February 11th 2009
I have just had a disk fail on my NAS, actually it happened ages ago but I was too broke to replace it. At the same time as one being faulted, another was degraded through having too many errors. Below is my interaction with ZFS to discover the extent of the problem and “fix” it.
December 22nd 2008
Last weekend I went down to London again for a Christmas jolly with some great old uni friends, it was a lovely weekend, good wholesome fun.
On the Saturday I went to see the Wallace Collection while some girlies shopped on Kensington Highstreet (where the sales are apparently excellent but I’m not sure I could have tolerated a moment). There was an Osbert Lancaster exhibit there that was great, alongside the permanent collection which is excellent. I had never heard of him before but hes is definitely worth investigating, the blurb on the wall described him as a dandy aesthete, something I have always considered myself.
In the nighttime we watched the 1951 Scrooge with Alastair Sim in an incredible private cinema, ate nice food, got a little squiffy (port was involved you will be surprised to learn)
On the Sunday we went to see the Babylon exhibit in the British Museum and I returned to Leeds feeling tired but ace. Babylon has appeared in art of all forms, not least a few Jazz numbers.
December 6th 2008
I was in London a few weeks ago and saw the wonderful exhibit at the Royal Academy of Arts.
I have been interested in Byzantine history since a historian friend at university described how they were essentially the eastern Roman empire, called themselves Romans, spoke Greek, were Christian and survived well into the Middle Ages. As ever, wikipedia has a good introduction to the topic.
Off to London again next weekend, going to see the Babylon exhibit at the British Museum and have a lovely Christmas celebration with some good old friends.
September 13th 2008
I have recently returned from Edinburgh, I caught the tail end of the Fringe festival. It was a good trip, and the first time I have had more than a day off work since February. I saw quite a few acts in the final 3 day.It’s been ages since I blogged and I’m out of the habit so I’ll just post loads of vids.
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June 15th 2008
I have been working really hard of late and have decided to block book a load of long weekends this summer and get outdoors a bit. I have been thinking about doing a long distance path for ages and have decided to do one in early August, probably the West Highland Way. It is 95 miles and I reckon I can walk 20 a day so should be able to fit it in if I take a Friday and a Monday off work. I have just gone shopping for some kit so I can do it as lightweight (and brutal) as possible, and so got my gadget fix at the same time. This is ambitious as I have done nearly nothing for almost 3 years, but fuck it. I am in Snowdonia next week and will see just how bad my fitness is and the next six weeks I will do as much prep as I can.
From Alpkit.com, a great store selling direct from the factory at low cost.
Hunka Bivy, £30
Gourdon 30L Watertight Rucksac, £20
I wish they had the Wee Airic mat in stock, but i got a thermarest one instead (cost 3 times as much!)
Wee Airic, £17.50
From golite.com:
Ultralite Poncho/Tarp, £26
JetBoil, £46. Been thinking about one of these for a while, very efficient use of the gas, boils real quick and stows in the 1L pot.
I am well excited about it.
May 10th 2008
I went a few weeks ago to see BodyWorlds at the Museum of Science and Industry (mosi) in Manchester.
I have only just had chance to get the pics off my phone and am amazed at how well they came out.
All one body, look at the shared foot.
This was the highlight for me, what incredible musculature.
This is amazing, enough features remain with just the blood vessels that you could probably recognise him if you knew him in life.
Either a real life visible human or a macabre newtons cradle.
It was a great day out.
May 9th 2008
Went here with a friend, pretty yum. 50% off makes it great value too.
http://www.felicini.co.uk
Expect an update soon on why my brute-forceing below was plain dumb rather than simply naive.
April 12th 2008
If p is the perimeter of a right angle triangle with integral length sides, {a,b,c}, there are exactly three solutions for p = 120.
{20,48,52}, {24,45,51}, {30,40,50}
For which value of p < 1000, is the number of solutions maximised?
WARNING: CONTAINS MATHEMATICS
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April 3rd 2008
When I first heard about ZFS and its features, I was intrigued by a comment by Bill More about the possibility of having a database or other app directly consume the DMU that ZFS uses for filesystems or volumes. After I did a spot of research when editing the ZFS page on Wikipedia I noticed the “Last Word In Filesystems” pdf has been updated since I last looked, here are the 2 pages that excited me. With Suns recent acquisition of MySQL and lustre we seem to have arrived there now. Lustre support is excellent as it solves the only failing of ZFS, that it is not clustered.
The in-kernel CIFS stuff gets a mention too
See the full presentation and Bill Moore’s slightly outdated video
April 3rd 2008
After me banging on for a year about how cool ZFS is, my boss is finally convinced and wants to get a Thumper (or 2). Depending on budgetary constraints we may be getting a couple of these to implement a warm backup solution for our current data and about 5 years worth from now (they are 24Tb each)
48 Drives in a 4U rackmount for 20k, great value and unbeatable storage density.