Solid Blog of Ise I think my toes are jealous of my fingers because they get to point at things

Apple introduced their iPad back in April. I personally didn’t find it particularly interesting, much in the same way that I don’t find a whole lot that comes out of SteveCo very interesting.

Sure, they make nice things but they always fail me for the same reasons: they’re all gilded cages. This is especially true when it comes to the portable devices made by Apple. While you as a user have a certain amount of control over a Macintosh-computer (even though it’s not free in any sense of the word) you have little or no actual control over your iPhone, iPad or even your iPod. You are not the one who ultimately decides what goes on there, it’s Steve and Apple who does that.

This is a big issue for me. While I’m not a complete FOSS-fiend I still find it extremely distasteful how corporations feel they can sell you a product and then limit what you do with it. I’m also of the opinion that as long as we don’t have access to source-code we cannot in any way trust the device itself, or what it does.

But alas, the real world works differently and I accept that sometimes we have to make compromises. Which is why I accept the closed-source and proprietary ATI/AMD-driver in my Ubuntu operating system.

Another thing I found somewhat distasteful with the iPad was that it was launched as some kind of revolutionary device, rather than a neat product that might fill a niche previously unheard of. That is, however, more a problem with Steve himself than his products, and he is very good at marketing them.

Recently though I’ve discovered that tablets/pads running Android –the free operating system for mobile devices that is sponsored by Google and based on Linux– have started appearing in the wild. Smartphones running Android have proven to be a very strong competitor to Apples own iPhone, often outperforming it in many ways thanks to the freedom you get with Android.

While I have very little interest in a smartphone (I still cling to my trusty old K750) I’ve begun to like the idea of owning an Android-based tablet. For reading ebooks/comics, doing light websurfing and other similar activites.

The problem though is that it’s a jungle, and since Android-tablets are a new breed of technology there’s no organized way to find them. That’s why I’m putting this question out on the internet. Where can I find a decent tablet running Android?

It should preferably be running Android 2.2. It can get away with 2.1 provided an update will be available, but nothing older than 2.1. One thing it definitely needs to have is a functioning Android Market, and preferably the ability to play movies and music as well.

If it lacks GPS or Bluetooth doesn’t make it a dealbreaker, but it would be nice having those things. I looked at the Wits A81e but it lacks an accelerometer and that’s annoying. Other than that the Wits looks perfect to me, but I would like it to have an accelerometer so I don’t manually have to rotate the screen.

Of course it should have WiFi, and if it has a slot for a 3G SIM-card then that’s a nice bonus but nothing I absolutely require. It should have a slot to expand storage as well. I noticed that the Wits-device had a micro-SD slot and that’s perfect for me.

Price should preferably be in the US$200-250 range. Display size is preferably a 7 inch unit, but if I can get away with bigger provided the price doesn’t shoot into the skies then that’s fine too.

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.

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.

Almost ten years ago I bought my first wireless mouse and keyboard. I loved it, it was great not having any cables to worry about. Of course, the downside of it was having to every now and then change batteries in them – but it was a small price to pay to be freed from the prison of the cables.

Over time these accessories developed further. I replaced the mouse after a while with another cordless mouse, but this one had an optical sensor instead of the ball-wheel type mouse previously. It also showed how much technology develops, because earlier me and all my friends had written off an optical cordless mouse as completely impossible. We felt that it would gobble batteries like a meth-addict going on a bender.

Well, we were proven wrong and indeed there started existing cordless optical mousen. I still kept my original keyboard, but a while down the road I replaced the mouse with yet another cordless optical mouse. This one had the improvement of faster response and precision, something the previous mouse suffered from. Now the cordless mousen was on par with their corded brethren, and I was quite happy with this mouse. It also had the benefit of being able to recharge its own batteries when placed in the cradle provided with it.

I used that mouse for a while, until I replaced it with yet another upgrade a year or two later. This new addition was cordless, and instead of an infrared optical mouse it used a LASER to sense movement. It also had the same features as its predecessor, with some added niceties such as a indicator of battery-charge for easy assessment, and a built-in battery providing much better power and longer usage.

This seemed to be the ultimate in mousing, and I was very happy with it. So happy in fact that I kept using it for more than five years.

During this period, however, I replaced the keyboard with a new corded thing. The old cordless keyboard had been badly abused through the years, and after about eight years it needed replacing. Since I felt that cordlessness wasn’t a high priority on a keyboard (you don’t tend to move them around a lot) I accepted a corded keyboard and felt perfectly fine with it.

But alas, my trusty mouse started to give up on me after more than five years of loyal service. I felt very reluctant to replace it, since none of the proposed replacements seemed to suit my needs. They were either button-infested monsters with a million features I wasn’t interested in, or they were aimed squarely at gamers and could be adjusted with weights, had gaudy colorschemes and other trinkets that didn’t appeal to me – or, lastly, they were cheap crap that no self-respecting computer user should use.

So, I bit the bullet, re-assessed my needs and bought a corded mouse. Which I’m quite happy with, except for the occasionall annoyance of having the cable catch in something on my desk.

But it’s interesting how I’ve now come full circle after almost a decade. Going from hating cables to a cordless fascist and then back again to the feeling that, who cares about cables really?

… for when you’re serious about being connected!

But seriously, I don’t see the purpose of this except for some cases where the machine could function as a internet sharing gateway as well. As far as I’ve gathered the purpose for dual LAN-connectors is for people “seeking complete network redundancy” but in my opinion this is just hogwash. Network redundancy would require two different uplinks as well, not just two cables plugged into the same NAT-gateway, because I seriously doubt most people have two completely different connections to the ‘net to use when distributing this load.

I never cease to be amused at the vaguely worded but impressive sounding crap computer companies put out today.

And yes, this is the rear of my computer, and yes – I do actually have two cables plugged in. It happened about two minutes before writing this, and as soon as I’ve published this I’ll probably yank one of them out.

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.