Blog on Charlie's Server » This Blog

Major Blog Cleanup

Hasan — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 17:16:23 +0000

I’ve spent a great deal of time over the last few days cleaning up this blog. With too many things to really list exhaustively, I’ll fire off some of the major changes:

Clean WordPress Installation
Updated K2 Theme
Various Cosmetic Updates
New, Reduced Categories

More to come as I continue development and deployment. I look forward to complaints, comments and suggestions.

New Blog Feature: Subscribe to Comments

Hasan — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 16:31:51 +0000

In doing some basic maintenance, upgrades and the like on the blog over the last several hours, I’ve installed a ‘Subscribe to Comments’ plug-in that will enable you to do just that. At the bottom of each comment submission form you’ll have the option to subscribe to subsequent comments (on the same post) by way of e-mail. The usual privacy stuff applies – I won’t share your e-mail address with anyone, you can trust me, blah blah blah.

Enjoy!

Minor Layout Changes (Updated)

Hasan — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 03:27:57 +0000

In order to accommodate wider content, I have made the blog slightly wider. Now weighing in at 880 pixels wide, everything should still fit nicely on those of you still on a 1024 pixel screen width, assuming your browser window hogs a sufficient amount of screen real estate. On a larger horizontal resolution? Well, a little whitespace never hurt anyone.

I feel it’s pretty reasonable to expand the width of the blog for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because most people are moving to large and/or widescreen monitors anyways. I haven’t seen anyone using 800×600, or anything smaller than 1024×768 for that matter, for at least a year. Given that most people browse the web with their web browser maximized anyways, why not take advantage of the extra room if it’s already there? Secondly, there’s just no way I’m going to fit my nice widescreen videos, plus a sidebar and sufficient white-space, in less than 800 pixels. I didn’t even dream of it. The way I see it, it was only a matter of time.

Other minor changes have also been included in this update. I will be making any layout corrections that I see necessary on a rolling basis, so please let me know if you find any inconsistencies or issues! Feel free to leave feedback via a comment below.

Update (2007.10.14): Now this blog is even wider, at 960 pixels wide. Hooray for wider displays becoming more and more common!

From Slumber We Hath Awakened

Hasan — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 22:17:45 +0000

Charlie’s Server is back online, folks. We’re now hosted out of Boston, Massachusetts via Comcast High Speed Internet. Sorry about the downtime!

Upcoming Downtime

Hasan — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 21:41:37 +0000

Charlie’s Server (the host of this blog) will be down for an as yet determined amount of time while I relocate from Norwalk, CT to Boston, MA. At the very least, the server will be unavailable for four hours, and at the most two weeks. Updates will follow as I receive more information. I apologize for the inconvenience.

Blog on CS Finally Gets Its Fix

Hasan — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 20:33:02 +0000

I’ve been lagging on updates to the blog software lately, and am now pleased to announce that this blog has been updated to use the latest and greatest software. Both the blog engine and the theme engine have been updated to their latest released versions.

I decided against using the new widgetized sidebar interface in light of some AJAX strangeness within the K2 configuration panel for the sidebar (my widgets would suddenly disappear without apparent cause). I will give another shot at this when the next version of K2 is released. For now, I’m happy with the hard-coded sidebar as-is; since I already have it all set up the way I want it, there’s no need to change anything.

I’ve also updated several of the plugins used on this site. Increased performance, stability and features should ensue.

Please feel free to leave comments/feedback, especially if you find any bugs!

Upgrade to WordPress 2 Complete

Hasan — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 04:33:32 +0000

Blog on CS is now running WordPress 2.x. The upgrade was smooth save some WPG2 glitches, which were solved within an hour, and some K2 glitches, which were solved within another hour.

All in all, I’m impressed so far. The transition was as smooth as can be expected and the benefits are clearly visible, not to mention hightened security. I highly recommend upgrading to anyone running an older version of WordPress.

More Upgrades for Charlie’s Server

Hasan — Fri, 28 Oct 2005 19:49:20 +0000

I found a great deal on RAM for Charlie’s Server, so I went ahead and bought two 512MB sticks. This should fill out all four RAM slots for Charlie’s Server to exactly half capacity (2GB). I expect them to be delivered within another week.

I also found a great deal on SATA hard drives, so I bought two 10K RPM Raptor drives for Charlie’s server. They should provide a nice, fast, redundant replacement for the current nearly-decade-old 6GB drive that currently provides root.

I’m done spending for the next month or two.

Long Live Charlie’s Server

Hasan — Sun, 25 Sep 2005 00:26:28 +0000

Charlie’s Server is reborn. The previously mentioned replacement hardware came in a few days back, and the new server is up and running. To be honest, the speed (or lack thereof) of the new Athlon 64 hardware didn’t stun me. All in all, though, I think I made an excellent purchase, particularly in terms of bang for buck. It’s stable as anything, and more than fast enough for my needs.

The CPU

I’ve overclocked the 2000Mhz processor just the tiniest bit — to 2050Mhz — in order to push the total bogomips to just over 4000 (real nerds like round numbers). I don’t want to push the machine too much, as I’d instead prefer for the processor to last a lifetime (okay, I’ll settle for five years).

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor_id : AuthenticAMD cpu family : 15 model : 47 model name : AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3200+ stepping : 2 cpu MHz : 2050.033 cache size : 512 KB fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 1 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt lm 3dnowext 3dnow pni lahf_lm bogomips : 4063.23 TLB size : 1024 4K pages clflush size : 64 cache_alignment : 64 address sizes : 40 bits physical, 48 bits virtual power management: ts fid vid ttp tm stc

So that’s where it stands. I’m a bit upset about not being able to purchase the 1MB L2 cache model, but it was just too far outside my price range. Despite having the same L2 cache as Lina’s Pentium 4 (currently the processor in PowerBox) and just a 250Mhz clock speed increase, it seems to be approximately twice as fast. If I care enough (or am bored enough), I may do some proper benchmarking at some point.

The Memory

The Corsair ValueSelect RAM I bought performs well but not amazingly. It’s rated at 2.5 CAS and some users commented on review sites that they were able to run it just fine at 2. I had no such luck, though I didn’t look into it too deeply. Right now there’s two sticks at 512MB apiece (1GB total) running at 410Mhz (205Mhz DDR) in dual channel mode. Let’s just say I’m satisfied.

$ cat /proc/meminfo | head -n 1 MemTotal: 1027300 kB

The Motherboard

The motherboard is nothing short of excellent. The only thing I’d ask for above and beyond what the MSI K8N Neo4-F provides is IEEE1394 (FireWire). I can always buy a PCI card for that, though (or even PCI-Express if I really need excellent latency/bandwidth.

All of the onboard features appear to work out of the box with the Gentoo 2005.1 minimal amd64 LiveCD. I’m no kernel expert, but I was able to get the kernel working perfectly with everything I need in one shot. I have yet to play with ACPI and CPU frequency scaling (I really have no clue about this Cool 'n Quiet stuff), but I hope to get around to that eventually.

The Results

As for right now, things are working great, and I’m overjoyed with the products and service I got from both of the vendors I went with. I have posted excellent reviews for both of them in the appropriate places.

Finally, I have a stable server that actually works.

Replacement Hardware on the Way

Hasan — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 21:17:51 +0000

As previously mentioned, replacement hardware for Charlie’s Server was pending order. Now, all of the necessary replacement parts have been placed on order and are being shipped to Lina’s residence in South Windsor, Connecticut. It can be expected that Charlie’s Server will return by the last week of September.

The motherboard/CPU combo order from BZBoyz[1] has been charged, confirmed, and shipped. DHL’s expected delivery date for the motherboard and CPU is September 19.

I placed an order with ZipZoomFly[2] today for two 512Mb CAS2.5 Corsair ValueSelect sticks of RAM. The order went smoothly, and should ship out (via free 2-day FedEx) tomorrow. Since the RAM hasn’t actually been shipped yet, there’s no FedEx expected delivery date for me to list here, although I expect it to come in at the latest on the 19th (the same day as the motherboard/CPU).

Assuming all of the hardware works as expected, I should end up with a pretty nice replacement server. Wish me luck!

[1] I found BZBoyz to have the best deal on the motherboard/CPU products I wanted. I searched for motherboard/CPU vendors almost exclusively via PriceWatch. I have no previous experience with BZBoyz, though they have good reviews.
[2] I found ZipZoomFly to have the best deal on the RAM I wanted. I searched for RAM vendors almost exclusively via DealRam. I have no previous experience with ZipZoomFly, though they have outstanding reviews.