Author: Tommy

I received an old and busted Xbox from a friend for my birthday. It didn't work for him, he bought a new one, and gave me his old one (at my request of a cheap birthday present). I ordered an Xecuter 2.6 Modchip and received it this week.
I just finished installing the modchip, turned on reassembled the Xbox, powered on and no smoke!

After reflashing the BIOS, I can now boot from a CDRW which contains Slayer's Auto-Installer. From here, I can FTP into my Xbox to move files around and upload new files.

After FTPing into the Xbox, I saw the C drive completely empty. When I tried to copy over the EvolutionX Dashboard replacement, I got a write-permission error. I decided this was due to a bad HD. I replaced it with a 200Gb drive I had purchased last Fall (but never used). I popped in Slayers, and it couldn't have been any easier. I can now play mp3s from the network, stream Shoutcast, play DivX movies from the HD, play ROMs from other game platforms, copy games to the HD and play them without the disc. After the soldering part, the whole mod was very easy thanks to Slayer's AutoInstaller.

Grendel sez: Havoc, I'm almost done modding your Xbox. Anyone else? IM me.

WTF is up with eBay shipping prices?!
KD5ING sent me a cool link called lastminute-auction.com, it lists auctions that are $1 or less and end within the hour. A very nifty site indeed.

So I'm looking through some of the available items and see a couple of neat things, I look at bidding on them - and shipping is $15!!! For a 99cent item! It's not heavy, it's just the "handling charge". Well, if that's the case, don't touch it, just put it in a box and be done with it. I don't want you handling the merchendise anyway. The extra charge in the shipping category is how some unscrupulous eBayers are making their money. Sure, they'll sell an item for just pennies, but then make their money back on the shipping. Buyer beware!

I think it should be against eBay policy to allow more than $3-4 for "handling", if your product costs you $5, don't sell it for $.99 and then have the other $4 tacked onto shipping - no, charge the $5 up front. To do otherwise is dishonest I think.
Sure, you can see how much their shipping charges are, but the selling price is what people care about, only after being lured in by cheap price do they see the 'hidden' shipping charges.

I finally listened to the Lamb album "What Sound?", an album that I heard tracks from years ago, but didn't have a taste for the music. I rediscovered it after downloading it from RCA's MP3 site.

I'd say it's trip-hop, chill-out with some experimental sounds thrown in - very ecclectic. It's nice to listen to at night, when you're just wanting to relax, but not quite ready for bed.

Check it out when you get a chance, or purchase it here.

I just got back from passing my Amateur Extra test. This is the top of the licensing structure, I now have full privileges on the ham bands. It's not quite as big of a step from General to Extra as it was from Technician to General, in terms of privileges. There's just a bit more frequencies I can use now, and it feels good to have climbed the ranks. Granted, there's still plenty that I don't know, and plenty that I'm hungry to know more about.

The Extra test was just a written test (no code test involved), but the content is a bit more in depth and alot more technical than the previous tests. I had only really been studying in earnest, this week (Spring Break). I didn't just beat the snot out of the test, it was a nail-biter, much like my previous Morse test. I could probably do better if I took it again at a later date and studied more - but I passed, that's all that matters, and I'm happy for that.

I finally realized that it would take a ton of work to create a fully functional forums package that would even come close to the functionality of IPB or phpBB. So I decided to just use one of the freely availble bulletin-board packages available.
I installed phpBB last night, got a few tweaks on it, and I'll continue to modify it to my liking.

Neodux Forums consist of a wholly seperate database than the neodux web content. You will need a new login name and password for the forums, seperate from the website. (yes, they can be the same name/pass) You'll see there aren't a whole lot of forums at the moment. Some may stay, some may go - what forums are popular completely depends on demand. I'm not going to focus the forums in any one direction. I will appoint moderators for each new forum to pop up. Forums are a community effort, all I ask is that the content stay workplace-friendly, and that you not be an asshat. k thx bye.

http://neodux.com/forums