I'm helping a friend who is carering to a group of businesspeople at their company-organised yearly get-together. For him it's a gig he is hoping will become a regular thing and a relatively reliable income some day. For me it's mostly cleaning glasses between refills. For a while, that is all my friend and I were doing: cleaning, rinsing. We took turns. At one point this guy comes up to us to let us know that his drink tasted a bit like dishsoap. He was nice and really just wanted to let us know so we can be more careful in the future if necessary. I don't see a reason for him to lie or exagerate. And he was sure that's what the taste was. It makes sense, too. We were hurring a bit sometime because there weren't that many glasses, a residue of dishsoap would be invisible but ruin the taste of the drink. But, for some reason or not, I defaulted on "But I'm not aware of me or us doing anything wrong." I didn't quite put it into those words. But my hesitant reply must have conveyed that that was how I felt about the "unterstellung". My friend was (and still is, successfully) more customer-aware than me, thanked the guy and assured him that it won't happen again. Guy was happy, friend was mad (today I think at me; back then I thought at the guy). And my stupid non-committing and abweisende reply is what I think of nearly every time I wash any dishes by hand, which since my dishwasher broke a few years ago, is a lot. I don't think I will ever either get rid of that memory or figure out how remembering it might still help me.
Useless Memories (Part 3)
SBWG 0.10.11
It's been two months since I published a new version of SBWG (and therefore since I worked enough on it to make me feel that an increase in the version number may be justified). I hardly get around to working on it, lately. But when I do, I try to make some solid small steps towards the improvements I wish do be done to SBWG.
So, now there is a new version (0.10.11) but I haven't published it yet because before I do I want to test it a bit more when I'm not as fucking tired as I am right now. Writing this entry could actually be considered part of the testing that I still want to do. But as I said, I'm fucking tired right now. So I'll continue this entry another time.
Edit 2022-09-12: I did some tests with fake content offline and feel confident that I fixed more than I broke in this version. I'll add it to the project page soon.
Two long procrastinate areas that have been overdue to get fixed for a while now are permanent caching and parallelisation. For permanent caching, the bugs that I found are fixed. Aggressive caching with option `--cache` (`-C`) works and certain groups can be selected (excluding others) for permanent caching. In my test this speeds up everyday web site re-generations by up to 100%. But it also means the user has to be aware of the cache files that persist after SBWG is done and will be used the next time. Changes to existing entries will not take effect without removing the relevant cache files. For parallelisation, the bugs that I found and that affect the generated HTML are fixed. I still consider parallel mode to be experimental. Sometimes messages on stdout are weird or cut off. But who uses very verbose mode and looks at every message anyway? Parallelisation is functional and usable is what I mean to say. In my test on a Core i5 with 4 cores (8 threads) it speeds up everyday web site re-generation by around 380% with default settings. It depends a lot on how much of web site generation is generating thumbnails and other image sizes of file attachments or gallery images. Those aren't sped up that much because the CPU already is the bottleneck for those. HTML file generation profits more from having more parallel threads than CPU cores (or threads) running.
Fred - Part 2 - The Case Lid And Cooling
In this entry I'll describe how Fred's components are air cooled.
So, after removing the fan wall and unplugging the two fans in the back of the case there was no active cooling left. That's good for reducing noise, but not enough cooling for the hard drives, the CPU and the SAS controller cards. Since the case is not mounted in a rack and nothing is placed on top of it, I decided to use the space in the case lid to place larger fans.
The CPU
My idea was to replace the CPU cooler with a larger one that just fits into the case and have a fan above it suck out its hot air (also pulling in ait from the RAM modules next to the CPU socket). I fount a heat sink from Scythe called Iori (SCIOR-1000). Mounted on the socket there would be just enough space for a 15 mm fan above it. As it turns out though, the heat sink is large enough to cool the CPU passively and the RAM doesn't need any additional cooling, too. So the fan above it is not even plugged in.
The Extension Cards
Since the HBA and the RAID card that I'm using are designed for servers with a proper airflow, they need at least some additional cooling. Their heat sinks are quite small for the amount of heat they produce. But there was enough room above them to place a fan that sucks the hot ait directly from the extension card area out of the case. I was told these cards usually don't have any problems getting extremely hot. But I rather don't want to have them do their things for hours or days streight without any active cooling. Replacing their heat sinks with larger ones would only be a sufficiant option if there was room for much much larger heat sinks.
The Hard Drives
I don't want to have have hard drives run continuesly without any active cooling, especially when they are sitting in enclosures that don't allow for any aitflow without some amount of pressure. There is just no-where for the heat to go on its own in these tight drawers. I decided for three 140 mm fans that would neatly in a row behind the hard drive compartment and backplane. Since the motherboard isn't that large, there was nothing but a few cables in that area of the case. I've mounted an aluminium bar that I had lying around and tucked two pieces of flat plastic between this bar and the bar that originally held the fan wall at the bottom. That way, the air that is pressed in from above gets directed only into the hard drive compartment where it has no way to escape without passing the hard drives.
Unfortunately the room around the hard drives is so small that quite a lot of air preassure is needed to cool them as much as I wanted to. Running the fans at full speed all the time is hardly enough to keep them at a temperature that I deem acceptable. I tried to increase the cooling effect by sealing all the edges and other tiny spaces where some air could escape without cooling the hard drives. But this didn't lead to a measurable difference. I ended up taking out two of the 16 hard drives to increase the size of the duct. I chose two drives in the centre so that there now is a large surface where the air cools the remaining drives. That lowered the temperatures of the surrounding drives a lot. The temperature of the drives at the edges was of course hardly effected. But those weren't the problem anyway.
I'll probably continue about the rest of the case mod in a followup entry.
File Attachments (12 files)
Fred - Part 1 - Modding The Quiet Into A Server Rack Case
Fred is an old Supermicro rack server that I got as an attempt at building a NAS that replaces all the smaller NASs that I already had. But I like to collect stuff and it's never going to be enough. So it ended up being just another extension of my home network.
Overview
It's an old 3U Supermicro server case with 16 3.5" hard drive drawers, a good but not too bulky Asus motherboard and a nice low-power Intel CPU. I kept the motherboard, CPU and 32 GB ECC RAM. It's more than enough.
I wanted to do some mods on the case though to make it more comparible to my home and my visual taste in computer cases. In short, what I did was: Switch the PSU to a quieter one, build fans into the lid for quieter drive and card cooling, painted the case, switched the CPU cooler for passive cooling, added two HBA cards and 14 8 TB hard drives (two drawers left intentionally free).
I will tell about/may document these mods in more detail in separate entries.
File Attachments (5 files)
Film: I'm Thinking Of Ending Things
I like this quote from the movie: Other animals live in the present. Humans can not. So they invented hope.
It's something I can think about.
I like the movie in general for breaking with storytelling conventions in an artful way without being so hard to follow that I just want to switch it off sighingly while exclaiming: "I guess it's art."
I may not understand the metaphors, which no doubt are plentiful throughout the movie, and therefor may not even understand what it is about or what Charlie Kaufman wants to say. But it certainly holding plenty of opportunities ready for letting the viewer get carried away by the movie's discussions about essential questions that are probably part of anybody's life at some point. I certainly got carried away to musing about all sorts of things several times. The discussions between the both main characters are often poetic and their course often takes on unexpected little turns. There are many things in that movie that I've not seen done well prior to this.
CW, in case you want to watch it: Suicide, Depression, Death and touching other unpleasant topics here and there
There's one other thing that I like about this movie: Parts of it are the most dream-like scenes that I've seen in any movie, as far as I can remember. I've been yearning for more accurate representations of the phenomenological idiosyncrasies of dreams for a while. Depending on the genre, filmmakers have tried different approaches, used many different effects and took advantage of technological innovations, as the were made, to depict dream scenes. Turns out all you need is a flatbed editor (or scissors and some tape or whatever editors used initially).
"I'm Thinking Of Ending Things" was the Charlie Kaufmann film that made me look up who wrote it. I've seen two movies of him before. But now I also know his name, somewhat his style, and much more of his work.
BLucid
I would like to tell the story about that time I co-founded and hosted a podcast for a few short years. But not today. This here is just to remind me.
Edit: Well, I'll just tell it real short then. I wanted to start a podcast in German language about lucid dreaming because there weren't any. But I wouldn't have done it alone, so I asked around, Zitrom joined and we recorded some episodes. We called the project BLucid because that sounded cool. He also made the intro jingle that I still like very much. Eventually I started to record episodes with others instead when Zitrom wasn't available anymore.
At some point I didn't find anybody who would join me for new episodes and so the project died. After a few years of me not having any time for that any more anyway, I decided to cancel the domain and take the site offline.
Now I'm re-publishing the podcast episodes on draft0.de.
And maybe eventually I will find somebody to co-host the podcast again. Some day. Feel free to send me a note if you'd like to be in the podcast, in German or English.
My main hobby this year is biting my tongue accidentally.
Sometimes I get bored of it and bite the inside of my cheek instead.
A good bite can leave a scar for up to a week, and a swelling that raises the changes of another bite at the same spot within days.
Real fun stuff.
One in three
I'd just like to repeat a point that I had made in a podcast once, because I think people trying to have lucid dreams tend to overlook that: If you sleep 8 hours a day, the chance that you are dreaming at any given point in time is 1 in 3. That's not bad. Getting the habit of questioning whether you are awake or sleeping right now into your mind really is the most important thing for someone starting out as an oneironaut. If you haven't stopped and taken some time to question your current state upon reading the first sentence on this entry, that is something you still have to realise. "Any given point in time" includes "now". Of course you knew that already. But are you questioning reality based on the fact? … One in three.