November 12, 2003

Can't Think Of Anything

So I'll answer some questions from CheddarX:

1. What good did you do in the world today?

I explained the difference between the 8KNXP and the 8PENXP, thus increasing the sum total of human knowledge.

That's about it, really. Today sucked.

2. What fashion trend are you glad that's gone away? Or what trend are you waiting to go away?

I'm waiting for flares to go away. Or maybe to come back. I'm not sure.

3. What's your greatest sports moment, your own or one you've witnessed?

...

Do WWE bikini contests count as "sports moments"?

4. Who would you nominate for the most annoying person award?

This guy I know.

5. What do you do to get yourself ready to write? Either blogging or other writing? (I.e. I'm a whiskey drinker and like to have a tumbler to sip from when I write fiction).

Find something to write with. A working computer. A pen and a piece of paper. Crayon and a blank wall. Charcoal on a light-coloured carpet.

6. Mac or PC or Linux? Why? (I'm curious about this because it seems like the majority of bloggers I know are Mac folks but maybe I'm just wishfully thinking).

Tandy Colour Computer, Amiga 1000 or SGI O2. Unified memory architecture, baby!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:10 PM | Comments (46) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

And The Winner Is

In the category Most Bizarre Sentence Containing Both A Reference To The Vice-President And The Word Dominatrix:

Dick Cheney thought the war could showcase his transformation of America into a dominatrix superpower.

You mean, like, America in stiletto heels and fishnet stockings and a corset, bearing a whip? Talk about big-concept.

(Maureen Dowd in the NYT.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:49 PM | Comments (42) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Promises

I promise that I will get back to blogging about things other than my dead and dying computers as soon as I have computers that are not dead and dying.

Meanwhile, I think I killed my DSL modem. I tweaked my MTU, and now it doesn't love me anymore.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:22 PM | Comments (48) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

1 Poor Pixy! Susie still loves you....

Posted by: Susie at November 12, 2003 05:12 PM (0+cMc)

2

Posted by: Pixy Misa at November 12, 2003 05:49 PM (LBXBY)

3 Susie be careful, or he may try tweaking your MTU too!

Posted by: Keanie at November 15, 2003 01:57 AM (A0Tg9)

4 I would never do such a thing! Well, hardly ever...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at November 16, 2003 01:25 AM (jtW2s)

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Good News, Poo News

Good news: I've finished recovering my files, all 380,000 of them. I'm just triple-checking before I reformat the drive and copy everything back.

Poo news: My ADSL is still down. Telstra* now say that it may be fixed by mid-day today.

* Spit.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:27 AM | Comments (48) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

November 11, 2003

Meh

Telstra "fixed" their DSL network at 10:30 this morning and closed the fault. Then reopened it when a reported 15%* of users turned out to be still having problems. This was fixed at 1:30 this afternoon... That is, "fixed" as in "not fixed". Currently there are "some services" still having problems and there is no ETA on fixing those.

As someone once said:

Telstra must die. Die, die, die, die.

* 15%: A Telstra term used in reporting faults, meaning "Some customers are still able to use the services we are overcharging them for."

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:28 PM | Comments (44) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

The Curse of the Pixies

I was typing up a fascinating new post and my X session crashed. Ploink. All gone.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:44 PM | Comments (45) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Yay For Non-Globalisation!

A couple of weeks back, I whined about the lack of CD-printing printers in Australia. Epson sell such beasties just about everywhere else in the world, but not in Oz, because the ink used is dye-based in will destroy the ozone layer or something.

Anyway, it appears that Canon have come to the rescue with not one, not two, but three shiny new models. Of course, the one I want* doesn't seem to be available anywhere...

But the really amusing thing is that the models sold in America can't print on CDs - apparently due to a patent dispute. Ha ha!

* The most expensive one.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:46 PM | Comments (43) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Infectious Suckness

Telstra have stuffed their DSL network statewide. In a rather interesting way: packets up to 1144 bytes in size will get through; packets of 1145 bytes or more, basically, won't. Packet loss is 7% at 1000 bytes, 97% at 1200 bytes.

So ping and traceroute work, ssh mostly works, but http, ftp, smtp, pop, nntp and BitTorrent - in other words, all the good stuff - don't.

When I get home, if it's not fixed, I'll try fiddling with the MTU and see where that gets me. Probably the yacht will sink.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:04 PM | Comments (45) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

A Poll Thingy!

So I've pretty much decided that I'm going to get a new computer. The only question is: What colour should it be? Oh, yeah, black. Makes it go faster.

Well, with that sorted, there are only little unimportant details left to decide, like what processor I should get. (Mac fans note: I'd love to buy a Dual G5, but it's just not on the cards this year.)

So, let me know what you think. AMD? Intel? Zilog?

Update: Oh, yeah. The machine will be running Windows XP, and will be used for web browsing and email... And graphics editing and web design. And video editing. (Video encoding is painfully slow on my current system.) And music editing (Sonic Foundry's Acid). The occasional bit of programming. (Most of my programming is done on Linux). Word processing. Watching videos. And games, of course.

In fact, mostly games. I already have a GeForce 4 4600 Ultra, so I'm waiting out the current confusion in the video card market. Wake me when the GeForce 6 is out. (Or the FX2 or the GX or whatever it turns out to be.)

I'm also thinking of upgrading my Linux box. That will almost certainly be an Athlon.

The reason I'm asking is that the last four or five systems I've bought have all been AMD - right back to the K6-2. I have a P3 box at work, and it's not particularly impressive. So I've never spent much time on a P4, and I don't know how they stack up.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:51 AM | Comments (50) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

1 You didn't say what you are going to use the computer for. That's kind of important.

If it's a server running Linux, then you can get away with an AMD xp1900+ and spend your money on memory and hard drives (get a few spares since you seem to break them frequentely).

If you are getting a workstation, what types of programs are you going to be running?

If 3D rendering, then the fastest AMD processor you can afford (not the 64-bit one) and a butt-load of memory.

For games, video card performance is more important than processor performance.

If you just use office applications and/or do web browsing, screw performance. You can get away with something cheap like the xp1900+ (about US$50).

BTW, if you are going for pure geek bragging rights, then you need an AMD 64-bit dual processor system and several gigs of memory. You won't ever need this kind of power, but who cares? At the moment, the 64-bit processors don't offer a lot of benefits over the 32-bit processors. That will change over the next year (or so) as programs are rewritten to take advantage of the 64-bit architecture.

Posted by: Rossz at November 11, 2003 07:28 AM (43SjN)

2 Speedspeedspeedspeedspeed!

Posted by: Victor at November 11, 2003 08:11 AM (L3qPK)

3 Good point, Ross.

The Athlon 65 FX 51 currently has the highest SpecInt 2000 score of any processor. Also the second highest (32 bit mode with Intel compilers and 64 bit mode with GCC respectively.)

So it will be interesting to see what happens as the 64-bit compilers improve.

And yes, what I really want is a quad Opteron, but it's not in the budget right now

Posted by: Pixy Misa at November 11, 2003 12:11 PM (LBXBY)

4 Athlon 65? I guess that one is having a bit on the side...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at November 11, 2003 12:15 PM (LBXBY)

5 BTY- get Western Digital HDs; quality counts.

Posted by: CPT. Charles at November 12, 2003 07:54 AM (Hgn8p)

6 no point in getting a 64 bit chip if you're using Windows XP - i'd wait until longhorn to jump on that bandwagon.

I'm running Athlon XP2800 with 2gb ram and UW scsi drives and it kicks the carp out of my work's P4 2.8ghz. Plus you can really push the Athlons provided you have enough heat extraction ... remember OverClocking is fun!

Posted by: rob at November 13, 2003 12:13 AM (kXZI6)

7 If the Athlon 64s were cheaper, it would be reasonable to spend a little extra to get one. But they aren't, so it isn't...

Interesting to hear your results on the XP 2800+ against the P4 2.8. How did you get 2GB of memory, though? 1GB dimms?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at November 13, 2003 01:24 PM (LBXBY)

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November 10, 2003

258,941 Down

108,671 to go. Or thereabouts. Then I just have to reformat the external drive and copy all of those files back again. I hope that runs a bit faster than the file recovery process. Stellar Phoenix seems to be thorough and reliable, but it is not fast.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:47 PM | Comments (44) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Ouchie!

I'm getting prices on upgrading or replacing all of my main computers. Although the individual parts are nice and cheap, when you add them all up the number is surprisingly large. Particularly when you start specifying RAID-5 with a hot spare as the standard storage configuration...

But it would be very nice to have everything working properly for a change. Or at least, to have enough parts around so that anything that plays up can get swapped out and sent back without having to juggle things endlessly.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:18 PM | Comments (42) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

November 09, 2003

Another Day

Another dead drive. IBM GXP-27 leaves behind the other three members of its RAID-5 set and all of its files. Thank G-d.

Look, you laws of physics/evil spirits/karma/planned obsolescence (delete where not applicable) this isn't funny anymore!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:39 PM | Comments (50) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

November 08, 2003

Bleah

Well, at least this one was brand new and didn't have any files on it when it died.

Also, it's under warranty.

Still: Bleah.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:54 PM | Comments (48) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

1 I think I'm going to have to start sending you condolence cards if you loose one more hard drive or whatever geekly thing it was....

Posted by: Susie at November 08, 2003 03:07 PM (0+cMc)

2 it's beginning to sound like some ancient curse

Posted by: Ted at November 08, 2003 03:37 PM (2sKfR)

3 Man, you're quite the hard drive destruction bunny, aren't you.

Posted by: Matt Navarre at November 08, 2003 03:43 PM (n/wkr)

4 It's not my fault!!!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at November 08, 2003 04:45 PM (jtW2s)

5 You had it easy. I lost everything on my server's two hard drives (one was brand new) when the power supply blew. I just set up the new server and I'm in the process of adding content. I plan on getting an external USB 2.0 DVD burner for backups. I decided on an external model so I can move it from system to system as needed. Can anyone recommend a decent model? I'll be using it with both Linux and Windoze.

BTW, don't ever trust a Seagate Traven tape drive. They are "write-only".

Posted by: Rossz at November 09, 2003 04:31 AM (43SjN)

6 My mom, at times when things went consistently tits-up, would say that I wasn't holding my tongue right.
I don't know how helpful this might be.

Posted by: LeeAnn at November 09, 2003 06:31 AM (HxCeX)

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Unleashed, Unfound

Bum.

The other day when I was looking for Chobits 2, I mentioned that during my excavation I discovered the latest Sims expansion pack. As it happens, there is now a new latest Sims expansion pack: Makin' Magic. This allows you to turn your neighbours into frogs, which does much to explain the popularity of the Sims franchise.

Unforunately, my Sims installation fell victim to the Great Storage Crash of '03, so I need to install it all over again. Now, let's see:

The Sims. Check.
Livin' Large. Check.
House Party. House Party? Anyone seen House Party? Aha! Check.
Hot Date. Check.
Vacation. Check.
Unleashed. Check.
Superstar. Check.
Makin' Magic. Well, duh. Check.

So off I go, install install install, only -

This copy of The Sims Unleashed seems to be missing something. Like, one of the CDs.

Rats! I do this from time to time. The problem is, after you install a game, you have to keep the CD in the drive to keep the copy protection crap happy. So the game box gets put away, you play the game for a while, and then you need to use the CD-ROM drive for something else. So you take the game disk out and put it somewhere safe™. And you never see it again.

Now, I can either turn my study upside down looking for the damn disk, or I can pop out tomorrow morning and buy another copy. Guess which one is more likely?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:11 AM | Comments (51) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

November 07, 2003

G Is For...

Web site of the day is Googirl.

'Nuff said.

Update: No doubt due to the flood of traffic I just sent their way, Googirl seems to have gone down.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:33 AM | Comments (49) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Quokka In A Red Hat

The first release of the Fedora Project, the new home for the free version of Red Hat Linux, is out. I'll be giving it a whirl as soon as I've backed up the remaining 2.5 million files currently scattered around Pixy Central.

But from a quick scan of the package list, it would seem that Fedora suffers from one of Red Hat's major flaws: No Nethack. Dudley will realise how much of a problem this is, even if no-one else does.

There is good news on the Nethack front to be found here, at least.

Speedy and fearsome Q's, eh? What are they going to do, steal my K-Rations and throw up on my boots? Aiee! The worst attributes of nymphs and rust-monsters combined!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:18 AM | Comments (46) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

November 06, 2003

C Is For Camel

Travel advisory:

An over-friendly kleptomaniac camel named Twinkle is terrorising tourists in its search for love in Central Australia.

Locals at Wauchope, 400km north of Alice Springs, say the five-year-old hungry camel cow is infamous for stealing and eating whatever it can get its teeth into from cars parked nearby.

When unsuspecting motorists pull up outside the hotel the curious Twinkle pokes her head inside the vehicle, inspects the roof-rack and makes off with anything in sight.

But Wauchope Hotel owner Lee Richard said Twinkle's already bad behaviour changes dramatically at the sight of a swag in a visitor's car.

"She pulls swags out of the utes and mounts them as if she's copulating," he said.

"Whenever they pull up, if she's out the front she'll grab one.

"I dare say that anything else left she grabs through an open window."

Twinkle was sold to Mr Richard for $500 in 1999 after his goat died.

"We've always had animals walking around the place," he said.

"We were one short so we got the camel.

"We let her out in the morning at 8am. She and the donkey wander around and come back around mid-afternoon."

Well, if Twinkle becomes too much of a problem, perhaps these people can help:

A Northern Territory company is calling for help to fill export orders, but it is not looking for coal, wool or any of the other commodities we normally send overseas.

Over the past 12 months, demand for Australian camel meat from South East Asia has skyrocketed with the Middle East and North Africa also showing promising signs.

Can you imagine the damage half a million swag-stealing, ute-humping camels could cause?

(News.com.au via Fark)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:39 PM | Comments (48) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Even The BBC

Even the BBC is not entirely worthless, it seems.

Not only are they bringing Doctor Who back to the screen, they are now producing a third (and fourth!) series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The new productions will feature most of the original cast, and even a cameo by Douglas Adams himself (taken from a previous recording).

This is good. This is very good.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:09 PM | Comments (43) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Q Is For Quokka

This is a quokka, a small kangaroo-like critter found on Rottnest Island off the coast of Western Australia. They are cute and tasty friendly.

But do not feed the quokkas, even if they have the appropriate coupons. They may become ill and throw up on your shoes.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:23 PM | Comments (47) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

Left, Right, Up, Down

According to this little chart, I'm to the left of all but two of the current Democrat presidential candidates. (I'm also more libertarian than any of them.)

Difference being, of course, that they are idiots and I'm not. You can be an idiot no matter what your political persuasion may be. Though the reverse is not true: There are some political standpoints that are impossible to take unless you are an idiot. (Or actively evil, or insane. Or some combination of those three; it's never a good idea to forget that someone may be an evil, insane idiot.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:47 AM | Comments (45) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)

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