Ask MetaFilter posts by ph00dz

Make me a Zimbabwe Dollar billionaire

ph00dz — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 07:48:44 -0800

I wanna be a Zimbabwe dollar billionaire. Where can I buy Zimbabwe dollars in bulk at a reasonable price? To be clear... I'm not a collector. I want fistfuls of the actual money... like... I wanna be able to grab a giant sack of Zimbabwe dollars and throw it all over the bed before I make love. When I see my rival rappers in the club, I wanna be able to throw millions of Zimbabwe dollars in their face, just to let 'em know that I'm for real. I wanna pose for pictures on my myspace page with my my billions of Zimbabwe dollars on display, just stacks and stacks of it... maybe even make a little youtube movie where I flash my Zimbabwe dollars in my hands and yell, "I'm rich, bitch!"

I see 'em on eBay, but the prices are... well... shockingly high, given the value of the Zimbabwe dollar.

Making a run for the Border?

ph00dz — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 06:24:37 -0800

How does the Mexican Border work? So... I was talking with a band last night who were on tour from Washington, and they were all like, "Dude, we crossed the Mexican Border for a minute out by the dunes on I-8, heading east from San Diego to Phoenix."

Are they right? Did they really cross into Mexico?

What I'm asking is this: is that truck fence that you see off I-8 really the Border? If a person jumps from one side to another, are they truly leaving the United States, or does the real border lie some distance from the highway?

This is what I'm talking about... (Although that's a different band / guy, for whatever it's worth.)

You've got the Touch? So... uhh... now what?

ph00dz — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 07:24:35 -0800

How to get the most out of the wifi/browser capabilities of my Ipod Touch? So... I went out and splurged on the fancy new 16 gig Ipod Touch... and while it's super cool, the supplied apps and whatnot are pretty weak. So what can I do to really take advantage of its ability to connect to the internet? Specifically, I'd love folks' recommendations on good web based apps for mail, chat, and... well... what else is worth checking out?

I'm not quite sure I'm ready to hack my firmware or whatever, especially with a devkit on the way, but I would be curious to hear people's stories, if they've done that with the Touch.

Have pack, will travel... to Flagstaff

ph00dz — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 18:41:42 -0800

Backpacking adventures near Flagstaff? So... I've been bitten with the wanderlust and want to get out backpacking for a weekend. I've got all the requisite gear, am in really good shape, etc... but have no idea where to go.

My ideal backpacking trip would take me somewhere cool -- like up to a lake or a great vista or something like that. Some kind of destination, at any rate. I'd like to hike in at least 5 miles, as anything less seems... well... pointless, but for something cool, I'm flexible. Off the beaten path, but... you know... not so off the beaten path that I can't go up just for a weekend from Phoenix.

I may (or may not) have my dog with me, so somewhere where that isn't a problem would be the best. I'm concerned not only with park regs, but also the availability of water -- hence, the interest in going to a lake or spring or something similar.

Any ideas?

Surf San Diego?

ph00dz — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 14:38:31 -0800

Where's the best place to learn to surf in San Diego? I'm in good physical shape and a decent swimmer, but I've never surfed... it's my dream to learn how. Any suggestions as to where to go?

MySQL SLAVE, obey your MASTER!

ph00dz — Tue, 29 May 2007 08:29:08 -0800

MySQL, why won't you replicate properly? Replication doesn't work.

We set up replication on two windows machines running mysql, got everything all synced up, set up the master/slave relationship, and everything worked fine for about two days.

Then it just stops... and the slave doesn't want to catch up with the master. Basic tests seem to indicate that the connection is still live -- we can still see the master's status from the slave, but it won't just grab all the data it needs to be current.

Here are the mysql servers:
master: 4.1 (NT)
slave: 5.0 (Advanced Server 2003)

What can we do to diagnose the problem?

Help Nuts and Volts make sense!

ph00dz — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 06:52:46 -0800

How to get started PIC programming? I'm interested in learning how to program little things using microchips... and it would appear that there are a ton of options out there.

Here's the thing -- I'm a beginner.

I know how to program (although assembly terrifies me), so I'm looking for something where I can write in basic or some similarly abstract language. I guess I need a kit or something -- something with a set of projects built in, so I can find my way without too much trouble.

My only technical requirement is that the programmer has to have a USB interface.

Any suggestions? Also, any suggestions for little projects I can build would be helpful...

Interception and redirection of streaming audio on an office lan?

ph00dz — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 13:29:14 -0800

Prankfilter: interception and redirection of streaming audio on an office lan? Too many people on too narrow of a connection at work means that the tech crew has to keep tabs on who is using more than his or her fair share of bandwidth or they'll screw up the entire network for everyone.

Getting a grip on who is doing what is no problem -- we've got the full range of linux stuff available and the DD-WRT firmware on our main router. So, since DD-WRT uses plain old iptables, blocking people from streaming wouldn't be a problem either.

But it's kinda boring. Geez... I mean, we might as well wander over to their desks and tell them to knock it off.

We'd much rather replace the stream that someone is listening to with something else. Something better.

So, maybe you're listening to yahoo radio. Instead of the latest dance hits, you get our station of fart noises or something. (We'll think of something clever later.) Doing this with streaming MP3's is well within our abilities, but is such a thing possible with RTSP?

Does anyone know if RTSP can be redirected with location headers just like a web browser Is there something simple we can do to deploy a RTSP that serves up the same wildcarded content, regardless of what page/stream is requested?

Can this be done?

Mysql... why won't you accept more connections?

ph00dz — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 16:20:39 -0800

Mysql5... why won't you accept more connections from a set of IP addresses? Here's kind of a weird one -- we've got a mysql 5 server in a cluster that does a fair amount of i/o. After awhile, it stops accepting connections (or slows way down) from the other machines in the cluster, but if I try to connect from a totally different box, it's lightning fast.

The server itself isn't running a load, nor is it coming close to the number of max_connections/max_user_connection limit. (It is, however, using a single account from all those connections.)

The code connecting to the db is PHP and we do close() the connection.

The mysql itself recognizes that there are "Failed attempts," but it's not clear to us at all what's causing them.

The box is ubuntu, if that helps. The hardware is pretty substantial....

Mater of our own domain names?

ph00dz — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 06:03:29 -0800

Becoming your own domain registrar? I work for a hosting company which registers around 300 domains for customers each week. We've got DNS, web servers, and all the basic stuff sorted out and humming along nicely, but still rely on an outside vendor to do our domain registration.

Since even saving a buck or two per domain can create substantial savings over time, we'd love to cut out the middle man. We'd also like a little more control over the process as well, since these days, any kind of substantial delay between a customer domain search and the aquisition of a domain can lead to it getting grabbed by an evil registrar.

If we were just looking for speed, there are other alternatives -- several of the domain registrars provide XML api's, which we could (and do) deal with no problem, but if it's not that big of a deal to go one step further... we're a bunch of linux dorks and I think we can probably sort it out. I'm just trying to figure out if it's worth our time.

I've found a basic page about accreditation from ICANN, but it doesn't really answer all my questions.

What's the base price of a domain from ICANN? GoDaddy claims it's only $0.25 per year... but I couldn't find any other references or breakdown per top level domain.

Has anyone out there set something like this up? How are the technical requirements? Was it difficult to get it all working with ICANN, or was it all reasonably straightforward?