Older blog entries for braden (starting at number 106)

iRiver S10

After years of sitting on the sidelines, I’ve taken the plunge and gotten a digital audio player.

iPods don’t interest me. While I appreciate their slick interface, I’m not the least bit interested in iTunes (or other online music services). And the fact that they don’t play Ogg is a deal-breaker for me. I use a Linux desktop (GNOME) and Ogg is easy for me to use, high quality, and completely unencumbered.

The requirement for Ogg narrows the field quite a bit. Narrowing it further, I’m interested in a flash-based device. So for some weeks I’ve been considering the Cowon D2 or the iRiver Clix. But ultimately the iRiver S10 won me over. The multimedia capabilities of the D2 and Clix don’t interest me; and the S10’s form factor is quite attractive.

I received my S10 yesterday. The functionality and quality are top-notch. And Nautilus makes it easy for me to convert selections from my library of FLACs to Oggs on the S10.

I am very happy with it. But here are the few things I don’t like:

• Unless you’re using a playlist, files play in the order of their FAT entries. I’d have preferred/expected alphanumeric order. The included software includes the facility to reorder the entries (and thus play order) however you like; however…
• The included software only works on Windows. I realize that providing software that works on Linux is probably expecting too much; but I was expecting a Mac version. This software isn’t absolutely vital; but the FAT entry reordering is very useful and the software is the most convenient means I’ve found of creating playlists. (Though so far I haven’t found myself messing with playlists.)
• The included software seems not to work at all unless it’s run by a user with Administrator privileges. Lame. Really lame.
• No case was included; nor does anyone appear to make one. Hopefully that will change. An armband would be especially handy.
• The “D-click” navigation is a pleasure to use; but it means that the player can’t really be operated while stored somewhere that’s at all a tight fit—like, for instance, pockets in jeans. If there is some way to lock the interface, I haven’t discovered it yet.

Syndicated 2007-05-30 21:59:51 (Updated 2007-06-18 06:28:47) from endoframe :: log

Feeding (and silencing) the beast

My primary development box, hinge, has seen a bit of an overhaul lately. Most significantly, I snagged some Opteron 285s that were refurbished units (i.e., system pulls) from HP servers for $325 each. These replaced the 242s that I originally built hinge with. Twice the cores and a full 1 GHz faster—quite an improvement. hinge is housed [...]

Syndicated 2007-05-02 06:36:24 from endoframe :: log

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

Syndicated 2007-04-16 13:22:40 from Stoff

Get it straight

Rounding out the weekend, an Extrusion bug. While at first glance it seems OpenVRML just isn’t normalizing a vector where it should, the larger problem is that the algorithm for identifying linear spines is broken. Sigh.

Syndicated 2007-01-08 08:17:39 from endoframe :: log

This is hard

I spent most of the weekend laying tile in my basement. It amounts to Real Work. One 50 lb bag of thinset mix seems to stretch for about 16 of these 18″ tiles (give or take depending on how much I have to use to get a tile set level with respect to adjacent tiles). I [...]

Syndicated 2007-01-08 07:35:53 from endoframe :: log

OpenVRML fall recap

Since going a season without posting here, I feel like I ought to provide some resolution to some of the things I mentioned here earlier in 2006. Fall was pretty good for OpenVRML. The 0.16 series (which saw its first release back in August) yielded 0.16.3 by the end of the year—which seems to be a [...]

Syndicated 2007-01-05 22:48:19 from endoframe :: log

uri_grammar hosted in Google svn

After discovering svnsync I’ve migrated uri_grammar to Google’s Subversion hosting. I’ll soon do the same for my Autoconf macros for OpenGL.

Syndicated 2007-01-05 03:52:50 from endoframe :: log

Resolve to suck less

So it’s 2007 already. I have finally repaired the style sheets for this journal such that the stuff that’s supposed to be on the right column actually shows up there. Good grief; I’ve probably forgotten more about CSS than many competent professional Web designers know. I wish I were exaggerating. But the fact is that there [...]

Syndicated 2007-01-04 23:28:20 from endoframe :: log

Home networking

Some months ago I cobbled together old parts in a new case for a box I’d intended to serve primarily as a nameserver. Last weekend I finally started to play around with getting BIND set up. And I’m pleased to say that, with some help from Tim Seifert’s page on the subject and some correspondence [...]

Syndicated 2006-08-01 10:05:30 from endoframe :: log

Testing Google code hosting

I have created a project for uri_grammar on Google’s new code hosting service, largely as a means of testing the waters. Though right now the only thing of interest that’s there is another link to the tarball. While Google provides Subversion hosting, it doesn’t look like there’s currently a way to import the contents of [...]

Syndicated 2006-07-30 08:44:00 from endoframe :: log