All posts by anthony

I’m a computer programmer, coder, and hacker, under Debian GNU/Linux 99.9999% of the time. Code is an art, like the art of Picasso that common people are not able to comprehend and appreciate. I like the Internet, I like the world wide web, I like wikipedia, I like AJAX, I don’t like the old web programming paradigm, interactive UI is what people need, but I hate web2.0, and I hate those people who are telling the world how much they know about web2.0 while they’re in fact just eyeing for VC investments.

Not my first blog

Technically speaking this is not my first blog site but my 3rd one. The first is this one, which could not be classified as a blog in today’s standard, since it is just a static HTML page with plain text only. The second one is this, which is hosted at Debian HK using Drupal as the engine. I started it shortly after the Debian HK site was launched. For the time being, I’ll be using this new blog and the one at Debian HK simultaneously, this one for my daily life and the other one for FOSS and Debian matters, as the latter is linked to Planet Debian HK and I don’t want to “pollute” it with my everyday’s sundry matters :)

Notebook hard disk failed, no 40GB 1.8″ disk in Beijing

The hard disk in my new IBM X40 started misbehaving around 2am last night. Some time earlier it was making rather loud noises. And then two commands (ps and smartctl) locked up the machine and I have to used sysrq magic keys to reboot it. It’s too soon for the harddisk to fail because the notebook was bought in October last year, so it’s about 5 months only. My original plan was to buy a new harddisk, transfer data from the failing one to the new one as much as possible, and then take the failed one to an IBM repair center for a replacement. But the sad news is I could not find a 40GB 1.8″ harddisk (which the IBM X40 can only use, it can’t use the 2.5″ ones) in Beijing’s Zhongguancun(中关村)! Zhongguancun to Beijing is what the Golden computer center to Hong Kong, you go there for any kind of computer hardware and parts. For all the shops I asked which sold 1.8″ harddisk, they only had 20GB. Once again, it proves that if you want to play with the newest electronic toys, your best bet is to try your luck in Hong Kong :|

So bear with me if I’m a bit slow in replying your emails or such, I think I’ll not be back to full force until I can work on my notebook again.

No. of download per architecture for ftp.hk.debian.org

After reading Tollef Fog Heen‘s blog, I tried to do a similar statistics on ftp.hk.debian.org from Dec 2004 to Feb 2005. Results are as follows (only include successful requests, that is HTTP 200 responses). Hmm, I think some archs can be cut to save some disk space…

Dec 2004

192207 i386
64539 all
6264 powerpc
352 sparc
174 hppa
142 arm
112 mipsel
21 alpha
9 mips
8 m68k
4 s390
3 ia64

(ignoring requests from Googlebot)

192195 i386
64486 all
6255 powerpc
339 sparc
167 hppa
133 arm
104 mipsel
12 alpha

Jan 2005

221980 i386
70907 all
2072 powerpc
1044 alpha
611 mipsel
456 sparc
298 hppa
272 m68k
252 mips
250 s390
238 ia64
214 arm

(ignoring requests from Googlebot)

221751 i386
70753 all
1807 powerpc
812 alpha
398 mipsel
205 sparc
45 hppa
1 ia64

Feb 2005

177502 i386
63081 all
3431 powerpc
214 sparc
174 mipsel
102 alpha
40 m68k
38 mips
33 hppa
28 ia64
26 s390
18 arm

(ignoring requests from Googlebot)

177470 i386
63035 all
3400 powerpc
188 sparc
148 mipsel
71 alpha
1 m68k