This guy is a bit of a bad-ass… watch how he makes vacuum tubes by hand from start to finish… impressive:

Make sure you have a drain in the datacenter… 🙂

Posted by richardyoo on Natuba

Think of this the next time your power goes out…

As you might remember, our first generator was built using a horizontal shaft engine. After many attempts, we have successfully completed the construction of a generator using a common lawn mower engine, the type that is sitting in your back yard right now.

Converting a lawn mower into a generator.

Posted by richardyoo on Natuba

This is a great tutorial:

I have seen several HowTos, tutorials, and forum posts about how to setup multiple (B)SSIDs using DD-WRT and although most of these write-ups indeed helped creating multiple SSIDs, none gave me an actual working virtual SSID. Most of the time I wasn’t even able to connect to the new virtual interface and in those rare occassions that it did connect, I never got an IP address. The reason none of these write-ups work, is because they are all based on the same base tutorial which, for one reason or the other, no longer works reliably.

I took all these write-ups and figured out what is needed to get it to work again. The following HowTo is what worked for me on my Linksys WRT54GL v1.1 and Linksys WRT310N. It created two BSSIDs, each with their own MAC address so any device is able to connect to either BSSID without getting utterly confused. The main BSSID has access to the internet and to your local network. The second (virtual) BSSID only has access to the internet.

http://www.pennock.nl/dd-wrt/Multiple_BSSIDs.html

Posted by richardyoo on Natuba

I don’t know about everyone else, but Firefox 3.5 has been much slower for me than 3.0…

I like Firefox but it’s not as fast as it used to be. This is a comprehensive, safe guide to optimizing Firefox 3.5 for speedy browsing. For each suggestion, your mileage may vary.

The Ultimate Guide To Speeding Up Firefox 3.5

Posted by richardyoo on Natuba

Maybe there’s some benefit to being a night owl…

Early birds may get the best worms—or at least the best garage sale deals—but they also tire out more quickly than night owls do.

Early Risers Crash Faster Than People Who Stay Up Late

It took SEVEN YEARS!

Hope people don’t have to replace all that pre-802.11n gear they bought. 🙁

The IEEE Standards Board has formally ratified the 802.11n standard (802.11n-2009, to be extraordinarily specific). It took seven years and involved 400 members from 20 countries. Somebody deserves a vacation.

IEEE Ratifies 802.11n

Poke, poke, poke… Poke, poke, poke… 😀

We don’t have Fios in Houston – but I’ll take 100meg Cable service!

Comcast has dropped us a line to note they’ve launched 100 Mbps broadband service in the Twin Cities market.

Comcast Offers 100Mbps

Posted by richardyoo on Natuba

Posted by richardyoo on Natuba

I keep telling everyone that the formula for the right sized HDTV for your room is – the viewing distance divided by two, and that number is the correct diagonal size of the TV…

Perhaps this video from the New York Times will help… 🙂

Posted by richardyoo on Natuba

Posted by richardyoo on Natuba

Posted by richardyoo on Natuba

Posted by richardyoo on Natuba

I’m glad SOMEONE finally got it right… yay for BackBlaze! 😀

At Backblaze, we provide unlimited storage to our customers for only $5 per month, so we had to figure out how to store hundreds of petabytes of customer data in a reliable, scalable way—and keep our costs low. After looking at several overpriced commercial solutions, we decided to build our own custom Backblaze Storage Pods: 67 terabyte 4U servers for $7,867.

Petabytes on a budget: How to build cheap cloud storage

From the San Antonio Express News:

Many of those students stay in San Antonio and contribute to the city’s intellectual and economic base. For example, Dirk Elmendorf, Patrick Condon and Richard Yoo founded Web hosting company Rackspace in 1998. Trinity’s 700 employees also contribute $25 million to the local economy.

Trinity tops goal of raising $200 million

Posted by richardyoo on Natuba