I have no idea where I stumbled on this image, but four power supplies is pretty impressive. Or judging from the PCI slots, is it two motherboards with dual power supplies? If it were the latter, I’d love to just have the case to merge some disparate machines!
The Gen8 HP MicroServers are wonderful little boxes. For less money than most NAS devices, you can get a tiny, server-grade cube with four drive bays, ECC memory and Xeon CPU support. I used to use mine with 4 drives in RAIDZ1, but now I use two mirrored pairs for performance and easier upgrading.
For use with ZFS, you have a few options:
Solaris has the advantage of native support, and Oracle’s recent closed-source version even supports turnkey encryption. I trust FreeBSD and their ZFS implementation the most though, so the decision was easy.
But what about Plex? I’d installed it on Ubuntu Server and Debian many times, but I noticed (several years too late!) that the media server software had FreeBSD support. Halljeluya! I believe it was introduced mostly for people using FreeNAS, but I’ve been really happy with how well its performed on FreeBSD since switching over to it.
Installation is a breeze thanks to the tireless package maintainers. I’ve read in enough places you need the compatibility package for certain C libraries as well:
# pkg update
# pkg install compat9x-amd64
# pkg install plexmediaserver
And now you’re good to go with the same URL and file management as any other Plex install, only this time you’re backing it with a ZFS volume with error detection, correction and redudancy. Too cool.
Incidently, do Hitachi make 8TB drives yet?
The Overnightscape Central is a fun weekly podcast hosted by the illustrious PQ Ribber. Hosts and listeners of The Overnightscape Underground participate in a topic each week, and you’re welcome to join.
I didn’t get my audio submitted in time this week, so PQ graciously broadcast my thoughts in the Night Project of his sublime Quaquaversal Satellite programme. Thanks PQ!
50:20 – Rubenerd is here with what was an early submission for this past week’s Overnightscape Central on Comedians, that became a Follow Up, because … well, because Ribber. Music from the Mind Bending Vaults!! Bob and Ray!! The Hollywood Palace’s debut show from January 1964 is examined!! No Man’s Sky!! Chapter Three of our Speed Gibson Adventure!! All this, and more!!
You can view this episode on the Underground, listen to it here, and subscribe to the Satellite with this feed in your podcast client.
FreeBSD defaults to 512k sectors, and there’s no provision in ZFS on FreeBSD to change this. If you try the following that works on Solaris and ZFSonLinux, you’ll be told the option doesn’t exist:
# echo "Does not work on FreeBSD"
# zpool create -
But you can use:
# gnop create -S 4096 /dev/diskid/DISK-xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Once you’ve done that, create your zpool on it/them and export:
# zpool create [..] tank mirror \
/dev/diskid/DISK-xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.nop \
/dev/diskid/DISK-yyyyyyyyyyyyyy.nop
# zpool export tank
Delete the providers, then re-import the pool.
# gnop destroy /dev/diskid/DISK-xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.nop
# gnop destroy /dev/diskid/DISK-yyyyyyyyyyyyyy.nop
# zpool import tank
Now you have the correct sector size.
I adore my Nikon D60 DSLR, but my iPhone’s appreciably worse camera gets more use because I always have it. With an epic trip approaching, I decided to check out whether I should lug it with me, change the lens, or replace it entirely.
My father used to know a National Geographic photographer. He would tell me the story of meeting him in the 80s on a trip, and seeing his Olympus SLR that was half the size of his colleague’s Nikons. Despite the lower apparent quality, his friend’s comment was that photos are:
A larger, heavier camera can potentially help with the first point, but if its too big to always have with you, you’ll never hit point three. The best camera you have is the one you’ve got on you when the opportunity strikes, and a bulky SLR at home isn’t going to be it.
So with that in mind, here are some options.
Sunk cost is a fallacy, but its a hard one to shake. I’ve already got all this investment in the Nikon ecosystem, so why not try and work with what I already have? To that end, I thought I’d check out a pancake lens to reduce the weight of the SLR, and potentially make the shape more forgiving for a small backpack.
There are plenty of pancake detractors, but I would refer them to the third point above. If they mean my camera is much easier to carry all the time, I’d get better pictures.
My beloved NIKKOR stopped making pancakes after 2005, but there are still plenty selling their 50mm f1.8 for a few hundred dollars. It’s incredible you can get an f1.8 pancake in the first place, though for my subject matter I far prefer 24 or 35mm on APS-C sized-sensors.
I’ve kind of had a soft spot for Pentax cameras, and almost went with one back in the day before settling on Nikon so I could share my old man’s lenses. Pentax make some interesting pancakes, including a 40mm f2.8 which autofocuses on all their contemporary DSLRs (take that, Nikon!).
If I were to get one of their cute KS-2 SLRs in white, or a K-70 with its crazy-high ISO, I could get a pancake lens and upgrade my kit all at once. Photos online show the pancake barely protruding further than the flash mount, so it would be big but much flatter than my current D60+35mm combo, but allow me to get some more glass for macro and distrance photography when I wanted.
Going down the other path, I started looking into cameras like the Olympus Pen and Sony Alpha mirrorless SLRs before realising a fixed lens compact offered most of the same features for much less money.
The darling of this pack is the Fujifilm X100T. Its 24mm f1.8 lens looks gorgeous, and the manual dials for speed, aperture and such would already be such a huge upgrade from futzing around all the menus on my Nikon. A certain Ken Rockwell character dismissed the extra LCD on the top of Nikon’s budget SLRs, but its so much easier using my old man’s D90 to change these settings.
Despite not having to pay extra for glass, they’re still breach the AU$1,000 threshold which I find hard to justify.
So we come to the final one that I’m most likely going to get. This tiny Panasonic still sports a micro four thirds sensor (albeit somewhat cropped to support multiple aspect ratios), and a 24mm f1.7. It has a higher-rated ISO than my Nikon D60, and has the same wonderful manual dials of the larger and heavier X100T.
It’s still not quite pocket size, but it could be enough to always have in my bag. I love buying new glass, but realistically most of the time this camera’s lens would suit my needs.
Like any self-respecting engineer with butter fingers, I’ve taken out insurance in my bashrc by aliasing potentially destructive commands. -i asks me before clobbering a target, and -v enables verbose output:
$ alias
[..]
==> alias cp='cp -iv'
==> alias ln='ln -i'
==> alias mv='mv -iv'
==> alias rm='rm -iv'
These work almost too well. Sometimes, I fully intend to copy over a directory of files, but cp wants me to hit y for every single one:
$ cp ./source/* ./dest/
==> overwrite shima.markdown? (y/n [n])
mv has a ‘-f’ option, which forces mv not to prompt before overriding, even if -i or -n have been invoked. cp has no such option, so instead I piped yes to it!
$ yes | cp ./source/* ./dest/
Another (perhaps more sane) approach is temporarily disabling the alias, though that does mean other options for that command would also be disabled, such as verbosity or colour:
$ \cp ./source/* ./dest/
More astute readers would wonder why I’m overriding my own safeguards, thereby making them useless. Presumably I’d only do this when needed, and only after confirmation.
Companies are abusing their customer email lists to send unsolicited newsletters. Today’s culprit is a data centre provider:
Welcome to the first edition of $DATACENTRE’s Partner News, your quarterly update.
As FY'17 begins, it’s a great time to reflect on what we have collectively achieved over the past year.
I never signed up to this.
“Claim chowder” is a Mr John Gruber term for demonstratably-ridiculous predictions levelled at Apple by pundits who should know better by now. He’s not immune to them himself though, as can be seen in this post from 2013:
We have big plans and a long roadmap for Vesper
And from a few days ago:
Yesterday, we announced that development was ceasing, and we’ll soon be shutting down our sync server.
I downloaded Vesper, but didn’t use it owing to its lack of sync. By the time it came around, I had already moved to 1Writer, the single malt of editors. No need to mix a cocktail of custom UI elements and fonts, just straight iOS.
Unfortunately, both use those ≡/meatstack/hamburger drawer menus instead of standard footer navigation, albeit disguided with an arrow. These have to be one of the most regressive UI metaphors in recent times; even Facebook recognised this.
I’m going to start calling them Clam Drawers.
Instapaper has been bought by Pinterest. For those of you who reasonably assumed I just spoke French, Instapaper was a read-it-later service that would render plain, easy to read text from bookmarked pages. Pinterest is a social network where people republish other people’s material on specific topics or a criteria of their choosing.
I was reluctant to try Instapaper back in the day, for the same reason I never used Evernote and similar tools. We’re entrusting a one-off, third-party service with a collection of material that could will eventually be yanked away at the operators whim, either through acquisition, sun-setting, or usually both. The service-specific hooks also render exports more difficult; best–case scenario would be we’d be left with an XML export that doesn’t map to any other service.
(Incidently, I have a ton of exported data from dead services that one day I want to turn into a Hugo or Jekyll blog. I’m thinking of calling it something corny like the Rubenerd Museum. There are enough cancelled services to keep a daily post on a site like this going for years).
Compare this to something agnostic like Dropbox, and a tool that processes text locally. Heck, even something you can install on a server yourself, with a managed version you can pay for instead.
Eventually I paid for it to try, mostly to support Marco Arment who’s late Build and Analyse show with the lovely Dan Benjamin I enjoyed immensely. I was surprised how quickly it became indispensable; it was clean and simple, had integrations with applications I used, and mostly worked. Competitors that arrived later didn’t do anything more to entice me away.
Contrast that to Pinterest. I had an account with them briefly to see if it could support my old idea of the Rubenerd Annexe, before realising it throws up a compulsory registration lightbox over your content ala Stackexchange and Quora.
I’m not entirely concerned with Instapaper being acquired (it has been once already), but their suiter is worrying. I’d be happy to wrong, though.
The ease (or lack thereof) of unsubscribing from opt-out email newsletters has become something of a meme here. And for good reason; the state of email marketing is pretty grim. So we may as well have fun with some of the more egregious examples!
Today’s had the best email unsubscribe footer I’ve ever seen. No quick unsubscribe links, just a poorly-formatted list of rather terrible options.
NOTE PS: if this isn’t for you or isn’t for you right now then please feel free to reply 1,2, or 3
I’m interested - but not right now (please contact in 3-6 months)
I’m not the right person in the company (sorry - I’d love an intro to the right person)
This isn’t right for us, please remove my details from your database.
I’m thinking there are a few options missing:
I don’t buy from unsolicited marketers, because their engagement in dodgy business practices (spam) prevents me having trust in them or taking them seriously
I think you’re responsible for destroying a communications medium, causing lots of reasonable people to flock back to a half baked IRC clone that rhymes with snack