Vanvalkinburgh.org

I guess I like speed more then a stable browser. Firefox 3.5 didn’t crash, but it is noticeably slower then Safari 4, at least for me.

My old mac mini still works and is fast enough for me. The only thing I can’t do is play newer mac games. I’ll just play games on my 360 and wii for now. Maybe I’ll consider getting new mac if starcraft 2 is ever released. Maybe I’ll buy an expensive SSD drive to speed it up even more. The 7200 rpm drive I have in it is fast enough though, so don’t really need a new drive. I will be getting a new superdrive, so I don’t have to use external drive to burn DVDs. Could always buy a cheap PC for gaming, if I want to play computer games.

Didn’t think backblaze would cause 360 to lag online when limited to under 40 kb/s. Transmission is idle, not uploading anything, just open. Could be the router slowing down. Doesn’t really look like comcast is up to the task of backing up all my data over the internet. Maybe if they ever provide better speeds it will be.

Blackblaze is out of beta now, so I’m trying it. Get 15 days free, probably not enough to backup all my data. If this thing makes me lag while playing 360 online, then I won’t be paying for it. Probably will make me lag, stupid comcast.

Update
Somebody on twitter said to cap upload since it’ll probably make it lag. I think that’s what the “Throttle” does, move it closer to faster network, and hopefully that means backblaze will use less bandwidth, and leave more for everything else. Could always setup QOS, but to lazy, and I think that worked anyways. At first I moved the throttle to faster uploads, and my network monitor said I was uploading at around 60 KB/s, and nows its staying under 40 KB/s, shouldn’t lag now. Oh yeah using the network monitor that comes with iStat menus.

Oh yeah the only bad thing is, it looks like I’ll have to do a new complete backup when I get a new mac. Another good reason not to buy a new mac, or I could just wait till I get a new mac to buy backblaze. That might be the best solution.

I was right about the throttle thing, just look at their speed test page. Hmm maybe I should move it backup to the default…

“A connection of 6998 kbps upload would backup:

73807 MB in a day”

Stupid power boost. That fast upload only lasts for a short time. I think it use to only be for downloads though.

From Boxee Setup

From Boxee Setup

Put xubuntu and boxee on my MSI Wind Nettop 100, plays 720p perfectly fine, at least everything I tried, tv doesn’t do 1080p, does 1080i though. There’s a bug in boxee, it crashes sometimes when playing an audio file, really annoying. Oh yeah put the boxee remote app on iPod touch, and changed wireless N router to mixed mode, so I can use iPod touch with boxee. Also bought a D-Link gigabyte switch, so I can have linkstation and MSI Wind Nettop 100 connected by gigabyte speeds. That came yesterday too, and works fine. It has a rebate according to amazon, but to lazy to fill that out, don’t care about rebate.

Downloaded the beta of Safari 4 earlier, pretty nice. I’m liking the Top Sites, also like the speed. Still getting use to the tabs being at the top. 1password works after following instructions on their forum, oh yeah I didn’t have to edit plist file. I should of looked in View Customize toolbar before updating to beta, might not of needed to update to beta… Google gears doesn’t seem to work, maybe I need to reinstall it or something.

Took longer then 3 days as always from newegg. Didn’t get it until 8 pm tonight. Burning dvds doesn’t seem any slower then when it was internal, reading dvds seems a little slower. Doesn’t matter because my mac can read dvds too. I burned ubuntu 7.10 64 bit to a dvd, because I have no cds, and I wanted to test it. The dvd booted fine on the internal drive, but not on the external drive, don’t really care, bought the enclosure for burning dvds.

The system profiler says the below:
MAD DOG MD-16XDVD9A2:

Firmware Revision: 1.F0
Interconnect: USB
Burn Support: Yes (Generic Drive Support)
Profile Path: None
Cache: 2048 KB
Reads DVD: Yes
CD-Write: -R, -RW
DVD-Write: -R, -RW, +R, +R DL, +RW
Write Strategies: CD-TAO, CD-SAO, CD-Raw, DVD-DAO
Media: Insert media and refresh to show available burn speeds

I like the channel Feel Good TV on Miro, but the only problem is the shows download by bittorrent. One episode downloaded after many tries. Then I tried to download another and it didn’t work, so I did a search on google, and found this. Then one of the comments mentioned your-freedom.net, which you can use for free 6 hours a day, 18 hours a week. I setup openvpn, I followed their instructions. Then I was wondering what would happen if I start downloading it and then stop the openvnp program, well then the download speed went down, and then it went up, and then it finished downloading. So I tried it again, and it didn’t work. I hate comcast. Maybe you have to let it download a certain amount through your-freedom, or I was just lucky. They don’t care if you use their service for file sharing, as long as you don’t use a US server to do so, or any other servers that say don’t use it for that. To bad you can’t configure a proxy with miro, that’s why you have to use openvpn. Could always use a different bittorrent program.

You might be able to use anoNet as a proxy for bittorrent, as it uses openvpn.

Hmm using azarus you can make it use a proxy for only the tracker, doing a speed test with encryption and the tracker proxy might of fixed it.
Use tor as a proxy for bittorrent (Says how to use it only for the tracker, and for downloading and uploading.)

You can get the classic interface in the latest version of azureus by going to options and clicking Interface and then start and then clicking show by display azureus UI chooser. Might have to be in advance mode to see it.

Download Feeel Good TV episode 20 (Not newest but funny.)

Update
Using a tor proxy for the tracker only and encryption seems to have fixed the downloading problem. I don’t think I can seed or upload though. But at least I can download at 500+ KB.

Encrypt bittorrent traffic
Use tor as a proxy for only tracker communication

The new beta has been released for the Paragon NTFS driver for Mac OS X. Can’t try it until I’m done copying around 9 GB of data over the network. Probably should of plugged it into my other computer by USB. I have around 7 GB with 18 minutes left.

Download Paragon NTFS driver beta 2
Fixes in Paragon NTFS driver beta 2

The bad news is “Dear Forum Visitors, please note that beta 1 and beta 2 are 30-days trial versions.”. Now I think I’m gong to copy all the data from the NTFS partition to my Mac OS Extended partition on the same external hd. I’ll provide new speed test results with beta 2, after I’m done copying data to it. Hmm I think I’m going to copy all the data from the NTFS partition to the Mac OS Extended partition, before running a speed test. Copying the downloads folder right now which is around 53 GB, says it’ll take about an hour. Wonder how long that would take with USB 2.0.

Disk Speed Bench X
22 MB/sec

Xbench

Results 39.71
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.4.10 (8R3014)
Physical RAM 1024 MB
Model Macmini2,1
Drive Type ST330062 0AS
Disk Test 39.71
Sequential 49.70
Uncached Write 41.83 25.69 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 54.65 30.92 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 39.51 11.56 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 77.08 38.74 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 33.07
Uncached Write 11.79 1.25 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 66.10 21.16 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 85.83 0.61 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 106.64 19.79 MB/sec [256K blocks]

I’m going to remove this driver, because it isn’t stable.

I used hiren’s boot cd, to resize my one big ntfs partition, now I have two partitions, one ntfs and one mac os extended partition. Make sure you create a partition on the free space, doesn’t matter what format, then on your mac erase it. Oh yeah and since I have an external hard drive enclosure, I took my hard drive out, and plugged it back into my other computer. Don’t think any of the programs on hiren’s boot cd support usb, and usb would be slower, then SATA 2.

New speed results:

NTFS partition: 20 Mbits/s
Mac OS Extended partition: 33 Mbits/s

Since the speed difference isn’t that much, I’m not going to copy the data from the NTFS over to the Mac OS Extended partition. I’ll just have two partitions.

Hiren’s BootCD

I used Acronis Disk Director Suite, which is included on Hiren’s BootCD.

You can find hiren’s boot cd, on findfiles.com. Just search for “hiren”, without the quotes.

I’m using the beta version of Paragon NTFS driver for Mac OS X.

To test the speed of the hard drive, I’m using Disk Speed Bench X.

Update
Just for the hell of it, I tested the speed of the hard drive, with xbench.

Mac OS Extended:

Results 40.66
System Info
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.4.10 (8R3014)
Physical RAM 1024 MB
Model Macmini2,1
Drive Type ST330062 0AS
Disk Test 40.66
Sequential 56.37
Uncached Write 52.40 32.17 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 55.07 31.16 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 47.95 14.03 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 77.72 39.06 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 31.80
Uncached Write 11.05 1.17 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 67.38 21.57 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 87.99 0.62 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 110.13 20.43 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Can’t run the complete test on the NTFS partition, It says “A disk error occured that prevented this test from completing (-48)”.

I’ll take back the very slow shipping, it wasn’t that slow, considering it was free shipping. I thought it was going to take the full 9 days, but I got it today instead. The speed is only around 20 MB, because its formated with ntfs, don’t want to loose all my data, and I don’t have anything to back it up to. USB is like 18 MB. The ntfs-3g driver sucks, its slow, but I found an alternative, Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X. Works fine for me. ntfs-3g got around 11 MB. Hopefully Paragon NTFS for MAC OS X, will get faster.

Now on to the pictures.

There it is in the nice dirty box it came in, well that box was inside a shipping box.

That’s the back of it, in case you wanted to see it.

Took it out of the box.

Took the enclosure out of the fancy box thing it was in, and ejected the thing you put the hard drive in.

The hard drive is screwed in.

There it is all hooked up, by firewire.

More External HDD Pictures

I’m in the process of uploading tremulous maps, will take a while, only uploading the maps I have. The biggest map I have is around 20 MB, and my upload speed sucks, thanks to comcast. Could upload it faster on dsl, when we had dsl, the upload speed was 90+ KB, while its around 50 KB with comcast. But the download speed is better with comcast. You can get a better upload speed with comcast, if you upgrade to the business plan. Oh yeah I get around 200+ KB for the first 5 MB I upload, then it slows down to around 50 KB or less. So the speed is fine for files that aren’t bigger then 5 MB. If you just finished uploading a file through ftp, then you should reconnect to the ftp server, so disconnect then connect, so the next upload will have the fast speed for the first 5 MB. Well you can probably upload 5 1 MB files, at the better speed, but eventually it’ll be slow, if you’re uploading a lot of files. So I’m only uploading one file at a time, then disconnecting, depending on the size of the file.

You might have to disconnect, and then wait, to reconnect. Since comcast is an ass.

I finally uploaded mythfrontend 0.20.2. I have a crappy upload speed, so it took about 25 minutes. This is the universal binary from here. Hopefully it’ll download faster from my site. Don’t link directly to the file, if you do anti leech will be turned on.

Download MythFrontend-.20.2-Universal.dmg

Update
Hot linking has been disabled. Also moved the file. Link has been updated.

Update
You can find svn packages here. For intel only unless otherwise stated in the filename. If you’re using leopard, your remote should work in all of those svn packages.

To use the svn versions your backend will have to be using a svn version too. If you’re using mythbuntu then you can follow these instructions for upgrading to the svn version. Might work with the official ubuntu too.

Mythtv release-0-21-fixes (Intel only.)

Firewire will be slower then USB 3.0. According to Extremetech, the speed for USB 3.0 will be 4.8 Gbits/s. But you won’t actually transfer at that speed, if you have used USB 2.0, then you know you never get 480 Mbits/s. At least I haven’t ever gotten 480 Mbits/s from USB. Same with SATA 2 hard drives, you don’t get 3 Gbits/s. If you go to the manufactures site of the hard drive, it’ll say the max speed is like 300 Mbits/s. Depending on the drive. So with USB 3.0, hopefully you’ll get around the advertised speed of USB 2.0. You probably won’t get 300 Mbits/s from a SATA 2 hard drive, unless you have a raid, but that probably wouldn’t be the stable speed. Reviews I’ve seen on newegg, say they get around 200 Mbits/s in a raid, for some SATA 2 hard drives.

“One example of their speed goals is to transfer a 27GB HD movie to a portable device in 70 seconds.”

27000 / 70 = 385 Mbits/s

Almost the advertised speed of USB 2.0.

“The same thing would take 15 minutes or more with HighSpeed USB (2.0).”

27000 / 900 = 30 Mbits/s

USB 3.0 To Boost Peripherals to Multi-Gigabit Speeds

Trying wine on my new mac mini, it just installed starcraft, even know there’s probably a mac version of starcraft, I don’t have it. Darn it doesn’t work, worked in linux with wine. Maybe it’ll work with the no cd crack.

OS X intel compiled wine download

Update
Found starcraft osx native installer. Doesn’t work. Ejects the cd, bastards. Damn it have to download mac version from bittorrent or something, and then use my pc cd key. Damn I hate you blizzard. The file is over 1 GB, and I don’t feel like opening any ports to speed it up, so I’m not going to download it.

Download video

Cool comcast made uploading better, now I don’t have to limit the upload speed, they cancel the upload for me, then it comes back, and then cancels again. My uncle might not like this, but I don’t use bittorrent very often, so I don’t care.

Comcast Tries To Sterilize, Decapitate BitTorrent

Youtube blows “Rejected (length of video is too long)”. Probably because its an ogg video.

“All videos uploaded to YouTube have a 100MB file size limit. The longer the video is, the more compression will be required to fit it into that size. For that reason, most videos on YouTube are under five minutes long and there is a 10-minute length limit for all videos.”

The video is around 2 minutes, youtube is a dumbass, they can’t determine the length of the video.

Solution use tinypic.

Update
Changed port, might work now.

Hmm so tempting, aww screw it, the iBook is going on craigslist too. After I reinstall tiger. I’ll buy the cheap mini, $600, or maybe I’ll be even cheaper, and buy one of the old models. But I kind of want the intel core 2 duo processor. Hmm I’ll just get the new model. I don’t really care if its 1.83 GHz or 2 GHz, so I’ll just be cheap and get the $600 one. Might be able to get $400 out of the iBook.

It’ll be a pain to switch the monitor and keyboard and mouse manually between them, don’t want to buy a kvm switch at compusa, most of the reviews are bad. Could buy a windows laptop, and wipe it, and put linux on it. Won’t buy a ubuntu dell laptop, because they cost more then the windows ones, and start at slower speeds.

Maybe I’ll make up my mind tomorrow, after I use my grandpa’s iMac, still selling the iBook, just don’t know what I’ll buy, probably a mac mini, but no guarantee.

Or I could buy an iPhone, anybody want to pay the bill?

Might get a refurbished mac on apple.com. Depending on how much I get. Wonder if I have any allowance yet.

Was playing tremulous, and a whole bunch of people were talking about how great ubuntu is. If you compare the speed of ubuntu to a clean install of windows, or one without viruses, and all the stuff stupid people download, then you’ll notice most likely windows is faster. You would have to tweak ubuntu to make it faster, recompile stuff possibly. To much of a pain, sabayon is probably faster then windows, and a hell lot faster then ubuntu. Dream linux is fast too. I would never buy a computer with ubuntu installed, unless it was really cheap, and then I’d wipe it, and put something better on it. The dell laptops with ubuntu cost more then the windows laptops, and have slower speeds, they start at 1.5 GHz. The 1.5 GHz laptop costs around $700, last time I checked, that’s a rip off. You could buy a windows laptop for less, and install linux on it. But the hardware might not work, which is the only downside. There’s a laptop that if you install anything other then vista on it, then you’ll void the warranty. It was either a everex or acer, saw it on newegg. So if something non software breaks, you’re screwed.

Was released two days ago. To bad wordpress isn’t immune to security problems. Then I wouldn’t have to upgrade it. Since I don’t have a dedicated server, I can just do wget, and then untar it over the existing one. I hacve to upload it, with my crappy upload speed, thanks comcast. I have to upgrade three sites, that’s why its a pain. I don’t have to upgrade the ds, but I doubt my uncle will. Since it fixes security holes, a script kiddie, would be able to “hack” it or script kiddie it I should say. Make that four sites, I forgot one.

Wordpress 2.2.2 and 2.0.11

Just downloaded it too. Now downloading the new version, I’ll try the upgrade feature. I saw 3.4e on the server, but I thought it was a beta or something, there was no post on their site, until today, saying its officially released. Should of downloaded it, as it has the same date, it had before when I looked at it. Cool found a fast mirror here, the first comment has a direct link to the file. Try to avoid bittorrent because it slows my internet down. Would have to limit the upload speed to 5 or 10 kb. Plus that download is faster then bittorrent has ever been for me. I don’t open ports either, to paranoid. They have that mirror on the official download page, just didn’t try it.

Fast mirror

Update
Canceled download, I’ll wait until the next release, or the release after that. Not enough new stuff to care about, and Entropy isn’t stable yet. But you can install Entropy, without downloading 3.4e. If you get an error about remote.conf not existing, then run touch /etc/entropy/remote.conf.

equo database generate
>> ####### ATTENTION -> The installed package database will be regenerated, this will take a LOT of time.
>> ####### ATTENTION -> Sabayon Linux Officially Repository MUST be on top of the repositories list in /etc/entropy/repositories.conf
>> ####### ATTENTION -> This method is only used for testing at the moment and you need Portage installed. Don’t worry about Portage warnings.
Can I continue ? [Yes/No] y
Are you REALLY sure ? [Yes/No] y
Do you even know what you’re doing ? [Yes/No] y

Should of said n for the last one. But then it wouldn’t of run.