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The project is under way! All functions on the new server are operational, except one really annoying item… the GIGABIT lan!

For some reason, I’m struggling to get the right driver working in Ubuntu. I wish Realtek would put the driver in the linux repository.

I’ll probably end up installing a new gigabit card to work around the problem.

Have a gander at this sweet setup!

From Right to Left.

At the bottom right corner is the original server, you can just catch the white DVD drive poking out. Above is that server’s screen.

The computer at the bottom middle is the new server. I may replace the case if everything works out. Above that computer is my Thinkpad. Behind the Thinkpad is the screen for the new server - temporary, of course. It will run headless.

In the back is Thor. Actually, it’s Odin, but the movie is Thor. It’s playing from the playstation through the network from the first server at the bottom right.

Boy, it has been a while since I last posted anything here. With school completed and a stabilized job, it’s time to do some upgrades to the home server.

Currently, the server is running stable. The OS is Linux 12.04 (LTS), headless, on the ol’ AMD Sempron I built back in 2004. It’s 7 years old now! My first computer ever put together…. a single tear (and a single core… HAHahaha…. oh, I crack myself up). It’s running Hamachi (for remote file sharing), SAMBA, PS3MediaServer (which I highly endorse) and FireFly (to share music on iTunes).

The Plan:

Using GParted, I plan to clone the old 30gb IDE drive onto a pair of 80gb SATA drives, and finishing the package onto RAID 1 (I would rather go RAID 6, but seriously… I have two identical drives lying around with no plans on purchasing a whole new set of 5 HDD… convenience wins). I’ve never cloned an IDE drive onto SATA, but from forums I’ve read, it sounds like pretty textbook stuff. The real trick is cloning them while also in RAID 1. It sounds like I can clone the IDE onto one SATA and then mirror that onto a second SATA once newly installed on the other motherboard. In an ideal world, I would use WD Green SATA drives, but the smallest form factor is 500GB, which is total overkill for a master boot disk.

“Why choose the WD Green Caviar Drive?” you ask? Good question! hahah… I read in a forum last year that the Green Drives have a MTBF of 1x10^15. Typical drives are 1x10^14…. so the chance of disk error is lesser by a factor of 10! CRAZY!

The new server (an existing old machine that is being very lightly used) is a Core 2 Quad I put together in 2008. A giant upgrade and it should allow for memcoder to work on the PS3. Right now, the current server clocks out trying to encode video files and crashes with HD. Straight playing is perfectly fine, it’s just the encoding of MKV files and the such that gets the thing buggar’d.

Once installed, I am hoping that the new motherboard can handle my four 2TB drives. Currently, my existing server motherboard drivers can’t handle anything over 1TB (it’s from 2004, so I’m not surprised). So, my work around is running the drives through external docks onto PCI cards. I have 4 external docks sitting atop the server… not the cleanest system ever. The new motherboard would certainly tidy things up.

I am also hoping the massive CPU boost would also make for some interesting results with the gigabit lan. Right now, the total load is about 25-35 MB/s. It’s not bad, but I’m hoping that I can get it to 60 MB/s or so. That would be awesome. Plus, it should handle multiple users better.

Right now, I’m doing a massive backup of the desktop files. Tomorrow I may be ready to start GParted.

My big question is… what is the destiny of the current server? There is some pretty significant sentimental value encapsulated within that ol’beast

It works!

After a ton of sweat and toil, I’ve got ps3mediaserver running perfectly!

ps3mediaserver is an open source program that streams video, music and images from a linux file server to a PS3. And it’s SO goooooooood!

I’m actually freaked out a little because it’s able to stream MKV files, DVD images, as well as the normal avi. MediaTomb’s got nothing on ps3mediaserver, I’ll tell you that much.

I’m totally geeking out right now.

Now, back to writing my thesis… while I stream some music and photos on the PS3! woot woot!

I KNOW right?!

“A little late, don’tcha think, Jay?”

“Like… whatever…”

Hahhaa, I caved. But on the bright side, it might lead to a lot of fun…?

Anyhow, back to thesis.

An interesting video came in today. I forgot that I had ordered it almost a month ago. City out of time, a short commentary on the role of art in Venice. Funded by the National Film Board of Canada, this thing has a short blurb on the Canada Pavilion. There’s a bit of footage showing the pavilion being used as intended: to showcase paintings.

I’m now re-compiling my book together. It’s interesting how, as I read earlier passages from October, so much has changed. In fact, my whole attitude towards architecture is different from when I started. Strange…

Now… apart from Thesis…

I’m reading Animal Farm (George Orwell) and The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Tolstoy). They’re the first two novels that Yann Martel suggests to the Prime Minister in What is Stephen Harper Reading?. I’m trying to read the books suggested in tandem, just out of curiousity.

Besides, it’s pretty sad that I haven’t read Animal Farm yet. I mean, the book is like 80 pages, tops. But man, I’m getting more from this little book then reading any history text on the Russian Revolution - or any other revolution to that matter.

Next, as suggested from a good friend at school, is to read 1984. I don’t know if Martel mentions it in his book, but I think it’ll be a good read nevertheless.

As for the Playstation 3… it plays some damn nice moving-picture-shows. I’ll have to find time for that.

So after watching the election Monday night (I stayed up, right to the very end), I realized that I need to know a bit more about this Stephen Harper. If he’s got a majority government, then what does that mean?

Remembering an interview Steve Paikin conducted with author Yann Martel, I ran to the bookstore early Tuesday morning to pick up What is Stephen Harper Reading?. I wasn’t sure what I would get out of it, in fact I was skeptical whether or not I would even get any insight into the mind of Stephen Harper.

Last week, I was discussing Harper with a friend. And it was brought to my attention that I had intuitively begun to judge him as a person, rather his political actions. Over the weekend before the election, I reflected on whether calling Harper an asshole on the basis of his policies was wrong. Should I pass judgement on the nature of a person from what I can deduce from his political life?

But it still got me thinking… the man rubs me the wrong way. And for some reason, if any other celebrity (of sorts) were to do something ridiculous, I wouldn’t care to think twice about it. This is where Martel really hits home.

“Is asking Stephen Harper to account for his reading habits irrelevant? Worse: is it improper and dishonourable, attacking the private man rather than his public policies?

   The answer is simple. As long as someone has no power over me, I don’t care what they read, or if they read at all. It’s not for me to judge how people should live their lives. But once someone has power over me, then, yes, their reading does matter to me, because in what they choose to read will be found what they think and what they will do.” What is Stephen Harper Reading? p.10

Interesting, as I started to understand why I felt so strongly against the man. And so, the reading began.

Martel begins with suggesting to Mr. Harper that he should read Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych, a book I have yet heard of. It began to spur my own interests in the literature. In fact, as I continued, I became more interested in the books that Martel suggests to our Prime Minister than the man himself.

Now I read on and got to a very interesting point. Martel suggests Harper to read The Lesser Evil: Political Ethics in an Age of Terror by Michael Ignatieff. Isn’t that interesting?

I looked online and The Lesser Evil is sold out everywhere. I couldn’t even get a copy from our library. But, I happen to have another book by Mr. Ignatieff already, part of the Massey Lectures: The Rights Revolution.

I began reading that.

Ignatieff states that a defining feature of Canada are our Rights. He continues to discuss the myriad of Rights that Canadians have and the wonderful benefits and responsibilities that come with it. He also notes how, historically, those who obtain rights tend to oppose others who wish to have those rights - a characteristic that Canada has been a leader in overcoming. In fact, the recognition of human rights and systems of democracy have been quite violent. People around the world today are fighting for democracy, and we squander it like the air we breathe.

I feel sad.

Back to Martel’s book - He summarizes every author at the end of his letters to the Prime Minister. And this is what was written for Mr. Ignatieff:

MICHAEL IGNATIEFF (B. 1947) is the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. Prior to his political career, Ignatieff held several prominent positions in academia and broadcasting. He has been on the faculty of the universities of Oxford, Cambridge and Toronto, and was the director from 2000 to 2005 of Harvard’s Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy. During his time in England, he worked as a documentary filmmaker and political commentator with the BBC. Ignatieff is the author of sixteen books, including a biography of Isaiah Berlin and three novels.

I feel more sad.

To my surprise, my sadness was less to do with Harper as Prime Minister, but of Ignatieff’s course in stepping down as the leader of the Liberal party.

I admit, the Liberals are far from perfect. But I truly believe Ignatieff is a man of principle. You can say that he called the election at the wrong strategic time, but it was called on the matter of principle - Harper is found in contempt or parliament. Harper has withheld information that, as a leader of a nation, with the responsibility to the people, we have the right to see and we have the responsibility to review the information. Accountability should be the name of the game, and this new majority government has none. Who will hold the party accountable now?

The NDP have over 50 seats from Quebec who have never set foot in parliament. I think one MP is 19 years old. Thus, the party’s dynamics are completely different than the party that campaigned. If I hear one more promise from Jack Layton, I just might lose it. The NDP have no power to pass any promises they make, especially against a majority conservative government. Maybe the conservatives will go easy on them…. fresh fish… fresh fish….. fresh fish…

But, some would say it’s in the direction of change. “Give the NDP a chance”, you might retort; I say sure. Give them a chance. Hopefully their battle wounds will show the Canadian people just how invasive this conservative government is. But, then again, you Canadians, you people of this nation; you have changed.

We are no longer citizens of a nation. We are as the politicians Rob Ford and Stephen Harper refer to us as: taxpayers. We are the entire reduction from a responsible, contributing, independant persons to a single dollar sign. The sadest part is that Canadians don’t care and we’ve reverted to the belief that a majority conservative government will stop this “bickering” and cycle of “unnecessary elections” just to stay the course of bringing us out of this recession.

The wealth of this nation is not in its fiscal plan. It is far greater than something so ephemeral. I have a voice as an equal, with rights as an equal, I am free like all equals. If you sacrifice even a fraction of our equality, then equality will be the price. What’s it worth to you?

Your precious conservatives have nothing on bringing Canada out of this recession. If the G20 summit report is ever released and the real price of the F35’s are ever confirmed, then hopefully Canadians will open their eyes. The conservatives will not raise taxes. They will cut taxes. But they will also cut funding for research in the humanities and social sciences (not technology). They will bring our tuition up multiple times. This is not the worst extent of this - this damage can be measured in dollars and cents.

Am I an “Ethnic”, or am I a “Very Ethnic”? I don’t know if my actions are “Ethnic” enough to constitute the “Very” prefix. Equal treatment is out the door with Harper. We can use the short form change to the census as proof. What are the bare minimum aspects that this government wants to know about their taxpayers?

I have barely scratched the surface. But I am sad and tired. The next time we hear Harper state this “is the True North”, our heads should sink to the floor in disbelief.

I can’t believe this was posted almost 2 years ago and I’m only discovering it now.

So, my next home project: TV recording server.

If I plan this right, the videos should stream right to my ipod.

I didn’t really know who Ignatieff was until really, a week ago. I’ve got to know Harper quite well in the last few years, and now having to vote a third time during my university education, I’m pretty fed up with his shenanigans. What is the deal with all the closed doors and the uncultured decisions? Oh, besides that fact that he’s an uncultured man.

Off the top of my head and in no particular order, I’m going to riffle off a few observations I’ve had in the last 24 hours.

1. I watched the Q&A session that Harper had at a shipping yard today. He’s limited each interviewer to 4 questions each (closed doors, AGAIN!) and the interview consisted mainly on asking about why they were limited to 4 questions each (kinda a waste asking repeatedly if you ask me - but the guy never answered the question! EVERY TIME!).

2. So, Harper’s talking about Newfoundland & Labrador and the Lower Churchill hydroelectric project. He’s not talking about helping the people in the province, who seriously got effed-over from the government since 1949 (Cod Moratorium 1992 - look it up). He’s talking about reaping the benefits of hydroelectric power for the rest of the provinces in the country. Dude… that ain’t gonna get you votes in Atlantic Canada in my opinion. Plus, he’s talking about the project’s importance in trying to reduce gas emissions and clean power. C’mon! It should really be about supporting the people of the province.

*Rant Tangent Begins - skip if you already know that Carbon Emissions is a moot point*

Carbon Emissions Rant

Recently I was thinking about the “hundreds of millions of metric tons” of CO2 emissions and thought… how much is that? ..because that’s a big number. So, through the magic of internet technology, I looked up a few facts.

The atmosphere is mainly made of Oxygen (~21%) and Nitrogen (~78%). Carbon Dioxide makes up 0.039% of the atmosphere, which is third on the list of most gases in the atmosphere. I kid you not, it’s a FRACTION of 0.1%.

so I thought… ok, so a 100 million tons of CO2 must be a lot if the atmosphere’s only consisting of 0.039% CO2.

Wrong. I found that the atmophere has 5.3 x 10^15 tons of air. So, 0.038% of that makes over 2.01 x 10^12 tons of CO2 in the air. That’s 2 Trillion! So, if we dump, let’s say, 600 million tons of CO2 into the air every year, it adds 0.0298% of CO2 into the atmosphere. That’s a FRACTION of 0.1% of added carbon dioxide per YEAR! PER YEAR. Which means the alteration to the atmosphere’s composition is like 0.001% of a change, at best. Oh, and the oceans absorb most of the CO2, so if water levels truly are rising, then CO2 shouldn’t EVER be considered a problem.

*correction, I found a report about how we dump 5.5 billion tons of CO2 into the air. So my estimation isn’t 0.001% change, it’s roughly 0.01%.

*Rant Tangent End*

3. I read over the Liberal “Family Pack” and it is much more along the lines of the Canada that I know and love. Although histroically Chretian’s 1993 red book was a bit on the side of empty promises (NAFTA reduction really meant NAFTA expansion…) I really hope this Family Pack isn’t another lie. Regardless, it has a message.

4. I like that Ignatieff seems cultured. And as quoted by Yann Martel, he’s written over 90 books and atleast through the medium of literature is evaulating the way in which he is a leader. “To lead, you must read” as Martel would put it, and I couldn’t agree more. Martel argues that through art you can look at something through a new lens, evaluate things that you can’t in science, or math, or whatever - and that literature is the best way to do this. I honestly don’t know what Harper reads. What is Harper’s vision of Canada? That is a fundamental question that any leader is required to answer, or we are doomed to wander in limbo. We aren’t a military country, so why are we spending $30 billion in fighter planes?

5. Why do corporations get tax cuts today and families get a “fitness tax benefit” in 5 years? If you’re voting conservative, I highly suggest you look into the policy. The “fitness tax break” is something like $500 per year for a family (and will happen so far in the future that it’ll be the subject of the next election… unless Harper schedule’s another election in 2 years…). $500 doesn’t even cover my YMCA gym membership for a year (and I pay considerably “cheap” membership). For many, that wouldn’t cover 6 months, let alone a child taking any kind of sports. I say tax the corporations for what it’s worth, they’ll still come out with a profit in the end.

6. The Conservatives are playing up on Fear whereas the Liberals are playing up on Hope. From my observations, it seems like the Conservatives have focused on the fact that the economy is still very fragile and requires good spending. But from the reports I’m reading, we’re in a far bigger national deficit now then we were a couple years back. The Liberals seem to be honed in on Hope, on that the working class is what drives the country and that pumping money into education, child care, healthcare and pension is the proper course of action. I don’t like living in fear, it’s stupid.

I’m sick of feeling crazy, like I’m the only person who feels this way. But I’m tired of our current politicians just playing politics and not governing. Rob Ford and Stephen Harper make me go apeshit. Am I the only person in Canada that thinks that we’ve lost what it means to be Canadian? According to Amnesty International, we’ve already lost our ‘leader in human rights’ status. Plus, Harper’s closed many many Canadian embassies across the globe. Who are we anymore?!

I say GO IGNATIEFF! It’s time to stop this crap about fighter planes and corporate tax cuts and it’s time to remember that being Canadian means leading in human rights - I’m all for education, healthcare and the future of this nation.

Canadian architecture has been most recently undermined by the increased value of architectural aesthetics and style. Albeit important aspects of any design – the production of things that are aesthetically pleasing – it is equally, if not more, important that architectural expression bases itself around a set of fundamental values or principles that are indicative of its cultural surrounding.

Recent publications have highlighted geographic regionalism as an apparent value behind much of Canadian architecture. Authors Lisa Rochon, Marco Polo, John McMinn, Andrew Gruft and George Kapelos have all sought to categorize Canadian architecture within these boundaries. As a defining characteristic of its architecture and a fundamental feature of the nation, regionalism in Canada transcends discourse on aesthetic style focusing on issues of architectural manner.

Regionalism is but one quality of Canadian-ism. Can an architecture of values be applied as a fundamental design principle so to further emphasize a national identity? The thesis seeks to express political, social and cultural qualities through architecture in an effort to convey a national identity.

It is the government’s responsibility not to lose touch with its values in cultural production for the sake of short-term cost benefits, for architecture is a practice of longevity. Recently erected buildings that should represent Canada have failed to communicate its national values, and thus have failed to project a strong national identity. The Canada Pavilions at both the Shanghai Expo and Vancouver Olympics in 2010 are examples of this neglect.

The Canada today is different than the Canada 50 years ago. When contrasting the recent Canadian Pavilions of the 2000s to those in the 1960s-1970s, it is clear that Canadian architecture once strived to identify itself with certain values distinguishing ourselves on the international stage (Osaka Expo ‘70, Montreal Expo ‘67).

As a result of the government’s effort to define Canadian culture in the early 1950s, the Royal Commission for the Arts, Letters and Sciences was written and published by Vincent Massey, casually referred to as The Massey Report. The Massey Report concluded that federal programs were required for the active promotion of the arts culture in Canada. The establishment of the National Gallery for the Arts, the Canada Council for the Arts and the National Film Board (to name a few) were the direct result of The Massey Report. 

For architecture, the Canada Council for the Arts has been largely responsible for the funding and promotion of architecture in Canada. Unfortunately, for the Canada Council, architecture falls under the category of the visual arts, focusing mainly on its aesthetics. Other national bodies, like the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada have tried to grapple with the increasing trend of accepting architectural aesthetics by developing an architecture policy much like Denmark and Finland. The policy, after 2 years of development, has since halted.

The Canada Council funds the promotion of Canadian architecture through programs such like the Venice Biennale. The Canada Pavilion at the Venice Biennale is an example of one representation of Canadian-ism. Designed to resemble a wigwam of brick, steel and glass, the thesis investigates and critiques its existence. Does it inherently have cultural value that speaks of our national identity?

In an effort to move away from an architecture based purely on an aesthetic style, the design investigation will attempt to define a method in utilizing a set of values that represent Canadian-ism for the Canada Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

Ok, so the linux server is running fine thus far. No overheating and so far the UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) hasn’t failed.

Hamachi has been so-so. It tunnels the lan, but after a few minutes of stagnation, the connection is lost requiring me to reset the domain, which can be done remotely. I’ve been trying NRSERVER (NeoRouter) with no luck. But, from the forums, I’ve read that it’s far superior to Hamachi (especially since LogMeIn bought them out).

But, regardless, it works. And yesterday I finished rigging up the entire house with gigabit switches (bought 3x 5-port Trendnet gigabit switches from Dell, on sale $19 each), that is 1000mbps. So the whole smash should work in gigabit.

I can juice out about 20MB/s over the network, which I read is pretty standard for gigabit. Really, it’s the max the hard drives will give me (apparently). If I ran Raid-5, I’d probably get a better output.

The next part of the project is to setup the backup system. Before I do that, I’ll just sum up what I’ve got on the server:

1x 60GB HDD -System Disk running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

1x 2TB HDD - Main Media Server (Movies, Music and Documents), shared across 7 PC’s and 1 MacBook Pro. Music is broadcast through iTunes via DAAP-Bonjour.

1x 1.5TB HDD - Photo Server (.DNG and .JPEG)

1x 1.5TB HDD - Manual Backup Drive (Just Copy and Paste Space)

I found that I can run processes not needing to be logged in the whole time using the ‘screen’ command. So If I’ve got a big Copy-Paste job, I don’t need the client machine to be on the whole time.

What I’m thinking is setting up another 2TB drive that cannot be seen on the network and having the server run incremental backups every night at 3am (backing up all new data on the server). Plus, I want a full backup to be complete every two weeks to a month. I think that’s comprehensive enough for my purposes. At most, this old pentium 3 server will hold 6 drives and that’s AT BEST.

I’ve found some open-source material like RSync and Dump/Restore that I’ll try. And it looks like they suggest compression format TAR, which is foreign to me.

Wish me luck!

So the progress thus far is I’ve got the Ubuntu Server (“Mark 006”, aka “Jesus Christ”) running, now tucked nicely away in the basement. It’s a little loud and I wish it could reach the gigabit speeds I hoped it would have. Unfortunately, it’s because I chose to resurrect the single-core Pentium 3 desktop. Pentium 3 just isn’t powerful enough to reach that gigabit rate: ~90mb/s. It’s tops out at around 20mb/s and then averages ~12mb/s.

But, what I should have done was resurrect it’s stronger brother, the Mark 007 that sat beside Mark 006 for the longest time. Mark 007 is a dual-core pentium 3 xeon server board. I put that it together in 2009 out of curiousity. Had to juice in 2gb of rated ram, two pentium 3 xeon processors and rigged up a normal power supply (it really needs a server grade psu). Problem is, the board is huge, E-ATX, that’s extended-atx. I had to remove all the 3.5” steel bays for it to fit. I know it works, but it just needs literal space for a hard drive, a server grade psu and a place for a disk drive. Plus, I don’t know if normal pci cards work in the server board, the mobo configuration is completely different.

Anyhow, Mark 007 will probably be resurrected next year, probably in the summer. By then, I think I’ll feel comfortable enough with Linux to efficiently and quickly set it up.

The Ubuntu Server is now running without a monitor and a keyboard. Setting up Putty, I’m able to access the server remotely from any computer on the network. I’m getting better with command lines in Linux, but I think I should get a Linux-for-Dummies book, just to see how far I can take it.

Plus, I got DAAP to work, so the whole Music folder on the server is shared via iTunes. The next step is to broadcast it over the internet… without Hamachi. We’ll see how far I get with it. Hamachi is a good compromise, but I think I can get this thing off the ground through Linux. Hamachi only runs natively on Windows and MacOS. WINE is not an option, can’t half-ass this.

So far the network can handle playing an HD movie on one machines while also streaming music on two other computers simultaneously. That’s the extent the network can handle. If it were truly gigabit (if I had worked on Mark 007 instead of Mark 006) the server would be able to handle, theoretically, 10 times that amount.