Years ago I went into cheapskate mode and bought a 500GB white label hard drive. Its model number was WL500GSA1672 or maybe WL500GBS, I'm not really sure. I've read that this was a debranded Western Digital, but theres no easy way to know for sure.

The drive was used as a primary drive in a Linux server, then later used in a different server as part of a RAID1 mirroring setup. It worked flawlessly for years. Finally, it did die, and quite gloriously.

The sliding block puzzle solver has been updated to run with the newest version of GWT and drag and drop libraries. This fixes a couple issues that were cropping up.
Sliding Block Puzzle Solver

Added client side encode options to workaround the 0x20 bit hack.

Client command --client-enc hexhack37 or --client-enc base16 should work around this.

Get it at the TCP over DNS download page.

This is a minor update, fixes a threading issue. Also, some code has been reworked to allow the client to run on older VMs (JRE 1.3) after RetroWeaving the compiled classes.

Get it at the TCP over DNS download page.

Added CNAME request support, this can be more reliable than TXT. Client command line option "--query-type CNAME".
Updated DNS Java library to 2.1.0.
Merged in (untested) inetd support from Marcus Cobden.
A few other small fixes.
Grab it on the download page!

I made another puzzle solver. This time its for hacking terminals in the game Fallout 3. Simply type out the possible words and it will help you solve the puzzle with the fewest possible tries.

Fallout 3 Optimal Hack Tool

Recently I came across a good deal for two Intel 80gb SSDs. However, they are first generation Intel SSDs, with no TRIM (discard) support, but that's OK because the plan was to use them in a cheap motherboard RAID 0. Motherboard raid configurations do not support passing through the TRIM command to the devices. This means that paying a premium for TRIM would be a waste of money anyway.

Having trouble getting audio working on your HDMI monitor? Using a DVI converter cable and an audio jack?

Some monitors will not output sound from the RCA or other audio source if the video is coming in with a HDMI/DVI conversion going on. If you are using a HDMI to DVI converter cable, you may have noticed that DVI can not carry audio.

I was playing, in Linux, with the filesystem on my Coby MPC652 and apparently I accidentally overwrote the firmware, which seems to be on the same flash memory as the memory for the mp3s.

Does anyone in the linux world have one of these things? If so, I'll leave an open invitation for you to send me the first megabyte of the raw /dev/sdX file.

Recently Activision / Infinity Ward have announced that there will be no dedicated servers (which means no mods or clan servers) for Call of Duty 6: Modern Warfare 2.

There is a growing community of PC gamers who are encouraging a boycott of the latest Call of Duty game for PC. Below are just a few screenshots from the in game browser of Activision's latest CoD game, Call of Duty: World at War.

A rough calculation shows that about 3-5 % of all the CoDWaW servers have the word boycott in their server name. Undoubtedly, more are encouraging boycott by other means.