http://www.evildre.com/index.php Copyright 2010, Andreas Klinko Andreas Klinko en-US SPHPBLOG 0.5.1 http://www.evildre.com/index.php?entry=entry100724-203535
When I started building computers at MicroNet, there was no Pentium 4 or Athlon. We hadn't even passed the 1GHz "barrier" at that point. 500MHz was considered ridiculously fast, and 100MHz RAM was the fastest available. Remember AT power supplies? Yeah, I zapped myself on two of them.

Now, my wife has a faster mobile phone in her purse. My own phone handles 1GHz and 1GB of RAM better than the original 1GHz Pentium III.

The machine on my desk is now a quad-core with 8GB of RAM and a ton of hard disk space; even the servers I worked on at that point had at most two processors. My video card has more RAM than most of the computers I built in my first few years at MicroNet. And you know what? I actually use the power, and I notice the difference between this machine and my previous workstation (dual-core with 6GB of RAM).

We've come a long way in the 5 years since I left, that's for sure. ]]> http://www.evildre.com/index.php?entry=entry100724-203535 Andreas Klinko Sun, 25 Jul 2010 01:35:35 GMT http://www.evildre.com/comments.php?y=10&m=07&entry=entry100724-203535 http://www.evildre.com/index.php?entry=entry100618-065300 at all qualifies as "more closely," though, because I didn't pay a huge amount of attention last time; I'm sure anyone who reads my Twitter feed in one form or another noticed (sorry Facebook). I'm following the US team by default, and Italy because of Julie ... Hungary's not in it, and I'm not quite sure how I feel about other teams. Perhaps I should follow Brazil, if only because I freaking love black beans & rice. I don't know.

Anyway, there have been some good games and some blatant slaughters that ended up not being enjoyable to watch (*cough* Germany/Australia, Argentina/South Korea). Looking forward to the elimination stage.]]> http://www.evildre.com/index.php?entry=entry100618-065300 Andreas Klinko Fri, 18 Jun 2010 11:53:00 GMT http://www.evildre.com/comments.php?y=10&m=06&entry=entry100618-065300 http://www.evildre.com/index.php?entry=entry100603-204035 http://www.evildre.com/index.php?entry=entry100603-204035 Andreas Klinko Fri, 04 Jun 2010 01:40:35 GMT http://www.evildre.com/comments.php?y=10&m=06&entry=entry100603-204035 http://www.evildre.com/index.php?entry=entry100510-075336
Everyone who has paid more than a modicum of attention to anything computer-related knows that there's more than just Windows out there, and I'm referring to alternatives other than Mac OS. After all, if someone goes out and buys a Dell, HP, Toshiba, Sony, etc., how would that person then go and install Apple's operating system on that hardware? Don't get me wrong, it's possible -- I've done it -- but not without the procedure being a massive pain in the ass for someone who lacks the technical knowledge (or knows "just enough to be dangerous" ). Once that's done, you'd need to worry about Apple releasing an update that breaks it. That, and there are those with consciences who won't do it because Apple's EULA states that their OS should only be installed on Apple-branded hardware (easy workaround: take one of those Apple stickers that seems to ship with ever Apple product and slap it on the side of whatever you're trying to use).

But I digress. I'm not here to get on my "Apple is turning into Big Brother" soapbox. No, I'm here to preach about virtualization. This time, though, I'm talking about virtualization on a desktop rather than on a server. Desktop machines are pretty powerful lately and people are usually talked into buying beefy machines that they'll never fully utilize. Some software companies are lazy, further refining and maintaining their products on what is now an 8-year-old operating system, Windows XP, instead of moving to Vista (suppress your gag reflexes, people) and Windows 7. Still others are slow to acknowledge the existence of 64-bit extensions to x86 architecture, preferring instead to limit their memory-hungry applications to the relatively restricted 32-bit memory space. I, for one, am glad Microsoft Office 2010 is available in 64-bit form; makes it much, much easier to open and manipulate 16GB worth of email archives.

The lazy software houses are the primary reasons for desktop virtualization. Some industry-specific software packages won't run on Windows 7, much less the 64-bit version of that OS. Enter XP Mode -- what essentially boils down to a Windows XP SP3 virtual machine with TSGateway functionality bolted on, which allows you to run your XP applications in "seamless windows" on top of Windows 7. You can launch your XP applications from the Start menu, just like your "regular" applications. Don't try to play games on it, though.

XP Mode uses Windows Virtual PC, but there are other virtualization solutions that allow you this sort of seamless integration. VirtualBox (Oracle's product as of January 2010) does this, and is available for free. This is my preferred platform on the desktop. I have a total of 15 virtual machines on my desktop in the office that serve various purposes, from providing connectivity to our customers' VPNs to new feature testing to alternative OS playgrounds.

... and that brings me to another benefit: the ability to mess around with the alternative operating systems I alluded to earlier without the risk of killing your desktop. Yes, many Linux distributions offer "live CD" functionality, which allows you to boot into and run Linux from a CD instead of from a hard disk, but as you could imagine this is slow. These distributions allow you to install to your hard disk if you like them, but of course there are people who do just that and then wonder where all of their precious files have gone. Given a machine with sufficient power, a user can test-drive an alternative operating system from the comfort of their existing one without shutting down, rebooting, burning a CD, and so on. I wrote this post in Google Chrome under Ubuntu 10.04 while performing my other day-to-day tasks in Windows 7 Enterprise x64; with the default settings under VirtualBox, Ubuntu 10.04 installed just fine and the VirtualBox extensions went on without a hitch.

So ... do you have enough disk space? Do you know just enough to be dangerous? Do you have the itch to try out a new operating system while preserving your files and sanity? Virtualize it :)

This long-winded, not-exactly-coherent post brought to you by a cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee service swill. ]]> http://www.evildre.com/index.php?entry=entry100510-075336 Andreas Klinko Mon, 10 May 2010 12:53:36 GMT http://www.evildre.com/comments.php?y=10&m=05&entry=entry100510-075336 http://www.evildre.com/index.php?entry=entry100409-202037
On to more nerdy stuff ... passing physical disks through to virtual machines is freaking fantastic. That whole I/O bottleneck thing is much, much easier to manage. I ran up a virtual SQL server recently and threw a couple of physical RAIDs at it (a two-disk RAID 1 and a 5-disk RAID 5). Before this setup, the SQL server was a physical machine with a two-disk RAID 1 and a 4-disk RAID 10. Yes, the RAID 5 is slower than the 10, but overall the performance of the virtual SQL server is only slightly slower. That's saying a lot, because the physical had 8 Hyper-Threaded cores (looked like 16 to the OS) and 72GB of RAM; the virtual has 4 cores and 32GB.

Toning down the geek ... Daisy is being hilarious right now. Julie's sitting on the sofa drinking water, and Daisy appears to have dropped something in the cushion on the end. She's digging in there and sticking her behind in Julie's face. Everybody knows a dog's ass is a biological weapon.
]]> http://www.evildre.com/index.php?entry=entry100409-202037 Andreas Klinko Sat, 10 Apr 2010 01:20:37 GMT http://www.evildre.com/comments.php?y=10&m=04&entry=entry100409-202037 http://www.evildre.com/index.php?entry=entry100323-184051
In other news ... well, not much. I figure that's pretty big.]]> http://www.evildre.com/index.php?entry=entry100323-184051 Andreas Klinko Tue, 23 Mar 2010 23:40:51 GMT http://www.evildre.com/comments.php?y=10&m=03&entry=entry100323-184051 http://www.evildre.com/index.php?entry=entry100227-193340 http://www.evildre.com/index.php?entry=entry100227-193340 Andreas Klinko Sun, 28 Feb 2010 01:33:40 GMT http://www.evildre.com/comments.php?y=10&m=02&entry=entry100227-193340 http://www.evildre.com/index.php?entry=entry100213-212646
I took upwards of 200 pictures, but not all of them made the cut. I lean pretty heavily on the auto focus on these cameras, and the auto focus sucks almost as much as the steadiness of my hands. Some of these were just barely out of focus and were easily fixed with a quick sharpen, but others were just horrendous. In the end, I think there are only 110 photos left.

So ... link is in the bar on the right. Enjoy!]]> http://www.evildre.com/index.php?entry=entry100213-212646 Andreas Klinko Sun, 14 Feb 2010 03:26:46 GMT http://www.evildre.com/comments.php?y=10&m=02&entry=entry100213-212646 http://www.evildre.com/index.php?entry=entry100210-191853
I imagine it will be more depressing than last year's Auto Show. i hear Ford had a very good display at the Detroit Auto Show, so I expect something good from them this year. Toyota, not so much; from what I've seen they're leaving the FT-86 out, and that's the one car from them I really wanted to see. Honda's bringing the CR-Z, which should be interesting to look at. They'll undoubtedly have the Crosstour, which doesn't photograph well but looks amazing in person.

Anyway ... looking forward to running down tons of batteries and filling up memory cards. ]]> http://www.evildre.com/index.php?entry=entry100210-191853 Andreas Klinko Thu, 11 Feb 2010 01:18:53 GMT http://www.evildre.com/comments.php?y=10&m=02&entry=entry100210-191853 http://www.evildre.com/index.php?entry=entry100201-203406
At the moment, we're using X-Lite. It's a gateway drug, as it were -- a free application that provides users with the "most popular" features of eyeBeam and Bria, CounterPath's paid products. It's a separate, standalone program.

The problem is that this is an additional program to support. Additional programs require additional how-to guides, additional application knowledge, additional licenses, and so on. if the softphone component is integrated into an already-familiar application, that's one less thing to worry about. For example, everyone in the office knows how to use Skype for voice and IM. Why not have a separate tab in the Skype interface that allows the user to place and receive alls via our own Trixbox?]]> http://www.evildre.com/index.php?entry=entry100201-203406 Andreas Klinko Tue, 02 Feb 2010 02:34:06 GMT http://www.evildre.com/comments.php?y=10&m=02&entry=entry100201-203406