Treg's blog

Yesterday afternoon a friend and I build a sort of portable ignition for a “bigger project” which I can’t mention for the moment.

First we had to find a suitable coil, so we drove to 6 garages. At least we found a (smaller) coil from a mower in a garden shop. Based on an ignition scheme from a car combined with an NE555 timer chip and a 9V battery we made the first design. We succeeded in making some little blue sparks. Not suitable for a good ignition. After a while (and blowing up an NE555) we found that the transistor which we used was to light. After some optimalisation we came to a nice result -> sparks with a length of 3mm.

Isn’t it time to build a bigger Tesla Coil? 🙂

Animator VS Animation is a “movie” made with Macromedia Flash where an object comes alive and starts to annoy the computer user. The idea of this movie is very original. You’ll need to watch it twice (or more) to see all the things that happen on stage.

Animator VS Animation II (part I included)

Post spotted on Blogging Marnik.

N3rd.tv ‘s a fantastic initiative from Jochem Kossen and Sander van de Graaf. On a weekly base, they bring you all the latest OpenSource related news in a sort of (dutch) TV news. N3rd.tv got it’s name because the show deals with “nerd like” topics or at least a bit geeky. Are you tyred of reading and reading and reading all the newssites and weblogs with tech info, than this is the show you must watch. (and it’s funny too)

Lately, I heard some very good comments on the latest new Fedora (Core 6) project, so I decided to test this Linux distribution.

The installation started nice, as I expected from this distro. After the first boot configuration I got a 800×600 desktop on a widescreen. After adapting the xorg.conf configuration, the X server was performing well (without DRI). The next thing to test, was the wifi connection. Unfortunately, I had to install and load the ipw3945 drivers manually. After a while this issue was fixed and I could move on to the next… bummer. Yes, the kernel didn’t support cpu frequency scaling. All what i got, was a kernel error. Concolusion: the distro isn’t workable for me at this moment. I expect a lot of bugfixes and support on the issues (that I find on the forum).

Fortunately people decided to develop a new version of the Linux Flash player. On this moment version 7 ‘s the latest stable version. BUT, a few days ago version 9 beta has been released. Finally Linux users will be able to see all those Flash based sites and movies (which are nearly all made for flash 8 ).
You can find the player in the Sevaes Repo for Ubuntu Edgy Linux. The package ‘s also hard masked in Gentoo Portage (here).

These days I’m testing the new upcoming Ubuntu Linux release called Edgy Eft. I find some weird shutdown SATA bug. When I’m shutting down the computer, I can hear that the SATA disk doesn’t spin down like it should be. After posting this on the forum and reporting the bug on launchpad (bug #63937), it seems to be an upstream kernel 2.6.17 bug. Let’s hope this is solved soon, cause the sound that the harddisk makes when it shuts down isn’t that nice.

I year ago, I decided to upgrade my wireless ADSL router (Dlink DSL-G604T) with some new firmware. Unfortunately the firmware was and is still up-to-date (firmware from 2004). I wanted some fixes and extra features so I searched on the Internet for new firmware. I found some newer UK firmware. After the upgrade, the router seemed to be dead. Nothing worked like it should be. With a telnet session, I succeeded to fix things and I could bring up the http server. Restoring some EU version firmware did the trick.

Recently, the source code of the software on the router has been released. Some people in Australia have been developing and bugfixing this software. At the moment I’m running the software successfully on my router. A great new feature of this soft ‘s the support for ADSL2+ connections. I hope this version runs as stable as the one before.

This evening, you can view a report (biography) about Ron Gonggrijp, one of the founders of the famous Dutch Internet provider XS4ALL. This reportage will be broadcasted on the Dutch television “Nederland 1” @ 22h50. For more information, please visit the specific KRO page.

Finally, the Eurosong 2006 weekend ‘s finished! I just can’t understand why so many people are interested in such a boring and low level “best song election” of the european countries. First, you have the elections on television, followed by the endless comments on the radio, followed by the halve final and final. Our government spent 60.000 EUR on it, for a song that didn’t reach the final! Another stupid descision is to do the elections with televoting instead of a professional jury (with the big side effect of voting neigbour countries on each other).

At the end… this election isn’t about music anyway. Bah!

Yesterday, I went to the “World’s leading dance event” Sensation White 2006 (Belgian edition) with some friends. Sensation is a big trance party with 15000 people @ Sportpaleis Antwerp. (the party is known for the fact that everybody has to wear white clothes)

We decided to go to the party by public transport, and so we did. Leaving home @ 18h heading for Antwerp. First we took the bus and train to Antwerp-Central station, no problem so far. But, using the local Antwerp metro lines isn’t as easy as it looks on the website of “The Lijn”, a public transport company. We met some people and joined them on the trip to the Sportpaleis.

At 20h50 we arrived at the place to be, it was raining like hell. Actually, we didn’t care at al, a fantastic night was the only thing where we were thinking of. Next step was the ticket control, passport control and the body check. 15000 party people, so it took a while. During the time we explored the area.

The intro started @ about 21h45. Followed by Maxim Lany, Tom De Neef, Darren Emerson, The Megamix, M.I.K.E., Marco V, and Dave Lambert. The dj’s were performing nice selected tracks. Marco V mixed the best set for me personally, this because I know his style and I like his tracks (new album). Second best was M.I.K.E. with a good relative hard trance set. I liked them playing not “known” tracks but sometimes I missed the long strong melodies (which Marco performed well). Also the megamix was ok, but I heard the selection of the tracks to much. 😛

@ 7h15 we returned home, totaly satisfied.

Party pictures can you find on the id-t.be website (direct link). I expect a party report soon.

Next year’s Sensation, count me in!