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Attck of teh AzN Cow flu!
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| tuesday nerd rant |
[Feb. 9th, 2010|12:04 pm] |
Argh I totally wanna go and redo the VTL/backup server to do ZFS and ZFS snapshots instead of this awful rsync --link-data thing going on. But moving all that hardlinked data back and forth is a pain...writing a tape of the email server already takes 10 hours+ due to the hardlink deref times.
Also, this post == totally wrong: http://forums.freebsd.org/showpost.php?p=35215&postcount=25
Public Service Announcement: In most cases, triple caching is LAME. As long as the controller is doing AHCI/NCQ to the terminal drives, then putting the ZIL on its own device (you can even use an SSD to hold the ZIL nowadays) can get you similar IOPS as channeling your crap through some craptastic controller's craptastic battery backed cache. And overall this is only going to affect synchronous writes anyway. We have an ARC and vdev cache for a reason people. Your system ram is already way faster than some silly PC133 256mb unit attached to your controller. |
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| moar tv |
[Feb. 6th, 2010|09:16 pm] |
So...
Dina Meyers is still hottt (NCIS guest)
and you can catch a young Jewel Staite on early episodes of DaVinci's Inquest playing DaVinci's daughter. Also on DaVinci's Inquest: Gwynth Walsh (who played B'etor on Star Trek) and Robert Wisden (who plays Major Samuels on SG-1) |
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| Fun in ZFS land |
[Feb. 5th, 2010|08:47 pm] |
I finally got a use-case where I could deploy ZFS via FreeBSD.
This is on an old PowerEdge 2600 with 2G of ram and 2x2GHz Gallatin NetBurst Xeons
The initial adventure was me not finding a cdrom drive on this thing, so I had to set up dhcpd, tftpd, and nfs on my main office box so I could PXE boot the PE2600. Then I found where the cdrom drive was but I actually needed everything off the dvd so I stuck with a PXE boot running.
Then I more or less went with the instructions in http://wiki.freebsd.org/RootOnZFS/GPTZFSBoot/RAIDZ2 (with some modifications) to install FreeBSD to a ZFS pool which then I made into root.
During the install ZFS kept panicing the system with the infamous "kmem size too small" issue.
Right now I am cvsupping ports which and ZFS seems to be keeping ram usage steady at 90M.
I have set the following tunables:
vm.kmem_size="512M"
vm.kmem_size_max="512M"
vfs.zfs.arc_max="40M"
vfs.zfs.vdev.cache.size="5M"
Setting vm.kmem_size/max to 300M as suggested by Cy Schubert in http://wiki.freebsd.org/ZFSTuningGuide caused more panics. |
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| Burning the village to save it. |
[Jan. 20th, 2010|11:21 am] |
Perhaps the imminent death of the Democratic Party *is* a healthy thing. For all its worth, Obama and his buddies have just turned into another Clinton, minus the sex scandals. Need we be reminded of a quote from Clinton's mentor himself: The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can 'throw the rascals out' at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies. Although it's been true that times may have been "happier" under Democratic leadership, in the end they tend to be more shifty, more insidious. Through globalization, they'll slowly suck the people's wealth away from underneath their feet before anyone can realize what's going on. At least the Republicans and so-called right-wing are so militant that their goals remain overt and one can actually see the day-to-day evil. Perhaps the John Birchers do recognize this fact about the so-called "liberals", the proverbial frog-in-a-pot scenario, despite the fact that capitulation to the neofascist neocons will result in something out of The Handmaid's Tale, at least until a populist revolt happens.
But just maybe, it's time to stop cheating ourselves with this compromise of compromises. It's time to go balls out on those other 'rascals'. It's probably why Chomsky's gone back to the Green Party instead of dicking around with the strategic voting. He's seen the light, and we must too.
In any case, continue fightin' the GOOD FIGHT, CHILLLLDREENSNNS! THIS IS 3-DOG AWOOOOOOO. |
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| NCIS: LA |
[Jan. 17th, 2010|05:54 pm] |
Heh, last episode has 2 guest stars who were from The Unit (Audrey Marie Anderson [Kim Brown] and Michael Irby [Charles Grey]) |
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| Wire in the Blood |
[Jan. 9th, 2010|12:32 pm] |
Hulu is being lame and not accepting this review of Wire in the Blood, a UK thriller crime series based on the "Tony Hill" series of novels by Val MacDiarmid:
I first caught this show on Netflix Streaming. First airing in 2002, its originality in crime drama for this era is comparable to the Law and Order: Criminal Intent series, but by being a post-watershed UK show, the acting and drama are unparalleled to any American mainstream mystery drama on network TV for a long time, except perhaps by The Dead Zone or until Criminal Minds or Ghost Whisperer came along.
This is my first encounter with a character portrayed by Robson Green (I am still looking for copies of the original Touching Evil). Tony Hill's incredibly dysfunctional yet endearing persona makes Vincent D'Onofrio's Bobby Goren and Hugh Laurie's House both look like a imitation knockoffs. I had previously seen Hermione Norris in the later seasons of Spooks (MI-5 in North American syndication) and you can see why she was a good fit for that show after leaving this one. In any case, Netflix streaming's version of the Season 3 premiere is busted, so I am looking forward to seeing it on Hulu when it is released.
Sadly, this show was canceled by ITV in 2009 due to budgetary constraints, and CBS is partnering with DreamWorks to remake it in the US. I just hope it won't turn into the travesty that Eleventh Hour had become (I mean come on, how can you remake a show with Patrick Stewart as the main character in it?!). (USA's remake of Touching Evil was fantastic however, although it too, was canceled after a season).
Perhaps enough Hulu ratings will convince the Americans not to disturb such a unique show and prompt ITV to make another made-for-tv movie episode of Wire in the Blood (ITV already made one in 2008 that takes place between Season 5 and 6 that is set in Texas, of all places). |
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| o/ |
[Dec. 24th, 2009|05:14 pm] |
11:06 < monsted> _________________
11:06 < monsted> < Merry Christmas >
11:06 < monsted> -----------------
11:06 < monsted> \ ^__^
11:06 < monsted> \ (oo)\_______
11:06 < monsted> (__)\ )\/\
11:06 < monsted> ||----w |
11:06 < monsted> || ||
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| adobe fail |
[Nov. 17th, 2009|07:26 pm] |
PSA for the night:
Adobe InDesign+InCopy+Samba+MacOS X (with users who demand group-based ACLs so everyone can write to everyone else's files) == fucked up. |
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| GOOOO RUNNN GET TO TEH CHOPPAH |
[Sep. 28th, 2009|11:32 pm] |
Crysis > Crysis Warhead > Far Cry 2
Review:
I never really got into Far Cry 2, but I beat Crysis, without cheating (horray), in about 4-5 days. Very awesome graphics, well-connected levels, no silly experience-ruining gotchas (like timer, puzzle, or whatever silliness).
Also, FC2's controls leave much to be lacking. I understand it's supposed to be way more RPGish, but the ability to just instill random carnage was what I was looking for. Also, wtf with no LEAN? EVERY FPS NOW HAS LEAN...
The whole nanosuit thing with Crysis is an interesting addition to the typical FPS genre. Also being able to mod weapons with the pickups was a nice touch too. Like sniper scopes on akimbo machine pistols? TOTALLY. Main gripes: no combobinds for keys (like ctrl-F, or something funky). Side gripe: the grenade launcher didn't have a separate sight, which you really needed...for maximum kill :) If they put a boss in the ship-interior level that would have been pretty cool too (imo), but I'm not missin it...
The main reason why the expansion pack isn't as good as the original:
1. What's up with the auto-ammo pickup thing?! There was a very specific way I wanted to allocate ammo loads and I have to play Delta difficulty now to avoid that?
2. The maps are way more disjointed than the original. Like on the second map you don't even need to kill everyone, it just ends when you hit the objective and the AI takes over and you move on...
( Spoilers ) |
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| frak me |
[Sep. 17th, 2009|12:16 pm] |
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I just got sucked into becoming a Moodle dev (at least for now...) |
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| nerdrage |
[Sep. 16th, 2009|08:16 pm] |
argh I just got bit by the libjpeg 6 -> 7 abi bump. Even symlinking /usr/local/lib/libjpeg.so.10 to libjpeg.so.9 doesn't fix this problem:
"JPEG library version mismatch, caller expected version 62, received 70"
WTF GIMP?! WHY DOES YOUR STUPID JPEG PLUGIN CHECK THE JPEG LIB VERSION!? Now I have to rebuild gegl and crap because of your stupid code... |
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| Zicam |
[Jun. 17th, 2009|11:07 pm] |
Long time no post, mostly due to excessive busyness (or maybe just too much gaming). Also I am pissed at BF2 right now so I am in a ranting mood. (also I spend most of my social networking on facebook these days).
So apparently Zicam's active ingredient is Zincum Gluconicum. I was googling this today, with various people bloviating about whether or not it really does anything or is harmful etc. (Since the makers are being accused of Zicam causing anosmia). Not sure why people are skeptical about this. We already know zinc is an immunomodulator since it affects metallothionein and alters: antibody expression profiles as well as Th1 and Th2 populations. MT modulation appears to shift host defenses away from bacterial while possibly enhancing antiviral responses (most likely due to the ab isotype change and downregulation of various stuff: read the MT papers by Lynes, et al).
So what's the problem, people? (Sure immunomodulation can result in funkiness, but DON'T say Zicam doesn't do anything...). As to whether it causes anosmia, I dunno (and what mechanism would that involve? something with the signalling pathway or downregulation of ORs, or just outright killing olfactory neurons in the nasal epithelia?). Heavy metals are peculiar species... |
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| STO: trying to be everything? |
[Feb. 15th, 2009|12:15 am] |
Based on the interviews I've seen, Star Trek Online is going to be like: Star Trek Bridge Commander (shipboard stuff) + Starfleet Command (SFC-style tactics and crew selection/bonuses) + Eve Online (skill training + exploration) + WoW (instanced battlespaces and WoW-style Factional Warfare) + Fallout3 (Over-the-shoulder shooter)?
Screenshots look pretty nice, although because it's Cryptic-style, there is a bit too much comic-like style going on - still prefer EVE-style artwork... |
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| Bad Battleclinic.com web security practices |
[Feb. 14th, 2009|02:56 pm] |
1. On the login page, when entering an unregistered username, the web app returns with "No such username". This is a particularly insidious form of information leakage because it allows you to mine for valid usernames for password guessing.
2. The registration verification email contains your password, which means it's not being one-way hashed in any way. |
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| Why do legit mailers abuse their hostnames? |
[Feb. 10th, 2009|04:43 pm] |
It makes me unable to use reject_unknown_sender in any meaningful way. Mail coming out of your relay should be using MAIL FROM that has an A or MX record! |
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| Bluemars is dead again |
[Jan. 20th, 2009|11:09 am] |
Stream seems to be down. :(
Soma Space is ok, but still haven't found the perfect electro ambient spacey channel yet :( |
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| Ahh IRC, how I love thee <3 |
[Jan. 9th, 2009|12:03 pm] |
10:36 -!- Topic for #distributed: Welcome to multiplayer Notepad
10:36 -!- Topic set by Nugget [] [Wed Jan 7 23:32:52 2009]
If you think about, it totally makes sense. IRC is the MMO text editor :) |
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