Well, it’s been another long gap since the last update… What a surprise eh?

We’ve just come back from 10 days in the sunny (ha ha) South of France. I say ‘ha ha’ since all but the last few days seemed to disappear in the torrential rain and thunderstorms — heck, even the motorway between Monaco and Italy has been shut for over a week! We did however have a really lovely time including nice meal for my birthday (21, for real!), various days out, etc…

Yesterday something went wrong with Baldrick, very much like it did back on the 1st of July, where PostgreSQL locked up in IO and no number of kills solved the problem. One reboot and a kernel update (while I was at it…) later everything seemed to be working fine again. Strange. This morning I woke up to find MySQL had gone crazy and was eating CPU trying to access a corrupted table, which I can’t figure out either. All fine again now. Very strange.

I’ve also been experimenting with IPMI, originally to get sensor values from my server for things like temperatures and fan speeds. That’s when I got more interested and found out all sorts of very interesting swanky features like being able to remotely retrieve this information and, probably the most useful, being able to remotely cycle power in case the box crashes (even though I can ask 49pence to do that for me, albeit with a delay).

Just while double-checking Baldrick was working OK at the airport, I noticed Gromit‘s battery was running low very quickly, and although it lasted a good while after getting down to 1%, I’ve now discovered my battery is on its way out. Apparently, a battery that only at the start of the summer was rated C+ and very good for its age is now “very poor” and has less than a quarter of its original capacity. That’s £82 that is!

Another thing on the shopping list…

I got in touch with the makers of the piece that I was attempting to put into Jess’s PS2 about the part I inadvertently removed, and they told me exactly which bit I should buy. So last night I proceeded to buy 5000 of the things (they sell them in reels) and got them today. Popped the tiny little part in and…

…it works!

So that’s me a happy bunny realising I haven’t broken the PlayStation, and Jess happy I haven’t broken her toy. Phew. Ah well, it looks as though in the end everything comes together: the SATA controller, the 2 new PCs, and now the final thing: the PS2.

Most of the week my luck has been wearing very thin indeed… I ordered lots of parts from DABS to build 2 new computers for Jess’s family, as well as add 1TB of disk space to a rebuilt computer of mine, and everything seemed to go wrong all at once! Oh well, at least Jess’s chickenpox is slowly going now!

First of all, I ordered a Serial ATA controller card so that I could use 2 of my 4 new hard drives (the motherboard has 2 SATA ports). I started off by ordering the cheapest thing available (they all use the same chips…), but when I received it it just kept locking up. After several days’ worth of debugging on the Linux Kernel mailing list, we came to the conclusion I actually had a faulty controller card.

Next, I set off to build the 2 computers. Everything looked fine until I came to start installing Windows (I know) on the first one. I quickly realised the floppy drives didn’t work for some reason, and the power supply covered up the heat-sink fan causing overeating. I knew the drives weren’t at fault since I used them on my other computer without any trouble.

Third, I started off fixing Jess’s PS2 after my previous failed attempt involving a blown fuse. I got the replacement fuse, replaced the failed part, and proceeded to install a “subzero fix” which is meant to prevent the laser burning out. In doing this, I managed to take off a tiny resistor (only about 1mm × 2mm × 0.5mm) and after trying to replace it, lost it. So now I need to order a replacement resistor for Jess’s PS2 once I find out exactly what it is.

I organised a return of the faulty controller card and the two badly-designed cases, and ordered a new controller (brand-name this time) and 2 new cases very much like Jess’s old one (now mine). The new controller works a treat. As for the two new cases, everything fits great and the floppy drives work: must have been faulty power supplies in the old cases. Two new computers working like a charm.

Pages updated: About » Arcadia and About » Bigwig.

Charles will be happy: the first post I have written for over a month! As you might expect I’ve in fact been up to a lot, and hardly ever bored enough to write a post on my blog — sorry readers! So what’s been going on? Well, I’m still in Devon and have been taking advantage of not having to do anything. Jess and I have stayed at her parents’ caravan for a good while, and various chunks of her family have been visiting—all with children—so we are keeping busy! Add to the mix the fact that I’m building 2 new computers (for Jess’s family), rebuilding 2 of my own, and I’ve been chipping Jess’s PlayStation 2 for various purposes, and we get: hardly any time left for blogging!

The caravan seems to provide an almost endless stream of faults that need repairing including 2 broken pumps, a mistreated porta-potti, and various other smaller jobs. It’s great fun staying at the site since it’s right on the coast and mostly quite peaceful. When the occasional sunny day does rear its head it makes for lovely beach going!

I’ve been asked to build 2 new computers for Jess’s family and, as you might expect, am rather looking forward to putting them both together. I’m also taking opportunity of the situation and I’m going to rebuild mine and Jess’s computers, adding 4 × 250GB hard drives making for 500GB of RAIDed storage: nice!

And yes, you’ve read correctly, I’ve been chipping Jess’s PlayStation 2. I must admit the real reason behind this is to be able to play dodgy games, but I might also play around with writing software for the device since it’s really quite neat. I’ve fitted a DMS 4 Lite and was fitting another little gadget when I blew a fuse with my soldering iron, and am waiting for a replacement to arrive.

Today marks the last day of my Industrial Placement at Oracle. I’ve had a really great year and everyone really made me feel very welcome, I’ll miss just about everyone there. It’s been a real pleasure working for Oracle, and I highly recommend going for a placement over there if you’re looking around. Maybe one of these I’ll end up back over there, we’ll see.

I thought at the start of the week I’d get through all this without feeling too emotional and all that, but just as I was leaving work yesterday I have to admit my eyes started to water a bit… I got through today fine though, despite the tears from the others around. It hardly feels like 12 months have gone by to be quite honest.

On another note, the server had a bit of trouble that started at around 21:50 BST, and was noticed about 5 minutes later. It was rebooted and everything came back up at about 22:10 BST. I managed to login and check a few things just before it seemed to lockup solid, and several (mostly PostgreSQL) process were in the D state (uninterruptible sleep (usually IO)). Unfortunately the log files didn’t have any information at all. Ah well, all seems well again now.

Last weekend was really quite nice—some friends visited from Huddersfield and, among other things of course, we spent all of Saturday afternoon and evening at the pub! I had been at the Hobgoblin a few times before, but never for too long and didn’t quite get the chance to ‘sample’ so much beer, shall we say. I loved the pub before, but now I really am going to miss it! This is the sort of place that has banned mobile phones, and changes the available beers every few hours: they have after all been through 3000 different beers since October 2003!

Tomorrow, Jess will be heading down to Devon again for her second (and, I’m sure, final) attempt at passing her driving test! Add to this the fact that we’re leaving for good at the end of the month, so it’s a bit of a sad time. We’ve already started packing and even sent some stuff down to Devon already, and started the procedure of moving out. Who would ever have thought it was so hard to change addresses and cancel contracts even with over a month’s notice! Never mind, I think they’ll realise quickly enough when Direct Debits get cancelled.

I’m now on the second part of my Oracle Application Server 10g: Administration course, and waiting for some installations to finish. We aren’t normally allowed out of the rather restricted ‘education network’ that we’re on, but there are plenty of ways out if you know what to look for! So here I am checking email and writing blog entries. Certainly beats drinking so much coffee as to develop Caffeinism!

• We all thought our neighbours across the pond were going towards a 1984-like totalitarian regime, but how wrong we are: they’re going Soviet!

• Apple has announced its 3^rd platform transition: the move from PowerPC to x86. After the previous two transitions (68K to PowerPC, then Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X) which were both leaps forward, I’m gutted that they chose to go for a technology that has hardly changed since 1982.

• Debian Sarge has finally gone stable, and has become Debian 3.1. As you may know all my Linux machines run Sarge, so this is a good day for me. I’ll also spend some time working on PicoDebian to get it up to scratch.

Yes, yes, I know, the Big Apple is New York but there’s something nice about calling Paris a Grande Pomme!

So, we’re back from our visit where we did everything we all hate about tourists: crowded around local beauty spots, took pictures of everything in sight, and spoke in a foreign language! No really, we had a lovely time and looked around all the usual suspects including the Tour Eiffel, the Arc de Triomphe, the Père Lachaise cemetery, and so on. Jess and I also went up to Montmartre in a futile effort to find the Café Les Deux Moulins from Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulin. Needless to say it took about 60 seconds to find a map to it once we got back home…

So…next time we go to Paris we’ll be much more organised, and visits will include (I hope!) Les Deux Moulins, the Buddha Bar (Warning: crappy French Flash web site), and Saint-Germain-des-Près for a knockout dose of modern French culture—the type you actually want to experience, not the dreadful pop-culture you experience by living there, which merits an entire, 100% ranting blog entry by itself.

BitTorrent has been in the news recently for all the wrong reasons. The name has been banded about as if it was a Technology of Evil™ and should be halted in its tracks. It is, in fact, a hugely useful technology that allows large files to be downloaded by people without placing an incredible burden on the content provider. I’ll lead you towards the official Introduction for more information.

What brings me to mention BitTorrent here is a rather well-known hosting company with several branches worldwide, 1&1 Internet Inc. (IWNL), who have recently told one of their customers they can’t distribute their own content through BitTorrent, presumably because of its use by pirating rings.

Although I currently don’t have any trouble with bandwidth, I’m now considering setting up a BitTorrent tracker and superseed to help with potential future bandwidth problems if people start to offer gigantic files for download. So, does anybody know of any good software to use as a tracker and seeder, a bit like Hurricane Electric?

I came into work today oblivious to the fact that today was the IP Welcome Day for the students who will be replacing us in our positions here at Oracle. In fact, I only realised when I went into TVP510 (our main reception building) for a pack of CD-Rs, from the Post room (which also happens to be the principal stationery dispensary). I was just walking back to TVP530 (where we all work) when I noticed a couple of familiar faces from when we joined and a flock of young people…

Having had this sudden realisation I got quite excited about our free lunch (who said there was no such thing?) and, of course, meeting all of next year’s IPs, especially the one who will end up replacing me. (Hi there!) Lunch was, in fact, really nice, despite having to wait for ages so that my burger was cooked to perfection in front of me, and I had a really nice chat with some of the other IPs. After lunch, I showed my successor around our building, met everyone we work with, and had a nice chat—all in the name of being social with a future employee!

This has, however, brought home the fact that my last day is coming up in just over a month—the 1st of July to be precise. It’s been a really great 11 months and I’m going to miss everyone on the team and everyone who I worked with. Hardly anyone has ever made me feel more welcome, and I learned a tremendous amount. And, the best bit was I didn’t have to learn anything non-technical, which suited me very well indeed!

OK, I won’t say any more, I’m not gone yet!