iWeb Pain

(Imported from rocketcat-v2)

Look, iWeb is nice and all, but geez it’s painful to keep my blog up to date. It’s got the best interface I’ve yet used, with an easy way to keep the blog entries sorted, an easy way to enter pictures and text, but it’s got some serious shortcomings.

First: There’s a slight problem that every time I export my website, to upload to the web server, iWeb insists on exporting EVERYTHING - it even redoes all the photo albums, resising all the pictures, generating thumbnails, remaking HTML. Everything. This means that a simple blog entry might take a minute or two to type up, select a picture for the heading and drag it in. Done. Now there’s the export. Give it another 5-10 minutes to do it all. Even this wouldn’t be as huge a problem as it is if it didn’t touch (or recreate) every file in the site. How do I upload just the changes? I don’t, I gotta upload the whole lot. Apple, are you listening?

Second: These (hopefully) attractive pictures I’m using at the top of my blog entries? Why does it link to the full-res versions, thereby meaning I have to upload them too? But the link to the full-res versions isn’t in any of the HTML - it’s in the RSS feed!?! Now, I would have thought that if anyone’s checking my RSS feed, it’s to save on bandwidth. Why would you then want to download a multi-megabyte digital photo?

Third: Even though you can drag-n-drop media from iPhoto, it only works if the images in the library are JPEGs. I’ve got some pix that Shing took and some of them were shot in Raw. Even though iPhoto had no problems importing them (something that did surprise me) I can’t drag them into photo albums in iWeb. Huh?

The Black Spur

(Imported from rocketcat-v2)

Went for a drive with Nadia, Duncan and Maxi yesterday, out through Healsville to Marysville - over the Black Spur. It was a fantastic day for a drive, unfortunately we didn't leave until 3-ish, so didn't get to go up Lake Mountain and back, but the Spur was great on it's own.

We had in the convoy, a 2002 Mini 1.6 (Maxi), a 2000 WRX Wagon (Duncs) and a 2001 Bora 4Motion (Nadia and myself).

On the way over to Marysville, we took it easy and the Mini was in the lead. Who's idea was that? No, it wasn’t too bad having Maxi leading - it made for a good drive at a decent pace. Didn't push it (OK, so the WRX and the Bora didn't push it, the Mini was going for it's life!) and had a nice drive over there. Took the time to take in the fantastic scenery with the tall, straight, grey eucalypts with lush, green treeferns around their base.

On the way back, well, that was a different story. We reversed the driving order. WRX, Bora, Mini. The Bora seemed to be much better at handling the steep climbs - often cruising up at 110 in 6th with no worries, whereas the WRX had to drop back a gear and keep on boost. By this stage the Mini had vanished off our rear-view mirrors and we weren't even in the twisties. See ya in Healsville, Maxi!

I had a heap of fun in the corners, while Duncs wasn't going at 10/10ths, he was having some fun and I had to push the Bora a bit to keep up, but pretty much managed to without any serious hassles. The WRX seemed to be a lot more neutral through the corners, whereas the 4Motion had the Bora understeering until you got on the loud pedal where it brought the rear around nicely. Had me seriously thinking about the Haldex upgrade!

The Bora would also benefit vastly from a suspension upgrade - however even though the suspension is quite "comfortable" there wasn't too much roll through the corners.

Anyway, for anyone who wants a good drive where you can drive as fast as the conditions allow, without risking your license, the Black Spur is a great little stretch of road. Fantastic scenery, tight, well signposted twisty road, and it's all marked at 100km/h - yet is tight enough that you rarely max it out anyway - I did most of it in 3rd and had great fun.

You just gotta time it right though, as the last thing you want to do is get stuck behind a 4WD, or someone towing a boat as there's _nowhere_ to overtake. We managed to ace it on the way back and the entire road was clear right through to Healsville.

iSCSI, ATTO and Overland

(Imported from rocketcat-v2)

I've been doing a bit of research about iSCSI and it looks like it's something that we're going to be seeing more of.

Basically, iSCSI is a method of running the SCSI command protocols over a TCP/IP network. This means that the SCSI commands and data are packaged up (and optionally encrypted) and placed inside a TCP/IP packet. iSCSI doesn't run at the lower ethernet level, but uses the existing TCP/IP stack to communicate. The advantages of this is that in order to set up a SAN, you don't need expensive Fibre Channel switches and cabling, and instead can use low-cost Ethernet - be it copper, fibre or wireless. iSCSI doesn't need any special iSCSI adapter cards or special cabling, it can use the existing NICs in the machine. Obviously gigabit ethernet is highly recommended =)

The disadvantages, however, are that you get slightly lower performance than Fibre Channel, as some of the network bandwidth is used up with the TCP/P packet headers, and it can use more CPU resources on your server as it has to calculate checksums for vast numbers of TCP/IP packets.

For, say, video storage where you need all the bandwidth you can get, iSCSI might not be the best option, yet for general file and print servers, iSCSI could be ideal.

If you're using iSCSI on other platforms (x86), it is possible to get dedicated iSCSI NICs that handle TCP/IP header and checksum creation in hardware, freeing up the host CPU for other more important tasks.

ATTO have a software iSCSI initiator that will talk iSCSI over a Macs inbuilt gigE port. Here's an excellent use for that second ethernet port on Xserves and G5s.

iSCSI RAID units are looking like they're also going to be cheaper than the equivalent Fibre Channel versions, however in some cases, a vendor's product range may have iSCSI at the low end and FC at the high end, with correspondingly more features.

Overland are selling some RAID units that may be an excellent alternative to Xserve RAID for smaller amounts of storage. These units go under the REO name and there are a number of units ranging from the 1RU, 2TB REO 1000 up to an expandable unit that can take 44TB, the REO 9000. The REO units, at the lower end, are iSCSI, and higher in the range they also have the option of Fibre Channel as an interface.

Bushranger's Bay

(Imported from rocketcat-v2)

Nadia and I went to Bushranger’s Bay today. It’s a beautiful place, down on the Mornington Peninsula - near Cape Schank

It’s been a while since we’ve been there, and it’s really not that far away - less than 1½ hours drive from where we live.

It's a beautiful place, with a nice walk to get there, and then there's the rough, windswept beach with the rocky island with rockpools all around it at low tide.

There was a huge amount of kelp washed up on the beach, some of it was so thick, it was like leather.

Nadia had a swim in one of the larger rockpools, and saw some fish swimming around - it wasn't a particularly warm day, and I had serious doubts that she'd actually get in the water, but she proved me wrong =)

More new toys!

(Imported from rocketcat-v2)

Went to JB Hi-Fi yesterday and picked up a Sony CDX-F7710 head unit for the new Bora.

Installation was pretty easy as I made sure I got a new ISO Plug to easily make up the wiring harness for the back of the stereo. It was all quite straightforward - the wiring harness from the back of the stereo had a heap of coloured wires that I matched up with the coloured wires coming from the ISO Plug - only problem was that there was a red wire from the stereo that had to hook up to a yellow wire on the ISO Plug, and a yellow wire that hooked up to red.

I originally hooked it up according to the instructions in my Bentley service manual, but thought that maybe there was a mistake, as all the other coloured wires matched up 1:1, so I tried hooking it up red to red and yellow to yellow, only then the stereo didn’t have power when the ignition was off, so it lost the time and all it’s settings.

Anyway, once this was sorted, it was relatively easy to mount it in the dash and being a gunmetal colour (the main reason I chose it, other than the fact it was reduced by $300) it looks pretty good - nothing worse than having a car with a fully black interior and fitting a silver stereo!

For a Sony stereo, it’s got fairly tame graphics - you can turn off all the flashy animations which is good. It’s got a pretty easy to use interface and it’s got a rotary volume dial - which I much prefer over using buttons. It plays MP3 (and ATRAC as well, interestingly enough) and it’s got a Line-in on the rear that I’m planning to use to hook up the iPod.

All-in-all, not a bad unit - I wouldn’t have paid $700 for it, but $400 is pretty reasonable...

Apologies for the crap picture - it’s taken off Sony’s website and it’s all blurry.

New Toys

(Imported from rocketcat-v2)

Put the Treo 650 up on eBay last night. Was expecting to have a week to look for a new phone. No, it sold in about 15 minutes for my Buy It Now price, which was $150 over the starting price. Damn. Looks like I had it up there too cheap!

Well, had to urgently get a phone, so didn’t have a lot of time for research. I did have a couple of requirements though:

• Bluetooth


• Syncs with iSync


• Decent menu navigation

It ended up being a 3-way contest between Nokia, Motorola and Sony Ericsson.

Nokia with the 6111, Motorola with either the RAZR or the SLVR and Sony Ericsson with the K700i.

The 6111, while I like the menus on them, was a bit flimsy and plasticy. The K700i was a bit pricey ($100 more than the others). The SLVR is hard to get in Australia at the moment, and is more expensive than the RAZR, while it uses the same innards, it’s a candy-bar form factor.

So, as you can probably tell from the picture at the top here, I ended up with the RAZR. It’s been out for over a year now, so hopefully the firmware has been through enough revisions. I’ve got one with a pretty recent version of the firmware, so it’s all good. Motorola phones usually sync very well with the Mac, second only to Sony Ericsson. So far, so good...