In fact, the problems were due to a broken heatsink bracket on the motherboard.   The machine would operate until CPU load hit 70% or more (which isn’t often with freeNAS), overheat and die.

One cannibalized motherboard later, and things were running great again.

My next problem of course, is the limitations with the fuppes UPnP server.. it seems to be unable to handle my media library.  Having tried both mediatomb and ps3 media server, I can say the following:

• mediatomb is powerful, but tricky to set up.  it doesn’t come with video scripts that put videos in properly out of the box, so you have to whip out the javascript to get the full functionality out of it.
• ps3 media server is ridiculously easy to setup and use — it’s pretty much all automated for you.  However, some of the file associations are a bit wonky — it won’t let me stream mp4 audio files to the PS3 properly.

Last year I built a NAS server using some old hardware, and open source software called Freenas.  But I have to be honest, the software was a bit lacking.   Now, I’m a patient man, and I’ve dealt with lack of support for SATA300 and a twitchy UPnP server implementation on my modest 1GB / 4TB hardware. 

And things haven’t gotten better — in fact, they’ve gotten just a little bit worse.  With the 0.7 release, things looked even more unstable.  And now, I can’t even get my media server to rebuild the database on that box anymore.  Maybe the library is too big, or maybe I need more RAM. 

Either way, I think it’s about time that me and FreeNAS part ways and I try moving to a full Freebsd implementation.  Well, FreeBSD or OpenSolaris.  I’m leaning towards BSD as it seems to have greater community support, so my first attempt will be installing FreeBSD and then compiling up the XBMC software to see if it runs better than Fuppes did. 

If not, I may end up going OpenSolaris, and virtualizing a linux instance to run a more mainstream media server such as Twonky.

In the end, all I want is

• ZFS ZRAID1 disks
• UpNP server
• FTP/Web access
• Subversion support

Too bad FreeNAS doesn’t seem up to the task yet.

And just today, I got an idea — why not install a virtualization hypervisor on my machine and move my work client to a 3GB memory partition?  This would free up the extra 1GB to do with what I please… and maybe even move some of the server software that I use to it… freeing up even more space on my main memory pool.

Development is a memory intensive process — and right now, nearly 100% of my company is likely hamstrung by this limitation… would be nice to overcome that limitation!

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/prokopchuk-s-place

Take the Santa Shuffle 5km race… my heart rate climbed steadily over the course of the half hour to peg at over 180bpm..

heart rate over the duration of The Santa Shuffle (Dec 6, 2008)

And today, my heart rate stays steadily below 160bpm, and within my target zone for training. 

5km training run (Feb 4, 2009)

So there you have it.  Same distance, same speed, definitely better shape!

Now, I have to try to lose some more weight so it doesn’t always feel like so much work!

Well, today was day one of half-marathon training.  4 minute warmup run, followed by 18 minutes of race-pace running to cover about 3km of terrain. 

And it was a chilly one today.  With temps dipping below -20C, it was a test of synthetic fibre’s effectiveness to ward off cold.  Considering only my uncovered nose got uncomfortably cold while the rest of me was covered in frost, I’d say the clothing did the job admirably.

Hard to believe there’s going to be about another 100+ of these trianin sessions before the zero hour.  Here’s hoping I can keep it up.

Nathan Phillip Square was done up for the Cavalcade of Lights, so there was plenty to see downtown.

Of course, the CN Tower was also decked out in Christmas Livery too.

CN Tower in it

5km down, 16 more to go….

Today was the culmination of the past 10 weeks of my running clinic, and the first step towards doing the Mississauga Marathon in May.

The starting line of the santa shuffle

The run started at 10am this morning, with a couple hundred semi-chilled runners gathered at the finish line.

My Goal for this run was to make it the 5km without any breaks from running, and to do it in under 30 minutes.

The run started off well, but by 8 minutes in, my heart rate was hitting 160+bpm, and things were getting difficult.

At the 10 minute mark, the fast runners were making their way back from the end of the 2.5 km loop.   Then by the 15 minute mark, we made it past the halfway point and started back.

And I was feeling pretty good too.  That feeling wouldn’t last too long tho — by the 20 minute mark, the time where the fast runners were past the finish line, I was starting to hurt.  My heart rate was passing 170bpm and the urge to walk was strong.  I was able to take some comfort in the fact that some people I was passing seemed to be having more difficulty breathing than I, so I dug deep and kept going.

From left-right, Me, Patrick

Things will happen over time, so check back once in a while to see what’s up.