zog blog

Sun, 31 Dec 2006

No More Saddam

Appears this CIA asset finally overstayed his welcome:
http://www.bushflash.com/thanks.html

While Iraqi blog Baghdad Burning wrote just before his killing:
That is Iraq right now. The Americans have done a fine job of working to break it apart. This last year has nearly everyone convinced that that was the plan right from the start. There were too many blunders for them to actually have been, simply, blunders. The 'mistakes' were too catastrophic. The people the Bush administration chose to support and promote were openly and publicly terrible- from the conman and embezzler Chalabi, to the terrorist Jaffari, to the militia man Maliki. The decisions, like disbanding the Iraqi army, abolishing the original constitution, and allowing militias to take over Iraqi security were too damaging to be anything but intentional.

Posted at: 14:36 | category: /rants | # | 2 comments

Sat, 30 Dec 2006

2006 Darwin Awards - Priest Tries to walk on water, drowns

In August, a congregation's 35-year old pastor insisted one could literally walk on water, if only one had enough faith.

more information

Posted at: 23:32 | category: /rants/religion | # | 0 comments

Tue, 26 Dec 2006

ZOG confirmed at chill area for Rainbow Serpent Festival 2007

I am completely stoked I was lucky enought to score yet another gig at this most amazing event. I have always had the most amazing time and seen the most amazing music at this event. A highlight of RSF2006 was seeing Zen Paradox and DJ Toupee a the market area, but there was piles of other excellent going on at all times.

More info at the Rainbow Serpent Festival Web Site

Posted at: 14:22 | category: /bleeps | # | 0 comments

Hooked On Kimchi

Been eating more and more Kimchi.. we started on small 300 gram tubs but have now have graduated to buying it by the 2KG jar.

Its a zingy, strong crunchy spicy mix of cabbage, chilli and garlic. It stinks to high heaven but tastes delicious. It has a kind of addictive morish taste. At least it has no sugar, no fat, and is evidently quite healthy.

Mon, 25 Dec 2006

Happy Hijacked Festival!

Yuletide, quoted from Wikipedia:
Many of the symbols associated with the modern holiday of Christmas such as the burning of the Yule log, the eating of ham, the hanging of boughs, holly, mistletoe, etc. are apparently derived from traditional northern European Yule celebrations. When the first missionaries began converting the Germanic peoples to Christianity, they found it convenient to provide a Christian reinterpretation for popular feasts such as Yule and allow the celebrations themselves to go on largely unchanged, versus trying to confront and suppress them. The Scandinavian tradition of slaughtering a pig at Christmas (see Christmas ham), and not in the autumn, is probably the most salient evidence for this. The tradition derives from the sacrifice to the god Freyr at the Yule celebrations. Halloween and Easter are likewise assimilated from northern European pagan festivals.

Posted at: 02:05 | category: /rants/religion | # | 0 comments

Sun, 24 Dec 2006

Hassles with DVI output on an nvidia fx5500 card at 1680x1050

Well I got myself the Proview 22 inch lcd monitor from MSY (I love their JUST THE FACTS basic web design style as well).

Nice basic cheap and cheerful flatscreen monitor that looks nice on the desktop. It has a litle bit of "backlight bleeding" from the top and bottom, but only visible when the screen is nearly all black, none of it is visible during my normal usage patterns of it so I don't care. The model number is FP2226w.

Main problems aoccured trying to get the FX5500 to drive the monitor via DVI.. the nvidia drivers refused to go higher than 1440x900 when I can easily go to the max mode using the VGA mode, but it looked terrible. After some reading up and trial and error, the problem appears to be the line in the Xorg.0.log saying:

135.0 MHz maximum pixel clock

Which appears to be a driver enforced limit. Adding the option "NoMaxPClkCheck" to the driver section like:

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "nVidia Corporation NV34 [GeForce FX 5500]"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    Option         "ModeValidation" "NoMaxPClkCheck"
    Option         "NvAGP" "3"
EndSection

Stopped this arbitrary limit being enforced for enumerating video moded and now I have the monitor running perfectly at best resolution.

One problem with the Leadtek Winfast A340 PRO T card is that it has a really crap heat sink and no fan and was overheating when playing True Combat Elite or Enemy Territory.. another visit to MSY to get a $3 80mm case fan to bolt on to the heat sink and heat problems mostly resolved, I can play at 1024x768 or 1280x800 without any heating problems kicking in.. still hangs at 1440x900 for those games, but then again the game isn't playable on an FX5500 at that resolution anyway. Other OPenGL games play fine at full resolution so it must be the Quake3 derived games that really work the card hard or something.

Posted at: 15:11 | category: /nerdy | # | 6 comments

deepmix.ru - excellent constant techno streams

Thanks to Nik and Jon for putting me on to this excellent streaming radio station from Russia.. neverending, excellent minimal techno - just what the doctor ordered after feeling worn down stressed and headachy recently. Never quite sure what they are playing but it's almost always good.

Link : www.deepmix.ru

For us command line using linux heads who just want to get straight into the music try this:

totem http://85.21.79.5:8040/listen.pls