Month: October 2004

The server is dead, long live the server

~ Enno ~ Leave a comment

The university had a scheduled power outage last weekend to install a new power supply for their high performance computer cluster. This meant my machine, whch sits in the same room, had to go down for a couple of days as well. And lo and behold! it did not come up after being turned off for 5 days.

The machine eressea.upb.de is built out of scrap parts. I’ve used it for 6 years, and it had 64 MB RAM and dual Pentium Pro 200 processors. It’s amazing how many services I managed to cram onto it, really. I was constantly battling with low memory, optimizing the hell out of the installation.

And now it’s dead.

I feel a bit sad about that. Although it means I finally got some new parts. This time, it’s two PII 450 CPUs, and a whopping 768 MB of RAM. Everything is suddenly snappy, the PHP pages come much faster, and still – it’s not the same baby I started playing with. It feels too big. I’ll never fill it out.

Rest in Peace.

Norwegian Goodness: BigBang

~ Enno ~ Leave a comment

Among the things I like best about Norway is the music here. For a country this size, it’s amazing how much good music they put out. I mean, compared to Sweden, Norway is really unpopulated. Yet how many swedish bands do you know apart from ABBA? Exactly. Me neither.

Today it’s been BigBang that have been playing in my head, especially their song “Something Special”. I like it, so by extension, you will like it too. Try to catch it somewhere, and while you’re at it, buy the albums.

What is the music like? It’s good old Rock and Roll, they almost sound like a 70s band, with Hammond organ, alternating accoustic and electric guitars. “Wild Bird” and “Girl in Oslo” were big hits over here.

Did you ever write my name with a fountain pen
in your books or on a table, did you tell your friends
that I was someone special?

There’s a concert at Rockefeller next month. I’m off to get me tickets.