Monthly Archive for May, 2007

Internet Radio Box #2

Published on May 28, 2007 in Computers, General and Sophos. 0 Comments

Perhaps the cheapest way to build an internet radio computer is, unfortunately, to buy a pre-built PC yourself. This PC would be perfect; it is fanless, uses very little power, and is just powerful enough to get the job done. It also uses a 4GB flash drive instead of a hard drive, which reduces noise even further. So what’s the catch? Apparently, for $99, you need to sign up for their service for two years. Plus, it’s not out yet. There is a preview program out there, but it would not be entirely fair for me to get one and then wipe the hard drive clean and install my own stuff because I wouldn’t be able to blog about it.

For the screen, I’m thinking of trying to find a cheap touchscreen off of Ebay. It only needs to be about 8 inches across to do the job. I’ll then set up an interface that will allow me to see my email, the weather, and select the station that I want to play. iGoogle (formerly known as Google Homepages) has a pretty sleek interface and I may make mine look somewhat similar. However, most of the LCD touchscreens are over $50…
P.S. My friend Abhorsen, from the Silver Knights forums (yes, I’m back to playing SK), is participating in a contest. If you would like to help him, just click this link. No registration or anything else is required. Just a click here.

Internet Radio Box

Published on May 13, 2007 in Computers, General and Sophos. 0 Comments

I really like internet radio. The free stuff, of course. It’s much better than having to fiddle with an FM tuner for half an hour to get a decent sound. Internet radio is quite pleasant after having exhausted my music collection.

But, my computer is rather loud. I’ve got two extremely powerful fans in there, plus another one on my graphics card. If I’m working on something that I don’t quite need my computer for, I find myself unable to concentrate. And I don’t really like to use headphones for extended lengths of time, unless if I’m gaming (which I haven’t been for quite a while now)…

So, I decided to look into building a small computer for a reasonable price that would be either fanless or use a fan under 20 dB. I first looked at Mini-ITX motherboards, but they were awfully expensive and had awfully weak processors (granted, they would be fine for just listening to music, though). But the cases were simply overpriced. The cheapest case on NewEgg was $80 and the cheapest Mini-ITX motherboard + CPU was $100. So, I decided that if I was going to pay for technology, I might as well pay for good stuff.

I moved on, looking at Micro-ATX motherboards. Granted, they were a bit bigger, but the size increase wasn’t too bad. Immediately, I found a very cheap motherboard and processor combo. By the time I was finished, the grand total came to be about $260 including shipping. Here’s what I came up with:

  • Foxconn socket 939 motherboard with an nVIDIA GeForce 6150 chip on the north bridge and an nForce 430 chip on the south bridge (I’ll probably have to cool the north bridge chip somehow; a little heat sink isn’t going to do anything) [N82E16813186115] and an Athlon 64 3400+ 2.2GHz processor [N82E16819103023] – Combo Price: $89.99
  • APEX Micro-ATX slim case with 275W power supply [N82E16811154061] – $42.99
  • Western Digital Caviar 40GB 7200 RPM hard drive [N82E16822140118] – $37.99
  • 2x AllComponents 256MB DDR 400 RAM [N82E16820159309] – $37.98 (2x$18.99)
  • Thermaltake 92mm CPU Cooler (just 18dB) [N82E16835106073] – $26.99

Total (without shipping): $235.94

Okay, that’s much more powerful than I’ll ever need for just listening to a media stream. But, I could easily turn it into a webserver/ftp server/compilation box. It actually wouldn’t do too badly for gaming. A GeForce 6150 could run older games like UT2004 without a problem. Too bad there aren’t any LAN parties around here. :D
If I get rid of the RAM and the hard drive, the price falls down to $159.97. However, I can’t really rip RAM out of any of my computers, and it certainly wouldn’t add up to 512MB. Also, I have a 40GB hard drive lying around, but it’s extremely loud (it’s starting to go), which defeats the purpose of a quiet system.
It’s a rather expensive setup, but maybe I’ll buy something similar to it this summer. However, the combo deal will be over by then and perhaps the $6.00 rebate on the fan will be over as well.

Checksumming as a Method of Memorization

Published on May 2, 2007 in Code, General and Tutorials. 0 Comments

I’ve always been very good at remembering numbers. People who know me know that I memorized the first 500 decimal places of pi just by spending 5-10 minutes a day memorizing the numbers, 50 at a time. I didn’t use any memory tricks like converting numbers into other things.

I’m not so great at remembering names, places, and events, however. So I sometimes use a trick analogous to checksumming. By using the same principle that seems to rule over those elementary school “cryptic” “puzzles” where a=1, b=2, c=3, etc., it’s easy enough to calculate the sum of the letters. For example, the word hello becomes 8 5 12 12 15. The sum of these numbers is 52. So, if I somehow forget the word hello, I only need to know a two digit number, 52, and I can associate that back.

Grocery lists are a great example. Say I have a grocery list containing 5 items: bread, cheese, celery, yogurt, and chicken. The checksums for each word are respectively: 30, 45, 68, 106, 53. If you’re like me, you can remember these numbers far more easily than the items themselves. You might even go further and take the sum of the digits: 3, 9, 7, 8. With a little magic, you might be able to now associate these numbers with their respective foods. Beware, though: this technique only works for some people. I know people who memorize things in all sorts of different ways. Some of my friends memorize by listening to the way words sound, some are amazing with mnemonics. I even know someone who has a touch of synethesia. Everyone has different ways of memorizing things.

Here’s a quick and dirty Python program that will allow you to easily checksum words:
http://joeyjwc.x3fusion.com/ext/stringsum.py
Save it as stringsum.py, run chmod +x stringsum.py, and then run ./stringsum.py word, where word is the word (or the sentence if you want; spaces, periods, and other characters are ignored) that you want to find the sum of. With Windows, you’ll need to run python.exe stringsum.py word or whatever instead. If you don’t specify the word, it will ask you in the next step. It’s not the best programming in the world, but it’ll do.

I put up an online PHP version here.  No need to download anything:
http://www.joeyjwc.x3fusion.com/labs/stringsum.php (source)