SGNLS.net
This website is being slowly cobbled together with old junk from older versions... and I am fiddling away with the back-end so it may be temperamental.
As per, most of the dates on the entries are not accurate.
You can always find me. I may even be more active here.
Perhaps that which should interest you is easier to find when I link it for you :)
23 ~ Mastodon - 'The Hunter'
Mastodon are a band who, in my eyes, are in the vein of Opeth in as much as their music is not only undeniably brilliant, but also accessible when the time is taken to absorb and appreciate their moderately unique musical tapestry. Much like their Swedish counterparts, the new album marks another change in their musical direction yet still somehow they manage to fill the tracks with an audial immersion that is unmistakeably their own.
Having switched over to Roadrunner Records (who also boast Opeth and Megadeth amongst their much bolstered arsenal) they've given themselves many avenues to pursue 'attractive' tours and promotions (although the fact that 'The Hunter' featured in the Top Albums of 2011 in the Metro, a newspaper distributed on the London Underground rail network suggests they hardly need it).
06:58:16am, 30th Dec, 2011 | [#23]
22 ~ Interview #2 with Scott Kelly (Neurosis)
Download ~ scott_kelly-high_voltage-240711.mp3
MD5 ~ 70a50d024d03e0a48e69f098300e26f3
(Sound quality of the interview isn't 100% because it was outside in the wind!)
14:07:49pm, 7th Nov, 2011 | [#22]
20 ~ All Systems Operational?
I have been spending some time recently redesigning the front-end for the handmade CMS system that I've been using for a few years now.
Not only was it in drastic need of a redesign, but it also allowed me to tweak the backend and add a few more features! Hopefully, and again hopefully is the key word there, this will actually be ready for me to release it publicly.
09:09:52am, 1st Oct, 2011 | [#20]
19 ~ Last.fm Visual Charts
Since I haven't got an active stream from Last.fm as per at the moment, I thought I'd just summarise. As summaries are good, and hearty...
09:02:25am, 1st Oct, 2011 | [#19]
18 ~ Opeth - 'Heritage'
Opeth... quite simply one of the best bands around, and one of my favourites. What follows is a review of their latest album, the opinion dividing 'Heritage'.
03:10:28am, 25th Sep, 2011 | [#18]
13 ~ Issues with OpenGL Composition on KDE 4
So, I built up a new machine and prepped with the usual (i.e. swap runlevel to 3 and change the sysfont used outside of X). I then installed KDE and X and then the problems really occured when attempting to enable 'Desktop Effects' in KDE using OpenGL composition.
These were the juice of the logs that occurred when I tried to enable OpenGL composition; xrender works fine (if not a little choppy). Seems to be something with kwin; note I am using a PAE i686 kernel with 4GB RAM, running Fedora 14, not that it seems to make much difference.
13:16:55pm, 24th Sep, 2011 | [#13]
12 ~ Linux Raid Woes
I restarted a machine the other day and had a message about problems related to /dev/md0 (I'm not 100% as it was 3 in the morning but I'm sure it was the usual message about superblocks when fsck runs) and that I should run fsck to correct this. I tried, but it continually complained about the superblocks. I tried backup superblocks but nothing would shift it.
Eventually, I could get into a shell and ran dump2fs to find the alternate superblock information, but none would work. The same messages ('superblock corrupt'). There were messages about the group IDs not matching; it started to look like a drive might have died.
13:16:31pm, 24th Sep, 2011 | [#12]
11 ~ Relentless Reckless Forever
On Friday 10th December 2010, I was one of the first people in the world who was given the priviledge to officially preview the new Children of Bodom album 'Relentless Reckless Forever'.
Upon arriving at Metropolis Studios at The Power House in Chiswick (beautiful area, full of wankers), I really had no idea what I was in for; this had been a last minute opportunity. Meeting up with some delightful fellow 'metalhead journalists' from Metal Rules outside, we went in and had to hand in all our recording devices and cameras; a standard practise.
13:16:04pm, 24th Sep, 2011 | [#11]
10 ~ Skinny Puppy - Live at The Forum
Last night I was massively fortunate enough to see the London show off the current 'In Solvent See 2010' tour of the mighty Skinny Puppy. Not only was it the first time I'd seen them, but I had been looking forward to it well before actually booking the tickets back in February. Needless to say, I wasn't at all disappointed.
Support came from a UK band called 'Hounds'. They weren't a bad band; generic punk rock with elements of synthesisers here and there (obviously over-tracked or played off stage as it wasn't any of the visible band). Why they were supporting Skinny Puppy, I don't know. Maybe it was last minute, maybe it was completely intentional... Either way, for me and a fair few others, it didn't work. We wanted to see Skinny Puppy, and if we'd had something remotely similar or even completely different that did the trick it'd have been superb. As such, we were treated to a rather generic but not hugely regrettable performance. They lasted the standard 30 minutes, before it then took 55 minutes for the stage to be set and the guys to take to the fold. It was a long, beer-fueled hour or so until the first sights of Skinny Puppy (I did however see cEvin outside, but that doesn't count).
13:15:33pm, 24th Sep, 2011 | [#10]
9 ~ An Interview with Malefice
Download ~ malefice-underworld_100522.mp3
MD5 ~ 84b99439f26ef2f7f9299ff7f35a62ce
The interview is with Dale Butler (vocals), Ben Symons (guitar) and Chris Allan-Whyte (drums) and below is the unedited transcript.
13:15:08pm, 24th Sep, 2011 | [#9]
8 ~ An Interview with Scott Kelly (Neurosis)
Download ~ scott_kelly-south_of_the_border-20.01.10.mp3
MD5 ~ ca447d8eb87607379fd720749f0d3217
I was fortunate enough to interview the one and only Scott Kelly at his London show the other day. I am editing the video of the interview and the performance, but for the time being you can read the unedited transcript. You can see the interview at Rocksins.
13:14:34pm, 24th Sep, 2011 | [#8]
6 ~ RPCBIND Error on NFS Service Start on Fedora 9
Error on Fedora 9 (2.6.x.fc9.i686/x86_64) when attempting to start the NFS service; error is as below;
[root@nivek ~]# service nfs start
Starting NFS services: [ OK ]
Starting NFS quotas: Cannot register service: RPC: Authentication error; why = Client credential too weak
rpc.rquotad: unable to register (RQUOTAPROG, RQUOTAVERS, udp).
[FAILED]
Starting NFS daemon: [FAILED]
Solution is to add the following to /etc/hosts.allow (assuming your going to be using NFS internally or with NAT, replace the 172.16.*.* with your internal LAN scope);
13:13:36pm, 24th Sep, 2011 | [#6]
5 ~ Wake on LAN Issue : Packet Recieved but No Boot
Had this strange issue; Wake on LAN enabled in BIOS of board (more than one board used, so this is a general issue) and packet light indicates the packet is received, but it doesn't power on.
Looks to be an issue with the state in which Linux leaves the network card after a halt signal. Change final command at /etc/init.d/halt to as below;
13:12:51pm, 24th Sep, 2011 | [#5]
4 ~ Grab Variables from Remote File
This is something I've done for the last few years; use the data from streams such as RSS or XML feeds from news, function and social sites to integrate and have 'live' parts to my site(s). Or, essentially, you can collate and manipulate pieces of active information from a remote file.
There are obviously many ways to do this and depending on what you want and what the structure of the remote file is, but I think my method is pretty nifty.
13:12:23pm, 24th Sep, 2011 | [#4]
3 ~ Boot Fedora in 16-bit Mode in Virtual PC 2007
Further to a previous post, I thought I'd give a heads-up on how to force Fedora to boot in 16-bit video mode when virtualised in Virtual PC 2007. This has caused me grief in the past and I have only now bothered to attempt to fix it; considering I did, I thought I'd also document it.
The issue is that VPC 2007 only runs it's display mode in 16-bit; but by default, Fedora (and most distros) will boot into 24-bit colour depth. The solution is to add further parameters to the boot command so that the kernel boots at a forced depth. In this instance, we'd add vga=791, which forces a 1024x768 resolution at 16-bit. A full list of Linux VESA modes is available at Wikipedia, as ever.
13:10:59pm, 24th Sep, 2011 | [#3]
2 ~ Virtual Manager and the Curse of ASMS
As I write this, I am, for a change, pleased to see Windows XP installing. I have been keen to get a virtual machine (hereafter a VM) installed on my main machine so that I am able to use a VPN to work remotely.
Unfortunately, I have had some trouble with this. Firstly, the pre-packed Virtual Manager (hereafter Virt-Mang) looked the first 'port-of-call'. Away went the installs of Ubuntu, Fedora and CentOS. As I had a previous bad experience (though apparently unmerited) with Xen virtualisation, I opted to try the QEMU hypervisor.
13:07:10pm, 24th Sep, 2011 | [#2]
1 ~ VirtuaWin
This is my typical desktop setup at work, minus the usual suspects of network administration. I also opted to swap my two 17" TFTs for one 19" widescreen, because despite the loss of pixel real estate, I fancied a change. And with VirtualWin, I find it's highly operable (My choice of shortcut is just CTRL+SHIFT+LEFT/RIGHT) and it means I get a 8400x900px desktop ;-)
You can rely on software like VirtualWin to make your time using sub-standard OSes more productive =)
