Mora's Digital Dust

User: Mora - November 1, 2005

I'm Scared.

User: Mora - November 7, 2005

I keep geting letters. There are now photos of my house included. I don't like this.

User: Mora - November 1, 2005

Ok, whoever sent me that letter can FO! I don't know how you gopt my address but that was not a funny prank, dude.

User: Mora - October 10, 2005

... Well this is weird. I just got a letter in the mail today sent to "The owner of the Mora Blog" with no return address. Some fan mail perhaps? I'm pretty sure I've never doxxed myself though, so know clue how they wouldv'e gottn my address.

User: Mora - October 05, 2005

Mystery Log: The "Markov" Ghost - I was crawling some old USENET archives and found a user named 'Smith291' who has been posting thousands of strings of random words every hour since 1994. Some people think it's a broken spy station, and if you read the first letter of every tenth word, it almost looks like coordinates. Probably just a bot glitch, but it’s creepy to see it still running in 2005.

User: Mora - June 12, 2005

Has anyone ever heard of a game called "Polybius"? I saw a post on a message board claiming it was an arcade game in Portland that caused seizures and was visited by "men in black." Sounds like total bunk, but the guy had a photo of a cabinet with no branding. Probably just a home-grown cabinet mod, but the story is a fun one to read at 2 AM.

User: Mora - January 28, 2005

Mystery Log: Shortwave Weirdness - Tuned my old radio into 4625 kHz tonight. It’s "The Buzzer" (UVB-76). It’s just been a constant, low-frequency buzz for years, but apparently, every few months, a voice reads out names in Russian. Why is it still broadcasting? It’s been decades since the Cold War ended. Just a "dead man's switch," or something else?

User: Mora - December 01, 2004

Project: The "Doom III" Benchmark (Final) - Finally got it stable. 45 FPS at 1024x768 with Ultra settings. The shadows in this game are insane. I had to disable "Antialiasing" to get it there, but man, my GeForce 6800 GT is screaming. Time for a celebratory session of Unreal Tournament 2004.

User: Mora - November 15, 2004

Project: The "Doom III" Benchmark (Part 2) - No go. The new drivers from Nvidia actually made my frame rate *worse* in the Alpha Labs section. Going to roll back to the 66.93 set. Why is AGP voltage so finicky on this motherboard?

User: Mora - November 02, 2004

Project: The "Doom III" Benchmark (Part 1) - Just picked up Doom 3 from EB Games. My PC is meeting the "Recommended" specs, but we all know that's a lie. Going to spend the weekend tweaking the .ini files to see if I can get a solid 50fps.

User: Mora - October 14, 2004

Link: www.strongbad.com - New Homestar Runner email is out. "Dragon" is an instant classic. Trogdor the Burninator strikes again!! I'm going to try to find a way to make that my boot splash screen.

User: Mora - September 22, 2004

The Firefox "0.9" Preview is actually really stable. I'm finally deleting the "Internet Explorer" shortcut from my desktop. If a site doesn't work in Firefox, I'm just not visiting it. Web Standards better catch up or GTFO.

User: Mora - August 14, 2004

Found a weird "Dead Air" site today. It’s just a black page with an embedded RealPlayer stream of a room somewhere in Ohio. There’s a clock on the wall and a ceiling fan spinning. That’s it. No audio. People in the chat say the clock hasn't moved in three years. Is it a loop, or just the world's most boring webcam?

User: Mora - August 05, 2004

Case Mod Update - I accidentally cracked the acrylic on my side window while drilling the hole for the 80mm blow-hole fan. $20 down the drain. Going to try again with a jigsaw this time. Need more masking tape.

User: Mora - July 19, 2004

Review: The Sony Ericsson T610. The screen is tiny but it has BLUETOOTH. I managed to sync my contacts without a cable. We are officially in the future, people. Now if only the camera didn't look like a blurry mess.

User: Mora - June 30, 2004

I am officially a YahooMail user! Thanks to "p0psicle" for the invite. 1,000 megabytes of storage. I’m never deleting an email again. If you need an invite, leave a comment with your favorite Winamp skin ;).

User: Mora - May 12, 2004

First Server Log (Part 5) - Apache is UP. MySQL is UP. PHP is UP. My "LAMP" stack is finally functional on the old Pentium III box. I’m going to host my own private wiki for project notes. No more scribbling in notebooks for me. Stay tuned.

User: Mora - May 05, 2004

Mystery Log: The Hum - I’ve been reading reports of "The Taos Hum" again. Some people describe it as a distant idling diesel engine that you can only hear indoors. I swear I heard something similar last night while I was debugging my PHP script. Might just be my neighbor's fridge, but it definitely puts you on edge.

User: Mora - May 01, 2004

First Server Log (Part 4) - Dependency hell is real. Trying to recompile the latest kernel since the 1st one I got online wasn't as complete as advertized and it keeps failing on one of the network drivers. For some reason I thought fixing it would be faster than finding a different one. Regretting life desisions now

User: Mora - April 20, 2004

First Server Log (Part 3) - Debian installation complete. Took all night to get it working. The "grub" installer is so much cooler than the Windows XP setup though. Now I just need to figure out how to configure the static IP without borking the routing table or shooting out a flare for crackers.

User: Mora - April 05, 2004

First Server Log (Part 2) - Scavenged a 20GB Maxtor drive from the "junk" pile. It makes a clicking sound when it spins up, but it passed the SMART test. Installing Debian tonight. Wish me luck.

User: Mora - March 28, 2004

First Server Log (Part 1) - Tired of my main PC being slow while I run downloads. I'm building a dedicated "Headless" server out of spare parts so I can run downloads in the bg while still being about to use my computer. It’s an old Gateway tower I found in the local scrap bin. Specs: PIII 500MHz, 128MB RAM.

User: Mora - February 14, 2004

Spent Valentine's Day playing *Final Fantasy XI* on the PS2. The new Network Adapter is the best $40 I ever spent. Being in a party with people from Japan while I'm in my pajamas is a trip.

User: Mora - January 10, 2004

Is anyone else using "SoulSeek" for rare IDM tracks? It's way better than Kazaa. No ads, no spyware, just people sharing obscure Aphex Twin live sets. My 56k is crying but my ears are happy.

User: Mora - December 22, 2003

Lord of the Rings: Return of the King was amazing. I want to build a PC case that looks like Minas Tirith. Does anyone sell white LED strips? Or should I just stick with CCFLs?

User: Mora - December 18, 2003

Found a zip file on an old trash drive labeled '97_INTERVIEW'. It’s an audio clip of a guy claiming he worked on a "sub-layer" of the internet that handles "hidden data packets." He sounds like he’s losing his mind, but his technical description of packet switching is super weird nonetheless. Just a very dedicated LARPer, I assume.

User: Mora - November 11, 2003

The "Dream Key" Quest (Part 3) - I give up. I ended up just buying a brand new Logitech Elite Keyboard instead to get rid of the HP. The keys are a bit mushy compared to the IBM, but it at least has decent macro functionality. Practicality wins this round.

User: Mora - October 30, 2003

The "Dream Key" Quest (Part 2) - Ok, I'm back from my first expedition. Turns out, very thrift store in a 20-mile radius is a bust :(. All I found was a sticky Microsoft Natural Keyboard. I'm going to have to resort to Craigslist. Anyone out there lmk if you have anything.

User: Mora - October 15, 2003

The "Dream Key" Quest (Part 1) - Typing on this cheap HP keyboard sucks. I've decided I'm not stopping until I find a vintage Model M with the "clack." The search begins tomorrow. Wish me luck!

User: Mora - September 29, 2003

Mystery Log: AtlasOS - Anyone ever seen something called "AtlasOS"? Found a forum post asking about it with a code snippet attached, but when I went back to find it a couple days later, the whole thread had been nuked out of existance. Weird thing is that I found that code snippet saved on my computer, but I have no memory of downloading it.

User: Mora - September 05, 2003

Quick Tip: If your Winamp is lagging, disable the "Modern" skins and go back to Classic. The XML rendering engine is a total resource hog rn, hopefully they fix it soon. Stay 1337, friends.

User: Mora - August 12, 2003

Happy 1-year anniversary to this blog. 112 visits! I can't believe that many people care about my rants. Thanks to everyone who signed the guestbook.

User: Mora - July 28, 2003

Does anyone remember "The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet"? Someone posted a snippet on a forum asking for the name of the band. It sounds like 80s New Wave, maybe German? I've been running it through every database I know and coming up empty. It’s like the band never existed.

User: Mora - July 04, 2003

Watching fireworks from my roof. Also, I finally figured out how to use "Port Forwarding" on my Linksys router so I can host a StarCraft game. Life is good.

User: Mora - June 12, 2003

E3 was insane. "Half-Life 2" looks like it’s from another planet. That gravity gun? No way that's running in real-time. I'll believe it when I see it on my own screen.

User: Mora - May 22, 2003

Review: The "Matrix Reloaded." The highway chase was cool, but the ending was a total head-scratcher. I'm going to go read some theories on the IMDB message boards.

User: Mora - April 18, 2003

Just installed "Windows Messenger" (the one that comes with XP). It's so annoying how it starts up automatically. Going to use `msconfig` to kill it forever.Will report on if this works later

User: Mora - March 15, 2003

Mystery Log: Numbers Stations - Caught a broadcast of "The Lincolnshire Poacher" today. A synthetic female voice reading groups of five numbers over a folk tune. It’s so eerie knowing that somewhere, a spy is probably writing these down in a one-time pad. It’s like a secret world happening right over our heads in the airwaves.

User: Mora - March 09, 2003

I just discovered "Webcomics." Penny Arcade and PvP are my new daily rituals. Does anyone know any good ones about coding? Need more distraction at work.

User: Mora - February 14, 2003

Valentine's Day present to myself: A new 17 inch monitor! So excited to see what this thing looks like!

User: Mora - January 05, 2003

New Year, same old PC. I'm saving up for a "DVD Burner." Being able to back up 4.7GB on one disc would be amazing. No more "Disc 1 of 6" spanning ZIP archives.

User: Mora - November 20, 2002

Someone emailed me a link to a site called 'Sentinels of the Void.' It’s a bunch of low-res photos of "anomalies" found in satellite imagery from the 70s. Most of them look like lens flares, but there’s one photo of a structure in the Nevada desert that looks like a giant, concrete circuit board. Creepy.

User: Mora - September 15, 2002

Thinking about learning "Flash." I want to make a cool animated intro for the site. Macromedia Flash MX looks powerful but the ActionScript part is intimidating.

User: Mora - September 02, 2002

Mystery Log: The "Titan" Glitch - Heard a story about a guy who found a hidden level in a 1996 PC game by hex-editing the save file. He claims the level wasn't part of the game design, but a "memory leak" that formed a perfect, playable maze. I don't buy it—code doesn't just "organize" itself into a maze—but the screenshots he posted were hauntingly beautiful.

User: Mora - August 10, 2002

First post! I finally got my own domain and hosting set up. This blog will mostly be a place for me to document my tech projects and random thoughts. Hello world!