Author: Dave Farquhar

How to mount a USB drive in Turnkey Linux

Dave Farquhar Linux , , , ,

I like Turnkey Linux, which is a collection of pre-built server appliances based on Ubuntu. When you need a server fifteen minutes from now, it’s about the only way you can make it happen.

But as far as I can tell, it doesn’t mount USB drives automatically. That’s fine; these servers are designed to have the minimum necessary for their stated purpose in life and nothing more. Here’s how I mount a USB drive to use for making backups.

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Milestone: Enterprise SSDs are cheaper than enterprise HDDS

Dave Farquhar Hardware

Partly due to flooding in Thailand pushing up disk prices, and no doubt partly due to the natural progression of new technologies driving down the prices of flash memory and related components, enterprise SSDs are now cheaper (at around $2 per GB) than enterprise 15K RPM HDDS (at around $3 per GB).

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Nginx, a leaner, meaner web server

Dave Farquhar Linux, Servers and Networking , , , ,

Ars Technica posted a nice writeup on Nginx, a cut-down webserver that does less than Apache does, but does the few things it does much faster. That’s nothing particularly new, as smaller and faster webservers have existed for as long as I can remember.

What makes Nginx different is that it can work with PHP. And therefore, it can run WordPress.

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Things I wish I’d known about AT&T U-Verse before I signed up

Dave Farquhar ISPs , , , , , ,
Things I wish I’d known about AT&T U-Verse before I signed up

As I wrote earlier this week, I’m a new AT&T U-Verse customer. Prior to that, I was using old-school POTS with a DSL connection. Between the phone service, DSL, and long-distance calls, I was spending around $75 a month. So it looked like I could switch to U-Verse with the 250-minute voice plan and 3-megabit Internet, save some money, and get a bit of an upgrade in connection speed.

I was mostly correct.

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Review: The Definitive Guide to Marx Trains, by Walt Hiteshew

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , , , ,

A week go I wrote about the newest Greenberg Pocket Guide, which I recommended as a useful, if flawed, resource. Today I’ll talk about one of the best ways to fill in the gaps.

Several years ago, Walt Hiteshew released his Definitive Guide to Marx 6″  and Joy Line Trains on CD-ROM, priced at $29.95. The Definitive Guide covers every known 6″ car Marx produced and includes photos, pricing, and production history. Basically, everything known or that can be reasonably inferred about Marx’s most prolific line. When Mr. Hiteshew says Definitive Guide, he means it.
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How I secured my new wireless router

Dave Farquhar security , , , ,

For the first time ever, I actually have a wireless router that can cover my whole house. I’ve been interested in wireless security for a long time, but haven’t actually had to do much with it because I wasn’t running any wireless networks at home.

I spent a few minutes securing my network after I got it up and running. I talked at rather long length about that in the past, but on a really practical level, here’s what I did in a mere 10 minutes that will make a big difference.

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An easy way to change your power plans in Vista and Windows 7

Dave Farquhar Saving money, Windows , , , ,

If you need to change power plans to manage your computer’s power usage, here’s the easiest way to do it without fumbling around in control panel. This works in either Windows 7 or Vista.
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Back in business after a 20-hour hiatus

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized ,

A routine upgrade to AT&T U-Verse ended up being anything but. The good news, however, is that everything works now, and I have a much faster upstream connection than I ever had before. If the blog is faster now, that’s why.

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B&N heats up the midrange Android tablet market

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , ,

This week, Barnes & Noble answered Amazon’s Kindle Fire with its comparable Nook Tablet.

Which should you buy?
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Firefox 8 lands, and there’s still no official Windows 64-bit support

Dave Farquhar Software, Uncategorized ,

It’s Tuesday. Time for a new Firefox release. One without official 64-bit Windows support, of course.

The official line is because there aren’t enough native 64-bit plugins yet. Although Java and Flash are available, which are likely to be the two people care most about. Release a 64-bit browser, and the other lesser-used plugins will have no choice to follow. Wait for the plugins, and tomorrow never comes. Somebody has to blink first to end the stalemate.

At this rate, it’ll probably be Google.