A végtelenbe és tovább!

‘IT’

- Időrendben

Egy tipp, amit talan ertekel majd nehany ember, akik a kornyezetemben most kezdenek aktivan irogatni. Mindig problemat okozott nekem a Youtubeos videok beillesztese, mert vagy tul kicsi vagy tul nagy (vagy olyan kis kozepeske – Irdatlan Bacsi(c)) lesz, raadasul teljesen felboritja a layoutot.

“Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla pariatur?”

Megoldas: ha egy egy oszlopos tablazatba agyazzuk be a videot, akkor ott mar lehet osztalyt (class) allitani, amit a CSS stylesheet le is kezel szepen.

Pastebin

<table class = alignleft>
<tr>
<td>
<object width="445" height="364"><param name="movie"
value="http://www.youtube.com/v/yR1-IYoJE-s&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999&border=1">
</param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param>
<param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param>
<embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/yR1-IYoJE-s&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999&border=1"
 type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="445" height="364">
</embed>
</object>
</td>
</tr>
</table>

Bar errol raklapnyi anyagot talalni a neten, kivancsi voltam, hogy a ket legelterjedtebb videomegoszto kozul nekem melyik fekudne jobban, ugyhogy tettem egy probat.

Feltoltottem a 1280×720/30FPS-es, Quicktime H264-gyel, illetve AAC-vel kodolt (tehat elvileg mindket szolgaltato altal optimalis formatumunak tartott) 2007-es showreelt mindket oldalra.

Ime az eredmeny:

Link

Link

Vimeo:

+ tetszik a beagyazott playeruk, illetve maga a szajt is letisztultabb
- nem lehet HD-ban beagyazni, ha nem fizetsz
- a feltoltott videot kb. 5.5 oran at konvertalta, ami nagyon sok
- heti 1 darab HD videot lehet feltolteni, ha nem fizetsz
- nem kontrollaljak a felhasznalt zenet (egyelore)

YouTube:

+ gyors, feltoltes utan szinte percek alatt lehet publikalni a HD bontasu videot
+ barmennyit fel lehet tolteni, ha valakinek olyanja van
+ sokan hasznaljak, nagyobb forgalom
- barom kommentek mindenhol
- kicsit kaotikus a playere
- figyelik a zenet, es ha jogsertonek gondoljak, leszedik (ez alatt stock zene van)

YouTube-Vimeo : 1-0, pedig en biztam a Vimeoban.

Ez a valaha volt legjobb dolog, miota a Wordpress kipattant valaki agyabol. Nem is tudom, hogy irjam le, annyira egyszeru, de megis annyira komplex eredmenyt adhat.

Tehat adott az apture.com weboldal, ahol regisztralva, illetve ket kattintassal egy plugint installalva mar el is kezdhetunk vadulni. Az iras megszuletese utan siman csak kijelolunk egy szoveget, mire felugrik egy ablak, ahol par kattintassal osszeallithatunk egy hasznos kis informacio-csomagot olvasoinknak.

Teljesen addiktiv a dolog, ugyhogy keszuljetek fel :)

Tehat peldaul tegyuk fel, hogy a tasman turamhoz szeretnek vizualis megjegyzeseket fuzni, peldaul bemutatva Hobart varosat vagy az atkeleshez igenybe vett Spirit of Tas-t. Esetleg berakhatom az oneletrajzom egy tutijo PDF olvasoval egyutt. Vagy mittomen, you got the idea…

“Éld úgy az életed mintha a mai napod lenne az utolsó itt a földön”

Nem nagyon szoktam blogokat ajanlani, legalabbis nem emlekszem, hogy lett volna mar szo roluk. Nagyon sok Ausztraliaba szakadt hazankfia (imadnivalo kozhely) futtatja sajat oldalat a zinternets eldugott sarkaiban. Legtobben gyakorlatilag naplokent tekintenek ra, es esemenyeket, sztorikat logolnak.

Van, aki inkabb eleterzest probal kozvetiteni, es ebbol talan kicsit komplexebb kepet kap az olvaso az orszagrol, mintha arrol olvasna heti bontasban, hogy mennyit novekedett a pici, vagy milyen asztalt sikerult szuperolcson beszerezni.

Utobbiak koze tartozik a Calmblog is “borsiorsi” tollabol, amit igazan elvezettel olvasgatok. Cairns[QLD] teljesen mas vilag, mint a delebbi tartomanyok. Mas az eletritmus, eghajlat, mas a termeszet. De ami igazan kulonbozove teszi, a szerzo elethez valo hozzaaallasa.

Nezzetek bele, aztan hatha nektek is tetszik.

Ha mar volt szo az ozzi szlengrol, akkor most hadd oltsalak titeket, gadzsok egy raj kis bloggal, ami a magyar kuzinnal abajog.

Idezem:

- A Tónió annyira be volt ilonkázva a Horizont diszkóban, hogy alig látott, geci.
- Láttam én is, hogy táncolt. Vágom, hányas a dzseki.

A Sikonya Misi kinn okádott a Kultúrház előtt. Valami csiribiri taktaharkányi arccal ilonkáztak előtte kajakra.

Ne pucsítsá’, Timi! Nem látod, hogy a fél Faház presszó a segged nézi?

- De pucsítasz, Totya! Csaknem prátolni készülsz?
- Ne oltsál, gecó. Tudnád, mennyire fáj a térdem!

(Átvitt értelemben) A Rudika egy szarfaszú kis féreg, aki minden raj cigónak odapucsít, hátha neki is leesik valami.

Valamelyik nap láttam, hogy a Pali beújított egy raj choppert, de egy ideje nem látom körözni.

(A be igelkötő nélkül) Májer az új farmerod, Rudika. Honnan van? Csaknem újítottad valahol?

Nem elég, hogy kaptárba került Pesten a Misi, még jól szét is cipőzték a kommandósok.

Meg, akarok!

De keszek…

Volt mar olyan, hogy hirtelen kellett volna egy PS valahonnan, de mondjuk netes kavezoban voltal, nem engedtek Gimpet installalni (vagy utalod), meg amugy is?

Mostantol hasznald a picnik.com alkalmazasat.

Ebbol a minta kepbol:

sikerult ezt osszehozni:

Jo, nyilvan gagyi, de azert azt mutatja, hogy a filteres huszarkodason kivul azert a legtobb atlagfelhasznalo altal igenyelt fotosoppos dolgot viszi. Raadasul bizonyos szintig ingyenesen.

Telefonrol :)

Muhaha. Utazas.com-on talaltam. Sot, annyi ilyen kreten(seg) van ott, hogy komolyan mondom, nehezemre esett kivalasztani egyet (es ez meg nem is a legjobb).

Egy kis netes jatekot szeretnek ajanlani, ami ide szogezett kerek egy orara a gep ele. Ilyen kellene PSP-re vegtelen palyaval, es akkor nem lenne unalom.

A cel roppant egyszeru: a kis piros jelet kell a nagy piros negyszogbe juttatni, 4-5 fele biszbaszbol epitett szerkezetek keszitesevel.

Peldaul ennyire lelemenyesen:

3 tipp a vegere:
- ne felj elpusztitani a palyat
- “az egyszeru szerkezetek – felepitesuknel fogva – konnyen karbantarthatok”
- ha elakadsz, nezz korul a Jutubon.

Méder Áron 2006 augusztusaban indult el 19 lab hosszu (tehat kb 5.7 meteres) Carina nevu hajojaval Magyarorszagrol azzal a cellal, hogy korulhajozza a Foldet, tapasztaljon.

A bejegyzes apropojat az adja, hogy a heten erkezett meg Ausztralia partvidekehez, a Csutortok-szigetnel lepett be a teruletre. Sajnos a tervezett utvonal csak surolja a kontinens eszaki reszet, es halad tovabb az Indonez szigetvilag fele.

Ajanlom a hajonaplo olvasgatasat, en itt ragadtam elotte 2-3 orara tegnap este.

Fair winds and following seas!

Love the Lars impersonation.

…ugy koltottem ma a betevot, adtam a biorobotsagnak.

Mar regota esedekes volt egy memoria bovites a laptopon, a gyari 2 GB nehany tobbe-kevesbe jellemzo felhasznalasra (Houdini, Lightroom…etc) kevesnek bizonyult az utobbi egy evben.

Miutan jol kibeszeltuk, mennyire utaljuk az iPhone-jelenseget, felhivtam az Apple boltot, hogy hogy megy a memoria bovites. Persze nem ugy ment, ahogy mondtak, de aztan mazlim volt, es sikerult elintezni. Telefonon annyit mondtak, hogy menjek oda, aztan ott helyben meg is csinaljak. Ehhez kepest, amint beleptem az ajton, azzal fogadtak, hogy foglaljak idopontot. Na, baz, mondhattad volna az elobb. Mindegy, az egyik internetezesre kirakott gepen gyorsan foglaltam egy oraval kesobbre, gondoltam addig maszkalok a varosban.

Igy is tortent, folytatodott a “shoppingolas”. Vettem egy Sennheiser HD 202-es hallgatozot, amit a cegben is hasznalok, es mar bevalt. Arban is turheto, majd meglatjuk, birja-e ugy, es addig, mint a Technics, amit vagy 5 evig hasznaltam teljesen elegedetten. Most epp Metallica S&M teszt fut.

Utban visszafele beugrottam egy fotos boltba is, ahol kezembe kaphattam egy Nikon D700-at, rajta egy 14-24/2.8-as varacskosdiszno meretu nagylatoval. Most, hogy kerestem hozza egy kepet, rajottem, mennyire nehez a tenyleges meretet erzekeltetni. Eleg annyi rola, hogy az amugy eleg testes D3 is eltorpul hozza kepest.

Olyan erzes fogni, mint a mozgofilmes prime obikat, legalabb annyira felelmetes is. Sosem felejtem el, mikor egyik forgatason Bristolban az operator, akivel joban voltam felem dobott nevelesi szandekkal egy cirka 15ezer dollaros Cooke S4-es primeot, hogy kapjam el, tegyem el a dobozaba. Ez is hasonlo volt, olyan serulekeny erzetet kelt valahogy a boszme meretevel, es nagy meretu, 10 centis front uvegevel, ami raadasul ki is domborodik, valoszinuleg nagyon konnyu nekiverni barminek (hiaba van rajta a merev napellenzo).

Csinaltam par proba fotot is, amit elmeletileg majd megkapok emailen holnap, majd kirakom ide. Szerintem nagy nekem ez a 14-24, inkabb maradok az eredeti tervnek megfeleloen a 17-35/2.8-asnal, az emberibb lepteku (viszont nehezebb beszerezni).

5 fele visszamentem az Apple boltba, a Genius Bar-ba iranyitottak. Nem tudom miert, de engem ez az elnevezes elegge frusztral. Geniusznak nevezni par, alapveto kepzettseggel (ertsd: lego) rendelkezo bolti eladot, hat, nem tudom. Es ki all a pult innenso oldalan? A Retarded Customer?

Na mindegy. Szerencsere normalis volt a faszi, aki kiszolgalt, es – bar elmeletileg naluk 24-48 oras (WTF?!) atfutassal cserelnek RAM-ot (hogyne, akkor inkabb beapplikalom magam) – kb. 5 perc elteltevel mar vigyorogva hozta a gepet, hogy kesz is. Gyors boot, latja, gyerunk haza.

Na, most asszem megrendelem a fotos cuccokat, csak hogy kerek legyen a nap.

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Ez itt a Fox egyik bejarata, ennel kozelebbit nem tudok.

A lakohelyemet meg a fold alatt mutatja, mert ott halad el a varos alatti fout alagutja, es ugy gondoltak, hogy az emberek is ott laknak..vagy nem tudom. Ugyhogy helyette egy kornyekbeli keresztezodes, 2-3 utcaval lentebb:

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Koszi Google. Jo bongeszest!

check out the new reels

I recommend the Big Picture blog by Boston.com that seems to entertain an exponentially growing readership, and not without a reason. Essentially it showcases some of the more compelling press stock photos of current, but maybe less covered subjects and with a couple of line comments it makes them available with no further ado. Simple but powerful.

California wildfires are also covered in the current (July 2008) issue of the National Geographic magazine (with couple more worthwhile articles, for example the one about the remaining gorilla population in DRC was outstanding).

“Kritikus minősítést kapott az a Mac OS X 10.4-et (Tiger) és 10.5-öt (Leopard) érintő sebezhetőség, amelynek leírása a napokban bukkat fel internet-szerte. A sebezhetőség lehetővé teszi a potenciális támadók számára, hogy “root” joggal parancsokat futtassanak az érintett rendszereken. Az ARDAgent – Apple Remote Desktop -, amely része a Remote Management-nek, setuid bites. Ebből kifolyólag az ARDAgent képes az AppleScript-eket – amelyek tartalmazhatnak shell parancsokat is – a root nevében futtani jelszó nélkül.

Referenciák:
Apple Remote Desktop Vulnerability Allows Malicious Programs to Execute Code as Root
Root exploit for Mac OS X
Mac OS X Root Escalation Through AppleScript” – irja a Hungarian Unix Portal (hup.hu)

Ez azert elegge no comment kategoria.

I accidentally bumped into this old interview with Caleb Howard (back then FX Supervisor at R&H). Interesting read, talking about the industry, Houdini’s role, the early days at SESI…etc.

Awesome.

Mert, ha hiszed, ha nem, tényleg azt mondom, a jót is meg lehet szokni. De mennyire! Talán ez az egyik legrégibb klisé. Kellemetlen, de igaz. Amerikában értettem meg, akármilyen olcsó fordulatnak is látszik, mégis igaz. Ha az álmaink hétköznapivá válnak, s már a másoké sem tűnik olyan izgalmasnak, jön az előremenekülés.

Egyre értékesebbet kell álmodni. Az elvárás egyre feljebb kúszik, alattomosan, hol magad, hol meg más miatt. Ok, de ez nem a magasugrás, ahol a lécet egyre feljebb lehet tenni. Még azt sem tudod megéri-e. Akkora lesz a nyomás, hogy ezt át sem tudod gondolni. A bensőd követelőzik, miközben a legtöbbször varriációkat gyártasz egy témára az újdonságra való törekvés kényszerű szorításában. Egy idő után nem csak a munkában, a magánéletben is.

Olvasom az elejetol fogva, akartam is mar ajanlani:

Szipal Peter (Hollywood nofotosa hazatert).

Harr..why isn’t there a -u (update) flag for the copy (cp) operation on OSX? Drives me crazy. One of those things you get used to and it hurts to use a stupid GUI tool to backup items from your hard drive. I can write my own if I really want to, but for something so basic? –osx (again)

If you’re one of the people running Houdini on an Ubuntu64+MacbookPro system, you might be interested in installing Skype2.0 beta with video conferencing. The webcam works out of the box with 7.10.

cd; sudo apt-get install ia32-libs lib32asound2; wget -N boundlesssupremacy.com/Cappy/getlibs/getlibs-all.deb; wget -O skype-install.deb http://www.skype.com/go/getskype-linux-beta-ubuntu; sudo dpkg -i getlibs-all.deb; sudo dpkg -i --force-all skype-install.deb; sudo getlibs /usr/bin/skype; cd ~

This simplicity is just awesome.

*Thanks digitallyinsane for the heads up

Studio AKA presents: Love sports

Checkout is a new service of Google promising nothing less than cutting the online shopping nightmare with registering multiple accounts at different providers/shops/services and keeping all the information in a central place at Google.

Now, I can’t decide if this is the best service ever or the biggest fear of anti-google people. I definitely find it attractive and almost fell for it straight away..then I had to reming myself how much they already know about buying habits and private life in general. Scary.

Oh btw..when is Google credit card coming?

Impressive.

Check out the SpeedShape website..I have a mixed feeling with usability (might just be a preconception with Flash built up during the years) but it’s definitely attractive and provides a strong presence to the company.

Linkedin started to betatest their new, more streamlined interface release amongst a bunch of selected users. Some of the new approach is quite good, it will definitely result in a better overview of the content. Read more if you’re interested.

This was mailed to the 3DPro mailing list by Robert Moodie, thanks for that. It’s a solution for the famous and hated gamma issue when using the H264 codec in a Quicktime container.

From the Frantic Films forum post (posted by Mark Wiebe):

Quicktime has a feature, mostly hidden from users, which is designed to adjust the display gamma of quicktime movies on different machines to compensate for display difference. Deep within the file, there is sometimes a little tag called ‘gama’ lurking which tells the Quicktime player what gamma correction the file was encoded with. While this is well-intentioned, motivated by the difference in display gamma between PCs and Macs, the Quicktime player offers no way to view this tag and change it.

When you’re using a tool such as cineSpace to calibrate your display, you want to give full control over your colors to it and for Quicktime to just display the data as it is. Unfortunately, if there’s a ‘gama’ tag in your Quicktime, this won’t happen. On a Mac, it will look darker than on a PC, because it is compensating for the gamma difference. Most PC displays use a 2.2 gamma, as specified by the sRGB standard, while Mac displays use a 1.8 gamma.

The Solution

To work around this issue, we have created a small tool that strips the ‘gama’ tag out of offending quicktimes. It’s a very simple tool which operates on all the file names and folders given to it.
To use it, copy the executable to a location you can easily drag and drop to, such as your desktop. Whenever you have a quicktime or folder of quicktimes to process, select the folder and files you want processed, then drag them over to the gamma stripper plugin and drop them there. The program will scan the directories, and process all the files, searching for and removing any ‘gama’ tags it finds. If it fails, the error log should provide details about what went wrong.

Download the tool here (Windows only for now)
Unfortunately the Frantic site doesn’t allow outside links, so please look at the link at the start of this post to grab the tool. Thanks for Stafford for the heads up.

Looking for security information about a technology I found this article: Google as a password cracker. It’s about plain MD5 checksum vulnerability when paired with large databases such as google..quite an interesting read, especially together with some of the comments.

Volll.com, a Hungarian design company launched their new site couple of weeks ago and I’m quite surprised at the quality they deliver. I especially liked this set of small games they did for BMW: appealing imagery and simple gaming for the bored office head.

Now I’m no way a Mac or Apple fanboy but this makes me think I’m quite lucky that I never really got into Vista.

“Executive Summary

Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to provide content protection for so-called “premium content”, typically HD data from Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sources. Providing this protection incurs considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical support overhead, and hardware and software cost. These issues affect not only users of Vista but the entire PC industry, since the effects of the protection measures extend to cover all hardware and software that will ever come into contact with Vista, even if it’s not used directly with Vista (for example hardware in a Macintosh computer or on a Linux server). This document analyses the cost involved in Vista’s content protection, and the collateral damage that this incurs throughout the computer industry.”

If you want to read one of the best articles that manages to avoid all the juvenile statements of FSF/GNU/Linux circles and the slightly arrogant and superior point of view of Mac fanatics, continue here.

Since I started freelancing in the UK back in 2004, I had a long standing need of running a proper accounting system to keep track of business but also personal financials.

During the times I was looking into several software but none really gave me the satisfaction that it will be able to handle my needs. Recently there was a conversation on the subject on Plastik.hu where some people suggested to take a look at GNUCash.

I had vague memories about an ugly looking package (and now tell me that first impressions doesn’t matter) so I was first investigating couple of other packages: Quicken, MoneyWell, iFinance…etc. After some promising start they both seemed to fail in two areas: either don’t work outside the US/Canadian areas, fail with multiple currencies or just can’t keep track of a mixed personal-business situation. Ah and did I mention it had to run on OSX as well?

So, after these rounds I finally arrived to get my hands on GNUCash. Going to the website the first obvious thing I looked at was the documentation..and I got to say: even if the software doesn’t deliver, the authors of the documentation already need a big thanks.

Next..installation. Now there is an obvious problem: they state that it can be run on various Unix systems (including OSX) still there is no native OSX port.
Why? From what I read in the FAQ, about 80% of the software is implemented in C the rest being Lisp and also relies quite heavily on GTK to render its visuals. There is a native Quartz port of GTK now, but I kinda bounced back from the good ol’ tarball installation..got a bit lazy on Mac, eh?

Still, I wanted to get my hands on it to try first without investing a huge amount of time in installation. So I booted my Houdini-purposed-Linux installation (Ubuntu7.10 with minimal changes), apt-got gnucash in about 5 minutes and tada, I was rolling.

Now after looking around, skimming through the docs I figured this is something I will need to try on the go, still this trip in Linux was enough to give me that initial push to install it.

How? Next I figured there is something called Fink. Apparently this is a set of GNU tools ported over to OSX and can give the background to compile and run GNUCash as well.
I even managed to find some articles about compiling and running the tool in this finked Unix environment. Great.

Now here comes the funny thing. After about 10 years of Unix, I couldn’t get it working.
I got Fink running ok including all it’s tools and GTK but there seemed to arrive to a locked state (circular dependencies..who knows) when trying to compile GNUCash.

I know it can be done but there is no definitive guide on the process and once we get into version management of depedencies, it all just goes miserable.

I was almost time to give up on it when I just did a search on Google and found OpenOSX, a service provider building on and selling on GNU tools. (This can be a bit of a controversial activity as I figured out later but I leave this issue with them to discuss.)

They have several packages with free software sold in the range of $30-100, the interesting one being the OpenOSX Office 2.0: Abiword, Gnumeric, Diagram, Gimp and GNUCash. You download it, installs from the .dmg file as usual, clik on it and tada.wav, you have it running.

For me (even though I need to deal with the shame of not being able to compile it) was well worth my money. Obviously I need to test it for longer but the first impressions are definitely positive.

Now I will try to read up more about GNU licensing as it seems to me that (even though the company doesn’t make it available) this package could be distributed freely and I’m investigating sharing it on this website.

Now you thought that Youtube is for sharing exotic car racing videos, music videos or emos talking shit about the heights of their private life? Wrong.

I’ve found the best ever use of Youtube. Donny, a mathematician of age 22 from Singapore has an awesome but slightly weird hobby of posting dozens if not hundreds of calculus and other math related teaching videos in his collection.

If you’re a fellow TD lacking in some of these areas, instead of banging your head against some hard to digest textbooks, you should check these out. A bit difficult to understand at the start but you get over it quickly and simply enjoy being back at school and learning something interesting and useful.

And don’t forget to say thanks to him for this huge effort.

Axis Animation, my ex company just launched their new website and I got to say it was just about time to do so.

I hope this new site will bring them the love even though they still seem to suffer a bit on the front of being able to showcase their best work. There is definitely a larger selection of featured works on the site still the best seems to be gone for ever. Such a shame.

Anyways, good luck to them with the new site, make sure you check it out as you can see some of the work I contributed to (either as TD or CgSup) or maybe find a job opportunity.

Guess.

Oh, btw…Google (the other evil company) has a new feature on Google Maps: terrain. You should check it out, it looks quite cool (would be even better though if they’ve added isolines and other useful functionality. Gradient calculation anyone?

A cool site if you want to get visual feedback about your ISP’s performance.

I got it. Accidentally. If you read back to the second post about this NAS misery you can see I ordered the MyBook World Edition II. It was about to be delivered to my brother’s place and because I found those reviews about the miserable performance, the supplier told me to send it back with the courier.

Now the courier was so smart that he delivered it to my parent’s place (don’t ask why) who obviously didn’t have a clue about what it was…but it was a free delivery to my name, so they took it. What a bad move.

So I got my hands on this box and it’s crap. Behaving exactly as those reviews said. I managed to connect it to my laptop using a Cat5e crossover cable and tried to use ‘dd’ on it to generate some random files.

Write performance was about 3MB/s while reading the volume is slightly faster, in the range of 4-5MB/s under OSX and Windows. Now..this means to access the 2TB content would take a whole WEEK of scratching (probably terminating the disk). I don’t want production level fileserving but some decency from a company like WD. Come on.

Don’t buy this crap. Ever. On it’s way back to the shop.

Now there is this app called Mailplane that I just tried. It’s a beta release for now, wraps around GMail trying to integrate it on the desktop. It does look like an OSX app..but..well, I simply just don’t get the point. It was hyped on couple of forums so I was like..why not? Then I had to realise that this is exactly like opening GMail in a browser. I was left clueless.

After spending about a day on this problem I came to the conclusion that no system available commercially is going to cut it.

Why?

These Raid0/1 systems equiped with 1-2 hard drives..well, I told you about them. They just suck badly (until someone proves me wrong..please).

Raid5 systems equiped with 4-5 hard drives might have an all right performance (although even those underperform to my expectations for some reason) but they’re are seriously too expensive for what I have in mind. Also, they weight tons and not really an option to move around.

There are also other, alternative approaches that I could take: building my own box with widely available (aka cheap) parts keeping an eye on costs and build a custom software solution on it (also keeping in mind that cheap parts are NOT reliable at all).

Possible solutions might be using OpenSolaris and it’s sturdy ZFS implementation or using one of the community solutions: OpenFiler or FreeNAS (out of these two the second one looks more appealing to me). With these I could guarantee the appropriate speed, run various other services (such as streaming media server, downloads, ftp..etc) keep costs low (at the price of fiddling with it for days) and finally learn something that I may be able to use when evaluating my next production fileserver solution (I’m really keen to see ZFS in a production environment).

Now the question is if I can be arsed to build it or should I just stick in a USB drive and live with it.

Ok folks, this is old..but I just can’t resist to share it as I just adore it.

(This post was sent with MarsEdit – an OSX blog posting utility..I expect this to make my life easier and allow/inspire more frequent updates. I will blame it on the software’s authors if it doesn’t)

I need a solution to the following problem. Currently I’m bound to use three (3) different operating systems on my laptop: OSX (my main system for everything apart 3D stuff), Linux (development and 3D) and the occasional Windows XP (for trying stuff sometimes and a bit of gaming).

Now my problem is that I need to share (a large amount of) data between the different operating systems but there is no single FS that could be read and written(!) safely from everywhere with a decent speed. OSX can read NTFS and Ext3 volumes with relative ease (after adding some kernel modules) but not writing without limitations (journaling seems to be an issue and reportedly fails writing large files on the Ext3 volume). Linux can mount and read NTFS and UFS+ volumes but can’t write UFS with journaling enabled (again, a problem for me). It can supposedly write NTFS with a new implementation but having had bad experience in the past (ruined partition table) with the old NTFS kernel module, I’m a bit hesitant on using this.XP can’t write or read anything without custom tools and those tools (at least the ones I’ve seen) are far from useable.

Just as a side note, the ZFS (originally developed by Sun) could be a good solution to this problem, it’s a really good looking filesystem even for high performance production use..but then the implementation is only available (apart from Solaris) for Linux. Rumors are wide spread about a coming OSX implementation but we got to see this. Not sure about Windows either but I doubt they would be too keen to integrate a UNIX based intention.

Ok, so after running these circles I came to the conclusion that I need to abstract the filesystem from the OS. And what are the most convenient ways? First thought is buying a NAS box that I would connect through gigabit LAN (or maybe also through a wireless router occasionally).

Criteria for the NAS box: it has to be relatively cheap, mobile in a way that it can be put in a baggage and fly with me where ever I would need it, have a decent chunk of storage available (1-2TB). Also recently one if my external hard drives failed leaving me with 400GB of backup data pulled from that drive and with a desperate need for about a terabyte of storage.

After evaluating these points I came to the conclusion that I would need something with 2 hard drives in there (while Raid5 arrays look appealing they’re too heavy for mobility). I even ordered something called a Western Digital MyBook World Edition II..should I have known I will bump into some reviews (and later more) telling me to expect lower than acceptable (3-5MB/s) IO speed on that box.

It’s running on an ARM9 CPU with 32MB of RAM. This is a great combination (in theory). The box can be modded to run custom compiled 3rd party software (users reported various ftp clients/servers, lightweight httpd servers, torrent client..etc). Only problem is that the ARM CPU seems to max out at the aforementioned speeds and thus acting as the real bottleneck of the box…shame. Because I’m planning to use it as my primary storage (laptop HD would only serve as temporary scratch space on the move) and it would accomodate a large amount of data, I would definitely need 10-20x that of presented in the review.

Also, other similar boxes are a no go as they have a similar architecture (and I even got one of my friends mentioning similar problems with Lacie boxes).

Now..it still didn’t arrive, so I have to option of returning it when the courier arrives..but this leaves me with the question.

What else with decent performance and pricetag?!

Don’t want to get into this bs, just suggest two sites that I use more and more:

linkedin: highly recommended for the professional networker…that’s what they claim..and indeed, I managed to get back in contact with ~100 people I was working with previously and even get closer personally. Which is great. Also, it’s quite rewarding when you get job offers (even though they are mass offers) out of the blue like it happened to me last 2-3 months since I’m on holidays.

last.fm: this isn’t a new one either..still – after one of my friends suggesting it about a year ago – I only recently discovered it. Perfect, now this was my exclusive noise source last weeks and working well so far. I’m listening to a well defined circle of artists depending on the mood and the stream manages to feed me with various but still similar enough songs to serve this. It works so well I hardly ever have to care about it more than typing in the style and that’s hardly the case with my music library or other net radios.

Now, it’s time to spend time with something well deserved: filling my tax return.