a few cool things

Toorcon 11 was excellent!

It was a bit odd meeting a lot of the same people again (sans ash, wind, tents, and blistering heat). Lots of locks were picked, ZigBee security was ridiculed, and Rock Band was put through its paces.
Read on for more photos, or click here for the full gallery.

These were taken with a compact digital point-and-shoot. If you want pro-quality photos, check out the photos by Viss. He’s a pro with a very nice DSLR.

I recently got a new unibody Macbook Pro and moved my entire OS (from my old SR MBP) using Carbon Copy Cloner. For my Boot Camp partition, I used Winclone, but after restoring I ended up with a broken Windows install that threw STOP 0x0000007B every time I tried to start it. Fusion refused to start it either, giving me an “The Boot Camp partition is not prepared to run as a virtual machine” error.

VMWare refuses to boot it because the Boot Camp partition was created using Boot Camp Assistant, which defaults to FAT32, but my restored Windows used NTFS. There are instructions for changing the partition type to “07″ using fdisk in OS X, but my partition type was already set to that. Even though fdisk claimed to write a new MBR, VMWare still complained.
Windows shows a BSOD because it doesn’t have drivers for the new drive controller, which I can’t install unless I boot into Windows!

I can’t boot natively, and I can’t boot it in VMWare to fix the problems. Time for a fresh install? NO! There is a solution.
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For my fellow Toorcampers, here are the badge soldering instructions in case you lost or never got them:

1. Solder 10pf capacitor (the one with the pink line) into the holes labeled 1.
2. Solder the 22nf capacitor into the holes labeled 2.
3. Solder the LEDs into the holes labeled 3.
4. Solder the jumper into the holes labeled 4.

Notes: When the jumper is to the left, the left LED will light up when 13.56mHz is detected. When the jumper is to the right, the right LED will light up when 125kHz is detected.

Check out Mike Ossmann’s excellent hack for the badge, turning it into an RFID decoder using a standard sound card and analysis software.

After struggling with the rear variator and not having the special Honda tools to take it apart, I devised a method that uses only commonly-available tools and won’t damage the pulley faces…

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Toorcamp 2009 was a success. Talks were had, badges were soldered, and silos were explored. I also managed to snag a partially-burned newspaper clipping (dated 1966!) from the launcher #3 equipment terminal. Many thanks to all my new friends, especially the Portland dorkbotters.

View the entire gallery here. Also, there is a separate gallery for stitched panoramas.
A few samples:

RTMP (Real Time Messaging Protocol) is a protocol developed by Adbobe Systems for streaming video. Despite Adobe’s promise to release the protocol, they have bullied Sourceforge into removing the rtmpdump project, which implements the standard RTMP protocol, including the RTMPE variation.

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A friend of mine recently gave me his malfunctioning Samsung SyncMaster 204B monitor. He reported problems with display flicker and intermittent failure of the backlight. Suspecting a bad inverter, I plugged it in on my workbench only to be greeted by a blinking power light. Thanks to some Google searches and a hint from this page about the slightly different 204T model, I started to suspect bad capacitors.

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RIAA Radar is a website designed to allow people to know whether the music they are considering buying (or are about to buy) is tainted by the RIAA.

Simply type in the name of an artist, album, or record label and instantly see whether the music is “kosher”, so to speak.

There is also a Greasemonkey script for Amazon that ties into RIAA Radar. Highly recommended!

Despite the cost, the quality is definitely lacking! I will be recycling the actual cable (which is not bad at all, but not worth the price by any stretch of the imagination) by using better connectors.

Don’t buy into Monster Cable’s hype, kids!
I suggest purchasing good quality cable from Blue Jeans Cable, Monoprice, etc.

(sorry for the artsy photo, i couldn’t resist)