Pilbeam Engineering

I am test running a new theme, one that gives a little more horizontal space as the old theme was incredibly narrow. Comments welcome! Additionally, my calendar has finally been added under the “My Calendar” page, accessible now at the bottom of the screen. This is updated semi-frequently, and I am able to update from either my email client, directly from Google’s website, or my PDA.

One bug in this new theme is that both the photo albums can calendar components that are wider than the post width look out of place, but there’s not much I can do about that until the author of the theme fixes it.

Adam

The military has for several years been in development of their Active Denial System, which is a millimeter-wave ray gun. Some of you may have seen pictures or video of the Active Denial System in action, as it targets a poor victime and releases it’s invisible ray to perform a non-lethal incapacitation of it’s target through the use of perceived heat. Currently, the system is operated on the ground through the use of Humvee mounted devices. Portable devices are also in testing by Raytheon company. Now, my thought on this this morning was, what if they made such a device airborne?

Obviously, it doesn’t seem like the sort of thing that would be effective on fighter jets, since they move typically very quickly and the effect would be extremely short lived. Nevertheless, a millimeter-wave emitter mounted on a helicopter, perhaps, would be very useful as the helicopter can quickly maneuver into position and active the system in support of ground troops.

Being in the air has the added advantage of greater perception of the battlefield and improved knowledge of where enemy combatants are, as well as allowing a better gauge of which enemy combatants are more vital to target.

Just a thought…although I note in further research that there IS in fact a program in place to make the Active Denial System airborne…so it’s no doubt just a matter of time.

-Adam

Since I currently back-up a lot of my DVDs (since I am horrified by scratches and disc-killing issues like that), I find myself repeatedly worried about running out of storage space. My current setup is as follows:

Windows Server 2008

2.4 GHz Pentium 4 non-HT

1 GB of DDR 333 RAM

One 18 GB 10,000 RPM SCSI (OS Drive)

There’s about 5 or 6 other hard drives in there, ranging from IDE to SATA to SCSI that make up the actual storage array. This kind of discontinuity in the array no doubt causes some slow-downs, but I manage to make transfers up to 10 MB/s over my regular 10/100 network using SAMBA. The total size of the array is 907 GB. 

So, the plan is to upgrade.

I already have  a new CPU that should be up to the task:

3.0 GHz Pentium 4 w/ HT

4 GB DDR2 Ram

Onboard ATI Video

Four SATA-II ports

I plan on adding to this a regular IDE hard drive, for the OS install.

This will probably be Solaris 10, since the ZFS system they use is quite impressive. I’ll be using Raid-Z capabilities to enable redundancy against disk failure.

Then I will incorporate a second SATA-II card (Solaris compatible) to bring the maximum drive capability up to 8 SATA-II drives. Into these ports, I will install 5 1.5 TeraByte drives (running currently about $150), for a total of 6 TB useable. (Remember, with Raid-Z you will lose the effective capacity of one drive). 

This in conjunction with gigabit ethernet capability to my main desktop, and the storage server should increase the useability for transferring files. Additionally, my new 802.11n network will provide enhanced wireless speed within the apartment.

These new upgrades should provide significant improvement to my entire network, I feel.

In other news, I purchased a proper Dell GX-270 slim case for the Car-PC, as well as a few other odds and ends. I still plan in integrating a Tire Pressure Monitoring System as well as Parking Sensors when I have time, money, and motivation to do so…some may question the limited usability of a parking sensor for the car, but I would say that it IS a hard car to park, with limited visibility both for the front and back in gauging distances from other objects, which I feel does provide some justification in adding the functionality. 

The display lamp for the climate control unit has failed, and assuming I can’t fix it, the whole unit will have to be replaced (it still is functional, I just can’t see what it’s doing anymore). I’ll post more on this as time allows…

-Adam