ADSL Speed Testing

Download/upload test: http://www.ozspeedtest.com/

Distance from Exchange:

1. Use http://www.adsl2exchanges.com.au/ to find your exchange
2. Use Google Maps to compute the approximate distance to your house
3. Use http://www.internode.on.net/residential/internet/home_adsl/extreme/ to convert distance to theoretical speed (under ideal conditions).

Downstream Attenuation:

1. Find the "Downstream Attenuation (dB)" figure from your modem's stats page.
2. divide it by 13.81
3. Use http://fremnet.net/article/216/adsl-theoretical-speed-calculator or the excel spreadsheet on which it is based.

All of the above is approximate & theoretical, and only reflects the performance between your house and the exchange you are connected to. The network performance beyond your exchange, and the performance of the sites you are visiting is another story entirely.

The CIMM - Capability Immatturity Model

What's worse than ad-hoc? The four levels of software immaturity - negligent, obstructive, contemptuous, and undermining:
http://www.stsc.hill.af.mil/crosstalk/1996/11/xt96d11h.asp

Based on http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/977/1/12.7_immaturity.pdf

NEETS - United States Navy Electricity & Electronics Training Series

http://www.phy.davidson.edu/instrumentation/NEETS.htm

The Navy Electricity and Electronics Training Series (NEETS) was developed for use by personnel in many electrical and electronic related Navy ratings. Written by, and with the advice of, senior technicians in these ratings, this series provides beginners with fundamental electrical and electronic concepts through self-study. The presentation of this series is not oriented to any specific rating structure, but is divided into modules containing related information organized into traditional paths of instruction.

The series is designed to give small amounts of information that can be easily digested before advancing further into the more complex material. For a student just becoming acquainted with electricity or electronics, it is highly recommended that the modules be studied in their suggested sequence. While there is a listing of NEETS by module title, the following brief descriptions give a quick overview of how the individual modules flow together.

Editing Video footage from a DVD Camcorder

A major drawback of camcorders which use mini DVD discs rather than MiniDV tape is editing - the camera records the footage as a standard DVD VOB structure, and so is not in an edit friendly format.

I've finally found a freely available solution that doesn't plaster nasty watermarks all over the footage - VirtualDubMod. It requires an additional codec to support DV, but it is quite simple and well described on videoforums.co.uk

Once the footage is converted from VOB to DV format avi, it can then be edited via the video editing software of your choice. I normally use Pinnacle (which seemed OK) but also wanted to try out Microsoft Movie Maker since that is what my parents will most likely use. The first converted file I tried opening caused it to crash - but that's probably a separate problem :)

Slow Read/Write CD/DVD Behaviour

I was having problems with single layer DVD burns taking ~50 minutes on my Dell Vostro, when they should have been taking about 8-9 minutes. After some research, I found the culprit - The IDE interface was in PIO mode rather than Ultra DMA.

Windows XP is set to put an IDE interface into PIO mode after a few timeout errors. This is apparently what happened to me after attempting to read a CD with some significant errors on it.

The easiest way (at least for the standard Intel controller) to clear the PIO mode problem is to go into Device Manager, open up the IDE ATA/ATAPI controller, check which IDE channel is in PIO mode then uninstall it. Then go to the top of the list in Device Manager, right click and select Detect new hardware. A few reboots are also par for the course in Windowsland...

meme #42

Inspired by Michael Davies & others to:

• Grab the nearest book.
• Open it to page 56.
• Find the fifth sentence.
• Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
• Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

My Result: "Sometimes this is natural and clear; at other times it can be cryptic." The C Programming Language, 2nd Ed. by Brian W. Kernighan & Dennis M. Ritchie.

I'm a bit disturbed that this was the closest book...

ECMA Standards

http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Standard.htm

Shows ISO/IEC equivalent specifications, and if they are freely available or not. Standards include:

• ECMA-262 (ECMAScript Language Specification - JavaScript 2.0 will conform to this spec)
• ECMA-334 (C# Language Specification)
• ECMA-335 (CLI)
• ECMA-372 (C++/CLI Language Specification)
• ECMA-376 (Office Open XML File Formats)