A Modest Construct

Posts tagged `general`

¶ Leaving 9Rules

A month late, sure, but better late than never…

Some of you remember that I joined the 9Rules network a while ago. At the beginning of October, 9Rules members got an e-mail advertising a new membership agreement.

After talking it out in Clubhouse, we made participating either in the private member area or my.9rules a requirement, part of the membership agreement. This goes back to the 9rules core because that is the way it used to be except members naturally interacted with one another so a requirement was not necessary [...]

If you feel you are contributing by your entries being shown only, 9rules is no longer a good fit for you, decline the agreement (or do not respond), please remove the leaf from your site and we will remove your site from displaying on 9rules.

I was in the middle of a move at the time, and the news underwhelmed me. Clearly, I thought, I haven’t even had the time to blog very much lately, much less blog and start arbitrarily posting in a forum. So, though it seemed a shame, I ignored the e-mail and passed quietly from the 9Rules world.

When I redesigned my site, I began thinking more heavily about the little leaf I was excluding, and became a little more irritated at the whole thing. A couple of years ago, 9Rules was a “Who’s Who” of the blogging world. It highlighted the best designs and the best content. It didn’t ask for anything else. This is partly why I joined it.

And perhaps it was my generation that finally changed things. Mandatory forum posting? Really? When did 9Rules become a glorified social network? Wasn’t it all about driving users to good content?

Apparently, I’m not the only one who was peeved, as there seems to have been a mass exodus of really excellent blogs in response to the revised membership agreement.

9Rules is, of course, free to do as it wants. If this is the direction that it wants wants go, more power to it. But it’s a different 9Rules than the one I joined (or thought I did), and I’m feeling better every day about my decision to leave.

§1930 · November 14, 2007 · 5 comments · Tags: 9rules, general, site updates, web design

¶ omgwtf Bill Bryson

I’m not cool enough for Bill Bryson to sign his new book near where I live, but Liz is that cool.

And she’s also so cool that she sent me a signed copy.

Thanks, Liz!

§1924 · November 8, 2007 · 2 comments · Tags: Bill Bryson, books, general

¶ R.I.P. Tiny

Tiny helps us play Scrabble

1990(?)-2007

§1916 · November 1, 2007 · 4 comments · Tags: cats, general

¶ Makes it easy…

Well, one way to get me to switch to Linux is for Windows to refuse to install on my new machine.

Vista, even though can clearly see all of my hard drives, says “Windows is unable to find a system volume that meets its requirements.” The hell? OK, to Google we go. The possibilities are:

There’s a USB device higher in the boot order. Nope, there’s no USB device in my boot order at all.
You don’t have the correct drivers. Nope, not only are they integrated with vLite, but I also put the drivers (regular and F6) on a thumbdrive and tried lodaing them.
The active flag on the partition isn’t set. Nope, I used a boot CD and set the partition correctly.

And various other things. Nothing seems to work. But the more I read, I less I even want to put Vista on my new machine: there’s no easy and reliable way to slipstream hotfixes yet, and I read that unless I have a particular hotfix for Vista x64, I won’t be able to boot the damn thing with 4GB of RAM.

So screw it. Kiss my ass, Microsoft. Hello, Ubuntu.

§1884 · August 3, 2007 · 5 comments · Tags: general, Linux, technology, Windows

¶ New computer plans

It’s that time again: I’m planning out a new workstation for myself. Those of you who have seen this since the beginning my remember my first foray into PC-building (not to mention its disastrous consequences).

Here’s my just-ordered layout:

Case: LIAN LI PC-V2000Bplus II Black Aluminum Server Computer Case; This massive aluminum server case from Lian-Li is a massive 24.6″ x 8.3″ x 24.3″ (D x W x H) and sports 12 internal 3.5″ drive bays. It’s got 3 120mm fans and a CPU vent
Power Supply: SeaSonic S12 Energy Plus SS-650HT ATX12V/EPS12V; After reading Jeff Atwood’s excellent article about high efficiency power supplies, I looked into “80 PLUS” certified units, which should save money on my electricity bills. These SeaSonics get high marks in all the reviews I’ve seen, offering rock-solid performance along with their high efficiency. This particular units is 650W.
Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-N680SLI-DQ6 LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI ATX Intel Motherboard; This high-end Gigabyte model is probably overkill for me—it’s geared to gamers, primarily—but its 10 SATA ports are a must, as I’ll have a lot of hard drives and don’t want to pay a premium for a decent add-in card. Better to pay the overhead on a high-end mobo. It’s also get pretty good heat-pipe tech and all the various features and widgets that have become standard for this sort of thing. The only thing it’s missing is WiFi.
Processor: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Kentsfield 2.4GHz LGA 775 Processor; After the July 22 price drop by Intel, this Quad Core processor is suddenly sub-$300, so I figured I’d future-proof my machine. Rather than worry about the Dual Core chips with faster processors, I’d rather have better multi-tasking capabilities.
Accessory: CPU heatsink: ZALMAN CNPS9500 AT 2 Ball CPU Cooling Fan/Heatsink; Zalman aftermarket coolers are some of the best I’ve ever used. This copper beast can lead to temperature drops of over 10°
Accessory: thermal grease: Arctic Silver 5 thermal compound; I used this on my last build and love it; much better heat conductivity than the standard postage stamp of thermal compound that comes on retail CPUs.
Memory: CORSAIR XMS2 4GB(4 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Quad Kit Desktop Memory; Rather than buy the 2x2GB kit, which costs $100 more, this 4-stick, 4GB memory kit from Corsair will be perfect for my Quad Core system: 1GB stick for each core. I’ve never had any problems with Corsair memory: their XMS line is rock-solid, so I’m using it again in this build.
Hard Drives: Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3500630AS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive (x4); Four of these drives will be RAIDed into 2 separate 1TB arrays: one for audio and one for video; Western Digital Caviar RE WD1600YS 160GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive; One 160GB drive will serve as my system drive, holding the partitions for the various operating systems that I’ll run
Optical Drives: LITE-ON 20X DVDÂ±R DVD Burner with LightScribe Black SATA Model LH-20A1L-05; This inexpensive dual-layer DVD burner is SATA, and made by Lite-On, whose drives I have had good success with in the past.; LITE-ON Black SATA DVD-ROM Drive Model SHD-16S1S-05; This vanilla DVD-ROM drive will be my workhorse, and is also SATA, which means I will no longer have any EIDE/PATA drives in my system.
Video Card: EVGA 320-P2-N811-AR GeForce 8800GTS 320MB GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Video Card; Only fairly recently, EVGA has become a top-of-the-line board manufacturer for nVidia, and yet their products are still cheaper than competing brands like Asus (my first Radeon 9800XT was an Asus, and it kept failing). I chose nVidia because of their better-than-ATI driver support in Linux (hello, AIGLX!) and their excellent performance. The 8800GTS is a very middle-of-the road card, and its specs don’t seem like much compared to the bleeding-edge cards, but it’s got the best cost/performance ratio of all available products, and it routinely matches or outperforms more expensive cards.

I won’t bother telling you how much it all cost.

Now I just have to wait until all the parts arrive and then I can delight in the sheer geekiness of it all.

§1876 · July 23, 2007 · 4 comments · Tags: general, Linux, technology