Poofy Goof Rant-O-Matic

http://www.poofygoof.com/~agrier/computers/ contains a list of most of my computers. it's static (much like my collection) but it might be updated more frequently if it were easier to manipulate, say, in a database. per-computer histories perhaps? cycle counting? a "last-booted" date?

back in college I wrote a program to search through possible factors of fermat numbers. I never discovered any new factors, but the program was verified through test cases, and was given an unofficial blessing by Richard Crandall. Crandall later went on to show in 1999 that F24 is composite, and a composite cofactor of F23 in 2000.

an idea I've been rolling around in my head for a number of years has been to write a standalone app (using RTEMS perhaps) that would turn a PC with a soundblaster into a standalone MIDI-driven synthesizer for some FM and low-fi sample action. the combination of the two was used to good effect by the Renaissance demo group for a few of their productions.

I have a 1991 subaru loyale. it's only a couple hundred miles away from 200,000, and has become my "bucket" workhorse vehicle. as it has aged, various problems have cropped up, mostly electrical, but one long term problem that's been getting worse has been the engine timing. it had been pinging under load, which I offset by using 89 and 92 octane gas in it, but under load even 89 octane had started to ping, and with gas prices close to 3.50/gallon for the 92, I've been investigating the feasability of getting it to run on cheaper 87.