Thanks to Becoming a Computer Technician for picking my blog as something useful to Mac users. I guess that means I should update my “Best Mac Resources” page – it’s sorely in need of one.
Sixth NEOSUG meeting rescheduled
We’ve rescheduled the sixth NEOSUG meeting for March 11. Dave Miner will talk about the state of OpenSolaris and demo some new functionality, and I’ll talk about what’s new in the Solaris 10 update 6 (11/08) release. Hope to see you there. For full details and registration info have look at the NEOSUG discussion forum.
The OpenSolaris Bible Published
Very happy to see the fruits of the labor of Nicholas Solter, Gerald Jelinek, and David Miner – The OpenSolaris Bible. Just received my copies (I was Technical Editor) of the book, and it is the best way to learn OpenSolaris. It focuses on the user experience, but also has lots of good how-to detail about administration. Note that they are offering some free chapter downloads (check out the right-hand column) as well. Check it out at Amazon.
Listening to Some Music
Checking out a band from my alma mater. MGMT sounds pretty good. A bit of Talking Heads in there I think. Not as good as listening to the new David Sanborn “here & gone” album though, which sounds great on my sound system, which I don’t think I’ve documented. I haven’t heard a home system that sounds better…
Source: iTunes on a mac, songs ripped from CD via apple lossless format (or bought in highest resolution available – usually 256-bit from emusic.com, Amazon, or iTunes). I buy CDs when possible for maximum resolution but sometimes get lazy. With my entire library available from a server I can load songs into my ipod or iphone, listen to them via the mac mini attached to my home theater in the living room, and so on.
Connection: USB out to a little USB converter box – Hagerman HagUSB – this outputs SPDIF
DAC – LITE DAC-60 – vacuum tube-based digital to analog converter takes the SPDIF and sends it to my integrated amplifier. The whole chain is digital until the vacuum tubes do the conversion and add a bit of sweetness and smoothness to the sound.
Integrated Amplifier: PS Audio GCC-250. Pure, clean amplification power. Just back from repairs so I’m happy.
Speakers: Acoustic Zen Adagio
Subwoofer: the AZ sound terrific but I needed a little more low-end bass so I added the MWF-15 subwoofer from AV123.
I use a variety of cables for interconnecting, some also from Acoustic Zen.
With this setup I can listen to any artist, album, or playlist built from the CDs I’ve ripped from my collection (almost all of them). Of course the setup is a bit expensive, and I had to rip all the CDs. They now sit on a ZFS-based file system with RAID protection (don’t want to have to re-rip) and I have a copy stored off site (really don’t want to re-rip!). Total space taken up by my itunes library – a little over 1TB!
Obsessive? Over the top? You make the call. But it’s very convenient, and sounds great. And check out the Sanborn disc if you want to check out how your system sounds (and listen to some great jazz). Do the horn players sound like they are in the room with you?!
Eulogy for a benchmark : The Observation Deck
Bryan Cantrill posted an important blog entry about the problems with benchmarking in general, NAS benchmarking more specifically, and the current industry standard SPEC SFS bencmark in detail. In summary, the current “standard” NAS performance benchmark is worse that useless or missleading, it encourages NAS vendors to engineer NAS solutions are overpriced and underperforming, just to get better benchmark numbers. Have a look:
Eulogy for a benchmark : The Observation Deck.
My latest column at ;login:
The February 2009 ;login: magazine includes my latest column. This time it’s all about the Sun 7000 Analytics component. The Sun 7000 is a new NAS storage device from Sun. It was implemented as a skunk works project by the “Fishworks” team – a team that includes some of the best and brightest Sun engineers. It is a true appliance with a few break-through features, including the use of DTrace technologies within a great GUI. Using this tool, the storage administrator can see unprecedented amounts of performance information about the NAS appliance. ;login: makes some columns publicly available, but other available only to members. While I strongly encourage membership in the USENIX association, I also like to make my writings more widely available. The column can be read for free in .pdf format here: 2009-02-galvin.
Moved my Blog
Just a quick note that I moved my blog from pbgalvin.wordpress.com to www.galvin.info (at Dreamhost). Nothing major should have changed but there should be new features. Unfortunately I think moving the site broke any RSS subscriptions, so you’ll need to resubscribe here if interested: www.galvin.info RSS
Postponed – Sixth NEOSUG Meeting
Just a quick note that we’re postponing the 6th NEOSUG meeting due to inclement weather and low registrations. For more details see the NEOSUG forum at http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/thread.jspa?threadID=88485&tstart=0
Column – The Death of Solaris
My latest column has been published in ;login:. I have attached it for your convenience. Dec 2008 ;login: column.
My new posting at ctistrategy about Sun 7000 Analytics
Just posted at http://ctistrategy.com/, an overview of Sun 7000 Analytics, including a walk-through showing its powerful features and links to more information and a downloadable full-featured virtual 7000.