Stefan Lasiewski

Moving this journal to Blogger

Thu, 29 Jul 2004 19:58:50 GMT

Hi everyone,

I have decided that I like Blogger.com better then LiveJournal.com.

My new Blogger can be accessed via stefanco.com.

Blogger has much more flexiblity in terms of templates and multiple journals, and will integrate better with my personal home page.

flarg.org is dead. Long live stefanco.com.

Too many social networks is anti-social: Tribe, Orkut, Friendster, LiveJournal, Blogger

Sun, 18 Jul 2004 18:13:21 GMT

One of the more recent trends in the Internet world is the concept of Social Network's and the Semantic Web. Social Networks are supposed to make it easier for you to interact with friends and communities online and make the web function more on a human scale.

Some of us remember Six Degrees, who tried to do this years ago and went under, and are coming back with a new site. I have had email lists for this sort of thing going for over 10 years now, and participated in newsgroup-type systems years ago, done the personal webpage thing, etc.

The Social Network sites offer great feature over my old, archaic mailinglists-- Friend-of-a-friend networking, personal journals, the ability to form interest groups, etc.

Participating in all of these communities requires too much effort, so I would like to settle on one or two sites for my journaling wants.

Here is a short list of the communities I have participated in recently. There are dozens (hundreds) more:

Friendster - Probably the most well known.
Tribe.net - Like Friendster combined with Craig's List and a heavy influence of Burning Man. Pretty cool, but no journal capability! Arg!!!
Orkut - Invite only, which makes it more scalable and more "elite". Closed to the outside world which means that non-member's can't use your information at all.
Livejournal - One of the first Blogging sites.
Blogspot/Blogger - Like LJ, but more flexible.
Slashdot - I have a ton of friends and foes on this site, but the journaling aspect leaves alot to be desired.

Here is my problem. There are many (too many?) social networking sites. Each site is isolated within it's own separate universe, with little or no interaction between the various sites. The lack of interaction adds an artificial barrier within the whole social networking idea. If one friend uses Friendster another uses Tribe, and another uses Livejournal; there is no interaction between these tools.

Likewise, I will post this journal text to the journal in each of my social networking accounts as an experiment. Unfortunately, the responses to each individual journal entry will remain separate, with no social interaction between the readers.

So my choice is to:

- Use all of the sites (too much work!)
- Pick one and stick with it
- Do it all on my own server, run it over my DSL line. This is also alot of work, and it there is no way for me to participate in the FOAF's out there.

Arg, what to do? What to do?

Free/cheap Wireless Antennas

Sat, 10 Jul 2004 05:38:18 GMT

This site has a bunch of free designs for wireless antennas. You download an image, print it out, glue the antennas together and then mount them.

Simple, cheap, effective.

http://www.freeantennas.com/

Yahoo mail blocking Gmail and Orkut invitations?

Mon, 21 Jun 2004 15:36:23 GMT

I've been checking out Gmail and Orkut over the last few weeks.

When my friend initially invited me to Orkut, I found his invite in the Bulk Mail (Spam) box. I've invited a few of my friends into Orkut, and several of the people at Yahoo reported that they never received the invites. The invites are probably in the Spam box.

I just sent a Gmail invite to myself as a test. It also was in the Spam box. It was sent from "myaccount@gmail.com". If I send a regular old email from Gmail -> Yahoo, the mail gets through.

Hmmm... another failure of the Yahoo spam filters?

I've been using Yahoo Mail for about 7 years, which means my address is on a number of Spam mailinglists. Unfortunately, I have also been having quite a few issues with their Spam filters.

This Yahoo account receives email from a couple dozen mailing lists, and *every* mailinglist that I am on has ended up in the Bulk folder, including mailing lists that I manage, email from CERT and even some email from Yahoo's Paydirect (It was legitimate email-- not a spoof).

For the last 3 weeks a bunch of Spam containing unobfuscated words like "Viagra" and "Teen Sex" made it past the Spam filters.

Someday I'll setup my own mail host here using an Webmail and/or IMAP service, and finally have control over the Spam filters, email over HTTPS, etc. But until I get the spare time for that project (Ha! I have a baby on the way. NO SPARE TIME.)

But until then, I want to use a decent webmail service so I can keep my life simpler. ONE email. ONE addressbook.

My first wireless network

Sat, 05 Jun 2004 16:43:52 GMT

I finally got a wireless network. I was waiting for the equipment to come down in price. TigerDirect had some refurbished 802.11b D-Link components for sale. $20 for the router: A D-Link DI-514, $15 for each of the D-Link DWL-520 network cards. So I bought them (still waiting for the refund from D-Link).

I installed the router, installed the DWL-520's (Which came with the wrong Driver CD!), configured everything and off I go!

For the most part the network works great, but sometimes Windows 2000 will crash into a Blue Screen of Death with this message:

DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL

*** STOP: 0X000000D1 (0X0191A400,0X00000002,0X00000001,0XF828B908)

*** NETR33X.SYS - Address F828B908 base at F827B000, Datestamp 3ecdaf93

Annoying as heck. Now, note that NETR33X is the driver for many D-Link cards, including the D-Link 520.

These crashes only happen my network has alot of traffic. I've been trying to use Bittorrent to download the latest version of Red Hat Fedora Linux, and the crash usually happens when my download speed goes over 150 Kb/s.

Well, while troubleshooting this and downloading Fedora at 150 Kb/s, I received a phone call. We have one of the cheap common Uniden cordless phones. As many of you know, many cordless phones transmit at 2400 Mhz. The 802.11b and 802.11g wireless networks *also* transmit at 2400 Mhz.

So I pick up the phone, listen to the caller, and there is alot of noise. I know that the Uniden and my wireless network transmit on the same frequency range, so I try to change wireless channels on the Uniden phone. I hit the "Channel" button, and at the exact same time, boom -- Blue Screen of Death.

It looks like the D-Link cards have trouble dealing with wireless signals from other devices.

After changing channels on the Uniden phone, there have been no crashes at all. My Bittorrent has even reached 170 Kb/s ! Yes.

-------------------------------------------------------------
Update: 6/29/04
Here is D-Link's response. They thing it's a usual IRQ conflict---
-------------------------------------------------------------

Products: DWL-520
Operating System: Windows 2000

Its an IRQ conflict in the Operating system. You have to change settings for
the IRQ in the BIOS of the computer. If you contact your computer company they'll
give you information on how to do that.

The DWL-520 requires a PCI 2.2 compliant motherboard in order to function. If
your PCI slot is 2.1 compliant, then the card wonbe detected by Windows and
unfortunately will not work. Contact your computer manufacture for information
on your motherboard.

Should you require further assistance with your D-Link products, please reply
to this message, or call toll free at 877-453-5465. Thank you for networking
with D-Link.

Sincerely,
Lorena Benitez
D-Link Technical Support Team

Nigritude Ultramarine

Sun, 09 May 2004 22:13:25 GMT

nigritude ultramarine.

Litigious bastards

Thu, 29 Jan 2004 05:09:06 GMT

litigious bastards.

Why? A Google Bomb!

Warp Records goes online! Holy Bleeping Bleep!

Thu, 15 Jan 2004 07:07:10 GMT

Warp Records, one of the more influential electronic "Don't call it IDM" labels, is releasing their entire catalog online in high-quality VBR mp3s,, without Digitial RESTRICTIONS Management.

Autechre, Aphex Twin, Plaid, Boards of Canada. Your ears will bleed.

Check it out, Bleep.com.

Little more expensive then I had hoped ($1.35 per track, vs $0.99 for iTunes), but no Copy Protection, and music from more quality artists. Looks like whole albums are a better deal, at somewhere like $10.

-= Stefan

Punk Rock Orchestra!

Sun, 11 Jan 2004 20:30:57 GMT

One of the more original bands that I've heard lately. Punk Rock covers by Punk Rock Orchestra.

My favorite is this cover of Suicidal Tendancies' Institutionalized.

I listened to that song alot high school, when I wasn't blasting Watermelon Man out of my trumpet in High School Band. Sorta like these kids at 924 Gilman.

Beautiful american

Thu, 08 Jan 2004 03:26:22 GMT

http://captionthis.com/view.php?id=535