Filler blog entry

Posted on by Mark Myers Leave a comment

I have a hell of a lot of stuff to write about and tons of work to do, but for some reason am not doing them (lazy toad that i am), but i want to put at least one thing up per week that might be of some use to people and the big stuff is taking to long to write up, so here’s something for the admins, its called unlocker assistant and can be found http://ccollomb.free.fr/unlocker/
(well i can be found all over the place but this is the best place)

Simply put, this means you can pull a sickly or corrupt database out of a domino server when the server wont let go of it, yes i know that theoretically risks crashing or damage the database, but quite frankly, if your going to have to bounce the box and the database looks stuffed, then your risking that anyway and it keeps the rest of the server up for the rest of the business day, i’ve used it a lot and have not had any problems at all, the server does a little W.T.F. “wheres me database” but copes with it in a few seconds, try it when your devs screw up their server and see what i mean.

On other news, it looks like i have been accepted as a speaker for uklug, this is fab and i am looking forward to it, there is only one problem, and that is i looked at the other Speakers and quite frankly I’m the only there that i have not heard of (lots of important people and one random peasant), eeek!

Long live drobo and down with lacie

Posted on by Mark Myers Leave a comment

The thought last week was, F**king Lacie, the bloody thing has gone and died, one Lacie big disk 1 TB had snuffed it, taking with it a huge chunk of thankfully replaceable data, sooo, time to bite the bullet and get a Drobo, i cant afford it, and should not get it, but this is the second drive i have lost in the last month and i need RAID (or what ever it uses), one surf latter and its off to Scan I go, (they were the cheapest, had it in stock and also had a special offer on good reliable 1TB drives)

2 days pacing (and frantic downloading), and it arrives, there are hundreds of normal reviews and deboxing views out there, so here is the points that the other reviews seems to miss

The dashboard app that you REALLY need (ignore what they say, its got all the groovy functionality in it), does not work on Linux, not under wine and not even under vmware (yes it loads and everything but it does not find the drobo, and i tried it in both bridged and natted modes, also it does not allow you to specify and IP address to connect to), so i go crawling to my beloved and beg the use of her XP machine (STOP SNIGGERING!!!), i had also got the Droboshare, as its currently the only way to support EXT3 with out a whole lot of farting around (it can support 2 Drobo units to 1 Drobo Share) and anywhere theres is something groovy about NAS’s rather than SANS.

Anyway, after that, is really was a doddle to setup (it also tootled of to the net and did all the firmware and such), and suddenly i had 3.8 gig of safe data space (broken up into 2TB chunks), you can rename the drives and everything, some extra notes:

1) its not too slow, i get 19Meg Sec, on normal USB drives and the same on this, and about 7-10Meg Sec on network transfer, so you can stream moves just fine.

2) its does not like surprises, ie it takes a while to warm up once it has fallen asleep, and if you suddenly do something it does not like (say attempt to transfer 1.5TB), it wants a little sulk and a quiet 5 mins to flash its lights, and don’t just turn it off (you don’t lose any data, but it acts like someone has nicked its teddy bear)

3) it knows best, even the instruction book says to leave it alone so it can sort it self out and do thing, and each time i have tried to intervene when it was taking longer than i wanted, i have just made it worse, and it simpler to just go and have a shower.

4) its bleeding quiet, nuff said

(clicking sound attacts the scums attention, and he scuttles off for 10 mins), Phew, back, my other lacie drive must have heard the swearing as it started making a very nasty clicking sound, and stoped responing, i tell you that company hates my guts, after a franting few mins i got it working by taking it to bits and spreading the parts out on paper in the cold outside (dear lord dont let it rain tongiht) and its talking to me again, backup BACKUP!!!,

back to the drobo, all in all an excellent bit of kits and well worth it if you have a couple of Terabytes of data you really don’t want to loose, and dont want to waste you money on lacie drives.

V and A Fencing

Posted on by Mark Myers Leave a comment

Last Friday, I was lucky enough to perform in a fencing demonstration at the V and A museum in London the results of which you can see here Doms Photos (you’ll have to scroll down a bit as dom put some roller derby photos on at the top, and I refuse to tell you which one is me as I quote obviously look like a twit), it was quite fun,but we had to cut down the swearing and abuse that is such a part of modern fencing, this is sample of what were were not allowed to say

Onlooker: so to challenge someone do you say “I challenge Thee'” and slap them with you glove?
Fencer: Nope, we yell Muther F**, and knee them in the balls.

there were medieval demonstrations of fighting, and people dress up mighty fine, as well as all the amazing things that are normally at the V&A, all well organised, however the highlight of the night was the reaction of the security guards when we arrived,

“whats in the bag?” he asks,

“swords”, I reply, he pales a bit, backs off a couple of steps and looks at the half dozen identical bags held by the rough looking and sweaty lot standing in front of him,

“im afraid you will have to leave them here” he says,

“Thats going to make the demonstration a tad boring” comes a voice, he then inspects a epee and states that you could hurt someone with it,

“not a much as a golf club” is the reply, the poor gentleman then has to watch as the rabble start the normal argument of which would be easier to kill someone with, a “wood driver” or an “iron”

how ever, now that I can go to the nationals in a months time, (work changed its plans), I have realised that there is the off chance that I might have to practice else I’ll go home to mother on a sheet of blotting paper

Linux update

Posted on by Mark Myers Leave a comment

My grief!!, hundreds of updates, for Linux and fire fox out at once and all their supported bits and bobs triggered a 200Meg update via the update manager, most things squeaked and squawked at the sudden change , most frightenley VMWARE would not load, but top tip of the day, if a Linux app will not load, run it in terminal and it will normally make plain its grievance and tell you what to do to fix, this all my apps have done (phew!!) and we are back up and running, but time to make another ghost style image (curtasey of Part Image and the system rescue cd)

British Library

Posted on by Mark Myers Leave a comment

Am currently in the British Library, which i have to say is a perfect example of when tax is put to good use, i only wish companies were run this well, from layout to ease of use to technical setup and security, a pleasure to use and to work there, As part of the design work i am doing there, i got out graphic Japan: from woodblock and zen to manga and kawaii” by Natalie Avella , graphic Japan: from woodblock and zen to manga and kawaii” by Natalie Avella, and among its interesting and insightful view points is the use of the IBM ‘nipple’ logo, is most likely based on the red circle in the Japanese flag (which is a very common design motif in a lot of Japanese products, also they had this amazing image

which apparently is what none IBM customers look like when they have not bought the right products (mumble mubble….sharepoint….mumble mumble)
(for those that think i have pinched it out of the book, i haven’t, i just googled it and there are a bunch of places that have it)