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A Long Weekend

This weekend was one long weekend. I don’t mean one of those “economic holidays” that the administration of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo like to declare. No, this one is long for another reason.

The company has been running out of disk storage and it’s about time for a major upgrade. The old capacity was 1.4TB of RAID 5 goodness and we plan to add another 1.4TB. This should suffice for a few months till we can get one of those entry-level NAS appliances which come in capacities like 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB. We also planned to take the opportunity to do systems administration training at the same time.

Playing around with storage is never easy. You have to take into consideration the fact that users access it in real time. And of course, there’s the fact that data and information are the most important assets of a company nowadays. This means, if we are to do anything, it has to be done when there are no users. This is only during the weekend. And late Saturday night at that. Also, we will have to be very careful.

We started at around 2PM by removing the old new RAID box from the rack at its storage area. It should have been removed beforehand and in fact that was the plan. But it was never done. It took an hour or so of mechanical work before we were able to wrench the RAID box off. We then carted it over to IT where we configured the RAID array, installed Linux FC6 on the operating system drive, and then started formatting the newly configured RAID drive. Formatting a 1.4TB RAID 5 drive takes time so we started on some training sessions and had dinner while waiting.

At around 9PM formatting was finally completed. By then, all the users have gone home so we shut down the servers and installed the new RAID box in the server rack along with the old RAID box. We then copied the files from the old RAID box to the new RAID box. This is when we hit a speed bump.

We tried various methods of copying: network, external USB drive, and finally drive-to-drive. They were all slow. We have gone through remaining training sessions and had breakfast but by Sunday noon the copying was still not done. We finally decided to leave the servers copying files overnight.

So, yeah, theoretically the long weekend is not over yet.

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Akira

Akira is one of those classic animes. It is noteworthy because it was one of the first ones that featured detailed scenes and fluid-motion. I read about it before but haven’t had the chance to watch it until Bianca lent me her copy.

Akira is about a top secret government experiment gone wrong. A street gang gets tangled in the experiment and one of the gang members, Tetsuo, started manifesting unusual mental powers and destroying things. The gang leader, Kaneda, took it as his responsibility to set out and stop Tetsou. It culminates in an action-packed showdown that shifted towards the metaphysical.

I noticed that such shifts seems to recur in quite a few of the animes I’ve seen. I noticed it first in Robotech, then Evangelion, and now Akira. It somehow reminded me of Stanley Kubrick’s Space 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Rating: 3/5

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Neon Genesis Evangelion

I’ve heard about Neon Genesis Evangelion or Evangelion before. In fact I’ve seen an Evangelion movie (forgot which, see below) and Rei Ayanami is a favorite anime character. However, I haven’t seen the TV series. This is bad since Evangelion is supposedly one of the best as well as one of the most influential animes. This changed when I was able to borrow a copy of the TV series from Aby. I immediately and eagerly watched it over several days.

Evangelion is set in a post-apocalyptic Earth under attack by an enemy referred to as Angels. The Angels are invulnerable to conventional weapons because of their AT shields. The only weapon that can combat the angels are Evangelions or Evas. These are experimental highly-unstable mecha which also have AT shields. As the series progresses a lot of combat ensues and a conspiracy unfolds. This plus the focus on the characters makes for a quite compelling story.

Unfortunately, the ending– specifically episodes 25 and 26– was, to say the least, confusing. It was all a sequence of psychological and metaphysical meandering occurring purely in the characters’ heads. I did some research and found out a lot of fans were also confused and dissatisfied with the ending.

Thus, when the first Evangelion movie, Death and Rebirth, was released it included an alternate ending. It is composed of two parts: Death which is the merging of the truncated TV episodes and Rebirth which is the the alternate ending. Rebirth however is not the full ending as the movie was released before it can be completed.

So another movie called The End of Evangelion was released which is composed solely of the alternate ending episodes (episodes 25′ and 26′) to the TV series. After watching this, things become a bit clearer but also a bit more muddled. But heck, it rocks!

All these were finally brought together in Renewal of Evangelion which is composed of an edited Death part of Death and Rebirth plus End of Evangelion. This movie is considered the complete Neon Genesis Evangelion movie.

But wait! There’s more! A new movie called Rebuild of Evangelion with new scenes is coming out. And there’s even rumors of a live action movie.

Rating: 4/5

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USB 2.0 to SATA/IDE Adapter

This one is one of those indispensable techie tools. It’s a 3-in-1 external drive adapter from large IDE, small IDE, and SATA interface to USB 2.0. This means that with only one kit, you can connect practically ANY disk-based storage device via high-speed USB 2.0 to your PC. That would be 5.25″ form-factor CD and DVD drives, 3.5″ desktop hard drives, and 2.5″ notebook hard drives. You can also connect both a SATA and an IDE device at the SAME time. And here’s the clincher: there’s no fancy shmancy casings. Only exposed wires and circuit boards. How geek cool is that?

It’s available in most computer shops (I got mine from AWD at Robinson’s Galleria) or online (including, of course, the famous Brando).

Here is a more comprehensive review.

Rating: 4/5

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Arts and Music Festival

Early yesterday morning, Izza (Thanks dudette!) gave me a heads up about an arts and music festival being held at SM Mega Mall. I checked the event schedule and I found two  two events that seemed to be good photo shooting opportunities: a body painting fashion show and a cosplay fashion show. As luck would have it, they’re scheduled one after the other. How convenient can that be? And because it’s been some time since I last did any shooting, I made it a point to go.

I got there early and positioned myself right in front of the stage. About thirty minutes and two bands (Julianne and Juana) later, the body painting show started. The models were good. They definitely know what they’re doing. They moved then paused to give photographers ample time to shoot. I can’t say the same for the cosplay models. They moved around without coordination, sometimes bumping against each other, and they just don’t stop long enough for a shot. You need to aim and shoot fast. Coupled with the poor lighting, the whole shoot was quite a challenging exercise. That, in a way, made things a bit more  interesting.

Photos of the body painting fashion show and cosplay fashion show posted at the gallery.