Author: Paul

I've decided to take the plunge and start working on a project that has been sitting in the back of my head since college. I'm setting out to build a CPU from scratch.

I thought that the Neodux crew might want to follow along as I work on this insane project. But not too insane...I've already figured out how I'm going to do it. I just need to do it now.

Follow along and watch as I walk the thin line between avocation and insanity!

...And I know some of you guys are EEs -- maybe you can give me a hand when something eventually goes wrong...

When I bought my new house in April, one of the most annoying things I discovered was that I got virtually zero cell service inside the house. The house is down in a valley and thus has no good line-of-sight to any cell towers. Inside the house I'd get 0-1 bar, and outside on the front lawn I'd occasionally get 2.

To try and remedy this situation, I had two choices: get a landline (with yet another phone number and at least $20/mo) or I could go with a "smarter" solution and get a cell repeater/booster. I found this gem after doing some research online: the YX510 dual-band cell repeater.

So for just over $300 I got this fairly large box containing an 18" external antenna, 35' of high-grade coax cable, and a chunky little box for inside with a little 6" antenna.

I went up on the roof of the house and found that I got 4 bars near the back of the house. So I mounted the external antenna at the top of an 8' 2x4 that I strapped to the side of the house. Then I ran the provided coax around the house into the attic, where I mounted the interior box.

I should note that I took care to put as many physical barriers as possible between the interior and exterior antennas, to prevent feedback loops. In my case, I was able to get 2 sets of shingles and 3 walls in between the antennas.

Finally, I found a good place to plug in the provided wall-wart, then spliced in an extension into the power cable (the provided one was only 4' long). Then I plugged the base unit in, and voila! I now get 4-5 bars all over the house. No more dropped calls, no more "are you there?" when talking to somebody. And I don't need to get a landline.

Highly recommended to anybody that is in a similar situation (bad cell service somewhere but with an easily accessible location nearby with good cell service).

edit: Here are pics of the setup.

I drove to Best Buy today in search of that 20 dollar Creative 30 gig MP3 player. Unfortunetly, all of the employees took advantage of the price glitch and there were no more.

Anyway, as I was browsing around checking out laptops, there was this Salesguy explaining to a woman how to remove spyware from her machine. I always wondered why people were so hell-bent on using programs like Spy Sweeper and Nortan Internet Securities, but now I know why.

The salesguy was just throwing out this stuff like jelly donuts to a fat kid; the lady was just eating it up. BS lines such as "Well, Spybot and Ad-aware don't really work too well because they are free. Spysweeper stops it in 'REAL TIME.'" Other lines such as "Nortan Internet Securities is the best!" were just appalling. I wanted to just say "You sir, are full of erroneous information!", but he kept going on and on; it would have been pointless.

I also remember a time when I needed a video card and just happened to be at a Best Buy. I asked the sales guy where his video cards were, and he asked me what kind I wanted. Now, this is the time where 3DfX JUST released the VooDoo 5, and was bought out shortly thereafter by nVidia. I told him I wanted a GeForce 2, but he actually said "Nah man, you gotta wait for the VooDoo 9, it's going to RAWK!" I kid you not, he actually said RAWK.

I blame companies such as Best Buy for such blatent mis-information about important concepts such as spyware removal. It's bad enough that spyware sucks ass, but adding suck software to the mix just makes the suck factor suck more. Amazingly, some people take Best Buy's word as gospel, and you can't convince them otherwise because you don't work at a billion dollar corporation and look like a Jehovah's witness while dawning the title AGENT 69 and driving a gay Volkswagon Bug with the title "Geek Squad" plastered on the side (that is a rant for another time).

Best Buy fills my body with rage sometimes.

I grabbed the demo (thanks ltd for the link) and played the heck out of it. This game just blows away it's Vietnam predecessor. There are so many added features to the Battlefield engine that just keeps the game interesting; like the nice cockpit designs with functioning HUDs and tracking systems.

This game didn't turn out to be Desert Combat on steroids. You actually have to aim at your targets rather than just aim in their general direction with an rpg or stinger missle and score an easy kill. Also, not everything kills in you in one hit. There's a nice balance to the weapons and the vehicles that allow players to enjoy the game rather than curse the programmers that implemented BFG-like WMD's(i.e. the scud launcher in desert combat)

I'd say this game has great potential. All we can hope for is that they don't screw it up with patches that "balance" the game.

update: Let it be known that Battlefield 2 is infact the 3rd game in the Battlefield Line.

Shamelessly ripped from the pages of Slashdot...

The following link was posted with some pretty damning evidence (or lack thereof) that Lokitorrent.com was really sued by the MPAA. Apparently, the guy that owned the domain paid off the MPAA with some trifling settlement, then ran with the money donated to his "legal fund"... weird, wild stuff.

Read more on the story, here.