Rig Update (2)

A lot has happened since I last wrote about my pc. For starters, I screwed up my bios while flashing it… I was using a nifty Gigabyte utility called QFlash to upload a newer bios from a USB stick. I’m still a little confused at what went wrong, but in the end my computer could not boot. It couldn’t revert to the bios backups, so it just kept restarting while cycling them through. Finally, after trying different components on the mobo without luck, I took it to the shop. They sent it to Gigabyte, and after a little over a month, I got the same board back. Now it worked. To clarify things a little, I’m sure that this problem was not related to my incompetence, just bad luck.

Everything has been working fine now, and I’ve been able to change a few things in my everyday setup. Before I had the Intel e8400 overclocked to 3.8ghz, but now I decided that 3.6ghz was good enough, since I changed my ram timings to 4-4-4-12. I’m sure I could easily push the cpu more, but I’d have to start compromising ram speed.
Now I’ve also got 2 SATA HDDs working in a RAID0 setup, something I had never tried before. All in all everything is working perfectly, and I’m glad to have a fast system again

8800 GT Overlocking

I’ve been looking for the highest working overclock for the Zotac 8800 GT Amp and now I’ve got some results. Originally the card was 700mhz core,1700mhz shader and 1000mhz clock. I pushed the card to perform well with 728/1812/1061.

To increase the fan speed to 100% and set clock frequencies I’ve used RivaTuner. I use Atitool to scan for artifacts, and play some UT3 to test stability. I should use Crysis, but I’m too lazy to install it. Anyhow this testing method works rather well, and I’m surprised at how far the Zotac can be pushed.

I need to do more teting, since the memory can most likely be clocked more. I’m using my older pc to run the tests, since my new motherboard is screwed (messed up bios), but when I get it replaced I’ll have more detailed info. The ga-ex38-dq6 gives me a more stable overclock aswell since I can increase voltage for stability etc… It’ll be interesting to compare the 8800gt to the 9600gt once I have more results.

Root, the source of all good and evil…

Just like a hero, being root requires great responsability… this should never be forgotten. Today I made a big mistake. I was about to remove a directory from /usr/share/, so I typed in rm -r /usr/ – and then accidently smacked enter. Initially I got petrified thinking that I had only typed rm -r /… but then I realized that my important unreplaceable files could be rescued… annoying nevertheless. The incident got me pondering about how carelessly I proceed with my root actions after typing su, something similar is bound to happen someday if I’m not careful, possibly having a worse outcome. Have to watch out more.

EDIT: I now have added a remove y/n promt through .bashrc

Firefox 3 Beta 5 Not So Resource Friendly Sometimes

It seems I was a little too hasty in giving Firefox 3 Beta 5 as much credit as I did earlier. Ffb5 does work extremely well, untill it doesn’t. As far as I am able to tell, the browser becomes extremely slow at random times often after keeping the browser open for some time, this is a result of a boost in memory usage and cpu load for no apparent reason. Surprisingly this problem does not occur to everyone, I only found a few reports. Nevertheless, this is a very big issue, that didn’t occur in ffb4. Obviously the browser is in beta stage, so whining is out of question. However, I could have recommended ffb4 to those willing to experience the speed improvement with only a few downsides, but I can’t say the same for ffb5. As the release of Firefox 3 draws nearer, I hope this problem gets fixed as soon as possible. I will still keep using ffb5 Post comments if you are having a similar problem and also if you know what’s causing it.

New Rig Project

Somewhere around October 2007 my old pc decided to stop working, and I decided to stop working on it, since that wasn’t the first time. I though I could buy a new one soon and maybe then play around with the old one to see what was wrong and set it up as a server. However, this project would take much longer than I anticipated, it’s still not finished. Most of the time was spent on me being lazy, the rest on component providers not being able to provide components. Now I’ve got everything but the CPU.

Case: Antec Sonata III (with 500w psu)
Motherboard: Gigabyte EX38-DQ6
RAM: Corsair XMS2 ddr2 800mhz 1gb X 4 (4 gb total)
Video Card: Zotac GeForce 8800GT 512MB AMP! Edition

CPU (don’t have it yet): Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 3.0GHz Boxed (Wolfdale, 6MB)
I’m getting the HDD + CD burner + CD reader from the old pc.
Hopefully I get it soon, then I can maybe post some benchmarks.

WordPress.com Syntax Highlight Without Plugins

As you can maybe see from my previous post, I’ve got my syntax highlighted. There is no plugin working its magic behind it, infact, since I’m not hosting this blog myself, I can’t use plugins at all. Nevertheless, one solution for highlighting syntax is to ‘wrap’ it with html, which works with the wordpress posts. I found out that with gVim you can Syntax->Convert to HTML. With gVim you need to use the “:TOhtml” user command. All you need to do is copy the output into you post. You might want to make the font size something like 3 by adding size=”3″ into <font face=”monospace”> which is in the beginning of the output – <font face=”monospace” size=”3″>. If you know some other/better way to do this please comment. Hope this helps

Python: Random IP

I’m not very experienced with python, but I occasionally program with some help from a friend. This script generates random ip addresses and tries to connect to them, displaying the addresses that work:

import socket
from random import randint

def randip():
    while True:
        yield ".".join(str(randint(1, 255)) for i in range(4))

a = []
for address in randip():
        try:
                s = socket.socket()
                s.settimeout(0.3)
                s.connect((address, 80))
                print address, "WORKS!!!"
                a.append(address)
        except socket.error:
                if len(a) != 5:
                        continue
                else:
                        print a
                        raw_input("press enter")
                        break

Importing Old WordPress Posts

I managed to import my first wordpress posts from the backup that I had saved in Gmail. Finding a way to retrieve the posts from the backup took a few hours, since I couldn’t find any help online. My backup consisted of the whole wordpress folder and the mysql tables. I copied all the sql entries to mysql and then changed the wp_config file a little. However, getting the posts through the old wordpress folder (http://localhost/wordpress) didn’t work because I had earlier redirected my url to morph.dy.fi. For a long time I tried to look for a way to disable the redirrect, but then gave up. So here is the method I came up with:

1 from your old sql backup import wp_posts
2 download a fresh copy of wordpress and extract it to your www directory
3 install wordpress as usual, remember to make a sql database and edit wp_config
4 once you are done remove wp_posts from the new database you have just created
5 after the table has been removed import the old wp_posts table
6 now when you navigate to http://localhost/wordpress login and go to the manage tab in the dashboard
7 click on the export tab and then on download export file

Now you should have the XML file on your computer, which you can import with your other wordpress blog. The dates of when the posts were written should be included.

.Xdefaults

These are my .Xdefaults that are for xterm.

!Colors
! Black
*color0: #5A5A5A
*color8: #3e3e3e
! Red
*color1: #FF4747
*color9: #FF6767
! Green
*color2: #AFC81C
*color10: #bFC81C
! Yellow
*color3: #FDD338
*color11: #F4D461
! Blue
*color4: #619AF4
*color12: #5496FF
! Purple
*color5: #5F5A90
*color13: #826AB1
! Cyan
*color6: #47E0FF
*color14: #2ED9FB
! White
*color7: #FFFFFF
*color15: #DEDEDE

!xterm settings
xterm*background: #333333
xterm*foreground: #efefcf
xterm*dynamicColors: true
!xterm*utf8: 2
xterm*eightBitInput: true
xterm*saveLines: 32767
xterm*scrollTtyKeypress:true
xterm*scrollTtyOutput: false
xterm*scrollBar: false
xterm*loginShell: true
xterm*faceName: Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:pixelsize=12
xterm*jumpScroll: true
xterm*multiScroll: true
xterm*toolBar: false

Xcursor.theme: DMZ
Xcursor.size: 24


Update

It’s been a while since I last wrote anything. The reason being that I’ve been using the once only-a-server-box as my everyday pc since my newer one died on me. This endeavour has forced me to use linux even more and I’ve learned a lot. Right now I have a very minimal Debian install with Fluxbox. I have my old posts saved up in my gmail and on the computer. Earlier today I was trying to download the files from gmail, but ran into a scary scenario. When I made a tar backup of all the stuff that used to be on the server (not very much) I had to change the file extesion to .dat so that gmail would allow me to upload it. Then when I was ready to download it today I could not because the gmail anti-virus claimed that it contained a virus after a scan. Obviously the file didn’t contain a virus, the anti-virus just though it was suspicious. Later I tried to forward it to my hotmail account, but gmail displayed ”One of your attachments contained a virus and could not be sent. Remove attachment and send”. Finally I downloaded icedove (almost same as thunderbird) and fortunately I was able to download the file. So I suppose also other similary email clients can bypass this anti-virus, e.g. Outlook.