It was a bad day. A lot of bad stuff happened. And I'd love to forget it all. But I don't. Not ever. Because this is what I do. Every time, every day, every second, this: On five, we're bringing down the government.

Testing Stuffs

Test test...
more...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:36 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Next Stop, Kurumi!

I need to spend some time on improved spam-walloping componentry, but I'm also planning to add another server into the mix, this time Kurumi.  Kurumi will deliver us another 100TB of bandwidth to add to the 6TB we currently have (of which we're using 5TB, so we'll need the extra pretty soon).

Kurumi will act as an automatic media-file cache thingy; image and file downloads will be redirected to Kurumi which will act as an intelligent caching proxy.  It might even do more than that if I can get a stable VPN working between the servers, but it will do that at least.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:19 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Zettai Karen Children

I'd completely forgotten this series until Steven reminded me and I dug it out and took a look.

This thing is awesome.

Why it wasn't all over the blogs last year I don't know - or maybe it was, I dunno, I was dead most of last year.  As far as I can tell no-one has licensed it yet either, which is just crazy.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:06 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Moog

MOO 1 & 2 are out on GOG.  MOM listed as coming soon.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:43 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Move Completed

We're now live on Akane (Mk III, I think) a.k.a Aoi (temporarily, because I can't have two servers with the same name).

Question: Is it any faster?

Answer: Dammit, I didn't grab any stats before the move.  But this page is loading *way* faster than the last time I checked.

Answer Part Two: Oh yeah, this baby flies!

Update: All the CPanel licenses got deactivated, but it only took a couple of minutes to get them reactivated.  I was half expecting that to happen anyway.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:29 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Well, That's Just Ducky

From my ISP's status page right now:

Fault Notice 1018181

Areas: Australia

Do tell.

Expected time to fix is 4PM WST, i.e. 6PM EST, i.e. exactly when I'm supposed to be doing the server migration.

Bah.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:42 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Mio Elements

As I was going through the uninstall list removing McAfee and Norton crap from Mio, I discovered that she came with full versions of Adobe Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements.  Those aren't comparable to the professional versions, but they're still very useful - and completely free.

Nice.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:24 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Server Migration - Sunday 18th April 8AM-9AM GMT

We'll be moving to our shiny new server this Sunday at 6PM Sydney time - 8AM GMT, 4AM EDT, 1AM PDT.  So a mostly convenient time for most people - in the evening for me, and in the middle of the night for almost everyone else.*

Downtime is expected to be 30 to 60 minutes, depending on exactly how long the network switch takes to refresh its ARP cache.  All URLs, logins, and IP address will be unchanged; it should just go offline and then come back an hour later on the new server running (up to) twice as fast.

Update: Pushed back one day and bumped.  My test migration worked perfectly, but I only got there half an hour before the real thing was scheduled to happen, so I'm putting it off until tomorrow.

* 8 o'clock on a Sunday morning counts as the middle of the night according to ISO 8833.7.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:37 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Sony E Series Mini Review

Good: The screen is fabulous.  1920x1080 in a 15" screen means I need to scale up web pages and stuffs, but that means the text is rendered with a lot more detail and easier to read.  The colours are exceptionally vivid - it might not be colour accurate but it sure as hell is vivid.

It's fast too.  The Core i3 330M is the baby of the family, but it certainly gets the job done, and the Radeon 5650 is as fast as you'll find outside of a specialised gaming notebook.

Bad: It's built like a tank.  It looks good in pictures, but it's bulkier and heavier than you'd expect.  Though my opinion has certainly been shaped by a couple of weeks with Sae - it's really only a few ounces heavier than my old HP notebook.  Also, battery life is estimated by Sony at 1.5 hours.  Better than the 20 minutes my HP had been giving me, but still...

Ugly: The keyboard.  The keys are slightly too small, slightly too close together, and skewed way to hell off center by the numeric keypad.  If you plan to use it mostly at a desk - and you have small hands - it probably won't bother you.

Summary: A capable desktop-replacement notebook marred only by the evil of the numeric keypad.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:27 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Moeblob Central

New notebook #2!



It's a Sony E series.  Core i3 2.13GHz, 4GB RAM, 500GB disk, Radeon 5650, 1GB video RAM, 1920x1080 display.

It has everything I wanted except for decent battery life and low weight, which are what I got Sae for.  I've been wavering on whether to also get this one, but I just went past the local hi-fi store and it was in stock and 10% off, and I unwavered.  Sae is my lightweight take-anywhere long-battery-life notebook; this is my high-power watch-anime-play-games when-I-can't-be-bothered-getting-out-of-bed notebook.

The only question: Yui or Mio?  I'd originally planned to get the white model and call it Yui, but they only had the black model in stock and it looks more like a Mio.

Then I just need to get two external disk drives - a silver one for Sae and call it Hiro, and a black one and call it either Ui or Azusa, depending...

This means that for the first time ever, I have two working notebooks.  Also, one notebook-shaped object.  I have heaps of old desktops that still work fine, but notebooks not so much.

Update: It's a lot bigger and heavier than Sae, and the numeric keypad means all the keys are in the wrong place; whoever decided that numeric keypads should be standard issue on notebooks should be shot.  Not sure about the non-stick trackpad either.

But the screen is amazing.  The viewing angle isn't as good as an IPS/S-PVA display, but the contrast and clarity and colour are as good as anything I've seen.  Going to watch something now, let's see what I've got in HD...

Update: Well, that was weird.  I spent an hour wondering if it was supposed to be as incredibly contrasty as that.  Web pages and stuff were just fine, but video looked seriously out of whack.  Eventually I went and started poking around in the video driver settings, and suddenly bloopf! and the video playback looks normal.  There was some gamma anti-correction going on somewhere - but for video playback only.

Typing on this thing in bed, though, is a pig.  It's too small to have a numeric keypad: you have to shift it way over to the right so that you're typing on the left, and your left hand ends up resting right on the edge of the computer.  It's ergonomically craptastic.  Numeric keypads on notebooks must die.

Nice screen though, now that I've worked out why Doctor Who looked funny.  Only problem is, you can see the pixels and artifacts in 720p video.  Need something better...

Update: Aargh.  The keyboard is slightly smaller than full size.  That's why it's such a pain to type on.  There was an almost identical Sony model at the store that seemed easier to type on, and that's why - it was a 16" rather than 15" screen, so it was a little larger, so the keys were the proper size.  But it was a lot more expensive and didn't have a 1080P screen - to get that model with a 1080P screen would have cost twice as much as I paid for this one.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:10 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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