Luke Sheldrick's Blog

I bought a MacMini the other day to replace my old nettop at home. Until I get the new storage for it, I figured I’d quickly setup a LUN on my NAS for it. It seems OS X, even Lion, still doesn’t include an iSCSI initiator (wtf, really?). Anyway the typical freebie that you’d use on Leopard/Snow Leopard was GlobalSAN’s free initiator. However seems that as of version 5, it’s not a freebie.

I gave it a try, and went through their process (read giving them my details twice – once to download, then again to get a trial key)… tried it out, and didn’t rate it. So using their provided uninstall script I see the below:

WTF is that all about? Their uninstaller is trying to delet / . .. /sbin ..etc, someone really hasn’t QA’ed their code.

Have emailed them to see what they say about it. Poor show.

I bought a HP Microserver a few months ago, to expand my media storage at home. HP had a promotion where you’d buy the server, and they’d give you £100 cash back. Not bad considering you can pick them up online for around £220. £29 for 8GB of DDR3 for it, and it’s quite an ample home server. I bought four 3TB disks, and have them in Raid-5 for the main storage, and I also have an E-Sata disk shelf with four more 2TB disks, also in Raid-5. The main storage array gives me around 8TB of usable storage, and the other around 5.5TB, so I have quite a bit at home to be getting on with.

A colleague at work today pointed out that HP had extended the offer until the end of September, so I thought I would pick up another one. My reasoning is they’re bloody cheap for what they are, and it’ll make HA testing in my lab a lot easier, with two identical machines.

However I decided to see actually how loaded the server was with what I run on it. The tasks that usually run on it backups of my various colos, streaming to the AppleTVs at home, transcoding up to 8 channels via the DVB cards, and downloading various media online. Well, basically, it isn’t breaking a sweat.

It’s currently running Ubuntu Server 11.04, which has pretty good support for KVM, so decided to spin up a few VMs to see how it handled it. I wasn’t overly optimistic, as AMD Turion™ II processor, which is basically designed for netbooks. However after spinning up a another Ubuntu Server instance, the server seemed to have no issue with this at all.

At that point I decided to clone the VM a couple of times, and then spin them all up to load test. 4 clones later, they all booted fine, and the box carried on with no real issues. I showed another colleague at work, and he’d asked how it would cope with Windows guests. The reason he was interested is he has just completed his MSITP qualification, and had quite a bit of difficulty running all the required server instances using his laptop and VMWare Workstation.

This evening I installed a base install of XP, and cloned that 4 times. Again, no real issues, so I decided to give every host 1G of memory (the server only has 8GB total), and see how KSM got on with the VMs. At the moment, it’s still scanning through memory pages, however it’s been running for around 20 minutes, and it’s already reclaimed 2.5GB of memory. No doubt given it some more time, it’s going to reclaim even more.

To say I am impressed by the Microserver, and KVM + KSM would be an understatement.Think I’ll setup a HA cluster when I get the other server, and see how that compares the likes of ESX.

Below just the quick setup I was playing with this evening.

I’m well late for this party, but having recently got an Amazon Kindle, and I have to say, I am very, very impressed with it.

Sure, it doesn’t play movies, it has a laughable web browser, and the audio play back is awful. However for what it was designed for, reading books, it is simply the best device I have used.

I’d previously tried to read paper books, using iBooks no the iPad, Android Tables, Phones, and my iPhone, nothing really felt right. I went on a long weekend to Tenerife a few weeks back, and wanted to try out a few books I’d been recommended. Previously I hand’t really been a ‘bookworm’, sure I read tons every day, but usually they’re technical books, RSS, Blogs… that kind of thing, but not novels or that kind of thing; even rarer to read it from cover to cover.

So I picked up a wifi Kindle, for £90, ordered a few books on the store, charged the thing up, and shoved it in my bag. Whilst sitting by the pool, I started to read ‘A Million Little Pieces’ a book a good friend had recommended. The first thing I noted was the eInk screen, and how easy it was to read in the bright sunlight – something no other device I have can be said about. The second was how comfortable it was to read with it. The buttons are exactly where they need to be on both sides, and the Kinda is very light, lighter than most books, so holding it for any length of time isn’t an issue.

The things that are clearly awesome about it:

• The price – It’s really rather cheap in comparison to my normal gadgets.
• Ease of use – It’s so simple, even Mother can get on with it.
• Ease of buying – The system Amazon has built around buying eBooks is so simple. I can request a sample of a book, read the first chapter, and if I like it, at the end of the first chapter, I have a buy button; that’s it, I then have the book.
• Screen – The eInk display is really rather impressive. The only downfall to it is the lack of backlight, so as soon as it’s not overly light where you are, you can’t see the thing. They do have a case with integrated night light. This also works quite well, as it uses the power from the device for power.
• Weight/Shape/Controls – They are all very well designed.
• Battery – Two weeks of use, and I still haven’t charged it.

The things that aren’t so awesome:

• Screensavers – They’re awful. I had to jailbreak the device, to get rid of them.
• Cases – To get a backlight, I bought the official case – they’re not cheap.
• VAT – not an Amazon or a Kindle issue – but in the UK, you still get charged VAT (20%) for eBooks. So eBooks are more expensive than paper books – CRAZY!

One thing I really wish I had done now in reflection is to buy the 3G model. The only reason I’d want that is the page sync. I’ve found that the Kindle app for Android is surprisingly very good. I use it on my ZTE Blade, which has an AMOLED screen. Putting the background to black and text to white, doesn’t use a lot of battery at all on the Blade, and being able to turn page by using the volume switch, makes it quite a good device to use when I don’t have my kindle on me. The only issue with this is, I need to remember to turn the kindle wi-fi on and sync the pages back to Amazon – if I’d bought the 3G model, this would just do it for me.

I’ve tried the Kindle app on the iPad, and whilst it’s all there, I just don’t find the iPad that great for reading for any length of time, the lack of a ‘turn page button’ and it’s slightly too heavy. It is however neat to have a synced copy of all my books on all the devices… just in case.

“The Cellular network you are using is not encrypted. This call can be intercepted by unauthorized listeners”

Running the first iOS 5 beta on my iPhone 4. Got this come up when I received a call this afternoon.

Apple looking to put in end-to-end encryption of calls?

Last week, a colleague at work bought a Motorola Xoom, I had a quick play in the office and was very impressed.

I’d previously owned the original iPad, however had grown quite bored of it’s lack of customisation ability. I found my self using it less and less, and eventually sold it, luckily just before the iPad2 was announced. I’ve been an advocate of Apple kit for quite some time, having owned every iPhone since they have come out, however last week whilst I was waiting for my number to port over to Three UK, I was using my ZTE Blade (running Cyanogen 7), and was really surprised how much it had come on from when I had last properly played.

So when I had a quick go on the Xoom, I was quite impressed. Being the impulsive gadget lover, I went after work to buy one. At the moment they’re only available on the high street from Carphone Warehouse, on a 24 month data contract. Unfortunately I managed to get a parking ticket as I was being slightly optimistic that I would only be in the shop for two minutes, however it was more like forty.

The only tablet I have used before is the original iPad, running iOS 4.3, so my opinion and comparisons are limited. I’ve used the Galaxy Tab, but not in any great detail.

The Xoom is the first tablet to be released to the mass market running Google’s Android operating system, 3.0 aka Honeycomb. The Xoom has all the usual features you would expect from the tablets on the market today, these include front and rear cameras, 3G, wifi, bluetooth, HDMI output, 1G DDR2 and based on the Nvidia Tegra 2, which is a 1GHz dual core processor.

The first impressions of Honeycomb are very impressive. It’s been well designed for use on the tablet platform and feels very smooth. However after a bit more use, my opinion has changed somewhat.

What I like

• Honeycomb is a big improvement over v2.x of Android, on a tablet.
• In comparison to iOS, the ability to customise Android is far superior. Widgets, shortcuts, themes, application integration, all are much superior.
• The inbuilt browser is very fast, and well presented. Has all the features I would expect.
• The aspect ratio at 1280×800 (wide-screen) works really well, and the screen is almost as responsive as Apple’s multi touch sensor.

What I didn’t like

• The device has the Tegra 2 chipset. A dual-core processor, which supports up to 720p. However no video player is included in the OS. Many of the ones I tried from the market, either didn’t work, or didn’t fully utilise the GPU, so getting the full 720p didn’t work.
• Honeycomb crashes quite a bit, having to force apps to close and settings windows quite often.
• The device has a micro-usb port for connectivity, however doesn’t charge from this. Instead they use a proprietary connector to their custom power brick. This in my opinion sucks. I have a Micro, a Mini and an Apple charger, by my bed, in my bag, on my various desks, and by the couch. Having one of these chargers just is a big draw back for me.
• The speakers are on the back of the device. That’s a bit of a design flaw to start with, however even worse, is they’re right where I hold the device, so even worse.
• The device seems heavy in the hand. The original iPad was 1.6lbs for the 3G model, which is the same as the Xoom. However in comparison the the iPad2, which is 1.33lbs, so seems much heavier.
• At launch flash wasn’t supported. Something iOS has come under fire for, and something the Android lovers have always commented on. This should have been there at release.
• The Micro-SD card isn’t supported as yet. I’m not quite sure how you can release a product without full support of the hardware provided.
• The Micro-SD card is on the same adapter and slot as the SIM card, so when it is supported, to swap the card over, you’ll also need to power down, as the SIM isn’t hot-swappable.
• There are very few apps designed for honeycomb and even less for the tegra2. This is to be expected, as they’re both only just out.
• Accessories for the device are very limited. When the iPad came out, this was exactly the same, however I very much doubt they’ll be quite as much choice.

There is one more annoyance, but that is neither to do with the device or the OS. Why mobile providers feel the need to sit proxies in front of their customers, which resample images to almost unviewable versions is beyond me. Sure you may save a few KBs, but really? The device is supposed to be use as a consumer device, however if I look at flickr I want to see a decent quality version of the photo, not some re-sampled crap version.

Overall, it’s an ok device, but it isn’t amazing. Honeycomb I expect will be really very good once it has some more time to mature. The overall experience of the device is it just hasn’t had the thought and attention into how it will be used. A few small changes could have really changed this. Honeycomb feels like an initial beta release. In my opinion it’s not quite there, in both stability and support (of other apps). Given time, I honestly thing I would prefer Honeycomb to iOS on the tablet, it just needs to mature somewhat.

I’ll be exercising my 14 day cancellation period tomorrow, and taking the device back.