Wilgje.net » Nerdy/Geeky

Still white and nerdy

Willow — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 22:38:38 +0000

Sometimes, in between slowly forgetting the finer Linux commands, working a lot and no longer tinkering that much with stuff anymore, I find myself wondering: am I still a geek? You see, I take pride in that part of me that likes to figure out how stuff works. Also it’s a lot of fun to do ^_^

Anyway, the other day I got quite annoyed since my internet wasn’t working. I’d checked everything: cabling, the AirPort, the connectors everywhere, the works. I found out there’s a problem with the type of modem I have (an Ubee) and kindly asked someone on irc to help me out. This only made it worse. Basically, if I attached my MacBook directly to the modem it was fine. With my AirPort it wouldn’t stay online for even a minute. After the fix on the modem I got quite desperate and two other friends of mine came over late at night to help me out on location. They tested more: on my other router, a Belkin, it still wouldn’t work, until they cloned its MAC address. Since my AirPort doesn’t do that, we would have never found this out if I hadn’t had the other router. After that it was a matter of asking the guy on irc (serial) about that and he found out there was an IP conflict with another customer. If I hadn’t had these connections I would have never found it, and helpdesk people would have been equally clueless. Likely I would have moved to another provider in the end.

So I can’t solve everything. I needed to tinker. And I did! After my interwebs were fixed, I pulled some cable through the wall, attached some connectors and fixed a UTP wall socket, so I will no longer stumble over cables in my hallway. So I haven’t lost my touch after all ^_^

UTP Wall Socket

I love being a geek ;)

Mobile phones, a history

Willow — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 18:04:02 +0000

Following a gajillion discussions on IRC over a long time, I started thinking about my history with mobile phones. This led to me googling for about 2 hours straight, because I couldn’t find my first phone ever. Until I did! It was the KPN Pocketline Wave 200, but almost none were sold in the Netherlands. Originally it was a Trium, and this took me ages to find out. On this picture the logo above the screen says Trium, on mine it said KPN. It was brilliant, it worked well and what I remember best were the sounds the buttons made (which I recall were impossible to turn off).

I also found all the other phones I ever owned. In a nutshell:
Number two: a KPN Pocketline Swing, which was my mom’s phone when I still had my first phone. I didn’t have this one for long, I only got it because my first phone broke and I handed it back when I bought the Siemens.
Number three: a Siemens A55. Dreadful thing, it unlocked in my pocket because unlocking only required holding one button, and it’d call people. Sorry everyone who ever received a phone call from me around 5 years ago! I took care of this one: I accidentally left it in my pants, which I then washed.
Number four: a Nokia 6230, which was easily the best phone I’ve ever had. It was easy to figure out, the buttons worked well and never broke, and it was a really sturdy phone overall. I bought a new frame for it once, and it was as new again. Drawback: the battery went dead in several hours at the end. Also, I was kinda bummed out about the fact that I didn’t have a 6230i, which had an extra button in the middle and more features/more storage etc.
Number five: an MDA Vario (HTC Wizard). I was tired of T9, and I’d decided that a phone with a keyboard was what I needed. I also found that Windows Mobile is quite versatile, even if it’s buggy and slow. Even if I had to reboot my phone every once in a while, I was happy.
Number six: an MDA Vario III (HTC TyTN II). So I figured, why not another one? This one was (a little) faster, had extra internet options, etc. Also, I got PocketScumm on it and I played Monkey Island ;)
Number seven: an iPhone 3G. This one pretty much speaks for itself. I went along with the big hype and got it too. Ny next phone won’t be an iPhone though; this one has WAY too little battery life and Apple is being an ass on certain things any other decent phone does offer these days, like tethering. But it’s cute none the less.

So there we go! I wonder which one my next phone will be ;)

Cubeecraft: Darth Vader

Willow — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 08:18:07 +0000

Darth Vader

I really liked how Sam & Max turned out in cubeecraft, so when I noticed this one I just had to make it too. Darth Vader, including helmet and light sabre!

Knitting: Cthulhu Dice Bag

Willow — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 18:56:05 +0000

cthulhu dice bag

I finished this quite a while ago but I thought I’d still post it here: my cute knitted dice bag. Thanks to Faragon I was able to start right away, since she gave me wool and the pattern for it. I think I knitted the pattern a bit tight but it’s not a disaster really. All part of the learning process :)

Cubeecraft: Sam & Max, Freelance Police

Willow — Sun, 24 May 2009 10:17:59 +0000

The other day I was clicking around on the interwebs, and found cubeecraft.com. You can download a pattern for a cubic version of your favourite character, print it out (on thicker paper), cut all the lines and then put it together, no glue or tape required. Yesterday I decided to try it out with two of my favourite characters: Sam & Max. It takes about half an hour to an hour per character and the directions for putting it together are quite self-explanatory.

Yes, I realise I have no life right now. This will change, as I’ve set up my own freelance business and my first job starts in June. Glee! ^_^

Malware in my theme

Willow — Sat, 16 May 2009 16:55:25 +0000

Up until a few days ago, when I made my last post, I thought I had a very nice theme worked out for my blog. The only issue was, posts kept loading really slowly, as if they were waiting for something. I didn’t know enough about it to figure out what could cause it, but Habbie did and he found that the issue was embedded in my theme. Apparently it queried the site xpstatz.com for some reason, most likely for malware purposes. Since my theme came from a non-official themes site (I can’t even remember which one), the malicious code was probably embedded in the theme by the creators of that website and then distributed. I would never have found out if the queried site, 2.xpstatz.com, hadn’t been down all day. So just to be safe I figured I should get and edit a different theme, from the official Wordpress site. Who knows what else is embedded in the other one…

Pixelhobby: Mario

Willow — Thu, 14 May 2009 17:57:48 +0000

Recently, my mother opened her hobby shop. One day before opening she got an offer from someone at Pixelhobby, and she decided to sell it along with the stuff she’d already stocked. Pixelhobby now accounts for a large part of her profits.

But what is it? Well, remember Ministeck? Pixelhobby works the other way around: you have a piece of plastic with pins on it, and you push little square pieces of plastic with holes in them over the pins. Where Ministeck had pieces with 2 or more pins (think tetris blocks), Pixelhobby only has pieces with 1 hole. When I looked at this for the first time I had one association with it that wouldn’t leave my mind: oldskool gaming! Therefore I decided to go with one of my favourite games from when I was young, which is Mario 3. This is the result ^_^

Look here for a closeup.

Edit: I’ll give a more detailed description of how it was made. First I got the picture off the internet. Then I used a program called Pixelhobby Designer to make it into a pixelated picture (it’s downloadable from their site, Windows-only afaik). I bought the colours and the plastic boards I needed, as was detailed by the pattern I printed out. Then I put a plastic board on the pattern, which looks like this, and I filled in the squares, circles, triangles and crosses with the four corresponding colours. After that, I put the board on the next pattern. It takes ages and you have to be careful not to mess it up, but it’s worth the effort :)

Mario 3 in Java

Willow — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 00:52:39 +0000

One of the greatest old-skool games I remember is Super Mario Bros 3 on the NES. I bet my mother remembers it even better as she actually beat the game before I ever got to :>

MacTijn stumbled upon the coolest thing since Mario on the NES: Super Mario Bros 3 in a Java app. Now you can play the game without needing to bother with emulators or the NES. Of course you can also buy it for the Wii if you have one, but this is a cute alternative. And another asset remains intact: you cannot save and quit the game, just like on the old NES ^_^

iStuff gets you guys (or chicks I suppose)

Willow — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 06:52:16 +0000

In the train this morning I took out my brand new iPod, since I needed a good dose of metal to wake up with. There was this really cute guy sitting across from me, who kept looking at it. As I usually do when people stare at me (it happens, although it’s probably all in my head), I thought ‘what’s he looking at’ and turned away. Then he asked me if my iPod was the newest version, and he explained how he wanted one of those since he had an old one, and that he also wanted an inscription (mine says ‘Willow’ on the back). We ended up chatting for a little while, until the lights in the train went out, with the train still moving at full speed. Damn those trains.

Next time I think I’ll take out my Macbook and see what happens. Perhaps I’ll find myself a pretty cute iGuy someday ;)

YMCA

Willow — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 21:15:27 +0000

Sometimes my friends can be rather weird. My friend Sim has dedicated her time to positioning her kid’s male Barbie dolls in the YMCA-positions and taking a picture of that. I wonder what other strange hobbies she has ;)