Tag Archives: review

Where's My Server?

Posted on by

Where’s My Server (WMS) is a New Zealand VPS provider, and I have to joy of running a Debian virtual server on their wonderful VPS platform. I’ve decided to write a short review on my experiences. Please bare with me, as I haven’t done this “blogging” thing in awhile.

First impressions were quite nice with WMS, their website is simple, and I like that. I hate nothing more than BoHTTP (Bloat over HTTP). Sign up was relatively easy, and payment was made via PayPal, which works out great for me. Within a few minutes I had my account setup and ready to run.

The welcome emails were nice, and were actually from a real person! I replied to one, asking about Where my “Where’s My Server” server was located, as I use the address in the naming scheme, and within a few minutes got a friendly reply.

The server booted up nice and fast, and I was able to quickly configured up the box, and it was put into production within the the hour. Unlike other VPS servers I’ve used, these are fast! Even on a virtual 400 MHz, it feels like it’s a real 400MHz. I think is contributed by the fact that it’s actual hardware virtualization, rather than software virtualization (eg OpenVZ). This also helps in the fact I need to create tun and tap interfaces, along with using IPSec and messing with the routing table, which in some VPS systems is impossible. You can customize your server as you want, yourself, without waiting for approvals or admins. WMS also allows for free snapshots of server, and easy rebuilding via their custom built console.

The console for WMS is great. Very light and easy to find what you want. It’s 100% better than any other console I’ve seen, however it can be improved in two ways. First is that there is no breadcrumb, or menu, which makes going back (eg, from the server list to bandwidth) annoying, requiring the use of the browser back button. The other annoying thing is that the remote console requires Java, which was a bit hard to work out when you don’t have Java installed. I believe that it just sets up VNC session, so it would be nice if the console could just provide you those details as well, just so you don’t have to bow down to the Sun/Oracle Java License.

Apart from those niggling annoyances on the console (which is still the best I’ve seen), the only other real problem with WMS (apart from them not supporting Gentoo) is the fact that it’s cost for more bandwidth, and hard drive space is insane. I can believe that the bandwidth issue is more of a New Zealand issue, rather than a WMS issue, but considering I can get for $50 USD a month a dedicated server along with 2TB traffic, vs $6000NZD a month for international traffic seems a bit excessive. Disk space I can’t understand, $90 a month for 60GB and $30 for 60GB of network disk space.

In summary, apart from the pricing issues WMS is awesome.

Robot Unicorn Attack vs Canabalt

Posted on by

canabalt meets robot unicorn attack

Forget your COD, CSS and Half Life. Two of the worlds best games are free (as in beer) and run on most operating systems. Canabalt and Robot Unicorn Attack. Both require less than three keys to play.

Both are platformers that have the exact aim. Get as far as possible with out falling or running into something. Pretty simple right? You can really get addicted to these and end up spending hours attempting to get to the non existent end.

Canabalt

Canabalt is a pretty straight forward 2D platformer. A guy is trying to escape from something (I’m guessing killer aliens) and takes to the roof top. You can’t stop running, and your only control is jumping. Jump from building to building. Run off the edge – dead, run into a building – dead, run into alien spaceship parts – dead, run into boxes – slowed (which eventually leads to death). Some buildings decide to crumble underneath you. Points are gained by distance traveled.

Keys
x,z – Jump

Robot Unicorn Attack

Like Canabalt, this is a 2D platformer. You are a Robot Unicorn which has some pretty nifty features, Dash and Jump. Your job is to get as far as you can without running into a wall, star, or falling off the edge. Longer you go, the faster you get. Points are earn’t on distance traveled, stars destroyed (using the dash skill).

Now be warned. After 2 hours of playing this game. Looking away from my monitor resulted in the room spinning. Sound is required.

Keys
z – Jump
x – Dash / Rainbow attack

Doku Wiki – mini review

Posted on by

So I’ve been playing around with doku wiki in my free time, and wow is it easy to use. It’s both feature full, and light at the same time. Breeze to install and configure, and ready to go out of the box. Plugins are a breeze to install, and there isn’t a great amount of configuration to worry about. It’s just simple. I like how namespaces can be dynamically added and removed without configuration. Give it a go…

RB750G Review

Posted on by
Poweredge 2650
RB750G – TheSkorm

I’m going to keep this short because I’m typing this on my phone. Moving into a new place, what is the one most important device you need? An IP router ofcourse. I was tempted to fork out the money to get a shiny new Cisco one… Maybe a 2851 or something but considering the price I asked around. Fortunenly a helpful IRC user suggested I look into getting a RouterBoard 750 or 750G. I looked the nicely priced device and decided to go with the G model as it supported gig and had a faster CPU.

Now considering that this router is priced cheaper than most DLink routers and switches I was surprised with a few things. First of all, it’s friggin small! No longer than my iPhone and only just wider. Packaging is minimal to save the enviroment.

Now just because it’s cheap and small doesn’t mean it isn’t packed full of features. It supports MPLS and all the common routing protocol. It has it’s own version of HSRP , includes Layer 2 and Layer 3 VPN clients and your usual PPPoE and stuff.

The device has low power requirements and can even be powered over PoE. I can see this device being perfect for where a L3 endpoint is required. Hookup a switchmode powersupply and battery. Battery backup would last hours if not days

Call of Duty 6 : Modern Warfare 2

Posted on by
freebsd-logo
Call of Duty 6 : Modern Warfare 2 – TheSkorm

With all the talk about how awesome this game is I thought I would take it for a test drive. Purchased it through steam, and waited for hours while it downloaded the metric fuckton of required files (taking up to 11.1GB on disk after installed). Installing didn’t take too long and the game runs fine on my 4x 3.2GHz/6GB/nVidia 260+ beast.
I was actually a bit surprised with, as the game was reviewed as game that requires 2 super computers to get a decent resolution on max settings (eg Crysis), but my machine handled 1440×900 just fine with everything set to “Extra”. That said, the graphics are amazing/stunning most of the time. Yes, most of the time, not all. Sometimes you’ll come across a low resolution texture, or lighting that just isn’t right, and it really stands out.

The sound and audio aspect of the game is good, although I don’t have anything fancy like 8 speakers, I have just 2 speakers and a little Hi-Fi Stereo System acting as an amp. I didn’t have the volume set to loud, but I’m sure you’d get a realistic experience out of the audio.

Game play wise, the story line was very easy to understand, and this is one of those games where you actually enjoy watching the before hand videos/cinematic. The main story was a tad bit short though, and at some stages, the missions were very bland, although what more can you do in a FPS?

COD6 makes the experience as close to a real fight as possible. The AI doesn’t just run down the middle of a hallway, they have some smarts to them. I was however disappointed at two stages, where you have to chase a guy, at the same time as being shot by 100 or so armed militants, and after failing the mission 20 or so times, finally came close to capturing him, when another team busts out and grabs him before I do. This made me wonder why I was playing the game. A similar scenario happened when I had to make it to an extraction point without being blown up. After 5 goes, I make within 10m I was blown up and rescued by a team mate.

I’m still debating with myself if the Airport scene and the pulling of the knife out of your own chest part was to far, or not. But apart from that the game was quite enjoyable for single player.

Multi-player is great fun, and the system they use for finding games is well needed in my opinion, although it wouldn’t have hurt to have a setup for dedicated servers, just so people can have fun, mod or start clans. Multi-player reminds me much to America’s Army where if you are in anyway spotted, your dead (unless you have a riot shield which is epic fun). I also think it’s a bit to easy to get some of the weapons of mass destruction, and when your first starting out playing, it’s annoying as hell getting hit from the air as well as by other players. Oh and the death physics need to worked on.

All in all 7.2/10

Cravings

Posted on by

crav-ing |ˈkrāvi ng | |ˈkreɪvɪŋ| |ˈkreɪvɪŋ|
noun
a powerful desire for something : a craving for chocolate.

Cravings are weird. An internal impulse to do something, sometimes something you typically don’t do, or dislike. This morning I had a craving for drinking a glass of plain milk. I hate milk and I am also semi lactose intolerant. I didn’t end up drinking the glass of milk.

Earlier in this week I craved playing Douglas Adams Starship Titanic, which I started playing while I was at my Nan’s several years. I got most of the way through the game, but never finished it(I think I was up to the musical instruments part [possibly]). I found it really enjoyable, and I believe it has a quality many new games are missing, that is, letting the user think for them selves.

New games I’ve seen focus on “Kill 50 bores and get their blood” (The grind-tastic ones, World of Warcraft and the like), “Shoot and kill everything on the map” (Unreal Tourny, Counter-Strike ect..) and the “Go save this person, along the way level up, loot some mad weapons and gain guest points” (Similar to the grind-tastic ones, but a little less grind and more game play, Diablo ect..). Don’t get me wrong these are great games and I like to play them, but I really like to think now and then.

Starship Titanic is an excellent game, even if it is a little bit out dated (Made is 1998) but the graphics, sound and game play is still awesome. It lacks in features , but who cares, when the puzzles are so awesome and fun. I feel that I should buy the Mac version and play that, however their shop seems to be down at the moment.

My last note, I thought my blog theme was getting a bit outdated so I decided to change it. (Another craving). It’s fairly basic, which is what I like. Now to make the changes to my MySpace profile, to make it look the same.

In the time it took me to write the post, I got 3 RSS feeds and 8 Plurk replies.