Category Archives: technology

The Big Box Dilemma

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Like most people, geeks, freaks, I have more than one computer. I don’t want to go into that right now. it’d be a longer post.  Over the last couple of years I’ve thinned the herd such that I now have only one ‘big box’. As I write, the details are here, but for the sake of click saving, it’s roughly this: Athlon64 3700, DFI gaming mobo, 2GB RAM, 256MB nVidia6800GS.  I built it in December 2005 as an acceptable games rig. In the end, it got older, as did I, and thanks to family, an XBOX 360 and a PS3, I don’t really game on the PC at all now. About 18 months ago, this became my Linux server with a plug-in eSATA Windows drive for gaming. At some point in the meantime, I’ve lost that drive. The issue with home servers is that I need it quieter, and to use as little power as possible when it’s on (not 24/7), thus I did some quick power checks:

Functional rest at the desktop: ~80 Watts

Being used normally  on desktop: ~90-100 Watts

Peaks during high CPU/HDD use: ~115Watts.

This is all a lot lower than I expected, but it is still a little loud. The are two main fans which make the noise – a 120mm front fan and a 100mm rear fan, with the graphics card a little behind them.

I was thinking of getting an EeeBox or similar, but honestly, I think I can cure the noise for less than 10,000yen:

1) Replace the fans with new, slower turning quieter fans for about 6,000yen.

2) Replace the 6800GS with it’s Arctic Cooling fan with a passively cooled card for ~ 4,000yen.

I’ve already played with OS and BIOS settings, so all things being equal, I’m hoping this will make for a quieter, lower power server.

(Caveat: I know spending money on a 3.5yr machine is odd, but I think it does have a few years left. Also, the 6800GS is quite big – the newer card will be smaller, and thus maybe help heatflow also. It’s 25% the price of an Eeebox.)

Screen Burn or Just Tired?

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I’ve been saying my venerable seven and a half year old Iiyama 17″ 4:3 LCD was on it’s last legs for about a year now, but it plods on. I like it. It’s dependable. Certainly the backlighting has been a bit uneven of late, but it’s fine for what I use it for. That said, I noticed a few weeks ago a bit of screen burn in the top left corner; a burn in of the Apple logo and Finder menu item, since I largely use my Mac on this screen.Hmm.

‘Well, it’s not interfering with play, so let’s push on.’


Today though, after almost a full day using my Xubuntu box on the same screen, that ‘burn in’ is now pretty much the menu bar from the XFCE desktop.

So is this really ‘burn’ or is it more of tired, old pixels just taking a break. Well, if I do swap this out, I’ll keep it to one side just in case, and any new monitor will likely be from Iiyama, which is odd for me as I tend not to let one purchase affect the decision very much on another. That said, it seems most of my friends have been through a few monitors in the time I’ve had this one, so I think Iiyama deserve a second shot.

From iPhone

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This is a slightly more pointless post than normal, but it’s just to test the WordPress application on my iPhone just in case I absolutely, positively have to post on the go. As it stands, I’m sat in a cafe in Akihabara listening to a podcsst, writing this. Hope the weather is nice wherever you are.

Online Backups

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For a while now I’ve been looking for better offsite storage, or even online storage for backups and archiving. It was fine shipping DVDs to the parents house, or similar, for a while, but I want fewer discs and something where I can get at it easily from anywhere. For this, I’m now testing Jungledisk on my Mac and Linux boxes, in conjunction with Amazon S3 services. This costs money, but so do discs, DVDs and air freight.

At the other end of the spectrum, I wanted something I could set up and (sort of) forget on my parent’s Mac to back up some of their files, so I’m testing out MozyHome Free on my MacBook to see how it goes. More news likely next month after I’ve kicked them both around a little.

One other system I’ve been playing with for a few months is Microsoft’s rather good Live Services, especially the SkyDrive, which now lets you have 25GB of storage for free, but it limited to a maximum file size of 50MB, and a fairly weak interface. More news on that soon also, after Mesh really gets moving.

[Fixed] iPod Photo Copy Problem

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A few weeks ago I posted that I was getting a rather silly error message basically saying that I couldn’t complete copying / syncing my iPhoto photos to my iPod, and later, my iPhone (more on that, hopefully never).

Anyway, long story short and after a bit of time on some search engines, I finally found some help which meant deleting a cache folder. That done, I can now sync all my photos successfully to all devices.

Note in that article, the problem described wasn’t exactly the one I had, but I thought it was worth a try, and it did seem to work.

Cable Cull

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Like most people with an enthusiasm for the technical I seem to amass, attract, or otherwise aquire cables, connectors, converters, other paraphernalia of a mobile life, the skeletal remains of previous generations of technology and other items which end up in boxes and on shelves. Of course to my family this is known as ‘the cable junk pile’.

Tonight then, in an effort to procrastinate over doing some real household chores, I took it upon myself to go through the back storeroom, which is home to most of the computing equipment, and through some boxes, and decide what things I need, and what I don’t.

Actually, I’m quite practical and ruthless when I have these clear-outs. There’s almost no emotional attachment involved, except when it comes to my old Palm IIIe which I will keep in a box near me forever, you hear me? Forever!

After about an hour I had no visible cables on the shelf and places, and was down to my one small cardboard box and toolbox again. All the things I might need are in the former, and the day to day items like chargers and such are in the latter.

The big losers this time were: S-video cables, a joystick which has been broken for at least 4 years, some RCA cables, about 3 USB -> mini USB cables, of which I have many, some coax cable I didn’t know I had, a fan I will never use in my PC and various other things which I just don’t have the devices to use (old Canon Ixy charger) or have duplicates of (the aforementioned cables).

Anyway, it’s done and I’ve pruned my burgeoning cable nest sufficiently that the rest of my family are satiated with the sacrifice for now.

RRoDeathed

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Well, it had to come I suppose. The Xbox 360 I bought in late February 2007 finally Red Ring of Death’d tonight. Actually, it’s been crashing a bit over the last week, but tonight, it’s totally d.e.a.d. or rather R.R.o.D. (Note the second image is a Flickr! video.)

Red Ring of Death

RRoD

I’ll call them up tonight and see if I can get it replaced before my copy of Dead Space arrives.

Let me in Mr. Drupal.

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I’ve just updated my Drupal install for Brightblack to version 6.5. The procedure for this is well documented, and on the whole, not difficult. However, just like the last time I updated, I see a problem after the install and upgrade, where the site keeps up the page for “Sorry, I’m in maintenance mode!” instead of showing the normal front page and log in details.

I’m noting this here, so I remember next time how to fix it more quickly. The trick is going into the database, either directly using SQL query, or via the host’s phpMyAdmin system, and changing the site_offline variable to “0″, and then cleaning out the database’s cached copy of the variable, and it should all come back. I did find a version of this on a few sites, and as a suggestion on the official forums.

Retro-Gamepad

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We’ve been doing a bit of retro-gaming of late, so I thought I’d get a cheap USB gamepad for some games. I got the sexily named Elecom JC-U1608TBK for a princely 1,280 JPY, which proudly mentions no Mac support, so I plugged it in and after a little fiddling, it works fine with my emulators. I note it has Windows Me support, but no stated Mac support. I guess I underestimate Me market share. Let’s not confuse that with MobileMe.

It’s a no frills, no analogue stick, 8-bit (and below) gamepad, so if you’re looking for one, it does work on the Mac.

As I often do, if you are having problems running some HID USB devices on a Mac even now, I recommend downloading USBOverdrive which is wonderful, especially if you bought a Logitech mouse and found that even if it has Mac drivers, you can’t address most buttons – this will let you do that.