Author Archives: InV4d3r

Back and new acceleration

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It’s been while since writing here the last time because I was on a three week long vacation through the western part of the USA and afterwards I got caught by a flu that kept me more in bed than in front of a computer. Anyhow, I’m back to my blog and will start writing as continiously as you know it from the month before my vacation and sickness. Till now I’m not sure if I go to write down some of the experiences I made in the US or if I just leave it up to my gallery, which will be updated within the next 3-4 weeks. We will see…

I’ve made some decent changes to my gaming PC, I changed the graphic card to be exact. I exchanged the Geforce 260GTX with a brand new and just released Geforce 570GTX. Until now the card is still aircooled but will hopefully receive a waterblock within the next few days and more hopefully beforce christmas. The Geforce 570GTX rocks, that’s what I can say as a first impression and after testing some games, demos and benchmarks. The cards wasn’t impressed by games like Crysis, GTA IV and Far Cry 2 in ultra settings. The card moved like a hot knife through butter when it comes to a DX11 test with Metro 2033 and Bad Company 2. The Geforce 260GTX will now move to my media center and will get an airblock (triple fan) instead of the waterblock that is installed right now but I’ll keep the overclocked BIOS on the card because I need some more Megahertzs for Full HD gaming (especially for the jungle stage in Street Fighter IV). Until now I’m not sure if I go and replace the BIOS on the Geforce 570GTX, too. It depends on the coorporation with NiBiTor. Anyhow, the new card was a cool deal and I’m pretty sure we both will have some fun hours together in the future… Metro 2033 here I come…

Stabilization #1

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I’ve made some minor changes to my Fedora system to get back to a stable system as it was before. I unplugged my SoundBlaster Live cards off the system to get a better look into debugging by just using one soundcard. After taking the card off, the system still crashes while listening to music or even usage of a soundcard. After the first crash with just using one single soundcard I made some changes to the config files of Pulse and afterwards the system seemed to be stable. I ran the system for like 45 minutes with music and without crashing. Before all these changes, the system crashed after nearly ten minutes. When I find that my system is stable (which will be after a few hours of uptime) I’ll post my config changes right here.

Mission 14 accomplished

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Because I don’t like old systems and can’t stand it if something does not work correctly or how it should be, I wasted nearly my whole weekend in Fedora 13 and 14. The Pulse server in Fedora 13 was buggy in a way, I don’t know why or what exactly changed, my Soundblaster cards gave me nothing than a stupid crackling sound. Without pulse and alsa only the sound worked correct but I was only able to set it all up in stereo only, which makes no sense on a 5.1 system. Another thing that was very annoying, that I was not able to do a clean install of Fedora 14, this issue got fixed after I rearranged the partition table of the system harddisk drive. Finally I was able to do the clean install and I don’t why and how but pulse was working correctly and I was even able to setup the whole thing to work in a 5.1 mode, where Fedora 13 gave me the crackling sound. That was in the night from Sunday to Monday and after a few hours of working with Fedora 14, I can say that the system itself is nothing brand new. It offers some nice little features like an updated KDE version and a new system settings page, but overall this is the most boring update since I got into the Fedora thing a few years ago. Another thing that I noticed is, that this version of Fedora is the most unstable version by now, it mainly crashes while using yum or in my case yumex.

Am I Bastard?

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…yes I am. If there’s one thing I enjoy and hate at once, it’s tormenting users and let them face with their undisputed lack of knowledge when they try to enter my realm. My realm actually consists of five separated networks that has to be controlled, sniffed, fingered and spied. While being a kind of bored at work I did some research on one of all-time favourite tales – B.O.f.H.

B.O.f.H. stands for Bastard Operator from Hell and is a collection of tales of an operator, his pimply-faced youth and the struggle they have with their boss, the users and everything else a classical operator has to face with. For me these tales are more than just funny, they are something like a brutal mirror of truth of my own every day life at work. They also remind of a time where my “operator instructor” introduced me to these tales, that was a time where I was the pimply-faced youth, and he was truely one of the operator/administrator guys who really wanted to have the users suffer. Hell, those days were fun…

I’ve finally found the collection of books on a single server and they now make my day (mainly diverting). So if any one of you out, especially the younger generation, wants to know what a REAL operator/administrator is about and what kind of might he has, read these tales, learn and keep and honour our heritage.

The official website

The german website

Cause 13 is my lucky number

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This week was the release of Fedora Release Version 14 and I was very excited about this release, because due to my hardware change between my media center and my internet PC I had several minor bugs when it comes to hardware detection. Actually, sound wasn’t working anymore and the speakers gave nothing else than a crackling noise right after logging in. So, I downloaded Fedora 14, burnt it, installed it and first of the new version had some problems with the “old” KDE environment variables (I did a fresh install by keeping my home directory). After deleting the settings and relogging everything worked fine. I went to install drivers for my graphic card and it turns out that this was bold bad choice, because KDE wasn’t working anymore.

I downloaded the full DVD image of Fedora 14 and tried to a fresh install with that one, but I wasn’t able either to do the partitioning because the system hung on harddrive detection. Yes, fail #2 and my patience fell below zero. I decided to install Fedora 13 once again and give an upgrade a try which finally seemed to work. Well, ya, it actually worked until I installed the graphic drivers once again. I got some stupid livna failure notices during booting and was not able to activate 3D effects either. Finally I declined to install the drivers offered by RPMFusion and install the ones directly from Nvidia and this driver version worked, BUT a wasn’t able to activate 3D desktop effects either. I’ve found a workaround to finally get them working, but I wasn’t very happy with this solution so I went back to Fedora 13 again, did my standard setup procedure and everything, except the sound issue, is fine. By now I am not very sure what the actual problem is, but I am sure I can fix this. Pulse is always a struggle especially when you install a Creative SoundBlaster X-Fi card and you finally want to have it in company with a SoundBlaster Audigy 2ZS. The ZS model is working fine but the X-Fi is a pain in the ass.

Closet cleaned

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Last weekend stood under the flag of rearrangement and getting rid of some useless things from the past. Out of a clear blue sky I decided to sort out some of my old IT books to get some space to place the old books of my grandfather inside my bookcase. Seriously, I don’t need a book about Novell DOS 6.2 or MS DOS anymore and if I’ll feel that urgent need to find some information about this ancient operating systems I would find much more knowledge bases on the net than in a single book. And due to fact that I stopped coding in 2005 I thought that there’s no more need for books like C++ and shit like that. I finally made it in nearly five hours of pure bookcase management to find a worthy place for every book. My beloved game strategy guides are now on eye height and everything else is well sorted and easy to find.

Secondly did I finally made it to exchange the mainboards of my internet PC with the one built in in my media center PC. I did this because the board of my internet PC offers two 16x PCIx slots and I wanted to use one graphic card as a dedicated PhysX accelerator like I do in my gaming system (GF260+GF9800GT). The exchange went better than expected, the systems are still working, except for some pulse server bugs on Fedora. The bug in Fedora is not a major one because Fedora 14 is going to be released this week and I don’t want to do an upgrade, I feel like re-installing the system by keeping the home folder, like I did several times in the past. The whole setup procedure runs pretty fast, because all that is left to do after the core setup routine is to install the missing packages, every application is already configured in my home folder.

Unfortunately do I have to run my Linux internet system with a crappy GeForce 8600GT because this graphic card knows a nothing about PhysX so I had to place my GF9800GT in my media center for a while till it is getting replaced by a new PhysX dedicated card. I’ll also replace the cpu fan of my media center because the stock one sold by AMD is a kind of cheap and noisy and is going to be replaced by an Arctic Cooling Xtreme Freezer Rev.2. Hopefully the noise will disappear after that and the AMD Phenom II X4 965 will feel comfortable without making too much noise. Anyhow, the whole media center is going to be much quieter than it is now.

Borderlands GOTY DLC censorship

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Today I received the Game of the Year Edition of one of my current favourite games called Borderlands. Because I do live in Germany and we have some stupid censorship laws here I had to import the uncut version of the game from good old Britain. After opening the box I saw what I already knew from blogs and forums about the game, that the whole DLC content is not included on one single disc, you still have to download the whole additional content.

After getting to the the proclaimed website where I could download the bunch of software I had to realize that I had to face censorship on the website as well. The patch 1.40 was the worldwide edition though, but by trying to download some international DLC content I got redirected everytime to the censored german version of the DLC. The solution for this problem was gladfully a kind of very easy. Just rename the file you want to download from

http://updates.gearboxsoftware.com/dlc/BorderlandsDLC1_Censored.zip

for DLC number one for example to

http://updates.gearboxsoftware.com/dlc/BorderlandsDLC1_Worldwide.zip

and you will get a fine uncensored version of the DLC. Hope it helps someone out there… and now go on and lift the secret of the vault and kick General Knoxx’ ass 😀

Motorola for the meantime

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Since that very that I’ve first seen Bishop in “Aliens” I’ve got this affinity for androids and now that Android is a kind of established on the market I decided to get an android on my own. The attentive reader of this blog might have noticed it, that I’m playing with the thought, well, it’s no longer playing, it’s more a fixed decision, to buy me the HTC Desire HD as soon as it’s got released on the European market. As some you might also have noticed, the HTC Desire HD is going to be released somewhere around calendar week 44 or 45. That’s a looong period of waiting, but luckily have I been able to extend my cell phone contract and was able to grab the good old Motorola Backflip with Android 1.5.

I use two Sony Ericsson cell phone at the moment and both of them do have broken plugs so that charging is a pure game of hazard and transfering data becomes a desperate act. Especially the last check is something pretty weird because one of the phones is a walkman phone and I’m no longer able to listen to music on that one. Long story told short, the Motorola will become my second phone in the nearby future and is more the dedicated to remote administrative things than the HTC phone. I tried to find some applications for XBMC on the iPad but I failed. I’ve found some but I had to pay for them and I don’t want to bloody pay for an application on a toy like the iPad.

Pad technology

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I am the owner of an iPad for nearly four weeks now and apart from the fact that I wasn’t amused of receiving an Apple product for work related matters I wasn’t expecting any big surprises from this useless kind of modern technology. Maybe it’s the thing that I’m getting too old and can’t afford the needed enthusiasm for this fruity piece or the iPad is simply useless as it is. Actually did I just find one single application (I don’t use the bloody short form right here) that could have been useful for me. It’s an electronic TV program guide BUT the same thing is integrated into my HD receiver so there’s no real, undisputed and ultra important need for this. Another thing is, that this application is broke for a while now so the iPad itself is 100% useless for me right now.

As you may know, I am a big supporter of the open source community and I am not very comfortable with buying software for special needs because I found out over the years that there’s no real argument for buying software when you can get for nearly every need a free open source product from the large software pool of the open source community. Maybe there are some products like a Photoshop that you cannot completely replace with a software like GIMP or Cinepaint for example but you can survive in todays culture without wasting money on software. Back to track, I don’t want to buy anything for a stupid gadget like the iPad and nearly everything that is useful for this tablet costs money which makes the iPad even more useless.

Finally, I cannot deny that the iPad itself is a fine piece of modern technology but it’s definately not the tornado in the water glass that brings the big revolution, as many Apple disciples affirm. Another thing that is bloody, bloody terrible is the heavy software rock called iTunes that comes with any portable Apple product? Why the hell do I need a software to gain access to my portable device? Is there any logical argument for this except total control of the innocent customer? The limited quantity of supported multimedia formats makes the whole thing even worth. Hellooo Apple, ever heard anything of MKV or AVI? Well, as you can see, the iPad is definately something for a stupid, mindless customer on the modern market who buys anything the commercials tell him. Strangely did I personally always compare the Apple disciples with the people listening to Himmler while announces the total war. Give it a try and compare this event with any speech of Steve Jobs, one can’t deny the similarities.

My heart’s desire

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According to the fact that mobile internet got much cheaper the last few month it looks more and more attractive to me to take the next step and become an Android user. I’m researching on this topic for a while now and for a very long time the Motorola Milestone seemed to be a nice and welcome comrade to me but finally the whole cell phone offered a lot of disadvantages to me. I was looking for an Android with a separate keyboard because I don’t like typing on a screen though. Unfortunately did I have to notice that there’s no Android cell phone out there, that is not a business one, that would fit my needs. I have to mention that my last bigger step in mobility was to switch to a Sony Ericsson walkman cell phone (some W9xx whatever thingy…), so going Android comes by like a massive revolution.

Desire

One cell phone that gave me a real crush from the very first moment that I saw it was the HTC Desire HD. I was stuck for a while on the predecessor HTC Desire, but why wandering through the past when you can have the future right in your hands. The Desire HD is definately what I want, fast processor, brilliant display and a smart look. It’s build of one solid block of aluminum which makes it look pretty classy. Most importantly, the antenna is working under every condition. By now I can only find one sticking point – the price – the HTC is listed with a price around 600 Euros, but I think this is worth it.