wednesdaymorning.co.uk a grumpy man who loves technology.

Just finished watching possibly one of the most intense SC2 games of my life. Yes, this is correct I watched a game of Starcraft 2. A game played at a professional level by hundreds of pro-gamers all over the world. Before you pass judgement on credibility of Starcraft as a sport. I suggest you watch a few games, check out some VoDs and involve yourself in the community.

The game I just enjoyed was the North American Star League Final, the combatants taking away a combined total of $75k (50 to the winner). Streamed live across the internet and watched by nearly 90,000 people. Thousands more will watch the games cast by other members of the community in weeks to follow.

Interested? You don’t have to be a gamer to captivated. I wouldn’t call myself a particularly hardcore gamer. Gaming is just a side effect of being a CS student. I suggest you check out a couple of places, watch a few games.

• day9.tv – Sean “day9″ Plott, an ex-SC1 pro is arguably the most popular SC2 personality. You can check out games he’s cast as well as his daily show about improving your SC2 play.
• gomtv.net - day9′s brother Nick “Tasteless” Plott and his heterosexual life partner Dan “Artosis” Stemkoski host the most popular SC2 related show in the world. Based in Korea the home of SC2.
• teamliquid.net - A community hub. You’ll find anyone worth their salt in the SC2 community is involved here.

I really do mean to do this more often. I have a few posts in the works regarding a number of random subjects. I wanted to catalogue my experiences at university but I don’t really have much strength with the written word and thus it became long winded and less of an account and more of a disjointed jumble of words. So that may need work. Perhaps I need to try a more Star Trek style log taking form. Speaking being more my thing, when I can get the words out.

So here is a bullet pointed list of my opinions on current (ish) events or things I have had my eye on.

• Notw Hacking Scandal: Wasn’t surprised, still disgusted, feel that as a software engineer there must be an effort put in to improve security on mobile phones (generally).
• G+ vs Facebook: What? Get serious. Google is trying this for what, the fourth time? It was in Google’s best interest to get in bed with Facebook but instead they are burning bridges. We all know why they want a social network, increased traceability and understanding of how their users use the web. It’ll improve their ability to target ad words making them more valuable. Imagine the profit in being able to present people with adverts about things their friends like near to their birthdays for instance. Huge! FB has the right idea with this, they follow the base law of hacking, don’t re-invent the wheel. Bringing skype video chat to fb was a good move, saves them time and effort and allows them to make use of an already tried and tested video chat service. I’ve heard rumors they are working with other companies on more features, the whole social network infrastructure speech from Z seemed like they have real vision.
• Google Anti-Trust: I think that’ll blow over eventually, I doubt it’ll end with anything substantial.
• NASA Space Shuttle: Sad, it always sucks to see the space programs suffer. Space is cool!
• Lion: Can’t say I like the Mac OS generally but seems to have some friends excited. I suppose if I ever get around to making the iPhone app I have planned I’ll get to know it a little better. I still wish they would do an amazon ec2 style cloud based development environment I can work in rather than having to get a Mac. I’m happy to get a developer licence too, I just have no use for the overly expensive machine and have no desire to build a hackintosh. That’s just silly. I do have to say this about Apple, they are bang on the money when it comes to customer service. So they should be, considering the price consumers pay.
• iPhone OS 5: Cool.
• Android OS 3: Cooler.
• Gnome 3: Meh, dual screen support is a must in a *new* window manager.
• Unity: Crap
• Spotify Premium on my iPhone: fun and useful!
• Asus EEE Transformer: Want!
• Java 7: Scary. Java is temperamental enough.
• Google Make Over: Pretty, tend to use their services through 3rd parties anyway.

Think that’s it, that was easy.

Basic Specification

• Processor: AMD Athlon II Neo N36l – 1.3GHz – Dual Core – 64 Bit – 2MB L2 Cache (1MB PP)
• RAM: 1GB(/8GB) – DDR3 – 800MHz – DIM 240-pin
• Storage: Raid 0/1 Controller – 1 x 250GB SATA – 4 drive bays total.
• Network: IEEE 802.3, IEEE 802.3u, IEEE 802.3ab – WoL – PXE – 1 Adaptor
• Expansion: 1 5.25″ (Front Accessible) –  2x PCI Express (1x x16, 1x x1) Half Length
• Warranty: 1 year manufacturer – limited.

Review

I recently received a HP ProLiant MicroServer as a gift for my birthday. It was a product suggested to me by a friend who had also recently bought one. I have little experience working with actual servers, the majority of my experience dealing with them involves me sitting behind a terminal window. None of my limited experience installing them was needed for this job however.

The set-up and installation of additional drives is trivial. Simply screw them into the rails, push and click the handle on the front. Installing additional RAM and PCI Express 2.0 cards is also very simple. Be sure to read the specification of the device before buying as the PCI cards will need to be half-length models.

It comes with a snappy little 64 bit, dual-core chip. The AMD Athlon II Neo N36L, just the right amount of power required for what is basically a NAS device with some additional potential. I am currently running a couple of websites and some git repositories (through Apache) in addition to using it as a NAS. I bought this product as an alternative to a Drobo as it didn’t require me to have a machine to connect it too the network. Previously I was using a number of external drives connected to a netbook to serve as a NAS. As you may have guessed, the USB read and write speeds weren’t particularly fast especially when dealing with more than one of the drives at once.

The build quality of the machine is very good, obvious thought has gone into it’s design. The motherboard is easy to remove to put in upgrades, each of the drives is removable on rails. One feature that really caught my eye was that the tools and screws for mounting the drives to the rails were embedded into the door panel. Little things that just make it an easier product to work with. I understand that is a feature they do across the range but it’s nice to see they provide it in a cheaper product.

Finally, the price was reasonable. HP also offered £100 cash back which could have easily have gone into drives or upgrades for the machine. The RAM for this machine costs around £35 for a 4GB stick. In all, I’m very happy with it would definitely buy another if I needed it.

Links

EBuyer Link: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/253305

RAM Link: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/229102