double the logic, but not how Moore meant it
the heat sinks on server number two
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Since I found my way to the data center these last couple of days, I thought this was a nice time to (finally!) finish my plans around server number two. I’ve been busy with it for ages, most of that was spent on how to use a second server, I mean, I could’ve co located it months ago, but what use is that if you don’t know how to use all that? I’ve spent quite some time on how to get 6GB of memory running on OpenBSD/i386 and with a new release around the corner and my server still at home, I installed the 4.3-release and replaced the kernel with a custom compiled one (with PAE-patch, thanks Mickey!) here at home, moments before I would carry it to the data center.
Next to that, I already spent ages on Intel Server Management. I knew that the board I had (an SE7500WV2) had it, but since that one was already co located, I never thought of a way of making use of that. But, with this second server, again with a board which came with ISM (an SE7501WV2), I thought this was the chance to finally get to grips with it and maybe, if I’m lucky and find a way, also install/use it on the board I’ve already have been co locating for three years now.
both of my servers with *transparant* covers! (thanks to gimp, i haven’t been modding them)
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Somehow, with ISM, I don’t know, each time I wanted to get my head around it, I read some documents and I read stuff like BMC, FRU, SDR ...erm… WTF? But, this last week, I finally got ISM, with a service partition on server number two, to work and I could talk to the Baseboard Management Controller from my XP box with the provided Intel software, which is nice of course and a first step to see what I could do with it. Last Thursday night, I spent all my time in putting such a same service partition on the already running server, the one I overhauled last week, and to my amazement and excitement I managed to put a first primary partition on the machine remote and while the server was up! Somehow that was possible because of the software RAID1 and LVM2 on that machine. I shrunk a partition, removed a disk from the array, repartitioned that with fdisk, with a new primary partition, put it back in the raid array and did the same thing to the other disk. All live and without a reboot. After that I dd-ed the service partition on there. I would be going to the data center the next day anyway and I was curious to see if all that work would pay off somehow. Well, guess what? It did! On Friday the machine rebooted just fine and in the BIOS I now got an extra option, <F4> service partition.
both my servers, left the old one, to the right, the new one.
complete specs
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with ISM you can also read out the ‘power on hours’ of the board:
the old server:
# ipmitool -H shamal chassis poh
Password:
POH Counter : 24764 hours total (1031 days, 20 hours)
the new one:
# ipmitool -H ghibli chassis poh
Password:
POH Counter : 119 hours total (4 days, 23 hours)
a new server should also get a new sticker right?
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the four disks (Maxtor 73GB U320 10K) which together are the hardware RAID 10 array on the new server
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Still, now with both machines capable of being managed remotely, how does one do such a thing? I mean, if I would’ve been dependent on the tools only running on XP, it would already be something but in my case not really that useful, I mean, I only run XP on one box and that’s it (and that box doesn’t happen to be my laptop nor my phone).
The idea was roughly this. Since these boards have dual gigabit ethernet, connect them to each other with a cross cable and also connect them to each other with a serial cable (in case of some serious emergency) and last Friday, I connected them just like that in the data center. (I felt lucky to find I could use a Cisco roll over cable for that, I was sketching the pin out and after ‘designing’ the cross cable I would be needing, it struck me that it was a roll over cable, which I happened to have also).
the rough idea, shall we call it DIY cloud computing? ^_^
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all hooked up, no (other) place to go (than where they are)
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Still, back home after a successful trip to the data center, I started wondering how I should use all this. Somehow the idea of only being able to ‘manage’ these machines from my only XP box didn’t seem too attractive to me. Luckily I found a nice howto on how to use the management features for when there’s Debian on top and providing me with enough pointers for setting it all up. I dove into the wonderful ipmitool and with it, I was able to set up two LAN channels per server. So now, each server accepts to be managed from either the outside world or the other server, all from the console. And, before you get your hopes up, I disabled the outside channel on each server and will turn it on only when needed. (has this ever been exploited?)
But, in case of some real Murphy’s law, the network would be down (in some cases the OS on top is able to block that), so I also wanted a serial link and this one cable, gives me just that. I can use it for a console on the other machine, or for console redirection of the BIOS during boot. I realized this weekend, that for even more control, I would need be needing more serial links, so I can also connect to the BMC at all times through there, but if I compare the amount of control I’ve got now with what I had before (and the fact I haven’t had to go to the data center in two years for the previous setup!) I think I’m pretty safe already. (I could almost, just almost, put a flaky OS on there, just for that ^_^). I will put the material for the extra serial ports in a bag and when I ever have to go to the data center unexpectedly, I will take it with me. ^_^
the BIOS of the old server, altering it from home.
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some last work to the servers last Friday.
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the servers in their rack.
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So, what about geek technique? Well, as a matter of fact, neither of these servers carries the IP of this site as its native IP. The old machine ends with .200, the new machine ends with .202 and this site happens to be .201. At this moment the site still runs on the old server, but I can switch that to the new server (when I would spoof the mac address also, it can be done quite unnoticed). So, now I can experiment like there’s no tomorrow! The first setup I’m going to try is putting lighttpd on the new server and MySQL on the old one and if I ever have a project with the traffic like the last one, I’m curious how high this setup will fly. But well, we’ll see about that, right? *^_^*
dual head XP being just one side of my ‘productivity cube’
(and Vista can be spotted too, in a tiny little window)
(somehow the sizes on my desktop correspond quite nicely with the usefulness of the OSes(imho of course))
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Something else, back home and being busy configuring all this and after running up and down the stairs a couple of times to my XP box to see what the Intel Server Management software would do, I figured I’d better use VNC for that and somehow I thought it was nice to find that VNC does dual head setups just as easily as a single head setup, and… this way XP is just one side of my Ubuntu Compiz cube aka my productivity cube ^_^
Which reminds me, I should upgrade it to Hardy Heron, which is luckily is only one click away. ^_^
maintentance and a megalomaniacal iPhone
the hardware which went into my old server. 4× 1GB memory and 2× 320GB drives
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This last friday, I finally went to the data center with some new hardware for my old webserver. Somehow I’ve been doubting all along how to make the best use of my second server and finally I decided I’m going to upgrade the old one and then put the second one on top of that. And that’s a process I now started.
my bike parked near the data center and the data center itself.
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Last friday I started out by placing 4GB extra (for a total of 6GB) in my server and replacing both disks with new ones. The old ones (simple desktop IDE-drives) have been working nice for three years(!). To be able to replace the drives I had to prepare the drives already at home with the correct partitions and filesystem (linux raid autodetect) on there and I gambled I could get my server to accept one of those disks, with larger partitions and rebuild to that and afterwards replace the second disk with a new one and do the same. Since I (more than three years ago) decided to run Gentoo on there and I prepared the server back then with software RAID1 and LVM2, I also suspected I would be able to resize the filesystem once this setup was running…
It’s been a long time since I had some serious (and planned) downtime and this time, especially because I knew I had to rebuild RAID-arrays and such, I thought it would be nice to have something still hosting some kind of page when I would be busy with my webserver. Now of course, I could’ve just plugged the cable in my laptop and let that one host one static page, but how much fun is that? *^_^*
geektechnique.org still gave me a page while the webserver was disconnected… ^_^
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Sooooooooo, after a while I thought it would be nice to use my black iPhone just for that, I mean, it’s this miracle phone according to some and it’s a Unix-machine for sure, so that should do it. In my Installer.app I already spotted Apache but after some searching I also found lighttpd for iPhones which (to me) seemed perfect for the job. I did make an appointment with my generous host but didn’t tell him (yet) about my plans. When I arrived at the office to pick up the keys and badges to get in to the data center, I, more or less as a joke, brought up the plan to connect my iPhone through an access point to his hosting network and while I didn’t expect it, he thought I should just do that, and so I brought the access point and my iPhone to the data center as well. *^_^*
Once there I disconnected my website and plugged the network cable from the webserver into the access point and those of you who visited my website then, saw this (this is a mirror).
my iPhone, my access point and the cable normally running to my webserver…
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It worked flawlessly and in the three hours I needed to rebuild my server, my iPhone handled 411 unique visitors (there was an access_log running along on my phone) which is just about my normal traffic in these quiet days.
After this I needed to get to work and put my webserver down and start working…
last login (on the console) may 2nd 2006 and bye bye uptime… 694 days!
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my environment for three hours while my iPhone handled the traffic.
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...but, because I had to wait for disks to rebuild, I had loooots of time and so I also shot two little videos:
Everything went well and after three hours I could put this very site back up. Now uptime is nice, but I decided I would continue to work on my server at home and update Gentoo completely on this box. Everyone who ever done such a thing, knows that can be quite a hassle and it has taken me a great deal of my weekend and I’m not there yet completely. All the packages have been updated, last night I also updated Apache on there and tonight I recompiled a new kernel. Tomorrow afternoon, when I’m already near the data center, I will reboot the machine one more time to get it on the new kernel and after that I can do some extra fine-tuning. I haven’t got a clue how much traffic this setup would now be able to handle, it seems to handle the ‘base traffic’ a lot better than before somehow. (if anyone still has issues, please leave a comment and if it craps out… well, it craps out ^_^). Next to that, this webserver will be a backup webserver for this site and only serving MySQL to server number two, which will run OpenBSD and lighttpd and act as my front end webserver.
Bates still likes to watch compiler output and the last step in this process, configuring a new kernel and oh! i’ve got a new poster.
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And well, that’s that! My old webserver is (imho) still good for another two years or such and when I also co located server number two (which I’m gonna do in a couple of days, there’s holidays coming up and OpenBSD 4.3) my setup is complete and I can, well, post a project for a change ;-)
the current webserver, good to go for yet another long uptime (or so I hope).
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Update: This afternoon I rebooted the machine on the new kernel, which is/was the last step in the complete upgrade of this machine. I already figured I should be near the data center for if something went wrong and indeed it did. It seemed I made a mistake in the kernelconfig, but I could fix that (thanks Bas, who happened to be there and helped me out with that) right there on the spot and rebooted again and… solved. Soooo, this old machine is all current again, with 6GB of memory (instead of 2), new disks and an updated Gentoo with kernel 2.6.24 *^_^*
(and the best is yet to come, server number two!)
DIY trackback
TUAW
shuffling around
server boards on top of my webserver on top of ...a VAX
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This last weekend I shuffled around… a lot of hardware. Most of it because I bought a ‘new’ server board for my encrypted fileserver, The reason wasn’t exactly performance or such, but because I wanted to (be able to) upgrade my fileserver later on and with the old board (an Asus SK8N) I pretty much reached the max of that. There were no PCI-E or PCI-X slots on the board and if I want(ed) to go for hardware raid, I do need something better than just 32-bit PCI. Next to that, for the current softraid setup I also already reached a point, since the old board only had 2 SATA-ports. I could get a nice Asus P5CR-VM cheap (most of the hardware that can only run single core P4s is dirt cheap at the moment), with Intel ICH6R (although I’m not using the raid of that) with 4 SATA-ports and Intel E7221 server chipset and PCI-E x8 for future upgrades. I did try a PCI-E 4-port SATA raidcard this weekend, but I decided I’m going to save a little further until I can afford a 8-port model and a proper case with eight drive bays. Until then scramjet (that’s the name of the fileserver) will run OpenBSD with softRAID. I believe there are some fixes for raid related utilities in upcoming OpenBSD 4.3 so I’ll be installing that anytime soon after May 1st.
So, I switched boards in my fileserver, the OS installation on there ran right away, I didn’t have to do anything! (Both the Opteron and this P4 630 are running OpenBSD/AMD64 just fine).
my …erm… studio
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But… then all of a sudden I had this nice workstation class (it needs ECC REG memory, so then it’s a workstation and not a PC, right? ^_^) motherboard, so what to do with that? Well, somehow I spend more and more time in my ‘studio’ (which is also my bedroom, don’t get any ideas ^_^) and so I decided to upgrade my old XP-box there, from an single MP1800+ (on a very old A7M266) to this SK8N
my ‘new’ video editing set
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...and while I was busy, all kinds of ideas came into my head and now in the end, I think I build quite a proper box from stuff I already had and never bought for this purpose. Next to the motherboard, I also had 4× 512MB PC2100 ECC REG (because I upgraded my webserver from 4 to 6GB) and I still had two 200GB IDE drives, which used to be in my fileserver. Now in a server (or anything remotely similar to that) I would never use an onboard RAID-chipset, but… in a ‘workstation’ and being used as a scratch disk for video editing, why not? So, I installed XP on a single 80GB IDE drive and I’m using two times 200GB as a RAID-stripe for video editing. Last night I did a test with capturing analog video from an old (a very old) video8 cam and I captured an hour (12GB) without any framedrops!
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And I think I’m now going to join the world in using XP just a little longer. Somehow, for video editing it’s either this or a Mac and I couldn’t build a Mac Pro out of spare parts(...), so XP it became ^_^. As a productive environment it can not stand next to Ubuntu (watch my video to see how smooth Ubuntu runs on my workstation) which I run on my day to day workstation, but for editing good old analog video (crappiness galore!) it’s okay. I think it’s rather funny that XP now all of a sudden is loved by a lot of people like never before. You make a mediocre product and when you follow it up with something way worse, people all of a sudden think your mediocre product is the best thing ever! riiight. Still, it’s nice to have a smooth running XP-box for some tasks and my just built editing machine is just that. However, there’s an SGI Indigo2 next to the XP-box and combined they have more features than Vista. Journaling filesystem (the SGI), scalable vector icons (the SGI), real time video effects (the SGI) and you can run all of your old Windows software (the …erm… XP box).
Well, if anyone still keeps track of what hardware I’ve got (w)here… I updated my hardware inventory. ^_^
And then, something completely different and before you start thinking I haven’t been out of my apartment this weekend (well, hardly, but still). This last friday I went to Wall House #2 which is a very nice place here in Groningen. I was filled with joy that I got an invitation, along with some other people, to drink a cup of tea there with Bianca Casady of CocoRosie. And what can I say? It was nice, very nice. *^_^*
I made some pictures which can be seen in this Flickr photoset not be seen anymore, i’m sorry.
And that pretty much concludes my weekend. I think my surroundings begin to take some shape now, with such a productive environment around me I think I better start producing …erm… something. ^_^
...and it's still quiet
...around here…
my setup this sunday
click to go to the corresponding pic on flickr
First of all, when I read this, I didn’t recognize myself in that, and somehow I think that’s a good thing.
In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop
“...the stress put upon prolific bloggers to maintain a constant flow of content in order to satisfy both consumers and advertisers in the information age.”
...erm… what? *^_^*
Somehow I made it my goal to show that you can have a lot of fun *without* advertisers.
“...Then the goal is raised, like a sales commission: write more, earn more.”
...riiiiiiight…
Anyway, that’s not my way and for long(er) time readers that shouldn’t come as a surprise, right?
This weekend I’ve been busy (again!) with server number two (and other things as well).
A couple of days ago I received some more memory for this server, I only had one problem. Since I’m using OpenBSD/i386 on there, and the PAE-support has been reverted since 4.1, how do I use the extra 2GB above the 4GB 32-bit limit?
Well, last weekend (not this one, the one before this one) I spent a great deal of time on that. I noticed that a lot of the PAE-stuff had been done by Michael “Mickey” Shalayeff. The coincedence is that Mickey (who had a wonderful accessory then) and I met on the last CCCamp and I decided to drop him a mail and he helped me out with a patch for my system (ain’t that nice!). It took me a while (...hey, I’m not a developer aight?) to incorporate it and I still have a question or two left for Mickey, but the machine now at least sees 6GB, so, we’re getting there! (this server is up and running around the time my then current cellphone will have the same horsepower ^_^).
6GB on boot
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compiling with the patches done:
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...and then… there’s another reason why I’m so quiet… ***^_^***
...and I’m not sure if I should mention this here, but well, since this is my personal blog and sooner or later you’re gonna see her anyway (right here) so, yeah, there’s a girl, a very special one and she keeps me occupied (and I don’t mind that one bit) *^_^*
I’ve already written something about it on the Dutch Moois Magazine, although non-dutch readers should be able to understand my post there as well.
her shoes / my shoes
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her bike / my bike
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Her name is Victoria and she lives in Buenos Aires. (if you’re really curious, you can spot some pics *through* the compiler-output in the picture above…). Now that’s quite far from Groningen, I know(...) but somehow, in today’s world you can really (and I mean *really*) get to know each other very well (it only takes hundreds of mails and pictures, hours of video and days on skype). (and if you read this and think ‘yeah right’, that’s what’s I thought two months ago also…). We know each other for almost two months now and I’m totally blown away by her. *^_^*
I’m not sure if I should put more love induced texts on my blog, for now I don’t think so, but who knows I’m gonna turn it around in some love & happiness blog (mind you, Victoria loved the idea!)
We’re both saving for tickets and we should be able to meet up this summer. If you somehow feel you want to contribute to this geek love story, you can!
...if we’re able to do something nice with the money, of course I’m gonna blog it! (although… I haven’t discussed this with her yet… ...erm… Victoria? *^_^*)
...so yeah, what to say? it’s quiet around here and I’m a happy man *^_^*
oh, and back to where I started:
“I haven’t died yet,” said Michael Arrington, the founder and co-editor of TechCrunch, a popular technology blog. The site has brought in millions in advertising revenue, but there has been a hefty cost. Mr. Arrington says he has gained 30 pounds in the last three years, developed a severe sleeping disorder and turned his home into an office for him and four employees. “At some point, I’ll have a nervous breakdown and be admitted to the hospital, or something else will happen.”
“This is not sustainable,” he said.
...I think my way of doing things is, but we’ll see about that. *^_^*
(but maybe I’m just thinking that, because I’m in love)
going through my gear
Well, somehow, and I don’t know exactly why, I quite like these quiet times on my site (for now). Somehow I always go through all kinds of phases. There’s a time I’m busy and concerned about the website itself, the code, the design etcetera, then there’s times I’m busy with all the hardware it runs on and there’s times I can concentrate fully on the content. Well, you probably guessed it, the time for concentrating on the content isn’t there yet, but it’ll come again. At this moment I’m busy going through all the gear which I consider the main tools for this website.
my workstation with ‘new’ monitors
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I’m busy with server number two and I’ve been buying some last stuff for that one, just before it goes to the data center. Once it’s there, I need some time too, first to get everything from the old server to the new one, then probably overhaul the old one and then run in tandem for the setup I’ve got in my mind.
I added some proper heatsinks to my server
...so those 1Us could go…
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And on the other end, in my home, I’ve been busy too. I decided I could/would continue a little longer with my workstation, but I had some problems with it, so those had to be solved before I could really work behind my workstation again.
getting it all back together…
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The problem is/was, upon boot, I had a random amount of CPUs… Sometimes 4, sometimes 3, sometimes 2 and sometimes 1… I replaced the PSU with a Fortron 600 watt Epsilon one (it was a 460 watt Enlight) but that didn’t help. I reseated the CPUs but that also didn’t help and in the end I decided my board would go back to Asus, just before the warranty would expire. Now I got it back and they say they replaced some components but I can’t spot which ones. Last night I kept having the same behaviour but I was totally amazed when I saw they put a new BIOS up for my board, after almost three years of silence (the last BIOS was from september 2005). I just flashed it and it booted on 4 CPUs (2 hyperthreading CPUs actually). Let’s see if this is it, otherwise I might try another set of Xeons, they get cheaper by the day ;-) (and buying on eBay in dollars is very nice for Europeans nowadays)
(update: after the bios-update I haven’t had the problem anymore… let’s hope it stays that way)
(update nr.2: it’s now a week and with the new bios i haven’t had the problem anymore :-) now i’m not sure if this would also be the case if i hadn’t send my motherboard to asus, but the bios was posted days after i send it in)
that’s four ‘virtual’ cpus alright (two hyperthreading cpus)
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And, next to that, this week, I got a mailing for an almost unresistable deal at a nice shop, used EIZO L685 18.1” TFTs for 85 euros each. They sold out quicker than you can say blueberry pie, but I was lucky to score two of them and I’m quite delighted with them! Now of course, these are used, probably seen 4 years of service and in the mean time TFTs got a whole lot better also. Still, this was one of the best TFTs around (one of the most expensive too) and I always have a weakness for stuff that was the best in its class, now or in the past and for this money, how could I go wrong?
For the same money I could’ve bought one new no-name 17” TFT.
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And since my workstation is located in my livingroom, the look of a monitor is something I take into consideration too ;-) If you ask me, they still look like a million dollars.
So, with the ‘new’ monitors and the checked-up motherboard, it was time to get it all together…
the motherboard with CPUs and coolers mounted
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Bates tells me which screw goes where…
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it’s a miracle it all fits inside my good old modded SGI 320 case
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and… action!
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I shot a little video as well:
Soooo, I think I still need some more time in the background, but in the end it’ll ensure continuity on this site for a long time to come. (At least, that’s the main point of doing all this ;-))
Oh, and where did those old IIyamas go? Did I put them in the trash? No, of course not! How can I put perfectly fine electronics in the trash? I thought it would be nice to have a dual-head setup in my bedroom too…
Now only click if you can stand a mess...
(...and while my motherboard was away, I worked on that desk, on a machine with a motherboard I bought seven years ago for too much money (550 guilders, 250 euros), an Asus A7M266, single CPU AMD, with AMD-chipset. Performance isn’t impressive anymore of course, but it’s nice to know that, from a productivity point-of-view I can also get my work done on an old machine like that. I needed loads of Zen, but still, moments like that make me wonder.)
q-u-i-e-t
well, I’m surprised I’ve still got visitors! *^_^*
somehow I thought this was an appropriate pic ^_^
credit: bnp on flickr
click to go to the corresponding pic on flickr
I mean, I don’t think that in the *ahem* history of this site I ever had a moment where I didn’t blog for three weeks(!).
But, behind the scenes I’m quite busy to push this whole thing in another gear somehow.
Last week I talked to my generous host and we were able to reach an agreement about my second server so yes, in a while I’ll be hosting this DIY-job of a site of two servers(!). That should also resolve some speed issues. At least, I’m experiencing some speed related issues with this site. Anybody else experience the same? Somehow I don’t want to change to much to this server right now… it’s been running for 640(!) days right now and somehow I want to be in the datacenter when I reboot this machine. I should be there in about a month I guess to co-locate the second server.
shamal logs # uptime
23:13:59 up 640 days, 13:46, 1 user, load average: 0.28, 0.36, 0.33
And well, of course I’ve been geeking around since my last project, but nothing big. I’ve been busy connecting my Indy optical to my stereo and I made an approach to another Polaroid project, but that needs more time…
click to go to the corresponding pics on flickr
And there’s a whole lot more going on as well, some of it in my personal life and some in my professional life (all positive btw!) sooooo…
bates got it all figured out
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Somehow this three weeks of non-blogging has to do with the kind of decisions I’ve been making I guess. In short that’s no ads and only blog when I really have something to blog. So yeah, in the end that could work out to only blog projects, but somehow I’m not quite sure about that.
Anyway, for those who want to know, I’m still alive and kicking!
*^_^*
a Polaroid project
click to go to the project page
Polaroid is dead, long live Polaroid!
Talk about a coincidence, in a weekend where I decided to tinker with an old Polaroid camera, Polaroid themselves decide to stop producing film for this (and other) types of instant cameras.
Well, here‘s what you can do with such a camera! ^_^
DIY trackback
MAKE:blog
NOTCOT
engadget.com
John Nack on Adobe Blogs: Helmut Newton, the death of Polaroid, and more
(how nice to be mentioned in one blog post along with my favourite photographer, the late Helmut Newton. I’ve got a Helmut Newton photograph on my wall and I used to have only one book of him, Pola Woman, polaroids(yes, that’s right) by Helmut Newton… (too bad I lost that book somewhere))
for sale: a black Ferrari 412
click to go to the corresponding pic on flickr
Last week I couldn’t believe my eyes when I was biking home from work and I spotted a black Ferrari 412 at the parking lot of a local garage:
click to go to the corresponding pic on flickr
Now, of course, this needs a litte explanation. I mean, seeing a Ferrari is nice, but I’ve seen dozens if not hundreds of them in my lifetime (I’m getting old, I know), so, what’s so special about this one? ^_^
A couple of months ago I saw Daft Punk’s Electroma (wikipedia link, imdb link).
click to go to the official electroma website (although I like the japanese one better)
Now I didn’t see it on some festival or such, the whole movie (still!) is up on Google Video and I opted for the ‘download to iPod/PSP’ and it’s been the first movie I put on my equally black iPhone.
click to go the full version of Daft Punk’s Electroma on Google Video
Mind you, the full version on Google Video is one hour and ten minutes long, if you’re in a hurry, here’s a short excerpt, with this car in it:
Anyway, that’s all nice and dandy of course, but somehow this logoless black Ferrari 412 kept popping up in my mind every now and then. Somehow I was touched by the idea of a black Ferrari with all the logos removed. Even though I saw the movie in a crappy resolution, it’s quite clear that there’s no Ferrari logo on the 412 Daft Punk have been using. I liked the idea so much that it kept popping up in my mind every now and then. I guess I like the seventies shape of the bodywork, earlier on I also spotted a poor man’s edition of the Ferrari 400/412 in my hometown, a Lancia Gamma Coupé with almost similar lines.
Next to that, I’m also a fan of ratlook VWs for instance and I guess removing the logos of this Ferrari is the equivalent of turning your VW into a hoodride without totally sacrificing it. I simply like the idea of dethrowning this Ferrari a bit. I guess this very 400/412 model is one which is much less recognizable when you remove the Ferrari logo. You want people to admire your car because it’s a tasteful ride right? ...and not because of some logo. If you want to buy a Ferrari so people know you drive a Ferrari, you can better opt for a 308/328 a.k.a. the Magnum car or something newer, more expensive and equally flashy.
Somehow, if this 412 was mine, next to removing the logos I would also go for an all matte black paintjob on it. ^_^
But guess what? This one isn’t mine! ^_^
But it is for sale!
(to get this straight, this is not the exact same car as in Electroma, but a similar one…)
According to Wikipedia there were no more than 576 Ferraris 412 produced (next to 1807 ones of the earlier 400/400i, GT and Automatic).
And of those 576 412s, how many of those are black and better yet, how many of those are in driving condition and for sale?
Not that many I guess, so that’s why I could hardly believe spotting this one last week in my hometown. I mean, you hardly see anyone driving a Ferrari over here, it somehow doesn’t fit in the culture of where I live I guess, so to find this one I already had buried inside my head somewhere is nice (even though I can’t afford it).
But maybe you can! So here it is:
click on a pic to go to the corresponding pic on flickr
This is a black 1985 Ferrari 412 Automatic, with a 4.9 liter V12 which should give around 340 horsepower, the odometer says 9000 and something kilometers, but that’s probably 109.000 and something.
It’s for sale at a local garage in Groningen, if there’s anyone interested, you can contact me and I can put you through. I would really love it if one of my readers would buy this exquisite ride ^_^
Asking price is around EUR 28,000
If you somehow like the idea of a matte black logoless Ferrari 412, got quite some money and you can miss a considerable amount of that but you don’t want all the hassle, there’s no problem either!
You can always donate this car to me and I’ll make it a hardware hack project which will wet your pants. I promise I’ll send the logos to whoever helps me out with this one *^_^*
So if you help me out, this logo, next to probably a dozen others…
click to go to the corresponding pic on flickr
...will be yours! (if you’re the one who donates the total amount)
Now that’s quite a deal, ey?
In the mean time, I’ll stick to my own black ride with tan upholstery (matte black and no logos has been the plan with that one also, no joke) *^_^*
click to go to the corresponding pic on flickr
(this car really is for sale. If you’re interested, contact me and I can put you through.)
related:
my ultimate car list (needs updating!)
Ferrari 412 – a photoset on Flickr
a Mac in an envelope?
I’m watching (well… following by refreshing) Steve Jobs Keynote right now on Engadget.
The rumours seem to be true, there is gonna be a MacBook Air and Steve is selling it by showing it’ll fit in an envelope.
picture courtesy of engadget.com
picture courtesy of engadget.com
But… wait a minute… my old iBook already fitted quite nicely in an envelope! In reality I’ve been using envelopes (with bubbles) as sleeves for my iBook and PowerBook and that (still) works for me.
from my archive:
click to go to the projectpage
click to go to the projectpage
minimalistic no cost iBook sleeve
If fitting inside an envelope is the sales pitch I guess I still don’t have a reason to upgrade from my beloved 12 inch Macs. *^_^*
Next to that, if you’re carrying a $1799 laptop around in an envelope (as is the case with this new MBA), I suggest you take a bubbly envelope (just like me) instead of a manila one. ^_^
picture courtesy of engadget.com
I’m only joking of course, the MacBook Air looks great (well, except there’s no replaceable battery as it seems!). I can’t wait to have a look at the real deal (and can’t wait for the hype to blow over ^_^).
DIY trackback:
MAKE:blog
the Indy now scrobbles to last.fm!
Somewhere before the holidays I posted a project on how you can make a netbooting, diskless, MP3 playing Indy. Now the only thing I somehow didn’t think of, was getting this player to submit the track info to last.fm. I’ve been using last.fm for quite a while now, so I was quite eager to get this to work. Next to that, sometimes I like to spent an almost unlimited amount of time to get the tiniest detail fixed. But for people who follow me, that’s no surprise I guess. *^_^*
the setup
click to go to the project page
Anyway, after weeks of getting my head around this, I finally found a way of doing this and it works!
My Indy now submits the tracks I’m playing to last.fm! ^_^
You can read all the details overhere:
update: the Indy now scrobbles to last.fm!
we’re submitting track info!
click to go to the project page
