www.vegard.net

New Noise.

Posted 20:33 CET Tuesday June 15th, 2010 (80 days ago). 260 views. 4 comments. Tagged with Gadgets, Technology.

You’ve all probably read the Noise entry and now you’re wondering how I did in the search for a new amplifier. OK, so you’re not, but I’ll still tell you about it.

Me and Anniken took the old amplifier down to Hi-Fi Klubben, where I bought it. Taking the amplifier with us was a last minute thing, I knew it was at least two years old and figured that the repairs would not covered by the store when the amplifier was that old. But I’m very happy we did take it with us, because it turned out that the store is required by law to cover repairs for five years, not two, like I thought.

The very helpful staff in the store confirmed that they also heard the static noise in the right front speaker, concluded that repairing the amplifier would be more expensive than to actually give me a brand new one. So they picked up a Denon AVR-1611 from their storage room and simple gave it to me, no charge.

On top of this I got an additional five years the store-have-to-pay-for-repairs on the new Denon. That was probably the most surprising thing about it all and if this continues I’ll never have to buy a new amplifier ever again. I just have to hope they all go tits up every four years.

Noise.

Posted 20:56 CET Wednesday June 2nd, 2010 (93 days ago). 336 views. 2 comments. Tagged with Exercise, Gadgets, Technology.

I praised the Forerunner in my previous entry, but since Sunday I’ve found a serious flaw: Every time you start a workout, a message telling that “jogging can cause intense muscle pains” should be displayed. Going downhill really messed up my thigh muscles and I’ve been walking around like an 80 year old since Monday. Today was the first day I’ve been able to get down the stairs without clinging to the railing. Sounds like I have to go for another jog soon, yes?

And now for something completely different.

A couple of years ago I bought a dead cheap surround amplifier from Argon. It was a demo model they’d used in the store and I got the amplifier and a region free DVD player for 900 NOK, about €114. A bargain. The DVD player gave me a mild electric shock if I touched it whenever it was plugged in a wall socket, but the amplifier worked like a charm until a few weeks ago, when a static noise began to sound from the right front speaker. Cleaning and dusting the insides of the amplifier didn’t help – I’ve successfully “fixed” a similar problem doing that in the past. The reason for the static noise is evidently a soon-to-fail thingy inside the amplifier and since I don’t have the wiring diagram, an oscilloscope, spare parts or the skills to fix it, I’m guessing it’s about time to get a new surround amplifier. Continue reading "Noise." →

How To Build a Silent Mini-ITX server.

Posted 22:07 CET Wednesday January 20th, 2010 (226 days ago). 998 views. No comments. Tagged with Gadgets, How To, Technology.

After I moved this site to my own, home grown Mini-ITX server, I realized that I needed a new one. The current server didn’t have the horsepower to cope with the odd request peaks I was seeing and with only half of the 1GB of available RAM being recognized by the motherboard, I had a major problem. Even though the VIA CPU featured passive cooling, the chassis fan made a lot of noise and while disabling the fan didn’t make the server too hot, it just unveiled the fact that the hard drives were quite noisy as well.

So I set off on a quest to find the ultimate Mini-ITX for a home server for my web server and mail server. The server had to be both powerful and silent, meaning no noisy power supply, no CPU fans and no clicking hard drives. The only real way to achieve this is by building a server with no moving parts at all. I also wanted to use a enclosure that looked nice enough to have in the living room. After a lot of research I ended up with the following hardware:

• SilverStone Mini-ITX SST-LC19R black.
• Corsair 4GB DDR2 XMS2 PC6400 800MHz.
• Samsung DVD±R/RW/RAM slim DL 8X SATA black.
• ZOTAC ION ITX F series motherboard.
• Two Kingston V Drive notebook 64GB SSD SATA/300.

Continue reading "How To Build a Silent Mini-ITX server." →

Going Premium.

Posted 20:08 CET Tuesday October 13th, 2009 (325 days ago). 384 views. 11 comments. Tagged with Android, Music, Technology.

I like music, I have to admit that. Recently I realized that I really don’t listen that much to the lyrics, with some artists it’s virtually impossible to understand what the hell they are rambling on about anyway. I’m more interested in how the voice of the lead singer sounds and for some reason drums and percussion tends to fascinate me. But I guess it’s with music as any other art form, people like it for different reasons.

Even though I listen to a lot of different music, I don’t have that many CDs; it’s been a while since I made the move from CDs from downloads. iTunes and torrents are to blame for that. For a while I downloaded pirated version of the album and then bought the CD online. Yes, I downloaded pirated music, but I also bought the CD. Probably not entirely legal, but I feel I’m in the clear. Because of this I’ve got quite a lot of CDs that I’ve never actually taken out of the cover.

Then I started to buy all my music as digital downloads and now it’s time to take the next step in the digital music evolution: Spotify Premium. Continue reading "Going Premium." →

Lessons Learned the Hard Way.

Posted 17:31 CET Sunday October 11th, 2009 (327 days ago). 306 views. No comments. Tagged with Technology, Work.

I spent Thursday and Friday last week on an internal introductory course covering the ins and outs of the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation. Like all courses some of the lectures were interesting while some were… less interesting. I particularly enjoyed the tours of the TV and radio buildings and the main control room for all the TV channels. With its 3500 employees, NRK is a fairly large company on a Norwegian scale, but if you look at similar international companies it’s a drop in the media ocean: As an organization, NRK likes to compare itself to the BBC, which has so many people employed that the number is not even available anywhere on the internet.

One of the most interesting things I learned, however, was not about NRK per se, but about a project that’s currently in development. I’m not sure if the project details are publicly available information or not and I vaguely remember something about a non disclosure agreement in my contract, so to avoid getting whipped I’m not going to go into any details here. What you need to know that it’s a very complicated computer system handling huge amounts of data – and the data is not being backed up externally.

Say what!? Continue reading "Lessons Learned the Hard Way." →