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Posts tagged hacks
HowTo: Measuring hard disk performance with linux and ‘hdparm’
Nov 5th
Measuring sequential disk performance with linux is easy – most distros (like ubuntu) come with a tool called hdparm , that is mainly used for tuning and optimizing hard disk parameters, but luckily it also includes simple benchmark functionality – for example the following command sudo hdparm -t /dev/sda gives me the following output: /dev/hda: Timing buffered disk reads: 176 MB in 3.01 seconds = 58.55 MB/sec Of course you need to substitute /dev/sda with the name of your raw disk device (for example, it might be /dev/hda for non-SATA disks) . Its impossible to get higher transfer rates that that from your disk. Hdparm reads at the very start of the disk for these tests (which is the fastest area of the whole harddisk) and using optimal access pattern
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HowTo: Measuring hard disk performance with linux and ‘hdparm’
Solar cells from donuts and tea – energy crisis solved?
Nov 5th
Yes I know – this has not got anything to do with mobile computing (sorry), and No, its not an april hoax at all – but I simply had to write about it.. as you can see on the youTube video below, this guy actually makes a small (and inefficient but still amazing) solar panel at home – from donuts, “starbucks passion” red hibiscus flower tea, water, vodka and some microscopy object slides…
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Solar cells from donuts and tea – energy crisis solved?
dBird-notifier checks for twitter, ICQ, email
Nov 5th
I refined the software part of my last project a bit. Now the thing consists of one main python script calling various subprocedures as separate threads, it has a nice colorful “parrot” tray icon (for closing the “application”), it listens on the dBus interface for alerts from various other software and shows three different types of incoming messages with a) respective system alerts (indicating message content and type), b) with a pop-up tray icon showing type of message by icon, and c) with some RGB LED wired to a RS232toUSB-adapter via a small picaxe08m microcontroller, which lights up in the corresponding color (twitter is turquoise, pidgin is purple, email is red)
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dBird-notifier checks for twitter, ICQ, email
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