Sergei Mutovkin’s Rumbling Mumbling

Energy Costs a lot these days. Running server at home is has advantages like access to some of my data from anywhere in the world and disadvantages like constant use of a lot of electricity. These server is currently powered by a very hungry setup:
CPU: Celeron D345 (3.06Ghz 256K 533FSB Socket 478)
Motherboard: Intel D865GVHZL
RAM: 1Gb DDR333
HDD: 2×320Gb Seagate 7200.10

Now progress moves ahead not only in terms of pure performance of the system but also energy consumption. So I’m thinking of the ways to cut at least some of my electricity bill by upgrading my server. There are many choices and the slower CPU you choose the better it gets. But I still want something fast (don’t ask me why). Today I have looked around and found a few “interesting” options. One of them is:

Motherboard: MSI K9AGM2-FIH - 75$
CPU: AMD 64 X2 4800+ 65nm (Brisbane) - 105$
RAM: OCZ Platinum Revision-2 2Gb PC6400 DDR2 800MHz - 65$
Case: Antec NSK4480 - 73$.
Total: 318$

Now the question is is it worth upgrading and spending SO much money but benefit from it only three years down the road in terms of monetary savings? Unfortunately environment looses for now, as the cost of the system is more than I can get back. Now if only I can sell my current server to someone…

Today’s announcement of the dollar parity for SONY PlayStation products is great incentive for Canadians to buy a Blue Ray player. For me there is even bigger reason to get one of those. This reason is the first ever Queen Blue-Ray (and HD-DVD) release of We Will Rock You Live in Montreal concert which was originally filmed on 35mm (while everybody else were using 16mm). This week I have unfortunately missed a movie theater premier of this concert (which happened on Wednesday, October 17th at 7pm in most major movieplexes, like Colossus nearby). The problem now is that even if I get the PS3, my 34″ CRT HDTV can show only 1/2 resolution of Blue Ray (540p).

On the side note, this concert could have been amazing on IMAX screen with IMAX sound, especially after being passed through IMAX DMR.

Finally I’ve seen the future… I was hesitating to install 64bit Kubuntu Linux for a long time, thinking that I will have a lot of problems with different things I use daily and that I will not gain much anyway. I was wrong!. I had to install 64 bit Kubuntu 7.10 at work and noticed dramatic speed improvement, close to saying a full “Wow”. On Friday I’ve rushed home backed-up my files and installed Kubuntu 7.10 RC1 on my home machine equipped with Intel Core2Duo E6600. Speed improvement is definitely terrific.

Right now I will describe just two things that I have done to make my life under Kubuntu 7.10 AMD64 better:

• Install Flash Player 9
• Run Skype 1.4
• Make Firefox play all online videos like Apple Trailers and GetMac Adds

Now if you are interested, then let’s proceed, though most of the stuff is quite obvious,
though there might be “better” approaches, I’ve done the following :

Enable Mutiverse, Universe and Restricted repositories in Synaptic or Adept!

To install install Adobe Flash Player 9 you need to

1. Install (I’ve used Synaptic):
   nspluginwrapper
   flashplugin-nonfree
   (both from Gutsy Multiverse).
2. Now run
   sudo nspluginwrapper -i /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so
3. Done

To install Skype 1.4:

1. Install all official packages (that have Ubuntu icon next to them) that contain “lib32″. Also install “ia32-libs”
2. Download static version of Skype (currently 1.4.0.118)
3. Run one at a time:
   
sudo -s
cd /opt
tar jxvf /home/surge/skype_static-1.4.0.118.tar.bz2 #that's where I downloaded my Skype
ln -sf skype_static-1.4.0.118/ skype
mkdir bin
cd bin
ln -sf /opt/skype/skype . #that's dot at the end

   You can create a link to this binary from your desktop or any other panel… (once I try a better /faster way I will post it here).
4. Done

Now to make all Videos play all the way it much easier:

1. Install all packages that start with “gstreamer0.10″ but don’t end with gdb or dev.
2. Install “totem” and “totem-mozilla”
3. Done

That’s all. Once I try to run Wine with 32bit windows applications and other fun stuff I will post it on this website or on Ubuntu forum (but post a link on my blog). I’ve also found out that my WordPress theme does not like code tags and is not very friendly with long command strings….

I’m a big fan of Digital SLR photography. One of the advantages over compact P&S is that all SLR let you shoot in RAW. Raw allows you get get better results not only today but in also in the future. This is the case with my photo shooting session of Queen + Paul Rodgers concert back in March 16, 2006. Originally all photos were processed with Canon Digital Photos Professional. DPP converts RAWs into Jpeg but preserves all CMOS noise for high ISOs and can’t recover highlights without manually tweaking the curve. Yesterday I had finally found time to process all the photos again but now with Bibble Pro, which did help to automate quite a few things. The results are much better.

Thanks to Noise Ninja built into Bibble all images are almost noise free even though they are all ISO1600. In the future with advent of better image processing techniques it will be possible to batch re-process all the images again and get even better results. Again all photos are on Flickr and in my Gallery.

Finally, I got back to finishing London Honeymoon photos that I have taken last year. This time I decided to process pictures from June 2nd, 2006 when we have visited the magnificent Windsor Castle and rode the London Eye. At the end we said goodbye to London late at night by taking night-time pictures.

What’s more I have simultaneously posted pictures on my Flickr gallery. Apparently thanks to being a Rogers Hi-Speed subscriber (at least I can now somewhat justify the price) I get a full Professional membership with Flickr and therefore unlimited space, resolutions and uploads. All this is totally fantastic since Flickr is the best photographer’s community website.

Fortunately or unfortunately I still have two days of worth of UK pictures which total to about 500 files.

When you think you already can’t find anything to listen to - amazing happens. Last night I have re-discovered Meiko Kaji. Why re-discovered? Because I heard her so many times already on the soundtrack for Kill Bill Vol 1 & 2. But I have finally got the full “Best Of” album “Zenkyoku Shu”. I don’t know Japanese, but her songs are heart touching and very melodic. A very strong voice that flies on top of the music. Most of the songs are from different Japanese motion films, so the full orchestra makes listening even more enjoyable. Definitely recommended and yet again something very hard to find legally in North America.

Today is a very happy day for all of us, Linux advocates, developers and users. US Court has ruled that Novell owns the IP (intellectual property) rights for Unix. What’s more because of the licensing deals SCO owes Novell more money then it currently has. Groklaw has followed the story for all these years and today was not an exception. It is very unfortunate that our Canadian bank (RBC) one day invested into SCO believing they would have it all from the case with Novell and IBM. This case has put doubt into the minds of many IT/Software managers who decided not to pursue Linux option because of “What If?” and has wasted a lot of opportunities. Hopefully, this would open a new chapter for Linux in corporate world. More here.

LINUX RULEZ

I remember while in university there were selling a t-shirt which read “Friend don’t let friend go to York”… it was a bit ridiculous, but funny. This time around I’m seriously recommending to avoid Bosch washers at any cost and NEVER EVER call for service “Southern Atlantic Service” located 3300 Steeles Ave West in Concord, Ontario. Why? When we got our new beautiful house I had a mistake of listening to the sales person in the appliance store and buying a Bosch Nexxt Inspiration washer and dryer. The reason being that they should be the best and quietest if you have laundry upstairs. Once installed and loaded with real clothes for the first time, I started to regret the purchase - the machine was vibrating like crazy and everything in the house resonated to the vibration of the washer. It was so bad that a couple of minutes and I had a strong headache. I came to the store and asked for the phone of the service center. It happened to be Southern Atlantic Service center. After being announced that they only work 9am to 4pm Monday to Friday (which meant me or my wife had to stay at home), they agreed to come next day, but only next day or not to come in the next few weeks. So my wife had stayed at home waiting for the technician to come. The guy came next day and announced that everything is fine and that’s how Bosch washer works after spinning empty drum for a few seconds. My wife suggested to put some stuff inside, but he declined the offer, letting her know that if it is broken it should not work in empty as well. He also declined to verify that it is properly leveled, since it was not his job to do this. But he did suggest ordering the rubber legs from Bosch, thankfully free of charge since we still had a short 1-year Bosch warranty. Time went by and our house was slowly getting destroyed by this crazy washer, but finally the rubber legs arrived two months later. The same lazy freak from the service center appeared and installed the legs, but this time my wife pre-loaded washer with some clothes. Machine got “a bit” quieter, but still vibrated insanely. Once again he told that everything is fine and that’s how Bosch washers work and if we want we can re-enforce the floor on the second floor. He left. The washer is still vibrating and we are forced to use the slowest spin cycle every time, which leaves all the stuff inside completely wet and takes hours to dry. I visited the store again and there should be someone calling me next week. Next week I plan to grab a camcorder somewhere, record the Bosch house-destroying washing machine and upload the video to YouTube for everyone to see. For now you can enjoy the view of my laundry after every washing cycle.

Before the cycle the machines are aligned directly in parallel to each other. After the spinning cycle the machine can be anywhere in the laundry, each time is different, showing how unpredictable our dancing queen is.

All in all, I wish I have bought LG or Samsung washer made by hard working Koreans and not “proudly made in the United States Of America”. Bosch Washers are crap!

I’m noticing a slow but constant change in my opinion about social networking sites. Four years ago on the dawn of blogging, I thought about it as an absurd thing to do since if everybody will be writing something, even once a week. When will we have any time to read it all? Now I’m blogging and I don’t care if nobody reading it. I do it for my own satisfaction. A year or two ago I have join the first professional networking site LinkedIn and created a full profile, today I’m getting some invitations or job offers regularly only through this only website. What’s more I actually like to share all that information there, since if people don’t know about me - they will never find it or read it. However, one of my friends might find it interesting that I have say changed job or found somebody else whom he/she knows as well. LinkedIn not only helps to find new connections but also discover common friends or colleagues. This Saturday (July 14, 2007) I have joined another interesting network, a Russian website letting classmates find each other - Odnoklassniki. Almost immediately I have found a lot of the people whom I didn’t see in years and was even more pleased to see their pictures. Realizing that I like to see their pictures, I have posted mine, with the similar idea in my mind - may be one of them will also be interested to see them. So now to the issue a lot of people talk about when dealing with social networks - privacy. To be honest I think a lot of people just think of themselves being to important. I don’t think anybody, who does not know you, will go and look at it at all and even if somebody did - then good for them. Most probably they will not remember your face in 10seconds.
All in all, social networks are great - they let people stay in some sort of contact that otherwise would have been completely impossible. By the way, I also joined Facebook, the site I was avoiding for quite some time - what can I say - very nice website.

Ever since I came to Canada in 1997 I was wondering why there were no nice lighting for the CN Tower. Up until the blackout of 2003, the top part had some lighting which at least gave it some nice touch and was pleasing for the eye. Something like on this photo:

However, after the blackout the tower got black, until recently. On June 23, 2007 after our company’s Cruise on lake Ontario, I noticed something stunning. At that time it was just a test, but still it was amazing. Finally, on June 29th, 2007 the official ceremony took place unveiling the new feature of Toronto - LED Lit CN Tower.

Today, I found one of the videos on You Tube showing the magic.

Search You Tube for more videos, but this one seems the best. Finally, I can see CN Tower (my favorite building in Toronto) from here in Woodbridge.