JerryKnight.com

I have finally gotten around to moving this site to slicehost.com. Dreamhost was fine for what it cost, but for any kind of web development projects, it was usually less than snappy on the responsiveness meter, and that makes web development very tiring. Slicehost gives me a private, dedicated virtual server. That means that the processing, storage, and memory resources allotted to me are mine, and nobody else with an account on the same physical web server can ever use up those resources. This means there’s usually a waiting list for new accounts, because they won’t cram more accounts onto the existing servers. To serve more customers, they have to install and setup a new machine in their server farm.

This also means that they leave all the setup of my virtual web server to me. They have fresh, custom Linux installations available (Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.), but I have to install and configure my web serving software (lighttpd, PHP, MySQL, etc.) This endeavor is not for the faint of heart. It’s taken years of tinkering on my own Linux machines to get comfortable with setting up everything on my own, although the impressive progress of Linux in recent years has made it much better. Still, this is not your grandmother’s web hosting provider.

Usually, moving my website or making any serious changes to it requires a site redesign, but I’m currently lazy busy with other projects. I chose to wrap up the code and database and plug it into the new server as-is.

Also, since they call their virtual servers “slices,” I lovingly named my slice “velveeta.”

-JK

I’ve been off of IM for a few days and generally less available online. My home computer has had something of a mishap, and I’m not sure how the recovery is going to go. As far as I can tell, the CPU block of the water cooling system sprung a slow leak, and the drips of coolant (water + antifreeze) were causing random malfunctions and shutdowns. By the time I realized the problem, the leak had sped up, leaving a small puddle on the video card. The very technical term for this situation is “not good.”

I pulled all of the water cooling system out and let the system dry out for a couple days, and tonight I’ll put on the stock CPU fan and see if there was any permanent damage. Needless to say, if I go back to water cooling any time soon, it will be a high quality system (with sealed heat exchangers).

Update: Looks like no serious damage was caused by the coolant leak. (That reminds me of Star Trek for some reason.) I installed the stock cooling fans on the CPU and video card, and put a normal fan on the case where the radiator used to be. Dodged the bullet this time.

Today is my ten thousandth day on this little planet. Since the powers of ten are so fundamental to us, why not celebrate my 10⁴ day? It all started around my last birthday, when out of curiosity I figured out that I was 9861 days old, which is really close to D10K. So for anyone turning 27 anytime soon, your D10K is roughly 4 months and 16 days after your birthday. (This page will calculate it for you.)

It’s a little hard to grasp that I’ve seen 10,000 days and nights and have been breathing for (roughly) 14,400,173 minutes. It’s so easy to abstract our lives into months, years, and decades and lose the sheer scale of it all. I’ve been through a lot in my first myriad, though not as much as I would have expected. I’m sure my next myriad (which ends on Feb. 6, 2035) will be much more interesting.

I didn’t plan any kind of clever celebration for my D10K, but I am enjoying the gift that Steve got me. A few possible D10K ideas:

• 10,000 red hots, M&Ms, Jelly-bellies, etc.
• 10,000-candle cake (probably a fire hazard)
• 10,000-bubble sheet of bubble wrap (that doesn’t sound half bad, actually)
• 10,000 pennies (55 lbs for $100)
• Any other ideas?

It’s been quite a while since my last post on here. I’ll try to post more.

The Infiniti finally told me it was time to replace the tires (minor air leak on one, almost bald on the back tires). I researched the stock Michelin Pilot Sport 2 tires, and the 25,000 miles that were on my tires was near the normal life expectancy. The handy tirerack.com site was useful for researching the available replacement options. It turns out that the top-rated tire model was available at Discount Tire for the same price as Tire Rack (without having to ship them). So, the Infiniti now has new shoes: Bridgestone Potenza RE960 AS Pole Position. They should last longer than the Michelins, about 40,000 miles.

It handles much better now, doesn’t threaten to slip on acceleration, and the road noise is drastically reduced. I’m very impressed – well worth the week and a half wait for the tires to get to the Waco Discount Tire store. The tires are pretty scarce around the country, so they had to call in some favors from other stores. The front tires (225/45) came from California and the backs (wider 245/45) came (late) from Fort Worth.

Just returned from a wonderful cruise to southeast Alaska. It was so nice to be in a place where long sleeves and jackets are still worn in June. Tons of pictures are uploading to Flickr as I type, and it will probably take most of the day. I have them all going out to Flickr, so I’ll go back when they’re done and take out the duds and duplicates.

It was a very unique experience. The course the ship took was on the boundary between vast wilderness and vast ocean. The only other boats were fishing boats and other cruise ships, and ships visiting the tourist towns add a few extra digits to the town populations. Many places simply would not exist if cruise ships didn’t stop there. Days were around 18 hours long, and the rest was dim twilight. All of these things were very foreign to me. The world is such a big place – and yet such a small place at the same time. It took a total of about 4 hours on an airplane to reach Vancouver. A hundred years ago, 4 hours was barely enough time to make it across the average county. The world moves so much faster now – almost too fast if you ask me. It’s good to take time off and admire creation.

Thanks, Mom & Dad for a great trip!

Well, I wasn’t planning on upgrading my system quite yet, but I lost all trust in my previous motherboard. It was probably damaged somehow by heat. So above you can see the basic specs that Ubuntu Linux sees. Once I assembled the hardware parts, the system booted up just fine, and apart from a minor tweak (The video card address changed in the move to the new system.) everything started up perfectly without any hassle.

Needless to say, everything is noticeably zippier. Linux loves to eat memory for breakfast, but so far it can’t stomach all of the new memory. Linux (Ubuntu at least) is getting very close to the “stuff just works” phase of an operating system that Mac and Windows have been at for some time. For so many years, I’ve had to struggle to get the simplest things to work – recompiling code, installing thousands of library packages by hand, etc. And to be fair, once things worked, they were reliable. Nowadays, I can install Ubuntu on a new system and everything works – sound, video, network, dvd – without having to do as much “geeking” as before.

Oh, and the new system is crazy quiet. Seriously, it’s borderline absurd. I hear the water pump going, and the radiator fan (the only fan in the whole system) in the back, but the case lid is still open. My other machine was a gas-powered leaf blower by comparison.

There were some issues getting the water-cooling kit setup in the new system, but that was the only tough part. Time to get some rest after a hard-fought battle.

I found out that I have somewhat of a newfound skill, useless though it may be. Maybe it’s just sheer patience and a mostly steady hand. I was dismayed to find out that the unofficial world record (Sadly, Guiness BoWR has no entry for golf-ball stacking.) is nine golf balls. Maybe someday I’ll challenge that record.

Incidentally, I’m really enjoying my Canon SD1000. Canon has similar models with image stabilization, but I wanted a Canon point & shoot that was as thin as possible. I’ve already demonstrated that I have a fairly steady hand, so I don’t miss the stabilization. The SD1000 has quite a decent sensor, and the firmware is zippy – faster than my S200 that now belongs to my sister. I’ve gone so long without a small everyday camera that I forgot how nice it is to have something I can carry everywhere. The XTi with the big honking (“honking” is the technical term) lenses doesn’t exactly fit in a pocket.

Late tonight, a very annoying and blood-boiling shriek erupted from my computer. Although the noise was too loud to pinpoint, I had previously heard the sound and traced it to the water pump, but that time the sound stopped after a system restart and a handful of death threats.

This time, the sound didn’t stop, despite the death threats, and as I watched, the CPU temperature rocketed to 150° F before I got the system shut down. It turns out that the shriek comes from a flow sensor attached to the water pump. The pump is no longer pumping, so my main computer is dead until I either replace the water pump unit or the entire water cooling setup. Either is a royal pain, but replacing the pump (if it’s even possible to find one in Waco) is better than draining all the water lines and assembling a new kit. The only other alternative would be to replace the CPU heatsink with the stock fan unit. Talk about lame.. but it would be less lame than a system that can’t run for more than 30 seconds at a time. A pumpless water cooling system is little more than a naked CPU, which would last seconds before burning itself out.

Update: Once I fixed the water pump problem, the system wouldn’t boot up. I figured it was some kind of heat stress from the water pump ordeal, but I tried again this morning and it worked. I still don’t trust the hardware at all, so I’ll be shopping around for upgrades.

With the addition of my new lenses into my collection, it became obvious that my trusty but dated Drebel (300d) was sorely out-matched. Since Canon decided not to release a 40D, I decided that the Rebel XTi was the right body to upgrade to. The 30D is nice, but I’m not obsessed with the alloy body and the newer features offered by the XTi at a lower price were too hard to pass up.

The biggest difference is the startup time. The old Drebel took over 2 seconds to get to where it could take a picture after turning it on or waking it up. At the time, it was just the way things were, but now Canon cameras can start up fast enough that you hardly can notice a delay. The published time is 0.2 seconds – faster than I can move my finger from the power switch to the shutter button. I don’t really notice much difference in picture quality, but most of their improvements are probably in high ISO exposures. The image buffer is much bigger, so I can take almost limitless JPEGs and 9 or 10 RAWs in a row.

One peculiar thing though – when taking a picture, after the mirror and shutter do their thing, there is an extra “ZZT” sound. It sounds remarkably like a film drive, which is a little absurd. I haven’t been able to figure out what part of the camera could be making such a sound.

When Joshua mentioned to me that he was thinking of selling his lenses, I had to seriously consider whether or not I could get them. The two lenses are a Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 L and a 70-200mm f/2.8 L, both phenomenal lenses. He wanted to upgrade to the Canon 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6 L IS, which is better for the outdoor photography he’s interested in than two non-stabilized lenses. This was my best opportunity to get into the world of professional lenses, so I now own my first two L lenses. Some have argued that the 10-22mm lens I have is constructed as L quality, but it lacks the official label. So now my lens bag contains:

• Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5
• Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8 L
• Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L
• and, last and least (though still a great lens), Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS

Let’s hope I never need to shoot at 23mm! Hopefully, I’ll have some additional income to let me upgrade my camera body to something more qualified to sit on those lenses. I love my Drebel, but it’s definitely a mismatch!

-JK