March 20, 2005
Nifty Corners: rounded corners without images
Web DevelopmentHere's a cool technique for creating rounded corners using only CSS and no images. Gotta get this page revamped...
March 19, 2005
How to write a best selling fantasy novel
Fun stuffA while back, I wrote about , making the case that it's based on archetypical storytelling. Taken too far, however, you find find yourself falling into cliche. I'm almost embarrased to read the hilarious How to write a best selling fantasy novel. Almost.
The new Doctor Who
I've been hearingthat the BBC is bringing back Doctor Who since ... oh ... right after they cancelled it, I think. But no, this time they really are, and Warren Ellis has seen it. Apparently it's been released, intentionally or not, on the P2P networks, though I don't intend to grab it from there, seeing as how I finally have this machine working properly. SciFi didn't pick it up, apparently, but hopefully BBC America will. And if they don't, hey, there's always PBS, right? Man, wouldn't THAT be a trip; watching Dr. Who on PBS. They could probably drag quite a few of us into pledge week via memory lane that way ...
Technorati Tags: Dr. Who | Doctor Who | Science Fiction
March 17, 2005
The dangers of only getting part of the story
PoliticsHere's an interesting fact, culled from How the Mafia Works:
In the early 1900s, organized crime had so thoroughly infiltrated Sicilian life that it was virtually impossible to avoid contact with the Mafia. Dictator Benito Mussolini cracked down on the Mafia using harsh, often brutal methods. But when U.S. troops occupied Sicily during World War II, they mistook the many jailed criminals for political prisoners and not only set them free, but also appointed many of them as mayors and police chiefs. Before long, the Mafia had a firm grasp on Italy's Christian Democrat party.
March 16, 2005
How to do a low-level format
TechnologyI am now the proud user of a Windows 2000/Linux dual boot system. Not that it was easy, mind you. At one point my 160 Gig drive was reporting that it had two partitions: 82 Gig and 534 Gig. Obviously that was wrong. So Support told me I'd need to do a "low level format" but of course I had no idea how to do that.
So, they told me I needed to download a debug program. I did, then I used it to create a floppy that I could use to boot the machine. Just using fdisk (which was on the floppy, I guess) didn't work, so I had to run the following script:
A:\>debug <enter> -F 200 L1000 0 <enter> -A CS:100 <enter> xxxx:0100 MOV AX,301 <enter> xxxx:0103 MOV BX,200 <enter> xxxx:0106 MOV CX,1 <enter> xxxx:0109 MOV DX,80 <enter> (80 for hd 0 or 81 for hd 1 ) xxxx:010C INT 13 <enter> xxxx:010E INT 20 <enter> xxxx:0110 <enter> -g <enter> Program terminated normally -q<enter>
NOTE that I have no idea whether this script is particular to the Dell Precision 370 on which I was running it or whether that's the normal way to "overwrite the Master Boot Record with zeros", which is what support tells me that script does.
Definitely a "use at your own risk" kind of thing. Even if it works, the results are a completely blank hard drive. (Well, as far as the OS is concerned.)
