Cricalix.Net

Some time ago, I picked up a Cedega licence. Don’t remember why, but I did. Today, at $dayjob, I decided to try the latest Cedega client and EVE Online. My boss knows I only want to manage my skill training at lunch, so he’s happy with that aspect at least.

So, install Cedega via the .deb package for Debian and Ubuntu. Download the latest update, apply it. Pull EVE across from our network drive, run the installer. So far, so good. Notice that the Cedega install complained that 3D acceleration wasn’t working right.

Download latest ATI drivers (x600 card), run the installer, clobber my existing xorg.conf (8.16 -> 8.24). Reload X. Notice mouse doesn’t work properly, fix mouse entry (buttons).

Run EVE.

It works. Sorta. Crashes trying to load the station. Restart, remember reading a tweak note that says reset the resolution at the character selection screen. Do so. Log in to station. Change skill training. Dance!

Well, the Leeds seminar (held by Logicalis) was quite fascinating, and beyond the four talks, I was able to talk to an IBM rep, an VMware rep and our Logicalis rep. Looking at the options we ($dayjob) have with regards our growing disk usage and soon-to-be growing server usage, the virtualisation path is looking more and more like the path we need to go down. The most mind blowing number mentioned was 400M USD – the amount saved by Cisco by virtualising their server and storage hardware over a 3-year period.

Off to Warwick in the middle of June to see some of the IBM offerings when it comes to blades, which should be fun. They’re just 1U servers put into a smaller space, but the space saving is a useful thing. Combined with say VMware’s Vmotion capabilities, and we could replace hardware in a matter of minutes (well, 30+) to upgrade or replace the hardware. Very very nifty.

VMware’s ability to deploy from templates also looked quite sweet.  If you’ve got a base OS image (or even complete), you’re looking at less than 30 minutes (they say) to roll out a new server.  Given the way $dayjob works, that could be very sweet, especially since they give you a SDK!

Just a quick run-down on life in general I suppose.

Work is sending me to a 1-day conference in Leeds to learn about server and storage virtualisation (VMWare etc). We’re rapidly growing beyond our storage and processing capacity, so we need to find a long-term solution in the short-term – or something like that at least.

The garden is starting to recover from my mangling it – rain has delayed further log-roll installation (as has lack of stock at my choice of supplier), and removal of plants. The peas are doing well, more carrots are showing, and I can see chives! The compost didn’t compost very well last year, Mum reckons it was too wet. I’ve emptied the compost out, and will restart it next week I hope if the rain holds off.

Went to Mill Meece Pumping Station today to see the engines steamed up. Fred Dibnah was right, there’s something about the smell of coal-fired steam engines that’s just addictive. They’re a volunteer run organisation, and it’d be a shame to see them close down, so I’m pondering financial membership at least. The engines at Mill Meece are tandem compound rotary engines – what a mouthful. Apart from the clacking of (what I think was) a control rod release, the engines are pretty much silent. Wonderful sight to see them steamed up, and in the case of the 1928 engine, powering the pumping head outside (not pumping water though, two electric torpedoes do that).

Got the quote for installing my kitchen. Have to find out if it’s ex-VAT or inc-VAT, but even if it’s the former, it’s a darn good quote, and includes the CORGI work to move my gas pipes, and the electrician’s charges for new wiring in the kitchen.

Ran Illegal Activity in EVE this morning, and landed a bit of kit valued at 24M on the market, so promptly sold it and doubled my bank account. Pity I can’t do that in real life! And speaking of missions, for 1665 scordite (15K market value), I picked up an implant worth 10M (or 2 willpower). Considering the haul this morning, I’ll take the willpower, as it helps with ship skills.

And finally, we have an example of a local cat giving me a death glare, not realising that my legions (of one) of stone rabbits are about to pounce!

Well, digiKam is making great strides towards being a great digital image organiser and editor.  Not to say that it isn’t great already of course :)  However, Gilles has recently introduced what amounts to full MRW support (and other RAW formats) by switching one of the underlying libraries to the Exiv2 project, and then contributing an MRW parser to the Exiv2 project.  This means I can do everything inside of digiKam from offloading the images (which I do via a CF reader to save camera battery), to tagging the ones I want (and digiKam can write the tags as keywords in the metadata), tuning the raw file and saving for web publishing as a JPG or PNG.  I still use JPG for size reasons, and the fact that PNG metadata writing doesn’t seem to be complete yet.

There are a few things I’d still like to see in digiKam, and while I don’t have time to code them, I can at least file requests with full supporting reasons :)

Well, it looks like my DSL is stabilising, and it also looks like the BT gear has determined that my line is capable of 6 MBit/s at the IP layer (even though the ATM side is still syncing at 7!).  SNR on the downstream has gone up slightly from when the measuring was going on – it’s now 6 dB!  A quick test of the download speed this morning courtesy of ftp.mirror.ac.uk showed a nice 620 kB/s.  Woot!  I should also have a faster uplink now, so this site should get a wee bit faster.

The grand experiment appears to be working – the peas have started to show their heads above the soil.  Time to put down a bit of snail and slug deterrent (garlic, soap, water, blended) to protect them from predators.  Hopefully the birds will be happy enough with the 4 feeders that are out to not pay my fledgling vegetables any mind.

Speaking of birds, a magpie tried to eat nuts from one of the feeders this morning.  Imagine a rather large magpie (foot long or more) standing on the top of a pole, trying to reach a swinging bag of peanuts below him.  Absolutely hilarious to watch.  Even tried holding on the the bag with both sets of claws, but gravity got the better of him (or her).  Pity it was a grey morning and I had no camera in hand.

I think at least one of the carrots is poking some greenery through the soil as well, but it could be my imagination.

Next move is to rent a skip for all the dead wood (from the fence) and stems etc that I can’t compost, and empty the junk out of the garden.  Again.  At least there are no paving stones to throw away this time.

This weekend saw another few hours of work on the garden. I worked on the very top bed, next to the shed. Ripped out a rather pathetic example of a rose and some other plant that was looking a bit past it. Left the berry (can’t remember which one, pink flowers) in place, though trimmed it a bit, and also left the fatsia japonica.

Gave a good solid tug on the fence, and it decided to make friends with me, so I’ve pulled all of the rotten fencing out. Good thing the neighbour put up a new fence last year! Nipped out to Focus, and picked up some begonias for the second blue pot I have – just need to find a spot for it now. I might get a smaller pot for the chimney pot in the middle of the lawn and plant some begonias in there as well – it should look pretty good to have a burst of colour in the middle of the lawn.

The clematis is looking quite happy – it’s growing nicely, and the flower buds are showing, so it should bloom soon I hope. Supposed to be a ‘multi blue’, so we’ll see if it really is. No sign of any vegetables yet, but I suppose I’m expecting a bit too much. I’ll probably sow another set of carrots in the bed with the flowering cherry this weekend coming (or later this week), and perhaps find a spot or three to toss some onions in the ground.