Musings of a Daydreaming Wanderer

Spent the last 2 days at work trying to install Ubuntu Server on an old IBM NetFinity M7000 M10 server (2x Pentium III Xeon 500MH, 512MB RAM, 100GB RAID-5 SCSI), and although installation was successful, booting the server was not. Tried many ways to troubleshoot the problem, and finally found something interesting - Fedora Core 9 LiveCD was able to boot up without any tweaking of the GRUB boot options. So, I decided to install Fedora Core 9. However, the server does not have a DVD drive, and DVD drives are a rarity at my workplace, so I had to hunt for one. Additionally, the server does not have a network card (it only had optical fibre), so I had to dig that out as well. Thankfully I found them, installed them into the server. The DVD drive was in-use by another PC, so I had to leave the cover open on the server while Fedora Core 9 was installing (about 1.5 hours). Still have alot to do, like updating the server, installing secured remote access software, and configuring network shares, but those should be a piece of cake - hopefully by next week it can be put to good use as a testing/development server.

Well, since its a holiday, the train and buses were packed with muslims out to visit their relatives or going to the mosque for prayers. Ah well. That’s not so bad. What’s bad is the smell from the perfumes and colognes that almost everyone wore. Ugh. Nasal overdose.

Went to the TYR Warehouse Sale @ Jalan Kilang Timor, which was somewhere in the Bukit Merah area, but near IKEA. Got myself a hoversack ($20), swim bag ($8), 2 T-shirts ($12), 1 polo Tee ($12), 1 racer brief swimming trunk($12 - Size M’s a little tight but I guess its ok, lazy to go back there to get the L size, LOL) and 1 pair of goggles ($8). I missed out on the metallized goggles sale, they were out of stock. I should have read the newspapers earlier to get them before they run out. Rats.

Going back home, I took the direct bus back to Jurong Point and had my lunch there. Went to the Popular bookstore to see if there’s anything of interest that I can buy, but there was none. So I left the store but before I could, one guy was announcing the arrival of Russel Lee (of the Singapore Ghost Stories Book #1 to 13) at 2pm. Sadly, my camera was at home, charging (since I didn’t charge it when I came back from the platoon life day the other time). Double rats.

Was snickering after reading today’s Digital Life, mainly because of three “strange” things in today’s Digital Life write-up about the UMPCs. In it, they compared the major brands of UMPCs, and was wondering why they awarded the MSI Wind the “DL Choice” award, when the battery life is horrid, and the screen size is the only largest of the lot. The odd thing is, why they did not bring in the Asus eee PC 1000 series for comparison, as it is readily available at retail stores islandwide?

Secondly, they mentioned that a store supervisor upgraded his eee PC’s memory and hard disk. As you all know, upgrading parts on a UMPC will void the warranty (unless special concessions are given by the manufacturer, as in the case of Asus’ eee PC memory upgrade warranty policy) - this basically means that his hard drive upgrade voids the warranty. Now, in the article, they reviewed the eee PC 901, which is using an SSD drive. Unless the store supervisor was using the eee PC 1000H, I don’t see how in the world you can fit a standard 2.5″ laptop hard drive into the eee PC 901, unless he was modding the eee PC 901 to use a 1.8″ HDD (which, of course, voids warranty). Even if he upgraded the SSD drive with an aftermarket one which is compatible with the Asus eee PC 901, they are quite hard to find in USA, let alone Singapore. So how in the world did he upgrade it?

Finally, there is a 32-year old “tech geek” who prefers the Acer Aspire One because he “cannot find his terminal screen” easily as compared to the Asus eee PC. Absolute rubbish - if he claims that he is a “tech geek”, he should have known the shortcut keys for the Acer Aspire One and Asus eee PC to run the terminal. Even then, the terminal for Asus eee PC can be found in the Applications > Internet menu in the Advanced Mode (which he should be using, hopefully, for a “tech geek”). So, whom do I trust now - the papers, or the “tech geek”?

Read in the HWZ forums that a Singnet user has recieved a “love letter” from the local law firm, Rajah & Tann, representing ShowGate Inc from Japan. Well, looks like the shit has hit the ceiling fan, quite literally. If this goes to the courts, and a landmark case is set, it spells doom on all anime lovers in Singapore.

EDIT: More news - Apparently, not only Singnet users have been hit, but Starhub users have received the letter as well, and not just only from ShowGate, but also Geneon Entertainment Inc as well. For a detailed story, and a background of the whole saga, check out this blog

I won’t go into the specific ramblings of the legality of downloading such stuff, data privacy concerns, morality of suing - presumably - 12 year olds and older, and the legality of using anti-piracy software, since it has been debated many, many times on other blogs, but what I am concerned about is what will happen, if other MNCs with intellectual property take up this issue, and decide to target Singaporeans, at a time of high inflation rates, high commodity and oil prices, and the EU & US economic downturn that is starting to affect Singapore, what would happen? Is Singapore a big red dot on the map that MNCs will target for copyright enforcement (perhaps going for free or open source software would be good, but that’s another story)?

Went to HS’s place after his RT, and CheekyHan was there also (since they were taking RT together). His PC, an AMD Palermo Sempron 3500+ with an MSI motherboard was dead. However, not knowing the full cause of the problem, I insisted that the PC had to be brought to my place, since HS did not tell me his system spec, so I came prepared with everything except the important part, which was the MSI Debug Bracket, so CheekyHan drove us back to my place, stopping at SPC beside JJC for a $20 fuel top up before heading to my place.

Diagnosed the PC, seems to be either a motherboard problem or the CPU is spoilt (very low chance), so therefore HS has to get a new PC. Worked my way through the CPU and motherboard bundle pricelist, and decided on the Asus P5K SE/EPU (for the cheapest motherboard with eSATA and 3 year warranty) with an Intel E2160 and 2GB RAM. Headed down to Funan because the chances of finding an eee Box there was higher than Sim Lim Square, and also there were DIY shops there for HS’s parts. In the end, the DIY shop only had the motherboard, but no CPU, so we headed to SLS. Finally, we got the whole set for $302 (after 2% cash discount) at a shop there. Took a look around SLS for the eee Box, and the price difference is huge - one shop was selling for $509, while another shop was selling for $439. Decided to be patient and wait for fatdeals.sg to reserve one for me, since their office is at Commonwealth MRT, and cheaper by a few dollars.

Went to CheekyHan’s place to fix up HS’s new computer in record time (not really counted, because its a “basic” config of just CPU and RAM) of < 1 hour. CheekyHan also decided to do a stunt, and used HS’s old RAM on his mum’s Intel P4. Ended up spending close to one hour figuring out what was wrong with the PC, and eventually was solved, probably due to the weird power issue with the PSU and motherboard DIMM slots. Drove HS back to his place, and later got an SMS from him, saying that his mouse connector was the “round one” (PS/2), and unfortunately, the motherboard only has one PS/2 port, which was for the keyboard, so he either has to get a new mouse, or scrounge up a PS/2 to USB converter for his mouse.

On another note, I spent $10 on bus fare this morning, because I forgot to top-up my ez-link card yesterday. Woe is me…

Sorry for the long delay in posting, its been almost a month since I last posted. Been really busy with the final year project, and the prototype was only submitted last Friday - hope that the assessment would be a good one. On top of that, my subordinate got into a minor motorcycle accident two weeks ago, and as a result, I had to run around like a madman for the last two weeks, preparing equipment for others, checking staff clearance forms and solving the usual technical problems.

Thankfully, last Saturday was a day of just fun & games at my workplace, although the final game was so wierd that I refused to play it. Then got dragged out by my ex-platoonmates to watch The Dark Knight, which was well worth the price and time spent in the theatre. Absolutely liked the Joker’s genius. Had dinner at Tao’s at Paradiz after the movie, and my impression of the food was good, and with excellent customer service as well.

Well, it’s been a busy two weeks - most of the time spent on either calling vendors, surfing the internet to check out product specifications, and also budgeting at work, and in my spare time, PSP programming and doing the project proposal for my FYP, amongst other things. Its amazing how fast new stuff can come out in times of economic growth.

Just had a major event this morning at my workplace, and I’m glad that it’s over. Somehow the confidence level in IT doesn’t seem to be high, as compared to my previous one - perhaps I can make a change in the coming months. Met new people as well, and they’re really friendly, much more friendly as compared to my previous workplace. However, due to my work, seems that I will seldom get to interact with them…sad.

I finally managed to get my D-Link DNS-323 NAS to run Transmission and Clutch yesterday night, so that I can power off my PC while my NAS box does all my hard work for me. Hopefully this month’s electricity bill won’t shoot up so high.

I ordered a capacitor on Farnell’s website to fix my x51v’s capacitor last week, and I made a major mistake - I used too much force when removing the capacitor, and the solder pad came off the PCB. Looks like I need to spend money on conductive paint to fix it, hopefully.

I’m planning to get an Asus eee PC, but I’ll get a hands-on on the two units this weekend before deciding which one to get - the 901 or the 1000H.

Caught Get Smart last Tuesday with EK and Seansean, and had a real good laugh over the show. The wit and humor in the movie was really enjoyable.

Yeah I know I’ve not been updating my site lately - tied up with work and my final year project in school.  In fact, I just came back from a meeting with my project supervisor at Plaza Singapura today, and there’s still lots of work to do in order to properly finish our project.

Anyway, so far the new job is quite alright, its the waiting for the action to start that kills. On top of that, boring stuff have to be documented for the end-users (as more often than not, their computer literacy is quite bad), as well as local system documentation for whoever takes over my position in the future.

Its kind of amazing to see that most people do not know that there are free alternatives to expensive products that can do the most of the job that they need - for example, Audacity versus Sony Sound Forge, OpenOffice versus Microsoft Office, Ubuntu Server versus Microsoft Windows Server 2003. Its even more shocking to realize that 99% of an organization’s primary and secondary servers run on Windows Server 2003. Especially for server operating systems - the more simplified they become (through GUI), the weaker the future generation of server administrators get. Although simplification is good, it is also important to have a strong foundation in using the command line as well.