We use a Thecus N2050 at work for external backups. The Thecus had been running very well (albeit noisily) in a hosted data-center environment, but has recently been shifted to our local office.

Now, a couple of days ago, the Thecus (as we like to call it) started to have some serious issues - spefically, our Linux kernel was reporting constant IO errors whenever the device was under heavy use. After a quick check, I noticed that the lights on the front were flashing to indicate that the second disk had failed. Since the device was (and still is) running in RAID 1, this should not have affected the device's reliability, but just to sure, I pulled the second disk out.

It was then, upon restarting the Thecus with one less disk, that I noticed the horribly loud fan... and subsequently realised, that the fan could not have been working prior, since it was so obvious now! :(

I had to export a GPG key from one Linux host to another today. While that is not something that's particularly difficult, it is one of those tasks that I do frequently enough to be worth remembering, but not enough to actually remember. So, it makes sense to document the process somewhere, and since it may help others, here it is ;)

For what its worth (probably not much), I was part of the Firefox 3 Download Day 2008 world record.

And to prove it (undeniably), here's my certificate :)

So I went to game on on Friday, which was quite a lot of fun... I was nauseated from playing Doom, and watching Halo Wars, but I think the best part for me was looking at some of the amazingly old prototypes, like an old Odyssey wrapped completely in timber, and a wire-wrapped Atari 2600!!!

I have a number of DB2 stored procedures that must use the NSE CONTAINS scalar function with optional search parameters. It turns out, that if you write such stored procedures in the most obvious way, then the performance is terrible. However, with a little insight, and some resulting tweaks, such stored procedures can be sped up immensely - eg more than 1,000 times!!

But first, let me explain what I mean by "optional search parameters". Basically, what I mean is stored procedures that return a result set based on a number of potential filter parameters, where the an NSE search string is just one of many possible filters.

It's not everyday that you see evidence that a company is actually being innovative with their product designs... it's for that reason, I was pleasantly surprised by this BMW GINA video.

I'm very excited about having just won an ADD3800IAA5CU processor on eBay for just AUD$42. So what's so special about this processor? Well, put simply, its the only 35 watt dual-core 64-bit processor ever made (yet) for standard desktop motherboard sockets (AM2 in this case).

Sure, you can can some processors with lower power ratings, such as certain Turion and Core 2 Mobile models, but they require special (and very expensive) motherboards with specific CPU sockets (Socket S1 and Socket M/P respectively).

1,320 Maxtor HDDs... 660TB... poor camera work... but I just love the sound!! ;)

For a number of reasons, I've finally switched from the hopeless Outlook Express to Mozilla Thunderbird... and so far, I really like the change. However, now that I've got Thunderbird, I find myself wanting to import my old Outlook PST file from a couple of years ago...

Now, it's worth pointing out that if you have Outlook installed on your PC, then PST importing is very easy - Thunderbird simply uses Outlook's MAPI interface to request all mail folders. However, if, like me, you don't have Outlook installed, and don't want to install it either, then you need to do a bit more work.

I'm currently sitting in (and posting from) the first Adobe AIR Camp in Australia... there's not much going on yet, but the day is young! :)

Currently, Andrew Spaulding is introducing Flex Builder 3... since I've been using it for some time now, this part's a little slow ;)

Okay, now he's talking about using transparent images for application chrome... getting interesting... better go now :)