| Interesting thing I found with the current Google Doodle... |
[22 May 2012|11:51pm] |
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mood |
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 annoyed |
] |
On a computer running Firefox 3.6.x (don't ask why, it just is.)
Clicking the doodle just redirects to a search, and under it it says "Upgrade to a modern browser and see what this doodle can really do." (pushing Google Chrome, of course.)
So I mess with my User Agent (Setting it to one for Firefox 12). It's still pushing Google Chrome, but otherwise the doodle works JUST FINE, and I can play music on it!
I even tested it with html5.enable set to the default "false" instead of "true" like I usually have it set, to see if that was it - nope, still worked just fine.
Why are they stopping the doodle from running on Firefox 3.6.x if it works just fine? Are they really that desperate to push their browser on people?
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| Well this is interesting... |
[21 May 2012|03:24pm] |
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mood |
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 curious |
] |
Recently managed to download a PDF scan of (what appears to be a photocopy of) the manual for my microwave... found this interesting bit on one of the pages near the front:
I wonder if this still applies? The manual seems pretty insistent about it after all... Or will they be *really* surprised and/or confused if somebody actually does this after so many years?
(For that matter, what exactly *is* a "registered microwave product"?)
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| T-34 Tank Blueprints/Schematics? |
[12 May 2012|10:58pm] |
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mood |
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annoyed |
] |
Maybe I'm using Google wrong, but whenever I look for schematics or blueprints for a T-34 tank, all I can seem to find is line drawings, diagrams of the inside layout, assembly guides for T-34 model kits, and other things that aren't what I'm looking for. Nothing seems to have anything even resembling dimensions, and I'm sure it wouldn't work very well to look up the length of one and try to scale up a line drawing or model kit to get dimensions. (Plus that wouldn't tell me things like plate thicknesses, &c.) Things like tracks are probably easiest done by ordering a track plate off eBay and sand casting copies though. (Of course, doing that just makes it even more important to get the sizes on the rest of the parts as close to accurate as possible...)
Any ideas?
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| Funny HTML Tag Idea... |
[21 Apr 2012|01:39am] |
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mood |
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 amused |
] |
Just had this funny idea.
In HTML, pages have a "header" section that uses <head> and </head> tags.
They also have a "body" section which uses <body> and </body> tags.
Perhaps they should add a "wrists" section that encloses all of the other sections. That way you can end it all with </wrists> :-P
(Yeah, I know, that joke was pretty bad and I should feel bad. Still funny though.)
This message brought to you by: Google Glasses: A New Way to Hurt Yourself
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3TAOYXT840
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| Video conversion? |
[29 Mar 2012|04:18pm] |
Does anyone reading this know much about video conversion?
Let's say I have some video files. Some 720p, some NTSC resolution, mostly mp4 and occasionally flv. Maybe throw in a few DVDs just to complicate things.
Let's also say that I have a portable device with a WVGA display. And it always stretches things to fill the screen. (Some of the stats on the box include "Audio support: MP3, WMA, AAC, WAV, OGG format" and "Video support: MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG 4 (Xvid), Divx, H.263, H.264, RM/RMVB, WMV7/9, MKV, MOV, VOB, FLV". It also has "eBook support: EPUB, PDF, TXT, FB2 format", although it tends to do atrocious things trying to reflow PDFs...)
Anyways, assuming I wanted to put those videos on that device, scaled down to the native resolution where larger, and hard-letterboxed to that screen ratio, what would be the best way to do it? Possibly also converting any audio down to stereo to save space (mono onboard speaker and stereo headphone jack), since it only has 2GB of storage capacity, and some of that is full of books.
Any ideas?
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| More Adventures in Video Cards |
[28 Jan 2012|04:35am] |
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mood |
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 accomplished |
] |
First off, for anyone not so interested in computery stuff, here's a pretty good YouTube video I found through Reddit earlier at least: Portal 2 - This Is Aperture
Computery stuff to follow:
Continuing from http://discopanda.livejournal.com/214467.html
Bought an 80mm fan (this one, if you're curious), and screwed it to the card heatsink by running screws between the heatsink fins. (Of course, the screws that came with it were WAY to wide, and standard case screws were too short, so we went to the hardware store and got some screws that were basically double-length case screws. (Self-threading even!) Then used the 4-pin molex adapter to connect the fan to the connecter that the old video card used (the new one is bus-powered!)
Results:
Idle (before fan): ~38C
Idle (after fan): ~32C
Minecraft (before fan): ~53C-55C
Minecraft (after fan): ~43C
hashing program (before fan): >70C (That's the point I stopped it, since I don't know how hot these cards will handle safely...)
hashing program (after fan): ~52C-53C (definite improvement there.)
The other oddity I've seen is that a hardware comparison says a GT 430 should get 20.24 MHash/s, but mine only seems to do ~8.3-8.7 MHash/sec? Maybe I should try some different hashing programs or something...
Still need to find one of my parts computers that has another 3200+ in it to swap out with this one, if I'm lucky I'll be able to pull a 1GB stick of PC3200/DDR400 DDR1 from it too, increase this one from 2GB (2x1GB) to 3GB (3x1GB) (the max this board will take)...
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| Adventures in Video Cards (and Minecraft!) |
[15 Jan 2012|12:17am] |
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mood |
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accomplished |
] |
Finally bought a new video card. (The old one may have been pretty decent when it was new, but now... yeah. Not so great.)
Old card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814128184 (Don't remember where we actually bought it from. Also the cooling fans on it are shot now.)
New card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814500221 (Actually bought it from TigerDirect for cheaper, but whatever.)
Did like it said to do. Uninstalled the old Forceware drivers (And I mean OLD, seems drivers for the FX series don't go past FW 96.85), then ran Driver Cleaner Pro set to nvidia like nvidia suggested.
Shut down, removed the old card. Put the new one in. So far so good.
Installed the latest "WHQL"(Recommended) drivers (FW 285.62). Restarted again. Things seemed to be working so far. Went to youtube and loaded a 1080p video fullscreened. Worked great. (The old card often had trouble even with non-fullscreened 720p.)
Went to play a little Minecraft. Hit "log in", it logged in, and then closed, leaving a hs_err_pidxxxx.log file on the desktop. Tried again (repeatedly), it did it again (repeatedly). Tried uninstalling/reboot/DriverCleaner/reboot/reinstalling the drivers. No luck. Tried renaming .minecraft to .minecraft_BAK so it would re-install it, no luck. Tried Spoutcraft (haven't been using it because it needs to update to 1.1 still), no luck.
The log files were all showing
# Problematic frame:
# C [nvoglv32.DLL+0x69cb45]
and looking that up, and reading people trying all the things I'd already tried, one site suggested downgrading the drivers. And new drivers were one of the changes, so... I downloaded FW 280.26 (the previous "WHQL"(Recommended) driver), and did the whole uninstall/reboot/DriverCleaner/reboot/reinstall thing again, except with the 280.26 Forceware driver for the last step instead of FW 285.62 - and this time, Minecraft works fine! Better than before even, as far as I can tell!
(I'm tempted to get a third 1GB stick of PC3200/DDR400 and max out the ram this board can handle, see if that helps any too... Might even have one sitting around in a spare computer, I'll have to look...)
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| Which Linux to use? |
[28 Nov 2011|02:57pm] |
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mood |
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curious |
] |
Still trying to figure out which Linux I want to try out next.
Here's the ones I've tried so far:
Two different versions of Knoppix Live CDs - They seem to have changed desktops from one to the next, the old desktop was better if you ask me. Neither version seemed to know how to see SATA drives.
Slackware (with xfce desktop) - This one's not too bad, other than needing to use su for every other thing - like shutting down, reading flash drives (or extra hard drives), and a number of other little things besides. And I can't seem to get sudo to work at all.
Xubuntu (11.10) Live CD - I like that you don't need to use su for everything - flash drives and external drives JUST WORK, and the "software center" thing is almost sort of nifty. I actually had to use it just to make playing MP3s work, otherwise all the media players just sit there ignoring them. Supposedly even then most DVDs won't play, although I didn't test that to see. Still couldn't figure out how to make XMMS work (it kept pushing some command-line-only version with a bunch of sucky frontends). And I couldn't figure out how to move the task bar to the bottom like I did on Slackware/xfce, let alone turn that stupid dock thing tnto a quickstart menu like Slackware/xfce had. (Although I did at least manage to add the little "shade window" thing back to the top of each window...)
Anyone else have any good suggestions, especially ones based on what I've tried so far? I'm thinking maybe I might try one I heard of called CrunchBang, unless someone else has any better suggestions?
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| Video Conversion? |
[12 Sep 2011|11:54pm] |
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mood |
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confused |
] |
Got a new e-reader recently for pretty cheap. It plays videos. The screen is 800x480. Apparently whoever designed this thing has never heard of letterboxing, since it stretches everything to fill the screen in all directions.
I wonder if there's a program I can use to take a DVD (or other video), resize it apropriately, and pad it with hardcoded letterboxing?
I found something called "Handbrake" that can turn DVDs and stuff into mp4 files, but I have no idea how to add the hard letterboxing. Anyone familiar with doing anything like this?
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| Electronics Misc. |
[11 Sep 2011|09:43pm] |
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mood |
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curious |
] |
I wonder what's the cheapest/easiest thing is that I can stick in between http://shop.moderndevice.com/products/rbbb-assembled and http://www.mpja.com/prodinfo.asp?number=18867+MS to make them play nice together. (Something designed to handle more than one motor wouldn't hurt, since otherwise I'll need 4 or 5 of the intermediate device depending on whether I slave 2 motors to 1 intermediate or 2 intermediates to 1 main board output.)
But yeah, the important bits are "cheap" and "easy". And not catching on fire or causing the motors to melt the plastic mounts they'll be bolted to, of course. :-P
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| That can't be right... |
[12 Jul 2011|05:47pm] |
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mood |
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amused |
] |
According to the "Info" button on the TV remote, WTTW 11.3 is currently showing "Best of The Joy of Pain". :-P
(Not sure what's actually showing, the reception isn't coming in well enough today. That's the problem with DTV, either the reception is great, or there is no reception, no in-between...)
Update: Uploaded the photo I took. :-)
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| Mostly hypothetical computer rambling |
[25 May 2011|12:23pm] |
Usually I like Asus motherboards (and I seem to have just a slight leaning towards XFX video cards), but some of the MSI stuff I've been reading about sounds like fun.
I wonder what sort of PSU I'd need for an MSI Big Bang Marshal board with 4x N580GTX Lightning cards in it? (There's 8 PCIe slots, but even ignoring clearance issues with the stock cooling which could probably be dealt with, I think I read somewhere that the drivers only support 4 cards for some reason?)
Even with 4 cards instead of 8, I'm sure I can't afford this setup, but it's always fun to think about this sort of stuff anyways. (And if there was a way to convince it to run 8 cards... Major GPGPU monster there. Though I'd definitely need phase-change cooling then.) :-P
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| Train |
[03 May 2011|07:29pm] |
Saw a train the other day with 10 engines pulling it. 2 CSX, 5 BNSF, and 3 MARC. (In that exact order even.)
We didn't stick around to see just how long the train they were pulling actually was, although I'd assume it was a really long one if it needed 10 engines in front. :-P
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| Linux |
[01 Apr 2011|05:14pm] |
Set up a spare computer the other day, and threw linux on it to try things out.
So far I've managed to:
- Install Slackware without blowing up the computer.
- Figured out that "startx" is how you get into xfce.
- Installed Firefox 4 while breaking a minimum number of things.
- Installed Flash in Firefox without breaking anything.
- Made it use the nameserver *I* want instead of the sucky one Verizon/Frontier provides. (Running netconfig won't do it, btw. Manual file editing.)
- Set a new wallpaper on the desktop. ;-)
- Probably some other things I'm forgetting, also.
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| Mega Flashlight |
[26 Mar 2011|10:54pm] |
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mood |
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amused |
] |
I've been contemplating building a gratuitously overpowered flashlight using a "fat 50" ammo can, an H6024 bulb, a couple switches (separate switches for high and low filaments, so I can turn on both at once), and the biggest sealed battery that will fit in the remaining space.
It'll probably end up being big, heavy, and excessively bright, but at least the ammo can will come with a good carry handle already built into the lid. :-) And it's not really about being practical anyways, it's just a random idea I had that I thought might be cool to try out. I'm sure someone knows what I mean by that.
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| Electronic Stuff |
[28 Jan 2011|02:20am] |
Been messing with a computer for a while, setting it up. I think I'll try out FreeBSD and XFCE on it once I have it ready.
I wonder if three of these is a worthwile upgrade from 3x512MB for the price?
That and I'm tempted to get a AMN4000BKX5BU CPU and see if I can get it to play nice with the K8V SE Deluxe motherboard.
A GeForce 7950 GT would probably be a nice upgrade (yes, they did make them in AGP), but the cheapest one of those on eBay is about $100 and in Hong Kong.
Also thinking of finding a fried rackmount whatever and transplanting the insides of a Dreamcast into it along with a few other minor adjustments.
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| Misc stuff. |
[29 Dec 2010|02:34pm] |
Huh. Seems that vacuum pumps aren't cheap. At least, vacuum pumps that pull down to 10^-4 Torr (0.1 micron Hg) aren't cheap. So far the cheapest one I've found is a used one for $100 that supposedly "works ok".
On the bright side, I did stumble across this site full of all sorts of interesting stuff: http://www.ecu.edu/glassblowing/gb.htm
(Hmm, I wonder what's a good place to find sheet nickel...?)
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| Random Quiz... |
[10 Dec 2010|04:14pm] |
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mood |
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 bored |
] |
You are The Fool
The Fool is the card of infinite possibilities. The bag on the staff indicates that he has all he need to do or be anything he wants, he has only to stop and unpack. He is on his way to a brand new beginning. But the card carries a little bark of warning as well. Stop daydreaming and fantasising and watch your step, lest you fall and end up looking the fool.
What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.
I'm still trying to figure out if it just gave me the wildcard or if it's trying to call me stupid...
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| Bike gearing stuff. |
[21 Aug 2010|05:55am] |
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mood |
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curious |
] |
Thinking of changing the gearing on my bike.
Right now it's set up like this:
- Front sprocket has 43 teeth. (I think? The chain guard kept getting in my way.)
- Rear sprocket has 19 teeth.
- Crank measures about 16cm from the middle of the sprocket to the midde of the pedal.
- 26" tires.
Unfortunately, it's a bit heavy, and there's some pretty big hills around here. Contributing factors include:
- Steel frame. (And rims. And just about everything else.)
- Huge rear basket.
- Solid foam-like "No-Mor Flats" innertubes.
- It's a Wal-Mart Huffy, need I say more?
Not completely sure what I want to change the gearing /to/, though, other than "lower". Clearly changing the rear sprocket would be easier than changing one the pedal mounts through. (And I need to repack the brake with new grease anyways.) So that means I need a rear sprocket with more than 19 teeth. I did see some on eBay with 20, 21, or 22 teeth that were meant for a single-speed, but they were EXPENSIVE. I'm sort of tempted to just pull one from a junk multi-speed bike and hope it doesn't drop the chain. Which would also probably let me pick from more sizes, too.
Anyone have any thoughts on what would be a good size sprocket to try to start with?
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| Train... |
[24 Jul 2010|01:54am] |
Saw this really funny-looking train going past at a local RR crossing in town today.
Looked sort of like a big shiny silver train passenger car with horns, just driving down the tracks all by itself, nothing at all attached behind it, and blasting its train horn at all the crossings just like the regular trains do.
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| Google. |
[21 Jul 2010|10:43pm] |
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mood |
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Accomplished |
] |
In case anyone actually cares (which I doubt), I just blacklisted JavaScript for all of Google in Firefox.
Which fixes that awful new version of Google Image Search (I don't need to mouse over images just to see the image info now!), plus as a bonus it disables that stupid fade thing on their front page.
Seems I still need the "Google - Remove left bar" Greasemonkey script to hide that particular "feature", though.
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| Misc. electronics, mostly... |
[06 Jul 2010|11:47pm] |
Hmm. Been a while since I posted... Not really much to post about, but whatever.
- Seems that with my "Power Joy" and "Super Games" TV games, the Power Joy cart (appears to be a famicom cart) doesn't work in the Super Games, and the 72-in-1 cart from the Super Games (appears to be a stubby half-height famicom cart) doesn't work in the Power Joy. I'm guessing the one that's way out of spec is the Super Games, since I've heard of people using real Famicom (and NES with an adapter) carts in a Power Joy.
- I /think/ I've found plans for an adapter to use the RGB output from a Sega Genesis (15kHz Hsync, probably SCART) on a VGA monitor, except for one catch - WinRAR can handle LHA archives, but WTF do I open .IFF files with?!?
- Considering converting my headphones to have a detachable cable. Not sure if I want to go with a 1/4" connector (sturdier) or a 1/8" connector (more common), though. I suppose if I went with 1/4" I could plug the cords existing 1/4" plug in there and solder a 1/8" connector onto the wires on the other end. Then I'd be able to re-use the cable without needing to use 1/4"->1/8" adapters anymore AND get the sturdier connection. :-) Tempted to get a retractable cable if I go removable-cord, though. (Probably rewiring a retractable 10' network cable though, most rethactable headphone cords seem to be only 2'-4' long.) (EDIT: Oh yeah, they're Realistic Nova 40 headphones. You can actually find pictures somebody posted of the insides here.)
- Comments/suggestions/ideas on any of the above?
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| Random command of the moment... |
[21 Apr 2010|03:22pm] |
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Random command of the moment: expand net.hl_ -r (After copying net.hl_ from D:\i386\ to C:\WINDOWS\system32 and cd-ing to C:\WINDOWS\system32 of course.)
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| On a positive note... |
[16 Mar 2010|04:27pm] |
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mood |
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 pleased |
] |
On a positive note, LiveJournal seems to have actually done an update to the old XColibur site theme! And it even seems to be back in the "standard" list of site schemes!
Which is surprising considering that when they forced the Horizon/Vertigo schemes as default they actually hid it so that you had to use special URLs just to get it as an option even.
(You still need to use http://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/?cat=display&view=schemes if you want to set LJ to use the ancient Dystopia scheme though, it's not to my tastes but I'm sure that there's somebody out there who still prefers it...)
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| New YouTube layout? Blwh. |
[16 Mar 2010|04:07pm] |
| [ |
mood |
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aggravated |
] |
Somehow YouTube changed the layout to a sucky new one that was missing the little blue box next to the video, and I'm not sure if the big video list on the side was meant to be the "more from" or "related videos" list?
Plus it totally broke both the "YousableTubeFix" /and/ "Loopy for Youtube" scripts!
Turns out to fix it back to the regular layout you need to go to a specially designed video url, then kill your YouTube cookies, and even then I'm not sure how long that fix will last for...
What the heck is wrong with these idiots?? Hopefully someone will make a script to revert it if they're ever dumb enough to do a full forced switchover...
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| Finding book series with books missing is annoying... |
[16 Mar 2010|01:22pm] |
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mood |
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 blank |
] |
Sort of annoying when you find /most/ of an interesting series of books someplace.
Like a series of 6 books that I recently found 1/3/4/6 of in the book sale room at the public library. The library didn't have any of the series in its catalog (these didn't appear to be ex-library-books anyways), and Barnes & Noble's online system didn't recognise any of them either.
And of course this appears to be one of those series where you really need to read them in order, it looks like they might as well be one big book split up into 6 smaller books as far as I can tell.
Ended up grabbing books 2 and 5 off eBay earlier though, same publisher and printing as the rest I already have even. Better condition than the ones I have too, the ones I already have are a bit beat up and the spines of the covers are flaking apart a bit.
(The series of books is called the "Spellsinger" series, if anyone's curious.)
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| recent_comments.bml issue? |
[05 Mar 2010|02:26pm] |
| [ |
mood |
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irritated |
] |
Interesting. All the recieved comments and almost all of the posted comments on http://www.livejournal.com/tools/recent_comments.bml seem to be missing their dates all of a sudden for some reason.
I suppose the next question is what they broke this time to have that effect, and how long before they get around to fixing it?
Edit: Actually noticed this a couple days ago. Checked again this morning and they finally fixed it sometime last night.
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| Hmm... |
[18 Feb 2010|07:21pm] |
[IMAGE LINK]
Hmm... One looks a bit longer than the other, but otherwise pretty similar... I wonder...
EDIT: Yep, just got the cord/connector off one, and it clicks right onto the harness where the coil pack usually connects. It definitely seems to be the same basic connector!
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