Archive for the 'Personal' Category

THIS BLOG IS NOT DEAD :)

Published on March 19, 2010 in Personal. 0 Comments

Quick post here, realised the other day that chirstmas was the last time i actually threw anything up on here… Well, a lot of stuff has been happening between now and then, not least of which is this full time job stuff (Yea, thats gonna dampen anyones efforts at EVERYTHING lol)…

Also, returned from a two week trip to Vietnam a few weeks back, such an amazing country, having a Vietnamese girlfriend made the trip even more fantastic (gotta love that language barrier falling over). Id reccomend the trip to anyone and got tonnes of suggestions on things to do (or not  hehe)… below is a panoramic i took from the top of Marble Mountain, a place fairly central in the country where local sculpters spend months carving the most amazing statues. Ill get some more posts up soon…

Also, just noted some very strange things going on with post links, seems every post was leading to 404 errors. Did some research and had to regenerate the permalinks from within WP, but all seems to be working again now… hmm, odd :)

RAID Storage Server 2.0

Published on August 25, 2009 in Hardware, Personal and Tech World. 0 Comments

Back in my final year at uni I threw togeather a nice little RAID storage server using one of them Adaptec rebranded 2610SA Dell cards, 6 x 500GB SATA hard disks into a RAID 5 Array, which up untill now has proved fantastic for my home run media. That box is currently a multifunction server, provinding web hosting for internal websites, 3 Virtual Machines (running through VMWare Server), a VoIP Asterisk server running several internal and external extensions for myself and several family members and friends as well as being the primary storage for 3 Vista Media Center machines scattered around the house.

Well, the time has finally arrived where ill be leaving this nest, a new job has arrived and will involve me moving down to Exeter within the next few weeks or month, so it came time to re-asses a few architecture items, first of which was this server. Obviously it cant be in two places at once and both my new location and here need it, so their was only one choice (well, im lying there a little, but this is the one i wanted to do, cus its cool lol)…

Time for a new Server hehe !

Specifications;

  • Motherboard : Gigabyte MA790X-UD3P
  • CPU : AMD Phenom 9650 Quad Core 2.30 Ghz
  • Memory : 4GB DDR2
  • Graphics : ATI Radeon 9200 (PCI)
  • Power Supply : Chieftec 650W (80 Plus, modular power connectors)
  • RAID Card : Adaptec Unified Serial Card – 3805 (Internal 8 Port SSF-8087)
  • Primary Hard Disk : Samsung HD501LJ 500GB (Running off Motherboard SATA Controller)
  • RAID Hard Disks : 4 x Samsung HD103UI 1TB Green SATA
  • RAID Configuration : RAID5 Array 2.728TB (Over 4 Drives, card capable of running 4 more at later date
  • Operating System : Windows Small Business Server 2008

Suffice to say, its a little bit of an upgrade to the old machine, which has been lagging a little for some time now (mostly due to the weight of the virtual machines pulling it down). At the current time this machine has been built into an old cheap case I had sitting in the garage, but next month ill be ordering a 20 or 24 bay rackmount storage server (like this one) and transfering the bits across, look out for some good pics of the finished article soon…

For the immediate future this server is going to have another 4 1TB drives added, creating an addition 2.7TB array, which will either be used for addition storage, or most likely a mirror for the time being. But with the purchase of the new chassis ill be looking to get an additional Adaptec RAID card capable of running the additional 12 disk bays on the chassis, most likely one of the adaptec 51245 cards with Intelegant Power Manangement, this card has the capability to power the additional 12 bays within the machine and one external SSF-8087 connector to power the JBOB boxes such as this one which can be stand alone outside the main chassis.

Spirit Of The South West Photography Competition

Published on July 20, 2009 in Personal and Photography. 0 Comments

2009-07-20_2139Fluxbox is proud to offer its support to the chaps over at Foot Anstey Solicitors who have founded a competition aimed at raising funds for a worthy cause, Jeremiah’s Journey, a charity that offers support and information to children and their families when someone special has died.

If you’ve got even the slightest interest in Photography or just a willingness to help out, head over to www.spiritofthesw.co.uk and submit a photo which you beleive will sum up the true spirit and power the southwest of england holds for you (a small donation required for entry) and you might be in for a chance to win some quite cool prizes, and even a chance to attend an exhibition of the winning photos along side your own in Plymouth this October !

Please feel free to post this link around to any well known photography sites your aware of, the more this is circulated the better !

Fluxbox Moving Home

Published on April 30, 2009 in Personal. 0 Comments

Quick post, Fluxbox will shortly be moving to another more luxurious home… hopefully if all goes right with the Name Server, tomorrow morning this site will seem like its never gone down hehe !

Goodnight Everyone …

Fluxbox Changes – New Authors

Published on April 4, 2009 in Personal. 0 Comments

Evening all… time for a slightly delayed update..

This blog has, for the last 2 years been the personal space of myself, Aaron Smith, a place for me to ramble, scream and generally just waffle on about any casual random thought that found itself between my ears with nowhere else to go. Well this has has now changed, fluxbox is now and shall from this point on be a group driven blog, still owned and moderated by myself, but is now adding additional authors to the mix.

There are two main reasons for this decision, first and foremost i suppose is my slow but steady decline in posts, mostly due to my increasing time depands within the real world, being a graduate it seems carries with it a certain responsibility to contribute to the national wealth and stop sponging off it, who new ! hehe… well, time I started doing something about that, hence my ’step-up’ in job hunting and recent move to the southwest in search of a dream position working with the IT industry (alas its kinda quiet atm, love this economy hehe)…

Secondly is my long running interest in getting more people involved with this site, and never really getting round to it. The Internet has now and for some time been a shouting board for every random person who has the intelligence to use it, my ramblings not withstanding iv always wanted to get some friends in on this site, to share in my insanity with the world, and share their achievements, disappointments and insane ideas, thoughts and feelings lol ! So, I now take this opportunity to formally introduce Shaun Adams, a fellow graduate from the university of Plymouth who had the good sense to apply for jobs before the economy ran away to hide in a corner hehe ! You can find a little more about him from his personal page in the ‘About Us’ section of this site.

Im hoping to grow on this list of authors over the next few months with some fellow friends, who have all tried to run their own blogs, but run up against the same problems with time (to look after it, an update it) as me. If anyone wishes to become an author for Fluxbox UK, please contact me via the ‘Contact Us’ page and ill get back to you as soon as i can :)