Another reference to Slashdot, I found this post regarding home schooling. Lots of good information in there I’m sure.

There’s a post on Slashdot I thought was worth keeping around here. It’s an “Ask Slashdot” article that asks some advice regarding starting a gaming cafe. There’s some interesting considerations there that make it sound more plausible in today’s age. I still think it’s something meant for full time and not something you can do “on the side”. I’d be interested in helping start one of these, but invest in it? Probably not.

Someone had a brilliant idea for a ringtone: a person coughing. What is this a good idea, you ask? For one thing, a lot of people do forget to turn their cellphones off when they enter a quiet theater. They should be turning it to a vibrate mode at least, but that takes too much forethought for some people. Instead, a person would just need to make their ringtone that of a person coughing, and keep it set at that ringtone at all times (if they’re the type to forget to turn the phone to vibrate, that is). So the person could enter a theater while forgetting to turn their phone off, and the “ring” of their phone would be no more interrupting than a person coughing. Makes a whole lot of sense to me.

I thought this page was pretty funny. “How to lose weight and hair through stress and poor nutrition”. Gotta love it.

I was finally able to get the IR port on the Sony PCG 505TX that work loaned me. This is somewhat allowing me to use it in conjunction with my cellphone to make PPP links to work. So far I’m able to connect and get PPP working, but after about 30 seconds, the link drops. It seems pretty consistent at 30 seconds. There’s got to be a setting that keeps the connection live longer.

Trying out a new shell today called zsh. Well, it’s not really new, but it is to me. I’m taking to trying different tools on Unix to keep more familiar of what options are out there, since I’m sure I’ll run into more of these sorts of things with every new user I run into. There’s also a Perl Shell that seems interesting, but I’m taking one thing at a time. And for fun you can always try out the MUD Shell. The MUD Shell could use some work, but it’s far from trying to be serious anyway.

If you know me at all, I’m what some people call a “spoiler whore”. That means many times I’m a sucker for finding out about a movie’s ending before I ever go see it, either by reading about it on some website, or in extreme cases downloading the movie from the ‘net. However, what really frustrates me is when TV trailers spoil certain parts of the movie after it’s been released. Case in point — The movie Signs was released last Friday, and up until then the TV spots for it were very obscure, leaving a lot of questions and mystery regarding what the movie would be about. Saturday morning, the TV spots changed and were riddled with new scenes that rediculously gave away the fact that there were indeed aliens making the crop circles and that the world was under attack.

This is what has been bothering me about the theater lately; if I don’t go see the movie on the release date, I’d better try very hard to avoid watching TV spots or else have all the “good parts” ruined for me. This is especially true with comedies, where byt the time you see the movie, you realize you’ve already seen all the good parts! Either this is a ploy my movie execs to drag moviegoers to the theater on opening day/weekend to drive up the viewership numbers, or they have their heads up their asses. Well actuall, that last part’s a given.

Here’s some tips I read on creating a clean room at home for doing things like opening and repairing hard drives:

Actually to break the seal on your hard drive, there is a special way . . .

You need a few things

1) saran wrap
2) latex gloves
3) a good box fan
4) a hair net (or hat) and a dust mask (just to keep the drive safe from you)
5) a screw driver to open the drive

Go to your bathroom and turn on the shower for about 10 minutes on hot, so there is lots of steam in there

Then, take the box fan and blow the steam out of the bathroom, this will catch all the particles of dust that hang in the air and blow them with the steam outside of the bathroom, you then take the top of the drive off and IMMEDIATELY wrap it in the saran wrap.

You can then mod the drives top and then put it back together in the “clean room”

It is not guaranteed to work, but I have seen it done with no issues, you just need to wear the right clothes and be super careful.

Some guys were able to mod a Sega Dreamcast with Linux and install some tools to make it a stealth attacker on a network. From other comments I’ve read on the subject, I don’t see why using a DC would help someone, even if it only costs about $100 on EBay. Some mention that the ethernet controller costs an extra $60!

Personally I think if someone were able to mod a network switch where it works like a switch, looks like a switch, but inside there’s a device that has an OS loaded and sniffs off all the ports on the switch and allows incoming connections, etc. THAT would be sneaky and nasty.

Neat page that has a version of Linux so compact that it fits on a floppy. While I’m sure it’s great for emergencies, I can also see bad coming from it if someone knew what they were doing (or didn’t know for that matter).