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2005

TerraStation

I recently received a Buffalo 600gig Terrastation to test from work.

I’ve been looking for a NAS / SAN storage solution for a while, but most USB NAS solutions I’ve looked at don’t support Linux. The Terrastation is a work of art. Full support for every OS, including Windows, Mac & Linux, easy setup, multiple RAID options, and a very easy setup.

It has default Samba settings, and in Windows shows up as a network share, unlike SAN’s which will show up as a drive letter. (Mirra only supports backing up from a drive letter, but oh well, wasn’t happy with Mirra as it was a Windows only solution).

It’s pretty slick – a very basic setup from Windows, but like routers on the market today, a full-fledged web page for setting it up on the box itself. It’s basically a Linux box, running off a PPC processor. Full support for users and groups, Raid 0, 1 and 5 (5 default out of the box!), FTP access, drive spanning and user secured shares.

I’ve had it about two weeks, and lo and behold, I see on Planet Gnome this morning, a Gnome developer blogged his experiences with it, including hacking at it. He has the upgrade from mine, the 1 Terrabyte (I have the 600 gig), and points to a nice hacker’s Wiki at terastation.org all about adding customized firmware to the Terrastation, including SSH and NFS support. I’m looking forward to getting SSH up so I can use SCP as well.

Overall, the machine is pretty cool. Pretty quiet, but 4 drives and their vibrations make some noise, and the lights on the front, including 4 seperate places for each drive to show status is very cool.

Burning Man

Someday I’ll get myself to Burning Man.

For those of you going, have fun. For those of you who don’t know what it is, hit the link – it’s the ultimate experience in alternative culture. Located in Black Rock City, Nevada, one week a year the desert is turned in to the playa. Communities form, art is created and much fun is had.

MythTV

I’ve been researching this for years, and waiting for the right moment, and that moment is quickly coming in to focus. That moment will entail buying all of the parts for a Home Theater PC and installing MythTV said HTPC.

What is MythTV, you ask? It’s a software program for Linux distributions, that manages all the media – TV recording, DVD playback, DVD ripping, burn TV to DVD, music, weather and more.

Here is one man’s way to build a $500 MythTV PC. I’m thinking mine will be a bit beefier, with a better processor, home theater looking case, more memory and much more storage.

More to come in the coming months.

Google Talk

Google has launched Google Talk a day early. Turns out Google is running one big Jabber server. Get yourself an IM client that is Jabber compatible such as Gaim and do this:

  1. Open a client supporting Jabber (AdiumX, Gaim, etc.)

  2. Your server name is talk.google.com

  3. Your username is the same as your Google ID. Example: user@gmail.com

  4. Your password is the same as you use to login to Gmail or other Google login locations.


I'm on Google Talk!

Update: And now the talk.google.com website is up offering a Windows Jabber client for download, as well as Jabber-compatible instructions for Mac & Linux users.

I hate Internet Explorer

Why, oh why, can Internet Explorer not conform to web standards?

I threw up a placeholder on Silwenae.com using Drupal, and put a transparent PNG as the header graphic.

Looks awesome in Firefox, but IE you see the background.

I hate IE. I don’t want to use a GIF due to patent issues, and JPEGs can’t handle transparency.

Grr.

Silwenae.com 5.0 is up, and a history of it is coming soon.

My next TV

As seen on Gizmodo today, Sony has unleashed a press releasing introducing the KDS-R60XBR1 and KDS-R50XBR1 Grand WEGA LCOS televesions.

Sony Electronics today introduced two new sets in the line based on the acclaimed Silicon X-tal (Crystal) Reflective Display (SXRDâ„¢) technology delivering full 1920 x 1080 high-definition resolution.

1920×1080 in 1080p is a beautiful thing. Featuring 2 HDMI inputs, 3 Firewire, and one VGA input, I can plug in almost anything. Running the V for Vendetta trailer in full blown 1920x1080p on a PC through the VGA input should be stunning. Also features a memory stick reader for photos.

I’ve been hearing from a good friend about this TV for quite some time, it’s nice to see it’s official. This is the same chipset in their current 70″ $25,000 set and is now being released for the rest of us at normal pricing of $4000 and $5000 (thank god!).

Pretty pictures of the TVs here.

Silwenae.com

Silwenae.com is 100% back to normal. All the data, links and information have been migrated to Apatheia.org. My last to-do is to update the header on the forums, but other than that, Fazin did an awesome job.

Now it’s time to start thinking about the new silwenae.com.

If I don’t have time to update my blog, I’ll have to figure out how to find time for web development again!

Silwenae.com update

It’s been way too long since I’ve blogged, once you get off the habit, it’s easy to do that. Let’s see what we can do about that.

Oxygenz.net was shut down this weekend due to a faulty PHP script. Based on the draconian rules set up by that webhost, Fazin and I decided to switch webhosts (again), this time to Site5.com. (Silwenae.org is proudly hosted on Nearlyfreespeech.net, as a backup to everything else.)

Fazin spent all night Sunday transferring the data back up, and we’ve moved all the content from Silwenae.com to Apatheia.org which Fazin had registered a few months ago and had just been pointing at Silwenae.com.

The data’s up, including the databases, but we have some bug hunting ahead of us as you can’t log in to the Drupal site or into the forums.

All of the Apatheia guild stuff will be moving to:

  • www.silwenae.com to www.apatheia.org
  • forums.silwenae.com/phpBB2/ to www.apatheia.org/forums

More to come soon.