vim colors (“syntax on”) missing

i run into this regularly on ubuntu installs, and fixed it a couple weeks ago. forgot to write a blogpost about it. on ubuntu 8.04 there is a package called “vim-nox” that you must install in order to use “syntax on”. the end!

rockbox sound quality vs winamp+dfx

wow. i’ve been using DFX for.. 7 years or so? i’ve been unable to live without the fidelity (and sometimes the hyperbass) settings while listening to winamp on my pc (which is how i listened to music on a regular basis 99% of the time.)

recently i got a rockbox’d mp3 player, and at first it sounded a bit trashy. with some tweaks/burn-in i got it to sound normal, and now i crank up the bass (+12 dB) and treble (+15 dB). two simple settings… actually sounds a LOT better than Winamp is sounding with DFX right now. even better with my new Sennheiser CX300B in-ear earphones, as opposed to my Steelsound 5HV2 or Sennheiser PC150.

i’m trying to tweak the equalizer and DSP settings to mimic the goodness of simple “bass” and “treble” settings, but it isn’t working as well.

so for now, rockbox > winamp+dfx in terms of my sound satisfaction. this is sad. very sad. i need a fix to this madness..

edit: hahahah no wonder. my winamp equalizer was off the entire time i was tweaking it. time to fix that..

dd-wrt wireless fallback oddity

for some reason dd-wrt auto-fallback’ed the wireless side to 5.5 mbps. for a long time. it does that regularly.. i don’t know why, but we’re all really close to the router.

anyways, wilson was doing a file transfer under the SSH protocol through WLAN, but QoS prioritizes SSH only on the WAN side. it was going at “120 kB/s” (according to nautilus) but apparently the wireless side of the router was choking so hard that internet browsing was pretty slow (but not unusable). wired clients were unaffected and i was still browsing fast HTTP while maxing out download speed on a HTTP transfer and maxing out upload on a torrent (set as bulk traffic).

for now i forced it to 54mbps instead of auto, which sorta fixes the problem (but not really), and doesn’t tell me why it happened in the first place.. but that’s enough for a few whiny individuals.

i would whine too, if i used wireless permanently.

note to self

default/old/ECS nForce4 networking drivers include broken (negative or ~0) pings along with normal ones.

Pinging divo.net [209.247.212.16] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 209.247.212.16: bytes=32 time=20ms TTL=53
Reply from 209.247.212.16: bytes=32 time=-37ms TTL=53
Reply from 209.247.212.16: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=53
Reply from 209.247.212.16: bytes=32 time=-38ms TTL=53
Reply from 209.247.212.16: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=53
Reply from 209.247.212.16: bytes=32 time=-33ms TTL=53
Reply from 209.247.212.16: bytes=32 time=18ms TTL=53
Reply from 209.247.212.16: bytes=32 time=-37ms TTL=53
Reply from 209.247.212.16: bytes=32 time=27ms TTL=53
Reply from 209.247.212.16: bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=53
Reply from 209.247.212.16: bytes=32 time=-35ms TTL=53
Reply from 209.247.212.16: bytes=32 time=17ms TTL=53
Reply from 209.247.212.16: bytes=32 time=-36ms TTL=53
Reply from 209.247.212.16: bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=53
Reply from 209.247.212.16: bytes=32 time=-29ms TTL=53
Reply from 209.247.212.16: bytes=32 time=16ms TTL=53
Reply from 209.247.212.16: bytes=32 time=-37ms TTL=53
Reply from 209.247.212.16: bytes=32 time=19ms TTL=53

i always just used the ECS website’s drivers; I guess since it’s an nForce board, I can actually get updated/real drivers from nVidia.

test before committing!

wilson applied some DNSmasq options to our router to attempt to alias “vogon” to “vogon.csc.calpoly.edu” since typing out the whole thing is annoying. however, he did them incorrectly and our router’s DNS didn’t work anymore. we thought the internet was down but actually it was still up – we could reach everything via IP but not hostname (but we didn’t test enough to know.)

2 disconnects in the past 12 hours and a lesson learned. test before committing changes!

firefox downloads/tabs warning

firefox warns you when you close multiple tabs. it used to warn you when you close the last window (therefore closing firefox) when there is a download in the background.. but it doesn’t do that for me anymore. where did it go?! i’ve screwed my own downloads over like 20 times because of this.

widescreen/LCD scaling

i installed a video card and the nvidia drivers wouldn’t work properly (went from a 7600gt to a 9600 gso) so I reinstalled the drivers. the nvidia control panel’s “use nvidia scaling with fixed-aspect ratio” now actually works! and I can play dota at 1600×1200 on a 1920×1200 screen with perfect clarity, with no resolution or stretch distortion.

as for other games.. feh, who has time for games? (dota is a no-upkeep whenever [can go months without it] game)