After answering this question, I reconsidered my answer a number of times, and I’ve finally decided to rewrite it as a longer version as a blog/essay on my website. One of my fellow sysadmin types on Serverfault wrote an answer from a blog-post, and I intend to do the opposite. Right. I see a lot of questions which are basically, “I want my blog/social network/niche site/new product launch site to handle a whole bunch of traffic, how do I do it?”. ...
Download the Qcontrol application source. (32.6 KB) About 5 years ago, I wrote some “drivers” to interface a Velleman K8055 USB interface card . After a recent request, I have decided that they should be brushed up a little, and reinstated with a download link. I’m open to bug reports, but I can’t promise that I’ll be able to fix them quickly. Instructions to compile/install You’ll need the following dependencies: libusb-dev libqt4-dev qt4-qmake (ubuntu deps) ...
The legacy of a nobody I work hard, and try not to let the future bother me. I don’t make 10 year plans, hell, I’m lucky if i know where I’ll be in 30 days time. I don’t make massive future plans, because I’ve found that everything can change massively week-to-week, and hastily made plans are often proved unservicable. I suppose this is par for the course when working in IT. There’s a sheer unpredictability when working with the internet, long hours and late nights along the way, but basically all computer systems listen to Murphy’s Law. ...
After receiving such a great response to my own article (thanks everyone!), a good friend of mine asked whether I’d publish his similar story here. If any of these stories give enough hope to just one teenager (or anyone) to let them survive the hardship of coming out, and homophobic abuse, then that’s enough. For various reasons which will become apparent as you read, N has decided to use this moniker to protect his identity. ...
I can clearly remember the reactions of most of my friends when I came out. I’ve worded that carefully, notice.. Friends. All of my true friends were supportive, one guy, a bit of a rugby lad, put his arm around me and said “Well done mate”. Mind you, that was when I’d chosen to come out, of my own accord. Truth be told, I’d actually been outed years before that. Let’s take a look back at that. ...
I recently acquired some ceramic tiles, and after a good bit of cleaning, they’re all presentable and nice. There’s 30 in total. Problem is, I’d like to know what the pattern is, who the designer/manufacturer was, and also, do they have any value. Some friends and family have suggested that they: “Look over 50 years old”, “Look like a morris pattern”, “look handmade”, “look valuable”, “mediaevally beautiful”, “worth finding out about”. ...
Say for example you want to build a new Virtualization cluster. You’ve chosen the CPUs you want, and know you want 32 GB of fast shiny RAM. The next thing to decide on is how the hell you’re gonna store your VMDK (or otherwise) images, and then store the backups and snapshots too. So. A typical VM Host server might be one of three choices. For sake of argument, i’m using Dell as a vendor. ...
In the last two weeks, I’ve seen at least two websites fall off the internet because of a distinct lack of forward planning Firstly, there was Derren Brown’s blog After Derren did his “The Events” trick with the lotto balls and dark magic, the number of fans hitting his page daily looking for clues, news, and gossip, caused the server to fall over. It even caused some of the channel 4 servers some traffic troubles (and they’ve got a lot of nodes!) ...
A few weeks ago, I wrote about this facebook meme, “The Name Game” and I hypothesised that this wasn’t a meme, but actually a data gathering exercise, possibly started by scammers. I’ve found another one. One of my friends took the “True Age Test”, and came out younger than their actual age. I’ve just had a brief flick through the questions. Starting off with fairly harmless, questions which are related to the app, “What is your actual age, what race are you, how much exercise do you get” etc… ...
I wonder if you’ve heard of a Drabble? A drabble, simply put, is a story, normally science fiction or fantasy that is exactly one hundred (100) words in length. No more, no less. Here is mine: It was a slow day in the spaceport. “These rocket cowlings aren’t going to fix themselves”, Simon thought to himself, wistfully. It was 4 days since the incident, nobody said a word after it happened, not until this morning, that is. ...