A Little Dusty

Maybe a Lot

Had some trouble with my workstation today.  It’s a pretty nice rig that I built myself almost 2 years ago, running a core2 duo processor, 4 gigabytes of ram and an Nvidia 8800 GTS graphics card.  As a whole I keep my operating system, drivers, software and files in great shape and usually have no problems.  It has an amazing cooling system with many fans assaulting the CPU and graphics card with cool air.

Today, however, I noticed a number of slowdowns and lag with visually intensive applications.  I thought, perhaps, that I had a virus or that I had somehow ruined one of my drivers.  I spent about 2 hours downloading various antispyware and antivirus software packages and updating each of my drivers looking for a solution.

At some point my wife suggested that the computer was just plain dirty and that I ought to take it outside and clean it out instead of looking for hidden viruses that weren’t there.  A tornado of dust (including some golf ball sized chunks of it) came out of the machine when I finally set it up on my balcony and used compressed air from every imaginable angle to clean it.

I’m back up and running now smoother than ever.  Keep those computers clean and listen to your wife!

Nine Inch Nails (Trent Reznor) has become the second major artist to release an album with a non-traditional independant digital format. The album is a free download (Ghosts I) with II-IV available via donation. The entire album can be had for just $5 and other pricing options are available all the way up to a box set with printed materials and a blu-ray disc.

On top of pioneering a new distribution system, the music on this album is incredible. It’s all instrumental, and it’s all genius. Reznor has called this “music for daydreamers.”  I have always liked NIN but thought I had outgrown the whining and screaming of previous albums.  Just in time, Ghosts I-IV is a much more mature and whine-free album.  The music is at once disturbing and uplifting.

Some press from nin.com:

Nine Inch Nails presents Ghosts I – IV, a brand new 36 track instrumental collection available right now. Almost two hours of new music composed and recorded over an intense ten week period last fall, Ghosts I – IV sprawls Nine Inch Nails across a variety of new terrain.

Trent Reznor explains, “I’ve been considering and wanting to make this kind of record for years, but by its very nature it wouldn’t have made sense until this point. This collection of music is the result of working from a very visual perspective – dressing imagined locations and scenarios with sound and texture; a soundtrack for daydreams. I’m very pleased with the result and the ability to present it directly to you without interference. I hope you enjoy the first four volumes of Ghosts.”

This is just awesome. Record labels, your time is limited! http://ghosts.nin.com/

Still working out the kinks in the server move… today I made a post and now it has disappeared. Odd.

Update: looks like the DNS was still propagating.  All should now be well.

jonvandalen.com is back and bigger than ever! Some users got an error a few days back to the tune of “bandwidth exceeded.” The new server I have moved my site over to features:

• 500 gigabytes of space
• 5 terabytes of bandwidth (my old server had 2 gigabytes… yes… I know…)
• Lots more ftp accounts, databases, emails, etc

Not likely to happen again…

I’m playing with the design and CSS for the blog. Expect weirdness for the next day or so.

Update: Should be all done. I spent a good 3 hours on a particular problem where my post-view screens had the background shifted over to the left, but index and other pages were fine. I inspected every single CSS element, the PHP files, played with countless variations on the padding, margins and tested other PHP files to see if my single post view had somehow become corrupted.

And, of course, it was just an image file I forgot to re-save with the new width of the page (I had saved only the images used on other pages)

Thanks much to Jeffrey Friedl for pointing out the centering issue in my CSS. I do believe I’ve solved it! Incidentally, his blog is wonderful reading. I’ve never cared to read personal blogs before, but he has a way of making even ordinary things into a great read.