Media

First off, a quick note about my new Twitter. It exists, it's published, and it's actually me. I know that some people decry Twitter and that entire segment of the social-networking community as a waste of time, or as an attack of vapid narcissism, and that's OK; I do sometimes have time to waste, or attacks of vapid narcissism But, before I get too roundly flamed, let me just say that it's an experiment. I'm not sure I'm keeping the account, and I'm not sure I'll use it with the regularity it expects (or perhaps demands). Twitter, as a service, seems to me like a very, very trimmed-down version of a blog (so-called "microblogging") plus text messaging, and it has some potential. Whether or not it appeals to me remains to be seen.

OK, disclaimer's done - flame away.

As for the RAID mentioned in the entry's title, I managed to score two 1TB hard drives (Samsung, SATA-II, 32MB cache, 3.0Gb/s) at Fry's on Black Friday, and I dropped them into the media server last Saturday. They're sitting in a fully-degraded RAID6, meaning they currently offer 2TB of space (the full capacity) but no protection against drive failure. This worries me somewhat, as there's an unsettling vibrating noise emanating from somewhere within that server, but all the diagnostics say the drives check out, so maybe I just forgot to tighten a screw somewhere. Continue reading "Twitter and RAID"

I read a lot of science fiction. Whenever I'm at the library, I check the new sci-fi shelves, I get out the anthologies, I'll read the occasional story posted online, and I'll go out of my way to seek out books that get good reviews from random sources. I say all this so that you understand when I say that the Culture series of novels is one of the best sets of sci-fi material I've read in a very very long time, you'll understand the weight that statement carries.

I can't quite remember if I've gone over the Culture here before, so here's the basic concept: it's a post-scarcity society. This means there's no money, no poverty, no limitation of goods or materials or anything like that. People basically have the freedom to live as long as they like in any lifestyle they choose; since it's set far in the future, there's of course the usual range of genemods and drugs and the like available at will. Continue reading "Now that's good sci-fi"

Do we lie to ourselves to be happy?

Such is the question of Memento, a shockingly good 2000 movie that deals with a man who has anterograde amnesia and his quest to find the man who murdered his wife. Tonight, the AP English IV classes got together and watched it, and being the consummate party crasher I am, I decided to go.

My biggest regret is that I didn't get pictures. It was a good time - the vast majority of all three AP classes came, and most of them had never seen the movie before, which made it all that much better. Of course, people brought food aplenty. My only complaint is that the people sitting behind me (you know who you are) were loud. All through the movie. Whispering. About this and that and the other thing. A little quiet, please?

Anyway, let's do it again soon. Sound good?