Dear Santa, thank you for the dolls and pencils and the fish. It's Easter now, so I hope I didn't wake you but... honest, it is an emergency. There's a crack in my wall. Aunt Sharon says it's just an ordinary crack, but I know its not cause at night there's voices so... please please can you send someone to fix it? Or a policeman, or... Back in a moment. Thank you Santa.
Tuesday, November 29
Crossover
Seagate Savvio 15K.3 300GB SAS 2.5" disk $695
Intel 320 300GB SATA MLC SSD $532
Not just for performance, but for capacity, a mid-range SSD is now cheaper than a high-end disk drive. Though that will likely reverse in a couple of months as drives start flowing out of Thailand again.
(On my denbeste.nu server, the googlebot is my most frequent visitor.)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Tuesday, November 29 2011 04:27 AM (+rSRq)
2
Yes, I expect a large chunk of those hits are web spiders, and Googlebot is the most active by a good margin.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, November 29 2011 09:43 AM (PiXy!)
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Still, across all the servers that's more than a billion hits a year. Given how little time I've had to work on things recently, that makes me happy.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, November 29 2011 09:43 AM (PiXy!)
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I work under the assumption that half of my page visits are from googlebots. That might not be true, but it's a safe rule of thumb.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Tuesday, November 29 2011 03:27 PM (2YMZG)
Well, technically, stridulation. Last night there was an invisible cricket the size of a '57 Chevy directly outside my bedroom window.
I say it was that big based on the noise it made - the loudest insect I have ever encountered - and I say invisible because when I went outside, in the rain, with a torch, I couldn't see a damn thing, but it started right up again when I went back in and turned the lights off.
1
A torch? What are you, a mob of angry villagers?
Posted by: TallDave at Sunday, November 27 2011 03:52 PM (lNW+B)
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Probably, and its a good thing too given that he has to keep this whole thing running.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at Monday, November 28 2011 05:59 AM (EJaOX)
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What you colonials* would refer to as a flashlight.
* As opposed to us colonials.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Monday, November 28 2011 10:35 AM (PiXy!)
4
But the thought of other way is so much more entertaining.
I assume this thread was spammed and cleaned up; there are three comments (not counting mine) but the counter under the post says 5. Something that's easily amenable to fixing?
Posted by: RickC at Friday, December 02 2011 01:54 PM (VKVOz)
Not his best. But then, his best is very, very good.
The Children of the Sky, Vernor Vinge
The long-awaited sequel to the classic A Fire Upon the Deep disappoints. Some interesting parts, but the villain of the piece is petty, stupid, and dull. Doesn't measure up to the original or the prequel.*
The Atrocity Archive, The Jennifer Morgue, The Fuller Memorandum, Charles Stross
I like most (not all, but most) of Stross's work, and these are some of his best. Think computational linguistics meets British spy thriller meets H. P. Lovecraft. Snow Crash meets Declare. Recommended if you like any of those things. (I was re-reading those after I tossed Zendegi on the eight deadly words pile.)
The Clockwork Rocket, Greg Egan
Has potential, still reading. It's about an amoeboid alien chick from another universe who is her species' Einstein-analogue. The science is laid on a bit thick at times - what I'm looking for is more of Egan's brilliant last-third-of-Schild's-Ladder** and so far this is intriguing but not quite it.
* Mind you, both of those won the Hugo award for best novel, so it had a lot to live up to.
** The first third wasn't bad either; the second third plodded, but the last third took wing and soared.
1
I always thought the third in the series should have been A Sky Full of Fire, focused on the core expedition. I eagerly bought the new one anyway, but set it aside after the first few scenes, and haven't gone back yet. It just didn't grab me.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at Saturday, November 19 2011 03:33 AM (2XtN5)
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I don't know if Stross is just very hit-or-miss for me, personally, or he's had a bit of a meltdown over the last half-decade or something. I really liked the beginning of his Family Trade series, and then it got uncomfortable... and then it got into "let's luxuriate in grotesque portrayals of genocide at the hands of the United States Hated Mordor" territory. Likewise, the Atrocity Archive was great, the Jennifer Morgue was acceptable, and the Fuller Memorandum was full of baby-eating American Christian fundamentalists, evil White Russians, and a protagonist descending into full-on malignant Hollywood Atheism. At least he managed to avoid presenting us with any heroic abomination-slaughtering commissars, but you could feel him trembling with manful restraint on that subject.
Posted by: Mitch H. at Saturday, November 19 2011 04:23 AM (jwKxK)
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The portrayal of US politics in the Family Trade series is, frankly, juvenile lefty bullshit, and certainly marred those stories for me too.
I agree that The Fuller Memorandum was the weakest of the three, but I still thoroughly enjoyed it, and it never ticked me off the way those parts of the Family Trade books do.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Saturday, November 19 2011 08:14 AM (PiXy!)
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What's wrong with heroic abomination-slaughtering commissars? I quite like the Ciaphas Cain series...
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Saturday, November 19 2011 09:06 AM (pWQz4)
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A Warhammer Expy of Harry Flashman? OK, Avatar, you've sold me on checking out the omnibus. Although the Flashman effect is a bit too culturally nihilistic for me to tolerate Flashman himself in more than pennypacket doses, so we'll see...
Posted by: Mitch H. at Tuesday, November 22 2011 05:29 AM (jwKxK)
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It's as close to humor as you'll find in the Warhammer universe, except for orks.
Honestly, I've never read the Flashman stuff.
Posted by: Avatar_exADV at Tuesday, November 22 2011 06:34 AM (GJQTS)
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Just wanted to let you know that your latest spammer also spammed me, which means he has a login.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Wednesday, November 23 2011 02:11 AM (+rSRq)
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Thanks. I'll get rid of them and ban them from the server.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, November 23 2011 10:46 AM (PiXy!)
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Yes, Atrocity Archive is a classic. Sadly, I learned in conversation with Stross that is a semi-rabid leftist, which colored my reading of his books -- when he had Dick Cheney nuking the United States, the stupid overcame the awesome and I haven't read him much since. I had a similar problem with Scalzi, who is (sadly) not just a leftist but insists on being an utter douche about it. The author of those two wonderful Takeshi books also apparently hates capitalism bitterly. What is the connection between leftism and brilliant fiction? The Hayekian conceit again, I suppose.
Children of the Sky was one of those books that seemed to be born out of inertia, it just didn't go anywhere or do anything new. It should have ended with the Blighter fleet in orbit. And FFS, (spoiler!) how do they not kill Nevil at the end? I mean, come on.
At any rate, I have high hopes for Trent Zelazny and Tony Daniel, and I am firmly resolved to avoid learning of any political views they might have.
Posted by: TallDave at Sunday, November 27 2011 04:05 PM (lNW+B)
10
The first omnibus of the Caiphas Cain series was pretty nifty - kind of like Flashman, but not nearly as harsh, the protagonist isn't as much of a secret shit as Harry Flashman. In fact, he bears more resemblance to that Horatio Hornblower expy from a few years back, what was the name.. Nicholas Seafort, David Feintuch's space opera series with all the "Hope" titles.
Posted by: Mitch H. at Wednesday, December 07 2011 04:52 AM (jwKxK)
It's a card game. When a card shows up on the table that a player wants, he has to slap it. If both players want it, it's a contest of speed.
What makes me laugh about all this is that back when DiGiKerot used to do comics for his web page, and when Saki was running, he satirized it by having his girls be in a Snap club (instead of mah-jong, you understand).
Sure wish he'd start doing those again, but of all people I particularly can understand getting burned out.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Monday, November 14 2011 03:57 PM (+rSRq)
1
Hmm.. it's now significantly cheaper to buy hard drives from big box retailers than from NewEgg! I see a 2 TB drive from Best Buy for less than a 1/3 the price. I wonder how soon BB (and presumably other retailers with largish inventory) will react.
Posted by: Kayle at Friday, November 04 2011 11:09 AM (M7tH0)
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Yes, I picked up a spare 3TB external drive the other day at a large retailer, for the same price as usual.
I suspect it's the difference between contract and spot prices - and the spot market for disk drives has evaporated because there's just no product available, so all the little guys now have to pay full contract price.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Friday, November 04 2011 08:45 PM (PiXy!)
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Saturday, November 05 2011 03:37 AM (+rSRq)
4
Big Papa Pixy, I have a possible bug report to... um... report. I just added a category to The Pond (Military History). I put up a post announcing the creation of said category and put the post into Military History. I then went back through my archives and moved appropriate posts into the new category.
If you click on the category, the comments for the New Category post show up, but the comments for the moved posts don't show up. They're still there if you jump to the month (for example), just not if you go through the Category listing.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Wednesday, November 09 2011 09:04 AM (2YMZG)
