@nthony

I was building a quick system in the week to replicate one disk onto another - our vserver host standard build that we deploy as standard, rudements of configuration, abillity to run vserver guests if we are pushed, along with our standard minimum security deployments.... basically so we have drives ready that we can stick in a machine, test, and leave the datacentre to work on later... handy things. Anyway - I digress; the point was while I know that the point of a Mini ITX motherboard is to be small - I glanced over and there it was nestling on a box (I said it was a quick system!) between two drives and a cdrom - and there it was barely bigger than the drive - stating the obvious - but arent they small! Picture below: Awwwwwwww - cute. [ READ MORE ]

Note to self, the FC4 install of Dovecot will support SQL sure - as long as it is PostgreSQL. If you would like MySQL support, then you need to be looking at getting a build that includes that - otherwise you will chasing your tail assuming sql means ... well anything SQL. Wrong.

After the change in config layout we are currently working through various configurations as we add two further servers to the mail cluster to help share the load. Although it would seem, as with wages, your ability to service requests just means you get more... thats right up there with "how do rabits know the road is closed" (reference to out riding on a road that is closed, covered in rabbits... do they read the signs?!). [ READ MORE ]

Laptop. A new lease of life has occurred. A while back it 1) refused to charge the battery, and 2) more recently died. It would seem that the BIOS battery had expired, and this for a VAIO z600 or a 505x as non Europeans (and google) would have it – means that it rolls over and plays dead. Thankfully on this occasion I had a spare in a box of bits labelled 'hardware'. The organisation is nothing short of awesome on this occasion. Looked, found, applied, solved issue.

Battery Packs. I opened up the investment I once made in my vaio – the 5 hour battery pack. Inside were no less than twelve Panasonic Lithium Ion battery cells with their model number stamped on the inside. A five minute google revealed they 1) have long since been replaced with a newer model with a longer milli amp hour rating and the same size still, and 2) they cost $5.99 each. So there we have options. Alas – I have a screw loose, and while exploring the little PCB that lives in there that keeps track of charging and cell status, I put the cell pack contacts down onto my amp. [ READ MORE ]

The other night while pulling down updates for the soon to be live Ubuntu Dapper Drake relase, I noticed I was consistently pulling in excess of 300K per second down.

Knowing that 2Mb looks like 240Kb/s down hill with a tail wind, either this was fibbing or my ISP had upgraded us.

Now for those not with their ear to the ground on such matters ADSL Max is not ADSL with go faster stripes, it is actually a different protocol. In simple terms it's ADSL2 and allows speed negotiation at connection time - where as older versions were fixed at a connection speed and no ability to fall back. Max allows you speeds up to 8Mb download and 800K up (assuming your ISP is touting that). The DSLAM at the exchange local to you spends about two weeks learning what rate you can reliably connect at, and then freezes that to save on negotiation time in future. [ READ MORE ]

Pointless but useful discovery today - apt-get install gimp-dcraw - my favourite multi platform image manipulation program handles RAW images from my camera better than the plugins I used to use for photoshop and the Olympus supplied app.. Quite the happy discovery.

On the subject of my aged E10 - which I have no issue with apart from lens flexibility, speed of processing images, and a slowish focus by todays standards; anyway - Mr eBay has furnished me with a 420mm equivalent, which should be making its way to my door over the next week.

I also discovered that there are unpublished repositories for Ubuntu Dapper Drake. They are not published because they contain the likes of mplayer and lame, upon which, despite it being questionable, have copyright implications as third parties. However - if you use a computer - then they are tools you are going to miss, so in the interests of sharing the love - try these in your /etc/apt/sources... [ READ MORE ]