News
Back Up & Running
Posted by HokieTux on November 15, 2009 in News
So everything seems to be back up and running again.
I use Slicehost to host the server for this site as well as a few other things. Slicehost, as far as I’m concerned, is fantastic and I would recommend them to anyone (note: not affiliated – just a satisfied customer).
For the past few months, I have been unable to do any serious upgrades on my slice – everytime I attempted a system upgrade, my slice would not come back up after a reboot. In addition, every few weeks, my slice would crash altogether – weird filesystem stuff going on.
Anyways, I’ve been simply restoring from backups of my slice every couple of weeks for the last few months to keep the site alive until I could find time to fix the problem, whatever it was. Turns out the problem was that I simply wasn’t using the Slicehost Manager properly. I had completely missed a little tab where you specify a kernel for your slice:
Simply setting this to the appropriate kernel, allowing the reboot, and then doing a system upgrade fixed everything, hah. So it goes.
Well, that said, I still need to post some new content. I have some good ideas for a few posts… I just need to find the time =)
vimrc updated
Posted by HokieTux on December 3, 2008 in Code, News
This is just a heads-up that the vimrc I provide via bzr (or via direct link) has been updated. Tom recently found a site or two that had some nifty settings I hadn’t stumbled across yet. Changes include:
- Now using smarter buffer-management via ‘set hidden’
- Window title will now make sense
- *** No longer have to scroll to bottom of screen for your screen to start scrolling! There is now a 15-line DMZ between your cursor and the bottom of the window! Sorry for the asterisks… but this is the feature I’m most excited about.
- Some smarter key mappings
- Menu-completions for command-mode options/commands
- Enabled the ‘matchit’ plugin (available in most repos)
There are a few other usability changes if you really feel like digging through it. If anyone has anything they think should be added, please post and let me know!
You can find the file here: http://git.hokietux.net/configs.git/blob_plain/HEAD:/global/vimrc
I’m Still Alive
Posted by HokieTux on November 19, 2008 in General, News
This is really just a ‘ping’ post to say that this site is still up and I plan on getting back to it as soon as I can. This semester, the last of my time as an undergraduate, has been extraordinarily rough in terms of coursework. I have had just about no time to do anything but work, and so updating this blog and website quickly got put on the back-burner.
As of start of classes in January, I will be a GRA here at Virginia Tech, pursuing my Masters in Computer Engineering. I very much hope to have more time to keep this site updated with new, useful material.
So, I’m Still Alive, and I’ll be back soon!
Fried Computer, Updates
Posted by HokieTux on June 29, 2008 in General, News
Well, as it turns out, my video card wasn’t only suicidal, but somewhat murderous. It would appear that when it went boom (see my previous post), it took the rest of my machine with it.
I know two other people that have had the same type of video card, and theirs both exploded as well. Given this, I’m going to go ahead and say that you should steer clear of EVGA’s 7600 GT line. They are rather aged now anyways, but if you are building a low system, make sure you avoid this line of products.
Unfortunately, I don’t think I can simply buy a couple of replacement parts for the machine and be done with it… I’m really not sure of which exact components are fried, but my suspicion is that the motherboard is dead. At this point, it would be really difficult to find a replacement motherboard that I could reuse the rest of my components with since they weren’t exactly top-of-the-line when I bought them 2 years ago. This leaves me in the position of being able to re-use my harddrive… and that’s pretty much it. Even my PSU will need to be upgraded to handle a larger load given the power demands of newer components.
Not only did I lose my primary machine, but I’m now cut-off from my primary data drive. My main storage is formatted as XFS, which is accessible easily on Linux systems, and from other machines via a Samba share that I had running on it. However, now that the machine isn’t running anymore, I can’t access it. I’ve desperately hoped for years that Apple would add ZFS/XFS support to OS X… but it hasn’t happened yet.
As far as articles go, I had promised a few people that the next post would be on zsh. However, with my Linux machine out of commission, it will have to wait until I get replacement parts in and have it back up and running.
Well, wish me luck!
Exploding Video Card
Posted by HokieTux on June 18, 2008 in News
Okay, so the whole video card didn’t explode, but four of the capacitors sure did.
I was napping at the time, but I’m sure it must have made a rather loud noise – so either I was *really* passed out, or my cheap case has magical sound proofing. I woke up, discovered that my desktop was no longer sending a signal to my display, and shortly thereafter I discovered the blown capacitors. Here are a couple pictures, linked for size (each picture is just over 3 megs):
here’s another angle:
