I found the first thing that I am genuinely disappointed in, with my MBP.
The SD card reader is only half depth, I had assumed wrongly that it was a full depth reader.
I found this out today, because I purchased a 32GB SD card, thinking that I would use it for media storage (read: iTunes purchased music) instead of storing it on the internal SSD, as it’s quickly becoming apparent how little 120GB really is.
The great idea, was to supplement the storage with 32GB for Music (should be plenty, right?) and just leave the SD card in the reader 24/7, as it would be primarily read only memory, without a lot of writes going on.
Then I plugged it in, and I have this big black wart sticking out of the side of the machine that looks like it will break the first time I stick the laptop into the sleeve or backpack that I use to carry it around.
Oh well, at least my camera will take the card with no problems, and at least it was cheap.
ADHD afflicted batshit fucking insane media whore with a nerd penchant.
I wonder if I can get that put on business cards?
My home network is much smaller than it used to be.
As hardware has advanced, I have been finding less and less need for multiple specific use devices, and have trimmed all of my core services to a single file and database server, and then remote clients, all of which are laptops.
Undertow:
The good old trooper. This is an AMD Sempron 3100, with a gig of ram, and several TB of storage. I’ve actually lost track of how much disk space it has, it’s sitting at around 6TB, if you include the external USB disks attached to it that only get fired up when certain scripts run for back up purposes.
Platform: Debian GNU/Linux. At the time of this writing, undertow has 6.0.4 Stable running, aka Squeeze.
Services Provided:
SMB, NFS and now AFS File Sharing.
PostgreSQL Database.
Apache httpd, with mod_perl and php.
sshd, complete with BASH.
DLNA Streaming to my WD-TV Live Hub.This machine will probably be replaced in the next 12 months or so, simply because I would like something with a larger case, with more internal disk bays. It’s currently hosted in a Antec Minuet case, which is nice and small, but only having a single 3.5″ internal is pretty cumbersome.
Stinkfist:
This is my new 13″ MacBook Pro that I bought myself for my 37th birthday. It was recently upgraded to have 8GB of RAM, instead of the stock 4, and the 5400 RPM platter was replaced with a 120gig Intel SSD 520. It’s a beast..
Platform: Mac OS 10.7.3, aka Lion.
Typical laptop usage. This machine spends most of it’s time with Chrome, iTunes and Microsoft Excel running. Data is remotely backed up to undertow via Time Machine (Instructions here)
Services provided:
I have Debian Stable running in a VMWare Fusion VM. This is a headless instance of Debian without a GUI, that mirrors a lot of the services that undertow provides, except for file and print services. I use this primarily for database and web development when I get bored and want to tweak stuff in an offline environment.
Vicarious:
This is an Ancient Dell Inspiron 640m that I inherited from a friend a couple years back. It has a rather large cluster of dead pixels in the top left corner of the screen, but other than that it works just fine.
Platform: Debian Unstable, with updates done once a month or so.
Services provided:
sshd, with X11 forwarding enabled.It primarily serves as a front end to Undertow, as well as for hard disk diagnostics (I have a USB -> SATA dock attached to it for this purpose). I also do some basic web programming (php and pgql, mainly) on this machine. It sits in the basement and I access it remotely via ssh, and forward it’s display to my MBP. The use of this machine was largely deprecated by the purchase of the MBP, but I still keep it around incase I have issues with an XFS, JFS or ReiserFS formatted disk, and I need to recover data.
Hush:
An ASUS EEEPC 900HA
Platform: Dual booted between Debian GNU/Linux (unstable) and Microsoft Windows XP Pro.
Services provided:
None, this is a front end client only, and is only used away from home.I’ve upgraded this little beast pretty much to the limit. I doubled the RAM from 1GB to 2GB the day I got it, and also replaced the 160GB, 4200 RPM HDD with a 500GB, 7200 RPM platter. I actually keep this machine in my camera bag, and it goes every where that my DSLR goes, so that I can dump my memory cards at a moment. It also gets used when ever I need to plug a phone into a PC, so that I can upgrade the software on the device, or attempt to fix something that I did to a phone. Until recently, it was also used to keep my iPod loaded with the appropriate media for the gym, but that task has been taken over my the MBP.
Stinkfist (Gen 1)
Circa 2001 Dual Pentium III (Coppermine) @ 866mhz, 1.5GB of PC133 Ram, and 320 gig PATA disk.
Completely deprecated, and not in use currently, which is sad.
5 Machines. A far fry from the days when I had 9 desktops, each serving different functions, and running massive utility bills. For the most part, only 2 of these are ever one at a now, as Undertow is really a beefy enough machine that it can replace the 8 that came before it (all were Pentium 2 era machines previously).
I have a feeling that the moment it becomes realistic to put a 2TB SSD into Stinkfist, even good old undertow will be retired…
And, just because I know someone will eventually ask. Stinkfist is the name of a Tool song, I name all my systems after Tool songs, and my workstation is always Stinkfist. It’s a 15 year old quirk, don’t ask.