Last 5 Entries

First post of the year, and what do I want to talk about?

Storage.

Not physical storage, mind you. Hard drives.

Began the final push to move all of my data off my five-year-old desktop PC and onto a small, quiet home server, attached to a 4-drive bay (setup as 2 RAID1 drives, with 2 hot backups).

Works like a charm. It is so nice to know that all of my data gets backed up now, not just the stuff that I could "afford" to backup space-wise. Granted, over the last few weeks there have been a few days where the backup process took 12+ hours to complete, but once the data is backed up, it's just a matter of storing more hard links. I don't edit very many ISOs.

Some of the new software:

• Ubuntu: 10.10 server
• Subversion: with a real URL scheme, too, not just a file:// pointer
• Cherokee: solid web server with good admin UI
• uWSGI: finally a WSGI server I can use. No more reverse proxies!
• rdup: excellent backup software
• MoinMoin: my wiki engine of choice

Getting some real admin experience with this, as well as a greater understanding of building and deploying web apps.

Good times.

When I first began programming in Python

Going through some old discs, archiving old code on my bright shiny new server. Found a CD with executables for my work on Python on Windows 98.

The earliest file:

Python-2.2.1.exe, 2002-06-30

Good times.

You would think, me being a web developer and all, ...

That I would keep my web site up-to-date.

Think again.

Just realized that not only do I have code inside a script block that calls to a missing file, the site still references jQuery 1.2.6.

So, I engaged in a little cruft removal/seasonal touch-up and

• removed the entire reference to a little animation project (js, css, and page-specific call)
• updated jQuery to 1.4.4
• added a nice winter effect (Jquery Snowfall Plugin 1.4, from Somethinghitme)
• changed the header coloring to highlight the snowfall effect

Commute record - 3.5 hours

A full hour in the morning, including a bus late by 10 minutes. Very cold.

The afternoon's commute:

• 4pm: stand in the bus tunnel, watch every bus go by with no room.
• 4:40pm: reverse commute up to the freezing open end of the tunnel
• 5pm: get in the first available bus going my direction.
• 5:05pm: bus exits the tunnel, stops halfway up the HOV freeway ramp - cars blocking the road
• 5:20pm: get past the block
• 6pm: arrive at park & ride; mercifully, my connecting bus arrives within a few minutes
• 6:30pm: arrive home

Total commute time: 3.5 hours.

Not fun. Not fun at all.

Best quote this week

Escort missions. They're like Take Your Child to Work Day, only your job involves getting shot at and your child is a mental deficient with a lousy sense of direction and giant target painted on his back.

From The Escapist : Escort Missions Suck, via ars technica's Masterpiece: Ico (which was a very moving review of an older video game).