Nookkin.com

LG 600G Review

Sun, 07 Mar 2010 19:20:00 CST

I have been using my LG 600G phone from Net10 (Tracfone also carries this model) since July 2009; it was my first actual cell phone with service, although I have had a good deal of experience with old out-of-service phones. Now that I've ordered my Samsung Epix, the LG will be going into my phone collection drawer, hopefully for good. But in tribute to it, I will write a nice review. [...]

Nookkin.com Mobile

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 17:36:00 CST

If you've ever used a mobile internet device to access Nookkin.com, you probably have noticed that it is a sub-optimal experience. With the ever-increasing popularity of such devices, I decided to create a mobile variant of my site. As of today, Nookkin.com is available in mobile and desktop variants. [...]

Asylum (a short story)

Thurs, 04 Mar 2010 11:21:00 CST

They keep me trapped here. Trapped behind invisible walls, in a gray, heartless world of stoned businessmen bustling around in their office buildings, stoned schoolchildren sitting in their classrooms. Living a lie. Bustling about, oblivious, uncaring. [...]

Choosing a Good Password

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 15:25:00 CST

Passwords. They're the bane of our online existence, yet they are critical for protecting our privacy. How complex should a password be? How can you create a password that is secure and easy to remember at the same time – does such a thing even exist? Why do I regularly use 30-character passwords, while most people balk at meeting the minimum length of 8 characters? [...]

AGPTek Laptop Battery Review

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 10:32:00 CST

My ThinkPad's original battery now lasts less than an hour, which is explainable due to its age. It was time for a replacement, but Lenovo charges a whopping $159 for their 7-cell battery (it's the only one they now carry for my model). Well, what did I do? I decided to take a shot at a non-OEM battery: the AGPTek Li9. Here is my review, after owning it for nearly two weeks. [...]

Bitwise Operators

Fri, 7 Jan 2010 8:54:00 CST

Did you know that 2 AND 2 is not equal to 4? Well, it's not – open up Windows Calculator, click [2] [and] [2] [=], and you will see that the result is 2.But how does this work? This seems to make no sense. Haven't we all heard the expression"put 2 and 2 together"? [...]

Nookkin.com One Year Anniversary

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 12:15:00 CST

Well, it has officially been over a year since nookkin.com launched, late at night on December 22. And while school and work have taken an unexpected toll on the amount of things I wanted to post, I still think that it has been a successful year. [...]

My new audio setup

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 12:53:00 CST

I have been interested in audio equipment long before I even had a computer. My first audio system consisted of four old car speakers and a few others salvaged from old electronics, all of which were powered by a small red battery-powered radio which I partially disassembled in order to connect the speakers. I was around 8 years old at the time [...]

Goodbye, Sansa... Hello, iPod touch!

Sat, 19 Sept 2009 22:30:00 CST

My Sansa e250 has served me well, but it is near the end of its useful life. The faceplate is cracked right above the screen, the mechanical scroll wheel is increasingly difficult to turn, and lately it has required several tries just to get it to recognize that it is connected to my computer. Thus, I decided that it was time to buy a new player, and chose one of the most popular and coveted players on the market: the iPod touch. [...]

Creating a word filter in PHP

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 17:07:00 CST

You are no doubt familiar with the concept of a word filter � a function that replaces "naughty" words with asterisks. There are many cases when a word filter is useful. A profanity filter can keep a site "G-rated" [...]

Ten tips for designing the worst software applications

Thurs, 18 Jun 2009 18:22:00 CST

We've all used them - programs that either seemed to be designed by a 6-year-old, or that crash regularly, or even those that installed malware. But how does a software developer try his hardest to design the worst possible piece of software? The tips on this page will be sure to help. [...]

NPS codename Obsidian, Alpha 1

Thurs, 18 Jun 2009 17:13:00 CST

NPS Obsidian Alpha 1 represents the culmination of several weeks of work on the existing Milestone 3 code. This release is not yet feature-complete, but it has most of the features used on an everyday basis � zoom, pencil and brush, resizing functionality, and filters. [...]

NPS codename Obsidian, Milestone 3

Mon, 1 Jun 2009 19:20:00 CST

NPS codename Obsidian, Milestone 3, was released today. Milestone 3 shares the same UI appearance as Milestone 2, but also boasts more features. Most toolbox items are now at least partially functional, including rectangular selection, brushes, shapes, airbrush, zoom, and flood fill.[...]

Beyond The Network

Fri, 15 May 2009 19:25:00 CST

"Beyond The Network" is a short story (about 25 printed pages' worth) that I wrote back in March of 2009. It is a science fiction story set sometime in the future. After numerous urgings from readers asking me to publish it, I decided to post it online for the world to enjoy. [...]

NPS codename Obsidian, Milestone 1

Fri, 8 May 2009 22:42:00 CST

NPS codename Obsidian, Milestone 1, was released today. The Milestone 1 release (version 3.0.15, build 253) is a fairly significant step in the history of NPS, as this is the first build from the Obsidian codebase to be released to the public. The Obsidian codebase is written from scratch using VB.NET (VB 2008), and does not contain any code from the RatTamer-Lagoon codebase (which is written in VB6). [...]

Windows XP on a ThinkPad 560

Tue, 7 Apr 2009 22:53:00 CST

About a week ago, I installed Windows XP on my old ThinkPad 560. This laptop was my first working computer, which I obtained about 4 years ago. It originally came with Windows 98, which ran fairly slow. The laptop has a 133mhz Pentium processor, 40MB of RAM, and a 2GB hard drive.

I decided to try my luck at installing XP on the thing – after all, I don't use it any more, and I might as well prove a point to the 20 or so people who have told me that XP would never install or on something t [...]

Dual-booting XP and Vista (my way)

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 16:09:00 CST

If you want both Windows XP and Windows Vista on your computer, you can set up a dual-boot configuration easily enough. But the default configuration may not be suitable for your needs. For example, I wanted to have XP and Vista installed on one hard drive, with XP being on a smaller partition which I planned on eventually using for a different operating system. However, setting up this dual-boot proved to be somewhat more complicated than I had imagined. [...]

A Few Updates

Thurs, 26 Feb 2009 21:35:00 CST

For the past month, I have either been busy with school, or busy with something else, and I more or less neglected to post anything on my blog. But here it is... the long-awaited February blog post.

If you haven't already noticed, I've added a few things to my website. Most notably, Computer Bloopers. I have been collecting somewhat humorous computer-related incidents that I have experienced for several years now, and am now putting some of them onli [...]

Computer Bloopers

Thurs, 26 Feb 2009 19:35:00 CST

In a world of technology, there are bound to be some people who don't understand it as well as others. At times, this can be frustrating to us geeks; at other times, these misunderstandings can manifest themselves in ways that can be perceived as humorous. [...]

Allowing any screen resolution on Vista

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 18:22:00 CST

By default, Windows Display Properties displays only the resolutions allowed by its driver, or (in the case of a Plug-and-Play monitor) exposed by its EDID.

I have been hacking my video and monitor drivers ever since I was 13. On Windows 9x, it was possible to enable all resolutions supported by [...]

Windows 7 Beta, part 2

Thurs, 15 Jan 2009 21:40:00 CST

A few days ago, I installed the Windows 7 Beta on my physical machine. I am impressed by the ease with which it installed, as well as the additional functionality added to it; however, it's still not perfect.

Installation and bootup

Installation was fairly straightforward, and very similar to Vista's. I deleted my old installation of XP Professional (which I never used) and installed Windows 7 in its place. After the installer finished, 2 new entries were added to the Windows Boot Manager &ndas [...]

Windows 7 Beta

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 22:50:00 CST

The Windows 7 Beta is out, and I finally managed to get my hands on a copy. I installed it (unactivated) in a virtual machine, but plan to install it on my physical machine as well, in order to use all of its features. I will update my blog once I do that.

The beta

As you probably know by now, the beta was supposed to be released yesterday. However, Microsoft's servers couldn't handle the heavy demands, and the official download link did not appear until about noon today. I tried downloading vi [...]

Time for some upgrades

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 14:47:00 CST

My 2-year-old computer was getting a bit slow, as I now run a lot of programs simultaneously. For Christmas, I received an AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ and 2GB of RAM, which was a welcome upgrade.

Here is a screenshot of Task Manager before I upgraded:

The RAM installed without any problems (at first). It took a good amount of force to snap the DIMMs in place, but the RAM worked. Vista instantly recognized [...]

Hello World

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 23:42:00 CST

echo("<p>Hello World</p>\n");

Well, it's been a hectic week, preparing for the launch of my site. Writing code, debugging, and making last-minute improvements. Then, uploading everything to the server, only to find out that MySQL isn't working quite the way I expected... but the site is finally up and running. What a relief.

I'd like to start off my blog by introducing myself. My name is Lyosha, known online as Nookkin or, less commonly, "Nookkin' OR 1=1;--". I'm 16 an [...]