Author: spierzchala

  • Ghostly Images of Urban Decay

    Randomly, I will select a Flickr Group and subscribe to it for a while, just to see what images bubble to the surface.

    All Rights Reserved — Carey Primeau

    This picture is a stunning photograph — part of a series taken inside an abandoned monastery in Chicago (pictures – story).

    He chronicles many of his urban decay images here.

  • GrabPERF: Back in Business

    Many thanks go out to the technical team for getting the GrabPERF Web server back on the Interweb.

    All the good (and bad) news about Web performance is back.

  • Lord Black wants to come home…NOT!

    Conrad Black, who gave up his Canadian citizenship to sit in the House of Lords, wants it back.
    Problem: he faces eight fraud charges in the US [here] . Takeaway quote from the article:

    “I have settled into my new life as a freedom fighter,” said Black.

    I think that he should be held to exactly the same standard that any foreign immigrant is when applying for Canadian citizenship.
    Can’t wait to hear him explain away the criminal charges/conviction part of the questionnaire.
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  • WRT54G(L): Interesting Behaviour

    I was futzing around with my WRT54G(L) last night and did something wrong. I thought I had bricked the damn thing. Much cursing and swearing ensued as I put a BEFSX41 on the front-end of the network (I have three of these; don’t ask why) and wandered upstairs with the lump of black and blue plastic that used to be the hub of my wireless network.
    After much fiddling, I thought I had it working, so I plugged it into the network drop I have at my desk…and the damn thing disappeared!
    Not physically, but from the network. I couldn’t connect to it via the network ports, and when I did connect wirelessly, I got an IP address from the wired router..????
    Then the lightbulb went on. It appears that when you put a WRT54G(L) on a network behind another router (most likely only happens with other Linksys devices) , it immediately becomes an access point ONLY.
    This was the way it was supposed to work.
    And people wonder why Linksys/Cisco sells so many of these damn things. With automagic behaviour like this, it makes the world of networking so much easier for morons like me.
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  • GrabPERF: Frustrated and Demoralized

    The GrabPERF Web server has been offline for more than 4 days, after it was moved to a new rack.
    Kevin Burton complained about the lack of availability today [here].
    I have enquired about an ETA for return to service. None has been forthcoming.
    At this point, I guess you can consider GrabPERF offline until further notice.

  • GrabPERF: Web server still out

    The folks who host the server are slammed and trying to figure out what is happening. Hopefully it will return to action tomorrow.

  • GrabPERF: Web Server Offline

    Last night, the folks at the hosting facility moved the servers to a new rack. The database server is up and data is coming in from the measurement agents, but the Web server is not yet back up.

    I hope that this will be resolved later today. Sorry for the inconvenience.

  • Welcome aboard!

    I finally tired of running my own blog server, and since most folks use the feeds, I figure I will abuse Matt Mullenweg’s bandwidth rather than my own.

    Welcome back?

  • Creative Hiatus — Sketching

    As a part of my creative hiatus, I have strated sketching. A lot. Still lifes mainly (people are still way off in the future), and mostly objects found on my desk and around the house.

    Nothing worth showing yet, but it is relaxing to dissect an object line by line and then put it back together.

  • The Size of Storage

    Today, I took an inventory of the portable storage solutions I have with me at all times.

    The Size of Storage

    On the bottom, a Maxtor OneTouch III Mini Edition at 100GB. In the middle, an 8GB Zen Microphoto. On to, a mostly useless iPod Shuffle that I use as a thumbdrive.

    The top two are provided for context. I also purchased a 300GB Maxtor OneTouch III that I use for my media files.

    Based on it’s size, the Maxtor Mini must use a standard 100GB laptop drive in a sleek aluminum housing. So far, It’s a dream. Slides into my bag, acts as a backup, and stores larger media files for when I’m on the road.

    But the whole idea that I can slip nearly 110GB of storage into my pack is insane. And next year, this will be old school.