forest; on the other hand the precision wasn't that impressive -- the GPS generally indicated 8 or 16 meters for accuracy but it did not update fast enough when walking. Also the integrated compass on the phone was incredibly noisy with the reading typically fluctuating -/+ 10 degrees.

Finally I got quite a lot more done, including many many hours spent reading the vast content of TV Tropes, working on my Android apps (Bearing obviously, but Timeriffic, Brighteriffic and Flashlight got translated to French too and had many other improvements, without even mentionning Nerdkill) and much more.

Overall what made the biggest difference was having a real 24-hour almost-instant internet connection instead of a 33K modem line. In that regard, I must say the ARC booster antenna was incredibly good when combined with the aging Kyocera KPC650. Bandwidth ranged from 70/40 KB/s (down/up) down to 3 KB/s (in rain at night, it's really that weather sensitive) with a typical average speed of 15 KB/s when I was generally getting no signal at all without the booster antenna. I guess being in the middle of a forest, behind a hill and out of the official zone coverage doesn't help :-) The signal strength indicator was around -100 dBm without the antenna and up to -80 dBm with it.

Empty

2009-06-18

There was a time when content flowed nicely. The flow slowed down.

It dried. Eventually it stopped completely.

That's OK, it will come back later. It is coming back. Slowly.

The music never stopped. It was actually louder, which is why you could not hear it.

1995

2009-06-16

1995 is over. For now.

I'd like to say it won't happen anymore. Unfortunately I know it will. Because there are things I cannot cope with. There are events that I simply fear. I cannot cope with loss. Yet it is bound to happen, for all beings are mortal.

I wrote about it in 1993, yet nobody could understand. Me neither. They thought it was poetic when it was a cry for help. Luckily deep wasn't that deep. Sink in 1993. Sink in 1994. Sink in 1995. Sink and bounce. Analyze and reinvent yourself. 2000 arrived. It was the sunny tomorrow I was looking for.

But this is different. 1995 was personal. My universe was changing. Everything else was stable, which helped.

The next crisis will be dramatic. It's not about me anymore.

What will I do? I don't know. How will I react? Externally I won't react. External watchers will not understand -- they never do.

Maybe Tigger would know. I sure don't.

Fractint still rocks

2008-10-26

Last week I was pretty sick amd I ended up awake at 4 AM. That's a pretty dull hour to do anything interesting and for some reason my half functioning brain wondered what happened to Fractint, that old program I used to use at the university back in the 90's to compute Mandelbrot fractals.

Turns out Fractint development kind of stopped at Fracting version 20.0, one that is said to "even work under Win95". Outch :-)

However the DOS version still rocks. It runs very nicely under XP in DOS mode without any tweaks and finds lots of interesting VESA modes to use, so I ended up using 1280x1024 mostly.

In a matter of minutes I got myself re-acquainted with the interface and generated these images:

Click on the images to view the full album and larger versions.

Fractint is unique in that it can compute in a variety of precisions, ranging from integer to floating point but also the one called "arbitrary precision". Think zooms in the range of 10^100 or, as you will see below, 10^240. 20 years ago the speed was simply ridiculous.

This is called "deepzooming", and you can view many deep zoom examples here.

Deepzooming at the top of the Mandelbrot set has already been done, for example in this page from Bengt M�nsson. To put things in perspective, the most inner zoom I computed took me 3h30 at 1280x1024 whereas the page above reports 800 hours at 640x480 on a 90 MHz Pentium.

All of this starts when zooming at the tip of Mandelbrot, near -2,0.

There are a bunch of converging "nodes". One would think the intersection of two nodes is empty. Nothing exciting to see here?

Yet by zooming at the intersection between 2 nodes, it eventually splits in 4, then 8, 16, etc...

And there's yet-another Mandelbrot in there:

TH Lap Times

2008-10-17

Laps with instructor:

2:40 x 5
2:42
2:46
2:55

Laps alone (open passing, end of day):

2:36
2:40
2:42
2:46
2:48
2:51

Typical speed in and out of turns (in the 2:40 case):

T1: 70-75
T2: 60-65
T3: 50-55
T4: 50
T5: 45-30 (at top) then T5+: 50-60 (downhill)
T6: 55-60
T7: 80
T8: 80
T9: 55-60 -> up to 80 before 10
T10: 45-50 -> 60 before 11
T11: 40
T12: 50
T13: 65-70 -> up to 85-90 before 14
T14: 50-45 then T14+: 60 then up to 90 at finish line

Red lines: 3rd=75, 4th=90

PC not booting with USB

2008-08-18

Earlier I was complaining about my motherboard not booting from time to time. It's an ASUS M2N-E motherboard.

A few days ago this happened again. In the past, the problem would happen for a while and suddenly the mobo might start booting, so annoyed I unplugged my cell phone to go read my mails somewhere else and... oh wait it just booted!

Huh? Backup! OK the cell phone is one of these smart cell phone and I had plugged to the USB to charge it (incidentally the USB has power even when the PC is stopped.)

I tried a couple of times and this is definitive: having the phone plugged into USB simply locks up the BIOS. At boot it will stop after printing the CPU and before starting to detect the drives.

A flagrant test is to boot the PC without the phone plugged, enter the BIOS setup and plug the phone: it locks up instantly. Remove the phone and the setup works again.

Anyhow, I found an Abit AN8 forum page that describes exactly this behavior. Granted the page is for the Abit AN8-SLI motherboard, not the ASUS M2N-E but the description is right on and I take it's not just a coincidence.

Down

2008-07-27

It's like the tide... up, down... up...

Right now I'm more feeling in the "down" part of the tide.

Too much clutter. On my desk, in my mind. Need to clean it. Annoying but nothing new.

I'll reuse plan A. Worked the last N-1 times: Make a list. Bullet points. Draw a line. Everything below the line is trashed. Act on the rest. Get some exercise, some sleep and reboot. Restart cycle every two years.

There's a plan B too. For serious and drastic times. I used it in '95 and it was painful. Let's not do it again.

Projects

2008-06-14

I finally got around to update the Project List and added 2 years worth of random and insignificants projects.

The only non-trivial projects that got completed in that time frame are rig3 and asqare.