2011 in review
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 58,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 21 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
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One of the handiest features of Compiz is having multiple workspaces, anywhere from 2 to 1024 (for the extreme multi-tasker).
By default, you can switch through workspaces by using Control + Alt + Left/Right. However I find it’s far quicker to switch workspaces by just spinning your mouse wheel.
To do so (presuming you have compizconfig-settings-manager installed) go to Desktop > Viewport Switching.
Click on the “Desktop Based Switching” tab, and change “Move Next” to Button 5, and “Move Prev” to Button 4. You’ll now be able to flip between workspaces with your mouse wheel 
Personally, I also like to go to Desktop Wall, and click on the “Viewport Switching” tab, and define “Non-Sliding Windows” to
(name=gnome-panel) & name=desktop_window
This prevents Gnome-Panel and the Desktop Background sliding, making the windows just slide over them
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Tags: Compiz, Ubuntu, viewport, workspaces
Christmas!
Even though I’ve not updated my blog in quite a while, a suprising number of people drop by every day. Seeing as it’s the season that it is, I just wanted to wish ye all a very Merry Christmas.
Eat, drink, be merry, watch re-runs of the Titanic movie, however you celebrate, just enjoy!
Thanks for visiting, and making this blog possible! Be sure to drop by in the new year, for some great new HowTos!
~Evidex
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Tags: christmas, evidex
Some Harddrive Tools
Seeing as I’m just rebuilding my server at the moment, I’m starting to remember a number of commands that I’ve not used in quite a while. Here’s three dead handy commands that deal with hard drives and filesystems. Seriously, how I ever forgot them, I’ll never know 
The first is the simplest. It shows you how much space you’ve used, and have free, on every storage medium attached to your machine. It’s four characters. Gotta love the simple things in life 
df -h
If you did it right, you should see something like this;
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda2 6.0G 901M 4.8G 16% / udev 243M 164K 243M 1% /dev /dev/sdc1 917G 615G 293G 68% /mnt/1000 /dev/sdb1 459G 199M 454G 1% /home
The next is a tool that does far too many things for me to understand, including some things which will DESTROY your data and maybe even physical harddrive. So be careful what you type. I however, use it as a performance tool.
hdparm -Tt /dev/sda
Obviously, change /dev/sda to whatever drive you like (you can find it with df -h 
). Again, if you’ve done it right, you’ll see something like this;
/dev/sdb: Timing cached reads: 792 MB in 2.00 seconds = 395.34 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 340 MB in 3.00 seconds = 113.16 MB/sec
The first reading (-T), shows, according to the man page, “is essentially an indication of the throughput of the processor, cache, and memory of the system under test”. The second reading (-t) is the more true speed of the drive, the actual speed a file can be read from the disk, without any caches. So obviously, this little command is great for those like me, who love comparing various computers, disks and setups.
The last command is another multipurpose tool, which deals with ext filesystem settings, rather than harddrive settings as hdparm does.
However, before I tell you what it is, we must do some homework. Ext based filesystems (and a few others) reserve space on the drive for the system. It’s main use is that when you accidentally “fill” the drive, there’s still some secret space left over for the system to use, preventing it from freezing up. By default, it’s set to 5%. Now on a root drive, that’s a good setting to have, but it’s not quite necessary on a drive that’s simply being used to store bulk data. In such a case, it’s safe enough to reduce that secret reserved space back to 1% in order to win back some previous MBs.
Without futher ado, here it is;
tune2fs -m 1 /dev/sda1
Again, change /dev/sda1 to whatever you need yourself. The 1 after the -m flag donates setting a reserved space of 1%. For example, on a terabyte harddrive, changing from the defaults of 5% to 1% should give you a gain of 37GB or so.
Right, well that’s it for now. Hopefully, I’ll keep posting bits and pieces. No promises though
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Tags: df -h, harddrive, hdparm, postaday, reserved space, Server, tune2fs
Another Milestone
Apologies, this is but another brief post.
In the last few weeks, even though I’ve not been posting, the site seems to be getting more and more popular.
As a result, it’s just rolled over 51,000 views!
To everyone who visits, thank you, and I hope to see you back here soon Don’t forget to comment on stuff you like
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Tags: postaweek2011
Is that a Tumbleweed?
No, I have to admit, I’ve not been the most regular, or interesting writer these past few months. To be honest, I simply havn’t had the volume of time I envisioned myself having over this summer.
Between being out and about, and working, I’ve just not had time to even look at the insides of a computer, even though so many of them seem to be breaking around me. I have a small stack of laptops in various states waiting to be fixed.
But there is light at the end of the tunnel. In about a month of so, summer will be ending, at the glory days of college shall begin. And considering that I’ll be studying computer science, there should be a torrent of material to post about
So, please bear with me for the moment.
As an infamous animatronic figure once said, “I’ll be back”.
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Stressful Server
Remember I’ve been complaining for a while about the problems I’d been having with via_sata cards and Linux? No? Well, in summary, they don’t work well together, causing lock ups and cryptic error messages. And remember how I said I’d gotten some lovely free motherboards and various other bits and pieces?
Well, as it turned out, a number of the motherboards I recieved actually had inboard SATA. Theoretically they were therefore a fantastic replacement for the no-functioning via-sata cards.
With my usual gun-ho ( is that how it’s said? ) attitude, I plowed ahead and ripped out the innerds of my server which for so long had lain idle gathering dust.
At first things didn’t look great. The first motherboard I tried was dead on arrival, but things picked up with the second. I hooked it up, and beamed when my sata harddrive was detected. I quickly proceeded to complete the transfer, getting all the drives and fans into the case, tidying the cables and that. It was only toward the very end that I realised what I had done.
Before I’d finished, I’d found an extra stick of RAM. The more the better I thought, and I leant over to fit it.
I then noticed that one of the modules seemed slighly ajar. In another second or two, I saw that the little green power light on the front of the case was still on.
I had somehow managed to leave the machine running, and dislodge the stick of RAM. Understandable, the mtherboard didn’t particularly like that, and now has given up the ghost.
Which leaves me back where I started, with a server I can’t run and files I can’t access. How easily stupid mistakes can ruin a build 
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Tags: Server, via-sata
Apologies
I am currently right in the middle of my exams, and things are more than a bit hectic.
Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that I’ll have time for new posts, for the next two weeks or so.
You never know, I might get a few minutes here or there, but I’m afraid I can’t promise anything, other than when I get back, I’ll be seriously upping the quantity, and hopefully quality of my posts.
See you in a few weeks
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Tags: postaweek2011
This howto is selfish, in that it is for me only. It is so that I can remember how to set Compiz up in the way I like best. You may or may not find this of any use. I know I will
Virtual Desktops
In “General Options”, change Desktop Size to 5 horizontal, by 1 vertical.
Zoom Desktop
Enable “Zoom Desktop”
Viewport Switching
In “Viewport Switching”, on the “Desktop-based Viewport Switching” tab, change Move Next to Button5 and Move Previous to Button4. This allows you to switch desktops by flicking the mouse wheel
Desktop Wall
On the “Viewport Switching” tab, change Non-sliding windows to (type=Dock) | type=Desktop
On “Edge Flipping” tab, enable Edge Flip Move.
Wobbly Windows
Enable Wobby Windows, disabling Snapping Windows.
Windows Previews
Enable.
Image Loading
Under this heading, enable all options, JPEG, PNG, SVG and Text.
Ring Switcher
Enable. Set Ring Height to 12. Set Text Placement to “Below Ring”.
Static Application Switcher
Disable “Show Minimized”.
Animations
Go wild. Enjoy yourself.
Apologies for the lack of any real content, this is really just so I can remind myself. I’ll post some decent stuff once I get time
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Tags: Compiz, HowTo, Ubuntu
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