Why did you say six months?
He's coming.
This matters. This is important. Why did you say six months?
Why did you say five minutes?

Saturday, February 04

Geek

Overprovisioning, Part 1

I just counted.  When the new systems arrive, I'll have 81TB of (working) raw disk.

20TB of that is currently sitting around because I haven't had time to install it.  21TB has been used for backups (two full sets) because things keep falling over.  24TB has yet to arrive.

Maybe I overdid things just a little.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:30 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Geek

Restoring The Global Economy

Nagi (my Windows 7 desktop machine) has been playing up increasingly often of late, and in the past month went from occasional freezes to full-blown BSODs.  I think it's due to one of the drives being on its way out; last weekend I backed up the entire system and took everything off that drive, and it hasn't crashed outright since then, though it did semi-freeze once overnight.  (It was still up and running the next morning, but uninclined to do anything useful.)

I had originally planned to rebuild or replace Nagi on the cheap during my Christmas break, but in the end I didn't get a Christmas break; I ended up working the entire time.  So no time for cheap rebuilds, but I got paid for two weeks I expected not to get paid for, so that money went straight into my toy fund.

And so, let me introduce Shana and Lina, who haven't actually arrived as yet, but have been ordered.  Shana is my new Windows box, replacing Nagi; Lina is my new Linux box, replacing Tanarotte.

Base Config

  • AMD FX 8150 CPU (8 cores, 3.6GHz)
  • Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5 motherboard
  • 32GB (4 x 8GB) G.Skill DDR3-1600 memory
  • 6 x Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 2TB disks (2 in RAID-1, 4 in RAID-5)
  • Pioneer 12x Blu-Ray Writer
  • Corsair AX-850 (Shana) or AX-750 (Lina) power supply

Shana Extras


Lina Extras

  • Sapphire 6770 1GB GDDR5 video card
  • Intel 320-series 300GB SSD

The two systems work out to almost the same price - the SSD is within a couple of bucks of the 7950 video card, but the 6770 is a bit cheaper than the fancy sound card.

So my Windows box goes from a 4-core 2.4GHz CPU to an 8-core 3.6GHz; from 8GB RAM to 32GB; from 1TFLOPS and 1GB of graphics to 3TFLOPS and 3GB; and from 4.5TB of flaky unRAIDed disks to 8TB of hopefully unflaky and definitely RAIDed disk.

Tanarotte is newer than Nagi, so the jump isn't as great, but it's still 4-core 3GHz to 8-core 3.6, 8GB RAM to 32GB, 5TB RAID-5 to 2TB RAID-1 plus 6TB RAID-5 - and another 300GB of SSD - and from motherboard graphics to a 1.36TFLOP 1GB dedicated card.

Whee!

Oh, and I still have the parts I'd set aside for rebuilding Nagi, so once the two new machines are settled in, I'll go ahead and do that as well.

Yes, this was pretty expensive, but Tanarotte dates to 2009 and Nagi to 2008 - I don't do this all that often.

Interesting point: Either of the new machines is more powerful than Aoi, the server that runs all of mu.nu and mee.nu.  I'll need to do something about that next.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:53 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Friday, February 03

Rant

Other Days

See that post below?  Strike  that.  Reverse it.

Fontspring?  Lovely site, beautifully organised.  You can get nice, reasonably-priced bundles of fonts for both desktop and web use for "Unlimited Web Sites".

But the fine print says that you can only use the fonts on sites under your direct control, so I can't license them and offer them to mee.nu users.

Fonts.com?  Not sure about the restrictions, but I checked the numbers again and realised that if a site like Ace of Spades were to use typography features licensed through Fonts.com, it would cost me $200 a month just for fonts, just for that one blog.*

So...   Eeeeeh.   Does Not Suck awards revoked.  Both sites provide good, useful, reasonably priced services - just not ones I can make any direct use of.

Instead I'll mention Google Web Fonts, now up to 436 freely available fonts which I have conveniently integrated into the upcoming revision of the editor.**

The range of fonts isn't as broad, and the quality isn't as consistent (though some are quite good), but it doesn't tie my hands and prevent me from using it through licensing restrictions or simple cost.

And you can download the entire collection if you want.  You'll need a Mercurial client like TortoiseHG, but if you're a programmer you should be using Mercurial anyway.****

* Admittedly, it's my single busiest site by a good margin, but...
** Well, I bought the editor, and it already had Google Web Font support.***
*** Well, I got the editor for free, but...
**** Git boo.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:57 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Life

Some Days

Some days I have a problem, and I spend hour after hour looking for a solution that doesn't bring more trouble than the problem itself, growing ever more frustrated until I want to kick the whole project to the kerb and take up potato farming.

Other days I find a solution that kind of works, then another solution that's better, and then another solution that's better still, in the space of an hour.

Today has been one of those other days.  They come rarely, but all the more satisfying for that.

Fontspring and Fonts.com share today's Does Not Suck award for reasonable pricing and no-nonsense licenses.

Update: Or not.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:25 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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