Starvin’ Marvin

I’m taking a while but I must admit I have a masterplan to build my personal Home Cinema system. As you might know, I’ve in my possession PlayStation 3. Being one great gaming console, it is also a fantastic and credit crunch Blue-Ray Player. A while ago (didn’t notice it was already 2 years ago) I acquired  a fabulous Sony Bravia KDL-32V2000. Although a little bit dated it is still a great TV, not too small not to big. I know it is not Full HD, but for a 32” sized LCD, it does not matter. Now I’m planning the final step of my malevolent plan. I’ve two pieces of hardware that I plan to buy for Christmas. An AV receiver and a 5.1 set of speakers. I haven’t made my mind completely, but my choices currently are:

• Sony STR-DG820 AV Receiver (around 350-400€)
• Q Acoustics 1000i set of speakers (should go around 500€ 745€, still haven’t found a place to buy in Portugal in Supportview)
• Pack WHARFEDALE AVI-9.10 set of speakers (580€ available in here)

What’s your opinion?

EDIT: Just found out a reseller fo Q Acoustics but news aren’t that good: 745€ for the set described above!

I’ve setup a simple and reliable monitoring mechanism on VPS. Basically i’m using:

• Monit:  as stated in the site, monit is a utility for managing and monitoring, processes, files, directories and filesystems on a UNIX system. Monit conducts automatic maintenance and repair and can execute meaningful causal actions in error situations. So basically I’m using it to monitor (and restart if necessary) the daemons I consider important.
• Munin: well it generates a ton of graphs and stats that allows me to check up how everything is going.

I like these tools, they are simple and nice. So what do you guys use?

It seems that haven’t been post for a long time now. So here it goes a brief news update.

First of all, I have a new job - I’m working as Network Enginner in Sonaecom in Access and Transmission Engineering group.

Other good news is that Benfica won against the city rivals Sporting 2 - 0. I was on the stadium and I must say it was one of the amazing games I ever watched live.

And now for something completely different, here goes a reading sugestion: If you are geek enough, you should read this lengthy article sent by a friend of mine (thanks Nuno). It’s about the famous Moore’s law. It’s a great way to learn a little more about the Moore’s law, processor’s manufacturing proccess and options taken by manufacturer’s.

I’ll try to keep a tigher posting agenda.

I was just reading my daily links and I just found out something really unfair. Take a look at this. It seems that OCN, the japanese carrier operated by NTT Communications is imposing daily limits for uploads. Not fair right? Well, not quite like that… It seems they are imposing a… 30 Gb limit of upload per day. How’s that for abuse?! Oh, by the way, downloads stay uncapped.

Word of advise, portuguese operators deploying fiber: prepare your core networks and ask manufacturers for your 10Gb uplink cards - 10 users at 100Mbps = 1 Gbps. Having in mind the portuguese way, if you offer something like 100Mbps some people will use it to the limits in order to improve their cinematographic and musical culture.

Let’s see how it goes…

Ever wondered why Google launched a mobile version of Google Maps, even for non-GPS enabled handsets? Your answer is right here. The updated version of Google Maps for mobiles comes with a new service that gives you rudimentary location information without needing a built-in GPS. The name for this new feature is My Location and is still in the beta phase but will provide your location in the map wherever Google Maps is available.

It seems that this new application takes advantage of the information broadcasted from cell towers and from the Cell ID it is able approximate your current location. Of course, this feature is pretty intrusive (google could track your location with this, but hey, they already can track what search for and you care do you?), so if you are a privacy freak, don’t use this. Nevertheless, this is a innovative piece of software and very useful if you don’t have a GPS enabled hanset.

I’ve tried the feature in Lisbon, and it work pretty well, giving me an accuracy of about 2km in my tests. I must confess I was not expecting this to work here in Portugal, because I thought Google wouldn’t have geolocation of cell IDs used here in Portugal, but it seems that they already have a huge database with this. I wonder how they built this database… Did they bought this information from operators or did they gathered this info by wandering around?

I was installing Firefox on one of my machines and I realized how nice plug-ins are. So I decided to compile in a post some must have plugins that you I need to install every I do a fresh Firefox install:

• Foxmarks - By far the best way to have your bookmarks synced and saved in the network
• DownloadThemAll - Well, one of the things I hate in Firefox is the Download Manager. DownloadThemAll is a pretty good Download Manager and provides me all the features I need: fast downloads, HTTP multiple gets, one click downloads, etc.
• Scrapbook - Found something interesting, but no time to read it now? Thanks to a friend of mine I found a easy way to save parts of webpages to enjoy later on. You may think this is not very useful, but it really improves your online efficiency.
• Foxtrick - Do you play hattrick? If the answer is yes, then you know why you need it.

I could state more, but these ones are the ones I consider essential. Do you have any other suggestions? Fell free to suggest some.

Edit (28/11/2007): I added one plug-in that I have forgotten. One that it is really simple and really helpful: QuickProxy. The name says it all, just a simple icon in the status bar for quick switch between no proxy and  proxy enabled.

Fifty years after Sputnik launch, I present you something that it’s not rocket science: a wireless upgrade to your wifi antenna. This is one way to go, but you can even simplify more the project. The material? You just need to pick up a piece of aluminum foil and a scissor. How to do it? Just watch this!

I have tried this, it really works! To prove my point, just check this screen cap: the red line indicates more or less the time when I’ve placed parabolic dish in my WiFi antenna. Impressive, uh?

Really… I’m not happy at all with the look of my little personal site. Ok, I know, this Wordpress almost in it’s pure state, so what am I complaining about? I am planning to do major revolution around here…

Anyway, I also installed DokuWiki, a simple to use Wiki, mainly aimed at creating documentation that I intend use as a personal repository of documentation. And talking about wikis, what about Newton, a desktop wiki applet for the GNOME2 desktop environment. it is pretty useful to enter your notes and information in a simple wiki-like syntax that Newton formats it in rich HTML for you. Kinda useful for fast notes and todo lists.

And now, for a little fun, RFCs published in the 1st April. I specially like the one about Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol (HTCPCP/1.0). Very useful.

Ok, enough for today.