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.

I wonder if I can get that put on business cards?

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.

Basic Spec sheet:

2.4GHz dual-core Intel Core i5
4GB 1333MHz Ram
500GB 5400-rpm Hard Disk
Intel HD Graphics 3000 Graphic Card

Basic, simple entry level model, that I haven’t made any changes to (yet).

All in all, I have to admit that I like the machine, with a few exceptions.

The good:

• It’s speedy, for sure. Applications are fast to launch, and very responsive to use. The only app I have had crash so far is Time Machine, but I think that was a flaky USB disk causing issues, rather than the software itself.
• The multitouch trackpad has already changed how I interact with computers. Absolutely amazing.
• It truly is Unixy goodness. Almost all the toys I am used to from Debian are already there in a nice little bash terminal.
• The backlit keyboard is awesome. I didn’t expect that I would care, but as I sit here typing in the dark, it becomes apparent really quickly why it is a good idea. FTR, I’m a (somewhat sloppy) touch typist who averages about 45 wpm. It still matters.
• The screen is awesome. at about half brightness, it’s far brighter than my ancient Dell, or even the more recent ASUS that this is replacing. Higher resolution would be nice, but I didn’t want to wait until fall for the (pure speculation on my part) retina HD display models coming out this fall.
• The Magsafe power supply is nothing short of brilliant.

The bad:

• I miss a start menu, with all applications in a neatly organized collapsible column. You know, like OpenBox provides. Launchpad is a start, but it’s just different.
• Command Key, instead of control key for common shortcuts sucks ass. I am sure this can (and will) be remapped.
• 4 gigs of ram seems limited. Other machines in it’s price range have 6 to 8. Thankfully, an 8 gig ram kit is only $50 at my local nerd store.
• 500 gigs, seems small as well: I imagine that this is only an issue for me because I haven’t yet adopted any “cloud” solutions for my storage needs. I’m a storage whore, always have been, always will be.
• 500 gigs, seems small as well, part deux: I plan on dual, if not triple booting this beast. Additional space would be handy. 750′s are cheap, so I’m not that worried.

All in all, I am exceptionally happy with the purchase. It’s an item that I have had my eye on for a while, especially after getting the monster 15.6″ Asus a few months back. I’ve missed the smaller screen for a long time now, as I have always been a fan of 14.1″ or smaller.. 13.3″ seems to be the new hotness for those of us that value small size and portability over a big assed screen for multimedia stuff.

Rambling pointlessly, I’m going to bed.

I’ve so far got NFS and SMB file sharing ready to rock. Apache is running as well as there are a few monitoring tools that I like to use as well.

All this, because I bought some HomePlug ethernet adapters to use with my WD-TV Live Hub, because I wanted to have access to Netflix in the bedroom.

The simple little Semprom 3000+ has turned into a media sharing beast, with just over 2.5 TB of total storage, and it’s currently sitting at 75% capacity.

When on earth did it become sane to have not only 2000 dvd’s, but to have a soft copy of each of them sitting on a disk in the basement, accessible to the entire house?

Better question. Why did it take so long?

I really need to get off my ass and install debian on my netbook again.

vi needs to be upgraded to vii

dan@vicarious: ~
$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure life
[sudo] password for dan:
Package `life’ is not installed and no info is available.
Use dpkg –info (= dpkg-deb –info) to examine archive files,
and dpkg –contents (= dpkg-deb –contents) to list their contents.
/usr/sbin/dpkg-reconfigure: life is not installed

dan@vicarious: ~
$