Centroid.EU Blog

(this blog is mostly encrypted - adults only)

God Speed Spock!

February 27th, 2015

         ##         ##
          ##       ##
           ##     ##
            ##   ##
             ## ##
              ###
               #

RIP Leonard Nimoy, 83.

0 comments

OpenBSD donations reached 397,000 dollars in 2014

February 26th, 2015

Ken Westerback of the OpenBSD Foundation has said this about 2014:

We received $397,000 in new donations and paid out $129,000 to support the activities of the OpenBSD and related projects.

And this year in 2015 they plan to raise $200,000. If you haven't donated yet please consider a small amount here or look up how to do donations otherwise.

I personally don't know if my money made it to the OpenBSD Foundation because I donate directly to Theo de Raadt's Munich bank account. So that money may be higher than $397,000. This year I decided to donate 50 euros quarterly and the first quarter is not up yet. But in a month it will be, I'll let you know when I do the second donation of the year.

0 comments

Got a washing machine

February 25th, 2015

Two years after moving into this apartment, I've finally got a washing machine. Picture here:

I used to take my laundry to my parents house but it's too much work now that my mother is home after having a stroke (she was in hospital for a few months), so I got this thing.

0 comments

Nearing 20 years UNIX experience

February 24th, 2015

In 1995 I first installed GNU/Linux on my sole computer (a 486/66). A year later it ran FreeBSD 2.1-RELEASE, another year later in 1997 I got my first sysadmin job (starting pay $10/hour, soon after $36K a year). All in all I'm nearing 20 years experience as a UNIX user and 18 years experience as a UNIX sysadmin. It should really be UNIX-like although we did use Solaris in 1997 and BSD is not a clone. A lot has changed in those 20 years. For one I don't have the body I had back then. Back then I was slender and carried a Basketball. Now I carry the basketball in my stomach, lol :-). But I'm also wiser, I admit. And I'm getting smarter, I recently worked out how much raise I should be getting after inflation from what my salary was in 2000. If I had any advise to young people is: "don't underestimate how much you're worth, make them pay" and "stay physically fit despite those long hours they want you to put in". Whether I'll be doing this another 20 years? Time will tell.

0 comments

Ordered three books

February 23rd, 2015

I have ordered three books that generally interest me.

It's about Time: Understanding Einstein's Relativity - Mermin, N. David
Quantum Computer Science: An Introduction - Mermin, N. David
Quantum Computing verstehen: Grundlagen - Anwendungen - Perspektiven (Computational Intelligence) - Homeister, Matthias

Other than being about Quantum computers they don't really deal with computers much.

0 comments

Scarcity vs. Abundance

February 21st, 2015

Scarcity, what is it? It means that something (resources) are limited to an extend that they are scarce or little. What is Abundance? Abundance is the exact opposite. I remember the first time I heard the word abundance it was in a Bob Marley song and it went "In the abundance of water, the fool is thirsty". I heard the word scarcity after hearing use of abundance really. On earth we live a life of scarcity when it comes to "things". We may have a toaster and a tv, but we do not own a rocket or space shuttle to take us into orbit. Only a few people that are selected can go, "on behalf" of humanity.

I'd like to contrast scarcity with abundance in computer systems. My first computer I had (a ZX-81) had 4KB of RAM, it was really scarce. Compare that with my newest computer that has 32 GB of RAM, that's a factor of 8 million times what I had back then. I just hope that we don't get too disappointed that we don't see such factors of abundance in material things such as space shuttles.

I lived in North America for 15 years and in the early years I noticed a contrast that a lot more people had an air conditioning system with their house or apartment. In Germany there isn't as many systems but it has to do with scarcity of electric energy. It makes no sense to run a coal powerplant to run an air conditioner, my dad always said. The burned coal produces carbon dioxide which in turn causes the greenhouse effect aka global warming. If using green technologies such as wind turbines we're tapping into an abundance of energy on earth. Yet wind turbines aren't cheap and there is a scarcity of them.

In fact we're in energy transitioning times where we're going from unsustainable and falsely seemingly abundance of energy in form of nuclear to sustainable wind and solar. What nuclear energy has left us with is an abundance of poison in form of nuclear waste. 1 mg of it could kill thousands of people. So I'm gonna stop here on that topic.

As you can see we're living in mostly scarce times, except the computers... those buggers seem to double capacity every 18 months. But I can tell you we're hitting a limit even with computers. Right now we're having a heyday going smaller and smaller with chip circuitry, but we're nearing an end. I think they say 8 nanometers is the end of it. We're at 22 now I believe. We'll have to look for new ways of computing in order to keep up this seemingly abundance of capacity.

Oh well, that's all I wanted to say, although I'll continue when more comes to mind.

0 comments

Purchased more Reggae

February 17th, 2015

I don't just buy men artists, although the majority of Reggae I have is men. This album I just bought is from a woman. Etana - "I Rise". Looking forward to hearing the entire album.

0 comments

Moved the blog

February 16th, 2015

I have moved the blog away from my old vps's. This means it's a single point of failure too as only one server (in amsterdam) is hosting the blog. This opens new avenues for me to eventually give up the Panama vps. The destinations americas.centroid.eu and emea.centroid.eu still go to the old vps's but I'm going to location tag them over soon.

The host it's now run on is powered by OpenBSD and is running openbsd's httpd, as you can see it's fairly successful at it. Please update your RSS if you were using it, as it may not work as before (you need to determine this).

0 comments

Upper Lower Class

February 14th, 2015

This impressed me very much. At wikipedia under the American upper class article there is this chart of classes. Now while I live in Germany and I always felt like I was in the middle class, I work in North America and get paid in dollars. I also have a North American education of "some college". Many of our customers are US based, and I'm thinking where my place would be. Yes I'm in the Upper Lower Class. Lately this realisation has enthralled me. And it's made me a bit angry too. Dear world, I'm not OK with where you're going.

0 comments

I'm sick

February 13th, 2015

These are the sickly days of winter. I came down with acute bronchitis since last weekend. I'm now on anti-biotics and medicine that will hopefully help me develop the mucus and phlegm required to cough out this virus. Sorry for the graphic picture. I haven't been sick in a long time like this.

0 comments