Smith & Wesson Are Back in a Big Way

I Bought a Smith & Wesson .500 Magnum

That's the headline.  I went into a pawn shop and saw it from the entry door and immediately knew what it was.  I negotiated what I thought was a decent price and bought it.  They now have a Dan Wesson 15-2 I might go back for later on.

Pawn shop gun?

I seem to buy really good guns from pawn shops.  After I lost interest in my Jennings J-22, my first ever gun, I went into a pawn shop and saw a Dan Wesson 15-2 .357 magnum revolver.  That started my love affair with big, heavy revolvers.  Another gun I bought in a pawn shop was my Jericho (Baby Eagle to US buyers) .40 S&W, which I will never sell, as it is the best semi-auto I've ever shot.  Enough of that.

But a .500 Smith & Wesson Magnum?

I haven't shot it yet.  The rounds are the size of double-a batteries.  The gun has three times the power of .44 magnum, of Dirty Harry fame, 'The most powerful handgun in the world!'

So, why a .500?  I love big, heavy revolvers, and this thing is one of the biggest and heaviest ever made.  It has excellent velocity and very high power factor, although it also has a lot of bad habits due to the fact that this thing is very near to the limit of what can be done with current technology.  Whether I keep it or not, I am really looking forward to shooting it.

Ammo is expensive, so I will be looking into reloading.

More later on how it shoots.

Ruger LCR report

I've had the LCR for a bit and I have a few observations:

1. The gun is tiny compared to the Taurus M85 I used to carry.  It fits in nearly every pocket I have so I seldom use a holster anymore.
2. I seem to have finally worked out how to hold it so as not to buck the shot like I used to.  Small guns, in particular, are sensitive to how you hold them, and the only way I know to work that out is to dryfire like crazy watching what the gun does, until you get to the point where pulling the trigger doesn't move the muzzle, and then practice that until it becomes a natural habit.
3. .327 is a phenomenal cartridge.  I'm thinking about picking up the SP101 in .327 as a bigger carry gun.  The recoil is about the same as .38 +P but is over a shorter period so bothers me less.
4. I got bigger grips for it.  The stock grips are way too small and have finger grooves.  Finger grooves force you to place your hand where the grooves are so mess up the ability to move your hand around to the right place for the combination of your hand and the gun.
5. It has developed a rattle.  I have no idea what is causing the rattle, but it works fine.  It is concerning me though.
6. While trying to chase down the rattle, I reassembled the gun improperly and damaged a $4 spring.  Finding the spring was easy; getting it took a week, ordering online.  Of course, I, once again, made a mistake reassembling it and damaged the new spring, but not badly enough that the gun won't work.  I may order a case of them.
7. On an unrelated note, I still can't find a firing pin for the M85 so it is in my gun closet (with a lock on the door, of course), inoperable, so I can't even sell it.  This means that, while the LCR was inoperable as well, I was carrying a Phoenix Arms .22 LR semi-automatic pistol which is a good deal less than ideal as a carry gun, although an excellent plinking gun.  I need a backup carry gun.

A note on holding guns: I've often preferred to shoot tiny guns because of the challenge of hitting accurately with one.  I have fond memories of a Jennings J-22 .22 LR pistol that never worked right but was surprisingly accurate once you got used to it.  Even with larger guns like the mid-sized revolvers I prefer or the full-frame automatics I sometimes use, the grip is very, very important.

Accuracy in a handgun is governed at the high end by what the gun can do.  Bolt it to a table and fire it and see what the grouping is, and that's as accurate as it gets.  That's often referred to as the weapon's accuracy potential.

When you put it in your hand, your hand becomes part of the weapons system.  When a gun recoils, it starts to move before the round exits the barrel, so the way you hold it governs, in a large part, where the barrel is pointing when the bullet leaves.  To achieve accuracy, you need repeatability, so you need to be able to hold it in such a way that the recoil changes the barrel's aim exactly the same every time.  You also need to work out how you pull the trigger so you don't move the muzzle in the act of pulling the trigger.  Achieving this takes lots of experimentation and practice because no two hands are quite alike.  This is a major reason we need such a variety of guns and a major reason you should shoot any gun you buy before you buy it or do what I do and go through several guns before you settle on one you like and can shoot well.

Lessons don't hurt either, but, remember, your instructor may merely be teaching you what has worked for the instructor, not what works best for you.

Jaguar report

As I said some time back, I bought a 99 Jaguar XJR on a bit of an impulse.  I've always wanted a Jag, and finally had a bit of cash.  Rather than buying an XJ8 with decent paint, I went with an ugly but mostly mechanically sound XJR.  It had sat for a while so had the usual issues related to that, and had over 100,000 miles on it, so had the issues related to that.  It had a recent transmission rebuild and the transmission is the weak part on that model, which is odd, because it is a Daimler transmission.  In a rare reversal, it's one of the parts not designed by Jaguar that has the higher failure rate.

You don't buy Jaguars because of reliability.  You buy it because of the grin it plasters on your face.  Today, while driving home, I got an opportunity to chase an Infiniti G36 coupe.  I was slowly reeling him in when my exit came up.  Slowing down for the exit, my transmission started randomly shifting into second gear, which made things interesting at 60 MPH, as each downshift caused the car to jump a bit.  I will have to figure out why it's doing that.  It only did it in sport mode, so I've stayed out of sport mode since.

Anyway, the coolant leak it has also reared up, so I had 'transmission fault' and 'low coolant level' alternating on the display, and the ECM had decided shifting was no longer an option and seemed to have locked the car in third gear.  I pulled over and topped off the coolant and restarted the engine to clear the transmission fault and drove the rest of the way home without any trouble.

Here's the amazing bit: before this happened, the transmission shifted hard.  Not jarringly so, but enough that it was mildly irritating, because the car would sometimes lurch.  I chalked it up to this car being a performance model and old besides, but, after the full-throttle freeway run chasing the Infiniti it has been buttery smooth since I haven't tried sport mode since.  I have to watch the tach to notice a shift.  It's not slipping; I did a few hard acceleration runs and there's been no loss of power.  The engine is quieter as well.

There's an old Jaguar remedy called a 'Tony tune-up' where it is recommended you put the thing in a lower gear and go as fast on the highway as you dare because these things are race-bred and don't do well if you don't air them out every so often, so maybe this thing is just being true to Jaguar form.  Maybe I'm in for an expensive transmission repair.

A funny thing is if you take my hourly rate and multiply that by the time I save commuting in this thing over my Expedition, it'll pay for itself in less than a year.  So there's your justification to go out and buy whatever madness you want, so long as it is old and eccentric.

I bought an iPhone (again)

As the title states, I did, indeed, buy another iPhone.  Blackberry has lost the plot in a major way, the Passport being the last good one, and all the Android phones I've had have been flaky and slow.  If the spirit moves you, you can leave your complaints about that statement in the comments.  I'm just reporting my experience with the things.

So, since the smartphone is no longer a novelty and is approaching the status of an appliance, I simply decided to buy the most reliable appliance out there.  After a short survey, that turned out to be the iPhone.

So, mobile email is much better than last time I used an iPhone.  Still not up to Blackberry standard, but that's really not an option anymore.  The iPhone has a far less annoying notification system than Android, something I am reminded of every time I pick up my Android tablet and do anything with it.

The iPhone I have is the 6s plus.  It is fast, reliable, and hasn't needed any real fiddling.  Apple does not understand cloud at all, so I've been constantly forced to fix iCloud issues, but that's another story entirely.

We'll see how long I stay happy with it.  Since my last iPhone, I've had two Blackberries running classic, two running OS 10, one Blackberry running Android and the Galaxy Note 3.  I seem to replace my phone mostly annually now.

What bothers me the most is that Blackberry was still the only manufacturer making something intriguing.  They produced devices such as the Passport, which was a stunningly useful formfactor, and the Priv, which was an almost-usable Android phone.  Prior to the iPhone, those were the two phones I bought before the iPhone.

Since I have decided we are in a post-innovation era in the smartphone market, I may keep this thing for a couple of years, which will be a disappointment to my kids, as they've been getting my castoffs.

Back To Revolvers

I'm swinging back to revolvers.  It's not a new thing; I seem to swing back and forth between revolvers and semi-automatics for my main self-defense and carry guns.  I'm going to provide my reasons in this essay.

Define a purpose

This is sort of an engineering approach.  The engineering method is to define a purpose then find a solution that matches that purpose.  To that end, we need to define the purpose of the weapon.

There are actually three major categories of handguns, with subcategories for each.  I'll list them out below as I see them.

1. Defensive handguns
1. Carry guns
2. Non-carry guns
3. Pack/trail guns
2. Combat handguns
1. Gunfighter guns
2. Military combat guns
3. Duty guns
3. Recreational handguns
1. Target guns
2. Competition guns
3. Plinking guns

I'm going to discuss two of the subtypes of defensive guns, the carry gun and the non-carry gun.  I'll be giving my reasons for switching back to a revolver on both.

Carry guns

Actually, when I got my license, I went out and bought a revolver.  I bought a Taurus M85 .38 Special snub-nosed revolver.  At the time, the reason was simple, in that I wanted an uncomplicated weapon to carry, one that I didn't need to worry about state and would not easily accidentally trigger.

The primary requirements, for me, for a carry gun are:

1. Reliability: absolutely must work no matter what
2. Concealability: must disappear when carried
3. Adequate performance: needs to hit at 35 yards and hit hard enough to be effective

The M85 I bought hit all the points except reliability, as it currently has its second broken firing pin.  That's why I went out and bought a Ruger LCR in .327 Federal, which is a better carry gun.

A revolver is easier to conceal.  Sure, semi-autos are slimmer, but the revolver looks less like a gun, thanks to years of Hollywood teaching everyone what a handgun looks like, which is a blocky semi-auto.  The profile of a semi-auto through clothing is much more obvious to the average person than the profile of a revolver.  The Ruger LCR, in particular, is easy to conceal due to a fully-shrouded hammer.  It can be put in a pocket.

When carried in a pocket, the positive action of a revolver is going to be more reliable in the face of pocket lint and whatever else might get into the action than the balance action of a semi-auto.  In general, of course, revolvers are more reliable than semi-autos.  A revolver will have less of a chance of jamming, of course, but, almost more importantly, a dud round does not require working the slide.  The next trigger pull advances the next round into place.

There are plenty of semi-auto carry pistols with adequate performance.  However, given the fact that the round does not have to fit into the grip of a small pistol, a revolver can have much higher performance than a semi-auto.  Since it doesn't have to worry about balancing a small, light slide against a heavy recoil, it can also have a much more powerful round, and the round can be tuned to provide high velocity in a short barrel.  In this, the .327 Federal excels.  It has nearly the same ballistics as .357 magnum but has much lower energy, which means it is not difficult to shoot out of a snub-nosed revolver.  Its delivered energy is excellent and its velocity is high enough to cause hydrostatic shock.

For me, the revolver is easier to shoot accurately, which I'll cover in greater detail when I talk about non-carry guns below.  This isn't true for everyone, but it is true for me.

Non-carry guns

This type of gun is one that you wouldn't carry concealed because it is too big.  It is a weapon designed for defense in a situation where the size of the weapon doesn't matter because you are keeping it in a house or car where there is adequate room to store it.  This means that the power factor can be lots higher, as can accuracy, and we can select a weapon that is somewhat more fiddly than a carry gun.  For me, the primary requirements are:

1. Accuracy: has to hit at at least 35 yards, preferably 100 yards
2. Power: has to hit very hard
3. Reliability: has to work even when stored for a long time

For a long time, I've been using an EAA Witness 10mm as my primary non-carry gun.  This weapon meets every requirement except reliability.  It requires too much maintenance to keep in top working condition, but, knowing that, I just cleaned and oiled it rather often, which wasn't hard since I've been shooting it regularly.  It also has issues due to full-power 10mm ammunition that have required replacing the recoil spring for a heavier one and replacing the magazine catch due to damage from recoil.

The Witness is 35 yard accurate, and the gun itself has the potential for 100 yard shots but I can't do it with the gun.  I've always had this sort of problem with a semi-auto, only really achieving good 100 yard accuracy with a Beretta 96FS I used to own that I practiced with nearly weekly for six months or so to acquire that ability.

Recently, I saw a simply beautiful Smith & Wesson N28 Highway Patrolman 6" .357 magnum in a pawn shop and bought it.  It has been worked on and has a brilliant single-action trigger pull as well as silky-smooth action all around.

Anyway, I took it to the range and was hitting bullseye at 35 yards by the end of the day in single-action, so I'm back to a revolver for this particular gun use.  I still have the 10mm and probably won't sell it, but this N28 is a revelation.

The main disadvantage, of course, is that the 10mm has no less than 15 rounds available when fully loaded while the N28 only has six.  Since 10mm and .357 have very similar power, that means that the 10mm is worth 2.5 revolvers.  However, statistically, you'll only ever need three rounds for defense anyway.  If you need much more than three rounds, you need a rifle, not a pistol.

As promised, I'm going to discuss why I hit more accurately with a revolver than with a semi-automatic.  If you hold a semi-auto in one hand the way you'd hold it to shoot it, with a fully-loaded magazine, you'll find that the axis of vibration is quite vertical.  This means that if your hand trembles, as mine tends to these days, the muzzle will flop around quite a bit.  It is quite difficult to keep the thing on target one-handed.  With two hands, it's easier, but still not as easy with a revolver.

If you hold a revolver in one hand, you will notice that the weight of the cylinder drags the axis of vibration more to the front of the gun, which means that vibration in your hands waggles the muzzle less.  

A major factor in shooting accuracy is the interaction between the trigger finger and the trigger.  This is particularly true of long-pull double-action triggers, but it is true of all triggers.  I haven't yet found a semi-automatic with a large enough grip that I can position my trigger finger optimally while providing the choke hold a semi-automatic requires.  Almost all revolvers allow me to slide my hand down the grip to the point where my trigger finger is optimally positioned to reduce bucking the shot by errant trigger control.

With a good revolver, you do not have to hold the gun tightly.  A semi-automatic might not cycle properly if you do not hold it tightly.  When you hold a gun tightly, your muscle vibrations increase and this makes you less accurate.  With a revolver, you can pull the hammer back to single-action and let the thing sit loosely in your hand which means much greater accuracy.

Another advantage a revolver has is that its sights are fixed to the barrel and the frame and the barrel is also fixed to the frame.  Semi-autos, generally, have a camming barrel arrangement to make loading more reliable, but it also makes the whole gun less precise and therefore less accurate.

In the end, I could probably spend the hours and ammunition necessary to overcome my issues with the Witness, and spend the time necessary to retain that skill, but the fact that I picked up a new gun, and, by the end of the day, was more accurate with it than with the Witness, convinces me I need to go back to using a revolver.  The decision is heavily influenced, of course, by the fact that I just like revolvers.

Inner Beauty

I bought a Jaguar.  Yes, the correct response is 'My condolences'.  It is a piece of technology so I will write about it.

Technology

This particular vehicle is a '99 Jaguar XJR.  Specs are as follows:

• 4.0L supercharged v8, 370bhp.
• Sport suspension.
• Five seats.
• 4,000 pound dry weight.
• Anywhere from 4.9 to 5.3 seconds to sixty miles per hour depending on who's testing.
• Top speed governed at 155 MPH.

Why inner beauty?

It has peeling clear coat, faded paint, dents and dings, and a worn interior.  That means it doesn't have outer beauty.  What it has is a soul.

Ordinary cars are about getting from here to there in the most practical and economical way.  There are acres of front wheel drive cars that have the same or better room, much better economy and are less likely to melt down an expensive piece of aluminum.  So why do people keep buying impractical Jaguars?

When you look at the bones of the thing, what it could be with some body work and some paint, it is low, sleek, seductive and full of presence.  Like any exotic, it looks ready to go fast sitting in the parking lot.

When you get in and fire it up and hear that cat roar, it furthers the feeling of barely contained agility, ready to launch.  If you've never driven a Jaguar, you may not know what this means.  When you press the accelerator, the XJR jumps off the line like a big, playful cat, and effortlessly attains illegal speeds.

Then there's the cornering.  It doesn't squeal.  It has little or no oversteer and understeer.  Just turn the wheel and it goes.  Your passengers will be upset, as they bounce off the sides of the car in turns, get interesting bruises from seatbelts when you hit the brakes, but you won't care and nothing will wipe the grin off your face for hours after.

That's inner beauty.  The car has so much character.  It has so much confidence.  It keeps telling you that you aren't anywhere near its limits.  Go ahead and go faster, it says, the car will sort out how to make that corner at that impossible rate.  Go ahead and go faster on the freeway, it says, you still have passing power at 90 or 100 MPH.  You can still stop if you need to.

OK, how is it on the freeway?

On the freeway, in heavy traffic, it provides the driver with opportunities that would otherwise not be there.  For a mid-sized car (large cars are extinct and I refuse to call these things large cars) it has massive mirrors giving good visibility.  You can see the space in traffic and be in it before you have time to think about it.  You can match speed in any traffic.  You don't have to worry about many cars stopping faster than you can.  Through all of that, the car seldom leans or dives and never seems to lose traction.  Throw it around like a little car, it says, but enjoy the ride of a bigger car.

Freeway bumps don't bother it.  You get the feeling of the road without the jackhammer to the kidneys that many 'sport' suspensions provide, like the imaginary suspension on the Scion xB, for instance.

Braking hard into a corner does not fluster it like it did with my old V6 Camaro, which was positively scary in heavy braking.  Flooring the throttle out of a corner does not induce mind-numbing fear like it does in other rear-drive cars with this much power, either.  I haven't really tried, but I have yet to break this thing loose in any way.

Edit:

I have found it completely possible to get the rear end to hang out in a corner, and have found it completely controllable when it finally does.  It will spin its tires on dry pavement, normally when going from first to second gear in sport mode, as I know better than to break it loose from a standstill.

So, why should we always apologize when we hear a friend bought a Jaguar?

Ok.  It is aluminum.  It is sort of glued, welded and screwed together.  This makes it feel like someone carved it out of aluminum and keeps weight down, but getting body work done on one is rather expensive.  Paint has to be specially formulated, body parts are rare, you can't weld panels to fix them and panels are nearly impossible to remove without Jaguar tooling.  So, this one is likely to remain beautiful on the inside and ugly on the outside.

Edit:

This is actually a steel Jaguar.  The aluminum ones came later.  This means that the bodywork is not particularly expensive and might get done.

That engine.  It purrs.  It roars.  It smoothly applies power until you ask for more, then it snorts, digs in the rear wheels and launches.  But, it is an aluminum overhead cam V8 with a supercharger.  For comparison, my Ford Expedition EL has a 5.4L V8 that simply doesn't require maintenance other than oil changes.  The Ford engine will be running long after the Jag packs it in, but it will never produce the kinds of smiles the Jag does.

It will also never need a new supercharger ($1200 for the part alone), never need a thousand dollar head gasket job, a thousand dollar timing chain job and so on.  Right now, the big cat is showing definite signs of needing a new supercharger at some point, so that is probably the second thing, right after I fix the brakes.

Edit:

I fixed the brakes.  That was actually cheaper than expected because I have Jag brakes, not Brembo, and they used a rather standard brake set.  The supercharger issue appears to be the snout bearings which might be a relatively cheap fix.  It, at the moment, needs a valve-cover gasket job to stop an oil leak.  It has also had two cooling lines replaced due to disintegration of the stupid plastic elbows, although, to be fair, the Expedition has gone through two plastic tees in the cooling system already.

So, is it worth it?

Do you like to drive?  No, really, really drive?  Do you have kids?  Are you a bigger person?  Then the Jaguar XJR might be for you.  It is actually not designed to be a full-on sports car and has a lot of design elements designed to make it mostly a comfortable machine, but then you can mash the throttle and summon a true exotic.  If that mix seems right for you, and you either are good with your hands or know a mechanic, then it might be a good idea.

If you are hot blooded, passionate and impulsive, then go buy the most expensive one you can afford.  Unlike a lot of other cars with similar ability, this one won't try to hurt you physically.

Windows 7 (Again) And Other Stuff

My son, who is into gaming, has been pestering me to build him a windows box. I finally arranged to get it all set up, having downloaded a Win7Pro64 disk on the advice of windows using friends of mine.

 This is when I found that a 2.4GHz quad core Intel processor is considered mildly obsolete. It also has a Radeon 4870 and 8GB of ram. The specs are fairly low by modern standards, but they should do. However, Asus, the motherboard manufacturer, no longer provides drivers.

I have found the network drivers, and Windows Update seems to be installing other drivers right now.
Anyway, that project is going swimmingly. I also have a decaying linux box, with a motherboard that periodically refuses to boot. I have found some 10krpm SFF SAS disks (2.5"), five of them, and am going to add them to my system, possibly adding three more later, as raid0, to improve my performance, as I have adopted KVM and need fast storage.

 I am going to have to address the machine performance as well. The processors are fast enough, 8 2.9GHz cores, but the ram, 14.7GB, is not enough. It is 14.7GB because of interleaving. Anyway, with two VMs running 4GB each, I'm running out of space.

 I also need to address my main storage array, which has precipitated my need to investigate Linux MD raid, which now supports RAID6, online level migration and online capacity expansion.

I have enough ports on my motherboard to connect 14 devices, 8 sas and 6 sata, and I have an 8 port sas controller as well. With 6 sas ports used by the sas hardware, going up to as many as 14 in the future, I will need at least 9 ports for the sata array, for a max of 23. Right now, I am looking at 15 ports, which can easily be done with the higher speed sas controller. I suppose when I get it set up, I will post some performance numbers for both the raid6 software raid array and the raid0 scratch/VM disks.

The Trouble With Linux

I have Linux boxes, several of them. My day job is supporting Linux boxes. On my desk here is a dual 1207 Opteron with two Barcelona CPUs running Debian. At work, I have a Xeon quad core and a HT P4, one running Debian and the other running Mandriva. I also have a Myth box in the other room.

I have been using Linux for a while, and am pretty competent with it, is what I'm trying to say. I have even used Linux as my only system for stretches of time, normally ending up with some sort of Apple laptop sooner or later, because Linux just doesn't seem to work.

I switch between Debian and Ubuntu mostly, while work demands that I use Mandriva where possible. I switch between Debian and Ubuntu mostly because the underlying Aptitude package system is the best system configuration tool I have used.

While using Debian, I begin to pine after the desktop-like features of Ubuntu, when, for instance, my Debian system fails to play a DVD because the codec is invalid or missing or something. Also, Flash doesn't work well or often.

Then I switch to Ubuntu for a while. First off, I can't use my software raid main volume that I use with Ubuntu. The Ubuntu installer knoweth nothing about software raid. Well, put it on the SSD and worry not. Everything goes on so slickly; even Flash works and works fairly well. There is a really nice front end for the package manager and Ubuntu happily suggests packages when you try to execute a command that doesn't exist.

However, after a while, the automatics in Ubuntu make the system get weird. None of the configuration is in the correct place. I spend hours tracking down how to fix the simplest things. I don't like messing with GUIs to fix problems. Even when I fix something, it gets fixed back. It can get tiring.

I get to wondering, also, whether I really need all that UI stuff, and get to pining for Ubuntu's XFCE simplicity. Seriously, XFCE loads in less than a blink after login.

Anyway, right now, as I said, I'm using Debian right now, and exploring the wasteland that is GTK, using FreeCiv to do it. GTK has gotten so piggish that this monster Opteron machine running 2.4GHz is slow. It takes minutes for each move. It is so bad I am speccing out a new computer based on a much faster single CPU in order to achieve faster single-thread performance. There is really nothing wrong with this machine, but I need faster GTK performance.

Linux on the desktop is adrift. Debian is pretty much excused, as its focus has always been on the server, not the desktop. Ubuntu and Mandriva are both desktop efforts. Mandriva 2010 is providing, shall we say, a certain level of job security, and that is all I'm going to say about that. Ubuntu, however, is so very close.

GTK, Gnome, KDE are all pigs. They chew through CPU cycles and ram like rampant hogs. When you are done configuring a decent desktop system, you are looking at a VM footprint of around 2GB. Look at XFCE4 on Debian, with a minimalist system, and the VM footprint runs around 512MB or so.

Why does all this matter? Well, CPU performance is as much about bandwidth as anything else, and, keeping the VM size down leads to less bandwidth usage, meaning more efficient usage of clock cycles. Keeping most of the code the size of the L3 cache would be ideal, but unlikely.

Anyway, there is an old adage that the XFCE guys seem to get, that Debian has long fought to retain, that Apple occasionally rediscovers, that Microsoft has never seemed to get, which is that 'software does something'.

Linux developers need to understand that the strength of the platform is efficiency and reliability. This is important, because the fancy graphics is pretty much the strength of the professionals, Apple and Microsoft. Fancy graphics don't matter in the long run. What matters is rock-solid performance.

Anyway, that's my opinion; the trouble with Linux is that they seem to be trying desperately to match the architecture of the for-pay systems. They need to go back to the simple ideas that hatched the revolution.

HP Veer vs. Dell Streak Mini 5

So, next month, my contract is finally up for renewal. I have become annoyed with the iPhone (3gs) and don't really want to pay for a 4, even tho it might, in theory, fix some of my complaints. I want to move on, if for no other reason that variety is the spice of life.

So, to survey the field, there are currently iOS (Apple), Blackberry, Android, WebOS and Windows Mobile 7. I'll deal with the ones I'm not looking at first.

I have had a Windows Mobile device, running 6.5, and it was horrid. I hear 7 may be better, but am not yet willing to find out. Blackberry is in the same boat, although I did look long and hard at the Torch. I currently have an iOS device, and my problems with it are by now well known.

So, that leaves Android and WebOS. I was pretty much set on the HP Veer until I picked up a Dell Streak Mini 5, which is a 5" Android handset. Sure, it's massive, but I'm pretty large, so the size never bothers me. It also doesn't have a hardware keyboard, which is a major reason to not be interested. It will, however, run flash very well, has a large screen and will soon run Netflix. It would be a unified device, giving me little reason to buy an iPad.

However, on the other hand, there's the HP Veer, which is a very small smart phone that is nearly on overgrown feature phone, providing a select set of services, such as email, messaging and facebook, while missing some of the other things, such as Netflix. It does, however, have a serviceable slide out keyboard.

I guess it broke down to HP vs. Dell. I have never liked Dell machines, generally preferring HP in any bracket where they compete. I think, more than anything, that is what is tipping the scales. That and the fact that the HP Veer does only messaging pretty much. When I'm carrying my phone, messaging and light browsing are all I do with it. I will eventually get an iPad if I get a Veer. The iPad will take over the media jobs and the heavy web browsing.

Don't like the iPhone anymore

It really revolves around the thing being a lousy messaging phone. The onscreen keyboard hasn't gotten any better (I was assured it would), the autocorrect is really annoying, as it makes me check every word to make sure it didn't change to something horrible (check damnyouautocorrect.com), and the email application is just as annoying as ever.

On the Blackberry Bold, an incoming mail, or any message, was added to the master message queue for you to see, in order it was received. The email subject was shown, at least what fit, and hitting the backspace key deleted the message. No muss, no fuss, the occasional accidentally deleted email, but, overall, quite usable. The iPhone, however, pretty much requires you click on the email, as the other options are 'edit' followed by touching each one you want to delete, followed by 'delete'. Or you can try the swipe to delete thing, sick, horrid joke that it is.

Then there's the keyboard. I now use a bluetooth keyboard at work to type messages rather than try to use the keyboard. I've ended up working on my laptop rather more, something I'd pretty much quit doing when I had the Blackberry.

Anyway, I'm off to buy a Palm Pre Plus, refurbished, and see how annoying that will be...

An iPhone as a Personal Computer

I have an iPhone. I broke down and bought one. I know, I have caved in to the crowd, but the thing is just so useful and entertaining.

Of course, there are problems with it, like how the master volume affects the ringer volume, or how the messaging system is such a mess, what with having to go into three separate applications to check three separate messaging types, voice, mail, email...

Gripes aside, the quest is to discover if this sort of device is adequate for my normal day-to-day non work-related computing, such as blogging, surfing the web, reading email, watching netflix and playing games.

Games it does, and how. That is perhaps the most entertaining thing it does. If you haven't played games on an iPhone or iPod, go do it and see if you don't enjoy yourself.

Watching netflix it does as well. It gets five or six hours of video in, which is simply spectacular.

With the new email client that puts all my email in one place, I am willing to say it does email well enough.

The test, really, is the lightweight writing, the blogging, my novels and, lately, my resume. That is what I am after right now, and, so far, it is fairly positive.

I don't know why apple has not released pages for the iphone; that would seem to be such a natural thing to do. I am using a Microsoft Word compatible office product, office2, which has a pretty good spreadsheet, and tonight, after I finish getting it squared away, I will start using that to actually write a story. For now, though, I am blogging, and, with the apple bluetooth keyboard, this thing may work well enough for that.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

A week or so on with an iPhone

A few minutes with a screwdriver removing a broken bit of plastic from the Logitech DiNovo Mini has really improved its usefulness. I did have the occasion to type on work's Blackberry Bold, and I miss that keyboard. The iPhone's keyboard is just usable enough for the occasional texting but nothing more. During the day I'm often reaching for the Mini to bang something out, as I'm doing now.

So, I guess I ought to get the complaints about the Mini out of the way first. The tick key, so often used in contractions, is not illuminated, so, in the dark, I have to remember it's fn-/, while dash is fn-o. Oh, and why, oh why, in the name of all that is holy, do they turn the illumination of the regular keys off when you hit backspace? Make a mistake, lose all ability to correct it.

Once again, the Mini is a superior media remote, but is mildly annoying as a portable keyboard. I will have to get a real one at some point.

Back to the iPhone. Having one has changed my habits slightly. For instance, my laptop stays firmly in its bag most nights, as I use my iPhone for most simple computing tasks. Having had a Blackberry, I was already accustomed to reading mail on my mobile device, and the reading of mail is superior on the iPhone, while the managing of messages in general is not. For instance, Apple forwent the nearly universal flashing LED indicator for new messages, with the result that I've missed some important messages by dint of stepping away for a bit or having it in my pocket. I have had to learn to check it often.

Also, the Blackberry puts all messages into the same list so you can see at a glance you have a text message, two emails and a voicemail to deal with, while those are three separate unrelated things on the iPhone. Also, seriously, modal dialogs, now, in the 21st century? Even worse, swiping that evil swipe to unlock thing causes the alerts to go away so you have to wander formlessly looking for what the alert was, instead of being taken right to all your messages, as does the Blackberry.

I guess most iPhone users are constantly attached to their phones by wired headsets, but I hate wired headsets. I will have to figure out some way around the wired headset in the future. Until then, I will miss the occasional annoyance, erm, phone call.

One thing I found out about having a Blackberry is that the excuses went right away. The Blackberry felt smaller and less of a big deal to carry. It wasn't playing music or games, and you never browsed the web with it except in an emergency, so taking it with you was as easy as slipping it into the holster it came with, which automatically put it to sleep and locked its keyboard. That is one trick the iPhone could stand to learn. And, could it kill them to put an alert LED on it?

One more minor gripe about the iPhone is the flaky cover flow in the iPod app. Some times, when I advance to the next tune in shuffle, the cover flow does not update to the new album art. If I let the song finish, it starts updating again. Weird.

Overall, the experience remains positive, but we shall see. So far, the Bold owns the record, as I was mostly happy with it for well over eight months. I already have some major annoyances with this thing, and I haven't been watching much mobile video, one of the major reasons I got it.

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

I Got an iPhone

I finally replaced my aging and decrepit Blackberry Bold with an iPhone 3gs. I got a refurb unit as I was concerned it would not suit me and the Bold entered nirvana months before cheap upgrade time for me.

So, anyway, first impressions are quite positive. The iPhone edged out the Samsung Captivate as it does the things I want to do now, such as stream hulu and netflix. Right now I am blogging while listening to music, using a logitech DiNovo mini to peck this entry out.

I will have to get a better keyboard and the wired headset is driving me to distraction snagging on everything, and the battery life is fairly poor, but the capability is there, and I keep finding new uses for it. more later when I have a decent keyboard...

[Posted with iBlogger from my iPhone]

In Case You Want To Try It, Too

The iMac project got abandoned. I got an ancient notebook for free that is now running Linux itself. However, if you ever want to do it yourself, check out freeNX. I've been using it from my Powerbook 12" to my big Linux box. It works very well.

Interesting Idea

I've come into the possession of an iMac Blueberry, which is a 450MHz G3 with 192MB of PC-100 ram (YAY!). I stuffed a 120GB disk in it (it had none, having been declared 'dead' by the school it came from), successfully ejected the disk in the DVD drive, which involved disassembling the computer, as the disk was too thick for the slot and kept binding. Then I installed Linux on it (Mac OS X on a 450MHz machine with 192MB ram? Really?)

After messing with it for a bit, I got it to work as a client to my other machine (read my other posts for an idea as to why I'd try to do that). The idea is to create a machine for homework that isn't expensive because I'm tired of spending hundreds of dollars fixing computers destroyed by the kids. Since I've got that other machine just sitting there, as I have to go to a real job these days, it makes sense to employ it as an application server.

I'm so close, too. If the audio can be made to work (my sysadmin friend is working on it) then I can use it for almost all uses the kids put a computer to. Unfortunately, setting up audio in is somewhat harder, and necessary for some of the apps. I guess I'll need to run a Mac for that. Maybe I'll just set up the multimedia machine for that.

Mourning The Loss of Threading

I've used many different platforms. Through the years, I've gravitated towards systems with native threaded UIs. OS/2, for instance, had a threading system that led to accidental threading. The original idea behind COCOA on Mac OS X was to have one UI thread and one worker thread per app. Java UI is easily threaded.

However, many of these systems now run apps with no threading at all in them, leading to unresponsive UI elements. The user has no idea why the app is unresponsive; they're just upset about it and will stuff the click buffer full of clicks about it, which will have unintended consequences when control returns to the UI element.

Of all of them, I think I like Apple's automatic creation of worker threads. It removes the threading issue from the developer's mind. The developer is free to develop while the OS manages the creation and removal of threads.

I guess this approach is too 'hard' because it seems Apple has largely abandoned it, going with the standard one thread (process) per app, which has led to a less responsive UI. Before, when a given app was hard at work, its UI thread was still responsive, meaning you could click on things and so on. The 'work' was in a worker thread. Since this happens as a result of the OS' UI layer calling the app's action delegate in a separate thread created by the UI layer for this purpose. Since OS X uses Objective C, which does message passing by default, synchronization is something that can happen at the framework level, making things much easier on the developer.

However, there seems to be a tendency to ignore the idea of threading. Synchronization issues kind of suck. Developers have to maintain re-entrant discipline and need to code in such a way as to avoid deadlocks and data corruption. Discipline is often in short supply as development managers feel the need to push software out on short schedules, meaning they need to simplify their development, which is one reason threading is ignored. Threaded code has a different set of testing requirements, for instance.

However, if, as is done in OS X, the threading is a simple split between the UI layer and the app, managed by the OS, the majority of the issues can be tested for by the OS developer. This means Apple has to increase their testing, but it also means all Apple apps look lots more performant by default than comparable code on other systems.

Ok, Why Did I Pay $1500 For This?

I found a solution that has worked for a bit now for the Macbook headphone jack red led of death problem, where the internal speakers quit working after headphones are removed: take a q-tip and remove some of the cotton from the tip, trying to make sure there are not lots of wisps left around. Push the q-tip into the headphone jack. If it takes too much work, remove more cotton. Try to keep the cotton removal equal along the length of the q-tip because what you're trying to clean is waaaay back up in the jack. Once the q-tip is in there, twist it around, move it in and out and then remove it. If sound does not start up immediately, repeat the process. If sound still does not start, put a pair of headphones in the jack and remove them. If it still does not start, I guess you're not as lucky as I was. Btw, the q-tip came out really, really disgusting. Apparently that jack gets pretty dirty, and dirt was clogging the microswitch. Why it would work sometimes and not others and suddenly switch off all by itself remains a mystery, but, for now, it's working.

Why You Want a Dual or Better

The Macbook headphone problem seems to be solved most of the time by blowing in it. Why this is is beyond me. I'm still quite upset about it, but at least I can get my music playing now while I write.

That is, of course, not the point of this post, just an aside. I thought I'd write up the principle arguments for a dual socket system and then turn the next post over to a friend of mine who holds the opposing view.

First of all, if you do any database work using a process-based database such as Oracle or Postgres, the more hardware threads you have, the better, generally. Since, in most architectures, each database process maps to at least one thread or process in the middleware or front end, you will find things go faster if you have even more hardware threads. When, due to the constraints of the problem, you find that your system has hundreds of threads with tens of database connections, in a time-critical application, you will discover that the dual socket system with its lots higher hardware thread count will complete in a lot less time.

One argument that has been put forward is that a cluster is more efficient than a single large machine. It may be that it is more cost-effective, but it cannot be faster because the latency involved in communicating over even well-designed gigabit is much, much higher than communicating locally. You can architect around this, using lots more processes and so on, but at the end of the day, a single bigger machine will beat several smaller machines for database manipulation.

There are lots of work profiles that this is not true of, such as video processing, where, quixotically, a single socket machine easily eats up the bandwidth of any sufficiently large drive, meaning that more than one socket really isn't helpful. The problem with video actually becomes one of getting the video to the processor, not one of getting enough processor threads.

However, I and many like me find it lots more convenient to have one large box rather than many smaller boxes primarily because the maintenance cycle is so much lower. I don't have multiple machines to constantly shepherd.

It is true, barely, that multiple hot single socket machines are cheaper for the amount of processing power they have than one large machine, but there are mitigating factors even here. For starters, any enterprise geek will tell you that the disk performance matters, and once you're done outfitting those single machines with adequate disk, the price tilts in favor of a single large machine. This is due to the price of SSDs, which may decline enough in the future to reverse the position, but, for now, a single, fast SSD is enough for most profiles in the single big machine, but you will need one for each small machine to achieve the same level of performance.

Further, ram aggregation is a good thing. While there are consumer products that can take more than 8gb ram, they are frightfully expensive, both for the board and for the ram, which invariably uses 4gb modules, which are very expensive. A decent dual socket board will have a minimum of 8 dimm slots, for up to 32gb ram. 16gb ram at the moment is very cheap. Now, in a single big server, you will find that the majority of that ram goes to buffers, which are shared among your processes. In other words, lots of your data is common amongst the processes you're running, but with multiple machines, it all gets duplicated around.

Now, if you're doing 3D rendering or video processing and have already solved the throughput problem mentioned above (I recommend a massive NFS server with at least 2gb, preferably 8gb cache) then you don't really care because neither one of those really burns ram. However, if you are working with a database such as Postgres, you will find an 8gb system to be inadequate once you get the base system and the shared memory (I was running 3gb shared memory for Postgres alone!!!). You end up with as little as 3gb buffers and cache, which cause lots of disk access.

Switch to 16gb and you can run everything at once. You can run two 2gb Java instances with a 2gb Eclipse instance, 3gb shm for Postgres, about 1gb Postgres footprint, and a 1.2gb os footprint, for 9.2gb, leaving nearly 7gb buffers and cache, which is normally enough to avoid significant disk access. And, yes, you'd have to run at least two machines to achieve that same ram footprint using consumer hardware, meaning you either have to fiddle with 10g (don't tempt me; I already have one card) or accept lots higher database latency. Alternatively, you can get the whole thing into one machine by dropping some of the java footprints, but that significantly increases the cost of garbage collection, which slows down the java processes.

So, the reality is that, despite that the main reason I have such a big machine remains that dual socket machines are just more interesting to me, I really could not live on less broad shoulders. And yes, I am trying to save for a quad socket system in the future, which is why I have the 8000 series Opteron processors rather than the 2000 series, as it would only cost about three hundred to get two more 8358se procs, nine hundred for a quad socket board, and around $240 for 16gb more ram. My case is large enough, my psu is both large enough and equipped with the appropriate connectors. I do need to replace the stock fans (100mm case fans, four to a side) with Scythe Kaze2s, for around two to three times the airflow, as those 8358se procs run very hot.

I am also going to eventually add a second Radeon 3870HD because I am running into a problem with dual screens where if both screens are receiving significant amounts of data, they tend to stutter. It is possible the problem is actually in XFCE, which I must investigate first, but I do have to say the machine is pretty much bored out of its life, playing hulu in one screen and freeciv in the other. When the freeciv app starts moving stuff around in a hurry, the flash hulu player stutters, a problem that is worse full-screen. Since I only ever tax at most three cores, as evidenced by the fact that only three cores go to full speed with the on-demand governor, and since the hulu playing happens without ever causing a cpu to go above the floor freq (1.2ghz), I think I can reasonably assume it is not a cpu load problem. I think I can also reasonably assume it is not a bandwidth problem, as the video card is in an x16 PCI-e slot and the system has four DDR-2 667MHz memory busses, and is doing interleaving on top of that.

One more thing I'm fiddling with is the need to have open gl on this radeon card in linux. I just want the pretty open gl screensavers. Seriously.

Heat Problems, Again

Mash has been, well, running a tad hot, not really overheating. It's the same problem, where a null zone has developed over the chipset near the video card leading to elevated temperatures there. I pulled the cover off and found the culprit: a failed fan. Turns out it is a 100mm fan, which are pretty rare. I found a Scythe Kaze running around 42 cfm, which ought to be substantially better than the 15-25 cfm the fans in there are currently doing.

To fix it temporarily, I wedged a 120 mm Ultra Kaze in there, which produced substantially higher flow, despite not being sealed into the fan gang. I am so impressed with the Ultra Kaze fan. Many say they are too loud, but my machine is close to a vacuum cleaner at full speed anyway.

I did find a Delta fan, 92 mm, that can blow around 100 cfm, but it is also lots more expensive than the Scythe. I'd have to re-engineer the holder. I'm still considering it because 400 cfm would be nice.

Well, I Did Pay $1500 For It

I am speaking, of course, of my shiny aluminum unibody Macbook, the thorn in my side. The networking is all working, which is a relief, but the stupid red led of death is back. I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out what triggers it and how to fix it, even to the point of having an old headphone plug to stuff in there occasionally, but the one thing that seems to work most often is blowing in the hole. What is odd is that canned air does not work. Go figger. Every time it happens, I want to launch into a rant about badly-designed headphone jacks. Basically, they're subjected to every torque and abuse in the book, so they absolutely must be isolated from the mainboard and shock mounted. The plug itself has to be constructed of very high grade material. Here is not a place you want to save a few pennies, especially with netbooks nipping at your tail. Seriously, Apple, don't let me spend too much time wondering why I spent $1500 for this thing...

I guess I have to take it out to a 'genius' who will hem and haw and take it apart and look at it and tell me he can have a logic board in by monday or whatever, being as how it is still under warranty, but I hate dealing with that sort of thing. That is one major reason I've traditionally bought Apple hardware, the aura of being somehow a cut above, but the current Apple is in a relentless drive to produce stuff whose internals are ever less well-designed. There's a hundred dollars worth of machined aluminum casing, glass and so on, but the actual system inside sux.

Its networking is sub-par. Using the same disk, a Macbook Pro gets much higher throughput. This may also be due to the drive subsystem, which is also sub-par. To be fair, the Macbook Pro has a processor with adequate cache, but no computer should spend more than ten percent of its cpu handing nfs copying. Of course, lots of that is the hideously bloated internals in OS X, and I do use Linux so I have the bar set pretty high, but some of it is the net controller they use, which is a bargain-bin part. The ancient HP laptop I have has a Broadcom nic. It didn't cost as much as this thing new.

So, yeah, not a bad machine to write blogs on, but a disappointment in most other ways. I understand the new Macbook Pro 13.3 is supposed to be lots better, but, hey, I already paid $1500 for this.