Pyro at the Office #1 , Team Fortress 2

Some thoughts on F1 and Michael Schumacher

First of all I think I'm not a hardcore Michael Schumacher fan, I mean, I don't have Schumacher related stuff at home.. caps, autographs etc as a matter of fact I don't have any F1 material at home, so I don't consider myself as a hardcore F1 fan either, but I like Michael Schumacher and especially "since the internet" I can download the BBC coverage to watch their interviews with him. It's a shame really that these media stuff is so restrictive in the world.. I mean many people would even pay for some stuff but it's simply not available outside a specific region. Here (Romania) even iTunes doesn't provide the full services, only the app store available here, no music, no shows nothing else.

Finally, ASUS releases the AMD Fusion boards too

Here's the announcement on ASUS News site.
Microsite here with comparisons.
ASUS got 6 of them:

F1A75-V EVO
F1A75-V PRO
F1A75-M PRO
F1A75
F1A75-M
F1A75-M LE

- the F1A75-V EVO seems to be the high-end one.
- the F1A75 doesnt have video-output so you'll need a dedicated card for this.

Wonder what will cost these, strangely the 990fx boards doesnt effected much the 890fx boards' price.

Gigabyte's AMD Fusion Boards with A75 chipset

It seems that Gigabyte is the first to show the FM1 socket boards on their website, currently, there are 4 of them:
GA-A75M-D2H
GA-A75-D3H
GA-A75M-UD2H
GA-A75-UD4

here is the comparison between the 4 of them

ASUS F1A75-M PRO AMD Fusion Motherboard Specification

I'm quite excited about this AMD Fusion thing, so basically I everyday search for some news about it, today I was successful, below are some specs:
Here's a picture (note: this is not the PRO version)

Specification

CPU	AMD Socket FM1 A- Series/E2- Series Accelerated Processors Supports CPU up to 4 cores Supports AMD® Turbo Core 2.0 Technology * The AMD® Turbo Core 2.0 Technology Support depends on the APU types

Status Update

Right, I haven't written in a while.. not that I wrote things about myself, so this will be a first.
Why was this big gap between this and the previous post? well a couple of things:

-I wasn't in mood a.k.a I'm lazy
-I was working from 25th October last year (this is the official reason) (three shifts)

I'm saying "was" because they haven't extended my contract last month.. so I'm currently jobless..
Unfortunately in this area lacks many job opportunities... so it will be quiet hard to find one.. and without experience no one hires.. I thought about a job abroad but you need some money to travel and for stuff.. of course I haven't got no savings.. because the salary was quite bad (really bad, still I hope it was more than in china for the "working" people). (you are welcome to donate)

Street View in Romania

Street View in Romania: "

Bram Stoker’s world famous novel Dracula was believed to have been inspired by fifteenth century Wallachian Prince, Vlad Dracul from Romania (better known to many as Vlad the Impaler). The legend of the vampire is still deeply rooted in Transylvanian culture today, and tourists from across the world come to explore the history and mystery of the many beautiful castles that can be found here.

But of course those aren’t all the sights Romania has to offer, and now you can see for yourself, because today we’re making 360-degree Street View imagery available in Romania for several cities and roads.

From your virtual vantage point, you can now take a look over the bridge onto Lacul Vidraru (Vidraru Lake). This is the starting point of the most beautiful road in Romania, the Transfăgărășan mountain pass, which at its highest point reaches 2,034 meters above sea level:

Or check out the summer residence of Romanian Kings, Castelul Peleș (Peleș Castle):

It’s not just Paris that has an Arc de Triomphe. You can whizz round the Romanian

Arcul de Triumf in the capital Bucharest:

And here’s our parliamentary palace, Palatul Parlamentului (Parliament Palace):

There’s heaps to explore but I’ll leave you with one final tip, and that’s to visit

Vatra Ardealului, my favorite cofee shop in Brasov, which you can see below:

Welcome to Romania and enjoy your virtual exploration!

Posted by Octavian Iercan, Operations Lead, Street View Europe

"

World champ Semenya cleared to return

The Associated Press: World champ Semenya cleared to return

Caster Semenya was cleared to immediately return to track by the sport's governing body Tuesday, ending an 11-month layoff while she underwent gender tests after becoming the 800-meter world champion. The International Association of Athletics Federations said medical details of the 19-year-old South African's case would remain confidential and it will have no further comment on the matter.

A Closer Look at ZFS, Vdevs and Performance

A Closer Look at ZFS, Vdevs and Performance: "

When looking at the mails and comments I get about my ZFS optimization

and my RAID-Greed posts, the same type of questions tend to pop up over and over again. Here's an example from a reader email:



'I was reading about ZFS on your blog and you mention that if I do a 6 drive array for example, and a single RAID-Z the speed of the slowest drive is the maximum I will be able to achieve, now I thought that ZFS would be better in terms of speed. Please let me know if there is a newer ZFS version that improved this or if it does not apply anymore.'



This is just an example, but the basic theme is the same for much for the reactions I see: Many people think that RAID-Z will give them always good performance and are surprised that it doesn't, thinking it's a software or a ZFS issue.

In reality, it's just pure logic and physics, and to understand that we should look a little closer at what vdevs are in ZFS and how they work.

What is a Vdev?

Another reader pointed out that I should define vdevs as short and simple as possible, so here we go:

A ZFS vdev (aka 'virtual device') is either:

• a single disk, or
• two or more disks that are mirrored, or
• a group of disks that are organized using RAID-Z.

There are also special kinds of vdevs like hot-spares, ZIL or cache devices, etc. but we'll leave that to another post. Look up the full definition in the zpool (1M) man page.

So there you have it: A disk, a mirror or a RAID-Z group.

A ZFS pool is always a stripe of one or more vdevs that supplies blocks for your ZFS file systems to store data in.

Digi Net Mobil finally at home

As a follow-up from my previous post

finnally i got one now.. it's like this:

speed.. well it's not 7.2 .. but i't arount 2mB/s .. well not so good but im sure it'll improve.

here's the coverage map not that bad too..

PS: works ok on linux

UPDATE:

some pics: