March 2004 Archives

AnandTech: PCI Speed and Overclocking: A Closer Look at A64 and P4 Chipsets . Connie's Dad got an Athlon 64. It didn't overclock very much. Just from 2.0GHz to 2.1GHz. This article explains why.

The nVidia nForce-3 150 chipset is supposed to keep the PCI bus stable at 66MHz, but this apparently doesn't work. The main reason you can't overclock is because all those peripherals on the PCI bus don't tolerate higher bus speeds well.

nVidia nForce3-250 comes to the rescue. This is the next chipset out and it appears to fix this and lots of other problems.

Confusingly, there will be four variants of this chipset:

1. nForce3-250 - basic value chipset for 754 socket (the current generation of Athlon 64s), 800 HyperTransport bus, does not include on-chip Gigabit LAN or on-chip Firewall.
2. nForce3-250Gb - includes Gigabit LAN and on-chip Firewall.

With the coming introduction of Socket 939, there will also be two additional versions of the chipset introduced:

3. nForce3-250Gb Ultra - 1000 Mbps HyperTransport, Gigabit LAN, Firewall, Dual-Channel unbuffered, for Athlon 64/Athlon 64 FX.
4. nForce3-250Gb Ultra PRO - for Opteron server chips

All of these include 8 SATA ports, 4-channel SATA RAID plus 4-Channel IDE RAID, and software 6-channel audio. Basically, its an awesome chipset. We should see the first boards for the current Athlon 64 in the next few weeks.

In the next few months, the updated Athlon 64s should ship and this looks like the chipset to use with it!

Well, I've been to Hawaii a bunch but never figured out how to really get a good ride in there. Here are some resources:

• The Bike Shop. The big multi store chain. There is one right in Kailua on Oahu. They rent the Specialized Allez for $110/week and you can also pack and ship to them for $35 to assemble and $100 for UPS to actually deliver the bike. It's $20 to disassemble and then $60 to send to the mainland. You have to send the week before hand.
• Hawaiian Bike League. Good road bike routes on Oahu. Most interesting is the one over the Pali mountains from Waikiki to Kailua. Amazing they say that bicyclists can take that one. Boy is it busy!
• Kona Hawaii Daily Bike Tours and Big Island Bicycle Vacation Packages with Orchid Isle Bicycling.. This is on the big island. Not sure how serious it is, but they are there doing packages
• Maui Bike. Seems like a relaxed thing, they offer 24-speed comfort bikes.
• Island Biker Maui. A little more serious, this is a local bike shop on Maui. You can for instance rent a 2003 Specialized Allez Sports for $125/week. Or a Specialized Epic for $45/day.
• CyclEvents. They run road cycling tours on the big island, Kauai and Maui now.
• Bike Hawaii. They give you trails for mountain biking all over the Hawaiian Islands.

Once you start spending dollars on games, I have to wonder what you do when you realize that your 4-year-old could easily destroy the CD and then you lose the game. Unfortunately, game vendors are so intent on preventing copying that it is actually quite hard to make a backup for yourself. Here are some hints (for the record, this ain't about piracy, but about what happens, when Grace pours juice on your CD):

1. GameCopyWorld - Generic SafeDisc Patch. Good overview of potential solutions. There are some wrappers that fool things like SafeDisc that are either generic or game specific. There used to be a program CloneCD that would let you do backups, but it isn't around anymore because of legal issues.
2. Gamefix. This site has a bunch of tools that emulate some of the copy protection schemes like SafeDisc or SecuRom or CopyLok

You can also try to read these copy protected disk with conventional tools, but there will be lots of errors (see Gamefix)

Image Tab
Image file Enter a Image filename
Copy options Tab
On the fly DeSelect
Drive with source CD... Select Source CD-Reader
Read Speed 1x (150 kB/s)
Read options Tab
Number of retries before read error 1
Read media catalog number and ISCR Select
Ignore illegal TOC Type Select
Unreadable data Continue copying
Data mode 1 - Force raw reading
- If it can be changed or it is not ghosted DeSelect
Data mode 2 - Force raw reading DeSelect
Read audio data with sub channel Select
Use Jitter correction Select (for older Readers)
Ignore read errors Select
Burn Tab
Ignore read errors 1x (150 KB/s)

When ready click Copy CD to start the copy process

Tom's Hardware Guide Processors: Welcome The Latecomer: Pentium 4 Prescott 3.4 GHz - New Processor Nomenclature To Come. To add more confusion, the clock rates of various Intel chips don't seem to correlate to performance, so they are going to introduce model numbers.

Right now, a mobile Pentium 4 running at a lower clock rate can actually be faster in benchmarks than a desktop Pentium. This is because they are different architectures internally. It is why an AMD ship running at 2.0GHz can be as fast as mobile Pentium running at 2.2GHz or a desktop Pentium running at 3.4GHz. Talk about confusing.

So Intel is going to these models:

For Mobile:
Pentium M 755 (2.0 GHz)
Pentium M 745 (1.8 GHz)
Pentium M 735 (1.7 GHz)
Pentium M 725 (1.6 GHz)
Pentium M 715 (1.5 GHz)
Pentium 4 Mobile
Celeron M 340 (1.5 GHz)
Celeron M 330 (1.4 GHz)
Celeron M 320 (1.3 GHz)

For Desktop:
Pentium 4 Extreme Edition
Pentium 4 560 (3.6 GHz)
Pentium 4 550 (3.4 GHz)
Pentium 4 540 (3.2 GHz)
Pentium 4 530 (3.0 GHz)
Pentium 4 520 (2.8 GHz)
Celeron D 340 (2.93 GHz)
Celeron D 330 (2.8 GHz)
Celeron D 320 (2.66 GHz)
Celeron D 310 (2.53 GHz)

Good luck figuring this out! Oh BTW, the main conclusion on Tom's Hardware is that the new Pentium 4 3.4E GHz wasn't a great deal. Still much hotter and about the same performance. There is apparently a new stepping (silent upgrade called D0) that you need to make sure to get.

WeetHet - CDRW - How to write a Bin/Cue CD image using Nero Burning Rom. Hat tip to google for helping me understand the differences between .BIN and .ISO files

BIN/CUE files (files that have a suffix .BIN and .CUE) are often found on the Internet and commonly created using CDRWIN by Golden Hawk.

If you already own Ahead Nero, it know how to burn ISO files, but not BIN/CUE files.

Simply put, a BIN file is nothing more than an ISO file variant, and a a CUE file nothing else as an index file for the BIN file.

Tip: If you only have the BIN file, and don't have the CUE file, then look in the downloads page where you can find a little tool called BIN2ISO to convert BIN files to an ISO file.

So the steps are:

1. Convert a BIN file to an ISO file.
2. Burn ISO with Nero on how to burn this image file (thanks to Hans van Helden for the tip!).

Well, the first of the Atheros routers have shipped. Basically, everything but the kitchen sink is now available. Does 802.11a, 11b and 11g, so you get high bandwidth and it works in both the 2.4 and 5GHz ranges. Street of $129, so * "D-Link AirPremier AG DI-784":http://d-link.com/products/?pid=299. Also supports the Super G mode. * "Zipzoomfly.com';http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=252009&ps=sw7. Has the D-link at $129. Others will announce shortly I think, but this unit looks like one that will have some legs, although new standards keep evolving. The earlier DI-624 that I got is 802.11b/g and has really impressive range and the turbo mode does work in homes. Very fast.

USB parallel adapters, USB computer parallel adapters at TigerDirect.com. Many of new PCs don't bother with a parallel port. If you an old printer that only has a parallel port (technically a Centronics IEEE-1284 port), then this is the magic cable for you.

OK, so if you're playing a bunch of games, what are the cool peripherals to get now?

• E-D Glasses. These give you a three dimensional view of your game. Really does work mainly because there are essentially only ATI and nVidia left for gamers, so they can focus the driver work. nVidia includes a stereo driver as part of its base load. Really amazing and great reviews.
• Track IR2. This is also from e-dimensional. With it, if you just nod to the left, the screen automatically flips to the left. Amazing for flight simulators and first person shooters. Imagine, if you could glance left and see the bad guy. How cool. It's also just $99 from E-dimensional. Cool toys.

I'm going to give them both a try.

"Wood Care Systems":http://ewoodcare.com. Got some rotting beams. Even with creosote soaked wood, you get cracks and it exposes untreated wood and then you get rotting. So used for utility poles for instance. Here is how it works: # powder you spray on the wood # a rod that you drill into the wood. when you gets wet enough to rot, the rod will dissolve and diffuse 4-5" around, space 9". This diffusion provide an internal treatment. # liquid is sprayed into the rod. an epoxy that you put into the rod. Rot fix will penetrate and harden and petrify the soft wood. # the last step is sculpt wood like play dough. incorporate some pressure treated wood and a layer of filler, then another layer of epoxy and cures together.

Introducing WMPtunelog | minimal verbosity. NOw when you are using itunes to play music, your blog can notice. How cool.

For Brad's party, we need an instrumental of a Little Help from my friends. A great reminder of how hard it is to do certain things. Like get a MIDI file into a CD. Here's how and its amazingly hard to do. Requires you pay dollars for a utility for something as trivial as MIDI to WAV file conversion. In any case, if you are ever cursed with this project, here are the steps:

1. How to Convert MIDI files to WAVE files. Hat tip to notationmachine.com for this explanation Before I begin to explain this, understand that MIDI files don't contain any sounds so we need to use some sort of synthesiser-- either an external one, or the one in your computer and record this synth as a wave file. The first question you must answer is: Are you happy with the quality of the sounds of these MIDI files right now? Do you want to record them as they sound right now in your computer using your computer's synth? If so, then it's simple. Just read on. If not, scroll to the bottom and read the directions below.
   1. Get the MIDI file. Many times, these are embedded in Web pages, so you have to go to Internet Explorer and choose the web page, then pick view source and go through the HTML to find the actual URL where the MIDI lives, then you can choose Save As and this puts the Midi file on your machine.
   2. You need to open your volume controls (double click the yellow speaker icon in the tray (the tray is the clock area of your Windows computer)).
   3. Check the 'Mute' check boxes for all sliders except 'Synthesizer Balance.'
   4. Now select 'Options' and 'Properties.' Click 'Recording'. Press OK
2. Sound Recorder stinks. The base sound recorder stinks in XP. It hasn't been updated since Windows 3.1 if you can believe that, so you are trapped with overpriced shareware to do the trivial thing of converting what's in the sound card into a WAV file for further processing. I tried a bunch. But, this is a tool for $30 that at least works. Let's you edit things as well, so you basically load the MIDI file
   1. With Sound Recorder, you play the MIDI file. This can be done in Winamp for instance, then you choose record from 1st-sound-recorder.
   2. You can then edit it. The cost for that product is $30, but at least it happens instantly. Cool Edit, another recommendation is now called Adobe Audition and cost $300 if you can believe that.
3. Now that you are done with this, you can load up Nero and you can create the CD with the WAV file.

Here are some links for things that happened in Alaska around 1987, Barrow Alaska and whaling there:

• Bowheads in Alaska. A note about Bowheads

What happened around 1987:

• Exxon Valdez. Crashed into Bligh Reef 11M gallons. March 24, 1989.
• Wikipedia 1986. It's hard to access Encyclopedias or other things, this wiki is pretty good though.

• Whaling History. The history of commercial whaling
• Bowhead Whaling History. Story of how Alaskan Bowheads were conserved.
• Technology of whaling and global history. Includes the invention of the bomb lance, shoulder guns, etc.
• Bowhead Protection Status. Bowheads were protected in 1938. Commercial whaling began in 1600s, First People have whaled for thousands of years.
• Snowmobile Inventor. Bombardier invented it in 1937.
• Barrow History. Recent history in short form
• Inupiat History. More depth on the history of Barrow and the Inupiat
• Alaska History. A larger chronology.

Double Layer DVD. Sony announces a double layer DVD player. Called the DRU-700A and DRU-700UL (external). You can store up to 8.5GB of data on a single disk. Wow!

Its truly a super drive and supports all the bizarre formats now around including They will also feature up to 8X DVD±R, 4X DVD±RW, 40X CD-R and 24X CD-RW recording. The cool thing is that these DL disks are compatible with most DVD players. ERP is just $230, so quite inexpensive given its at the top of the technology curve. Although you can now buy a super combo drive like the NEC-2500A for just $90.

Apparently these are OEMed from Lite-on (just as the original Sony drives were actually from Ricoh), so you should see drives from Lite-on, BenQ and Phillips soon.

Hybridcars.com. Proving once again there is a website for everyone, there's actually a news portal now for those interested in hybrid cars. No RSS feeds though unfortunately. Some interesting facts:

• Toyota Hybrid Camry in 2006. Toyota plans to sell 100,000 hybrid Camry's out of the 400,000 total. The overall Toyota plan is to sell 300,000 hybrids annually by the middle of this decade.
• Car Overview. A great overview of all the cars coming. The Prius, Honda Civic and Insight are the three out now, but coming are cribbed from them. Too bad the Sienna minivan isn't on the list. Now that's a car I'd buy. Talik about practical:

Coming in 2004:
Dodge Ram Pick-up
Ford Escape SUV
GM Silverado Pick-up
GM Sierra Pick-up
Lexus Hybrid SUV

In the Works:
Chevrolet Malibu Sedan
Chevrolet Tahoe SUV
GMC Yukon SUV
Honda Accord Sedan
Honda Pilot SUV
Mercedes S-Class Hybrid
Mercedes Grand Sport Tourer Diesel-Hybrid Station Wagon
Saturn VUE SUV
Toyota Camry Sedan
Toyota Highlander SUV

Welcome to the world of audiocoding - AudioCoding.com. I use MP3 for compatibility, Ogg Vorbis for playback on PCs and Flac for archiving music files.

Here's another resrouces, Audiocoding.com is doing free MPEG-4 encoders including HE MPEG-4 also know as AACplus. This is a very high compression codec. Got to give it a try from my friends at Coding Technologies

Referrer Spam. There is no end to the spam disease. It ain't just email. With all this self publishing, I've spent more time on comment, then trackback spam. Now I'm barraged by referrer spam. That is links of folks who have recently visited.

What is really needed is some sort of server side filter and some way to mark packets as really from a desitination rather than forgeries. Interesing computer science problem. Anyway in the mean time, I'm turning off referrers on tongfamily.com, geekfishing.net, etc.

George asked me about what computers should he get. Surprisingly, January-March was quiet in the computer business without any major events. The Prescott launch turned into a non-event given that although they moved into a new chip family pricing didn't really change. Even with CeBit coming next week, doesn't look like any major shakeups. Those come in the second half of the year. "Shuttle":http://www20.tomshardware.com/business/20040309/cebit2004-preview-05.html. The major change will be the next line of Shuttle PCs. Amazing that this little company has gone from selling 34,000 PCs in 2001 to nearly half a million last year. Most interesting is the launch of the new XPC "Zen ST62K":http://tech-report.com/reviews/2004q1/shuttle-st62k/index.x?pg=1 line. These are 20% smaller than current Shuttles and has an external fan-less power supply so it is super quiet as well as very fast onboard graphics done by ATI's 9100 IGP. These will ship in April, so that's a consideration if you need one right away. Should have a street price of $300. The comparable unit is the ST61G4 which streets at $340, but has an AGP slot and a 250 watt power supply (vs. 180 watt). That being said, here are my recommendations for PCs. Right now, I'll cover the $500 barest but decent system up to about $1,000. With one system in between: h4. $500 Budget system So, what does $500 buy you? Well a pretty nice machine if you are running office applications and browsing the Internet. It doesn't use the latest chip set, but these chips do overclock well, so you can get about 25% more performance typically if you need it. This isn't a gamer system, but sure looks nice with a 17" LCD display (my rule of thumb BTW is to spend about 80% of the system cost on a monitor, or about $400 buys you a nice 17" LCD monitor) | Component | Price | Comment | | Kingston ValueRam 512MB PC3200 | "$85":http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=687181/ut=1813184029de13f6 | Room for another 512MB if you need it | | AMD Athlon XP 2500+ | "$75":http://www.pricegrabber.com/mega_bottomline.php/return_masterid=697070/ut=1813184029de13f6 | Overclock to 3200+ easily | | Lite-On SOHC 5232K | "$54":http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=2292834/blsrt=1/ut=1813184029de13f6 | CDRW and DVD reader | | Shuttle SN41G2 | "$250":http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=678701/blsrt=1/ut=1813184029de13f6 | Integrates video, audio, ethernet, usb, 1394 | | Western Digital Caviar WD1200JB | "$88":http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=541564/blsrt=1/ut=1813184029de13f6 | 120GB hard drive. Very fast | | Total | $552 | Get from Newegg.com and accupc.com | h4. $1000 Screamer Well, this doesn't get you the drool machine, but certainly something state of the art. Main things you get are much more memory and disk plus the latest 64 bit processing monster. | Component | Price | Comment | | Kingston 1GB HyperX Kit | "$250":http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=939430/blsrt=1/ut=1813184029de13f6 | Best RAM money can buy | | AMD Athlon 64 3000+ | "$209":http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=2152536/blsrt=1/ut=1813184029de13f6 | 64 bit processing and cheap too | | NEC ND-2500A | "$94":http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=1839337/blsrt=1/ut=1813184029de13f6 | 12x DVD writer. Wow! | | Western Digital WD2000JB | "$146":http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=607706/blsrt=1/ut=1813184029de13f6 | 200GB screamer | | Shuttle SN85G4 | "$299":http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=2268274/blsrt=1/ut=1813184029de13f6 | Has everything else | | Total | $1010 | Get from accupc and zipzoomfly | If you need a display, a 19" Benq FP991 is a great choice at about $660 h4. The inbetweener So what can you get in between. Well, here are the tradeoff I'd make from easiest upsell to most painful: * From Lite-on to NEC. This is just $50 more and you get a state of the DVD burner. A good tradeoff. For instance even in the office, you can now be reasonable about doing backups. Most data files are going to be smaller than 4.5GB, the size of a DVD writeable. * From 120GB to 200GB. The next trade up I'd make is to go to 200GB or whatever you can stand. Adding $50 more gives you nearly 80% more disk. And there is only one hard drive spot inside a shuttle, so this is a precious resource. * From 17" to a 19" display. Believe it or not, I actually think the $200 more here is the most worthwhile thing you can do. * From 512MB to 1GB. This is more expensive, either about $80 more if you use ValueRam or about $120 if you use fancy HyperX ram. Main thing is that you'll really never wait with 1GB of main memory in your system. * From XP to 64. This is the biggest upgrade, in that you have to upgrade both the processor

Well here they come, hat tip to my buddy Jeff for pointing this out to me:

• Toyota Prius is named best car of 2004 and one of the ten best by Car and Driver. More importantly, production goes to 150,000 units next year. Who would have ever guessed that!
• Lexus hybrid - RX400h. An amazing technical feat. This is a 40 mpg 4-wheel drive car. Features a electric engine in the rear so that it is a very neat way to be a hybrid.
• Ford to use Toyota components for the Hybrid Escape. Toyota really does have the lead here. Their small SUV, the Escape will become a hybrid in 2004.
• Toyota Highlander. Their truck-based SUV gets a hybrid version in early 2005.

What does it all mean for me? Well, that Lexus Hybrid or the Prius sure looks good to me :-)

I've been using Bit Torrent now for the last 30 days. It is a little confusing since there doesn't appear to a site for novices who want an easy to use P2P system. Here's my short guide with what I know so far:

• Azureus. First, you have to select a client. I've tried a bunch so far and Azureus seems like the most user friendly. You can see downloads and get lots of statistics. It is a Java application and has crashed for me a few times though.
• Isohunt. The second thing is that you need a search engine. Unlike other file sharing applications, Bit Torrent separates the search from the download. These search engines go up and down all the time and disappear too, but I've found Isohunt to be pretty reliable for finding .torrent files. These are the magic cookies that tell clients like Azureus where to get the files.
• Xchat. Many of the Torrent files are on Internet Relay Chats. This bizarreness reminds you what the Internet was like circa 1980. Basically, you have to go to a chat room, utter some strange incantation then wait in line until you can do a download from a server somewhere. I haven't actually successfully done this yet, but Isohunt has reasonably complete automation to do this.

Other references include:

• Bittorrent Client Links. A good summary of the top clients.
• Bit Torrent is incredibly basic. Has a separate user interface for every download and doesn't tell you much about what is going on. One interesting behavior you'll see is that many clients using this code preallocate an entire file, so pretty soon your hard disk gets filled with empty files if you have many failed downloads. The advantage of course is that there is less fragmentation.
• ShaD0W clients. HE has two that are popular, the firs is called shadow experiemental and the new one is called bittornadio. Haven't tried these yet.

I haven't seen reviews of these yet, but Nikon has a pretty interesting 1Q04:

• D70. A response to the Canon Digital Rebel. This is a 6Mp camera. Also has a new 18-70mm f/3.5-4.5 zoom lens. DPPhoto thinks it compares well with its bigger brother, the D100, and its competition, the Canon EOS-300D.
• Nikon COOLSCAN V ED. Their latest low-cost scanner. It has 4,000 dpi optical resolution, digital ICE automatic correction of slides, etc and scans in 38 seconds. Wow, how cool. Not as high resolution as say the Konica Minolta Dimage 5400, but only $600 vs. $900.
• Nikon Nikkor AF-S VR 70-200mm f/2.8G IF-ED. The ultimate pro lenses. $1,500 of pure joy. Of course who really needs such an incredible lense. For half the price, you can get a 80-200mm lense without the vibration reduction for instance.

Dummy files for neutering Spyware-based programs. Even if you use Lavasoft's Adaware to remove spyware, some programs require them, here are some files that you put in that look like spyware, but aren't.

ViennaTeng.com: Scrapbook. A great example of an independent artist doing promotion via blogs and a web site. Interesting to see how folks develop an audience.

Much is by traditional means, get a label like Virt Records, do interviews on NPR, go do lots of shows, but part of it is letting folks see who you are via blogs. Interesting, Jonathan :-)

OK, as usual, the sources of information for shopping have shifted some. Here's the 2Q 2004 guide to getting the best values on the web. h4. For Electronics and Computer Gear This is the easiest category to shop for. There are so many different sources of information. Here's the path I use: # Get a great review. First you need to find reviews to figure out what the best is. These vary, but I usually do a google search for the product name. The highly ranked sites are usually review sites particularly for computer equipment. Top sites I use regularly include "Tom's Hardware":http://tomshardware.com for computer gear and "Photo.net":http://photo.net for photography. # "Pricegrabber.com':http://pricegrabber.com. Particularly for computer and electronic goods, they are good about this. There are some goods that aren't stocked, so beware. Also, I never buy anything from a vendor with less than 4 1/2 stars and I read all the recent reviews as well. # "Newegg.com":http://newegg.com, "Googlegear":http://googlegear.com and "AccuPC":http://accupc.com. If I can't find it on Pricegrabber, I check out these online merchants as they've been reliable in the past for me and they usually have good prices. h4. For Music and DVDs This is more complicated mainly because Pricegrabber doesn't monitor that many merchants. # Pricegrabber. If they have it. This is a good place to check. Gives Amazon's price usually. # Half.com. If the rating is more than 1,000, this is usually a real retailer so is fairly safe. I use half.com and get like new only. # "BN.com":http://bn.com. Barnes & Noble is my last check. They sometimes are better than Amazon and Half.com.

Livelink - Result Page for Internal Error #4238. Talk about obscure error messages. Got this while using my Blackberry and trying to synchronize contacts. The bad error message mumbles about a bad connection to the Exchange Server.

Digging deeper, it looks like there is some corruption in the Outlook contact file and you have to turn logging on and send it to Blackberry.

I've run the clean utility against Exchange and don't see any obvious errors.

Slyck - File Sharing News and Info. I haven't had a chance to look at the many advances in file sharing and peer-to-peer commercially. Interesting to see an entire site dedicated to it. Most interesting is to see how many users are on various networks cribed from Slyck, the top hit for sites that monitor the state of peer-to-peer networks:

Network	Users
FastTrack	3,038,547
eDonkey	1,229,544
iMesh	1,194,643
Overnet	860,160
MP2P	254,830
Gnutella	242,893
DirectConnect	200,752
Filetopia	4,200

I was surprised to see how Kazaa (a.k.a. FastTrack) isn't as dominent as I thought. All that spyware and other junk must be having an effect.

Interesting developments are that Kazaa has shut down the adware-free versions now, so you have to install all types of junk to be able to look at the FastTrack network.

Here are some new programs I found to try:

• There are only a few adware-free clients left. Trustyfiles is one of them.
• BISS. Bluetack is a ip blocking list manager. The old application I used was peer guardian, this has been superceded by the bluetack blocking list manager. This management application takes block lists from many sources, sorts them and makes them suitable for a wide range of blocking applications. There is also a driver-level utility called protowall which is much more efficient than peer guardian. It takes the list from the blocking list manager and then blocks IP addresses as needed.
• eDonkey and Overnet. This is one of the popular clients for the edonkey network. Overnet is the distributed version of edonkey.

a little ludwig goes a long way: Pinging Service Rundown. What a great idea. Neil has a list of good sites to ping and Doug Gunters is working on an automated version of this.

a little ludwig goes a long way: ATT phone obsoleting. For those of you who have been wondering why AT&T GSM coverage is so horrible. Ludwig explains it. Basically, AT&T launched their GSM in the 1900 MHz range, but then built out their older 850 MHz TDMA spectrum, so now they really need phones that are dual band (1900/800MHz) to really work effectively.

Of course that means that you really want the newest AT&T phones only. Sigh. What a mess.

Last review of these I did in early January, so time for the 2Q04 recommendations. As usual, "Digit-Life":http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/digest3d/index.html has the very best comprehensive review. Here's a quick summary. These figures were done with an Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz Not much change here since January, no major new releases. These prices are as of March 9 at "Pricegrabber":http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_attrib.php/page_id=5/ut=1813184029de13f6 | Card | Call of Duty 1260x1024 | Call of Duty 1024x768 Aniso+aa | Price | | Radeon 9800 XT 256MB o/c 460/780 | 233.1 | 161.9 | $434 | | Radeon 9800 Pro 128 MB 380/680 | 201.0 | 139.3 | $204 | | GeForceFX 5900 Ultra 256MB 450/850 | 184.8 | 131.7 | $229 | | GeForceFX 5900XT 128MB 400/700 | 135.4 | 110.3 | $183 | | GeForceFX 5700 Ultra 128MB 475/900 | 133.5 | 92.9 | $172 | | Radeon 9600 XT 128MB 500/600 | 114.7 | 81.5 | $174 | | GeForceFX 5700 128MB 425/550 | 106.4 | 79.0 | $135 | | Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB 400/600 | 102 | 64.7 | $125 | | Radeon 9600 128MB 325/400 | 76.1 | 47.8 | $103 | | Radeon 9800 SE 128MB 325/540 | 73.6 | 61.8 | $137 | | Radeon 9600 SE 128MB 325/400 | 42.3 | 28.1 | $73 | Based on this, you can see the best buys performance wise are: * "ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB":http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=704418/blsrt=1/ut=1813184029de13f6 at $204. This is last years stock, so a great buy. * "Chaintech GEForceFX 5700":http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=2045284/blsrt=1/ut=1813184029de13f6 at $135 * "Power Color 9600 Pro":http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=987780/ut=18131004d2bbfa02 at $124. These are last years stock, so a great buy. * "Saphire Radeon 9600":http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=1382828/ut=18131004d2bbfa02 at $103 as last years stock.

Well, Jenn asked me about cell phones. She needs one or maybe two. Given the pricing right now and wireless local number portability, here's what I told her (this applies mainly to Seattle) and is tuned for "just married" set for once vs. geeks galore:

• Wireless Local Number Portability. Given that it costs $30 here in Seattle for a wireline phone. If you're young and moving around alot, it sure makes sense to watch your minutes and go with a family plan rather than having a cell phone and a landline phone. The main thing you give up is the ability to dial-up for PC access.
• Comcast. Broadband. Again, given that that $30 looks large, the $45 for a cable modem sure looks good. On that line, you get of course data and if you really need lots more minutes, then you can get Net2Phone where you pay $0.02/minute. It will be a long time before you use up all those minutes :-)
• T-mobile Family Time Plans. I've done bunches of pricings and T-mobile comes out consistently in Seattle with decent coverage and very aggressive pricing. In particular, their Family Time plans are great. You get unlimited T-mobile-to-T-mobile minutes, so newlyweds can talk to their batteries content. Then for $70/month, you get two lines and also unlimited nights and weekends. Only major bummer is that you do have to pay $0.05/text message or get 300 text messages for $3/phone.
• Verizon. They are more expensive, but coverage in Seattle is better. Also these aren't world phones, so you can't use in Europe, Asia, etc. The $80 for 600 minutes, so a little more. They have a bunch of promotions going on now.
• LetsTalk.com. You can get phones about $100 cheaper on this site. So I'd advise buying here or at Amazon. And the Samsung SGH-R225, actually gives you back $100. Great for bargain hunters. It isn't color, but it is a world phone.

:: w.bloggar FAQ ::. Som e good tips on Mac blogging applications. The one I've been using crashes like crazy. Called Ecto. I'm not sure why. Mysterious, "Application Unexpected Quit" which is about as useful as the BSOD on Windows.

• Netnewswire:http://ranchero.com/netnewswire/. Is a Mac RSS reader and editing off line as well

Can it be that another quarter has passed. Here again are the recommendations for the best hard drives to buy. It basically is that you should get the WD740GD for system drive, the Hitachi Deskstar 7K250 ATA-100 for your data drive. If you are on a budget, then get the WD2000JB or the WD1200JB if you want an ultra cheap machine. * "Western Digital Raptor WD740GD":http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200401/20040126WD740GD_1.html. This is the fastest biggest drive you can buy for your system disk where you need the incredible performance of a 10,000 RPM drive with 4.5ms seek time. It's the fastest single user drive you can buy. Regardless of whether it is SCSI or 15,000 RPM even. And of course its expensive at "$229":http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=1733497/ut=1813184029de13f6 as of today or $3/GB. Get one if you want the most performance and pair it with a really big drive for your data. * "Hitachi Deskstar 7K250":http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200310/20031007HDS722525VLSA80_1.html. This was the fastest drive of 2003. But, compared with the WD2000JB below, its not clear the price/performance is that great. As of today, it costs "$252":http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=1519733/ut=1813184029de13f6 or about $1/GB. The Serial ATA version is a little less at "$207":http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=1146400/ut=1813184029de13f6 or $0.80/GB and basically no difference in performance at all. * "Western Digital Caviar WD2000JB":http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200210/20021018WD2000xB_2.html. If you want a big drive for less money, then the 200GB ATA-100 drivers are the place to go. As the best drive of 2002, the performance compared with the SATA 250GB drive is actually better for Office and Gaming benchmarks, so you don't give up much compared with the Hitachi. It's a good tradeoff at just "$142":http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=607706/ut=1813184029de13f6 or $0.71/GB. One big change though is that these drives now only have a 1-year warranty, so that's a real cost difference. * "Western Digital Caviar WD1200JB":http://www.storagereview.com/articles/200201/20020124WD1200JB_1.html. The stars of the ball in 2001, these are great budget drives. Great performance and just "$92":http://www.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=541564/blsrt=1/ut=1813184029de13f6 or $0.69/GB. Get for your budget system. | Benchmark | Unit of Measure | WD740GB | Hitachi 7K250 SATA | WD2500JD SATA | WD2000JB PATA | | Average Read Service | ms (lower better) | 7.8 | 12.1 | 14.1 | 14.8 | 13.5 | | Transfer Rate Beginning | MB/s (higher better) | 71.8 | 60.4 | 57.9 | 56.5 | 48.8 | | SR Office DriveMark 2002 | IO/s (higher better) | 606 | 459 | 417 | 431 | 413 | | SR Gaming DriveMark 2002 | IO/s (higher better) | 749 | 588 | 541 | 546 | 505 | | SR File Server DriveMark 2002 | IO/s (higher better) | 213 | 127 | 124 | 130 | 126 | | Idle Noise (in dB/A @ 18mm) | 42.3 | 41.5 | 46.1 | 46.7 | 47.1 |

OK, now that I've run out of consumables, here's a good place to get them. Its actually hard to find an inexpensive place to buy this stuff, but you can try Yesmicro.com as well as thenerds.net. Verbatim has done consistently well in benchmarks for media, but it is a mess trying to decipher the various part numbers and the product descriptions don't help. You really have to go to the Verbatim.com site and look up part numbers. Here is what I ordered: | Manufacturer | Description | Verbatim Part No. | Yesmicro.com Price | | Verbatim | 100PK CDR 80MIN 700MB 52X BRANDED SPINDLE | 94594 | $33.99 | | Memorex | 50PK CD / DVD SLEEVES WHT | 32021960 | $7.99 | | Verbatim | 50PK CD/DVD COLOR CD SLIM JC 5 COLORS | 94178 | $9.99 | | Verbatim | 50PK DVD+R 4.7GB 4X INKJET PRINTABLE SPINDLE | 94632 | $76.99 | | Verbatim | 50 x DVD=R (G ) 4.7 GB 4x | 94495 | $78.66 |

Well, its the start of the new year and it seems like we are planning travel like crazy. Here are some of the things we sue for planning:

• Seattle. Amazon has a nice list of the best selling travel books. Travel is one area where having the book ranking is certainly really useful. BTW, I completely agree that the Best Places Seattle is the best resource even though it is getting a little old now (it was published in 2002 and there are quite a few new restaurants opening).
• San Francisco. I would not have guessed that the Frommers guide is the best selling. Actually, I like the Best Places version, but it doesn't seem to be rated very highly.
• Zagats New York. Where else can you find out what everyone else thinks about restaurants in the Big Apple.

With all the great new artists out there and the Internet, it sure is easier to find some great new folks to listen to. Lately, I've been gravitating towards alternative artists like:

• NPR : Vienna Teng, Live at NPR. One of the few folks I learned about reading the Seattle Times. A cross between Sarah Maclachlan and Tori Amos. She only has two albums out, Waking Hours and Warming Strangers. Check out the NPR feed for some songs and her personal site for some free downloads.
• Patty Griffin . I first her Patty Griffin at the North Hill Bakery. She was one of those folks I just had to learn more about. Another example of someone who isn't with a major. I just love Living with Ghosts and 1000 Kisses. She's just about to release her latest album A Kiss in Time. There are also some great live recordings running around on PTP networks.
• Shawn Colvin. A great artist. Particularly good in concert.
• Indigo Girls. Another great favorite.
• Everything But The Girl . I actually like their earliest stuff the best. They're defunct now, but Amplified Heart for instance was the best.
• Sarah McLachlan. The artist who started listening to alternative rock for me. Now she's kind of the dean of it all. Stumbling Towards Ecstasy is probably my favorite.

About.com : http://www.macmerc.com/news/archives/1270. Pepsi is doing a big giveaway where if you find the right bottle top, you can get a free iTunes song.

Here's a good post in about.com that explains how to tell if the bottle is the right one:

1. You find a bottle that has a yellow top. Diet Pepsi, Pepsi and Sierra Mist all have them.
2. Tilt the bottle 25 degrees and look through the bottle till you can see underneath.
3. If the letters say AGAIN, then pick something else. If there are series of random letters, you have a winner.
4. Buy the bottle. Drink. Get new song P-)

NWS Seattle . It is kind of amazing how the Internet lets you do so many things :-)

Connie pointed out to me that if you wanted to see if it was raining when we go biking, just jump on the National Weather Service Forecast office rain radar and voila. Give it a try!

Well I know most folks use Internet Explorer, but I've spent a little bit of time using some alternative (non-traditional browsers). Here's a quick review, in order of preference:

• Opera. Definitely the geeks choice. Features that I love are: a) it has panes, so you can multiple web pages open at the same time and can have these pane tabs on the left, b) the absolutely best feature is that you can set it to remember where you last were, so that for a multitasker like me, you can have lots of threads of browsing, close Opera off and get back to the exact same place the next day, c) it has lots of built in search boxes, so you can search google, amazon, ebay, directly from the tool bar, d) it has popup killing built right in, e) uses every button of the mouse, for instance clicking the thumbwheel opens up a new pane in the background and f) super fine grained control over cookies. The drags are that it isn't completely compatible with IE, so it will run Javascripts for instance, but doesn't support right clicks. They are going public buy the way and have a good revenue model by using google adsense for their freeware versions. Underneath it uses the Mozilla code for rendering, so it will have all the usual. Finally, I forgot to mention that it has a very nice imap/pop3 mail client that's part of the paned views and the way it handles file downloads is great. Rather than having downloads disappear, there is a pane for them, so you can always double click on what you've downloaded to start them rather than searching the hard disk wondering where the files when. Downloads simulatenously and in the background.
• Safari. This is the built-in browser on the Mac. Has paned views like Opera. Isn't particularly fast, but that could be because I only have an 800 MHz iMac and everything feels a little less snappy. The panes are nice though.
• Firefox. This is the new browser from the folks that brought us the original browser. Anyway, this is a super streamlined application with relatively few features. I'm just getting to know this one.

How to change the World. I've been pretty fatigued on charitable giving. Done the board thing, seen how hard it is to change things and also how hard it is when non-profits become an end unto themselves (that is, where maintaining employment is more important than the cause).

Anyway, SVP sent us this book. Inspiring to hear stories of folks who really care and who really are making a difference. Not tons of overhead, but folks who really believe. There are some other great quotes about entrepreneurism and leadership too that he got from The Achieving Society which explores motivation and what make an entrepreneur an entrepreneur.

McClelland defined three dominant human motivations--need for power, need for affiliation, and need for achievement--and developed techniques to measure them. What most interested him was the need for achievement which he found correlated with entrepreneurship.

McClelland found that individuals with a high need for achievement tneded to be less influenced than others by suggestions as to what they should do, think or believe. They were "oriented forward in time toward longer-ragne gaols, even when that means foregoing immediate pleasures." They were less conforming and cared less about public recognition. What influenced them most in engaging problems facts. They preferred the counsel of experts to friends. They were not gamblers. They tended, in fact, to be conservative in games of chance and daring in games of skill, at which they usually overestimated their chances of success. While others viewed entreprenuers as risk takers, McClelland noted that they did not see themselves this wya. They typically accepted challenges only when they perceived that there was an acceptable chance of success and when the main determinant of success was their skill. And, contrary to common assumption, McClelland asserted that entrepreneurs were motivated primarilty by the sense of achievement rather than a desire for money. Profits were important because they gave the entrepreneur "definite knowledge" of his or her competence. But real satisfaction for the entrepreneur came from amking the world conform in a very specific way to his or her will.

Its been hard to find code optimized for the Athlon 64. Here were some threads I found on the topic as folks struggle to do this:

• mersenneforum.org - Creative ways to achieve Athlon 64 / Opteron optimization
• AMD64 Optimized. The small list of folks doing 64-bit optimizations. Biggest names are probably America's Army (a cool game) and Dr. DiVX encoding. Both of these require 64-bit Windows (in beta now).
• AMD-64. A site sponsored by AMD for developers writing 64-bit applications.
• PlanetAMD64. Another enthusiast site with announcements
• Mandrake, NetBSD and FreeBSD, Suse, Debian ports to AMD64

dvdinfopro.com - Home Page. Great utility for figuring out what DVD you really have and also to figure out what the media code is so you know if the media you have is reliable.

a little ludwig goes a long way: Super DVRs. Wow, Ludwig finds an article about DVRs that will let you preview three streams and record a bunch of others in the background.