Red Tiger

When I'm a bit sad, I play some BANGIN' TOONZ far too loud, then I don't feel so down any more :3

It's a shame my laptop only puts out about 200mW/ch for headphones. I make it clip so hard :(

Chopped around and updated! All good fun, eh?

***

In unrelated news, my main laptop no longer has an H key, but since it's a triple-layer membrane keyboard, it doesn't matter so much. I'm rather glad this "Genuine Dell" keyboard wasn't genuine! It's much nicer to type on than the original one, too...

One laptop, a repair job abandoned by the owner.
I'm sick of the sight of it: £65

1.5GHz P4m, 512MB RAM, 12GB HDD w/XP Pro VLK installed (laptop does have a legit XP Home OEM key, but I don't have a Home install disc). Onboard SiS graphics, I believe.

The cost may seem steep for a low-spec machine, but this is to cover my time and the parts used in repairing it - the motherboard caught fire after the original owner left the dc lead connected, knowing the socket was faulty.
This machine now has a very unique dc input connector.

Reply here or by IM/email if you're interested. Comes with a laptop bag and a spare battery, but I think both batteries are a bit knackered.

EVP.

If (with no input signal) I turn the volume and treble controls on my Rogers Ravensbourne Stereo amplifier to maximum, then get up close and personal with the right speaker, I can clearly hear the words "It's a prison!" being repeatedly uttered by a worried female voice.

I really need to service this amp.

( SPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOI )

"People who are into cub art and vore calling other people freaks of nature for admitting they had fursuit sex. Really now?".

You know, if it wasn't for the community on FurAffinity, including all the good artists who call it home... I'd be DDoS'ing it to hell and back 24/7/365, just because of the fuckwits that are in charge.

Dragoneer in particular just doesn't deserve to be in charge of a site like FA, he and many of the other admins are just power-tripping idiots.

I'll have a hearty LOL if I get banned for saying this.

... It's still not ready for "normal" people's day to day use.

Too many hardware support bugs, system-specific workarounds, confusing application dependencies and complicated configuration files.

It took me three re-installs to get 3D graphics working on this laptop, and after ~6 months I've only just found a solution/workaround for my "suspend" problem.
My gran's laptop can't suspend either, also suffering memory corruption, and can't use video overlays without the desktop background becoming corrupted for the duration the overlaid video is playing.
The main "downstairs" PC boots into XP in <30 seconds, suspends and resumes instantly, etc.. Yet Ubuntu takes >2 minutes to boot, cannot suspend and cannot use 3D graphics without risk of the system freezing. That's on its fourth or fifth reinstall now, owing to completely losing the ability to display graphics after updating. That is, I install, it works perfectly, I update, it no longer boots. I've found some workarounds, but the point is I shouldn't have to.

This is all old hardware with excellent drivers for Windows.

If all you hardcore Linux fans out there want to convert Windows users, stop making excuses and try making an OS that actually works flawlessly for everyone first.

I do hope the government isn't planning on banning these, considering their rated life is considerably longer than the useful life of most CFLs... http://www.bltdirect.com/product.php?pid=10587&cat=1595&nm=GLS+Extended+Life+16000+Hours+100w+Pearl+BC

Also, want:
http://www.lightbulbs-direct.com/product/2057/squirrel-cage-lamp-60w-bc/ &
http://www.bltdirect.com/product.php?pid=1253&cat=84&nm=GLS+240+volt+1000+watt+GES+Clear

Yagfox, click the cut, you might at least get a laugh out of this...

( Teh latest Furry Meme with grammar corrections and formatting. Stolen from Plastiger )

http://www.lightbulbs-direct.com/product/3318/envirolight-led-golfball-2w-bc-matt-warm-white/

This is the future of lighting, people.

Government response to a problem caused by the government and only affecting the general public:
"We don't see this as a problem, there's no need to take action."

Government response to a problem caused by outside influence and only affecting the general public:
"We're looking at ways to tackle this situation, and will choose whichever one works in our favour."

Government response to a problem from any source and affecting the government in any way:
"The best solution, as we see it, is to create a new department to deal with this situation as quickly as possible, then introduce a new stealth tax to cover the cost of running said department. In the process we'll be introducing new legislation to make everyone's life harder except ours. If you don't like it, tough."


( Our policies on Anti-Terror and Climate Change are certainly the worst... )

MY PPMS ARE BOUNCING OFF THE RED AGAIN :O

As some of you may know, my oscilloscope went bang in a very big way a few months ago.
I took the covers off today and had a look at it.
Oh, dear.

I need to replace every single electrolytic capacitor in there, as well as a large resistor which had been rather badly burned... So it's going to live in the loft for a while until I can afford to order all those weird values required. 6.4V 320uF, anyone?

I did discover that it has no fewer than seven supply rails, ranging from 12.6V (for the valve heaters) to 2kV (for the main HT), with all kinds in-between for grid bias and the transistor sections. Speaking of which, I also found 8 SGS Germanium transistors, 8 Brimar ECF82s and 1 Brimar ECF80, making a total of 10 valves. All look original and perfect. The valves are all in the front-end and timing circuits, by the look of things, with the transistors being used as regulators and amplifiers for the CRT drive. Presumably noise, speed and gain were all mutually exclusive among transistors when this was built.
The rectifiers are all solid-state, and the HT rectifiers look like big brown sticks, about 2 1/2" long & 1/4" wide ... Never seen HV diodes this old before.

By the looks of things, it's already had two film caps, one electrolytic and four resistors replaced. I herd a rumor on the Internets that this thing went up in smoke once before, indeed, long before it came into my posession.

Anyone got the schematic for an Advance Instruments OS 25A?
Is it really a 15MHz scope?
Can anyone offer assistance calibrating it again once I've got it running?

Stolen from sirius_moonshdw
May not be taking this seriously. Or maybe I am.

Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. You can't use the band I used. Try not to repeat a song title. It's a lot harder than you think! Repost as "my life according to (band name)"

Pick Your Artist:
Add N to (X)

Are you male or female?
Sir Ape

Describe Yourself:
A Silhouette of a Man and a Wasp

How do you feel:
Machine Is Bored With Love

Describe where you currently live:
Incinerator No. 1

If you could go anywhere, where would you go:
Orgy of Bubastus

Your favourite form of transportation:
Total All Out Water

Your best friend is:
The Black Regent

What is life to you:
A Very Uncomfortable Status

Your fear:
The March of Pure Mathematical Evil That Ends and Results in War

What is the best advice you have to give:
Lick a Battery (Tongues Across the Terminals)

How would you like to die:
Plug Me In

My Motto:
You Must Create

... There, I bet you feel much better after that!

My iAudio 7 is now a functional 8GB external drive.
The main CPU, DSP CPU and output buffer ICs get rather hot, but the memory is fine. I think that's just because they're running from 3.5V, though, rather then 2.9 ... Datasheet says that's fine... *shrug*

I have portable storage, woo!

Also I'm now working on the AU-505 again, putting a few relays in around the place... It'll look a bit mad, but I guarantee it's going to sound awesome. 25W, 30Hz-20kHz +/-0dB, <0.5%THD, both channels driven, continuous. Intentionally smaller output caps to limit low frequency output, it never gets fed anything below 50Hz with any appreciable power anyway. Helps keep it cool too.

*glee*

Obligatory yearly meme, this time stolen from androgynism
( Don't click if you're just going to complain! )

*listening to the current electrical storm on longwave*

Valve radios are awesome.

okay, I do actually have flu :(

I am coughing, sneezing, and feeling generally quite drained.

Don't inhale pink grapefruit juice, people, it gives you Swine Flu.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4606475.stm

As much as I am sorry for anything harsh said in the heat of the moment, you can't get away with acting like that just because you have a problem which you believe earns you some kind of "get out of jail free card". Government works like that. Life doesn't.

It's painful to see someone so intelligent waste all that grey matter on being such a spiteful brat. You're not always right, and you never will be. NOBODY is.

For now, I've had enough. Apologise here or by email when you're ready.
If you don't understand why you need to apologise, then I have little hope for our future.

***

In other news, I've managed to break another Ubuntu installation... But it may have been doomed from the start, since it has an ATI graphics card on an AGP bus.

***

Oh, and the demo of Reason 4 installs and apparently runs quite well under wine (with a few randomly selected winetricks). Not that I can do much with it, but this was more proving a point than anything else. A point which, once proven, was picked apart in a desperate but really rather futile attempt to gain the upper hand.

Apparently, Open-Source software like Linux is just silly unreliable "fan made" stuff, nothing at all like the good, reliable Closed-Source software like Microsoft Windows. I mean, we all know how reliable and secure Windows is!
Oh, except Firefox, which is excused from being called "fan made" because the person making these silly statements happens to like it.

It's funny when you're being sarcastic.
It's not funny when you're ignoring and talking over someone who knows far more about both environments than you can ever hope to.

Linux OSes are just as bad as DOS/NT OSes, the only difference seems to be that you can install Linux for free legally.

But if some people would stop taking general comments personally, especially when said comments are about an entirely different group of people, it would solve a lot of problems in the world, and a lot of drama in the furry community.

As some of you may know, I have a small fan hanging from the ceiling in my room. In order to slow this fan sufficiently for use at night-time without it forcefully removing the blankets from my bed, I fitted a PWM speed controller to it shortly after purchase.
An annoying feature of this PWM controller is that it emits a loud buzz, which I'm sure some readers here will have been familiar with.
After several years of owning this fan, I have discovered that it will operate from 110V at greatly reduced speeds and without much in the way of heating. "Maximum" actually runs the motor at around the speed I used to with the PWM, but without any noise at all.
I am a happy mew.

There seem to be several major groups of people around on the Internet.

Some people take it far too seriously, assuming all they read about everyone and everything is true or treating comments and IM conversations as serious documents in which spelling, grammar and punctuation must be perfect. It's hard to hold a meaningful conversation on-line with someone like this, but at least it's possible.
I'll call this lot Group #1.

Some people don't take anything on the Internet seriously, dismissing anything they can't immediately understand as unimportant. The kind of person who intentionally goes offline in the middle of conversations to do something else, or responds to anything longer than two sentences with "TL;DR". The kind prone to logging onto messenger services and telling you they don't want to talk when you say hello, then getting upset when you say goodbye and leave!.
This is group #2, and the group to which most furs seem to belong. I tend to refer to these as "typical furries", although I should point out that typical furries also seem to obsess over sex as well.

The remaining few, of which I would like to consider myself one, I will call Group #3. These people don't take everything written on-line as true, not without enough evidence for proof anyway. They treat the Internet as a resource, open to both human errors and system failures. They see what is written and extract useful information from it, using multiple resources to construct accurate opinions of objects and people.
Most importantly, they acknowledge that they are still communicating with real people.

***

I've noticed over the past ten years or so I've had Internet access, that a great many people seem to "come and go". Or just go.
Since 2003 I've had broadband access, and have been a user of AIM, MSN, Yahoo and LiveJournal. More recently, I've joined FurAffinity. I used to use Hotmail, but was forced off by Microsoft's limitations and I used to use ICQ but was forced off due to excessive spamming.
Over these last six years, I've built up long contact lists... And now I find myself deleting many contacts simply because the people behind them have lost interest in that particular service.

It seems that LiveJournal is going in a similar direction to may other websites I used to know and use - the entire user base is migrating to the latest fad website, and will probably move on once again when something new comes out.
Personally I don't use Twitter, can't stand it, nor do I use Facebook, Myspace, or any other "social network" websites - there was nothing wrong with the network I'd built up here until everyone else in it buggered off!

I refuse to just up and leave because everyone else is. I like it here. It's comfortable.
I miss the days when I could chat to everyone I know on-line, and everyone I talked to was NICE and HONEST.

I'll be aggressively cleaning out my contact lists soon, there are only three people I will never remove - Darkpaw, Stormy and Aamplythikheyes. Everyone else who I never talk to, or perhaps even never see online, will go. I won't block anyone, though, and will re-add anyone who wants me to.

Another observation: If I remove someone who then contacts me later on, I'll ask them if they want to be re-added. Most normal people either say yes or aren't bothered, yet every fur with no exceptions has thrown a hissy-fit.

***

I have changed a lot over recent years. I don't like certain aspects of my personality from "back then" and I'd like to think I've become a better, more mature person. Despite this, I become less and less popular, and find I have less and less of a role to play among furs.
Is maturity scary to furs, or is it just the fact I don't "do" yiff*?

* In this instance, I refer to cybersex. It's POINTLESS.

My active crossover just bricked my iAudio 7.

Anyone want to buy me a new one, cus I can't fucking afford to.