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Slim Devices kicks it up a notch
If it weren't for the fact that I'm very satisfied with my original Slim Devices Squeezebox, I might well have some buyers remorse over the upgrade they've just announced.
The Squeezebox 2 takes it to a whole new level - lossless music formats, Burr-Brown DAC, 802.11g WiFi, higher-resolution screen, visualisers. Not to mention "High precision dedicated crystal clocks and separate linear power supplies for the audio stages" and "Huge 64 megabit buffer for extreme resilience to adverse wireless network conditions."
I wonder if it would interest truly hardcore audiophiles now wanting the convenience of keeping music on a server, such as Sun's Tim Bray.
I'm not in the same audiophile league as Tim, no doubt, but he's thinking of a Mac mini and firewire drive setup near his hifi. That's certainly one way to do it. I'll be following his investigations with interest.
Me, I've got an 1466 Mhz AthlonXP/100 GB Seagate IDE/ 1.25 GB RAM/
mid-tower setup, with UPS, Apple Airport hub etc etc - messy. noisy, hot
etc. The thing is, it's in the basement, and I'm listening to music on the
ground floor. Works for me.
posted at: 10:35 | path: /music | permanent link to this entry
The choices were to watch "CSI" about a flight attendant brutally stabbed to death in a hotel room, or fit my DDS3 drive and get my workstation backed up.
It's obvious, right? I fitted the tape drive. It actually took about 10-15 minutes of real work, plus 1/2 hour searching for a power cable extender (you know, those internal power cables with molex connectors? I have a bunch of extenders somewhere). I never found the extender, so I snipped a cable tidy holding back the existing one inside the box and got the tape drive fully hooked up.
I think a SB1000 looks very nice with a DVD-ROM and a tape drive. Sure it would be even better to have a DDS4 or DAT 74 or whatever the latest kind is, but they cost about 5X more!
As I write this, I'm doing a level0 backup of the entire machine to tape. Quick, are there files at risk where you (yes, YOU!) live? :)
To get things kicked off, I'm using hostdump.sh which takes 2 minutes to download install and works out what to dump all by itself.
Yes, I know that real men write their own scripts, using star, fancy block
sizes, FIFO buffers etc, but I've always thought it better to start with
protecting the data, then work on the sophistication and efficiency of
the backup system strictly in that order.
posted at: 22:16 | path: /solaris | permanent link to this entry
I bought a DDS3 drive for my Sun Blade 1000 on Ebay. Should arrive any day. This is a DAT based tape drive which has a pretty good $/MB rating these days. I prefer DLT, but only when someone else is buying the tapes.
At a modest 12GB native capacity, and rather leisurely transfer rate, it's not something I'm going to be keeping my digital video projects on.
On my Sun machine, however, the main things are my programming projects, my .profile, my .emacs, my CVS repository. This stuff fits nicely in a few gig. I also like the idea of a backup device built-in. So I can put a fresh tape in regularly, use a cron job for the scheduling and have a stack of tapes on top of the machine. If something goes horribly wrong, it will be fairly straightforward to get files back.
For resilience, once I have local backups running, I'm going to do a sort of "cooperative rsync partnership" with a friend who lives uptown (see Eloptoof.Net) and I suppose one DDS tape is no big deal to take Upstate when we next get away for a bit of geographic separation.
Long-term I plan to have a backup server, with a better tape drive,
running Amanda but whilst data is at
risk, a small local tape drive, plus hostdump.sh is a
good first step.
posted at: 22:37 | path: /solaris | permanent link to this entry
Powerbook - return of the life
My Powerbook came back from Apple safe and sound. Hallelujah!
No logic board swap, no new hard disk, just a new superdrive.
I wasn't expecting it this quick (less than one week) and it came superbly packaged - like "I'm going to keep this box" superb. So on the whole I am once again happy with Apple and my investment in AppleCare is definitely showing a big return (I simply knew something had to give eventually given how much work this laptop does).
Any complaints? Well, the CD that jammed wasn't returned. I'm going to assume it was more work to get it out of the knackered drive, so I'll let them off. I also asked for them to look at the latch which is reluctant to trigger, which they don't seem to have done, but I can see that this laptop is basically in good shape for its age and allow it some signs of again.
During the worrying time when I thought the laptop might get damaged and I might lose files I got a bit more serious about backups again. My research led me to favor Dantz Retrospect software plus a stack of Firewire hard drives for backups and standbys. For more details on the reasoning behind this, please see Take Control of Mac OS X Backups - a rather good "EBook" I bought (and no, I wont forward you the PDF, buy your own!).
I need to take a deep breath before committing that much cash (make sure I don't have any other big bills lurking). In the meanwhile, here's the semi-random things I backed up off my laptop :-
And here are the things I didn't backup, that I realised I'd miss after I handed over the laptop and walked off :-
So here's to backups, but also, here's to a hard disk that didn't
fail. "TOSHIBA MK6021GAS" you made my day.
posted at: 22:27 | path: /rescue | permanent link to this entry
I made an early start this morning and got to the Apple Store SoHo by 9am. They don't open until 10am. So I'm not the genius in this story, it's safe to say.
Trying again, I made an appointment for 4.45, and just before that time grabbed a taxi, making it to the store just after 5pm. I figured they might be running a bit behind, and I can hang around a bit if they've given my slot away, since I am a little late, should work out nicely, right?
Arriving in the store for the first time wanting to get something out of the genius bar, I found I didn't know how it works.
There might be a sign saying "wait here and someone will see you". But no.
There might be a ticket dispenser saying "take a number". But no.
I had to interrupt a "genius" to ask "how does this work". I consider this already a sign of bad design.
The friendly and overworked person told me there are two sweepers who handle incoming requests ... but she couldn't actually see any. That would explain why there's a small knot of anxious people building up. There are signs overhead showing who's next, but they aren't changing.
They sweepers turned up in a few minutes, and I eventually got to talk to one. Firstly I mentioned I had an appointment and was just a little late. He scribbled something and said "oh, you're fine". This didn't really explain enough to me. I asked him "so do I just ... hang around then". He told me yes, just hang around.
It's only by overhearing do I find out the signs listing who's next are apparently just for show, because when someone asks why they show the same names, they are told "That's not how it works here".
Similarly, I overhear something about a two hour wait - nah, can't be!
After waiting for half an hour or so fairly patiently (I thought) I got a bit tired of standing around, so I sat down at a free stool at the genius bar got out my laptop and hopped on the free Wifi and checked my email. Yes, I was trying to be a little in-your-face, this is New York after all.
This got the attention of "my" sweeper. It turns out the sweepers spend a lot of time doing frontline customer service themselves - simple user error in ipods or laptops they can handle. The guy tried rebooting my laptop whilst holding down the mouse button. Ok, that's nice of him, but I was trying to explain that I already had a case number from AppleCare phone support, and I had already exhausted every known troubleshooting trick for this issue. So he rebooted my laptop for nothing, but no harm done.
I stayed at the bar whilst a number of people seemingly walked up with iPod problems and got immediate attention. The guy right next to me seemed very taken with the woman behind the desk who was trying to make his Dell laptop work right with his iPod. He was chatting about how he arranges his music and stuff. All very nice, but he was into Apple for a maximum of $300.
One of the geniuses caught my eye - a little older than some of his colleagues, and he seemed like he was very knowledgeable and I thought I'd seen him checking out someone's iBook. He looks like the guy for me I thought.
So a girl comes up, bypasses the sweepers and asks him (my guy - let's call him Ted) something. Ted goes to a sweeper and says he's going to just take care of something very quickly. It's an iPod pickup. He does take care of it quite quickly, but that's still at least 10 minutes stolen from all the patient laptop clutching people already waiting.
At this point, I'm starting to lose patience. I'm getting stressed, that acidy stomach feeling is growing. After all, I asked Apple for a time, made a pretty good effort to be there. Surely if they're this late every day (and it appears they are) they should change how they do the "reservations"?
I go to my sweeper and try to point out that some of the staff are taking walk-ups. I understand it's only for quick things, but I point out that since my machine is already diagnosed and 99% certain to be sent off, couldn't someone have a quick go - it's "just a drop-off". He says no, there are different technicians for different tasks. An iPod technician can't take a laptop job, and "we don't do drop-offs".
So eventually my turn comes, about an hour after I arrived (more than an hour after my "appointment"). As luck would have it, I end up with "Ted". Yes, he can't fix it, and yes it does have to be sent to Apple. And yes Ted really is technically excellent - asking me about my backups, checking my contact info, deauthorizing my itunes files in case I receive a logic board swap etc etc. Apple has talented support staff who really care about their job and confirm everything I had hoped for in paying for extended support. But it still leaves me irritated ... this guy, who CAN take laptop questions, also apparently just fills in with "quickies" - because the sweeper disappeared and nobody else know's who's next, because it depends on his secret paper-based system. Fucking Hell!
It's utterly frustrating, but also unnecessary. The sweepers and technicians are overloaded with support questions for iPods and really try very hard to cope. However, in trying to accomodate someone who just needs their ipod reset, they unknowingly undermine the system. Meanwhile a stream of people needing help with their actual expensive Apple computers are told "come back tomorrow" or "wait time is two hours right now" even if they made an appointment before-hand.
Here is my suggestion, for what it's worth. The deli counter at my local supermarket does customer service better than this, so just use their system for now (a really amibitious upgrade would be based on state-of-the-art retailers like B&H Photo Video).
Firstly, throw away the web interface - since you're not using it, it
is just an extra insult to your customers. Just put a ticket system at
the front door, with a sign. "People needing technical help please
take a number". Have the staff providing technical help always serve
the next number. If the person who took the number doesn't respond,
move to the next number. Either have separate ipod and laptop people,
or don't, but please don't let the staff make it up as they go
along. And finally, drop that name, please?
posted at: 22:26 | path: /rescue | permanent link to this entry