Terran Melconian: Index by Title

A Story about our Financial Meltdown (20080923/Personal)
Here's what might have happened.
A Zephyr-Like AOL Instant Messenger client (20041018/Technical)
This started as a quick kluge one night when I didn't have any AIM clients I was happy with. It's no longer a quick kluge; it's now a big, long, complicated kluge.
A few more pictures from my trip (20100925/Personal)
Final set of pictures from my trip to Atlantic Canada
A few pictures from my trip (20100908/Personal)
Some pictures from my trip to Atlantic Canada
Automatic Coffee Roaster (20091208/Technical)
in which I build an automatic cofee roaster from a $5 popcorn popper and $100 in other parts.
Blackberry 8820 Current Draw (20080505/Technical)
Current consumption measurements on the Blackberry 8820 in various modes
Carbon Fiber Top Hat (20101008/Personal)
I have a carbon fiber top hat!
Celebrate Your Ten Year Anniversary (20130928/Personal)
Why you should celebrate the 10th
Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies (20080115/Personal)
After making cookies the same way for around ten years, I changed the proportions recently, decreasing the butter and adding an egg.
Comments on Learning Programming Languages (20010728/Technical)
Here are some thoughts I've had on which parts of learning a programming language are actually the difficult parts, and which ones are trivial.
Countrywide Loans: A Short Review (20080807/Personal)
Review: They could not possibly be more incompetent.
Custom Functions in R dplyr (20160505/Technical)
Translating custom function invocations from plyr to dplyr
Debian GhostScript package with Samsumg GDI driver (obsolete) (20010101/Technical)
The Samsung ML-4500 family of printers require specialized drivers, and provide a hacked GhostScript which includes them. However, they provide only Red Hat packages. I extracted the source patches which provide the GDI driver from their RPM distribution, applied them to the Debian package, and built it. This is a quick hack without documentation.
Defective ADC on the ATTiny85? (20110625/Technical)
I get enormous differences in the reading depending on the state of output pins. This seems like a fairly major defect.
Does Getting a Ph.D. Pay? (20090610/Personal)
I have generally thought not, but recently stumblued quite by chance upon nearly all the data required to conduct an actual analysis and decided to do so.
Dynamic DNS with BIND (20010201/Technical)
There is a pronounced lack of useful information about dynamic DNS with BIND. This document is an attempt to rectify this situation.
Election 2008 (20081106/Personal)
Thoughts on several election results and responses thereto.
Google Maps Mobile uses their usual search syntax (20080830/Personal)
In which I find coffee using the internet!
Google: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish (20150112/Technical)
Wondering what Google will do? Ask yourself what Microsoft would have done in the 1990s.
Grip Tape You Might Want To Buy (20110704/Technical)
so that your phone can look as awesome as mine!
Happy 23:59:60! (20090101/Personal)
I'm celebrating on UTC this year.
Honda Fit Air Conditioning in Defrost Mode (20120604/Technical)
The Honda Fit forces the air conditioning on when you direct air to the defroster. This page describes how to easily disable this annoying feature in under five minutes
I can connect them! (20080428/Technical)
Finally, I can connect my phone and camera. I've only been waiting three and a half years.
I made a web page for my titanium (20130118/Personal)
It's got PICTURES, even
I'm Having a Coffee Tasting (20090912/Personal)
Email me for details if you're interested
Instructions for Livejournal Users (20080127/Personal)
Instructions for how to view this content from the Livejournal user interface
LED Flashlight Modification (20040124/Technical)
A modification of a 2-AA Sears flashlight to take 7 white LEDs, using three 2/3AA NiMH batteries. The Sears flashlight is better than a Mag-Lite for this because it has a separate switch instead of using the reflector.
LG Headset Distortion Workaround (20141021/Technical)
Tips for getting earpieces to work with recent LG phones
Largan L-Mini 350 Interface (20020304/Technical)
Steve O'Conner's programs didn't work for me (kept generating timeout errors), so I made my own. I'm not saying it's any less klugy, but it does happen to work for me. It's written in Perl, and supports everything but the Thumbnails (because I was having a hard time figuring out the thumbnail format, and the Largan-supplied converter code didn't seem to work). UPDATE: Thumbnails are now working.
Linux Memory Checker Comparison (20010724/Technical)
Linux Utilities for MeTex DSO (20020515/Technical)
I have a handheld oscillscope which, as is all too often the case, came with computer-interface software only for the Microsoft Windows operating system. Thus, I wrote some utilties of my own.
Livejournal Integration Problems (20080216/Personal)
with apologies to those who commented on my previous post using LJ
Livejournal: A Lost Cause (20080320/Personal)
Livejournal isn't going to get better. Also, feed aggregation and openid.
Miscellaneous (20001030/Technical)
Miscellaneous Comments on Programming Complexity (20001009/Technical)
This is a compilation of ideas I've had about different types of complexity found in computer programs and languages, and some conclusions I've drawn from these ideas.
Miscellaneous Reference Sheets (20070000/Technical)
This is a collection of short references I've made to help myself remember assorted subjects. The most comprehensive is the one for Perl/tk, at over 25 pages.
Multiple Scroll-Wheel Mice and XFree86 (20010131/Technical)
XFree86 doesn't support mice with more than one scroll wheel, as an inherent consequence of the way it deals with the Z-Axis information. This is a patch which adds support for certain types of multiple-scroll-wheel mice, and a description of what it does.
Neon downconversion of laser wavelengths? (20090807/Technical)
In which there are shiny things!
One Long Damage Limitation (20071129/Personal)
A discussion of life as a noisy stochastic process
Orange Cake (20030000/Personal)
A recipe for orange cake, along with some of my thoughts about baking.
Panasonic KX-P 1123 Setup (20010221/Technical)
I was given an old Panasonic KX-P 1123 Dot Matrix printer, without any instructions. I've determined by trial and error how to set many of the options on it, and it's explained here.
Partition Alignment on 4k-Sector Drives (20111112/Technical)
Benchmarks show that some operations can be half the speed if the partitions are not aligned correctly.
Phillips Square Drive: Actually Better (20080309/Technical)
in which I express my amazement that something I originally assumed to be pure marketing drivel actually works more or less as advertised
Plan for Revised Web Presence (20080122/Personal)
I guess if I want it done right, I have to do it myself.
Political Question of the Day (20080131/Personal)
Recommended Technical Books (20080808/Technical)
A revised list of recommended technical books. I could not even find my previous list, so I decided it was time to compile a new one.
Reviews of Handheld Wireless Devices (obsolete) (20050808/Technical)
Reviews of two pagers (a motorola T900 and P935) and one cell phone (a Samsung A310).
Rotated Text Patch for Perl/Tk (20010923/Technical)
This patch, for Perl/Tk 800.023, adds the ability to rotate text with the -angle option for X11 and PostScript output. For more information, see this Usenet post.
Serial Logic Analyzer (20050325/Technical)
The ``serial port logic analyzer'' uses some cute tricks to get data off of the four status lines of a serial port, and has utilities to identify the signal as RS232 data if you've connected what would ordinarily be the RxD pin to one of the status pins.
Simple C/Unix Memory Problem Debugging (20040602/Technical)
A simple tutorial on how to recognize some common memory management errors for C and C++ programmers on Unix. After showing these simple cases to a few people at work, I thought I'd write them up and share them with the rest of the world as well. This is for people who took computer science classes which didn't touch on ``applied'' things like debugging.
Talking Helium (20041025/Technical)
Shake me and I say ``Decay!'' Pictures of finished product as well as code and circuit diagram.
Test Equipment Prices (dead) (20040107/Technical)
I used to maintain a list of historical prices of certain types of test equipment on Ebay.
The Hacker, the Academic, and the Corporation (20010728/Technical)
Some common viewpoints which seem to be represented in many discussions are described here, as an attempt to explain why nobody can agree on what advice to give a newbie.
The Igo Juice is almost, but not quite, a general purpose power supply (20110529/Technical)
The Igo Juice, despire initial appearance, is not a very good general purpose power supply
The many meanings of "remove" (20111226/Technical)
Remove means something very different in lvm than it does in dmsetup...
The title of this post is not available at your clearance, Citizen (20080212/Personal)
It is 1984 in the Year of Our Ford. Your job, troubleshooter, is to find trouble and shoot it.
This is Linux. Isn't it awful? Please go home now. (20020128/Technical)
Linux is overhyped, and is being recommended to many people for whom it is utterly unsuitable. This is my attempt to set forth the complete lack of benefits which most people would realize by using Linux.
Translating is hard (20090125/Personal)
Is it better to use a computer or a person?
Two Attempts at Receiving Video (20090102/Technical)
In which I attempt to receive unintentional radiation from a CRT (no success) and intentional analog TV (success)
Two Models for Social Networks (20090505/Personal)
the village and the option
Ularn Spoilers/Reference (20021108/Technical)
Ularn is a great game. More information is available from the Larn Home Page.
Velouria Espresso (20080301/Personal)
Velouria Espresso, 389 Centre St, Jamaica Plain
Virtual Hosting Services Comparison (20071212/Technical)
A listing of virtual hosting services in the $20 range.
What just happened in Greece? (20150717/Personal)
Why did Greece turn overnight from resistance to capitulation?
Wish Faster, Motherfucker (20080203/Personal)
Recipe for coffee cake
Won't You Be My Neighbor? (20080719/Personal)
Won't you be my neighbor? (property near me for sale)
Working Through the Picture Backlog (2007) (20090404/Personal)
Pictures from 2007... I'm only a little over a year behind!
X Cursor Reference (20010928/Technical)
my cozy new web home (20080125/Personal)
Now that I've built the infrastructure, all I have to do is figure out what to use it for!
pmh (dead) (20001011/Technical)
pmh is a rewrite of mh in Perl. It's not usable, and isn't being worked on anymore.