Bluetrait

Well I had my last exam today. Yay. I'm heading off to central Australia on Friday and will be away for about 2 weeks. So that should be good. Hopefully I'll take some photos on the way.

My new rack mount server now has everything installed in it I need. The specs now stand at:

Dual Pentium 2 400MHz
512mb PC100 ECC Ram
1x 9.1GB 10K SCSI HDD (connected to a Compaq Smart 2/P Raid Controller)
2x 36GB 10K U160 SCSI HDDs in a Raid 1 (connected to a Compaq Smart 3200 64mb cache Raid Controller)
Remote Insight Board
2x 225watt PSUs
running FreeBSD 5.4

When I get back from my holidays I plan to put it to good use. I also headed into Virgin Moblie today to pick up some more computer gear.

Anyway I'll see everyone later :)

Yesterday apple updated iTunes to version 4.9, this new version now has built in podcasting support. It allows you to manage different podcasts somewhat like RSS feeds. You can make each podcast sync to your iPod whenever a new one is downloaded.

The firmware on all iPods has also been upgraded to better support these podcasts, and should allow you to manage them better.

The old black & white iPod is no longer on sale and has been replaced with a colour version.

iPod Colour 20gb $449
iPod Colour 60gb $598

(if you can get a student discount it is about 10% cheaper)

I got my Compaq Remote Insight board delivered today. Wow what a cool piece of hardware.

It allows a user to remotely connect to a server and access it like you were physically there. Think of it like SSH. But the cool thing about this board is that everything is contained on the card.

So it has: a video card, network card, modem, CPU and battery. This allows you to configure the server from BIOS level. It displays everything the second the server is switched on.

It has its own IP address for telnet access and it also has a web interface. You can even dial in to it.

It has an onboard battery that keeps it running even if the server is switched off. On newer model Compaq servers you can switch them on through this card.

It also keeps a log of the last two reboots. So you can play them back through the web interface; this allows you to see what went wrong with the server.

It is one very cool piece of hardware.

Also work has given me a copy of Windows 2003 Small Business Server to play with. I am currently installing it on this server. Cool fun.

On another topic, Bryn should be out of hospital tomorrow after having his appendix removed. Yay :)

The company I work for, Blue Arc launched their new website today. It is much nicer, much much nicer. I think my ranting in the office was heard, the site now supports Firefox and Safari.

Great job!

We'll it has been a while since I last posted, I've been pretty busy. Mainly uni exams. Two down, two to go. They've been pretty good.

Mother got a new digital camera the other day, a Canon IXUS 40 which seems okay. I haven't played with it too much.

I picked up my server. It is VERY loud, but very funky. I've upgraded it to 512mb Ram. Also work gave me 2x 10000rpm 36gb Seagate SCSI HDDs and 2x 7200rpm 18gb Seagate SCSI HDDs. How nice of them! So I need to find another raid controller for it or something.

A group of UNI people had a movie night last weekend. We tried to watch all 6 Star Wars. I lasted through about 4 and a half ;). Thankyou SACS for the projector too! Very useful.

Well I went on to ebay to find myself a cheap rack mount server. I found one!

Compaq Proliant 1850R

• 2 x PII 400MHz CPU's installed
• 128MB Registered ECC SDRAM
• 9.1GB 10K hot-swap SCSI HDD (room for 2 extra)
• Smart Array 2/P Raid controller
• CD-Rom / floppy drive
• 3 rack units
• 2 x 225watt redundant PSU's

For a grand total of $69

And some images (sorry IE users, you mightn't like this)

I'm picking it up on Friday afternoon. I have a 256mb ECC stick of ram here that might work in it too.

I won an indoor SkyConnector from Cebit. It seems to be a high powered 802.11a Access Point worth $975ex.

I'm not really sure if it can be used as an Access Point, it is meant to connect to a SkyExtender

So if anyone has some 802.11a gear let me know.

Here is an image of what these things are meant to be used for (my model does 16K LOS or 3.2K NLOS).

It's tru_e!

So anyway, it is official. Apple is moving to Int_el based CPUs, replacing the IBM G5 and the Motorola G4. So here is a quick run down of what is happening:

• First Apple computer with an Intel CPU by this time next year
• Majority of the transition within 2 years
• Developer Kits running a Pentium 4 3.6GHz PowerMac are available to developers NOW for $US999 and must be returned in 2007 (Ships with 10.4.1)
• Every operating system since OS 10.0.0 has worked internally on Intel CPUs
• Most Mac applications will work on the new CPU via a layer called "Rosetta"
• New version of Xcode (2.1) out now will compile for Intel CPUs
• Apple is not dropping support for the PowerPC
• There is nothing stopping the new Macs from running Windows, but OS X will not run on a standard PC.

Hopefully we'll see Pentium-M Laptops and NOT Celeron ibooks/imacs

Bryn came over yesterday and dropped off my rack!

I have one rack mount 10mbit hub, but I don't have any rails for it. So if anyone has any let me know! I'm in the process of trying to get some rack mount gear.

But currently I just have my old stuff sitting in the rack. So here it is!