To Tweet Or Not To Tweet, That Is The Question

2010/08/31 — isecore

… or, Why Should I Keep My Facebook-Account?

A while back I got myself an account on aforementioned website. I think it was in 2008, some time. Compared to many other social networks that I’ve become a member of, Facebook then seemed a lot nicer. People used their real names, had actual photos of themselves rather than some celebrity or lookalike, and also the somewhat strict and spartan design of the site meant that unlike hell-holes like MySpace you couldn’t do much in the way of fucking up customizing your profile.

So it seemed okay.

But recently there’s been a lot of changes that have made me lose what little affection I had for Facebook. Chief among these have been the draconian changes to privacy settings, but there was a lot of other things that changed too. In fact, the only thing I still really like about it is the status-updates. It’s an easy way to keep in touch with friends, and an easy way for me to dole out whatever brainfarts I get.

So last night while I was waiting for sleep to happen to me, I started thinking. Thinking about my Facebook-activities and parts of my online activities overall. I don’t blog as much as I used to, for example. There was a time when I would spew out long, rambling stuff on a daily basis. I don’t really do that as much any longer, not because I don’t enjoy writing but simply because I’ve grown a little tired of blogging and feel that my writing abilities could be focused on other ventures. So, blogging has been put on the back-burner, and occasionally I feel bad about it, but it’s really just evolutionary – maybe someday I’ll be back to producing mind-numbing tedious rants on a daily basis again, who knows?

I also started thinking about how I like the status-updates type thing on Facebook, which is essentially a type of micro-blogging. The problem there is that you basically have to be a member of Facebook and a friend of mine there to see them. I’ve locked down my privacy settings as hard as you can, and that keeps them pretty private.

But it would be nice to have some way of communicating these small brainfarts to the rest of the world, outside of the iron curtain of my Facebook privacy settings. Which led my thoughts to Twitter.

Now, my official disposition to Twitter is utter contempt. I actually do like the concept of microblogging but I dislike Twitter and the whole culture of tweeting and blapping and retweeting and booming and jonesing and poppin’ and lockin’ and whatever other jargon they use. Every time I’ve encountered Twitterites (Twitters? Twitterers? Tweeters?) I’ve always gotten the impression that to use the service you have to buy into the whole culture. This annoys me. I want to use it my way, not the same way as everyone else. But maybe that’s just me being stubborn and backwards and get-off-my-lawn-you-damn-kids type grumpy.

Secondly, if I’m gonna go for the tweeting then I want a mobile way of doing it. As it is, I’m locked down to my computer to twitter stuff, and when I have a brain-fart on the go I’d need some type of mobile device to do this. My current phone is a SonyEricsson K750, it’s going on a bit over five years old and while surprisingly capable it still is pretty dumb. But I like it fine, it still works great and apart from some minor scrapes a bruises it’s essentially in mint condition. Maybe there’s some Java Twitter or something for it? I’ll better check that out.

Now, return to Facebook. I’m seriously thinking about ending my tenure there. The annoyances are becoming to severe. But, I still want to be able to give y’all status updates. Thus, Twitter seems like the perfect replacement. At least until Diaspora goes online in half a month or so, and I’m very curious about that thing. But Twitter exists and is ready.

I’m not sure about these plans either. This is essentially just me ventilating my thoughts, which is why you have a blog.

Posted in Blogging, Computers, My domain. No Comments »

One Primary Reason Why I Prefer Ubuntu

2010/08/02 — isecore

I happened upon this image a few weeks ago, and I started thinking about it.

I started thinking about how Windows assumes that you’re a criminal, and it’s up to you as a user (through constant verification with Microsoft) to prove that you’re not. Unlike how most of civilized society views the legal process, where you’re innocent until proven guilty, Microsoft works the opposite way. You’re guilty until you continually prove your innocence.

And this annoys me. Because even if you’ve bought Windows, paid your hard-earned money for it, you’re still being treated as a potential criminal. Even if you’re a loyal customer to Microsoft, you’re still constantly being treated with a degree of mistrust. Even if you’ve bought and used nothing but Microsoft-produced software for all of your life, this still doesn’t qualify you to be completely trusted by them.

I find it both sad and kind of funny how many corporations today expect customers to keep buying their things, but still insist on treating them with dislike and as potential criminals. The movie and recording industry are prime examples here, but Microsoft does the same thing to a slightly lesser degree. When you run Windows, you’re not trusted. Not only are you not trusted to be running “genuine” software (whatever that means) you’re not trusted to take care of your computer. Windows will constantly treat you like a semi-retarded individual.

But, I digress. The point of this whole rant is that Windows (and by extension it’s creator, Microsoft) does not trust you. Like a greedy dragon it will lie on the golden pile, constantly watching you and constantly distrusting you.

Ubuntu, on the other hand, does trust you. It trusts you so far that you’re even allowed to peek at the source code, the magic sauce that makes it all happen – and even entrusts you with the power to modify this and share your modifications with the world. Ubuntu has no need to verify if it’s “genuine” since it’s always genuine. It’s redundant, and in the world of Ubuntu it’s as absurd as trying to sell shoes to fish.

Ubuntu does trust you, and doesn’t monitor you. It also does not treat you as a second-class individual and gives you the power. After that, it’s up to you to wield that power properly.

Posted in Computers, Linux/UNIX, Software, Windows. No Comments »

What Kind Of Screw Is This?

2010/07/29 — isecore

I need to find a screwdriver that fits this, and if anyone out there in Internet-land knows what kind of screw this is it would be very helpful.

The screw in question (or screws, since there’s four of them) is located on an IBM drive-tray for my servers. I would very much like being able to replace the drives myself, and thus need to know what kind of screw it is. I’m leaning towards this being some weird IBM proprietary screw, but I also feel it should be pretty easy to locate a driver for it.

Basically it looks a lot like some torx-variant, but it has a pin in the middle. I hope you can make it out from my crappy macro-photography.

Posted in Computers, Hardware. 5 Comments »

Ett Inlägg Om Servrar Åt Min Söta Mamma

2010/07/07 — isecore

För ett tag sen pratade jag med min älskade mor om mitt projekt att drifta en “riktig” server som ersättare för dels min egen hemmaserver, men även åt diverse släkt och vänner för att slippa bökiga webhotell.

Under samtalets gång säger hon att hon är lite nyfiken, och frågar: “Hur stor är en server egentligen?”

Jag hummar en stund och försöker sen förklara att servrar som regel är rackmonterade, och därför är de platta och avlånga. Jag förklarar det här med hur man delar upp rack i units, dvs enheter, och hur de minsta servrarna tar upp 1U, dvs en enhet i racket. Hur det finns tjockare maskiner som tar upp kanske 2U eller mer. Jag förklarade att servrar är specialbyggda för att klämma in så mycket maskin som möjligt på så lite fysisk yta som möjligt, samt att det är fantastiskt bullriga maskiner då de är byggda för funktion, inte för form.

Nåväl. Ord via en telefon är alltid bra, men en fysisk demonstration är alltid bättre. I brist på fysisk demonstration får nedanstående exempel duga.

Tidigare idag var jag och Jocke och hämtade inte en, inte två, utan tre stycken fullt godkända servrar av fabrikat IBM. De väger uppskattningsvis ca 35 kilo styck. Det här är en av dem.

Först lite bilder:


Servern från ovan. Framsidan av maskinen är den svarta sidan närmast kameran.


En bättre vy över framsidan. De vita märkena är rester från dymo-märkningen av diskarna och maskinen i sig. Jag har plockat bort dessa märken då de inte längre fyller nån funktion, och lite senare ska jag sätta mig med nagellacksborttagningen och ta bort klisterresterna. Det är inte den vackraste framsidan jag sett på en dator, men den är funktionell. Maskinen har plats för totalt 6 stycken hot-swappable SCSI-hårddiskar, och fem stycken sitter i. Hot-swappable på vanlig svenska betyder att man kan rycka ut och byta hårddiskar under drift, dvs utan att behöva stänga av datorn.


Baksidan. Inte så jättespännande egentligen. Grundläggande portar för skärm och tangentbord. Fyra stycken nätverksportar – de flesta normala desktop-datorer har en. Längst till höger två stycken nätaggregat för att förse datorn med ström. Dessa är också hot-swappable, och redundanta, dvs om en av dem går sönder tar den andra automatiskt över.


Ett foto med locket av. Bokstavligt locket av, då man lyfter av överdelen av maskinen medelst en mycket smidig liten snäppgrej. Det här är kylningen för hela maskinen. Åtta stycken stora, fantastiskt bullriga fläktar.

Vilket för oss till den riktigt praktiska demonstrationen. En liten film jag spelade in med min digitalkamera där jag dels kopplar in strömmen, och sedan slår igång maskinen. Det ger en uppfattning om precis hur mycket oväsen den här saken för. Kom ihåg att det är mycket värre i verkligheten. Tänk en armé av hårtorkar som slår igång.

Jag vet inte om det hörs heller, men när man kopplar in strömmen i nätaggregatet slår fläkten igång, på lågt varvtal. Så länge strömmen är inkopplad snurrar den lågt och skapar ett tyst litet hummande. Sen trycker man på strömmen för datorn, och de där åtta stora fläktarna drar igång och skapar en mindre tornado. Ställer man sig på baksidan av datorn är det som en relativt stark fläkt som blåser.

När man lyfter av locket ökar bullernivån dramatiskt. Det här är med andra ord ingenting man vill ha hemma, igång dygnet runt. Såvida man inte vill bli tokig. Eller som jag, redan är det.

Posted in Computers, Hardware. 2 Comments »

Om Det Här Med Server

2010/05/25 — isecore

Jag har funderat mer på det här med servrar, och att drifta en gemensam för släkt och vänner. Intresset har varit positivt, men alla har undrat vad det kostar. Därför tänkte jag försöka ge en ungefärlig uppgift om priser. Dock är det svårt att säga exakt, då priserna på en begagnad server varierar enormt mycket, och då jag än så länge letar efter en hall att placera den i.

Men ungefärligt prisexempel…

Först måste en fysisk maskin införskaffas. Jag har kikat runt och börjat dra i lite snören för att försöka hitta en komplett, begagnad maskin till rimligt pris. Man kan hitta dem på Blocket också, och jag har tittat där. Nåt som är väldigt lockande är t.ex. nedanstående annons, som jag kopierat som exempel.

Här är alltså någon som säljer två (såvitt jag kan avgöra) identiska maskiner. Priset per maskin är 2500 kronor, vilket i praktiken är att säljaren skänker bort dem. Jag hade köpt båda maskinerna, och transplanterat så många delar från den ena till den andra som möjligt. Därmed hade en maskin skapats som har gott om prestanda för den överskådliga framtiden, och till mycket rimlig prispenning.

Om vi är tio personer hade det räckt med en femhundring per person för att införskaffa nåt sånt här. Återigen vill jag dock poängtera att det här bara är ett exempel. Ju mer man kan delta med ekonomiskt, desto kraftfullare maskin skulle kunna införskaffas.

Man vill inte köpa en “för” begagnad maskin heller, då saker som hårddiskar och fläktar är förslitningsvara och förr eller senare måste bytas ut. Hårddiskar i en för gammal maskin som varit i drift tidigare har ju därmed betydligt förkortad livslängd än splitternya diskar, exempelvis. Dock tror jag inte detta är ett alltför stort problem, men man måste vara beredd på det.

Kostnaden för att hysa in maskinen i en hall, s.k. co-location varierar enormt. Dock verkar det som att man inte kommer undan för mindre än 300-400 kronor i månaden, beroende på vilka behov man har, hur stor plats man tar upp i racket, hur många IP-adresser man behöver osv.

Men nu har ni som eventuellt är intresserade lite mer kött på benen vad gäller kostnader.

Posted in Computers, Internet. 2 Comments »

En Serverdröm

2010/05/13 — isecore

En tanke som vuxit i mitt huvud är att driva egen server. Jag gör det nu, inofficiellt, men skulle vilja göra det i mer officiell kapacitet. Kanske som ett litet webhotell?

Jag sköter om sidor och domäner åt ganska många människor nu, en del ligger på “riktiga” webhotell och andra bor hos mig på min hemmaserver till självkostnadspris. Självkostnadspris, dvs vi delar på elräkningen för att ha en maskin igång 24/7.

Emellanåt under de senaste åren har tanken på att flytta till en “riktig” server dykt upp. Det hade varit skönt att slippa ha en server hemma som slukar dyr elström, och det finns många lockelser med att flytta till ett webhotell. Dock har jag alltid känt att styrkan i att driva egen server försvinner, och man får underkasta sig diverse nycker som webhotell alltid har.

Alternativen har varit att hyra en VPS (Virtual Private Server, en virtualiserad server), att hyra en dedikerad server eller att köpa en maskin och bo på en Co-Location nånstans. VPS är ganska uteslutet då jag ännu inte hittat nån VPS-leverantör som ger valuta för pengarna i förhållande till mina behov. Att hyra en server är ett alternativ, men ett dyrt sådant i förhållande till vad man får. En colo förutsätter att man redan har en maskin att drifta, något jag för närvarande inte har.

Men…

På senare tid har jag börjat sparka runt idén med att köpa en bättre begagnad server och hyra in den på colocation samt flytta alla tjänster jag annars driver hemifrån dit. Jag tänker också att då skulle jag officiellt kunna flytta bl.a. min far och min moster dit och släppa lös dem från det kommersiella webhotell de bor på nu. Kanske vill Jocke också flytta dit? Ylva, André, Linda, John och Micke bor redan hos mig.

Tanken som är nu blir nåt i stil med att alla intresserade delar på inköpskostnaden för maskinen och den månatliga kostnaden för en colo. Jag sköter administrationen och driften av maskinen, och kollektivt delar vi på kostnader. Ett slags kollektivt webhotell.

Med tillräckligt många intresserade skulle inköps- och driftkostnaden bli relativt låg. Inte så låg som vissa budgetwebhotell men i förhållande till vad man får skulle den bli väldigt låg. Inte dela server med hundratals andra människor, inte vara utsatt för webhotellets nycker och infall, slippa mycket av den byråkratiska idioti som många “riktiga” webhotell sätter i system samt ha en kunnig person som sköter om allt i bakgrunden och slippa en anonym “kundtjänst” som mest är där för att vifta bort problemen.

Vad tror ni? Är någon intresserad av att delta i detta?

Posted in Computers, Internet, Linux/UNIX. 3 Comments »

The Lynx On The Laptop

2010/05/11 — isecore

The other day I upgraded Ubuntu on my laptop to the latest 10.04-release. It went without a hitch, and because my laptop is unaffected by the I/O bug it went fairly quickly. A little over an hour, most of which I spent watching “Damnation Alley” and occasionally checking up on the laptop.

After it was done I rebooted, and everything was peachy. Nothing major to report, except that I now can use Compiz/Desktop effects on it without X freezing after two-three minutes. That’s a major improvement in my book, since I now can play (an admittedly quite jerky) Xmoto on it. Previously X would freeze up whenever any accelerated graphics were in use.

Quite nice.

Posted in Computers, Linux/UNIX. No Comments »

Settling Down With The Lynx

2010/05/02 — isecore

Yesterday I took the plunge and upgraded my installation of Ubuntu to the freshly squeezed 10.04 aka “Lucid Lynx”. Yeah, the codenames are silly, but I find that they help identify the generation you’re using. Whatever.

These are some random assorted impressions after the first 24 hours of use.

First off, the frickin’ disk I/O whatever bug is still there. It seems a bit mitigated, but heavy disk I/O will still make my computer take long and completely unwarranted pauses. THIS IS INCREDIBLY ANNOYING, and even more annoying is the fact that more than two years down the road and no one still knows why this is happening or how we fix it. Sure, we’re relatively a minority of users who are affected by this, but we’re still lots of people. This is a big, big blight on the otherwise quite good Ubuntu-stamp of approval.

The upgrade went fine, even if it took ungodly long. I think the upgrade took a total of six (!) hours for me, and I heavily suspect the above mentioned disk I/O regression whatever bullshit is to blame for it. I could theoretically still use my computer while upgrading, but it was essentially like trying to pass a kidney stone so I simply let the machine putter for all that time and resorted to my laptop. Which is blissfully unaffected by that bug, even though the funky onboard ATI x300 has some quirks. I’ll be upgrading the laptop to Lucid in a few days, and maybe those quirks will disappear by then – although I don’t have very high hopes that they will.

After the upgrade finished I rebooted. There were a few tense moments when all I stared at was a black screen with a blinking cursors, but then my harddrive started ticking and vrooom, I was greeted by the new GDM login-screen. It’s quite purple, and while it’s pretty I think the dark chocolate of Karmic was a bit prettier. But booting went fine and it went quick, so it seems the priority to pull down the long boot-times has been a wise choice. HAL is completely gone now, and this is (as far as I can understand) one of the major contributions to the increased boot-speed.

I can’t say anything about the new UI changes, since my desktop looks and functions almost identical to before the upgrade. Same theme, same settings, same everything. Some minor keybindings had inexplicably changed, and some minor settings in window management, but a few clicks in the settings and it was back to normal.

Some minor griping is about this new idea that applications don’t appear in the notification area, but rather create their own icon/applet in the panel. Transmission for example would previously appear in the notification area, and required one click to open it and one click to tuck it back in. Now, with the new behaviour you require twice the amount of clicking to perform the same action since clicking will open a drop-down menu, THEN you click “Show transmission” and then the same to hide it again. Sure, you can hide it by clicking the close-button but it’s still inefficient and a bit obtuse in my opinion.

The volume control and Rhythmbox act the same way, imitating panel-applets rather than notification icons.

Thunderbird has been upgraded from the 2.x tree to the fairly new and shiny 3.0. That’s nice, even though I find a lot of the new Thunderbird a bit confusing. I do however like the non-existing toolbar, and just like Firefox it now sports an “awesomebar” instead. Quite nice. Thunderbird is definitely moving in the right direction and I feel zero incentive to change my mail-client.

Posted in Computers, Linux/UNIX. No Comments »

The Day For 10.04

2010/04/29 — isecore

Today is the 29th of April, 2010. To most people it’s just another day, but to us nerds it’s the day of release for the latest Ubuntu-version. In this case it’s 10.04 aka Lucid Lynx.

So far the official Ubuntu-site hasn’t been updated, and my update-manager hasn’t started squealing about this yet, but I’m guessing it’ll happen in a few hours. I’m going to hold off on upgrading until the weekend (or possibly later even) to make sure that the load on Ubuntus servers lighten.

Lucid seems promising. I’m not completely excited about it, but it takes more steps in the right direction. I’m a little ambiguous about the new default theme – it’s pretty and it’s nice to see Ubuntu move away from the dominant brown colors, but at the same time it might be confusing to newbies. None the less, I don’t really care about it in the long run, since I’ve been running the same theme for almost two years now and won’t change it just because Lucid rolls around.

No, my biggest hope is that they’ve finally fixed the disk I/O bug. Or whatever it is. It’s been a problem for me since the days of 8.04 (aka Hardy Heron) and it’s become progressively worse. According to most sources it’s a problem with some kind of driver-regression in the kernel, but I have yet to get a straight answer, much less get a fix for it. In fact, whenever I’ve submitted a bug-report it’s been quashed and deleted. Often times I felt as if I was taking crazy-pills – it’s here and I’m not the only one affected by it, but the people in charge seemingly choose to ignore it.

So, that’s my biggest hope. Other than that, I see 10.04 as more simply more Free goodness.

Posted in Computers, Linux/UNIX. 5 Comments »

AMD/ATI: Please Get Your Ass In Gear!

2010/04/15 — isecore

(Warning, this entry contains foul language)

Recently I made some changes to my computer setup. One of those changes consisted of buying an ATI instead of Nvidia graphics card. I’ve been doing a lot of changes to my basic principles lately, and foregoing Nvidia in favor of ATI was a big one.

I’ve been buying Nvidia-based cards for the last decade. Mostly out of lazy habit, I’ll gladly admit. I’ve justified it with a feeling that Nvidia provided slightly better bang for the buck in the mid-segment where I usually buy graphics cards. This was also a traditionalist thing, since back in the days Nvidia and AMD had a close thing going what with the first Nforce-chipsets and so on. I’ve also been a long-time AMD customer, and have bought nothing but AMD-based platforms for the last decade.

But a few years back this changed when AMD coughed up the dough and bought ATI outright. Alliances changed and now it generally makes more sense to buy ATI if you’ve got a computer with a cpu from AMD. So, since I was (for a change) buying something in the high-end segment I went for ATI. It also made sense since my motherboard has Crossfire, and it would be nice to later down the road add a second card when prices start dropping.

All was not happy though. I’m primarily a Linux-user, and a far distant second Windows/gamer. I spend maybe 90% of my time in Linux, and I knew it was a gamble to go for ATI over Nvidia here, since I’ve read that ATI is lagging behind in support for proper operating systems.

I went for it anyways, and even though I’ve worked out most of the kinks it’s quite true: despite lofty quotes and claims from AMD the support for non-legacy operating systems is quite poor compared to what Nvidia offers.

Essentially I feel as if the binary driver for Linux that AMD/ATI offers is of dubious beta-quality. Of course, they claim it’s production, but it’s so littered with strange bugs and occurences that I can only assume it’s unfinished. It’s also quite primitive compared to Nvidia, and doesn’t offer nice things such as alpha-blend compositing.

But it’s the bugs and annoyances that are the worst! Having to log out and then log back in again simply because the driver suddenly decided that the screen should go black while changing desktops. Or that wheen performing a desktop-zoom it should become inverted.

Not to mention that the driver insists on running the fan at an ear-shattering 50% (approx 2500 rpm) by default. Admittedly it does the same in Windows, but at least in Windows the Catalyst Control Center has an easily accessible option of manually overriding this. In Linux you’re forced to figure out the commandline aticonfig command – which as far as I can tell doesn’t even document the switches needed! I had to google myself to them on some forum, because nowhere in the driver documentation or on AMDs website are they listed!

For fucks sake! AMD, get your shit together and stop mucking about. If you’re serious about supporting Linux, open-source and the like then either release a PROPER driver, or release the specs and all the requirements so the community can write a driver. As it stands, it’s like partial circumcision.

Otherwise I’ll be force to go back to Nvidia when I next upgrade my computer. Which will also mean that I’ll leave the AMD-platform that I’ve been loyal to for a decade and start buying Intel-chips instead. I’m tired of this bullshit.

However, I will give props for making the driver easier to install on Ubuntu than Nvidia does. But of course you didn’t document how to do it, instead I had to find it on Ubuntus wiki. So I guess it’s a half-win for you, and it doesn’t make up for the poor performance and quality of your binary drivers.

Posted in Computers, Hardware, Linux/UNIX. No Comments »
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