small blog update

so, yesterday i mentioned that the blog is being powered by a CDN for all the Javascript, CSS and images. this, from what i can see, has hepled speed up the site. This will tide me over till my Dedicated Server arrives, when ever that will be.... :( anyway, i have updated the front page. to show full posts, not just the Excerpts. If anyone has any complaints, please leave a comment...

SimpleCDN now powering this site and the image site

So, a few days ago, I mentioned SimpleCDN, a very cool Content Delivery Company, which has a very novel approach to CDN business: one time charge. I talked about it before, and a few days back they updated their pricing for smaller files (under 100k). Well, for the last few days, I have been trying to figure out what the best way was to upload files to their site for delivery, and I have found it!

One of the features SimpleCDN offer is called AutoCDN (see bottom of the page). The way it works is by changing the URLs on your site. So, Take the SimpleCDN logo of this post as an example. The real URL is http://us.images.lotas-smartman.net/3abd912a-bc78-4686-8fa4-b10e5f35fce0-SimpleCDN.JPG (hosted on Amazon with a CName alias). but, to you it looks like http://cdn.lotas-smartman.net/autocdn/images_lotas-smartman_net/http://us.images.lotas-smartman.net/3abd912a-bc78-4686-8fa4-b10e5f35fce0-SimpleCDN.JPG. again, CName Aliases.

better yet, I don't need to upload the image to their servers to host it. all I have to do is append the http://cdn.lotas-smartman.net/autocdn/images_lotas-smartman_net/ string to the front of my URLs (by the way, only works with my domain name, so no cheating!). this works great, and only involved minor tweaks to the Image hosting site! Thank you SimpleCDN! :)

CTR500 Cellular Travel Router: close, but no cigar...

CTR500

so, reading JK on the Run this morning, i found their post on the CTR500 Cellular Travel Router by Cradlepoint and though "SWEET! I WANT!" but, its missing something very important: Battery power.

if i am "out and about" in town or somewhere, with my laptop, iPhone, etc, and i am sitting in a Cafe or waiting on someone, i dont really want to spend money on their WiFi service (if they have one). Plus, if they do have one, they are usually limited to 1 device. so, i cant check email on the iPhone, download music on the iPod Touch, and lark about on the Web with the OQO all at the same time. one at a time please... So, this, if it had a battery, would be perfect! even if it only latest, say, 5 or 6 hours running, i would be very happy with it.

so, i wonder how long it will take someone to bolt on a battery pack to this...

SimpleCDN: just got better!

Yesterday i posted about SimpleCDN and talked about the price of their data structure. Any file between 0 and 1mb was charged 1 credit, which works out roughly at $1 (unless you buy in bulk). Well, today i was uploading some files for testing, and noticed i was only getting charged 0.1 credit for small files. I though it might have been a bug, but after checking their pricing page, its correct! files under 100k are now only charged 0.1 credit! concidering 90% (if not greater) of the images on my Image Hosting site are under that size, i am starting to look into using them as my CDN! now to work out how to automate the upload from C#...

Some MotorLoggr news: XMPP, Twitter, OpenID

So, I finally got my SQL server up and running for MotorLoggr. Still nothing there, but if you would like to play with an Alpha version, drop me a mail at motorloggr@gmail.com. Anyway, I have been playing with some cool stuff for the last while, and I though I should post some interesting links.

First off, Twitter. I have been using Twitter for ages, and I see that the likes of IWantSandy is using it for taking notes, etc. So, I had a look at their API, and managed to get a C# app reading data easily. all you have to do is call an authenticated HTTP page (see the API under Direct Message Methods) and you can get back JSON, XML, RSS or Atom. very nice and easy. Only problem with it is its polled...

That's where XMPP comes in! I have been playing with AG Software's agsmpp-SDK. with literally just a couple of lines of code, you can build an app that talks directly to XMPP. What's XMPP? Its the protocol that GTalk, Jabber, etc, talk. pretty cool stuff... will be looking at a bot that you can chat to and add data. I may also look into using Windows Live Agents for Windows Live Messenger...

Finally, OpenID. This is something I have been very interested in for a while now. There is a Membership provider based on OpenID, which I would like to play around with... Lets see what I can actually implement... :)

simpleCDN: Exactly what it says on the tin!

I found simpleCDN Today, and i am very interested and a bit bowled over! the idea is simple (hence the name). you upload a file, and your charged for that. and thats it. no monthly charges, no bandwidth charges, no usage charges. NOTHING! well, except the upload in the first place...

the Pricing page shows how much you pay for different file sizes. for example, files upto 1mb will cost you 1 credit ($1). 1-5mb costs 2 credits. and it goes up. 20gb will cost you only 335 credits!

So, some maths here. Say, i get back into podcasting (which i would like to do, eventually) and i do both a Video cast and MP3 cast. the MP3 would weigh in at, say, 15mb, and the video would be about 50 - 75mb. it would cost me 5 credits to upload the MP3 and 9 credits to upload the Video. but that would be it. no more charges. with S3 (as an example), i would pay a reoccuring charge of about a cent a month to host both (mp3 would cost $0.002 and the video would cost about $0.007, but amazon round up, so we say a $0.01). for each download i would be charged $0.002 per mp3 and $0.008 per video. doesent sound like a lot, right? Ok, but if i get 100 downloads of that , that works out at $0.80 for the video and $0.20 for the mp3. if the file has a "long tail" of 1 - 5 downloads a month, thats another 1 - 4c per month. hosting for the year would cost between 2 and 9c.

again, doesent sound like a lot, but after a year, this place would pay for itself. especially if your working with files over 75mb! 100 downloads of a 75mb file would cost you $1.27, 6c per month reoccuring for 5 downloads and another cent or so a month for hosting.

If you sign up, they even give you 15 credits to play with! signed up already, and i will be playing with this over the next while.

Building a New Media Centre PC, Part 2: AV receiver

So, in the previous article, I mentioned I talked about the PC part of the Media Center (I see the Media Center as more than just the PC, its the whole package). My Current setup has a Yamaha RX-V357 AV receiver and speakers (standard speakers that came with the amp). Now with the Advent of HDMI, and Multiple HDMI sources, I really need to upgrade to something with more bite (and an appetite for HDMI!).

So, not really knowing a lot about Amps and Receivers leaves me in a bit of a pickle. So, I went looking and found this article over at ECustics.com which tells you want to look for in a home cinema receiver. In the article, they talk about everything from inputs to ohms and Codecs. and in the section about Codecs, they drop a name: Onkyo TX-SR606. They mention that this will decode Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD (master audio) and it has 4 HDMI ports. Since 4 is the magic number (not 3 as they say) for me, this is the Amp for me. and, not only that, its cheap! So, how cheap? Well, Komplett have it currently for EUR500. and, for that price, with 4 HDMI connections and everything else, plus the fact I can get it in Black, I am very wanting this!

Next time, I will start looking at speakers. Leave a comment (they now work) if you have any questions or advice for either my Receiver or the Media Center. always looking for feedback!

MotorLoggr: Log car related costs, easily

There have been a couple of services popping up around the place allowing you to track fuel costs, etc, and it has gotten to a stage that its starting to annoy me. not because the services are there, but because of my own stupidity. Last July, I started coding my own Data Logging website for tracking Oil and Fuel consumption on my car, with the intent on making it available for public use. Well, the first checkin went in at 19.24 on the 22nd July 2007 and nothing major has happened since then...

Both the domains MotorLoggr.com and MotorLoggr.net (with both go nowhere at the moment) are registered as of the 21st July (There was some spec writing going on, but I knew the name before I started coding).

Anyway, I am here to announce the return of the project, and I hope to have a demo and prototype working by the end of the month.

Some of the ideas that this will include will be secret for a while (mainly because I am not sure of what half of them will be... :) and also for "security") but there will be web service access so tools can be written for phones, pocket PCs, desktop app's, etc. If anyone has any suggestions, please leave a comment.

PS: I would love to add a screen shot, but I am having problems with my internal network and I am not sure where my SQL box is.... Odd problem to have, I know, but hopefully i can fix it soon!

Home Storage Cloud?

Is it posible to build a home cloud storage system with spare storage from machine? and if not, why not? since we all need large amounts of storage for different things, and we dont want our storage "disapearing" any time soon, a distributed file system over multiple machine, all backed up to each other, would make life very cool... but would it work?

some thinking behind this:

take my network as an example. I have my main workstation, with 300Gb internal storage and 2 300Gb external drives. My old media center has 200Gb of storage. i have a Dual Opteron server with 160Gb storage, a PowerEdge server with 80Gb and an old IBM server with 3 18Gb SCSI Drives. Total storage, just in my room and on, is nearly 1.4Tb.

now, say that i could add storage from the machines to a storage pool, as much as i want. i would add, say, 500Gb from the main workstation, 100Gb from the old media center, 60 from the opteron, 20 from the poweredge and 36 from the old SCSI Box. that, as RAW data, weights in at 716Gb. using some sort of RAID system, depending on the way its setup, you could have (assumptions made below):

716Gb Striped (RAID 0)
356Gb Mirrored (RAID 1)
713.99Gb RAID 5
711.99Gb RAID 6
711.99Gb RAID 50

the assumptions i made are as follows:

split all storage into 2Gb chunks. if you have a 100Gb partition, the "system" may see it as 50 2Gb "drives".

i used a RAID Calculator here. total storage was 716Gb, giving me a total of 356 2Gb units.

RAID 6 may be the best option, since it will accept more than 1 drive failure. only issue i can see is if you have a very large machine with lots of storage, and a physical drive with lots of these "disks" fail, your screwed as a lot of data is lost. RAID 10 may be better, but then you may want to make sure your total pool is no larger than your smallest machine... which would not be great. in my example above, the smallest machine is 20Gb. thats not a lot of storage to share. i am starting to think that cloud storage works best if it is left in the cloud....

Building a new Media Centre PC, Part 1: thinking and main machine

So, a couple of months ago, I replaced my Media Center PC with a Sky HD box, an Apple TV and an XBox 360. Well, in reality, the XBox 360 was used to connect to the old Media Center, so it wasn't a replacement.

Anyway, over the last couple of months I have been missing some of the Media Center features, especially the extended record support, and All-in-oneness of the experience (Music, Video, TV, etc).

So, I have started to think about building a new Media Center PC. it wont be for a while, but a quick check on Komplett for parts and here is what I am coming up with:

Main machine:

Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS2R, G33, Socket-775, m-ATX, GbLAN, DDR2, VGA, PCI-Ex16 EUR92

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz Socket LGA775, 8MB, BOXED w/fan EUR179

Gainward GeForce 8600GT 512MB GDDR3, PCI-Express, DVI/HDMI/VGA/HDCP, SilentFX EUR102

Corsair TWIN2X 6400 DDR2, 4096MB CL5, Kit w/two matched CM2X2048-6400 Dimm's EUR78

Western Digital Raptor 150GB SATA 16MB 10000RPM EUR149

4X Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB SATA2 32MB 7200RPM EUR128.01 EACH (EUR512.04)

Silverstone SST-LC17 HTPC, Black (Without PSU) EUR99

Seasonic S12-II Powersupply 430W, 120mm Fan, 4xSATA, ATX, PCI-E, 20/24pin EUR82

2x Hauppauge! WinTV-NOVA-HD-S2, DVB-S2 (HD-ready), PCI, Retail EUR100.01 EACH (EUR200.02)

So, excluding delivery and misc parts (like extra fans, cables, etc) the price is currently coming to just under EUR1500 (1493 to be pedantic). but, that will get me a machine with a Quad core processor, 4Gb ram (to start, with room for another 4Gb later), 4150Gb of storage (the 150Gb Raptor will be Boot Drive, the 4 1Tb drives will be in a RAID Array of some sort...) and a fairly decent graphics card with will output as HDMI. The 2 DVB-S tuners are for pulling HD and SD TV signals from my Sky Digi Dish. The dish has a Quad LNB connected to it, so running 2 extra cables (2 already connect to the Sky HD box) should not be a problem.

So, the next think to look is the Sound System. I already have an amp, but its not got any HDMI connections. So, I will look more into that next time.

Mozy

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