Geek and a Half

August 7th, 2007 by Jake

Comcast, my ISP, is great. They sign you up for (in my case) an 8MB/1MB connection, but after the first few months of service, I noticed my bandwith increasing. I did a speed test, and the download was for the most part unmetered. The upload had a small increase. I don’t know why Comcast does what they do, but my internet is about 3x faster than it was (I get burst speeds of up to 2.5MB/sec, and solid downloads at about 1.2MB/sec). Here’s a speed test I ran just a few mintues ago:

For the most part, I can tell what kind of internet or bandwith limits a server has when I’m downloading from it (i.e. one site may cap its downloads at 200k/s whereas another may give me as much as 800k/s, others are as fast as my cable line). I really like their policy on home networks, too, they guarantee an internet connection to your house, but after that it’s up to you to configure your home network the way you want it to run (no router support unlike AT&T DSL, for example).

February 6th, 2007 by Jake

…almost. It would have been an awesome picture if the sun was shining, but hey, you get what you get.

Taken from my front porch at home. Click to see full picture.

Winter Wonderland on Flickr

November 21st, 2006 by Jake

I got cable a few weeks back, but I never blogged about it. Sorry about the late post, heh.

That’s the highest speed I’ve ever recorded, and it’s pretty amazing. I especially like the upload, since I like to host things from my house.

December 20th, 2005 by Jake

Yeah, it’s been too long since I blogged, so, might as well make a post while I have some time.

Let’s see, what’s new since I last posted, um… Oh, got a few different kinda of PSP games, and lemmie tell you, gaming on that thing rocks. My favorite would have to be Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, unbelievable graphics on that thing, and the gameplay is really cool.

Ah, next item on the agenda: My new furniture. We picked up an Ikea desk the other day, and, man is it huge. I mean, really, words cannot express how kickass this desk is, and an improvement over my old one. Check out the before and after pics of my desk. I think this is the cleanest my room has ever been, really. That, and I can now dual-monitor my computer, which is really neat. So much desk space (virtually and physically!), and I don’t know what to do with any of it. Oh well…I suppose I can start by finding some nice desktop widgets from Konfabulator to stick on my second monitor. Also, I picked up this nifty little program called UltraMon that extends your taskbar (sort of) all the way across your second desktop. It can also manage your screensaver and wallpaper for your second monitor, and it will also add two more buttons next to the standard “_X” buttons that allow you to either stretch that window across both monitors, or simply switch it between monitors. Another nifty little feature of UltraMon is that whichever window an application is open in, its corresponding taskbar button is only shown in that monitor’s taskbar. For example, if iTunes is open in monitor 1, its taskbar button will only show on monitor 1’s taskbar, not 2’s. Confused? Good.

I suppose that’s all for now, nothing much more to say, and yes, I’m fully aware that I’m rambling…Mmmkay, I’m done.