matthewmoore.org.uk

My current PC had been getting a bit elderly, also the case wasn’t in the greatest of conditions. Due to the age it still uses AGP graphics and DDR RAM. So upgrading it wasn’t really very worth while. So I got the following:

Motherboard – Gigabyte GA-M57SLI-S4

CPU – AMD 3800+ X2

RAM – 1gb Crucial PC6400

Graphics – Asus EN7300GT

Case – Antec P182

PSU – Tagan 480w

I already had the PSU and the CPU was very cheap from a mate. So it didn’t really cost much and it means I’ll be able to upgrade the graphics fairly soon.

The build was quite straightforward really. I was able to route quite a few of the cables along the backplate, so the main compartment is quite tidy really. I only put two of the hard drives back in, the SATA ones. I’m planning on using the IDE drives for backups, so I’ll be putting them in caddies soon.

Here are a few lovely pictures:

The only part of the build that has really worried me is the clearance between the graphics card and the northbridge. Here’s a nice close up from my shiny new camera:

As I’ve got two drives, I was planning on going for a dual boot machine. One with some flavour of linux and another with XP. This didn’t quite work out as I’d planned. I installed Ubuntu with out any problems. However so far I’ve not been able to install XP. But as I can do most things I want to on Ubuntu, then I’m not that fussed. Pretty much all the games I want to play work really well. I’ve tried EvE and WoW so far and both are fine.

The Ubuntu install has been fairly plain sailing. The main problem with the installation has been graphics related. Firstly X was sending at a high refresh rate, which my monitor couldn’t cope with. This meant I was flying blind till I could change the resolution. I managed to do this after a while. But it would put most people off. I was then stuck with 640*480 for a while. But I got the proper nvidia drivers installed easily enough. Synaptic is very user friendly. A few X restarts and a bit more fiddling and I had the right resolution, 1024*768. It is just a pity that didn’t hold after a reboot.

Anyway after this, I moved on to sound, which worked fine out of the box and then the printer, which was fine. I didn’t have many problems with setting up the printer for network printing, so my better half can print. It didn’t seem to hold the setting after the reboot, so that is a bit more work.

I’m obviously happy with the new PC. The build has been painless and so far my experience with Ubuntu very good. I’ve used Linux for quite a while now, but so far I’ve never had it as my sole operating system. I currently use Gentoo for my webserver and previously, I’ve used Slackware, Debian and FreeBSD. I’ve been able to do everything I want to with it easily so far. Including WoW and EvE, which is great. There have been a few niggles, but they’ve been easily fixed.

Well. Today has been fun. TG and I went into town with the intention of sorting out the road tax, only to find that we were 4 days early. Which sucks arse. TG tried to find some comfy work shoes that fit. She failed. Rather unfortunate that. I’m lucky I bought a pair in clarks ages ago. Trainery shoe. Nice comfy sole.

After this I dropped TG off at work. She drove there which is good. I then mooched around on the web and on eve for a few hours before finally going off out on a bike ride. This was rather tiring. That bit was quite depressing. The hill I went up and over was so big I had to push most of the way up. The downs were good fun tho. I need to get better brakes on this bike. Infact the list of new kit is quite large.

New backpack
New tyre/inner tubes/slime guards (pretty essential)
Lightweight windproof top (howies sell some nice ones)
Base layer of some kind
Better brakes (discs, which will mean a new frame)

The better brakes quest has led me to look on ebay for a pace frame of some kind. I found on the fast descents I couldn’t scrub speed quickly when I wanted to. The rear V brake was clogged with mud, and due to its age the front disc is worthless. That will require a new wheel because you can’t get discs for the current hub anymore. I’m happy going fast, when I know I can a) stop quickly b) get to the right speed for corners/obsticales.

Last item – blog.hughservers.com is now, finally live. Ugh. Took me 45 minutes as well. I’d forgotten the right syntax for a few commands. Mainly the one to GRANT ALL PRIVS and how to unzip a tar.gz properly. Bit crap that really. I appreciate the power of the command line, but I need to work with it more to get good with it. I work so much with GUIs that I find it hard to break out of the GUI mould.

Write a post up on here for ages now. Never quite managed it. Hopefully now that I can type on the lappy at the bnb then I might be able to post up a bit more often.

Server development has been going really slow. I need to save a copy of the current svn repo and then rebuild svn. It’ll prolly involve lots of hand configuration. bleh.

I’m seriously thinking of moving hosts again, back to my old VM provider. I get a lot more space with them than I currently do. Must see if I can squeeze some space out of the current guys. That’d make it perfect.

Job searching hasn’t been that bad really. I’ve had several interviews and have several more. Any advance on the server has ground to a halt, I’ve not had the motivation recently. On the flip side I’ve been playing quite a fair bit of eve. That game has me in it’s clutches well and truely.

TG is very excited about christmas. I’m more worried about sorting out and paying for presents for everyone.

Tomorrow will involve building a PC for TG and sorting out the OSes on mine. The build does assume hat all the components arrive in the post, but I’m hopeful that they will.

I wonder if I will keep on going with this blog.