In-

Writing is false. Remember that.

Nginx

Must play with this HTTP server/load-balancer/mail proxy/bundle of awesome sometime soon. Looks like a pretty awesome option for VPS environments and other places where there isn’t heaps of spare resources going around! My cupboard-bound SSH oasis and occasional webserver is, of course, a likely candidate… but I’m a tad concerned I’ll screw myself over with PHP. Not because it particularly gets used for that (there’s like… a few wikis and a handful of lines of PHP code easily replaced by something else that get semi-regular attention) but mostly for the “just in case” I wanna test run something. And yeah, I know, that’s what virtualised stuff should be for… but I still haven’t quite caught up to that. I’ve got an Ubuntu thing running in a virtual PC instance on the computer I use most of the time, but it just doesn’t cut it for actually trying to test something out with, you know, other users and real Internet connectivity. In other news, can-we-have-IPv6-moar-plx? Just because it’s absurd to have to pay more to run real SSL on dedicated IPs when there is SO MUCH SPACE just waiting for us to broaden our horizons and start to fill it. I’m not heaps fussed if pre-Windows XP users can’t use it, actually, because they’ve likely got bigger security problems on their hands from their network-connected 10-year-old OS than any regular web interaction is likely to give them, properly secured or not — that is, even if their web traffic is secured, their desktop is probably a botnet zombie with keyloggers and trojans abounding.

Sunset time of year…

Laptop storage

Can you ever have enough storage? I carry half a terabyte around with me on a daily basis, just in case, uh, I suddenly need to connect an HDV cam and record everything that happens for the rest of the day *shifty eyes* … yeah, it’s overkill. But overkill is the name of the production game. I’ve got two desktops that have been replaced by one desktop and this laptop — the laptop is a backup, primarily, and normally gets relegated to the oh-so-interesting task of PowerPointing (sometimes it gets to record audio, too… nice and spaciously even when it’s full of rips of video, just in case! The second hard drive normally houses any realtime data applications to make sure that normal response time isn’t impacted).

In case the main playout PC (has some fancy things that the laptop doesn’t, like RAID 0′d drives and better video processing hardware) decides to throw up, as it did late last year, the laptop serves as a ready-to-go alternative. I’m starting to carry a second, smaller laptop for slide playback — it’s a lot slower, but it also used to be the lightest laptop on the market (1.19KG) and I’m about to kit it out with solid state hard drive goodness. This makes it hopeless for recording/writing applications, but I’d never trust it with that, anyway. It does, however, ensure it’ll be lightning quick especially for applications like slide playback — ever had a hard drive spin down and pressed a key only to hear the computer laboriously whir back to life before changing slides? That’s one of the main attractions in retrofitting a relatively old laptop (it’s a Pentium III/256MB/touchscreen… the touchscreen is mostly what inspired the purchase when in China last time!) with a relatively new technology.

Of course, it’s quite possible none of this stuff will ever come in handy. But it might (and, surprisingly regularly, does). I just ordered about another 40 assorted connectors and cables that I’ve used, loaned, or lost over the course of the last year or so… not because they’re strictly necessary right now, but because they almost certainly WILL be (and, when you order them from cheap overseas suppliers, you can’t have stuff next-day when you need it!)

Anyway, I think it all ends up in the “better safe than sorry” basket. More important for some jobs than others, certainly.

Accessing the Dell 2707WFP LCD monitor service menu

1. Turn off your monitor, then turn it on by simultaneously pressing the three buttons circled in blue above (Menu, Plus, Power).
2. To access the service menu, press the button circled in yellow above (minus).

Exit the service menu as you normally would. To return to normal user mode use the soft-power button to turn the monitor off and back on again.

This should also work great with 2404WFP, 2405WFP, 2406WFP, 2407WFP, 2704WFP, 2705WFP, and 2706WFP where those panels exist (maybe not some years). My guess is the 3008WFP will also use the same combination — I don’t know about earlier years as they had fairly different display processing hardware.