Lambda

I’ve been looking into purchasing some new hardware for a web server recently, and I’ve come across some interesting deals. As I had mentioned before, there are some fantastic deals on the Intel Atom boards, however I am also finding some excellent barebones systems that are based on some of the other netbook designs. There was a fairly interesting system based on the MSI Wind platform that had a Gig ethernet port instead of 10/100, and included a mini itx case that could accommodate 3 drives. There were no PCI slots though.

Eventually, I’d like to have some form of raid backup so that I don’t lose everything to a bum drive, but that is probably more for down the road. Hopefully I can make a decision about this at some point. For all new hardware, it should only be about $360 bucks. Not too bad for a computer that would run well over $1000 only a few years ago.

The downside of this shopping being the fact that I am now also looking at some of these netbooks as a portable laptop. I’ve currently got the Vostro 1500 15″ laptop, and it works great, but the thing is a little large to grab and go with. If I go for a 9″ laptop, I could throw it into my bagpipe case and carry the thing on when I travel (eliminating the need to carry the larger laptop) and still get some work done. Since these netbooks currently run 1.6ghz and up with a gig of ram, I’m fairly confident that they could run my work vpn software and allow me to do anything I needed to do. We’ll see where this leads eventually.

Finally figured out how to put my old archives back on here. This has been a learning process, and seeing as I don’t have a -ton- of time to devote to this, it’s been taking a while to complete.

As far as new webservers go, now that I have my archives back up and running, I can safely wipe the old server and get me some ubuntu going. I’m also interested in looking to purchase an Intel Atom based mini ITX mainboard to play with. Since this puppy only uses about 45 watts when the processor is taxed, I think that might be the “Green” way to go. The boards (with processor included) are only $60-70, and I can probably use the memory I have now.

Either that, or I really want one of those Qnap NAS 4drive devices. Those are spendy though.

Had some downtime there. The server crashed on me while I was working on it from work and I forgot to restart it yesterday. Back up now, for the time being. Some day I’ll build a new one… some day…

A few updates from my summer. I’ve had a couple of fun events and trips the past few weeks, and while they were fun, it has been fairly nice to have some down time where I don’t have to travel or devote a whole lot of my time to any particular thing.

Over the 4th of July, I took a family road trip to Paulina Iowa to visit some family. This trip was both fantastic and insane all at the same time. I’ve come to the realization that “family roadtrips” are simply not a good idea.

I should have known that something was amiss when my family arrived to pick me up and depart. We had 5 people, my Grandmother and Grandfather, Mother, Brother and Me all crammed into a four door sedan. I had been delegated to driving, and had to place all of my luggage between me and the shotgun passenger. The trunk was so full, that we had luggage packed in between (and in some cases, on top of) various passengers. Being the driver, I had the whole safety thing preventing me from having too much on top of me, so that was nice. My mother needs to learn to pack less crap when she travels…

The drive to the family gathering took us through Wichita Kansas and Omaha Nebraska, and eventually landed us in pretty, little Paulina Iowa. We lucked into being able to stay on the Air Force bases in both Wichita and Omaha, and I must say that they were very nice for the price. Luckily the trip up didn’t last much longer, because I don’t know how much longer the occupants of the car were going to survive the clown car.

Once we finally arrived, we had a wonderful time. My Grandfather was raised in Paulina, and (as with small towns I guess) there were lots of family that either lived there or came back to visit. I got to meet more relatives than a Mormon family reunion. While this wasn’t an “official” reunion for any part of my family, it was the QuasQuiCentennial celebration for Paulina (125 years if you were wondering), so lots of people showed up. There was a tractor parade, a kid parade, a parade parade… Actually, for being a small town, they put on a pretty good time. Things were a bit more relaxed than I am normally accustomed too, including the fireworks show (I think the finale went off some time in the middle of the show), but I enjoyed the pace.

The Return trip was NOT good… I’ll post on that a bit later.

The only other big thing that I’ve had in a while was the Arlington Scottish Festival. This was my first time playing out there with the band, and it was quite a bit of fun. I learned enough from last year that I wore enough sunscreen and didn’t bake. It seemed like it went by much quicker this year, probably because I actually had to do stuff, but it was a good fun weekend.

The only thing I have for August is a wedding, so I’m going to get to enjoy some relaxing times.

The Nortel stock that I have been purchasing for a while now has finally started showing weak signs of life the last two days. After a great announcement that Nortel is partnering with Alvarion to offload some of its WiMax work. This means that the company can now focus more heavily on the larger potential of LTE (Long term Evolution).

That, coupled with the fact that JPMorgan has recently upgraded the stock to “Overweight” means that the stock took a nice jump the last two days. Hopefully the momentum can maintain a health pace toward the elusive $23 price range that was recently predicted.

As a shareholder, all of this makes me just a little bit happer. Unfortunately, even at the current price of $10.30, we are still less than %50 of the value 1 year ago… Some of that pain is mitigated by the fact that I was able to purchase quite a few shares when it bottomed out. As more of the analysts start putting buy ratings on the stock, and assuming that Nortel can actually live up to its financial predictions, this could be good times for the stock.

Ballantyne Memorial P & D are the 2008 U.S. Open Bagpipe champions. Sundays performance was brilliant, and we won with a landslide.

Overall, the Alma games were very enjoyable. Alma Michigan is a fairly small town, but the entire place gets fired up for these games. Apparently Alma is “Scotland, USA”, and the entire town has a touristy Scotland theme going for it. The Alma College Scots are resident there, and the place even sports a “Bravehearts Pub” (Complete with bagpipes on the wall). Opening day Saturday, there was a rather immense parade down main street, and I’d wager to bet that this is the largest parade the town has in the year. The festival itself was pretty decently sized, complete with the usual highland dancing, highland games, vendors, food, clan tents and of course the pipes and drums competition. This festival also sported a bazaar outside the gates which was fairly impressive. All in all, there was not a lack of things to do and see.

The band had a great time at the festival. We stayed on campus in the dorms (which were complete crap… For you UP types, think Villa Hall but worse), and even though the accommodations weren’t great we had excellent access to the entire games. The 2 minute walk was nice when we were done for the day and wanted to get out of there quickly. We spent Friday night doing a quick practice, and Saturday and Sunday nights were spent eating and drinking. Mostly drinking…

The competitions Saturday and Sunday were a lot of fun. Saturdays performance caught me by surprise. I guess I was a bit nervous, because all I remember was us warming up for about an hour, and then coming to the sudden realization that we were on the starting line getting ready to play… I don’t even really remember walking over there. Regardless, Saturday we played OK. It wasn’t the strongest performance that we’ve ever had, but we managed to eek out the 1st place. Sunday, we were feeling pretty good from the win the day before, but our warm-up seemed a bit off. I’m not sure what happened between when we stopped warming up to the actual performance, but when we did play, we’ve never played that well before. Everything sort of fell into place. Sundays U.S. Open competition was the biggest challenge so far, and we managed to pull out our A game for sure. We had a nice big trophy presented to us, and have some nice bragging rights now.

The grade 4 band placed 3rd on Saturday and 4th on Sunday, however admittedly their competition was considerably more difficult than ours was. They performed admirably, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard them play as well as they did. It was truly impressive.

Most pipers will bawk at the idea of playing in the massed bands. Often, you end up standing there for long times while somebody drones on over the PA system reading this award and that award off. Its often hot and uncomfortable, and when the bands are playing the musicality of the tunes goes right out the window. I, however, think it’s completely entertaining to be out there with so many pipers and drummers. It’s an impressive sight, and while it might not sound musically good, the sound is nevertheless very impressive. The massed bands at Batesville was considerably smaller than this festival, so this was my first time of being surrounded by well over 200 pipers and drummers. It’s a lot of fun. In the picture above, I’m directly behind (and obscured by) the lead drum major in front.

In all, the weekend was a huge success for our bands. When we arrived, no one at the festival knew who the North Texas Caledonians were. That gave us an X factor, and they were afraid of us because we were an unknown quantity. Now they know that the lands in the south can play, and they are afraid of us because they know what we can do.

Official Results: HERE

Just a brief update…

The grade 5 band took first place of seven bands yesterday after a surprising first showing. We hope to repeat the effort today. So far, that makes me 2-0.

The grade 4 band had some stiff competition and came in third. Hopes are high that both bands will have strong performances today, and that we will come home with more trophies.

This is the schedule for the Alma Michigan games for 2008.

Saturday 5/24/08

Circle 1

Grade 4

2:00 p.m. Windsor Police Pipe Band
2:10 p.m. 87th Cleveland Pipe Band
2:20 p.m. Flint Scottish Pipe Band
2:30 p.m. Chicago Stockyard Kilty Band
2:40 p.m. Northwest Indiana Pipes and Drums
2:50 p.m. Penetangore Pipe Band
3:00 p.m. North Texas Caledonian Pipes and Drums
3:10 p.m. The Frost Pipe Band

Grade 2

3:30 p.m. City of Chicago Pipe Band
3:40 p.m. Midlothian Scottish Pipe Band

Grade 1

4:00 p.m. Windsor Police Pipe Band

Circle 2

Grade 5

2:00 p.m. Cabar Feidh Pipe Band
2:10 p.m. Ballantyne Memorial Pipe Band
2:20 p.m. Culver Pipes and Drums
2:30 p.m. Grand Rapids and District Pipe Band
2:40 p.m. Doonaree Pipe Band
2:50 p.m. Flint Scottish Pipe Band
3:00 p.m. Penetangore Pipe Band

Grade 3

3:20 p.m. Toronto Police Pipe Band
3:30 p.m. City of Rockford Pipe Band
3:40 p.m. Ann Arbor Pipes and Drums
3:50 p.m. Macalester College Pipe Band

Sunday 5/25/08

Circle 1

Grade 5

2:00 p.m. Cabar Feidh Pipe Band
2:10 p.m. Ballantyne Memorial Pipe Band
2:20 p.m. Culver Pipes and Drums
2:30 p.m. Grand Rapids and District Pipe Band
2:40 p.m. Doonaree Pipe Band
2:50 p.m. Flint Scottish Pipe Band
3:00 p.m. Penetangore Pipe Band

Grade 3

3:20 p.m. Toronto Police Pipe Band
3:30 p.m. City of Rockford Pipe Band
3:40 p.m. Ann Arbor Pipes and Drums
3:50 p.m. Macalester College Pipe Band
Circle 2

Grade 4

2:00 p.m. Windsor Police Pipe Band
2:10 p.m. 87th Cleveland Pipe Band
2:20 p.m. Flint Scottish Pipe Band
2:30 p.m. Chicago Stockyard Kilty Band
2:40 p.m. Northwest Indiana Pipes and Drums
2:50 p.m. Penetangore Pipe Band
3:00 p.m. North Texas Caledonian Pipes and Drums
3:10 p.m. The Frost Pipe Band

Grade 2

3:30 p.m. City of Chicago Pipe Band
3:40 p.m. Midlothian Scottish Pipe Band

Grade 1

4:00 p.m. Windsor Police Pipe Band

I’m on my way to my own HTPC. I recently purchased a new Mac Mini with the 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo processor and Super Drive, and have hooked it up to my TV already. This is the first Mac that I’ve ever owned, so I am going to have fun playing around with it, To be quite honest, the installation was rather painless, and I was up and running in under 5 minutes after opening the box.

The Mini that I have is the more expensive of the two, but I’ve had a $150 Apple Store card burning a hole in my pocket since I moved to Texas (Thanks Reliant Energy!). Coupled with my employee discount from my work, the faster system was cheaper than an off the shelf version of the second tier one.

As I said above, so far I’ve hooked the mini up to my Samsung TV, and was able to hook up to my existing wireless network without any problems. As for sound for now, I’ve simply moved my existing Creative 5.1 setup from my old computer to the mini (minus the center and rear channels). Since this was an analog only set of speakers, I can’t get the full 5.1 goodness from them, but this will suffice for the interim. It’s better than the lone internal speaker from the mini.

I’m able to seemlessly stream movies and music from my other computers without any real setup beyond sharing drives or telling iTunes to share the library. The next steps for the mini are to purchase some form of home audio system (though living in an apartment, this isn’t a necessity), and possibly getting a tv capture device. I’m not sure if I can hook the mini straight up to my satallite receiver, but I’ll have to research that a little more.

I also have a spare copy of XP Pro lying around somewhere that I’ll try to get going with Boot Camp. Geekyness abound…

I’m still fooling around with OS X, so I haven’t gotten much further than installing the Divx and Xvid codecs for Quicktime, but I’m able to watch vids that I have now, and have been able to stream other content directly in iTunes with the sharing feature built into that.

A thanks to Ray for the idea of hooking the mini up to my TV for this purpose.

Ballantyne Memorial Pipes and Drums (The band I’m in)

1st Place Grade 5

North Texas Caledonian Pipes and Drums

1st Place Grade 4