I came across an interesting new site today called Streamocracy.  In general, it seems to be a technology focused website aimed specifically at video sharing.

However, what caught my eye was their Newswire section.  It seems that what they’re doing here is aggregating RSS feeds from other technology-related sites across the Web and archiving recent content on their servers.  It’s essentially the same idea as what we see with Slashdot, only in this case, the posts are re-published “as-is”, rather than having a comment written by an editor (which is how Slashdot work).

I would encourage you to check them out – particularly the Newswire section (http://www.streamocracy.com/newswire/index.php) and to leave a comment here to share with us all what you think of their service!

Enjoy!

I was asked today by a recruiter which versions of UNIX I was familiar with, and this got me thinking.  It seems that through my whole IT career, I’ve never worked on a mainstream release of UNIX – only derivatives!

It started at college with MINIX – a scaled down version that was released in the public domain with full source code available in the textbook that we used (I think it was called ‘Operating Systems and Data Structures’ or something equally inspiring…!).  I remember taking a copy of the disks home to my Atari ST and booting MINIX, then thinking “Cool!  Now what???”

Next, I started working for a company that used computers manufactured by Tadpole.  These used a customised UNIX based on System V called TPIX.  We also ran systems from DEC, which ran their own variation called ULTRIX (for which I’m a certified sysadmin!!!)

From here, I moved to a compnay that had another DEC system, but this time from one of their subsidiaries, which again ran a variant of UNIX with a whole layer of utilities which the manuals marked as “unstable”!

Since then, whilst I’ve had to use the occasional UNIX system (such as HPUX or Solaris) my main UNIX-like experience has been on LINUX.  Once again though, when I chose to buy a copy for home use, for some reason I chose SuSE, rather than the more common Red-Hat.

So there we have it – my UNIX exposure in a nutshell – and not a mainstream flavor amongst the lot!

Finally – I’m back online!

It wasn’t as easy as I’d (naively) expected though…!

It started with my ‘budget’ case which didn’t have enough screw-in posts for the new Intel motherboard. No problem though – I simply stole some from the old case. Then, one of the screws jammed in the post and wouldn’t screw in, but wouldn’t screw back out without bringing the post with it – and I’d fitted most of the 11 screws by then…!

Once I’d got the motherboard in place, another ’subtle’ point hit me – there was no keyboard connector! Since I only had an old Microsoft keyboard, the connector was PS2 only, so we made a quick trip to PC World for a new keyboard. [On a side note, I was tempted by a cordless desktop but I found the prices ridiculous!]

Finally, I got back home and started fitting the side cover of my case (with it’s monster 25cm fan!!!) only to find that it was sitting on the over-sized heatsink that I’d installed on the CPU! At this point, I decided to do a test before going any further. So the fans came on (and lit up with unnecessary, but strangely comforting blue LED’s) but nothing else. No disk activity, nothing on the screens, nothing. It was still dead, but with just a little more life.

As luck would have it, a few years ago I purchased a kit consisting of two products – MicroScope for diagnosing sick PC’s, and POST-Probe for diagnosing dead PC’s! According to this, the CPU was preventing the system from going any further. One more trip to PC World (returning with a nice, new Intel Core 2 CPU) and the system booted!

My first obvious problem was that as Windows started, it was still clearly looking for the old keyboard and also ignored the mouse, so when it asked me if I wanted to re-activate Windows, I was unable to answer Yes or No! Eventually though, it sorted itself out and let me continue. When it asked for drivers, I knew that I was clever and had the handy ‘Intel Driver CD’ – if only the DVD drive’s driver had loaded at boot time…! This was easily sorted though, with just a simple re-boot!

So I now have a nice, cool (running 40% cooler than the old one) PC with a fancy new Microsoft keyboard!

Watch out for me trying this out on frequent posts in the near future….

-John.

P.S. Please don’t ask me to post photos of the new machine – I might think the LED’s look nice, but I’m too old to be particularly proud of them…!

I’m writing this post from my wife’s laptop, as my PC just died!

All I did was shut it down, which it appeared to do normally, just at the last moment, there was an almighty bang and a smell of burned electrical components!

At this stage, I suspect the power supply, but I’m concerned that either the motherboard may have been a factor, or the heat – my CPU alarm has been going off for high temperature over the last few days…

So my dilemma is this:

• Since the PSU is almost certainly dead, should I just swap it out, or should I look for a new case with better cooling?  [Please give me your recommendations on good cases with PSU's, if you have any!]
• Since I already have misgivings about the motherboard, should I swap that out too, and go back to my preferred brand – Intel – choosing one with internal temperature monitoring?
• What if the bang has damaged something else?????

I’d appreciate as much feedback as I can get on this as I need this up and running with some urgency, and don’t want to be constantly having to rebuild my PC….

Many thanks!