Is there anything notable in the current season, now that I have time to watch stuff again? There's the second season of Honey & Clover, but I haven't finished watching the first season of that.

So preferably something that is good, but short.

I poked around in the three squigabytes of fansubs that I've accumulated and came up with Shakugan no Shana, which looks like it will keep me occupied until I can sort out what's what in the new shows. I've always liked shows where the hero gets killed in the first episode.*

* Paging Yakumo Fujii...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:03 AM | Comments (27) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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(Actually, the party isn't until October 24th, but I'll forget the point by then.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:27 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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It's not perfect - see my difficulties with the clock under CentOS, for example - but I expect that sort of thing will become less common as OS developers take up VMWare as an important target platform. Linux is Linux, though, so for now it's enough to know that Fedora 5 works fine.

I needed a new Windows PC at work, and I needed at least two servers to test Minx, and I needed a replacement for our ancient development box* and thanks to Intel and VMWare Server I have them all parked neatly under my desk.

I'd be happier if I had 8GB of memory rather than 4GB, but that's still a bit pricey at the moment - and opens up the 64-bit can of worms, which I didn't feel like doing just yet.

* A Pentium III 550.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:40 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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I was laughing so hard this morning that the guy next to me on the train actually got up and moved.

Well, at least I assume it's because I was laughing.

P.S. Back episodes available for download here.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:50 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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I selected all of the basic things, and selected sub-components until I ran out of patience.

This installed 4.6 gigabytes of stuff. It did not install iostat. Or sar.

Update: Updating Fedora is abysmally slow, as always. And while the update is running - which looks set to take several hours - you can't install anything. Bleh.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:53 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Meanwhile, my iPod has decided that my correct timezone is Abu Dhabi. I have no idea why.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:44 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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I downloaded and configured it, and then ran make:

real 0m54.730s
user 0m39.567s
sys 0m13.762s

real 1m48.209s
user 1m41.037s
sys 0m6.834s

Old server:

real 2m12.971s
user 2m2.240s
sys 0m5.932s

But Kyon just zooms along - if what you want to do is compile Python. It's kind of a slug for desktop use. How does it go for other server-type stuff?

Let's see. I have a little Python benchmark. Nothing complicated, but it gives the interpreter a little test. Old server, Python 2.4.2:

real 0m3.373s
user 0m3.284s
sys 0m0.028s

real 0m3.028s
user 0m3.008s
sys 0m0.004s

Kyon, Python 2.3.4 (which is what CentOS 4.4 comes with, the slackers):

real 0m0.919s
user 0m0.909s
sys 0m0.009s

Just one small problem:

It's lying.

The timer is off... Apparently by a factor of two, though it varies a bit. I increased the loop count by a factor of ten and hand-timed it. Computer says 9 seconds, I say 18.

That's gonna really suck for my development work.

Python under Cygwin gives 1.5 seconds for my benchmark, and I confirmed that (roughly) with hand-timing, so the Core 2 really is a lot faster for Python code. Just not quite as fast as Kyon wants me to believe.

Update: A bit of digging came up with this, which doesn't help much, because I've set Kyon up as a dual-processor machine. But it at least explains what's going on.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:58 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Me hearties!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:19 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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The thing that has eaten all my time for the past two months is done, dealt with, finished, over, forgotten, dead and buried at a crossroads at midnight with a wafer in its mouth and a stake through its heart.

Cough.

I'm back to working on Minx. Being paid to work on Minx. Not quite full time - under the agreement I worked out, I have to look after some other stuff as well - but it is the major focus of my day job. (As well as being a major focus of my free time.) Yay for that.

Right now I'm setting up Kyon, Yuki and Mikuru, the Minx development and test servers. Haruhi is running pretty well, by the way, though of course the super-duper Core 2 Duo with 4GB of memory is brought down to Earth on a regular basis by software, peripherals, and networks.

My iPod is still working. My notebook has started crashing randomly again.

And tomorrow I turn 40.

I'm not going to have a mid-life crisis. I'm too busy dealing with actual crises, thank you very much.

*"Poor little guy starved to death."

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:13 PM | Comments (14) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Cons: No built-in street-level GPS. No host-device-accessible cold fusion power unit. No antigravity or timetravel capabilities. That's pretty much it.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:56 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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