Category Archives: Science

My PS3 has had very bad luck indeed

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I bought a box of individually packaged PS3 parts on eBay that the seller assured me were all from the same system. He or she explained in the auction description that the system suffered from the YLOD problem. Since I have a heat gun now and the price was even lower than the other YLOD systems on eBay due to it being already disassembled, I bought it.

A reflow fixed the YLOD for about a year. When I got the YLOD again the other day I tried doing another reflow with the heat gun. This is the same PS3 that I broke the USB ports on, so if I destroy it utterly, it’s no big loss to me. But sure enough, the second reflow did the job and it booted up and ran. I even left it alone to play gameplay videos in Dynasty Warriors for about an hour or two as a stress test and it was fine.

When I turned it on the next day, however, I immediately saw a warning about error 80010201. The light that should be green on the Ethernet port wouldn’t turn on. I figured I must have damaged the Ethernet port somehow during my clumsy YLOD fix. “No problem”, I say to myself, “I’ll just use WiFi”. So I scan for my network and get an error message that says something along the lines of “no access point detected”, although I forget the precise wording. I tried entering the SSID manually but it just got stuck when I did.

Although I didn’t notice it at the time, what should have tipped me off at that point was that Bluetooth wasn’t working. The battery in my controller was dead, so I connected by USB cable. I only realised later, after making things much worse, that Bluetooth wasn’t working.

After I read online that reinstalling or updating the firmware can sometimes fix these mysterious errors, I thought I would try re-installing kmeaw 3.55. As a precaution I was going to first install OFW 3.55 and then install kmeaw 3.55 afterwards. Unfortunately, at about 62 to 64% of the way through the flash every console owner’s worst nightmare happened: the flash failed with a cryptic error message.

The error I received was 8002f1f9. This was actually helpful, because other people had already done most of the work for me in figuring out more or less what it meant. I’m almost certain now that every single one of my problems was because the WiFi/Bluetooth daughterboard was not connected properly, though I did check about 10 times that the ribbon cable was firmly inserted and not visibly damaged. The only thing that made me wonder if perhaps something else was wrong in addition to the CWI-001 board was that the Ethernet didn’t work either. I’ve read, however, that this board also controls Ethernet network connections, despite what one might think.

Bearing in mind the possibility that the CW-001 board also controlled the Ethernet port, I bought a replacement on eBay. However, it occurred to me that it was possible that the board was fine but it was merely the ribbon cable that was damaged. The seller provided both the card and the ribbon cable for it so I did an experiment when it arrived. I put in the new board using the old cable and booted the system. It gave the same 8002f1f9 error message at about 62-64%. I then powered the system down, took out the new card and the old ribbon and inserted the new ribbon and the old card. The combination of new ribbon + old card worked and now I’m back on 3.55 kmeaw.

I’ve learned a few lessons from this experience. The most important, perhaps, is that error 8002f1f9 refers to a problem with the WiFi/Bluetooth daughterboard and that it is, indeed, this board that also controls the Ethernet port. The Ethernet port won’t work if you try to boot without the board connected. The green light won’t light up at all.

The second lesson is to be careful with the ribbon cables. This is the first time I’ve ever damaged one but I’m 99% certain this was the cause of all my problems. There was absolutely no visible damage to the ribbon, but it’s clear after testing it so many times that I must have damaged it somehow.

The final lesson that I’ve learned from my problem is that it taught me how to get a console out of an update loop, which means that merely failing to update the firmware won’t really “brick” a console as long as you can fix whatever caused the failure in the first place. The trouble with update loops, of course, is that since the firmware flash failed, every time the user boots the system it retries the installation which will never succeed until the hardware problem is solved. This means that you cannot access the recovery menu. According to a thread I read on the official Playstation forums of all places, if you install a hard drive in the system that is not PS3-formatted (i.e. any notebook HDD) you can get to the recovery menu even if the console had been stuck in an update loop prior. You can then hot-swap the drives by taking out the non-PS3 HDD and inserting the HDD you actually want to use with the PS3. It’s a bit frightening removing and then installing an HDD while the PS3 is powered on and running, but I gave it a shot before I figured out that the Wifi board was the culprit and discovered that this method works perfectly. It’s not enough to simply boot without any HDD installed because the PS3 won’t go to the recovery menu if there’s no HDD at all. It must be a non-PS3-formatted HDD.

But fuuuuckkkkkk… I really want to play Ni no Kuni. It’s not even an issue of not wanting to pay for games. I buy all my PS3 games. It’s just that I can’t update my firmware to play the games I legitimately purchase without forgoing CFW. I have a retail copy of Tales of Xillia that I still haven’t been able to play for this very reason. That’s also why I won’t buy Ni no Kuni until I either buy another PS3 or there emerges a new exploit. I don’t want to buy a TB dongle. If I were going to do that, I’d just buy a used PS3 slim incapable of being downgraded to 3.55 for slightly more than the price of the dongle instead and designate it my dedicated legit console. All options seem like a waste of money to me though at this juncture.

I’ve dumped Comodo

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Haha, I just love this kid.

Comodo firewall is great if you like to micromanage every single process on your computer. Nothing slips past Comodo, seemingly even if you set the firewall to “disabled”. On the one hand, it’s a bit idiot-proof to the extent that it’s hard to accidentally disable the whole program by some mistake. On the other hand, I’m rarely able to get it to do exactly what I want. For example, just to get a simple P2P program working required making 4 non-intuitive application rules (one for port 80 for tracker announces, one for TCP in/out, one for UDP in/out, one to deny everything else) and a global rule. I also had to make these 5 new rules top priority or else they didn’t take effect. There’s a section for managing programs on an application-by-application basis so you’d think I could just point the firewall to P2P_program.exe and tell it something along the lines of “trust everything P2P_program tries to do; it’s safe” but that doesn’t work. Even the “allow all” setting doesn’t really allow all. You have to dig deep in the forums to figure out how to allow a single program access through the firewall on a single port or port range, as though this were some sort of uncommon task that only superusers need to know how to do. It’s not though. Whenever you install a program that needs relatively unfettered access to your Internet connection you need to let it through your firewall but there’s so much prerequisite knowledge needed to be able to do that in Comodo firewall that it can be extremely frustrating and time consuming. I should be able to choose a program, specify some ports and a direction (ie. IN/OUT) and be done with it. I shouldn’t have to mess with global rules, stealth port settings, and application-specific rules or be familiar with some arcane settings buried in an obscure “advanced” menu.

Comodo is not a bad firewall. Of course, I know nothing really about computer security, so even if it were a bad firewall I wouldn’t be qualified to judge. What I can say though is that Comodo makes it so difficult to actually allow a program to run normally that I may as well unplug my Ethernet cable for 100% security. The program is so secure that it makes it a real challenge to weaken it even slightly. A more user friendly approach is what I’m looking for, even if it may put me in a less secure environment than Comodo. I’d rather be put in a bit of danger by human error resulting from my own foolishness than do things safely but painstakingly with Comodo.

My other problem with Comodo though is cfp.exe, which unexpectedly jumps to 25% CPU utilization occasionally. I’ve read that this can be caused by conflict with another firewall or AV program but I don’t have another firewall and I’ve tried uninstalling my AV program Avast, with attention to meticulous detail including using CCleaner and the official Avast manual removal tool. I’ve also specified the entire “COMODO” directory to be excluded when Avast does virus scans. In the Defense+ settings of Comodo I’ve likewise specified all the Avast folders to be excluded. Neither of those ideas helped. The high CPU usage is not a reproducible reaction. It’s totally unpredictable and has no upside, which is what makes it so aggravating, unlike the strictness of the rules system which at least has the benefit of preventing me from doing something stupid. Sometimes I’ll simply be browsing the web without any P2P program open at all and cfp.exe will cripple my computer, sometimes for just a few minutes, sometimes for as much as a half an hour.

I didn’t want to use a commercial firewall as a replacement. I did a google search for “lightweight firewall” and came across PrivateFirewall. I’ve only been using it for about 30 minutes now but I already know how to make global rules, new application rules, how to trust an application completely, and how to make application rules that allow a program through the firewall only under certain conditions such as only via specific ports or only in one direction or the other. These are all things that were not satisfactorily covered in the Comodo help menus which meant I had to read countless threads on the Comodo forums before I could figure out how to do them and even then, my rules did not always work properly because I had missed some other minor setting that would render them ineffective.

I also like the PrivateFirewall taskbar icon of a friendly police officer.

Days 8-12

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Speak up, you idiot. Don't you know I'm sitting in the middle of a lecture hall!?

Abstract here.

Day #Offences for male students (within 5 minutes of start of class) #Total offences for male students (inclusive)
8 0 5
9 3 4
10 4 4
11 1 3
12 2 3
Day #Offences for female students (within 5 minutes of start of class) #Total offences for female students (inclusive)
8 5 10
9 8 11
10 7 9
11 5 8
12 4 4
Day #Total offences(Male + Female) %Offenders [%Offenders(adjusted)]
8 15 30%[50%]
9 15 30%[50%]
10 13 26%[43.333%]
11 11 22%[36.666%]
12 7 14%[23.333%]

I think I encountered a cpanel bug

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My host moved the mysql server a week or so ago so I expected to have some downtime. I feel stupid that it took me so long to realise that they had finished the move due to what I believe is a cpanel bug. They finished the move a long time ago but I couldn’t log in because of this bug (and intermittent ddos didn’t help either). Even though my login credentials hadn’t changed, I still kept getting an error message at the phpmyadmin login screen as well as this error from WordPress, which I had never seen before:

We were able to connect to the database server (which means your username and password is okay) but not able to select the “databasename” database

It turns out that all I had to do was change my password by clicking “Change Password” in cpanel and then everything worked. It also still worked when I tried changing it to something else and then changing it back immediately. But if I hadn’t read about this bug on a forum somewhere I never would have known. I would have just sat here twiddling my thumbs assuming that the problem was due to residual issues from the move. I’m very happy now though, in any case.

Before realizing that this was such a trivial thing to fix, I tried visiting some of the other sites hosted on this server (in a virtual machine, of course) to see if they were having problems too and, sure enough, most of them just throw out “Error establishing a database connection”.

Blargh… midterms are hard (and days 6 and 7)

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If only I could be more carefree and forget about highfalutin status symbols like good grades and literacy I could spend more time watching Enlightened, Bored to Death , and all the terrible anime airing this season that I can’t resist and I’d finally be able to buy and play Tales of Xilia. But alas, I’m stuck here trying to learn the difference between a taisha zukuri and a shinmei zukuri while keeping track of these loony characters:

With all these names, I almost feel as though showing them in kanji would actually help me learn them. Even if I don’t know how to read them, the kanji could at least help memorization, if only because it would allow me to devise some mnemonic devices. I don’t know who Sarutakhiko is, but if I saw his name in kanji and saw the 猿田毘古 I’d assume he was a monkey or if I saw Ame no Wakahiko, 天若日子, I’d assume he was some young guy sent from the heavens, which is actually partially correct since he came from “high up heavenly place”, 高天原, and married Shitateruhime according to the Nihon Shoki. Even if you’re like me and can’t read, if you know a few basic kanji you can make some bullshit guesses that might be good enough for an exam if you can see the names written out in Japanese. You don’t need to be able to know that it’s phonetically “Takamagahara” to deduce that it’s some kind of heavenly realm. In romaji though you can’t even take a wild guess like that except for the most obvious distinctions like the safe assumption that names ending in -hiko are probably male gods. Some of those names, moreover, aren’t even spelled correctly. Ignoring for a moment the differences between traditional and modified Hepburn, Taka-Mikazuchi no Kami should be Take-Mikazuchi no Kami, Sukuna-hikona no Kami and Sukuna-bikona no Kami are the same kami and thus shouldn’t be listed twice or separately, and I’m not sure who Tokoshiro nushi no Kami is supposed to be. It’s probably supposed to be Kotoshiro nushi no Kami, 事代主神, and may be the same as Ebisu in some contexts, who was a son of Ookuni nushi no Mikoto and is a god of fishing or something like that.

Thankfully I don’t actually need to know all these names, least of all Ame Nigishi Kuni Nigishi Amatsu Hiko Hiko Ho no Ninigi no Mikoto, who I think is supposed to be the father of Emperor Jinmu. I just enjoy complaining. I must know the important ones though. The question, of course, is deciding which are important. I think that any names that I hadn’t heard of before enrolling in this class are unimportant enough to not bother remembering; that’s just the kind of hubris I need to muster up to avoid getting melted hippocampus all over my shirt collar. Any name that’s famous enough for me to have known about the god or place before entering the class must be important enough to warrant focus. I didn’t know who Sarutakhiko was and he’s apparently pretty important.

If only there were a Chinese cartoon that could solidify their identities in my mind…that’s how I learned all about Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Eventually I’ll read Water Margin too. I can get a cheap copy of the nice boxset from Foreign Language Press from eBay.

Anyway, here are days 6 and 7:
Abstract here

Day #Offences for male students (within 5 minutes of start of class) #Total offences for male students (inclusive)
6 0 0
7 3 4
Day #Offences for female students (within 5 minutes of start of class) #Total offences for female students (inclusive)
6 7 12
7 8 11
Day #Total offences(Male + Female) %Offenders [%Offenders(adjusted)]
6 12 24% [40%]
7 15 30% [50%]

Masako is a more likable character than Ringo (and day 5)

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I want to say sardonically, "Simpsons did it" but the irony is that it wasn't nearly this funny or absurd when they did; it was actually one of the most heartfelt and serious episodes in the series.

I like stalker characters quite a bit and really enjoyed all of Ringo’s episodes pursuing Tabuki. I also enjoyed learning about Momoka and watching her strained relationship with Shouma develop in the wake of the actions of the Takakura parents. It’s all very fun and the idea of being stalked by a high school girl never really loses it’s appeal, but I’ve decided that Masako is, nonetheless, a more endearing character. Her charm is how mysterious she is. The viewer is scared of what she’s capable of and, until episode 16, knows very little about her, which lets the viewer’s imagination run wild.

As for the table, it would get unreasonably long if I kept including all previous days. I don’t know how long I’m going to keep this experiment up, but, at the very least, I shouldn’t give up until I’ve recorded at least 10 days. At the end of 10 days I suppose I’ll make a table of all the results.

Abstract here
 

Day #Offences for male students (within 5 minutes of start of class) #Total offences for male students (inclusive)
5 4 4
Day #Offences for female students (within 5 minutes of start of class) #Total offences for female students (inclusive)
5 4 7
Day #Total offences(Male + Female) %Offenders [%Offenders(adjusted)]
5 11 22% [36.667%]

Day 4

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These slouches are getting worse by the day.

I keep forgetting halfway through class to keep counting. I had to trash the results from several days since they were incomplete.

I do want to make clear though that I don't exactly object to the idea of slacking off in class on any ethical grounds; what I object to is the blatant scorn for the teacher and minority of students who are actively trying to enjoy the class that slacking off in so blatant a fashion as using a PSP, DS, or mobile phone reveals. It's like regifting. We all regift, but we don't tell the recipient when we do it.

Having said that, I, of course, am not one of those people actively trying to enjoy the lesson. I let my mind wander from academic matters all the time in class. But in any given class there’s bound to be at least one person who enrolled, not because he or she thought it would require a minimum of effort (the primary criterion by which I determine which classes to join), but because he or she actually thought it seemed interesting. Those are the people I feel bad for. Not myself.

Nonetheless, I slack off just as much as the next guy. What makes me better and more ethical than the rest of you louses, however, is that you can’t tell when I’m slacking off. I play mental games during class like counting backwards from 1000 by threes, counting how many people are using mobile phones, doing rough estimates of how much SP I’d need to fully farm a pure STR glaive character with maximum grasswalk, fire imbue, and heuksal skills, imagining Christina Hendricks as a catgirl chambermaid with glasses, smirking while thinking about the fact that I have a symmetrical 35Mbps connection, picking at my cuticles, trying to write kanji I’m on the verge of forgetting over and over using my finger on the desk, cracking my neck, thinking about rDNS, trying to mentally paint pictures of various national flags, trying to remember all the U.S. presidents, trying to name all 50 U.S. states, trying to name every province of China and its capital, trying to hide my bleeding cuticles, naming every Japanese prefecture from north to south, trying to name every country in a continent of my choosing, drawing a mental map of the trade winds or tectonic plates, thinking about what’s on TV tonight, and looking at my digital watch, Benoit Garibaldi, exactly when the minute changes and then attempting to count precisely 60 seconds before looking at him again. I can do all of these things relatively discretely. You cannot play with a mobile phone without it being visible. The key to slacking off while still appearing like an earnest sort of person is to enjoy yourself primarily by using the vivid imagination you’ve developed by playing Magic: The Gathering, Angband, and reading R.L. Stine books when you were a kid.

Abstract here.
 

Day #Offences for male students (within 5 minutes of start of class) #Total offences for male students (inclusive)
1 0 0
2 2 2
3 0 2
4 3 3
Day #Offences for female students (within 5 minutes of start of class) #Total offences for female students (inclusive)
1 5 8
2 9 11
3 6 11
4 9 12
Day #Total offences(Male + Female) %Offenders [%Offenders(adjusted)]
1 8 16% [26.667%]
2 13 26% [43.333%]
3 13 26% [43.333%]
4 15 30%[50%]

Day 3

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Abstract here.
 

Day #Offences for male students (within 5 minutes of start of class) #Total offences for male students (inclusive)
1 0 0
2 2 2
3 0 2
Day #Offences for female students (within 5 minutes of start of class) #Total offences for female students (inclusive)
1 5 8
2 9 11
3 6 11
Day #Total offences(Male + Female) %Offenders [%Offenders(adjusted)]
1 8 16% [26.667%]
2 13 26% [43.333%]
3 13 26% [43.333%]