Anatiferous blog | Move every zig.

Howdy! This is my (William Reading's) webpage. At the moment, I only have this blog script and my gallery up, but I hope to get more stuff on this page at some point, or so I thought when I created this site years ago. Updates and shiny new copy to eventually go here. If you'd like to contact me to point out that I've done something to break XHTML/CSS standards or heaven forbid--look at my Vita--drop me a line at my e-mail address bill +spam @ [ELEPHANT] aggienerds.org. Simply remove "+spam", the spaces and the pachyderm along with its brackets and that address will reach me. I'm also available on Jabber/GChat/AIM/MSN with the same address above.

Apparently someone decided to make it such that if the “external amplifier” is “on", then to mute sound from speakers. This took about three hours to discover.

As you might have seen on another post, I recently picked up a Gateway 3018gz laptop. It’s a great laptop, but there are a few problems with it. The windows driver bit was somewhat excusable, but in addition to that the video bios does not have a video mode for the supplied 1280x768 resolution screen, resulting in fugly XFree86 until it can be prodded into the correct resolution. As a result, it is necessary to use a little magic to fix it by patching the bios in memory.

Update: The instructions below should probably no longer be needed when using Xorg.

1) Pick up a copy of 855resolution, conveniently available at http://perso.wanadoo.fr/apoirier/.

tar xzvf 855resolution-0.3.tgz
cd 855resolution
make && make install

2) Add the magic modeline (generated from our handy gtf) to the /etc/X11/XF86Config file:

Modeline “1280x768″ 80.14 1280 1344 1480 1680 768 769 772 795 -HSync +Vsync

3) Pick a resolution to overwrite and select that one for use

855resolution -l

In this case, I have something like:

Mode 3c : 1920x1440, 8 bits/pixel
Mode 4d : 1920x1440, 16 bits/pixel
Mode 5c : 1920x1440, 32 bits/pixel

I’m unlikely to use this, so I chose them to be replace, but it is a personal preference which to use:

855resolution 3c 1280 768
855resolution 4d 1280 768
855resolution 5c 1280 768

4) Finish setting up XFree86 as you would with any other installation. Note that these settings are not static and the bios must be patched by your init scripts each time the machine is started up. I did this on my Debian box with the following script:

#! /bin/sh
# Put me in /etc/init.d/855resolution
for i in 3c 4d 5c; do /usr/sbin/855resolution $i 1280 768 > /dev/null; done

And then:

chmod +x /etc/init.d/855resolution
update-rc.d 855resolution defaults 80


I picked up a Gateway 3018gz laptop to supplement the powerbook today and promptly wiped it to install windows xp and debian. Only after I tried to get all of the vendor supplied drivers to work did I discover that the driver listed for the wireless card is incorrect. It has a broadcom wifi adapter; not an Intel one. The correct driver can be found here: http://support.gateway.com/support/drivers/getFile.asp?id=19881&uid=8413850 with the following description: “9528158.exe - Broadcom Wireless Network Card Driver for Gateway® M520 / 7000 Series Notebook Computers Revision: 3.30.15″.

Update: Also note that these are the drivers that need to be used with NDISWrapper to get wireless working on this laptop in Linux.

If you’re you’re compiling dante on Mac OS X, remember to include -lresolv in your LDFLAGS to avoid link errors.

I’ve now got all of my pictures for China up on my Shanghai Gallery.

If you happen to travel to Shanghai, China and pick up a China Unicom sim card to use with an unlocked GSM phone, the following might be handy:

- Dialing to the United States is mildly expensive on this service, but is slightly cheaper using the “17911″ service that routes the call using VoIP. Dial with something like this: 17911+001+Area+Number.

- You get a telephone number to go with the card. Dialing this number from the US would be something like:
011-86-13167012345.

- The service number is 1013089 and the handy customer complaint/service number is 10010.

- Wap can be enabled by talking to the customer service people at 1013089.

- The card may be recharged by calling 1013088.

Some of you might know that our team at Texas A&M University won the South Central ACM ICPC Regionals late last year. (whew, a mouthful, isn’t it?) The ultimate result of this is that we are now in Shanghai, China for the ACM ICPC World Finals.

At the stroke of midnight on Friday, I began to pack. This, of course, requires that I have clean clothing to put into my luggage. Unfortunately, I had none. Six dollars and two hours later, I can now pack something to take abroad. 3:00 a.m., CST all of my clothes are packed and the majority of the wall warts needed to charge the various electronics that I’ve brought along. 3:30 a.m, CST we have a (albeit rushed) breakfast at IHOP and leave at 4:15 a.m., CST. Following photocopies of various identity documents, we fill out risk management forms and leave at 5:00 a.m., CST. At approximately 7:00 a.m., CST, we arrive at the airport in Austin, Texas and happen to run into the University of Texas team. We leave for Chicago and reach there at approximately 11:00 a.m., CST. In Chicago, after a seemingly endless concourse, we finally reach the end, gate B-17. An hour later, we begin the 14 hour flight to Shanghai. We arrive in Shanghai at 5:00 p.m. on Sunday, localtime. We’ve now checked into the hotel, eaten some food and registered for the contest. I’d post more details, but I’m a bit tired myself. Pictures are available at http://anatifero.us/gallery/shanghai.