OMG it's Beryl!
Not too long ago I upgraded the graphics in my current workstation. Only one post later I switched from Gentoo to Ubuntu and back then, someone suggested I should take a look at Beryl. Now, almost four months later, I was up to it, and boy, couldn’t have someone prepared me for this? *^_^*
I followed these nice and easy to follow instructions:
Install Beryl on Ubuntu Edgy with AIGLX
and then the madness could start. On a first view you really need to take a good look what has changed, it’s still Gnome as a desktop. But as soon as you move windows around, you notice the wobbly windows! ^_^
After that, I accidentily hit the scroll button somewhere on the desktop, after which my jaw fell on the desk… I quickly learned that holding/pushing the scroll button (which doubles as a third mousebutton) gets you ‘the cube’...
I run multiple monitors, after fiddling around a little I think I like two cubes (one on each monitor) best, but maybe I change back to one later on. Don’t know yet.
‘The cube’ on two separate monitors (this is taken from one screenshot):
original screenshot can be found here (it’s large!)
And still my desktop on the same monitors, only now with one big cube…
original screenshot can be found here (it’s large!)
Before I continue weeeeeing about this, what can I say?
Beryl… it’s euhm… it’s nice… *^_^*
By the way, this comes at a good time for me. Lately, since I have my little powerbook 12”, I found myself more and more using that instead of my workstation. That’s no problem of course, only I keep finding myself spending too much time on that on my couch, instead of firing up my workstation. Because of this rather uncomfortable way of ‘working’ on my couch, my rightshoulder really starts to ache quite bad. I guess that’s RSI-related and such and I have that problem way less when working properly behind my desk… With this, I’m sure you can find me back at my desk again.
And of course, Beryl has to sink in a little overhere, but boy, am I impressed!
update: flash based iPod mini now up to 8GB!
Well, I couldn’t resist an update but at the same time, at current prices, it wouldn’t make sense to invest in anything larger than 8GB. So I figured a proof-of-concept of exactly the same mod as last week, only now with 8GB would be everything this world needs right now (who says I’ve got a distorted world view?), so here we go! ^_^
click to go to the project page
flash based iPod now up to 8GB!
Oh, and at the same time I added some pics which might be handy for some people trying this mod out.
traffic frenzy
Well… just after I posted my latest project, this happened:
and here are some of the sites responsible for that:
What can I say? *^_^*
Not much I guess… The idea to try this out popped into my mind last mondaynight and tuesday I bought the 4GB-CF-card at my work. Last tuesday-night I actually had better things to do but I managed to quickly test it out, make some pics and write it all down in between other work I had laying around, work which actually needed my attention more than this. I figured there could be some interest, that’s actually the reason why I wanted to post it quick, but I never expected this! Oh my… In terms of absolute traffic and getting linked to in such a short amount of time, I never experienced something like this before. It all started out when I got linked at MAKE:blog, within minutes after I posted the project. From there on, it went straight to Gizmodo and Digg. On Digg it went to the frontpage in about 3 hours(!), within 5 hours after I posted the project…
click to go the duggtrends-graph
When I woke up the next morning, I checked up just before I was to leave for work and found some very sweet words on the Cult of Mac over at Wired… That one had me smiling all the way biking to my dayjob ^_^
TUAW in the meantime figured this site is run my a whole bunch of people, something which happens more often when somebody links to me. That’s no problem of course.
And last thursday, engadget.com suggested everyone with a Mini should one-up Apple with this mod… oh dear *^_^*
Well.. after almost five days of traffic frenzy, we’re more or less back to normal levels. It was a joy to see my server held this traffic beautifully.
For instance, this happened in the comments on Digg, while on the frontpage:
And in the meantime my server has gained quite an uptime. I guess we could say this package is now stable.
$ uptime
15:42:31 up 276 days, 6:19, 1 user, load average: 0.25, 0.21, 0.18
^_^
It’s been sweet and addictive at the same time. I kept checking up on my statistics to see if there were new referrers popping up. The last few days have been a rush, in between all the other work I did. Stuff like this keeps me going, so… thank you all and it’s time to move on! ...to some new projects I guess…
click to enlarge
click to enlarge
uuuuhm… riiiight… ^_^
project: make your iPod mini flash based...
and yet another project! *^_^* This time it’s a quickie but I was so eager to try this out and, when this would work, share it, so here we go.
How to turn your iPod-mini into a flash based iPod
In this little proof-of-concept I was eager to try out if I could swap the Microdrive inside an iPod-mini for a Compact Flash-card. These cards are getting bigger and cheaper by the day so my idea was, if this works out, we have a great way of extending the life of this little MP3-player…
click to go to the projectpage
click to go to the projectpage
project: LED throwie bike lighting
Ever since Brightlive I had some throwie-material left, now here’s what I did with it:
click to go to the projectpage
click to go to the projectpage
LED throwie bike lighting, bike lights for minimalists!
*^_^*
storage myths busted
Well, for storage freak^H^H^H^H^Henthusiasts it’s been quite a week. The only thing missing is the Mythbusters themselves presenting the facts. I guess I’ve had a fair share of failing disks (that link is just one of them) and once you’ve experienced this random behaviour on nowadays tech, anyone who likes to be in control of his or her tech becomes a storage fanatic just like that!
click to go to the corresponding pic on flickr
Anyway, first of all Google put a paper online with some interesting facts.
Failure Trends in a Large Disk Drive Population
link to pdf-file
There’s a summary to be found over here.
And then another paper became popular:
Disk failures in the real world:
What does an MTTF of 1,000,000 hours mean to you?
link to pdf-file
A summary of that paper can be found over here.
Read both papers (or their summaries) and really, you will think different about hard drives from now on (even when you didn’t think about them at all before)
For instance (out of the last paper):
“Interestingly, we observe little difference in replacement rates between SCSI, FC and SATA drives, potentially an indication that disk-independent factors, such as operating conditions, affect replacement rates more than component specific factors.”
By the way, both of these papers were presented on last week’s 5th USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies (aka FAST’07)
So do like Google does, no RAID and replicate everything three times (on cheap drives)... If this means anyone has to get rid of all-of-a-sudden-out-of-fashion SCSI U320 drives, I’ll be happy to oblige and buy some of those drives cheap. (I’m such a nice guy and I don’t mind some old-fashioned setups) *^_^*
...and then, nominated for a Dutch Bloggie?!?
...it seems that geektechnique is nominated for a Dutch Bloggie 2007!
woohoo! *^_^*
This site is nominated in the category ‘best personal weblog’. Somehow I always thought it was quite funny (and I could see the advantage that this wasn’t considered a Dutch blog, although, that might’ve been just me trying to come up with an explanation) that this page was never counted in any list of Dutch blogs/pages (there are probably a gazillion of those lists) while I was quite sure that it should’ve been in there sometimes, all depending of course what you are looking for and/or depending on what is listed. Any how, I guess that is all history now, because this site now is nominated :D
click to go to corresponding page on dutchbloggies.nl
I’m not sure when this happened, according to my stats, some members of the jury already visited this page to rate it
...and it doesn’t seem they click any further than the frontpage (yeah I know, statistics are suckers ^_^)
So, if you’re a member of the Dutch Bloggies Jury and you want to know a little more about what this page is all about (cause really, only looking at the frontpage doesn’t do anyone justice I guess) try my projects-page or if you’re in a hurry just my two latest projects:
click to go to the projectpage
Oh, they seem to like it in China, do they have these awards over there also? ^_^
and
DIY obsolete iBook logic-board repair
click to go to the projectpage
...or just wander around… (on the top right you’ll find the navigation of this site…) ^_^
...and for everybody else, there’s no way to vote at this point, so I’m not asking you either (now that’s convenient, isn’t it?) just wish me good luck on this one. All right?
...and then what?
Well, every once in a while I’m so in the middle of a lot of stuff, only at a moment like today I realize there’s not much to post, cause nothing is near finishing right now…
Actually, I’m really trying to make my big obsolete computer laboratory into a workable environment. To get to that point I did cheat a little, I’ve putten my old iBook upstairs (but hey, that’s obsolete in every sense… but it’s also the quickest machine in that room…) and now I use that there also, for googling and watching pdf-files in getting all the information to get the other systems going. If I can spend a few hours there every once in a while, at some point I should be getting there.
well, the Indigo2 works!
click to enlarge
Next to that, there’s plenty of stuff which happened lately and I barely blogged or didn’t blog at all (sometimes I consider putting a vague picture on my flickr with an even more vague description (if any) already blogging, but of course, that isn’t…)
Last wednesday I’ve been to AMS-IX. Now I know I said that, but just take a look at this machine alone.
click to go to the corresponding pic on flickr
It’s a glimmerglass intelligent optical switch and if I’m right, all the traffic from the AMS-IX, which happens to be the busiest internet exchange in the world, is going through that switch. (There’s a second one on another location btw.) Now think about that for a second. To me, it’s almost incomprehensible how much data that is. In numbers it’s about 250 gigabits/second tops (which they reach almost every day), but imagine the amount of people, the amount of machines, the amount of everything connected and which output is actually going through those lines… Well, any way, I was impressed… ^_^
Next, (something which I also already put on my flickr), as it turns out, a little piece about me ended up in something called the Amsterdam Index 2007, the pics which I made in the bookstore can be found here. In the end, I bought that copy, I’m not that cheap, you know?
yeah yeah yeah, I got my own copy ^_^
click to enlarge
Then, this afternoon I got a visit from a photographer, Thomas Schlijper, who came all the way from Amsterdam to take some pics of stuff I made, some of them including Bates and oh, myself. Some of these pics will be used in an article in a Dutch magazine, HCC!link. I enjoyed the session and I can’t wait to see the end result. For now, he put one (imho quite brilliant looking) picture up on his photoblog.
click to go to the corresponding picture on schlijper.nl
And for now, that’s about it! *^_^*
...and some gear which came home with me!
Well, all this energy about obsolete hardware had to go somewhere right? No, I didn’t pick up a 19” rack of some sort in a fancy colour and I didn’t pick it up with a truck (or einen LKW mit Hebebühne) either…
But, I did pick up something today:
click any pic to enlarge it
...and brought it home by train *^_^*
Today I visited Amsterdam for a trip to the Amsterdam Internet Exchange, or AMS-IX for short. Pics of my trip can be found here.
Anyway, it happens more often that I decide to ‘double-use’ my trip to pick up a machine, or two, while I’m at it and so I did today:
by the way, this machine doesn’t come from the AMS-IX or such, the seller just happened to be located in Amsterdam, that’s all
click any pic to enlarge it
The machine is an SGI Indigo2 and yes, that’s the Owner’s Guide I’m reading there on my powerbook (in the train)... (and oh, that bag is a bag designed to carry Compact Macs)
I guess it’s a nice add-on for my laboratory upstairs (which doubles as a bedroom).
You can expect (and I truly hope this works out) that any future YouTube-videos on this site from me have been edited on this machine. I don’t know, even if it would take me ages. To me doing it this way just seems right….
^_^
...and some gear which is going somewhere
...probably
Oh dear… even though you could say I’ve got enough obsolete gear, I can’t help myself and strawl around on eBay and such for more. Especially for strange exotic gear and one of the things to look for in my case is Silicon Graphics gear. I don’t know, I keep having a soft spot for that stuff. I also try to rescue it if I can. Anyway, look what I found now:
click any pic to enlarge it
*^_^*
sofort Einsatzbereit
(das Gerät ist sehr schwer. Selbstabholer müssen einen LKW mit Hebebühne mitbringen)
Ab 1,00 Euro.
Well, it’s just a little too big for me(...) and even though it’s advertized as ‘from 1 euro!’, with eight days to go, the bidding is at 693 euros and I’m pretty sure it’ll rise some more.
Of course, that’s peanuts compared to it’s original cost, but not something I see myself ever pay for something which classifies as ‘hobby only’ as I can’t see a system like this being used in any commercial way anymore.
By the way, at the University in my town they have a somewhat similar system (an Onyx 3400). Now if even this kind of gear already is getting classified as obsolete… maybe I should contact them and ask when they plan to throw that one out… *^_^*
...then I start planning on renting a bigger space …and a truck! ^_^
