Google for the first time gave the public a look at its server hardware. It uses custom-made motherboards, 12-volt-only power supplies, and each server has its own built-in UPS battery. Also, Google datacenters consist of standard shipping containers – containing thousands of these custom-made servers. Very interesting!
DVDs that ignore your remote control
Dear DVD producers,
The more junk advertisements and previews you put on your DVD that won’t let me skip to get to the DVD menu, the more likely your DVD will wind up on The Pirate Bay. Just sayin’.
Disregards,
Mark
Hole in the bucket
There must be a hole in Raleigh’s bucket somewhere. In spite of all the rain we’ve received lately, we ended March still a half-inch below normal rainfall for the year. Granted, we ended March almost 3 inches above normal for the month, but still.
From the NWS Climate Summary:
WEATHER ITEM OBSERVED TIME RECORD YEAR NORMAL DEPARTURE LAST
VALUE (LST) VALUE VALUE FROM YEAR
NORMAL
..................................................................
PRECIPITATION (IN)
YESTERDAY 0.00 1.53 1962 0.11 -0.11 0.98
MONTH TO DATE 6.83 4.03 2.80 5.53
SINCE MAR 1 6.83 4.03 2.80 5.53
SINCE JAN 1 11.01 11.52 -0.51 9.95
Rev. Horton Heat at Cat’s Cradle
I’m buying a ticket to see the Rev. Horton Heat play Cat’s Cradle Friday, May 1st. Kelly would join me if a babysitter wasn’t so expensive. I’ve listened to The Rev. for months now as his music has been my latest Pandora obsession. I can’t wait for the show!
Read what other Pandora users have to say about The Rev. and watch him play an early gig on Youtube.
April Fool
Someone must be playing a trick on me. How did it get to be April already?
A look at Netflix’s cost of streaming movies
My streaming media fascination that began with the ACC Tournament continues. I found this interesting analysis of Netflix and the costs it incurs with its streaming media offering.
I wonder if the Netflix players do any swarm-type sharing of media or if it’s all point-to-point. Swarming such a large amount of data seems like an easy decision to me. Surely Netflix has considered it.
(h/t Hacking Netflix)
HugeURL
Amazon does it better
I decided to retire my old laser printer when it wore out its latest toner cartridge and the thought of paying $80 to order another cartridge didn’t appeal. I bought a popular Brother model from Amazon Thursday evening, not expecting to see it until today.
Instead, it arrived on my front porch Saturday morning at 9 AM – and that’s with Amazon’s free shipping. I’m still blown away at how I can order a printer with a few clicks, pay 30% less than at the local warehouse club, pay no shipping on a 26 pound shipment, and 36 hours later it’s in my hands.
Amazon runs one tight ship, my friends. They beat all I’ve ever seen.
Myth and speed
Ever since I upgraded to an HD capture card in my MythTV backend, I’ve noticed a wide variation in the playback speeds of the recordings it makes. Some play back at normal speed while others play back far too slowly or quickly. It’s frustrating.
I was going to blame MythTV for this craziness until I remembered the dvb-utils application azap. This little app tunes the HD card and dumps the output to a pipe, thus it provides a way of testing the card (and driver) outside of Myth. I’ve never used it before but it seems to be the perfect test tool. It turns out the streams produced by the driver and card exhibit the same synchronization issues I’ve seen in Myth itself. That means Myth isn’t to blame.
But what is? My card or its driver? I suppose the next step is to somehow get Windows running on my server long enough to test the card using the Windows driver. If that works, I know Linux or the Linux driver is to blame.
The investigation continues…
Wind-up Bird
It’s lyrics ain’t Shakespeare but this song is still strangely catchy.
Wind-up Bird (YouTube)
Pink Grease
I can’t take it anymore
You keep on dancing in my nowhere
I am the preacher, the preacher’s son
You keep on landing in my nowhere
You are the wind-up, wind-up bird
You keep on sounding in my nowhere
You are the cancer, cancer girl
You keep on landing in my nowhere
But now my cat is dead
my cat is dead, gone down the well
Yeah, now my cat is dead
gone down the well
my cat is dead
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