You know when grown-ups tell you everything's going to be fine, and you think they're probably lying to make you feel better?
Yes.
Everything's going to be fine.

Wednesday, December 19

Geek

Replacing A Failed Drive In A RAID-5 Volume On A LaCie 5big Network 2

1. Check Raid Management in the admin panel.  This will tell you which drive has failed.  The drives are numbered left to right as you look at the back of the device (which is where the drives are).

2. While the device is still powered on, look at the back.  The failed drive will have a red light.  This is the one you want to swap.  It should be the same as the one indicated in Raid Management.  If not, you're probably doing it wrong.

2a. The other drives will have blue lights.  These are the ones you don't want to swap.

3. Turn the device off.  Wait for it to stop blinking and talking to itself.

4. Unplug power and network (and any other) cables.

5. Use a minus screwdriver to unlock the failed drive by turning the little locky thing 90 degrees widdershins.

6.  Pull the drive out and put it somewhere where you won't get it mixed up with its replacement.

7.  Put the replacement into the empty bay.  It will slide right in.  Don't put the bad drive back in; that's unlikely to help.

8.  Use that minus screwdriver to lock the drive in place by turning the little locky thing 90 degrees deosil.

9.  Plug the power and network (and any other) cables back in.

10. Turn the device back on.

11.  Wait for it to stop blinking and talking to itself.  This will take about two minutes.

12.  Log back in to the admin panel and go to Raid Management again.  You will see that the array is still degraded, but the new drive has a little button against it that says "Claim".

13.  Click on the little button that says "Claim".

14.  Your array will now resync itself.  This will take from 6 hours for a 5TB array to 18 hours for a 15TB array.

15. Enjoy!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:46 PM | Comments (37) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Life

Christmas Avoidance

Didn't really want to go shopping today; the stores are full of people and I never did like people very much.

Then I thinks to myself, I haven't used the home delivery service for a while.  It's great for stocking up on bulky or heavy stuff like soft drinks (soda) when they're on special and (checks web site) they're on special right now.

So that's that dealt with.

Also, I'm on holiday as of twenty minutes ago. smile

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:20 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Cool

Expectations Exceeded

So on the 14th (Billy time) my little village joined the Ninja World War. At the time we had all of the upgrades available to us - 25 in all - as there's only so much you can do until you start fighting the Ninja War with other Ninja Villages.

On the 15th, I said:
8 upgrades in two days. So far. smile

There are 18 more upgrades we can buy while we stay safe in Tier 1. At our current rate, that will only take 4 or 5 days.

So let's do that, then get our Natural Resource Facility and join the big boys! (And girls.)
But plans change, and on the 16th:
Bought Natural Research Facility, Elemental Harmony! We've moved up from the Little League now. smile
On the morning of the 15th, I predicted 18 more upgrades in 4 or 5 days. Now, on the afternoon of the 19th the actual tally is 38.  We set a crazily ambitious target and then more than doubled it.

Our daily announcement says it all:
Daily News (19 Dec): Please Collect. No Kaiju or Zombjas yet, that might not happen until tomorrow, sorry. Bought: Ninja Ambassadors, Medical Ninja Facility, Tunnel System, Elemental Shield, Special Forces (Genjutsu), Special Forces (Ninjutsu). Jonin and higher have access to S-Rank missions! Plus we should be significantly harder to invade now. Kaiju Upgrade: Needle Pits. Yesterday's drop: Hacksaw. Drop winners: Hypozeuxis. Raffle winner: Naksho. Raffle list: brikmuppet - 5, Dahemo - 4.

Yesterday's News (18 Dec): Please Collect and kill the kaiju! Bought: Verdant Fields, Temple of the Four Winds, Black Market, Invasion Defense, Ninja Beach, Nonja Lab, Television Studios, Summoning Circle, Lemonade Stand. We have Flower Wars and Mahjong! Kaiju upgrade: Wasteland Highway. Today's summon: Dakralai. Yesterday's drop: Tire Tracks. Drop winners: Hypozeuxis, Carrot 6. Raffle winner: Naksho. Raffle list: brikmuppet - 5.

So come join us! We have Burger Ninja and Pizza Witch, Hanafuda and Mahjong, Kaiju and Zombjas, BillyTV and BillyCon, Crafting and Summoning, Claw Machines and Darts, and Ramen and Lemonade!

Fractal Village: Because reasons.

http://www.animecubed.com/billy/userimages/sigs/85354.jpg

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:55 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Monday, December 17

Cool

Memetic Plague Warning


(And yeah, I've heard about Psy's earlier, idiotic and repugnant lyrics.  That sort of thing is why I appreciate artists for their art, and not for their political views.  Also, was it windy here last night or what?  My laundry basket is at the bottom of my garden; last night it was on the back porch.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:34 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Saturday, December 15

Cool

Just Checking

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:28 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Thursday, December 13

Geek

It's Raining Shinies

I'm working on a new theme for mee.nu based on Twitter's Bootstrap framework (a nice unified CSS/Javascript platform for doing responsive site desings).

But while I'm a pretty good programmer, I'm only middling as a designer, so I've been hunting for a good Bootstrap-compatible theme I could license and then customise to my needs - and I couldn't find one.  I could find some nice themes that didn't work with Bootstrap (making it harder for users to customise their own sites), and I could find Bootstrap themes that were immediately obviously Bootstrap themes, but nothing that was both based on Bootstrap and also slick and polished and distinctive.

And now I've found five since Sunday.

Guess it's that time of year.  Or... Something.  Any one of these themes would do the job, and some of them come with stacks of features that will save me weeks of work (and months of elapsed time, since I don't get to spend as much time as I'd like working on Minx).

I've bought basic licenses for all five (that's pretty cheap to do) so that I can play around and do some site mockups, which I'll post here for comment.  Expect to see that this weekend.

Once a favourite is selected, I'll buy a more expensive "extended" license that allows me to repackage the theme into Minx.

And then it will be shinies all round.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:21 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Tuesday, December 11

Geek

Caption Tag

Just testing...

http://ai.mee.nu/images/Hunter.jpg?size=540x&q=95
I has a caption?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:05 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Friday, December 07

Art

Authors Who Need To Be Eprinted

Glen Cook.  His older, long out-of-print stuff is now easily available from Baen, which is great, but his two best-known series, the Black Company and Garrett, P.I. books, are nowhere to be found.

C. J. Cherryh.  She's written a ton of stuff, a lot of it long out of print, and almost none of it is available as ebooks.

Jack Chalker.  Of the sixty books he wrote before his untimely passing, I can only find twelve available for sale.

I've been happily ploughing through the backlists of Lawrence Watt-Evans and Walter Jon Williams, who have self-republished their older works, and I'm starting in on F. Paul Wilson now, who's done the same.  I like this trend and hope to see more of it.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:56 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Wednesday, December 05

Cool

Are You Fractal Enough?

Fractal Village needs ninjas.  Ninjas like you.

Not not you, the other one.  No, behind - yes, you.  Hi, what's your name?  Cool.

Yes, ninjas like you, with poorly-defined boundaries and non-integral dimensionality, hidden depths of self-similarity and, um, the time to log in once a day for a few minutes to help out a village in its finest hour.*

http://www.animecubed.com/billy/userimages/sigs/85354.jpg

So click on that banner, sign up, and come join Fractal Village, the only village with hidden depths hidden in its hidden depths!**

Fractal Village: We have cake.  Sometimes.

* May not contain actual finest hours.
** Apart from Recursion Village, the bastards.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:43 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Cool

Cheapjacked

Just discovered that the entire Repairman Jack series and Adversary Cycle (by F Paul Wilson) can be bought on Kindle for sixty bucks.  Update: Unless you live in America, in which case you're outta luck.  That's for twenty novels, seven or eight thousand pages.  And it's good stuff.

If you've never read any of his books, I suggest you start with The Tomb, a standalone novel* and the first Repairman Jack story.  Just $2.99, assuming you have a Kindle or something with the Kindle app on it.  If you like it, you'll very probably like all the rest.

It looks like the ebooks have been self-published by Wilson, which is is just how things should be, and a slap in the face for companies like Hachette, who need to be slapped in the face as often as possible.  The one downside is that publishers still provide some useful services to authors, such as, oh, cover design...

Update: Also, a new Repairman Jack novel, Cold City, first in a new trilogy, is out.  $2.99 for me!  Since the series is complete** these are prequel stories, and apparently not supernatural/horror, since Jack's first brush with that sort of thing happened in The Tomb.

* Standalone in the sense that it tells a complete story and assumes no prior knowledge of the characters or their world.  It wasn't planned as the first volume in a series; that just sort of happened.

** The final Repairman Jack novel, The Dark Before the End, immediately precedes the final Adversary Cycle novel, Nightworld, and Wilson has always made clear that there would be no continuation of the story beyond that point.  Which makes sense, since it's the story of the end of the world...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:07 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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