So what’s so special about this server? It’s running Debian 3.0 on XFS, which is SGI’s industrial-strength journaling file system. It’s faster than ext3, more feature-complete than ReiserFS, and it’s been reliably shuffling bits as part of SGI’s IRIX operating system for the better part of a decade. You know you want it.
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Drowning my sorrows in cholesterol and punk
I can wait a long, long time
Before I hear another love song.
— Sisters of Mercy
It was a clear and muggy Thursday night, and I had a bad case of the blues. So I did what I usually do–I laid down until it went away. An hour and a half later, it was worse. So I got in my car and drove, intending to drown my sorrows.
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Dude! I’m getting a… Packard Bell!
Oh wait. No, I’m thinking of Steve. Although he and I did just get identical Dell Optiplex GX1 P2-450 workstations to use as Web servers. We learned a little bit about them too.
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All of this and nothing
There’s no one thing to write about. So I’ll write about a few little things. Deal?
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Looks like Premiere 6.5 will be a keeper
Adobe announced Premiere 6.5 yesterday, and it’s got just about everything that should have been in 6.0.
It promises to work better with native DV (which will alleviate the need for hardware like the Pinnacle DV500 card), provides native tools for exporting your video to DVD, VCD, and SVCD, and a titling app, a busload of fonts, better audio tools, and real-time effects and transitions. That’s probably the most important thing; it’s annoying to apply a bunch of effects and then to have to wait a few minutes for it to render all the frames, only to find it wasn’t quite what you were looking for.
I guess it’s like the difference between a film camera and digital. Read more
I think I need to learn about VCD
R. Collins Farquhar IV, before seeing my new video:
You don’t call art a “video” or a “movie” or a “tape.” You call art a film.
R. Collins Farquhar IV, after seeing my new vi… whatever:
Yes, that is definitely a video. Read more
Words to live by
I do what I do, and I don’t plan how I ought to do it. I never have. I don’t believe in being rigid about anything. If I see an opportunity, I will drop all the rules, even when doing so is probably a mistake. –John Cocke, inventor of RISC
I’d never heard of John Cocke until he died, but that figures. Since I didn’t major in CS or EE, there are a lot of important people I’ve never heard of. But the father of virtually every non-x86 CPU still standing died this past week at age 77. Like many geniuses, he was eccentric and didn’t like to be bothered with mundane, everyday stuff. And like many geniuses, he didn’t think about his methods much. Read more
Where does faith come from?
Following closely on the heels of the question of how to pray, people often ask me where faith comes from, and where they can get more of it.
The best response to that question, usually, is, “Why do you want more faith?” Read more
A class act
The Royals–mired in an 8-game winning streak that has them within striking distance of third place–are more than just scrappy. They’ve got some players who are big-time class acts.
There’s superstar Mike Sweeney, who’s missed the past seven games because he strained a back muscle climbing into the back seat of a pickup truck and hunching down so his mother could sit in the front seat. Of course Sween would get hurt doing something nice. He’s always doing something nice.
Then there’s Paul Byrd. Read more
What’s the matter here?
I remember when the stock market crashed in 1987. I had to inform a 16-year-old that 1987 wasn’t “a long time ago” the other day, but that’s another story. So, in 1987 after a crash, who’d CNN talk to? Sam Walton. Makes sense. Sam Walton owned a lot of stock.
So, when the Dow dropped 390 points on Friday, who’d CNN talk to?
Billy Joel. Read more