iPhone review

Since iPhone came out I have not been very interested in it, it always seemed to be inferior to other phones.
It had lower specifications, it was overpriced, it was 2G, was lacking basic features such as copy/paste, video recording, MMS, multitasking etc.
But Apple has an amazing marketing machine, and even if the platform is closed and so far from being open as it can get people still bought it, made applications and games for it and now in it’s 3rd generation it actually started looking like something.
It has 3G, MMS, video recording, and a pretty clever way of handeling copy/paste, and an amazing amount of apps and games.
So my old phone was getting old and felt pretty outdated, HTC Trinity started out as a Windows mobile 5 device, and thanks to the people over at xda developers I was able to
Upgrade to home cooked 6.1 versions. But it did not change the fact that the device was slow and memory were more and more getting to small.
So it was time for a new phone, I was having my eye on Android, and with HTC having some very nice phones and more and more manufacturers planning Android phones I was concidering it, but perhaps my next phone will be Android.
I ended up picking the iPhone mostly due to the applications out there, my main concern for not picking the iPhone was the lack of multitasking and customization, and Apples insistance on locking down the platform.
I wanted to use the Spotify client instead of iPod as I like the idea of having access to the wast library of music that exists in Spotify but the advantage of the built in iPod is that you can play music and browse the web or use other apps while listening to music, something not possible with Spotify due to Apples in my oppinion stupid policy.
But I came across the jailbrake community, I started following the iPhone download blog and found out about the whole homebrew scene.
One of the apps I came accros were Backgrounder an application that allows you to run program in the background.
This made the whole iPhone thing much more attractive.
So Sunday soon 2 weeks ago I went into the 3 store and bought the black 32GB iPhone 3GS.
So after using it for soon 2 weeks, how do I feel about my choice?
Well I think I made the right choice, it is a very nice looking phone, the OS works really well, it is a bit like OSX (I know it is based on it) in that it just works, no fuzz easy to use.
The Appstore works great, the sync with my google apps mail, contacts and calendar was a breeze to set up with push working like a charm, updates in contacts were pushes on both directions almost instantly, mail would sometime pop up on my phone before the browser showed that new mail has arrived.
I started out downloading a bunch off different free apps from the app store, Spotify was one of the first followed by some games and others. I subscribed to some podcast that I listened to on my way to work, and they told about different apps and games and one game called Dungeon hunter got very good reviews, a kind of Diablo clone with very good graphics and gameplay, so this was my first purchase from the app store and indeed a very nice game that I spent a lot of time playing.
But It was deeply annoying me that I could not listen to Spotify while using safari to read my rss feeds or reading my mail, etc.
When I bought it there were no Jailbrake available, not until last weekend was I able to jailbrake it, so I got a week of locked in usage, and it was bugging me a lot.
But thanks to Blackra1n I was able to jailbrake and install backgrounder and a bunch of other applications for example winterboard, an application to customize the looks of the iPhone and an app called sbsettings that adds a quick menu to enable and dissable various things like wifi and Bluetooth without having to dig into the settings dialog.
And now it works as I wanted it, nice OS that I can customize to my taste.
And it is great to use, last weekend we went to Denmark for a baptizing, and in the train I used the iPhone as a mobile Internet for my laptop so I could surf and chat on the go, I could have done this directly on the phone but it is nicer with a big screen for extended use.
Once there I used it as camera and videocamera.
On the night before we had to go home, Emilia got a fever and stuffed nose, and on the way home we realized we did not have any medicine for babies such as fever lowering medicine, so I used the iPhone to log in to the website for the pharmacy to see where to find a night open pharmacy, then used the built in google maps app to find out which one was closest to the train station, and to find our way there using the built in GPS and compass when we got there.

All in all I think the iPhone will work well for me, but had it not been for the abillity to jailbreak I think I would be less happy about it.

Oh and by the way, I typed this entire post on the iphone using the wordpress app.

Baby Carrier »« Google Wave

Emilia is born.

On 28 March 2009 at 05:52, Emilia was born at Huddinge Hospital.
As I have written before we were expecting a baby, and on Saturday morning she was born.
It is funny because earlier on the week I told to her while still in the belly that Friday would be a good day, and it all started Friday morning.

Well, my part of the story starts at lunch on Friday.
I’m sitting eating my lunch when I get an SMS from Marina asking me why I’m not on-line on MSN.
I reply back, with just “Lunch”.
After lunch I get back to my desk and log in to MSN again, here is a copy of the conversation.

Marina säger: (13.13.39)
hi

Marina säger: (13.20.42)
take the metal plate from cake


The cake was one Marina made, that I had brought with me for Friday afternoon coffee.
For that reason I had also taken the car, since bringing a cake in a stuffed bus , is not a good idea, well secretly I think Marina had told me to take the car not for the cake, but in case something would happen, since later she told me that the water had broken already before I was even awake that morning, but she did not want to tell me anything since no contractions at the time.

Anyway so on the way home Marina calls me, and tell me to go to the midwife clinic (Barnomorskemottagningen) on the way home to pick up some blood tests, we have been waiting for.

So I’m not home until about 14:30.
And when I get home I call the hospital, according to the phone log this is at 14:40, I explain that the water had broken this morning and that she had started to have small contractions, they told us to come in for a check to see, since we suspected the water had broken.

We drive to the hospital, a 15 minute drive, and arrive around 15:15.
They take us into an intake room and put some sensors on Marinas belly, to listen at the baby’s Heart rate as well as measuring the contractions, this lasts I think about 30 minutes, they then come back and say that they want a doctor to have a look, since if the water broke they can’t “Feel” down there, due to the risk of infection.
Unfortunately this is a very busy Friday afternoon and only one doctor on duty.
And since the contractions are not so strong, we have low priority, and have to wait.
And waiting we did, some 5 hours, apparently someone had to get an emergency cecarium (is it spelled like that?)
Meanwhile the contractions are getting stronger, but are not frequent, sometimes 20 minutes in between.
We move to a TV room while waiting, since sitting in that intake room is getting rather boring.

At about 21:30 the doctor finally has time, and we go back to the intake room, and she starts checking, she tells that the water has not broken, and that the wetness that Marina had felt that morning in combination with a bit of red slime, was a so called slime plug(Not sure how to translate it), and sometimes if at all, comes a week or two before delivery.
She also measures, and Marina is about 1.5-2cm open.
She asks Marina if she wants this baby soon, and Marina says yes, so she does something, I think she said to stimulate, but she points out that it is not sure that it will work.
Then she says that now we wait, the baby could come in a couple of days or even in a week or two.

The doctor leaves, and there is a midwife who explains a bit more in detail, she tells that the contractions should be more frequent and much much stronger, like a knife in the back, to quote what she said. She also tells that type of contractions she has now are more like the body exercising for the real thing.
We wait a bit longer, since we need to get our papers back, and also the journal for our visit.

And then we go back home.
We are home around 22:30, I read the journal of our visit, and it is very cryptic and with a lot of medical abbreviations, but I read something about going home with two citadon, not sure what that is, later on I find out we were supposed to have gotten some pain killers with us home, they just forgot to give it.

Marinas contractions are still getting stronger, but they are still not frequent and sometimes takes a break of up to 20 minutes.
She takes 2 Alvedon (Paracetamol)
But some time after midnight, Marina is getting in more pain, she goes into the shower to get some warm water to, lower the pain, I start timing the contractions, and get that they are between 3 and 5 minutes in between, but still sometimes takes a break of 10-20 minutes, I did not know I had to time the length also.

At around 02:00 while she is in the shower I call the hospital again, and they ask for the frequency and length of contractions, while on the phone i time the length, and get that they are about 20-30 seconds in length, the lady from the hospital tells me that they should be about 1minute, and not so long breaks.
They tell me to wait, since there are still some longer pauses in between, and they don’t think they are strong enough yet.

So we hang up, and I explain this to Marina, and she is not happy about it.
She is tired, and in pain, but we decided to try and get some sleep in between when the longer breaks come.
However there is no chance for this, so it ends up being a mix of sleeping, and timing the contractions, they are getting more frequent and stronger, but still not longer than 40 seconds, and still occasionally takes a longer break.
She takes another Alvedon.

The pain is getting stronger, and a bit after 04:00 Marina is in such pain, that I again call the hospital, asking what I can do to help her, since she is in such pain.
After a bit of convincing, they now agree that perhaps it is a good idea that we come in.

We grab the stuff we need, and I go and get the car from the parking, and then we go to the hospital.
We arrive around 05:00, according to the Journal we got written in at 05:15.
The time I have now are from the Journal, I only know that it all went very fast.

They again ask if the water had broken, and I explain no, but that we were there earlier since we thought it had broken earlier.

The again put the monitor thing on her belly, and this time the contractions show up strong, so half an hour later the midwife comes back, and feel inside of her, this time they say, that she is fully open, and the baby want to get out, so we go directly to the delivery room.

When we get there, they ask Marina to push, hoping the water will break. But it doesn’t, so at 05:40 they manually break the water, the first birth contraction starts at 05:45, and 4 pushes and some laughing gas later at 05:52, Emilia is born.

The first thing she does when she comes out is pooping, then screaming, but only briefly, as soon as she is on Marinas chest, she is quiet again.

I was so happy, I even cried a little bit, very emotional moment.
We spend most of the morning in the delivery room, waiting for a free spot on the BB, (This is a department on Swedish Hospitals, where women go to recover after the delivery)
While we waited they came to weigh the baby as well as doing some basic checks.
She weighed in at 3.7kg, and was 51cm long, and they also measured 35.5cm around the head.

But right after lunch we got a family room in the BB department, We went there, and I went home to grab some stuff, as well as getting some sleep, and a shower, did not get much sleep, to much excitement, but at dinner I came back, I took the laptop with me since I had earlier found out there were wireless internet at the hospital, we called Marinas parents on Skype and turned on video.
We slept there over night, we were both very tired, with not much sleep, she did scream once a lot, and it was when we put her in the baby bed, we took her back but she kept screaming, we rang the bell for the Midwife, and she came, and explained that many babies don’t like to sleep alone, and that she might be hungry.

I got a nice talk to this Midwife, and she gave many very handy tips, I also asked about cat’s, sicne we have two of them, she told that she herself has cats, and two children and that it was never an issue, also officially there are no recommendations, there are two believes, one is that having them around when you are small will strengthen the resistance to allergy, and the other is that one should be careful if there are allergies already in the family.
Since my whole family has pets, and I had them aroudn when I was a kid, and Marina is clearly not allergic, we are not so worried, we do keep them out of the children bed and stuff, but they are allowed to come and sniff, and investigate.

Anyway, the night went pretty smooth, we did wake up several times, but we did get some sleep. The next morning we were waiting to have the children doctor check up the health of Emilia, they asked if we wanted to stay another night, but both Marina and me wanted to go home.
The doctor checked Emilia, and all was well, so he allowed us to go home, but that we had to come back for additional check-up.
So I went home to go and get the car, and in the afternoon we were back home.
Since none of us had much sleep over the weekend, we tried to get some sleep, I was very tired, and so was Emilia.

Today we went back to see the doctor as well as making a hearing test.
All is well except she is a bit Yellow, apparently something quite common that should go away, but just in case we have another appointment on Thursday to see that it is getting less.

For more pictures, be sure to head over to the album.

For Dogs: How to hug a baby. »« Give Blood

Give Blood

So I have joined the group of people who donate blood.
I’m already a donor, and now I’m also a blood donor.
It is something I had been thinking about but never got around to, and when The Swedish Pirate Party launched the campaign Sharing is Caring I decided to join, so I went there and did the “intake test” where they ask you a whole bunch of questions, take blood samples etc.
And Yesterday I was there for the first time to give blood.
Pretty pain less actually, they give some sandwiches and Juice while you wait, then they drain 4.5dl of blood, that is approx 10% of the total amount in the body, and it all took some 30 minutes while the actual blood giving was only 10 minutes.
So I strongly encourage everyone to do the same, help your fellow humans and give blood.
And if you want to support the Sharing is Caring campaign at the same time then you can click the banner above, and register every time you donate.

Emilia is born. »« Server Outage

Spotify

Ok so I have now joined the future of Music listening.

I never like the idea of CD’s, I think the only Music CD I ever owned was a single CD that came as a promotion “gift” with a computer game I bought, I did have some 5 LP’s back in the day, can’t remember all of them, but I think there was a Magnus uggla, Murtel Crue, and some others.

No I was early with the electronic music, Already on the Commodore 64 I would load up a game just to listen to the music, and on Amiga it was MOD’s, a kind of 4 track sampled music, I even hacked my Amiga 500 to enhance the experience by increasing the “Chip” memory, this was the type of memory that was able to handle Music and Graphics, so by increasing it I could listen to “higer” quality tunes, I also bought a special thing that would enhance the sound, I think it was some kind of Filter or something.

On The PC, Well I had a bunch of MP3′s I would rip CD’s that friends had, and store them as MP3, and well before you start thinking thta is illegal, well in Sweden it is legal to copy between Friends, so by having a lot of Friends through a Lan party club I aquired more music than I would ever listen too. I actually always been more of a Radio Person, just putting a mixed bunch of music on playing random.

Although back then Harddrive was expensive, so I burned all the MP3′s to CD’s, Unfortunatly this was a bad idea, as one very hot summer I forgot the Leather CD bag on the desk in direct sunlight, and my CD’s basically turned transparent, rendering many of them unreadable.
So I salvaged what could be salvaged, but some 15 CD’s were completely unreadable.

Then came Napster, at that time I was sharing a house with some friends and whenever we had visitors, we would download some music, and they would all store it on my server so we could access it from anywere in the house, so I ended up having all kinds of music, everything from French Rap to Polish Pop, Swedish Rock, to Soviet Marching music!?!?. But with those early download music came the down side of Crap Quality, some of the songs were recorded on low bitrat, no tags, or sometimes not even complete.

So I started looking for a solution, I was still heavily resisting paying for a piece of plastic I would never use, and started looking if there was a way to pay for guaranteed quality downloads, and there was this new cool service called allofmp3, some Russians came up with this brilliant system of selling music to a resonable price and in the format you choosed, you payed depending on the size of the file.
The files were tagged, categorized and super easy to search. It was still not clear weather it was legal or not, I mean technically they were since they payed royalties to the Russian record assosiation I think they were called ROMS, but it was exactly what I was looking for, cheap, easy and good quality. Some time later Itunes started up, but they were expensive and files had DRM(Digital Restrictio… erhm Rights Management), something I’m strongly against as it limits my rights as a consumer.

I can honestly say I do not mind paying for music, I stronly believe artists should get payed, and I have still never been to a concert, so I do not supprt artists that way, I do however pay my Media Tax every time I buy a CD, and believe me I have not used a CD or a DVD to store music since I lost a larger part of my collection to it, I also pay a TV license which effectivly pays for the public Radio and TV here, also whenever I listen to non public Radio I have to listen to commercials, so in the end I have payed for music.

Ok, so then allofmp3 was shut down by American RIAA lobbyists, and my source of Good quality music (Read DRM free in good quality) was lost, I did not want to go back to download through various services since that would be a step back, so it was back to listening to internet radio stations, I did buy some music from Itunes when they released Itunes plus, a service were you could get DRM free music.

But now some Swedish guys have launched a new service called Spotify, it is a legal music distribution system, that do not require(Or allow) you to keep any files locally, instead you stream the songs, in from what I can hear good quality. They have a huge collection that is growing. It has several ways you can use it, one is payed by commercials, you can buy day passes, as well as a monthly subscription that both do not have commercials.
You can make customized playlists, or just make your own radio station based on music you like, really nice.

It is currently in Beta, and on Invitation only, except for the premium monthly service, I tried several times to sign up for the premium support but it was failing, I think it had to do with the beta, I did not have an invitation so I wrote them requesting that they fixed the payment system so I could get an account.
They replyed back saying there were some problems with the payment system, but they also sent me an invitation, I have now tried it for a Day and I like it a lot, It has a native client for Mac OSX, and the commercials are not intrusive at all something I can definatly live with, although I will for sure upgrade to the premium system just to show I support this.

There is one downside though, since it is streaming there is no way of transferring the file to a portable media player, hopefully that is only tempoarary, or at least some kind of mobile client.

Anyway, you can find it here: www.spotify.com I do not have any invitations yet, so if you want to join you can try the premium service, or wait untill i upgrade to the premium servie and then maybe If I know you I can arrange an invitation.

Troubles troubles. »« Our new apartment.

Our new apartment.

Hello everyone.

A short update of what is going on.
We recently bought an apartment that we moved in to on November 22.

No Pictures yet,it is too big a mess.
The place is in serious need of renovation, so we have started with that, we decided to start with the most important room first, the bedroom. So we started tearing down all the old wallpaper/paint, I can honestly say it looks as if no repairs have been done for a very long time. There were 3 layers of Wallpaper and one layer of paint on top of that. And ols Masking tape still sitting there.
The bottom layer of wallpaper looks as if it might actually be the original, since it went underneath sockets and panels.

But since there were paint on everything, we took it all away, and had a clean room with no floor panels, or anything.

But we did run into a problem, the room had 3 different type of walls, 2 Betong walls, 1 Woodwall and 1 Drywall, so painting on top of that would give 3 different shades, so we had to put up a kind of wallpaper made from glassfiber, than paint a layer of white, and finally paint 2 layers of the colour we wanted.

We also wanted a new floor, the existing plastic floor was horrible, so we were looking to buy wood floor or laminat, but could not find a type that looked nice in that room, but since it was the bed room, we decided for a carpet instead.

We also replaced all the floor panels, as well as adding new ceeling panels, (Think they are called panels, they run along the walls next to the floor/ceeling.)

Next project will be the livingroom / Hallway, this will probably not be until January/February  since we need to save up money for materials.

When I get around to take some pictures I will post them.

Spotify »« Holly 20/08/1997 – 30/10/2008

Holly 20/08/1997 – 30/10/2008

Yesterday was probably one of my worst days ever.

I was as every evening out for the evening walk with Holly, and we were coming back.
As we went up with the elevator I took of her leech, but when the Elevator arrived on our floor and the door opened, the neighbour was on her way out with her dog, and was waiting for the elevator, so when the door opened her dog went to attack and grabbed hold of Holly over her back.

It all went so fast that none of us had a chance to react, when we finally got her dog to let go, Holly laid down and the elevator doors automatically closed, I was already on the floor, and wanted to check her, but as soon as I touched her she would turn around trying to bite me, it was pretty clear she was not aware the other dog was gone and I was trying to help her.

She got up briefly trying to walk, but she was badly damaged and laid down again, she had trouble breathing, and I could feel she had several broken ribs, I rushed to get the car key, and Marina, and together with the neighbour we went to the car to go to the Animal Hospital, but I think she had already stopped breathing by the time we got to the car.
But we still continued to the Hospital, when we got there, they confirmed what I thought, her ribs had broken and punctured her lung, and she was dead.

So Holly became 11 Years and 2 months old, anybody who knew her knows how sweet she was, and she will be very much missed.

Holly has been with me pretty much since I moved to Holland in 2000, and has followed me almost everywhere I went except when I went to places to far away like Ukraine, but she did go with me on my Crazy scooter ride from Amsteram to Lammhult in Sweden, and back, she was sitting in a shoulder bag that I had on my belly, enjoying the wind and the speed. I unfortunatly did not bring the camera on this trip, so I have no pictures of it. Actually I do have a picure now, Annelise who ows the Kennel where Holly is from sent me 2 pictures, I have added them below.

She went with us when Marina’s Parents came to visit, and we traveled to Denmark and Sweden, she came with us when we went to the beach The flower garden, well everywhere.

Anyway you can have a look at my album, there are a lot of pictures of her, and she will be missed for sure.

Pictures sent by Annelise at CanisDanics.

Our new apartment. »« I got a JOB!!!!!!!!

I got a JOB!!!!!!!!

Ok so I have been looking for a job for a while, since I got to Sweden, well not really that actively, was lazy enjoying my holiday for a while.

I mean we moved to Swedisn end of June, and I did not update my C.V. on monsterboard until  21st of August.

I applied for a couple of different jobs, and went for some interviews, but nothing went anywere, some i have not heard from again, and some I turned down.

Anyway so on the 12 of September I got a call from a recruiter for a Job.

She send me the Job description, and to be honest I almost turned it down right there, I was worried it was a call center like job.

But getting closer to my last day to BT, i decide i might just as well go, just in case nothing else comes up.

She calls again the next day, and I tell that I am interested.

And on the 15th I get a mail asking if I can go for an interview on the 17th, which I agree to.

So I go to the interview and the the position turns out to be much more interesting than my first impression.

I get interviewed by an in house recruiter, and I guess he found me to be an interesting candidate since already at the end of the interview he asked if I could come for a second interview on the 24th.

I then go for the second interview, this time with the Customer support manager, you wont believe this but well he is a dutch guy, hmm the dutch is haunting me.

Anyway we have a nice chat we decide to settle the interview language to English since my Dutch was as good/bad as his Swedish. .

After the interview I again have a better impression of the job.

We agree that I will come to meet the team leader the next day, I kind of have the feeling that I will get the job, but not sure yet, but by now I am really interested in this job.

And yesterday afternoon I went to meet with the Team leader, as well as another guy, who will be my collegue doing the same function.

We also talk a bit, mostly about what I did at BT, and after about 30 minutes we are done and they ask me to wait, since the manager (the dutch guy) wanted to speak with me.

So I sit and wait and after a while he comes in telling they like me and would like to hire me, and hands me an offer along with a contract.

I get very happy, but tell I would like to take it home to read through (Had to many bad experiences with rushing things.)

When I get home and read it through I find it is again better than my expectations, so today I went there to hand in the signed contract to HR.

And as of the 7th of October I will be working as a Technical Support Analyst for a company called Cognos.

Ok so almost done setting up our new life in Sweden, only thing missing is our own place.

And speaking of that, me and Marina have been looking at houses, and we actually found our dream house.(Link removed, House no longer for sale)

It has everything we wanted, not to far from Center, but still in a quiet area, a garage for my car, a garden for Marina, a big workshop for me, enough rooms to have a guest room and a computer room, as well as a room for me and Marina  and for the kid that is on it’s way, a nice layout on all of it. And for a resonable price, I mean this house is everything we want. A house that both me and Marina could agree on.

But unfortunatly it looks as we can’t afford it right now.

Now that I have a job I called a financing company to find out if we could afford it, and they told me no.

Since we only will have one income, and here is a rule in Sweden that your morgage payments can only cost 50% of your household income.

And this house would cost us about 60%.

The stupid thing is, that if I was single, I could buy it.

The calculation would then be based on only my income and my expences, but now it is based on supporting 2 persons on 1 sallary.

Although the amount she gave me that we need to have left was way more than we need to be able to live a normal life, with a kid , but rules are rules.

And since we don’t have enough savings to put in we have to borrow the full amount that is allowed (95%), and that makes it very difficult for us to get it at this moment.

Oh well hopefully something will come up later, so for now we are looking to get a rented apartment and then save up so we can get a house later.

So until next time, you now know what we want for christmas, I think i will be really good so santa will come.

Holly 20/08/1997 – 30/10/2008 »« Small update.

Some updates and Server Maintanance.

Hello everyone,

Quite a while since I made any updates here, so it’s about time.

So what has happened since last time?

Well me, Marina, Holly, Balder and Heimdal has moved to Hässelby in Sweden, it is in the Western part of Stockholm.

Here we share a large apartment with some friends, Aurelie (who also moved from Holland to Sweden.) and Göran(He moved up some months earlier.)
Move was a pain, we moved during the weekend of 27-30th of June, And well trust me driving Amsterdam-Stockholm-Amsterdam with way to little sleep in 3 days is no fun.

We have started to settle in, Marina is going to Swedish course, and I have started looking for work.

I had saved up Holidays from my previous employer, enabling me to be on Holiday from June to end of September, I have used this to get all the details arranged, including getting me some well needed rest.  :smile:

And I have some great news too, In end of July actually only 2 days before my Birthdate, we found out that Marina is pregnant. This was kind of unexpected news, but still very welcome news, since the plan was to move to Sweden to start a family, although the start a family part was supposed to be a bit later, but well nature wanted it differently.  :razz:

So after our calculations, expected delivery is on the 24th of March 2009.

Marina is going through some hard times, as many other pregnanat women, she is nausious, puking, difficulty eating many things, pain and general weak feeling. But luckily this should start to wear of, since she is entering 11th week now, and they say that most women start feeling better in 11-12th week.

I will kep you  updated on what happends on this of course.

So another update, this more boring than babies.  :roll:

With the move came a bonus, as I mentioned in the previous blogg, the server would be moved to a faster connection, well this was true, right now it is connected to a 100/100mbit Fiber connection.

Well not directly to fiber, but close, the Fiber converter is in the Fuse cabinet.

So you should notice a slight speed improvement loading images and such on the Album, or on your page if you are hosted with me.

Another update is that I decided to learn more about Server Virtualization, for those of you who don’t know what that is well, to be brief, I have a Computer that acts as a server, This server does a lot of things, most noticibly Hosting this blog, and the album, but it also does E-mail, file server, Database server and some other things. And right now it all runs as one server, all running in the same environement.

For a home server that is fine, but for businesses, it is not a good idea, since if for example the Mail server crashes or if a hacker found a security flaw in the web server, this could spread to all the other services, and take them all down.

Before this was solved by having one or more computers for each type of service, so one computer for Mail, one for Web, and another for Database, and so on.

But that is very inefficient and expensive, both in Energy and Money.

Because usually not all services need all the resources of the computer at the same time leaving many servers stanidng doing nothing a lot of the time.

So instead someone came up with the idea of Virtual servers.

Basically that means that on one computer runs several virtual servers, all Isolated from each other.

So even if one server get’s hacked or crashes, all the others will remain unaffected.

It also gives the advantage that you can run different type of Operating systems on the same computer at the same time, for example different flavours of Linux, Windows, and Solaris.

Well i wanted to try and learn more about this, so started investigating and I found a nice open source virtualization system called Xen, unfortuantly the hardware I have does not fully support virtualization, basically as you remember some time ago I upgraded the hardware in the Server, and bought new motherboard and CPU and so on, well the CPU I got was a Pentium D 805, and this does not have the Virtualization feature, so Today I bought a new CPU called Pentium D 930.

Unfortunatly my Motherboard is too old to support the new Core2Duo or Quad processors, so had to stick with the Pentium D generation.

I picked up the last one they had in the store.

I installed it and besides having the ability to do Virtualization, it also got a  bigger Level 2 Cache and it is a bit faster, 3.0Ghz, vs the old 2.6Ghz, this while still using slightly less electricity.

Now I need to collect some money to upgrade the memory also, this would give a good speed bump, since right now it is kind of struggeling with only 1GB.

I even tried to steal some memory from my old Dell PC, it has 1,5GB, so wanted to take the 1G, but it was too old. the Dell is using DDR 400, and server uses DDR2 667

So I have to go and get some new once.

Donations are as usually always welcome.  :mrgreen:

Well anyway, to be able to set up Virtual servers on my server, I need to reinstall everything, since I don’t have another server to take over while doing this it means I have to take down everything while doing that.

I plan to do it this comming weekend 5, 6 and 7th of September, if it does not work out I will make another attempt in the weekend after.

Well that was all for this time.

Brian.

Spam and Maintanance update. »« Moving to Sweden

Moving to Sweden

So time for another update.

Not a very good blog, too infrequent, but well no matter.

I have now been living almost 8 years and 7 months in Holland.

And I had decided quire a while ago that it was time to move on.

So, on the 27th of June we will move to Stockholm.

In regards to the server, there should already be a an Internet connection there by the time we move there, and I will move the server with me and set it up in Sweden, but that does mean that it wil be down for some time.

Count that it might take the whole weekend of 27-30 of June to get everything set up.

If for some reason Internet is not set up by the time we get there, I have a backup plan to put it at my Mothers place, but that could add some time.

The good News is that while server is currently on an ADSL connection with only about 1mbit upstream, the connection in Sweden will be 100mbit, so hopefully it should be a bit faster.

Will try to make some more updates later.

Brian.

Some updates and Server Maintanance. »« A sleeples night.

A sleeples night.

Huff, So It is 03:30 at night, and I have been awake for at least an hour, twisting and turning in Bed.

I’m not really sure why, but while twisting and turning, Ideas for my car kept popping up, so I decided to get up and write a bit about it.

People who know me, know that I have a Volvo 850 T5 Saloon.

The car is from 1994, and well has over 600.000km on the meter, but it still drives great.

Of course with such an old car, it has some faults, It drinks Oil like crazy about 1 liter every 800km.
The Air Co is not working, and because of the Oil leaking onto the exhaust pipe, it is not possible to use the ventilation when idling or driving slowly like city traffic, this because it takes in the air mixed with burnt oil fumes.
And lastly the previous owner did a horrible paint job, and paint has started fading on the Hood.

But besides that, there is hardly any rust on it, it still drives 240km/hour without a hitch, and accelerates fast enough to outrun most non tuned and some tuned cars.

So what do I want to do with the car?, well first of all, I actually wanted a V70R, but since I don’t have the money to buy one, I will focus on this car.

I wanted to have a hook on the car, to be able to pull a trailer, or put one of those bicycle holders.

I went to the Volvo dealer Svala Motors in Zandam and asked for a quote on the price for a new one. Unfortunately their computer system were down when I was there so they were not able to give me a quote, but I left my Details, and they promised to call back.

I the mean time I went to a company here called Brezan, and they gave me a quote of €350 for one with 7 pole electric connector.

I figured that was rather expensive thinking I can just as well get a second hand one.

So I started looking and found some different websites offering searches from Car scrap yards, and found onderdelenzoeker.nl, here I filled in a search and some days later I got some offers, ranging from €100 without shipping and with old electrics, to €90 including shipping and new 7 pole Electrics. I ordered the cheap one including shipping from De Boer Auto Demonatage.

2 days later Volvo called back and left a voice mail, asking if I wanted 7 or 13 pole connector, but since I had now already ordered the second hand one I never followed up on it.

Well about a week after I ordered, it arrived, I opened it and the flakes of rust was falling out, wow it was very second hand, well you get what you pay for. I looked up some drawings of how it should be connected, and quickly realized that there were a lot of pieces missing, so off to Volvo to get those pieces. This time I went to Furness Car in Amsterdam Southeast.

After some investigation with them, we found out that I actually needed to order a Mounting kit, since most of the parts I needed were not available separate, ok so another €50 for those. While I was there I asked how much a new hook would have costed. he told me €180 not including electrics.
I quicly realized, that I could just as well have ordered it there, argh.

ok, well now it is 05:30, so need to get ready to go to work, will continue laters.

Moving to Sweden »« New harddrive arrived and installed.