danny’s space

The lab got a new Lacie 300gb external HDD the other day for backup and mass storage for microscopy imaging files which often take up a few DVDs at a time. So I hooked the drive up using USB (one of its many interfaces which include this thing called Firewire 800 which has a weird plug) to the computer running the microscope, but it didn’t recognise the drive! And then I found out Windows NT 4.0 doesn’t have native USB support, even under SP6.

So went scouting on the internet, found various 3rd party drivers that sounded like they would work. Anyway, settled on this driver from Digi.com (ftp://ftp1.digi.com/support/driver/i4usb406.exe) and it worked a treat! After installing the program/driver, even without a restart, the computer immediately recognised the drives and they were accessible. Woot.

Turned a potential few hundred dollar paperweight into a working piece of hardware.

Hooray. Commuters are going to be charged extra for fewer trains that run slower. Cityrail alleges that more of its services are running on time - this isn’t hard considering that they are running much fewer trains, and have changed the definition for on-time-running from 3 minutes to 5 minutes. Genius. So in effect, from July 2, commuters will be paying for fewer trains, spun by Cityrail to look like efficient on-time services. What a joke.

What’s worse is that the ‘independent’ pricing tribunal has agreed with Cityrail that its services are running more on time. Why don’t they define on-time running to plus/minus 30 minutes - then nearly all of their services will be on time, and they can justify another price hike. I’m sure the people running the independent pricing tribunal don’t have to put up with the train system and get taxpayer funded cars and petrol.

Pretty nifty. And annoying. Visit Compound Security, a UK firm specialising in this teen control product. It’s quite painful to experience actually.

Got it from an SMH article about a teen ring tone, which is a 17Khz ringtone that only teens can hear, letting them know calls/SMSs are coming in without adults like teachers/parents knowing. It plays fine through the computer speakers, and boy is it piercing.

I’ve been staring at this stuff all day. It’s starting to look quite appeasing. I must be delirious.

I don’t think this picture needs any more explanation. It all started in January… Thanks to Anii for her great Photoshop skills.

1. You fail in at least one thing every day
2. You’re at uni from 9-6 without a break
3. You’re at uni on the weekend
4. “It stuffed up” or “It’s not working” becomes the most common thing you say

Well, as you can tell by the gel picture (or not), things are still not working that well. I just felt like posting a gel picture up. I have to look at these pretty much every day, so thought you’d like to too.