ipw2200: teh suck?

So I got my ipw2200 miniPCI card the other day. I installed it and got it working pretty fast, but it appears to suck massively. I get super crappy throughput on it.

First, some of the wacky kernel parameters I was using to make ndiswrapper crash less made it somewhat slower. Turning those off made things a bit better; the connection was ok for casual web browsing, but an attempt to play a movie over NFS on my home network failed spectacularly.

Then Google told me that I should try disabling hardware crypto. Another (very marginal) improvement, and still no dice getting the movies to play over NFS.

More googling led to the suggestion that I try the "latest and greatest" ipw2200 1.0.10; again, slightly better but still no dice with NFS (BTW, the versions I've tried so far are 1.0.0 in 2.6.14.5, 1.0.8 in 2.6.15.2 and 1.0.10 from outside the kernel).

So, uh, does anyone know how to make ipw not suck? I'd really like not to have to use ndiswrapper any more, but right now ipw2200 is next to useless for me...

February 06, 2006 (link)

Google Video

guspaz: You can actually enable better interpolation on Google Video. It's near the bottom-right, the little thingy that lets you choose original size, double size, etc. Predictably, it makes things quite a bit slower.

Tangent

I actually think a Google Video is a pretty appropriate use of flash. Usually I hate flash, but that's not really because of the technology itself but because it's almost always used for stupid banner ads that eat 100% of CPU and play freakin' music.. in a banner ad! But with videos is just makes so much sense; the quicktime and windows media plugins work so terribly and the flash video players work so well that it's hard to argue.

I briefly toyed with the idea of doing a video player in JS. I even mocked one up... and got a whopping 3fps! You could probably do it, but sound would be the major problem. I seem to remember some ghetto sound support involving .au files in ancient browsers back in the day, but even if that stuff still works these days, keep it synchronised would be near impossible.

More Tangent

I just came across this, which almost made me fall off my chair. Not for those who are easily offended, however...

February 07, 2006 (link)

Google Talk

So Google Talk is finally available within Gmail. If it hasn't been activated on your account already, it will be within the next few weeks.

I really love this. I used it at Google and it was super useful. It's the best chat interface (better even than Meebo IMO) I've seen in a long time, very well integrated with email, and most importantly for me, no stinkin' pop-ups when stuff disconnects! The best thing, though, is that your chats can now be indexed if you want. Then when you search in Gmail you'll get chat results as well. This is incredibly useful for me, because I often have people's phone numbers or other important information in chat history that is only searchable on the machine where I actually had the chat. So I have to look on my laptop, then my desktop, and I don't always find it.

For people who are freaked out by having their chats indexed, this is a completely optional feature. But for me, it's totally worth it. It works no matter what client you use for Google Talk (the Google Windows client, Gaim, Gmail, whatever).

And anyone who has no clue what I'm talking about but would like to find out, feel free to hit me up for Gmail invites at pcolijn gmail com.

February 08, 2006 (link)

Emerson

kjrose: David Emerson said he would work to bring the Tories down. He's doing just that, in a rather spectacular way. I must admit, I didn't expect this level of cunning from him.

Of course, I'm being sarcastic, but this can only hurt the Tories, so the sneaky somewhat demented part of me has to wonder if it wasn't at least somewhat intentional :P

February 15, 2006 (link)

As Usual

The University of Waterloo is screwing me as usual; I have an exam on the very last day. At least this is the last time they'll be able to do it (assuming, of course, that I do ok on my exams). That doesn't mean I'm not bitter though; it seems every term I'm the only person in my group of friends who has an exam on the last day.

Discrimination

Since I'm also one of the few people I know around here who's left-handed, I suspect this may be a case of discrimination against left-handed folk. drheld and I also suspect there may be discrimination at a certain popular employer of Waterloo students, as we're the only ones around here who haven't received our offers yet.

February 16, 2006 (link)

Snow Day

Today's a snow day at Waterloo. So if you were planning to go classes, don't. They're cancelled.

mrwise was nice enough to alert me via Google Talk before I left the house. He came home and we went out for breakfast, and I'm now lying in bed with my laptop watching the snow blow outside. I also get to miss my super boring Thursday afternoon English tutorial. Yay! There's something so satisfying about eating a lazy breakfast and then spending the day in bed on a weekday...

February 18, 2006 (link)

Thundering Fists

Yes, I know, that sounds really bad. But it isn't. It's a really funny movie some of my buddies way back in high school made. It's a parody of Chinese Kung Fu movies, where the English dubbing is awful and the fighting is rediculously fake.

February 20, 2006 (link)

Succumbed

So I finally broke down and got a cell phone. It's a treo 650, per drheld's suggestion. I was thinking crackberry for a while, but all the wacky Palm software you can get for the treo finally won me over, and the email apparently works just as well as the crackberry email. Of course, here data costs 3c/KiB, so I won't be using it. (Seriously, 3c/KiB?!? How the hell can phone companies get away with this crap?)

Anyway, if you want the number just email me.. not too sure how brilliant it would be to stick my phone number in such an easily Googlable place.

Montréal

mrwise and I are coming to lovely Montréal this weekend. I'd be down with seeing some Nitiots if anybody's interested...

La vie Quotidienne

mrwise: I'm trying to save my sexual favours for special occasions
me: I liked you better when you were slutty
mrwise: haha, and I quote
me: that's going on planit, btw

February 21, 2006 (link)

Those Bastards!

So the chumps that run the local Horny Tim's here on campus decided that because this week is reading week, they'd shut down the Tim's at some rediculously early hour like 7. 24 hours my ass! What is a caffeine addict to do?

February 22, 2006 (link)

On Polling

pphaneuf: I agree that in general polling is something to avoid. However, you suggest no alternatives. The most common alternative, which is trendy these days, is notifications. Notifications certainly can be cool and file notifications have enabled some neat stuff recently (eg. Spotlight, Google Desktop Search, Beagle) but in network applications they can be crippling; issuing a notification is O(n) in the number of clients. Having them all poll is O(n) too but it probably won't happen at exactly the same time.

Look at RSS. Lots of people say it's stupid because it's polling, and everybody's stupid RSS reader goes out and pings servers every 15 minutes or whatever. But what're you gonna do? Notify each and every of the 15 million people who read the slashdot RSS feed whenever there's a new story? Load on servers can be minimised by optimising the typical case (no update) and clients can be made smarter to estimate how often feeds are actually updated (but of course you can't rely on smart clients).

So yeah, polling can suck, but notifications can be inappropriate too. I would argue that you really have to consider how important the information is. Is the user blocking on it? Are they going to care if the data they see is 10 minutes old? Is it interactive?

February 27, 2006 (link)

Done with Via

I think I'm done with Via. My train back from Montréal last night was over 2 hours late. It arrived after the last busses and trains to Kitchener. They did at least put us in cabs, but we still ended up arriving back home over 2 hours late.

This kind of thing happens with any form of transportation, of course. But I think I've been on a grand total of 3 Via trains that were even remotely on time. So they're batting around 15% It's a shame, because I really want to like the train, but no amount of irrational emotional attachment can overcome this level of suckage.

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