Brokencube

Project :: Two for the price of one

Mon, 18 May 2009 20:40:45 +0100

Damn it! Wait ages for something to rant about, and then two come along at the same time!

Rant the first: Intel VT-x

So, some background first. I'm currently working towards building myself a mini server farm, based on Atom mini-itx boards and a specialist rack mount casing that supports two boards per 1U rack.

A fairly expensive solution (considering I managed to buy a reasonable Xeon server for less than £50) but the advantage is that using Atom processors means that each node should have a TDP of less than 40W, and so should save money on electricity used. For comparison, the CPU in my main computer, a Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 has a TDP of 65W for the CPU alone (Core 2 Quad Extemes can hit 150W TDP)

Anyway, one of the main things I plan to do with this server farm is simulations of cloud computing, using Virtualisation technology (notably Virtualbox) to push images of computer nodes around the network. I have managed to get virtual servers up and running on my current mini server 'Odin', but I hit a few snags on realising my ideal setup.

Now, ideally, I would want to run 64bit OS on the virtual images, using hardware virtualisation (a requirement for 64bit) to make sure that the set up is running nice and quickly. Unfortunately, it appears this is not possible with Intel Atons. The Atom chips come in 3 flavours, plain, N-series and Z-series. The plain Atoms are 64bit, but don't support Intel VT-x, the Z series have Intel VT-x, but are 32bit, and the N series is neither 64bit or VT capable. Suck.

Considering the shambles that Intel have made with their arbitary distribution of the technology over their range of CPUs, it saddens me that they have effectively crippled decent virtualisation support on the Atom, considering that it currently a good candidate for creating reasonably powerful low power clusters, even getting the interest of some very large players.

I really hope they fix this with the next set of Atom chips.

And AMD, get your arse in gear and bring out a competitor in this market!

Rant the second: Wolfram Alpha

Okay, so the "New Google Killer" has gone live.

NO.

WRONG.

The amount of bad publicity this has gotten over the last week or so annoys the hell out of me. This is not a "Google Killer". Hell, I would puase for a second before calling it a search engine. What it is, is a brilliant tool for looking at data in various different formats and interpretations. It is also a great way of searching for very specific data.

Here are a few examples from the mundane to slightly more interesting:

So, it's not a search engine in the traditional sense - I'm probably not going to use it to find reviews for films, say. However, I think the media are overlooking how useful a tool this can be to scientists and researchers of all creeds and levels. Not that there isn't a lot of work to be done, but I think this has the possibility of being a very big thing for the academically enclined.

Anyway, enough from me.

Update: 19th May 2009 09:20 BST

MORE ANGER.

Blog :: End of an era

Mon, 18 May 2009 12:35:50 +0100

I'm feeling a rather odd mix of annoyance and melancholy today. Mostly the annoyance is aimed at various services I have to use at work. But some of it is aimed at the same reason as the melancholy - a sudden change of circumstances at work.

So, firstly, last week our company announced that several people's positions were being made redundant at the company, including one of my underlings and one of my bosses. As the 'boss' has been there since I started (and was the main person to guide me through the company) it feels odd to see him leave... the company will feel very odd without. To all though whom are having to move onto pastures new, good luck :).

Also, 'Munchies' the sandwich shop I use daily for my lunch at work has moved outside of the town - too far to sensibly walk there and back in a lunch break. That sandwich shop had become part of my daily ritual, and it feels strange to walk down the high street and not turn into that shop. Given that I was introduced to the shop by the afore mentioned boss, life is suddenly going to feel very different in the coming weeks.

Hmmm, other news...

Dom has his 2X birthday last week, so the house went out for a very enjoyable meal at Old Orleans in the Lanes. Reasonable amounts of alcohol was consumed (Purple Rain cocktails are gorgeous!) and a good time was had by all. We've been trying to go out as a house more often recently, and I definitely think it's been improving the general mood of the house.

Not much else happening really. I've had a fair amount of rack mountable computer hardware come through the post, and I'm now looking into a server cabinet to house it all in (see my rant in the code section).

Oh, and I have found I have a liking for weird teas - I ended up ordering about 15 boxes of the stuff on Amazon.

Right, out of lunch time to write stuff, and out of stuff to write about, so I'll leave it here.

Blog :: Precioussssss

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 12:03:46 +0100

3 days to go...

Project :: Google Maps - Zooming to markers

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 12:49:56 +0100

Been playing around with the Google Maps API at work. Seems to be a nice bit of kit, but there are a few functions I would like to see which seem to be missing.

For example, a function to move the viewport to show all markers on the map would be very useful. Therefore, I have written my
own.

Give the function below the map object and an array of GMarkers (the objects representing the pins on the map), and it will move the viewport to the right position and zoom level to show them all on the screen simultaneously.

function zoom_to_markers(gmap, gmarkers)
{
   area = new GLatLngBounds(markers[0].getLatLng(),  markers[0].getLatLng());
   for(var i = 0; i < markers.length; i++)
   {
       area.extend(markers[i].getLatLng());
   }
   maptype = gmap.getCurrentMapType();
   zoomlevel = maptype.getBoundsZoomLevel(area, gmap.getSize());
   center = area.getCenter();
   gmap.setCenter(center, zoomlevel);
}

Note: the box above will show nicely formatted and coloured eventually, but I am still writing the code colouring class. Watch this space (or more accurately, watch the space above!)

Blog :: Broken

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 12:37:40 +0100

Well, damn.

This post was going to be about both how much Virgin Media's 50mb service(which we have moved to) rocks, and how the house went out for a meal on saturday to the Open House and had much good food and drink.

Instead however, you will be getting a chronicling of my day so far.

So today:

I spent half an hour looking around my room for my keys. Nope, they appear to be gone. Great.
The ticket gates at Brighton station ate my weekly season ticket that I had just bought. Had to get the guards to dig it out for me.
Got to work to work, where I have at least 3 separate projects that need to be tested and given to the client by the end of the day, to find all sorts of bugs and problems with the code - so I have been frantically patching things while I should be doing detailed testing. Also, they seem to be doing renovation work downstairs - the office is vibrating from all the power tools being used.
Between myself and a colleague, we managed to break one of the live servers - it seems there are some problems with the newest stable release of PHP. Sigh.
And finally, the nosepiece of my glasses fell off randomly.

4 hours to go. Wonder how many other deities I can piss off today...

Update 16:29 GMT

Also:

Managed to break a Google Docs spreadsheet to the point that it didn't show column numbers and wouldn't allow anyone but myself and a specific colleague to edit it. I could give others permission to edit the file, but the permissions then reset about 30 secs later.
Caused Smarty to create a compiled template with permissions such that it then couldn't recompile the template.

Sigh.

Blog :: Belated... everything

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 11:48:41 +0100

So, first off, Happy Birthday to Amy and KJ!

Secondly, KJ - I suck, I still haven't managed to send your birthday present, I will try and sent it tomorrow, I promise.

Finally, Woo, yet another couple of weeks without posting. Go Nik!

Right, with that out of the way.

Managed to get around to clearing out my room over the long weekend (and I hoovered it, Craig :P). This was long long over due, but it's finally done and the room does look a lot better for it. I still have some stacks of things to sort, but there is now floor space!

I have also managed to accidentally buy a server. To be fair, at £41 delivered, I can't complain - but I am very surprised that I managed to win it.

Anyway, other than that, not a lot has happened. Work is plodding away. The weather still can't make it's mind up. I should be rolling out an update to the site this week end which will include, among other things, a new style (that works with all versions of IE) and all the old posts from the old version of the site - I may not get around to adding the comments for these posts though.

Blog :: Accursed Number...

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 15:27:22 +0100

Sigh.

Don't see it yet?

Blog :: An apology

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 17:34:09 +0000

Dear Angry Balding Fat Man who drove past London Road Sainsburys at approx. 10:35am this morning.

I am sorry that I offended you so much that you felt the need to honk your horn at me and flip me off.

If you could let me know what it was about my behaviour or appearance that, in the one second you had to see me when you came round the corner, offended you so much, I will my utmost to improve that aspect of myself.

Yours, a concerned citizen

Project :: Underpant Chromes

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 15:36:00 +0000

Install the new version of Google Chrome.
Visit this web site.
???
Profit!

(For anyone confused, this refers to a internet meme based on an episode of South Park (look at the business plan image).

Blog :: Ugh

Sat, 14 Mar 2009 23:37:00 +0000

Not a good week. I spent Wed. and Thur. feeling like crap and throwing up and stuff, and then, when I went back to work on Friday, realised that the code that a colleague had written as part of one of the pieces of development I was working on was, whilst functional, not exactly fit for purpose and almost impossible to maintain (even for him). I think we've solved the issue, but I will admit that I possibly didn't handle the situation ideally as my mind was still recovering from being ill.

I think I'm definitely going to have to step up the code reviewing to try and stop this happening in the future (absence due to illness not withstanding). I don't want to have to be in a position again where I have to tell someone their work isn't good enough (at least, not if I can do something earlier to prevent it becoming an issue)

Blergh, I hate human management at the best of times...

Hopefully next week will be better...