Welcome to my home page. I've put some links here to things I've done and bothered to write web pages for. This page is very old, I stopped updating it around 1999-2000.

A bit of B5 stuff

Paradise 2000 Netrek Client

My client for the game Netrek. It has some features not found in any other client, like a good sound system.

XLassie's Home Page

XLassie is a replacement for XBiff, with some added features. One feature many people find useful is POP3 support. This is my most popular section!

XLoadtime's Home Page

XLoadtime is a replacement for XLoad, with some added features. The one that gives it its name is the time in digital format displayed in the xload window, so you don't need a separate clock. Another ability is optional CPU usage bars, with multiple bars for each CPU on SMP systems.

Motor Control of SCSI Drives

Some programs to start and stop SCSI drives under linux. Makes my computer much quieter for watching movies. Also a kernel patch to spin up stop drives when accessed and spin then down when idle.

Computer Generated Prose

This is a little program I wrote that uses a 1st order Markov chain model to generate random text that sort of makes sense. You give it a URL to use as input, and it makes random text that reads like the input. Sometimes it can be humorous. After, a long period of brokenness do to firewalls and dynamic IPs, this page works again.

The Effect of Different S-Video Cables

I was getting a bad picture from my laserdisc player, and I figured out why; the cable was bad. The difference between the cheap cable I bought and the one that came with my VCR is really amazing. I made a bunch of frame captures so you can see for yourself. Maybe those people who buy $200 audio cables aren't fools after all.

The USPS Strikes Again

This time they got Jackie Chan. I've got a page with some scans of how they busted up my Rumble in the Bronx laser disk here.

More Links

Here is some stuff I'm involved in, for which someone else has written web pages.


Copyright ©2000 by
Trent Piepho