A beautiful day outside. Sunny, clear bright-blue skies, just a degree or two below freezing. Huge white snowpiles. It’s wonderful. When it’s days like these I have no problems remembering why I love living where I do, and I have no trouble enjoying winter.

I took these photos yesterday, actually. But the weather today is the same, except a lot less windy. Yesterday it was gusting quite heavily – today it’s completely calm. Today you can feel the suns rays warming your face.

A while back I had a neat idea. It was one of those brainfarts that I occasionally get, and while the majority of them are quite stupid this one actually seemed kind of neat.

See, I own a cheap no-name generic bluetooth dongle. It works quite well and I like being able to connect my phone to my computer using it. Transfer files, sync phonebooks and all that jazz.

Anyhoo, this particular dongle has a tiny green LED indicating activity. When it’s idle it blinks at a rate of about 1 blink per second. When connected to a device it lights up stronger and also flashes intensely if there’s data-transfer. Demonstrated in the video below.

It was the 1 blink per second that got me thinking.

Why not put simulated aircraft lights on a casemod? I’ve always liked the blinks of airplanes and helictopters, and if you’re building an aircraft-themed case why not add a few aircraft LED’s to the mix. Much more stylish than the old-ass windows and cold-cathode tubes everyone has. Additionally it adds some neat bling to it, and also makes the case seem more hardcore. It would even work on a spaceship-themed mod as for example the good old NCC-1701 has aircraft lights on it.

I think that would be kind of neat, some nice pseudo-aircraft lights on a sweet hightech/military type looking case.

However, if you decide to go this route, you shouldn’t use particularly bright LEDs, rather you should go for the subtle approach. In this case (har har) I would say that less is definitely more.

I’ve built countless computers in my days. I’ve built them for myself, for friends and professionally. There is very little I don’t know about building computers, and while I don’t really have the time to keep up with every single new invention I adjust quickly when it’s crunchtime. I started building my own custom computers long before it was common to own a computer, much less assemble it yourself.

While hardware has come and gone there is one axiom that still remains when it comes to building your own computer, and that is the undeniable fact that any included cooler will always suck ass. This is still true, despite the years rolling on and despite technology getting better. Any CPU-cooler that’s included with a retail purchase of a CPU will pretty much blow chunks.

Sure, I admit that it’s money that’s the primary reason. CPU manufacturers simply throw together the cheapest thing that will do the job and ship it, and that’s why the damn things are loud, awfully engineered and keep the CPU at a temperature that is adequate but not in the least impressive.

I recently built a new computer. At first glance the included box-cooler looked pretty decent. It had heatpipes. It had lots and lots of thin aluminium-fins. It had a copper-core.

And when I started the computer it still sounded like a helicopter with severe case of swineflu. In addition, I think that had I put a slice of cold grapefruit on the CPU instead it would’ve been better at cooling the processor.

Why is this?

I think Intel and AMD need to realize they suck at doing this, and tell whatever chinese sweatshop that are assembling these turds to drop dead. Wouldn’t it simply be easier to ask for example Arctic Cooling to build coolers for them to include with a new CPU? Arctic Cooling manages to make coolers that are not only quite efficient, but aren’t ludicrously priced and also fairly quiet.

Not too long ago it became clear that dutch company Spyker will be purchasing SAAB Automobile from GM for a lot of money. I’ve been a bit split about this, but it’s not like I have a lot of say-so in the matter. I think GM is throwing away a big and almost vital piece of their own technology, since most of the other GM-produced marques such as Cadillac depend heavily on SAAB-developed technology.

None the less, the sale will happen. I stumbled upon this little article which urges Spyker to re-introduce a SAAB-branded Sonett, and I’m totally for that.

However, when I started thinking about this whole retro-thing I realized there’s a better candidate for Spyker to bring back. As the above-mentioned article says there’s lots of companies who’ve had success at bringing back retro-styled models. I for one love the new Fiat 500 which is just so cute and sexy. BMW brought back the new Mini, and lest we forget the questionable decision VW made a decade or so back to bring out a retro-styled bug.

So I got to thinking… Why not bring back a retro-styled SAAB 93? The 93 is a classic SAAB, and it’s a damn cute car, especially the ones from the mid to late 1950s. I think this would be a much better choice of introducing than the Sonett, which despite all it’s good things has some issues. The first one is that the Sonett would be yet another two-seater pseudo sportscar, while a retro-styled 93 has a backseat and could function as a family car while at the same time being a neat and sporty hot hatchback type vehicle. We shouldn’t forget that SAAB had quite good results in various rallies with the 93 and similar vehicles back in the day.

I mean, just look at the SAAB 93 from 1959. Doesn’t it just scream out for a retro-makeover and being built with modern technology? Replace the nasty old two-stroke engine from the original with a nice little hybrid and I think it would give the beloved Prius a run for its money. Make a funky, nice retro-styled SAAB 93 with the original suicide-doors, let people have plenty of options when it comes to color and addons and I wouldn’t be the least surprised if it could enjoy the same success as the Fiat 500.

Look who’s figured out that there’s a perfectly sized little jungle room for her in the kitchen, and discovered that it’s quite nice to sit there and soak up the spring sun.

It seems like eons ago that I started this thing. Back in 2003 I installed what would become this server, and after a while this started to grow. The name (darklands) was inherited from that machines previous owner, and it still felt right. Admittedly I have none of the original hardware left, having replaced everything including the chassis, but the name still sticks.

Debian was the operating system of choice, made as far as I can remember on an impulse and a mild suggestion from a friend. Debian Woody to be precise, since back then I didn’t really know much about Debian and went for the “stable” release.

This installation served well for the next seven or so years. It got upgraded twice (from Woody to Sarge, then from Sarge to Etch) and survived my occasionally wild exploits. It hosted websites, and helped teach me a lot about the finer qualities of maintaining a 24/7 server.

But as time went by it became more and more unstable. Or rather, not unstable as such (uptime when I pulled it offline was 270+ days) but it had developed a lot of personality. Since I didn’t quite know what I was doing in the beginning, back in 2003, I took a lot of -in hindsight- very poor decisions. Decisions which I later regretted and had to endure working around for the next seven years, always being a nagging irritation at the back of my mind.

No more of this now.

I spent a week reinstalling the machine from scratch. After giving a lot of thought to it all I decided to go with Ubuntu Server instead of the previous choice, Debian. Admittedly, since Ubuntu is based on Debian the differences are very subtle, and all in all I’m quite happy with Ubuntu even as a server OS. It’s got the good things about Debian, and very few of the annoying ones.

The reinstallation was surprisingly smooth. I transferred the original machine into a virtualized environment running on my workstation to minimize the downtime while working on the actual machine. This proved to be a good idea, and I’m happy I took the time to do it. It also cemented that VirtualBox is a perfectly decent environment for virtualized computing.

Reinstallation went smooth. Minor hiccups always occur, but with seven years of experience I sorted them fairly quickly. Getting the external services running proved a challenge, but after some tweaking I managed it just fine. Apache, MySQL, all that stuff went up fairly quickly, and with minor modifications and tweaks the original content and configurations could be transferred to the new environment.

Internal services also went up smoothly. In about two days I had gotten approximately 90% of the external and internal services up and running. Quite nice. It’s been running for about a week now, basically just a shakedown to make sure things don’t go haywire for no reason.

Work remains, but now I can do it in the background or at night while the machine hums along and provides the same services it has always done. I’m happy, and proud of myself.

I’ve been avoiding upgrading Firefox from 3.5 since up until just recently I hadn’t found a good way to do it under Ubuntu. The only real option I’d found (apart from installing it manually) was using the mozilla-daily PPA, and that has some negative effects since you’re essentially installing a nightly developer-build of the browser that isn’t adapted to Ubuntu. It’s just a little too bleeding-edge for my taste; having your browsers behavior change on a virtually daily basis because you’re running nightlies of developer-versions is not something I recommend. Additionally it doesn’t install the Firefox-branded version but rather the generic Iceweasel-version instead, which is a minor annoyance.

Until I found this little article detailing a different PPA to use, and it worked flawlessly. A quick tour in aptitude and presto, new version of Firefox.

I’ve been using Firefox as my main browser for many years now, and I see almost no incentive to change that habit. I’ve used it since back before it was Firefox, back when it was Firebird, and it’s still the best browser in most ways. 3.6 has made it better by removing some of the annoyances I had with 3.5, most notably how the browser would often simply “pause” for a second or two. Admittedly a lot of these annoyances could stem from me using about 56954 different extensions but whatever.

It’s a nice improvement, and if you’re using Ubuntu then the abovementioned PPA will be a nice and easy way to upgrade. It won’t blow your socks off, but it’s a nice improvement. Slightly faster and more of the same Firefox-goodness we’ve all come to love over the years.

I just found this completely awesome video of some norwegian dude doing pixel-art when re-tiling his shower. This is so cool! Lots of work but deeply impressive results!

Maybe some day when I redo my kitchen I’ll steal this idea and do a pixelart tile motif in it somewhere…

Either click the link up there to go to Vimeo and watch the video in much better quality, or enjoy the embedded (lesser-quality) version down below.

I’m not much for clocks on my wall. Part of this is due to the fact that I’m old-fashioned and wear a wrist-watch, but mostly it’s due to my deep and utter dislike for clocks on walls. Most of the time they’re ugly, useless, ticking pieces of plastic.

However, this clock I actually like. It’s just simple digital (duh) digits. The neat thing about them is that they’re OLED, and in sunlight they’re black and in darkness they’re white. Don’t get it? Look at the picture below.

I like minimalist type designs, and as such this appeals to me. Currently the clock isn’t in production but if it starts being produced and doesn’t cost an arm and a leg I could consider buying one.

Read more at the designers site.

Well, I took the dawg (aka Hilda) and walked to the petstore today. Good times, she was really excited and behaved mostly well. Unlike some other dogs I’ve encountered she understood that it was not dog-heaven and she wasn’t free to play with all the toys, other dogs or eat all the candy. But it was exciting, none the less, and a good walk.

Bought a orange rubber ball that we had fun with earlier tonight. Man, throwing a ball and watching this dog chase after it is like firing a cannon. She shoots off at the speed of sound, I kid you not.

Here’s a picture of her and the cat chillaxing in the couch. The cat is extremely uninterested in the dog but tolerates her. The dog is curious about the cat but is a little nervous after being hit in the face by aforementioned animal quite unexpectedly the other day.