Random thoughts, views, and rantings

If you didn’t know, my old server died for a month.  I was able to get it up and working, but it was on its deathbed.  Its hard drive was failing and possibly its motherboard and it was SUPER slow on even the simplest of tasks.  Even a simple ls took 20 seconds sometimes.

However, I am now on a brand new (to me) server!  It has 1.6 times the processing power, 1.7 times the memory, and 2.5 times the space of my previous server!  This server is now a P3 733 MHz with 384 MB of RAM and 40 GB of space; not too bad!  I just finished installing and configuring Ubuntu Server 8.10 on it with all the software I need (Apache, PHP, MySQL, SSH, FTP, NTP, TeamSpeak, etc) and repopulated my databases and moved all my web files over.  The site is running faster than it ever has before and its stable once again!

So, now that I have a stable site, I would really like to start blogging again.  Also, I am teaching myself some AJAX and will be writing some code for Videlais and my AP Database so look for updates of that here.  Also whatever I feel like writing about at the time.

P.S. Humongous props to Ubuntu and their ShipIt service.  I requested CDs of their 8.10 Desktop and Server editions and they just arrived yesterday–perfect timing so that I didn’t have to download an ISO today when moving servers!  And now I have some nicely pressed professional looking Ubuntu CDs.

P.P.S. I still have 13 pressed copies of Ubuntu 5.10 and 6 pressed copies of Ubuntu 6.06 if anyone wants a nice copy.  True, they are out of date but they can be upgraded and are still useful as LiveCDs.  Otherwise they will be used as swag when I start geocaching again (which will be really soon!).

So if you didn’t know, my video card in my desktop pretty much died on Saturday.  It was working fine until I rebooted after installing XP SP3.  Upon loading windows, the computer hung.  Every single reboot.  I tried uninstalling SP3 in safe mode (which worked) but it didn’t affect anything.  I thought about it for a little bit, especially how safe mode worked but regular booting didn’t, until I thought that it might be my video card.  I uninstalled the drivers in safe mode and rebooted and lo and behold it loaded into XP.  I thought well its good I didn’t lose any data, but it didn’t look good for my video card.  In ATI Tool instead of displaying its name as a X800 PRO VIVO, it instead called it an AGP Device 0×45something with 0 working pipelines.  Uh oh I thought.  I reflashed the card’s BIOS, tried downmodding it back to a X800 PRO, and finally took the card out and cleaned all the thermal compound off in case it had bridged some contacts.  Nothing.  It was dead.  So I talked to my parents and worked out a deal that I could order a new computer now (I don’t have the money just yet) and they would cover it and buy my old desktop off of me at fair market value and would buy a video card for it so it could become the new family computer (they still are using their old 700MHz PIII).  So I agreed and ordered my new computer last night! Specs:

CPU – Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3GHz

Motherboard – ASUS P5K Premium WiFi

RAM – 4GB (2×2GB) Corsair Dominator DDR2 1066

Video Card – XFX Geforce 8800GTS (G92) 512MB

Hard Drive – Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB SATA2

Case – Antec P182

Power Supply – Corsair 550VX

CPU Cooling – Thermalright Ultra 120 eXtreme with a Scythe SFF21F 63CFM

DVD Writer – Lite-On LH-20A1S SATA

Generic Floppy Drive (yes I still want one)

Add these to what I already have:

Monitor – Dell 2407WFP

Keyboard – Logitech Elite

Mouse – Logitech Mx518

Speakers – Altec Lansing ATP3

UPS – Belkin 1200VA

And its gonna be a really bangin system!  The parts are ordered and should arrive sometime early next week hopefully!  If I don’t get too excited building it I will take some pics of the process and write a post about it.  Hopefully from my new computer .

Thanks to videlais for the shoutout to my blog (also check out his video game review blog here).  And welcome to any new viewers.  If you would like to comment let me know somehow.  I’m still learning the Wordpress software and right now you have to be a logged-in user to comment (to stop the spambots).  But I’m not sure you can apply for an account as of now, hence the problem.

Lately I’ve been playing alot of the game Anarchy Online.  Anarchy Online is an MMORPG that is science fiction based rather than the more commonly used setting of fantasy.  I enjoy sci-fi so this really appealed to me.  AO was released in 2001 so the graphics aren’t that great, but it also means that almost any current computer can run it.  However, the coders are working on a brand new graphics engine for AO so soon (supposedly this year) this will be a moot point.  The main point that brought me into this game is that you can play the game on a FREE account.  AO currently has four expansion packs.  To play the whole game costs about $8 a month.  But, you can play the core game and the first expansion for FREE–you just have to put up with some in-game advertising.  This I agree with and I think is a good example of how in-game advertising should work.  Most other games that use this technology still make the user pay full (or close to full) price for the game, while the advertising benefits the makers of the game instead of the users.  But I digress.  The advertising in this game is in the form of short looping videos that appear on billboards placed throughout the cities in the world.  They loop a low-res video with sound that lasts about 20 to 30 seconds.  Sometimes they can be annoying, but the sound fades as you walk away and half of the time they aren’t even displayed.  For being able to play the game for free it is a small price to pay.

Another thing I like about AO is that it is a very technical game and is not a game for beginners.  Whereas in Diablo 2 you have five areas you could increase on a level up, and in Guild Wars you have seven I believe, AO has about 82 areas you can place points into to upgrade your character.  Stats pages for weapons and items can fill a whole info window and still scroll on.  Instead of having one stat with the name “Armor”, there are many different armor classes ranging from Impact/Projectile, Energy, and Melee to Fire, Cold, Chemical, Poison, and Radiation, each of which has its own rating on your character.  There is all this and more and I actually really like the technical aspect of the game and the steep learning curve as it makes you really put some thought into your character.

Overall, I really like this game and I am enjoying playing it.  I won’t say it doesn’t have its problems though.  It has crashed once in a while for me, and lags every now and then, but these are not enough to make the game a pain to enjoy.  Also, since the game is older, the graphics are not that great, but the game will soon (hopefully very soon!) be updated to the new graphics engine and that will not be a point of concern.  If you haven’t heard or played AO check it out; it’s free, fun, and you have nothing to lose.  My main nick in the game is Urloc–add me to your friends list and send me a tell!

I’ve pretty much completed the setup of my new server.  Ubuntu server was incredibly easy to get setup and running, and come with a built-in LAMP and OpenSSH installs that work out of the box (or more accurately, off the disc).  Also, using the Debian apt-get system, I got an FTP server, SSL server, and some perl and php modules.  I installed webmin (a browser-based administration system) and set up wordpress and mediawiki smoothly and quickly.  Setup and running a webserver on Ubuntu is extremely easy and I am very pleased with it.  It’s more secure and alot easier for me to manage and keep up to date.  And also, not to mention faster since its on a pentium 3 server now.  I like it alot and my old server will soon finally go offline.

I found a script that converted my old Nucleus blog posts to wordpress posts so I got them imported into here.  Also, wordpress has an integrated Blogger importer so I imported my old blog posts from 2004 too!  So finally I have all blog posts (with comments!) in one place and in this very nice and superior blog platform.  Administration of wordpress is very nice and easy, and has alot more options than nucleus.  Also, since its on my new server its running alot more smoothly.  Overall I am very impressed with this software and I am hoping to post alot more regularly on here.