versus IKEA

  

crate and barrel!

  

Sailboat passing to the stern of hanjin lines container ship

  

Bainbridge island sunset

 

Oddly enough... Having the million dollar view will in fact cost you millions of dollars. 

Soft Updates

Two papers on softupdates

softupdates techniques.

http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/usenix99/mckusick.html

journaling vs softupdates

http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/usenix2000/general/seltzer.html

Getting your ducks in a row...

 

The 8 audio recorders up in the recording booth at IETF66 

Items spotted at the New Zealand equivalent of radioshack

 
  

The new phone!

 

4GB IBM microdrive
A whole bunch of ram
mp3 player
gsm 900 1800 1900 umts 2100 bluetooth wifi
167grams 

After!

  

Before...

  

200 Switches representing ~16000 ethernet ports...

Just arrived... Plan is to have them turned around headed for african universities in a couple weeks.
  

New Laptop

08042006
Originally uploaded by joelja.

1.66ghz core duo
2GB of ram
120GB drive
radeon x1400 with 128MB
802.11a/b/g and bluetooth 2.0

Well ok... (pager)

maybe virtual dimension will be better:

http://virt-dimension.sourceforge.net/

The overall windows experience. Week 2 on the new box.

This is a the first time I've used a windows machine as my primary box in a long time, (we have one for gaming at home, and I have a mostly unused desktop at work...

There's a couple things that are nice:

1. Suspend and resume works, though this laptop has 2GB of ram and it suspends really slowly.
   
   
2. It's nice to have media on all websites play back for a change.
   
   
3. More open-source software seems to have been ported to windows and works well. GIMP, gnu dia, GAIM, slypheed, clamav etc.
   
   
4. bluetooth is easy to setup, but it doen't really work all that well which is slightly disapointing. linux and bluez is rather harder but it's rock solid once you get it working.
   

Some things are not so good though...

1. You still have to restart way too often... Either because you've installed some piece of software or a driver that requires it or because for whatever reason some piece of software generally part of the UI has become unstable.
   
   
2. Sometimes software just mysteriously fails to install, or after installing doesn't work. There's muc more diagnostics for this in linux systems then there is in windows boxen. When you uninstall someting on a rpm package mangement based system you can be pretty sure it's all gone. that's way more ambiguous on windows.
   
   
3. The initial load on this acer was horrible... some things I had no trouble installing on the Dell, Just refused to work properly (windowblinds). The system came with software to backup the image on the disk, but didn't come with installation media. reinstalling the os using an oem disk and the key on the bottom of the laptop solved that for the most part except some if the acer provided drivers (ati catalyst control panel) refused to properly install. not all the software (the cd burning stuff or the dvd player) were avaialble for download. norton antivirus which came bundled with it is junk and is now gone.
   
   
4. Drivers for some of my older usb hardware (usb serial adapter) are now rather hard to find... these things for the most part just work on linux.
   
   
5. Does somebody make a virtual window manger/pager for windows that doesn't crash, lose windows, end up with the same window on multiple pages unitentionally and fits someplace in the start-bar? cool-desk had lots of promise but it has all those problems. The windows powertools one install but now appear not to work (that problem again) and I remeber not liking it anyway. it's shouldn't be that hard a problem to solve.
   

Parallels for windows, revisted...

Has actually ended up being fairly unusable for me...

The fc5 instance routinely stops responding to me during normal use. Initially I thought this has something to do with the xserver but it happens if I start a vnc server then point the windows vnc-client at that over the virtual network interface as well.

Virtualization does not survive the windows suspend and resume cycle. Normally if you suspend the parallels vm on it's own it will resume properly after you wake, or in fact after you restart the laptop, but if you leave it running, it'll fail when the machine resumes either that or you may get a BSOD.

VMware player would happily survive a suspend and resume cycle on linux (at least with a freebsd guest). Though suspend and resume for the linux laptop (the dell inspiron 6000) wasn't all that reliable to begin with.

Dirty boy, redux.

07302006(001)
Originally uploaded by joelja.

dumpster full of closed cell foam.

Wow!

07302006(002)
Originally uploaded by joelja.

Is that box big enough...

Don't try assembling a chatsworth megaframe in your office.

I'm a dirty boy...

07302006
Originally uploaded by joelja.

Who knew I had enough cardboard in my office to fill an entire dumpster?