Topslakr May 29th, 2009
As a geek and IT person by trade I have a somewhat unique setup at my home, in terms of computers. I have several web servers, a mail server and a large storage array that I keep running for my personal use. On the one hand, it’s fun for me and allows me to do things most people can’t dream of, but on the other hand it’s all valuable training setup and a great place to do testing before trying it on production servers at the office. The stakes are much lower for me then for the company I work for. To that end I have a stack of server hardware, sitting in my basement, running all day and night sucking down power.
As a lone person accessing the network and with several pretty low profile web sites it’s not crucial for me to have ultra high performance. All I really need is reliable hardware, and the cheaper the better. With the exception of my recent router upgrade all the hardware I use for servers are just old desktops that were replaced for one reason or another. Free hardware is (was) better then having to spend money and is a great way to get started. Read more... (1971 words, estimated 7:53 mins reading time)
Topslakr April 20th, 2009
This past Saturday we began building our first poly tunnel. This project also signaled the start of filming for the upcoming video podcast. I enlisted some filming and photography help from a friend of mine that was there and I think we got enough recorded to make an episode work. Time will tell.
We have some final work to do on the tunnel which we are planning to take care of next weekend. Once that is done and filmed I should be able to start piecing together the video post, which makes me pretty nervous…
Fingers crossed!
Topslakr
Topslakr March 23rd, 2009
I’m preparing to go out on a limb here. I’ve ordered a camcorder, some various bits of kit and I plan to embark on a project to create compelling footage that is both entertaining and informational about… farming on a small scale. I just might be crazy.
I believe that producing a substantial amount of your own food will be easy and not take a tremendous amount of time. Based on this I am going to try and document my process to do just that and will publish my findings for all the world to see, even if I’m wrong. I don’t want to post some clips of me pulling weeds or looking at a gathered information about time spent per day ect, I want to talk about my process, the costs, the reasons, and how it turns out. Read more... (1010 words, estimated 4:02 mins reading time)
Topslakr March 20th, 2009
I’m not an especially political person. I exersice my right to vote here in the US and I stay current with what is happening but I generally try to avoid political discussion. This story on the NYTimes though struck me so I thought I’d pass along my quick thoughts…
Take a look at this story, and then come back: A.I.G. Sues U.S. for Return of $306 Million in Tax Payments
Basically, to me it’s all ‘Blah Blah Blah’. I’m not a tax person and, who knows, maybe they are ‘owed’ money. I’m not going to discuss that end of things. I think it’s ridiculous for them to sue the government with the governments money, but that is neither here nor there. My thoughts here are, does that amount of money even matter at this point?
Follow along here, and check the math.
We have given them $200 Billion.
1% of $200 Billion is $2 Billion right? (2B x 100=200B)
.5% of $200 Billion is $1 Billion. (2B divided by 2 = 1B) Read more... (315 words, estimated 1:16 mins reading time)
Topslakr March 16th, 2009
Spring is begining to come upon us here in the northeast of America. Over the past few weeks we’ve seen some warm temps, climbing into the 60s; We have also seen about a foot of snow in the past 10 days or so. Here in New England, it takes spring a few weeks to really get a foot hold. As it approaches however my mind is increasingly focused on developing (growing, if you will), last years vegetable experiment.
Last year I took a small plot of land, only 4′ by 8′ and grew a few vegetables. It was small, it was simple and it took almost no time at all. Mistakes were made, things were learned, but more importantly, it reinforced my big ideas for how to live my life. Read more... (805 words, estimated 3:13 mins reading time)
Topslakr March 9th, 2009
If you look around the internet you will find what almost appears to be a bit of a film renaissance. People all over the internet are adding film back into their photography. It seems people are not abandoning digital for film, they are simply adding film to how they work. While the end result between digital and film are the same, pictures, they both have various strengths and weaknesses that can and should be exploited.
Digital is really great at a lot of things and I shoot 75% of my work on my Nikon D300. You can make thousands of tweaks to the camera, change the ISO speed at any time and can see what your shots look like right now. All of these things are really beneficial and if you are a professional out shooting a wedding or a fashion shoot these features make all the difference in the world. Read more... (874 words, estimated 3:30 mins reading time)
Topslakr February 27th, 2009
I recently had a chance to go for another flight in the Cessna 180. The weather around here has been very cold lately so there were some concerns that the plane would not be willing to come to life. Dave, the pilot and owner, brought with him a pre-heater for the plane though so after ten or fifteen minutes of warming when we pulled it out of the hanger it started up almost immediately.
Once we got things moving we began taxiing out to the runway at Hampton Airfield (7B3). The whole place is a sheet of ice from the hanger to the runway. In the best of times the runway is grass so in the winter they plow one side and leave the other snow, for people with skis. You can imagine the difficulty in doing a run up when your plane slides forward on the ice no matter what you do to the brakes! Read more... (1034 words, estimated 4:08 mins reading time)
Topslakr February 24th, 2009
When I first bought my Nikon FE I canvased a few people I know that have or do shoot film to find out what they recommend for a general use film. Something that I could use for whatever might come my way. Everyone said to look for a 400 speed film and a number of them pointed me squarely at this Fuji film. It’s a standard print film that can be handled and processed most anywhere. I bought a few 36 exposure rolls and went to town, so to speak.
I am pretty impressed with this film. It does have a healthy amount of grain to it, though it’s not distracting, and it does very well with shadow detail. Color rendition is very strong with perhaps an affinity for greens; I understand Fuji is known for that. Read more... (801 words, 4 images, estimated 3:12 mins reading time)
Topslakr January 21st, 2009
In a recent post I detailed my current saga of server trouble. This time around I was having router trouble causing this website, and others, to fall offline. Not that much fun…
When life hands you lemons though, one needs to try to make lemonade. Since I needed to replace hardware I wanted to make sure I put in place some hardware I could trust to last another 5 years and hardware that would sip power… not guzzle it down like the now dead antique desktop tower computer had. My needs are pretty low performance-wise and I don’t need to have a super high performance setup. I just need a powerful feature set.
I left off on the other post basically trying out pfSense to see if it would fit my needs, and a few weeks later I can comfortably say that yes, it does. It’s much more pleasant to use then IPCop was and though it’s more powerful, and thus more complex to use, it still remains simple enough to setup without have to dig through piles of documentation. The interesting part of the swap though is the hardware. Read more... (658 words, estimated 2:38 mins reading time)
Topslakr January 8th, 2009
My home network is more complicated then most. I host some web sites, my email servers, and various other ancillary services that the average person doesn’t need, or want to worry about. As an IT person though it behooves me to have a test bed to try out new things, without the risk of losing company data.
In recent years I have been using IPCop as the gateway between my home network and the outside world. Generally speaking, it’s worked just great. I rarely had to reboot it and the web interface was usable, if slow. The only draw back for me is that they don’t seem to favor low power machines. Sure, you could build a smallish computer using less then 100 watts and run IPCop on it but when you are talking about handing some basic routing for internet access and the like that sure seems like an insane amount of energy to be using 24 hours a day 7 days a week. IPCop was, as far as I can tell, designed to be run on old hardware; It’s for that computer you don’t use anymore but can’t throw away. I had been using it on an old PII 500Mhz setup and was happy to be re-using the machine. That machine though has finally bit the dust and needs to be replaced. Read more... (1071 words, estimated 4:17 mins reading time)