I suppose it’s only prudent that the first post on a site purporting to explain everything should probably explain why we’d choose to do so in the first place. For those unfamiliar with us, we’re a small, loose-knit group of individuals who like experimenting with things (hardware, software, and everything in between) and documenting the results.
The guys who cover a soda can in 200 LEDs and then try to drink it before the tiny battery goes flat? That’s us. The guys who take apart Sega Dreamcasts and then name the …
Hack Something:
Hardware »
My Yamaha HTR-5540 has one of those digital volume controls on it… the kind that if it’s off, you can keep turning it. The last couple years it’s started doing this thing where I’d be turning it down and it’d go +1-1+2-1+1-1+2-1. The net result after volume spasming is an increase in volume – not really what you want at the time.
I decided to take it apart and try and clean the “pot” – it’s not really a potentiometer, but that’s what many people would call it anyway and cleaning …
Uncategorized »
Where the hell do I put this?
Anyone that knows me knows I’m basically a hop skip and a jump from a clinical hoarding dysfunction – okay it’s probably not that bad, I really only tend to hang onto things I feel might be useful some day. It’s worked out pretty good, because that’s how most of this site came to be.
For some reason, I held onto an office chair that had the wheel broken off of it somehow. Don’t ask why, I probably won’t tell. Anyway, while reaching behind her, …
Hardware »
I love my mouse. No, I don’t think you quite understand – I love my mouse. It’s not like it’s anything special either, you can get one off of eBay for about five bucks… but of course it was about $35 when I got it, back when optical mouses were still somewhat new. In fact it’s only quite recently that most new computers came with an optical mouse.
But even so, this mouse has served me well. It’s now called the “Microsoft Optical Mouse Basic“, but back when I got it …
Operating Systems »
Spike on IRC was commenting about how much of a pain in the arse it is to track down drivers for unknown hardware on Windows, and how easy it is under Linux using lspci. I sat and thought about it – lspci can’t possibly pluck hardware strings from nowhere, there has to be some sort of database… and there is, and best of all there’s a web-based front end to it.
So here’s how to do it yourself in a few easy steps… first, right-click My Computer and choose properties. Then, …
Software »
This website doesn’t actually use TimThumb – our hack of the Arthemia theme instead uses Flickr for all it’s image hosting, so it’s just easier to hack the theme to understand how to pull different sizes of Flickr images instead.
However, we have another site that my wife’s internet services company hosts that needed to be optimized for Digg/Slashdot-style surges, and it does use TimThumb – extensively in fact.
The Problem
TimThumb does have a caching engine built in which will, if your permissions are set up correctly, prevent the thumbnail from having …