Mace's Musings

My blog is now on Facebook

You've probably noticed that I haven't been blogging here for a while. The reason is that I now do most of my interaction on Facebook. The service integrates many functions - status updates ("tweets"), blogs, photo albums, blog aggregation, access control - into one place. This makes it much more convenient, and provides a higher bandwidth path to the content. The existing facilities will remain here, but new content will be on Facebook. I will have the "originals" for photos in the gallery though, as I wouldn't want to lose that content if Facebook "goes away".

You can sign up for free on Facebook (with a bogus name, if you want to be anonymous) and just add me as a friend for access to my info. There are other people you know on Facebook as well, so you probably want to do this anyway. If you create an account with a bogus name, make sure you let me know who you are when you send a friend request, or I'll end up denying access.

Fawning over wildlife

We looked out the window, and saw a pair of fawns, probably less than a month old, lounging in the backyard under the trees. While deer frequently pass through the yard, we haven't seen any laying about this close to the house. I grabbed the camera, and captured a brief (less than 2 minute) video.

They're just so cute! It's kinda nice that they feel comfortable and safe enough to be this close to the house.

Considering a new machine

I've been considering upgrading my laptop to a new machine. However, I rarely take it with me anywhere anymore, so I was thinking that I could get a desktop instead. The price-performance of a desktop is much better than a laptop, and I could cherry pick components. This is what I've come up with so far:

Most off-the-shelf desktops use slower DDR2 or DDR3-800 memory. Since this motherboard supports DDR3-1333, I figured I'd go with the fastest available. It's more expensive, but still dirt cheap for 4GB. The maximum supported is 8GB, but I can leave that for future expansion if needed (when the price of the higher density components drops). The overall system performance will only be a few percent faster than using slower memory, but DDR3 also uses about 25-30% less power, so there will be a long-term savings.

With the price of hard drives so low, I configured a pair of 500GB SATA-2 drives. The motherboard, power supply and case support up to 6. I can configure a 500GB RAID-1, for less than I paid for a single 80GB ATA drive in the server a few years ago.

The CPU is a quad core, with the virtualization extensions. This will let me run more virtual systems concurrently, faster; I may end up leaving some up all the time. It will also allow me to transcode video about 20 times faster than my laptop (10 times faster than the server). A two hour video should transcode in about 10-15 minutes.

I already have a monitor (the 24-inch Acer X241W). You may have noticed that no video card is listed. The motherboard uses the Intel G45 chipset, which includes X4500HD video. This is more than adequate for any application I will need, and is fully supported by open source drivers.

I haven't decided yet whether to purchase now, or wait for November when there are further Intel announcements coming. Usually, the longer you wait, the more you get with computer equipment. It's hard to predict the impact of the economic downturn though. Reduced demand usually increases supply and lowers price, but it can also reduce competition as manufacturers drop out and consolidate - which could raise prices. Thinking...

Climate change impact - NJ

This report goes into the details of the impacts that climate change will have, specifically for New Jersey. It was prepared by the University of Maryland Division of Research Center for Integrative Environmental Research. There are state reports for Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Michigan, Nevada and Ohio as well at that site.

The time frames are in question, and tend to be getting shorter rather than longer, but the impacts are quite real and useful for planning purposes. As we used to say at AT&T, expect success, but plan for failure. There's no downside to taking a negative impact into consideration - but there is a real downside for failing to do so.

Buffy Linux

Whoda thunk it? Apparently, Buffy uses Linux:

The above panel is from the Buffy Season 8 comics published by Dark Horse.

The second time

I've just completed a second viewing of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, with Angel, in the original broadcast order. It took about 30 days to view the equivalent of 100 movies (177 hours). Some observations:

Buffy:

• I liked the show more on the second viewing, even though I had just watched it in June.
• I picked up a great deal more (having knowledge of events in future shows) on the foreshadowing that occurs, even years in advance.
• I also picked up on the clues to future relationships, as in the discussion of the relationship of Quasimodo to Esmeralda being something of a template for the relationship of Buffy and Spike.
• The funny stuff stays funny. The sad stuff stays sad. The action is really just a backdrop, and isn't significant other than as metaphors for the various anxieties in play at the time.
• The production quality is really impressive, considering the low budget of the show. Everything from lighting to camera angles to the clothing and hair styles worn by the characters is significant to the story.
• Watching the show interleaved with Angel detracted from Buffy, but enhanced Angel.
• On completion of the second viewing, once again, I just wanted to start the series again. There's really no higher praise you can give any content.

Angel:

• I didn't like the Angel series as much as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, though I did like the crossover episodes.
• The story lines didn't engage me as much as Buffy. They seemed... shallow.
• I really didn't like that Spike was brought back. It made the sacrifice in Buffy meaningless - as the characters discussed themselves. It was as if the writers were saying "this wasn't our idea - they made us do it".
• I think the Angel series hurt the Buffy series, by trivializing some of the story arcs. The "Buffyverse" would be improved by excising most of the Angel episodes.
• The best episode of the series was the last, in terms of finally establishing an emotional connection.
• After the show ended, I really wasn't interested in seeing it again (other than the two or three significant crossover episodes).

So in other words, if you haven't seen the series (or haven't seen it recently), watch Buffy with only the Angel episodes marked with asterisks in this air date ordered list of the two series.

A comment by one fan I read, placed an interesting spin on Firefly/Serenity, by calling it the story of "River the Reever Slayer". I thought that was very insightful, and probably why I like that series and movie as well.

Doctor Horrible

Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Serenity, Dollhouse, Toy Story, etc.) has introduced a web musical called Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. It will be presented in three parts, streamed online over the next few days - free. The first part is already online, starring Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion and Felicia Day. Watch now, or pay for the DVD/iTunes download later.

How it's done

Here's a great talk from June at Google on the Linux kernel. Everything you wanted to know, from the development process, to the companies that fund development, to the rate of change.

There's also commentary on companies like Canonical (Ubuntu) that contribute almost nothing, but depend on Linux for their existence. Also, a little discussion on the pluses and minuses of "stable" enterprise kernels and virtual systems, and their interrelationship.

Good stuff.

2.6.26

The Linux 2.6.26 kernel has been released. There are some really interesting advances in this kernel:

• Most webcams will now work out of the box. This has been an area of weakness in Linux driver support.
• Wireless mesh networking is now mainstream. This changes how wireless devices interconnect, allowing them to hop from device to device to reach a destination. You could be miles from a WiFi access point and still have a good Internet connection, if there are enough devices running mesh networking in the middle. Look for new access points running Linux to support 802.11s. All laptops, desktops, access points, etc. with this functionality become "repeaters" (hops) with this functionality, even if they are not physically connected to anything. Very, very cool stuff.
• KVM support for s390 mainframes. This means that mainframe users no longer have to pay for z/VM to run virtual systems. They can use (free) Linux to run and manage multiple virtual machines, using the same commands and graphical user interfaces they would use on a PC. Learn it once, use it everywhere.

There's a whole lot more, and the link above has the details. It's mindboggling how much functionality is added in a 3-month "dot" release.

Another

Another nephew contacted me last night to let me know that he is teaching himself Linux and server configuration.

I realize now that I probabably suffered a stroke while watching all the Buffy episodes in ten days last month, and I'm now in a coma, dreaming. Given a choice between realities, I'm OK with this one.