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Entries tagged "misc".

So I have a new bathroom

25th April 2012

The work on my bathroom is complete. The two weeks of noise and mess were well worth it.

The old and unpleasant room is now completely different. The only issue I see is that I've managed to fill up the storage already.

I'm particularly impressed with the sink, but special mention must go to the step, and the light switch (this is touch-sensitive and apparently incapable of electrocuting me).

Rest assured that despite all the changes none of my dinosaurs are missing!

Oh well I can always mount a new shelf, or three.

ObQuote: - "Tell me of your homeworld, Usul.", Dune.

Tags: bathroom, misc. | 8 comments.

 

I like languages

24th February 2011

One of the reasons I like Scotland is the fun that Scottish people have with language. I'm going to use two examples to illustrate my point:

  • "Mind" is often used as "Remember"
  • "How" is often used as "why".

The last one is particularly fun when you use questions such as "How no?" - meaning roughly "Why not?".

Languages, and idioms, vary wildly in different parts of the world, even when you restrict yourself to English-speaking languages. I'll not even get started on Accents. The UK is tiny compared to many other countries, yet we have a wide array of accents - Australia, by contrast is huge, but I can think of only two accents across the country. (Rationally I expect that there are many accents in different parts of Australia, and I'm merely ignorant.)

In conclusion languages are fun, and some places this is more evident than in others. I will most likely contintue to say "The shop is open from 9 while 4" rather than the more typical "From 9 til 4" - I'm allowed to do that, having grown up in Yorkshire!

(PS. PHP still sucks - Even if you post it upon a PHP-powered blog. ;)

ObQuote: "People take you for granted, you know. We gotta make people miss you." - Hancock

Tags: edinburgh, languages, misc, random. | 3 comments.

 

So people spend a fortune on office chairs?

12th September 2010

I've heard, over the years, of people spending insane amounts of money on office chairs.

On the one hand I accept that you spend a lot of time sitting in chairs when you're working upon a computer. On the left I find the idea of spending £750+ on a chair a little insane.

For the past few years I've had a kneeling chair over time this has gotten pretty "squished" and "flat". (Specifically the part where my knees go.)

So I decided to get a new chair. What did I buy? a large rubber ball!

It's a little weird to walk into the room and see this green ball in front of the keyboard, but it's actually pretty great to sit on.

I'm gonna ignore all claims of "excercise" and "healthyness". Sure I find myself shifting around slightly to retain balance, but I'm not at all convinced that such small movements, even over the course of many days, will make any appreciable different to my muscles.

Anyway .. That is all I have to say today.

ObQuote: "Don't tell anyone we went to war over a woman. " - Mongol (2007)

Tags: chairs, misc. | 4 comments.

 

Sanity testing drives

12th August 2010

Recently I came across a situation where moving a lot of data around on a machine with a 3Ware RAID card ultimately killed the machine.

To test the hardware in advance for this requires a test of both:

  • The individual drives, which make up the RAID array
  • The filesystem which is layered upon the top of it.

The former can be done with badblocks, etc. The latter requires a simple tool to create a bunch of huge files with "random" contents, then later verify they have the contents you expected.

With that in mind:

dt --files=1000  --size=100M [--no-delete|--delete]

This:

  • Creates, in turn, 1000 files.
  • Each created file will be 100Mb long.
  • Each created file will have random contents written to it, and be closed.
  • Once closed the file will be re-opened and the MD5sum computed
    • Both in my code and by calling /usr/bin/md5sum.
    • If these sums mis-match, indicating a data-error, we abort.
  • Otherwise we delete the file and move on.

Adding "--no-delete" and "--files=100000" allows you to continue testing until your drive is full and you've tested every part of the filesystem.

Trivial toy, or possibly useful to sanity-check a filesystem? You decide. Or just:

hg clone http://dt.repository.steve.org.uk/

(dt == disk test)

ObQuote: "Stand back boy! This calls for divine intervention! " - "Brain Dead"

Tags: drives, filesystems, misc, tools. | 4 comments.

 

You seem uncomfortable.

6th February 2010

I've been trying to remember to post the pictures I like online for the past few months. So this is a reminder to myself.

This image below didn't turn out quite how I wanted it to:

  • I was hoping for a nicer sihouet upon the lady's face.
  • The tree-branch on the left irritates me.

But that said I keep on coming back to look at it. I like the lighting, and I love the way that the brick wall on the right hand side angles towards the building on the horizon.

Enjoy. Or not.

Sunset

A similarly "not perfect" image is this outdoor shot. I have only one irritation with this shot - and that is that the trees are clipped at the top. Meh, such is life.

(I have two styles of photography; semi-random where I snap what is in front of me, and staged where I try to construct a particular picture - the two images above? One of each.)

ObFilm: Bound

Tags: images, misc, photography, random, soul-stealing. | No comments