Dream Theater where rocking Oslo 2 years ago. Krikri & I bought tickets the minute they were out for sale, we’ll be screaming our hearts out
Its not too late for you either, get your tickets here!
*disclaimer* some of my friends, I wont mention names, have had a laugh at my so called technical gibberish. This post will be no exception *disclaimer*
Running several distributions can cause more than your average the-day-after hangover when you are due for a upgrade. Granted some are more a breeze than others, but they all got their quirks in some shape or form.
To my suprise this round the distro I was most worried about turned out to be the least of my worries.
To sum up the mix of distros running both dedicated and virtual atm I got; FreeBSD, Slackware, *ubuntu, CentOS & Gentoo. The ones I dreaded this round were CentOS(4.2->5) & Gentoo, the latter more so due to running old gcc, mysql and well, quiet a few other daemons & applications that are vital.
Although I love Gentoo it has lost terrain not to due to its capabilities & customizations, but rather well, what could be considered its biggest pros & cons. Since its a source based distro you got total control of what should be compiled, with which use flags & not to forget nailing the version of the given application at your discretion. But, and yeah, there is a but, the compile times even with Icecream chipping in can be a tool if you run several different archs. But looking aside from the day or so the boxes still running Gentoo had to use to get up to date it was really no problems. This is the first time in many years Gentoo has given me a “mainstream distro” feeling during such a big upgrade.
So all the coffee I had brewed, backups I had done, days of getting mentally ready for digging into odd errors were to no use? FreeBSD, Slackware & the various *ubuntu servers were all done, surely CentOS wouldnt be that bad?
Muhahaha, no, it wasnt, but it sure as hell beat all the previously mentioned distros by a milestone.
The fact that I run CentOS with OpenVZ did cause a few more hickups than a “vanilla” install would have, so I did get to consume most of the coffee I had prepared before I was done.
Ones you have the base systems updated/upgraded, and most of the vital daemons are up to date, then comes the fun stuff; All the other appliances/services running in the various boxes & VE’s..
This blog for instance, a Wordpress (aka WP) upgrade is no hassle, nor are most of the customizations Ive done to it. Only thing I wanted added feature wise was lightbox, had a decent hack with WPG2(v2) working earlier, but saw v3 had that on its feature list so decided to try it out. WPG2 is a integration plugin for WP to Gallery2, it has many features & uses, check out their wiki for more info.
To try & get back to topic of the post, the update cycle. With any update you got dependencies, and even more so when you add beta/rc appliancies to the pot. As I said, I wanted the lightbox feature in the blog, so brought home a SVN snapshot of WPG2v3, enabled and heh, lo’ and behold, more updates?
Sure, why not, WPG2v3 needed a newer WP, fair enough. Few minutes later, enabled WPG2v3 in latest WP(v2.2.2)… More updates? Yep, Gallery2 had to be updated, another 5 or so minutes Gallery2 v2.2.3 was in & WPG2v3 now works with lightbox.
So to sum it all up, *ubuntu, FreeBSD, Slackware & Gentoo, I still love you looong time, CentOS? Not so much, think its time to migrate OpenVZ to Gentoo or *ubuntu.
The rest of the daemons & appliances running have come a long way, most of them are a breeze to maintain & update. Be it bind, clamav, courier, dhcpd, exim, lighttpd, apache2, mysql, samba, snmpd, spamassassin and all its integrations & addons, it just works.
Summer is over, systems are all set for the winter… as always, if any of the services running under this or any of the other domains should have a hick-up, I’d appreciate a bug report.
I admit, Im a utter geek when it comes to WRC, I try not to watch tv, read newspapers or be “online” much during an event. To have few friends that share my passion for the sport also helps 
Last night I edited down the captures and started to watch what will be remembered as the most nail biteing rally to date. For those that dont care about the sport or just dont get it, let me try & recap, I’ll even add some screen captures & clips to hopefully help you see the light.
The fight between 1st & 2nd place could be summed up with; now-now, but that wouldnt be enough to justify a blog entry, so here is a clip from the second last stage(SS17).
Close enough? Not really, lets cut of a few more 10th shall we? Heres a clip from the remaining few seconds of the last stage(SS18).
A total race time of 3:52:53.9, almost 4 hours of flat-out nutty gravel driving and 0.3 seconds between the top places. Holy shit, I have never witnessed a battle like this, EVER. Heres Virtual Spectator showing the distance in meters.
7.6 meters…. A memorable weekend from the fantastic Rally of New Zealand, the battle for the WRC title is by no means over, the remaining rallies this season cannot come soon enough.
Bets are on, will it be Gronholm or Loeb thats on the top of the podium at the seasons end? I must admit, I hope for 2 finnish lads with a sob’in frenchy squeezed into second place.
Till next round; Flat out, over crest into hair pin right, dont cut, geeks inside!
I was reading a very well written article this morning as I enjoyed my freshly brewed java, its been on slashdot, digg & the link has travelled over many networks since it was published two days ago. It deserve every possible spread tho, so here’s to you Dave Gutteridge, you sir, made my day.
Link to article; Windows is Free
Saw this presentation last night on the Tour de France broadcast, but sadly wasnt home to hit the record button.
Calle Fegth called this morning & said it should air today aswell, since todays stage is indeed through the Cognac region.
I havent paid much attention to le Tour, so lucky for me(and you!) he called.
Cognac made the right way, if you havent tried any of their products yet, its due time you do!
It should also be noted that the Cognac you might have tasted from Jon Bertelsen is a cooperation with L. Gourmel.
And the links to the respective gents;
Leopold Gourmel
Jon Bertelsen
Cognac.no
Restaurant Credo
