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Old Stuff of Interest
Posted by Scott August 16th, 2006 | 5,253 words |

Room and Equipment
Projects
Actual Photos
Unsortables

My Room And Equipment

Oldest surviving photos of my room
As I started to become interested in computers, my collection of junk began to grow

	This is the oldest photo I have of my computer, back when I only had 1 pc. This box apparently has 4 CDrom drives and two 3.5” floppy drives, although if I remember correctly I never got around to hooking up the floppy drives (who uses those anyway?) This photo was taken before I started working with FreeBSD, Linux, or any other Unix-style opensource operating systems.
	This is an old photo of my room right before I went to China to adopt Hannah. This was right as I began getting interested in computers. My PC is seen on my desk with two monitors (for the first time) with a TV in the corner and two laptops on the right.
	Another view of this setup shows my bed beside my wall. It wasn’t too long until I got fed up with how much space my bed used and removed it completely.
	Here is one of the first photos I have of my computer when it had three video cards in it. Three monitors displaying one desktop. I could drag a window from the far left all the way to the far right with one click. This was my favorite arrangement. Although I had 5 monitors set up at one time, 3 was my favorite number. Even numbers like 2 and 4 were awkward, because for some reason I love to have a center monitor.
	This was my first purchase on E-bay! It’s a Shrek poster in Japanese. How randomly cool is that?
	At this time in my life, I slept in a bed. The existance of a bed in this image clearly dates the photograph, for quite a few years ago I ditched the bed alltogether and began sleeping on the floor.
	This is where my bed went, for a while. After I got tired of storing it in my closet, I gave it to my mom who moved it into our guest bedroom in preparation for another member of the family. Hannah was adopted shortly afterwords, and she was given this bed since I didn’t need it anymore.
	To replae my bed, I used an old comfortor with fish on it folded in half longwise. In the day time, to make my bed all I had to do was roll it up. This is a photo of my bed, as well as my old TV/monitor (which was quite large and convenient). I had my couch right in front of it, so I could use the computer and watch movies in comfort!
	See what I mean? My wireless keyboard is visible on the arm of the couch. Notice the rigged speakers dangling behind the coutch. As lame as it may look, I actually had a 6 channel surround sound system hooked up to that computer, which was really great for watching movies that I downloaded.
	The other side of my room looks surprisingly messy. Oh well
	I was given a mini refrigerator by my old math professor. I helped him move furnature from his office to his new office (they were moving him because of construction) and as a thanks, he let me keep the fridge! Above it is a broken DVD player which I fixed and used for several years. I believe that DVD is Panasonic’s remastered edition of Akira.
	I can’t tell when this was taken, but this photo represents my favorite arrangement of monitors attached to a central computer. The background is one I made that was created to span all 3 monitors. (3072×768)
	This is my room the day after I got back from China with Hannah (pictured). It took about two weeks before I got her her own shell account on my linux systems. Notice Titan AE playing in the background…

A Growing collection of junk
As time passed, I began collecting more and more hardware and using it on my network

	It can be noticed that over time, monitors tend to multiply and network cables tend to divide. Slowly, my room turns from a bedroom to a server closet.
	Here is a photo of my TV connected to an old PII based motherboard mounted on a wooden block. Actually, I think that’s a partially completed LainBox (scroll down for more info). It’s running Slackware Linux and appears to have just playing a video with MPlayer (the program I miss most from Linux)
	This is a photo from when I first started compartmentalizing my network needs. Here is the first time I split up my web server (running Apache) from my network router (which ran FreeSCO’s floppy based routing OS)
	Some more photos of my room that lack the need for explaination
	I obtained a really nice (but slightly broken) CRT monitor from work, and decided to fix it. More information about this fix is in the projects section of this page.
	Here you can see where the repaired monitor went. Ahh, the bliss of 3 monitors.
	There we go, in its completion
	And with an updated background I guess?
	I began adding useful little inventions to my desk. It’s hard to see, but can you make out that little picture of the girl with blue hair to the right of the penguin? Below it is a circuit board with 3 lights. They flash depending on incoming packets, outgoing packets, and server load. It’s just the LED strip from a keyboard (caps lock, scroll lock, and whateverthecrap that other light is for) that I have plugged into the keyboard slot (my actual keyboard is USB). Using a little program I ran in C, the lights flash automatically in real time (surprisingly fast)
	Boom! Where’d that 4′th monitor come from? It’s not connected to the same comptuerin this picture. It’s actually connected to my web server, and it’s watching live-scrolling raw website logs.

The height of geekdom
These are the years of 16 computers, 6 monitors, 2 laptops, and miles of ethernet cable

	Here we see the "web" corner of my room where I used to store my web-type servers (HTTP, FTP, SQL, and IRC)
	This is a picture from my webcam which ran 24/7. An old sight follower of mine kept saving pictures from my webcam she thought were funny. This was one of them. My cat is retarded.
	That same girl got a real kick out of this one. I was leaning over to get something (I’m guessing) and she happened to be watching and saved the image. Fans, what can I say [rolls eyes]
	Notice the poster from Serial Experiments Lain in the background. Actually, it’s not a poster. It’s a kakejiku!
	There we can see the TV on the left. Hey, is that Perfect Dark?
	Ahh, computers are everywhere!
	Another arrangement of monitors on a desk it appears…
	Here I’m working on something. It appears to be one of my LCD panels.
	Watch the servers grow baby! Ever wonder why I only had 16 computers? My Netgear ethernet switch only had 16 ports! My main servers were in my closet at one point. Notice the main internet-containing ethernet cord marked with a paper with a highlighted yellow and black "X" on it. That was unfiltered (unfirewalled) internet. I didn’t want to plug it into the wrong system!
	…I moved my main server core out of my closet because I was afraid of fires…
	YES! 5 Monitors on one computer. This was running a single desktop with the XFree86 window system on the FreeBSD operating system.
	How did I get 5 monitors on one computer? Easy! 5 video cards.
	Check that out. Sexy.
	It didn’t last long though. It was impractical. 3 Monitors was my favorite combination. With 5, I’d start IMing someone… then work on a project… then remember that I forgot to continue my IM conversation 4 monitors down the line
	In time I preferred the L-shape configuration of monitors to allow a curved panorama of screens.
	At the peak, I had six monitors on two desks. Although, they weren’t all on one PC. 3 were on one pc, and 3 were another pc. Since 3 was my favorite number of mointors for a desktop, and I had 6 monitors, it only made sense to use all 6 monitors on two desktops! Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures of all of them being on at the same time. My second computer sation was only used a fraction of the time, and primarially when I was programming (multiple screens with multiple windows at different points in the code along with documentation was incredible for writing software)

A little house Cleaning
Where’d all that junk go?

	After a few years, I pulled a 180º switch and rejected computers! I gave away most of my equipment, and slimmed down to a single computer and one laptop (not pictured) I took to school.
	A few months before going off to college in TN for my Jr year, I found a cool program called The Rasterbator which can take an image and print it over multiple sheets of paper.
	Here you can see that image after being taped together and hanging on my wall. My laptop is also visible here, along with another wallscroll from Mononoke Hime
	um, this would be me comparing two differently-rasterbated images (the one on the left is higher quality) and, wait a minute, is that a picture of Misia randomly attached to my wall?
	Check out the center image. See how one square is colored? I did that with a crayon - I was thinking about coloring the entire picture with a cryon. Do you think it would have turned out well? I never found out. It took too long (lol)
	This is an amazing photograph. It shows that old LainBox part (the one I used for my video player years ago) that I found in my closet. I must have been looking at it at the time I took the pictures of these rasterbations. I never powered it up again, but I was obviously looking at it. For those of you who remember Misia, this was the box she used. It was the last thing I threw away, and I almost cried when I tossed it…

Radio Broadcasting Setup
Yeah, at one point I had "The Scott Is Hot Broadcast". Scary, I know.

	This is my basic broadcasting setup. Two laptops and a main PC for sound editing. It got bigger from here, but this is where it started.
	After a few shows, things started to get messier and messier as I began adding equipment
	One thing that was central to my ability to conduct live recording sessions was this little mixer. It wasn’t incredible, but it was functional and worked decently. It made noise when the knobs were turned and when the sliders were moved, but it worked dangit, and I used it well.
	Near the end I began using 3 laptops to do my recordings. Why laptops? They were easy to set up at a moments notice. Since I was "down to 1 computer" at this point, I didn’t want to leave my room like this. Instead, I hooked all these together only when I needed to do a show.

unimpressive conclusions
After years of obsessive coding, building, hacking, and geeking, I simplified down a bit.

	This is my computer one week before I left to transfer to a university in TN.
	Here is my laptop and my computer (a server I used to store files, firewall the internet, and share a printer on the network with my mom’s computer elsewhere in the house)
	Notice that I painted my wall? It’s an amazing color - I picked it out. It took about 5 days to paint my whole room, and a lot of those days were on the dark wall. It took 4 coats to get the color that rich!
	And here we leave my room, in its most beautiful state (at least in my eyes). Ahh, so pretty [tears up]

Projects

LCD Panel
This was my favorite hardware/software project

	So here’s the deal. I ordered a few backlit LCD modules from CrystalFontz and worked to write software that allowed them to be controlled and powered completely from a computer’s parallel port and, for the backlit modules, power from the power supply.
	The hardest part for me was writing software to control them. I’d never worked with I/O controlling software, much less in the C programming language, especially in Linux! It was a challenge, and it took a lot of work to make it all work right. Endless tweaking both to the software and to the hardware.
	Here’s how it got its control. Data from the parallel port, and extra power from the power supply. The contrast of the letters was controlled by a potentiometer between one of the wires and the computer, and the backlight brightness was controlled by another potentiometer between the module and the power supply lead.
	Here you can see some of the maticulous soldering I had to do. I say maticulous because I did it all by hand, and I didn’t use pre-set pins. Additionally, I was working with archaic soldering equipment.
	This was my first working prototype…
	And then a backlit version
	Then I started getting cute. I made this one fit my linux penguin! What’s it doing? It’s scrolling songtitle information from XMMS (like Winamp, but for Linux) along with equalizer bars. The refresh rate was amazingly higher than I’d have expected from the parallel port, ranging from 16 to 21 refreshes a second. This created REALLY smoothly changing bars, and it was really nice looking.
	Experimenting with connectors…
	I never figured out the best cable to use. I kept crossing between ribbon and ethernet Cat5 (lame, but cheap)
	Here’s the same thing with the backlight on
	Zoomed out a bit, you can see my old binary digital desk clock.
	My original purpose (and ultimate goal) for this project was to create a small, inexpensive LCD device that could show server information (like uptime, server load, data transfer, even raw website logs) on a small screen. This way, I could have multiple computers and check their information at a glance, eliminating the need for so many monitors. It was cool to have a little screen show me how many email messages I had too…
	Near the end, I got fancy. I purchased a few inverted-backlit LCD screens. I still have one in my closet… I never threw it away. I know I’ll never use it again, but I had so much fun working on it.

Custom Minidisc Labels
I love minidiscs, and even more I love making cover art!

	Here’s a great project! I created really nice looking labels for blank minidiscs. This one is for a collection of Namie Amuro songs I liked.
	I even made nifty little spine labels!
	And here are a few more of my first creations… There should be a tutorial abut how I did this up on the net somewhere. I’m sure I’ll upload it soon, people really loved it.

AimPoo And VenomCrack
Some of the more "shady" projects I worked on regarded AIM screen name crackers

	Here was the fundamental concept behind AimPoo. I sketched it out on Hannah’s chalk board and photographed it so it would look nice and professional.
	Someone (I forgot who it was) drew some art for the project and emailed it to me in hopes that I’d use his logo. Thanks, it was a nice contribution, but I don’t think I can’ make that work… [shrugs]
	This is the oldest screenshot of AimPoo I have. AimPoo was never finished, it was in development for months. All of the versions worked, but I didn’t want to release it publicly until I had "finished" it. However, it needed to be tested. To do this, I got a core of people (about 50) who were willing to use their computers to test it out. With an army of 50 PCs running AimPoo 24/7, many 3chars were hacked, as well as countless pages of valuable statistic information collected for my use in improving the next version. To keep my 50 testers from spreading unfinished software, I used a key mechanism. Every computer had a unique ID, and a password was required (unique to that ID) to activate the software. Every version of AimPoo had this registration process. This helped me keep close tabs on who was using AimPoo.
	Here are some more screenshots of later versions of AimPoo. (one of them, appropriately entitled "AimPoo2")
	This was my working environment while writing AimPoo.
	AimPoo eventually morphed into an opensource python version of the program valled VenomCrack. Since it was open source, everyone could view (and modify) the code. Daily, people would add to it (making it faster, more reliable, easier to use, or better in some other way) and submit it. It became a community project, which was awesome. It was the first large scale opensource project that I led.
	After a while it began to get really intricate. It had a central HTTP-controlled server core that ran a local web server from Python. It would run invisibly, and you’d control it from your web browser. This allowed network use. I ran VenomCrack on my own web server (they supported the execution of shell scripts) and just checked the website every few weeks to collect my list of valid screen name / password combinations of 3chars that I had hacked.
	Eventually I wrote a module allowing use of the OSCAR protocol instead of the traditional TOC protocol. This file was created in Windows however, using C#.net sources. This moved the project back to windows, and away from the opensource community (a VERY bad move in retrospect). This once again required secrecy, and led to much frustration (python scripts weeded out the annoying lamers) eventually pushing me over the edge leading to my creation of the YAABL.W32 computer virus. The venomcrack project had ended.

LainBox Project
Who can forget the creepy LainBox?

	Here are the internals. Not much, just a P2 and a lancard. It was an IRC fserve client primarially.
	Arranged on my desk…
	Almost completed…
	Boom! There she is. Notice the groovy little fan on the top and everything. The picture on the front is from Serial Experiments Lain.
	(I used this photo for reference)

Monitor Repair
What do you get with 2 good monitors and 1 broken monitor? A screwdriver!

	This was done looooong ago. This is the inside of the monitor, with the damaged area circled.
	I used a modified version of this cable to fix the problem.
	I had to get soldering equipment way down in there.
	At one point, I had a thouroughly documented page about what I did
	But now it’s hard to remember…

The GasTank Computer Project
"Hey, why not built a computer inside of a gas tank?"

	This is pretty much what it looks like. A gas can with a power splitter on the side. You should have seen people look at me when I bought this combination of equipment at WalMart.
	This is the partially assembled computer. All of the ports are accessable from the side, with no need for anything special. It’s just like a normal case.
	And, I mean, what good is a gastank computer if you don’t add illumination, I mean come on.
	There’s a nice close up view for you all
	And, there we go! A completed project. I took this PC to work and used it for about a year and a half as my primary work computer. It was a 650mz celeron.

The FreeBSD Logo Case Project
Don’t just build a fserve server, build one in style!

	For a while, I was not only anti-Windows, I was anti-Linux as well. I was pro-BSD so much, that when I set out to create a fserve box out of a 286 I did it in style.
	This is a closeup of the front. For a while I was obsessed with making blue-LED optical mice, so what did I do with all those red LEDs I removed? Bingo. Note that this box had a 64mb (not gb) hard drive, which was just enough to run FreeBSD and a fserve program serving files on network drives. I find it funny, a 64mb hard drive based computer was serving people 4-gig DVD rips.

Cassini Oragami Project
This is psychotic.

	I spent about 8 hours and quite a few pieces of paper to create a scale model of the Cassini spacecraft that was built to study Saturn and its moons.
	Here is the completed model, created with nothing but paper, glue, and a pen. Notice the delicate high gain antenna on the side of the spacecraft…
	Here you can see that I fully created the sattelite dish parts in 3d. Awesome. So, after spending an entire day on such a project, what do you do with it?
	Burn it of course.
	Yep, here we go.
	Hmm… re-entry?
	That’s messed up man.
	Well, on to something new.

Unsortable Projects
I didn’t think these deserved their own section, so they’re all jumbled together.

	This is my wardriving setup. Yes folks, I used to partake in such quasi-legal activities.
	To minimize the chances of drawing any kind of attention (glowing monitors in the back of an SUV kind of does that in the middle of the night) I wrapped all of the screens in black trash bags. This made them so dark that they couldn’t be seen through tinted windows, but they could if you were right up against the computers. The only hard thing was finding the cursor if you lost where it was on the screen.
	This is a computer I fixed up to give to KawaiiAyu a few years back. I wonder if she still has it?
	An old program I made for myself, "HostToast", easialy modified the windows hostsfiles
	A small lanparty setup, complete with laptop control station and plenty of goldfish to last through a night.
	Yeah, I actually started working on a "Scott Is Hot Magazine". What a silly idea…
	At one time I wrote a story, or at least I started to. I stopped about 3/4 of the way through because it was emotionally difficult to continue (I made the main character far too much like myself, and it crushed me to crush him). Anyway, this was the cover.
	An old promotion for the "Scott Is Hot Broadcast"
	Everyone thought homestarrunner was the greatest thing ever for a while there. I thought it was retarded.
	A page of notes I took in my Western Civ. 1 class
	More junk from my "Scott Is Hot Broadcast"… I’m so retarded
	Hey, goldfish!!!
	This was a project of mine I thought was funny but no one else "got" I guess. It’s a printer server… inside of a printer paper box!
	I was testing out a small battery powered illumination system that I could use while crawling back behind computers. Pull the wrong wire and BOOM! There goes FTP.
	A photo of a squid with internal organs noted with numbers. I used this to study for my Biology II class.
	Another photo of something I used to study for the final. We had to identify about 50 different types of plants and fungi, so I photographed them all. The biology lab looks cool I think
	Happy valentines day
	Here’s a logitech mouse that I opened up and cut out the red LED and replaced it with a blue one. It anyone else wants to do this, make sure you use a 2600mcd 2.7volt blue LED with a 15-degree radial angle.
	I made a parallel cable to laplink crossover cable connector to allow the networking of two computers through the parallel interface.

Photos

	This is me in KunMing, China in 2002
	Hey, I made a friend in China!
	Hannah (one of the girls we adopted from China) modeling some geek apparel.
	She’s kinda cute
	But randomly psychotic like her brother
	Scott made some more friends in China!
	This is hannah in China while we were in the process of adopting her
	I made this when I was frustrated with so many stupid people asking me to write code for them in HTML
	This was my favorite scene of Kirka from Noir
	This is my Biology II professor from my old college. He was crazy.
	Marena, one of my study partners in the Bio II class is more than slightly psychotic.
	Peter, another one of my study partners in that class. Doesn’t this picture look like a DVD cover or something? It’s awesome
	Being sane, Marena, Peter, a few other students and I often made fun of a lot of the BS that this guy tought (who admitted that a lot of the stuff in the book is simply made up because no one knows). One issue that was often comical is the one of folds in developing embryos appearing to look like gill slits, "proving" an evolutionary background in humans by "evolving" inside the womb. To make fun of this theory, while celebrating the final exam, we got together and purchased a cake with a printed image on it of a cat that had been run over. Professor Clark loved it!
	Studying for that final exam, here I am pictured beside Peter. Acutally, we were done studying, now we’re mainly just slacking off.
	Scott and Scott (the other guy) preparing for a calculus III exam.
	Yeah, um, we’re not going to talk about this… (calulus III again)
	Ghaw, how many pictures of peter do I have?
	We (the smarter core) of the calculus III class made party hats for the final exam with a picture (hand-sketched) of the professor on them. We also decorated the board. Yep, we’re nerds. From left to right Scott, Jennifer, Sergio, and Scott (not has hot as the first Scott of course)
	Yeah I don’t remember who this is
	This is a picture of Ayumi Hamasaki from one of her CD covers
	And this is my old friend Laura who I met in the IRC channel at Japan-A-Radio dressing up as Ayumi Hamasaki for a school function!
	Ha! This was a channel on my TV for several days. It looks like the cable company runs windows…
	A few years back I went to plug in a vaccuum cleaner and the wires crossed and the plug exploded in my hand. It scared the crap outta me.
	This is me at Union University in TN on a preview day. I ended up going to this school! This photo was taken about 6 months before I decided to transfer. I look pretty crazy don’t I? Wait a minute - are those GLASSES?

Unsortables

Evangelion Unit EVA-05
What can I say. I’m a dork. I’m a geek. Just leave me alone and let me play with my action figure!!!

	You know what? I’m just gonna start dropping these in and you can think what you want. It’s a model of EVA-05 from the anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion. It took a lot of searching to find this specific model (most of the other ones out there are not very flexible and have only a few bending joints) but I eventually tracked this sucker down and bought the last one from a guy who sold random items from Japan!
	Here EVA-05 is posed after having ripped a bloody arm off of EVA-02. Die Asuka. Die.
	Yes, that’s the NERV logo in the background.
	why did I take so many pictures of my doll
	Here it is again atop of my minidisc player
	… and in front of a Misia minidisc. For the record, if anyone tells you that Scott purchased an action figure at the age of 19, don’t listen to them. They’re full of crap. [walks away quickly]

Other Photos
lacking description…

	This is me at Union University in TN on a preview day. I ended up going to this school! This photo was taken about 6 months before I decided to transfer. I look pretty crazy don’t I? Wait a minute - are those GLASSES?
	Here’s some of my minidisc equipment. Yes, that’s the NERV logo in the background.
	This has been one of my all time favorite little web comics

Screen Captures
Photos of computer stuff over the years

	A screenshot of a 3-monitor setup
	This is the design I used to make my LainBox from earlier.
	A screenshot of a 2-monitor setup
	An old version of my website. I think I liked this one the best.
	Another version of my website
	Yet another version of my website!
	I really like this banner. The face is a vectorized image of Chihiro Onitsuka
	AimForum.com is so stupid
	A little Valentine’s day comic
	My favorite image ever!!! I love that face. It’s Beramode from War of Genesis III
	Another 2-monitor screenshot
	A random Japan-A-Radio IRC session of people screaming for a Jpardy!
	The image I used to rasterbate my wall
	Some website stats from a long time ago? They’re not that impressive. I don’t know why I saved them.
	Some old wallpaper
	Nice tshirt!
	Enough said.
	awe, so cute =o)