William Goodall's Blog » IT http://blog.williamgoodall.name Occasional mutterings Fri, 23 Jul 2010 20:08:01 +0000 en hourly 1 Apple Is the New Microsoft, Part 2 http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/07/21/apple-is-the-new-microsoft-part-2/ http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/07/21/apple-is-the-new-microsoft-part-2/#comments Wed, 21 Jul 2010 11:36:11 +0000 William_T_Goodall http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/07/21/apple-is-the-new-microsoft-part-2/

Apple surpassed Microsoft two months ago as the world’s most highly valued tech company, and is now challenging the Redmond giant on another key metric: In a blowout third quarter, AAPL posted record revenue of $15.7 billion, which should be close to or exceed what Microsoft reports Thursday. [From Apple Is the New Microsoft, Part 2]

That would be two out of three. How long until Apple overtakes Microsoft on profit too?

Later

Next quarter then :-)

]]> http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/07/21/apple-is-the-new-microsoft-part-2/feed/ 0 I write like David Foster Wallace http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/07/16/i-write-like-david-foster-wallace/ http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/07/16/i-write-like-david-foster-wallace/#comments Fri, 16 Jul 2010 12:47:06 +0000 William_T_Goodall http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/07/16/i-write-like-david-foster-wallace/ Flattering if it were true :-)

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

]]> http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/07/16/i-write-like-david-foster-wallace/feed/ 0 D-Link DNS-323 http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/07/03/d-link-dns-323/ http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/07/03/d-link-dns-323/#comments Sat, 03 Jul 2010 12:57:08 +0000 William_T_Goodall http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/07/03/d-link-dns-323/ The box containing the DNS-323 and the cheapest compatible drive I could find (which was a 500GB) arrives and is unpacked.

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NAS and HD in boxes.

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Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB.

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Eco-friendly cardboard packaging on the DNS-323.

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It is even smaller than I expected.

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Cables, power brick.

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It seems quite nicely made.

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Side by side with HD before installation.

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Another view.

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Rear view.

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Front cover just slides off to slide in drive(s)

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Assembled and hacked in short order. Got lighthttpd mySQL and PHP running. Just a bit of tweaking and hardening and then I’ll find a place to tuck it away out of sight and save some desk space :-)

Later

Tucked away in the home theatre cabinet with other fan-bearing gadgets.

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]]> http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/07/03/d-link-dns-323/feed/ 0 Dead Server part ii http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/06/29/dead-server-part-ii/ http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/06/29/dead-server-part-ii/#comments Tue, 29 Jun 2010 21:10:21 +0000 William_T_Goodall http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/06/29/dead-server-part-ii/ I ordered a D-Link DNS-323 NAS on Amazon for under a £100 with the cheapest supported HD I could find without looking for too long which was a Western Digital Caviar 500GB for £36. Should arrive Thursday and once I’ve hacked it will have a web server, PHP, MySQL and such on it and will serve.

]]> http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/06/29/dead-server-part-ii/feed/ 0 Dead Server http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/06/26/dead-server/ http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/06/26/dead-server/#comments Sat, 26 Jun 2010 13:55:47 +0000 William_T_Goodall http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/06/26/dead-server/ The ancient G3/350 “Kihei” iMac from 2000 I was using as a server on my home network expired sometime in the last week. I don’t know when because my network monitoring software, which emails me when there are faults, was running on it :-) It also ran a cron job to send some automated email reminders to places, and hosted some bits and bobs of DAMP web pagery I had experimented with over the years. And a chatroom that seldom saw much use that I hosted for a moribund mailing list I’ve been on for many years.

I’d upgraded the HD and RAM on the iMac but I’m not going to try fixing a power supply or whatever it was let out the magic smoke.

I’m thinking about what to replace it with. A Sheevaplug or hacked NAS type solution for less than £100 would be good.

]]> http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/06/26/dead-server/feed/ 0 SKY HD reboot part 2 http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/06/25/sky-hd-reboot-part-2/ http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/06/25/sky-hd-reboot-part-2/#comments Fri, 25 Jun 2010 18:39:34 +0000 William_T_Goodall http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/06/25/sky-hd-reboot-part-2/ Previously.

The mechanical timer did the job but was a bit too noisy.

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So I replaced it with this.

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I shall find out tomorrow if I managed to program it correctly :-)

]]> http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/06/25/sky-hd-reboot-part-2/feed/ 0 Intel preps x86 Android for summer release http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/06/25/intel-preps-x86-android-for-summer-release/ http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/06/25/intel-preps-x86-android-for-summer-release/#comments Fri, 25 Jun 2010 00:26:52 +0000 William_T_Goodall http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/06/25/intel-preps-x86-android-for-summer-release/

There is no joy in Redmond Microsoft got some more bad news today: Intel is porting Android 2.2, née Froyo, to the x86 architecture.… [From Intel preps x86 Android for summer release]

I’ve never understood why anyone would pay for Windows when Linux is free and OS X is better.

]]> http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/06/25/intel-preps-x86-android-for-summer-release/feed/ 0 WordPress 3.0 http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/06/17/wordpress-3-0/ http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/06/17/wordpress-3-0/#comments Thu, 17 Jun 2010 17:27:25 +0000 William_T_Goodall http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/06/17/wordpress-3-0/ WordPress 3.0 was released today so I upgraded this blog to use it. Needless to say I ignored all the instructions and then it didn’t entirely go smoothly. I had to ftp in and manually fiddle with things to get it working. It all seems to be going now :-)

]]> http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/06/17/wordpress-3-0/feed/ 0 SKY HD reboot http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/06/14/sky-hd-reboot/ http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/06/14/sky-hd-reboot/#comments Mon, 14 Jun 2010 12:40:34 +0000 William_T_Goodall http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/06/14/sky-hd-reboot/ My SKY HD DVR needs to be rebooted every day or it develops issues like not recording things. To avoid the hassle of digging around in the cable mess behind the home theatre I plugged it into a RC socket so I could reboot it by remote control.

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However remembering to do that every day was a bit of a pain so today I swapped in a timer switch to reboot the box at 6AM every day (a time I’m never recording anything at anyway). Lets see if I got that set up right :-)

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Later.

]]> http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/06/14/sky-hd-reboot/feed/ 0 Objective-C Moves Into Top 10 of Tiobe Programming Language Index http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/06/02/objective-c-moves-into-top-10-of-tiobe-programming-language-index/ http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/06/02/objective-c-moves-into-top-10-of-tiobe-programming-language-index/#comments Wed, 02 Jun 2010 19:02:24 +0000 William_T_Goodall http://blog.williamgoodall.name/2010/06/02/objective-c-moves-into-top-10-of-tiobe-programming-language-index/

Up from #39 one year ago.

★

[From Objective-C Moves Into Top 10 of Tiobe Programming Language Index]

So it’s not an obscure language that nobody uses any more then :-)

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