Flight of the BryCoBat » Cool Stuff

TIL: Run redsn0w in XP SP3 compat.

brycobat — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 21:44:59 +0000

Jailbreaking my old iPhone hangs partway through unless you run in XP SP3 mode. I also ran as admin, just for grins.

(Yep, taking a page from The Hanselman here, this is not so much UI as it’s so I can search my external brain later.)

Well, this is a pleasant surprise…

brycobat — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 20:19:50 +0000

If you’ve been waiting (as I have) to install Linux on a machine, especially a laptop, run, don’t walk, to www.ubuntu.com and give the Hardy Heron (8.04) a try.

For the last 3-4 years I’ve been trying each release, waiting for one that would work “well enough” on my Acer Aspire 5672 WLMi. By “well enough” I mean not crashing on hibernate/restore. 8.04 lives up to Canonical’s claim: It Just Works. This has given me back a processor core that used to be dedicated to running antivirus/antispyware under Vista.

So, to all the people who worked on this release, to all the developers who slave away on this stuff, thank you.

Dvorak + International + AltGr in Windows? Sure!

brycobat — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 22:06:09 +0000

One of my goals is to become fluent in Spanish to the point where I can carry on a conversation. To that end, I need to be able to type various accented characters using a Dvorak layout. Here’s the setup I’m using:

* Dvorak International Alternate layout from http://keyboards.jargon-file.org/, the one that puts everything on AltGr

* A combination of menu.altgr.reg from http://keyboards.jargon-file.org/ (toward the bottom of the page) and swap_caps_lock_control.reg from http://johnhaller.com/jh/useful_stuff/disable_caps_lock/. I’m an emacs junkie, so I need that one as well. Combining the two according to the format described at http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/input/w2kscan-map.mspx worked just fine, the result is menu-altgr-swap-caps-ctrl.reg.

Useful in a Cubicle Farm

brycobat — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 19:41:02 +0000

Found some 22 dB noise reduction rating headphones at Lowe’s today:

AO Safety® WorkTunes® AM/FM Stereo Radio and Hearing Protector

They have an am/fm radio (obvious from the name) but I can’t pick up much down here. No big deal for me because I don’t usually listen to the radio if the Preds aren’t playing. The big win is the 1/8″ stereo in jack and included patch cable, for whatever device you want to plug in. It’s also blatantly obvious to people who want to talk to me that I can’t hear them because of the big yellow thing on my ears.

At least they know why I’m ignoring them now.