ANDREW PENG

That’s a Z06, by the way.

Without a doubt out of all the carriers I have used in the past, Verizon Wireless has had the best coverage out of them all. However, I couldn’t resist the Sprint SERO plans and their tempting low prices, so last summer I broke down and jumped on the deal. $30/month for 500 minutes for unlimited data unlimited texting. Sounds too good to be true right? Read the rest of this entry »

Here’s a lazy liner that I cooked up to rip music from MixRiot.com – simply replace the URL variable with the page that contains the music and it will dump the music using wget with an MP3 extension!

url=”http://www.mixriot.com/category/essential-mix/browse-show/broadcasts/bbc/radio-1/2009″; IFS=$’\n’;title=();id=();for i in `GET $url | grep FlashVars | egrep -o “mixriot.com%2Faudio%2Fplay%2F[0-9]{4}” | cut -b 30-`; do id=( “${id[@]}” “$i” ); done; for j in `GET $url | egrep -o “<h2><a href=[[:print:]]{1,} title=[[:print:] ]{1,}>[[:print:] ]{1,}</a></h2>” | cut -d\” -f4`; do title=( “${title[@]}” “$j”); done; for (( k = 0 ; k < “${#id[@]}” ; k++ )); do wget -O”${title[$k]}.mp3″ http://www.mixriot.com/audio/play/${id[$k]}; done;

I found myself needing to take some photos with my webcam because it was a simple setup and had excellent image quality when given enough light. However, when using the default webcam application in Windows XP/Vista/7, it will only capture images in 320×240; hugely disappointing when the webcam will do up to 2MP. Enter the DefResCh tool – which I found in this thread on the Logitech developer forums. Of note, you will need to install the Logitech webcam drivers to make this tool work; the default drivers that Windows installs does not work with this tool.

Modeled after falling maple seeds, this tiny autonomous monocopter has one asymmetric wing and rotates along it’s center of mass to produce lift. On-board camera at about 5:40 into the video, Hack A Day suggested using the microcontroller to take a snapshop at the same position of rotation to make one stable video.

NASA’s launch of the Ares I-X, the experimental prototype of the new launch vehicle. Pay special attention to around 0:45 into the video and look at the USS (Upper Stage Simulator) – where you can see the effects of the Prandtl-Glauert Singularty, where the sudden massive drop in pressure in the cone of the sonic wave causes water to condense out of the air into a visible vapor cone! Here’s to returning to the moon!

Signs of a culture moving forward, or just frivolous waste of government money? Finland has announced that by next July, 1mbit broandband internet access, which is roughly 20 times quicker than dial up (assuming a generous 50kbps assumption for dial-up) is now a legal human right. While it’s certainly a step towards the future, Finland still plans to blast us away by promising 100mbit internet connections by 2015. With this announcement, Finland joins the ranks of Estonia, France, and Greece where internet access is considered a human right.

[Source: cnet news]

Right here, thanks to Telegraph.co.uk

8th ring discovered around Saturn. Well crap, why didn’t see see this sooner? It turns out that the ring is only visible in the thermal band, not the visible spectrum that we’ve been staring at it for so long with. When you point Nasa’s Spitzer Space Telescope (which observes in infrared) at it, you get the grand view of the rings, which start at 3.7 million miles out from Saturn and extend an additional 7.4 million miles. Composed of simply space dust, it was observed at a chilly -316F, or about 80 Kelvin.

Thanks to @waybis for pointing this out!

So long “Chronos”, it’s been one hell of a five year (going on it’s sixth) ride. All the abuse you took from me, being more or less on 24×7, overclocked from 3.2GHz to 4Ghz, watercooled, and on it’s 4th motherboard and second CPU.

This computer has carried me through countless nights of Starcraft and Counter-Strike, then Counter-Strike Source. This computer has brought me to level 60 in WoW, then level 70. This computer has made countless videos, websites and edited countless pictures. This computer has taken me through BattleField 1942, Battlefield 2, then through EverQuest II, Eve Online, Team Fortress 2, and Left4Dead.

You have helped me produce endless amounts of term papers, exhausting hours of research, Catia, Rhino3D, MatLab and Maple. I have received job offers from you, found friends with you, and resurrected you from the dead more times than I can remember.

Now you don’t remember your BIOS settings, nor do you stay working for more than a few minutes at a time without the BSOD or eerie crackling and beeping noises. I miss you already