I caught this article about my country hosting the Olympics. Written by an American, and very funny.

Link: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/columns/story?columnist=reilly_rick&id=4906756

I was trying to find a section to quote, but it's not super long, and the whole thing is equally funny. Just go read it.

Alright, the site's back up for now. I actually didn't replace any hardware, all I did was keep the webserver shut off for a few days, and then forgot about it for a few more. I turned it back on, and boom, we're back in business.

However, the site might be a bit slower than usual, although I'm not sure. The machine is still on its last legs, but because it's such a pain to relocate everything to completely new hardware, I haven't started that daunting task.

I did make sure to take some extra backups, but this failure made me realize that I need to be able to move this to new hardware. In fact, I think I'm going to see if I can migrate the whole thing to a VM so that it's completely hardware-independant.

Of course, that will have to wait until after we win some more medals, because the Olympics are going to be all of my spare time in the next couple of weeks... 

Wow. I've never watched the TV show Mad Men, but I might start now.

Christina Hendricks.

Wow.

So one part of my network reorganization that I'd been meaning to do for awhile was get some sort of server monitoring software. I was going to write my own program, but then I decided I didn't need to reinvent the wheel as this isn't a new problem. I was sure there were dozens hundreds of programs out there that I could try for free. And sure enough, I stumbled across one fairly early on that seems to suit my needs, at least for now.

Servers Alive! is the name. Free download (although there's a pay-version with a few features unlocked), and so far it seems to be working pretty well. What impressed me was the versatility. You can do a variety of things including monitoring hard drive space and pinging IPs (as I'm showing in the image), to checking for specific database services or other system processes on remote machines. You can even have the monitor start a service if it discovers the service has stopped. It can alert you in a vareity of ways including coloring (the red/green above is fully customizable), emails, text messages, even MSN messages.

I've only had it going for about a week, but I think I'll probably stick with it. If I was writing my own code, I'd change the layout a bit, but you can't argue esthetics with a program that provides so many tools for free.

In the meantime, one thing I should add to my previous post about my network is that part of the reason this got spraked now is because I've decided to migrate my DVD collection onto my fileserver for easy access from the modded Xbox. I don't have that many DVDs (or I didn't think so), but it's amazing how fast space disappears when you're adding 7gb at a time. especially considering I still have the entire James Bond 007 Box Set to rip...

Over the last few days I've decided to take a look at my home network. With multiple pcs (laptops, workstations, & servers) and other networked hardware (Xbox media center & Wii) all using both wireless/wired connections, and all potentially trying to access the same shared data, it seems to me like the system should have some planning put into it. So I decided to step back, evaluate what I have and what I need, and try to maximize the efficiency and minimize the maintenance. I do this for clients, so why not put some of that same understanding into my personal network?

To start with, let's do a quick rundown on the main pieces:

• 1 main workstation pc
• 1 web server
• 1 media center that's turned into a file server (has both wired and wireless nics)
• 1 laptop
• 1 old Xbox with linux-based xbmc (Xbox Media Center) running on it, connected through a wireless bridge
• 1 Wii (wireless)
• 1 500GB eSATA backup drive, connected to my main workstation
• 1 Vantec USB/eSATA external enclosure, currently with a 500GB drive connected to my media center

I included these last two items because although they're not stand-alone devices, they ARE designed for storage, and could potentially be moved to other machines or serve other purposes if it makes more sense. I also have a few miscellaneous accessories that will be excluded from this conversation, like a non-network-enabled printer and a Blackberry, because I'm not planning around them at the moment.

The wireless router has 4 wired ports and all the main hardware is located in my office, so all the pcs are currently hardwired, while the rest of the peripherals are scattered around the house, connected wirelessly.

A few other tidbits:

• The main workstation has all the newest hardware, and also happens to have the most storage. It has 1Tb internal, plus the 500Gb backup attached through eSATA.
• The webserver (hosting the page you're reading right now) is the crappiest machine.
• The media center is somewhere in the middle, although storage is limited which is why I just picked up the Vantec unit.

Part of this exercise will be for me to actually document the relevant specs of each machine, so I can best use what they have. At this point, I'm only going off my mediocre memory.

I think that I'll leave you with this background as Part 1 of this segment, and let you think about it while I do the same and update you shortly.

This seems to be more of a computer mod than an xbox mod, but call it what you will - it's still impressive.

http://www.wimp.com/xboxpro/

As impressive as the mod is, I have to say that the cinematography is equally if not more amazing. If it was all done by the same guy, that's a helluva talented dude.

Wow, I can't believe it's been almost a month since I posted last. And the sad thing is, nothing has really changed. I finally got that wireless adapter hooked up to my Xbox tonight. Yes, nearly a month after running out out and buying it like the world was going to stop if I didn't do that.

I guess being out of the country for a week, then Christmas approaching, my son's second birthday this weekend, a world-class snowstorm which seems to be continuing to this very day ... things have been pretty busy.

On the upside, it's nearly Christmas, and through a stroke of luck, I may have some actual days entirely to myself. Both my wife, and our day home, will be working part-time over the holidays, and if those two events happen to line up, I may find myself without a wife or son in the house. And that, my friends, is what the holidays are all about. Sitting around in my Team Canada jersey, watching the World Junior hockey tournament (as Canada goes for a 6th Gold medal in a row), and drinking beer on the couch.

Maybe I'll even get something productive done. But let's not get ahead of ourselves quite yet.

After spending less time than I'd like playing with the new XBMC, I picked up a wireless bridge tonight to get it connected to my home network. The internal 8GB drive is so small that you really can't do much with it. My main concern now is if I ever use it to play X-box games again (which is unlikely but possible) I may want to download some, and I don't think they can be played from a remote machine. I have no basis for that assumption, other than thinking it would be too slow to be a viable option. And with only 8 gigs of local storage, I can't imagine a lot of games could be stored there. Then it comes down to cloning that drive onto a more reasonable 250 or 500gb drive - I haven't opened it yet but I assume it's an IDE drive, so finding one of those would be another problem.

Whatever the case, I've already loaded some songs and videos directly on the machine just to test it out, and it seems to work pretty well. I'm mildly concerned that the interface will still be a bit too overwhelming for my wife to really get into, but we'll see. Maybe my 2-yr old will be able to teach her. He's pretty much got all the other remotes/tvs/dvdplayers figured out.

(yes, he's nearly 2 already!)