Well, I've really been going on about how amazing Sunshine is as a movie, and after doing some reading on it like one does when they like something, I've come across posts saying how anti-religion it is, or how anti-religion it's supposed to be and stuff like that... I guess I could see how it could be construed that way, and I want to explain what I believe. Of course, doing that, there will be major spoilers, so I will put that behind a link for those of you who plan on watching. And when I mean "major spoilers", I mean... I'm going to give away the entire story, so don't read if you want to be surprised!

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My apologies for the latest batch of tech posts that nobody cares about (that get you see plenty of on MystBlogs, tsk tsk), but I'm compiling notes for myself, too. But after some more discussion, I have opened up some new options for myself concerning RAID and backup solutions. Basically, RAID isn't considered a backup solution because the drives are connected to the computer and can be accessed... Basically, since the computer can see the drive, it's not really a "backup", it's a redundancy. Essentially the same thing, but, technically, a backup is something that you make and store offline and in a safe, secure place. I really don't want to have to worry about making hard copy backups to use to restore my files, and I would much rather use some sort of redundancy. I think I've done pretty well over the last 8 years keeping my data safe when I can freely navigate the folders, so that's not really a problem for me.

So, as I discovered on the last post concerning this, I decided that a two-drive RAID 0 would be what I want in my desktop. The more drives you add, the exponentially faster the speed becomes, but I think two drives will suffice. Unless I get, say, four small, cheap drives and put them in a RAID 0... But that also dramatically increases my chance for a failure. UNLESS I actively mirror the RAID 0 to a single external drive. Say, I get four 150GB hard drives in RAID 0? That's 600GB. I could get a 600GB drive that would be a single-drive mirror of the RAID 0! Synchronize it every week (or say) or so. That way, if something bad happens to the RAID 0, I'll have a mirror that I can recover everything from.

I was also considering using this set up and put 1TB of drives in RAID 0 in the computer itself, and then have a single 1TB external drive (maybe even mirror that, as well) that stores everything. Operating system, program files, sensitive data... But that undermines the idea I had to have my documents and sensitive data on a separate RAID 5, so I'm inclined to shy away from this idea. I really don't want to put my data on the same partition as the operating system and other reinstallable stuff, ya'know?

But! I think my tentative (and colossally expensive) plan is to put two 500GB drives in RAID 0 in my desktop and have a single 1TB (1000GB) drive that the RAID 0 mirrors to, just to give me the option of recovering stuff... But, actually? Now I'm remembering my plan that if RAID 0 is only Vista and games, I don't really need to have that stuff stored redundantly. If I lose it, I can reinstall. However, along the same lines, I haven't quite decided if I want to invest in a RAID 5 for my sensitive files, because external RAID 5 setups are incredibly expensive... $1200 for a 2TB, four-disk array from LaCie, which, frankly, is the only external RAID 5-capable box that I'd trust right now. Although, technically, 2TB is the grand total... It means that there's four 500GB drives. Putting it into RAID 5 will reduce the grand total to 75%, meaning that it's really only about 1.5TB. Similarly, the eSATA 1TB, two-disk array from LaCie has a grand total of 1TB, but if you mirror it, then it's only 500GB that you have. Kind of disappointing and a little misleading, but I don't care at the moment, because I was smart enough to discover it! Hah! Anyway.

So do I go for a simple mirror? 500GB (or even the 1TB) that's mirrored entirely, so I have access to all my data in the event of a disaster, or do I invest in the 2TB (1.5TB in RAID 5) four-disk array? Technically, the RAID 5 would have the same failure rate as the mirrored, since both RAIDs allow for only a single drive to fail before you lose all data. The question, I guess, is how much data I have that I want to save? The answer is: I have no clue. At the moment, I have a full 40GB drive and a full 200GB drive on my current desktop. I have a full 100GB drive on my laptop, and I have a 240GB drive that is also full. That's about 600GB already, give or take a few! Geez. Of course, this is counting operating systems and massive games like World of Warcraft, so this number is far, far smaller than it seems. So... I really don't know. I know 500GB isn't going to be enough since I'm known for downloading and storing extremely large files on a regular basis...

I honestly don't know... If I go for mirrored, I need the 2TB drive so I have 1TB available, which is 960 dollars, or, for RAID 5, the 2TB set (which gives me 1.5TB usable) for 1240 dollars. Ugh. I guess it would all depend on the form of redundancy that I want. Actually... the RAID 5 would have more of a chance to lose all data, wouldn't it? The one with 2 drives only allows 1 to fail and still keep the data, the one with 4 drives also only allows 1 to fail and still keep the data. Hmm. Both ways, if you lose two drives, all data is lost. The smaller mirrored RAID would be more portable, so I could take my collections on vacation with me... That would be really fun!

So we were eating supper and I happened to glance out the window and... What's that white stuff? It's falling from the sky! On Easter, too... This shouldn't be happening! It obviously can't be snow, because the scientists are in "consensus" that the entire planet is getting catastrophically hotter and it's wreaking total havok on our environment. So... It can't be snow, since they're telling us it's too hot. So I'm going to have to agree with Peter Heck here... This strange white fluffy stuff falling from the sky on Easter? Global Warming Residue. We don't know what it is, but there it is!

Okay, all jokes aside... It's snowing. On Easter. In all my 23 years, I can't remember that ever happening. But, hey. Remember! The planet is getting hotter. Or... Hmm. Reminds of the headlines that NewsBusters found: "Global Warming Not Always To Blame For Extreme Winters." Yeah? As opposed to... Global warming ALWAYS being the blame for extreme winters? Okaaay. Is it just me, or does nobody have a straight story here? Me? I'm just going to watch the SNOW FALLING ON EASTER and laugh at them all. (Well, until that law comes into effect that bans incandescent light bulbs... Thank you, Democrat Congress!)

I wish I could have picked a less expensive hobby.

So my friend and I were talking about RAID a while ago... For you uninitiated geeks, a RAID is a set of multiple drives that interact with each other on some level. It's intended to preserve data, but there are modes that promote speed over preservation. Like, say, RAID 0 will take two drives and spread files out between the two drives, meriting a literal read time of 2x the amount of a single disk. RAID 0 increases speed for each drive, but each drive also increases your chances of failure. Since RAID 0 spans a single file over multiple drives, when a single drive fails, you lose everything, period. RAID 1 is a mirror! You have two drives, but you only use the space of 1 drive, and the 2nd drive is an exact duplicate. The ultimate in fault tolerance. One drive dies, use the other, buy a new drive, recreate the mirror. Data is secure! Then there's RAID 5 which is a bit more interesting. Basically, you have a minimum of 3 drives. The equivalent of two drives are used for data, and the equivalent of one drive is used for error correction. The error correction information is used for when a drive fails. When you replace it, the RAID interface can recreate all the missing information. The nice thing about this is that the data and error correction information is spanned across all the drives, so there's no single point of failure. This is probably the most popular out of the three basic RAID types when it comes to data preservation.

Now that I've explained all that, let me put a little word in for a nice RAID calculator I found. I knew there had to be some formula that would determine how much space was available for RAID 5, and I was right! Since all the drives have to be the same size in RAID 5, the formula is basically ((DRIVE SIZE times DRIVE AMOUNT) minus DRIVE SIZE). In other words, add all the drives together, and then subtract one for the error correction information. So a RAID 5 of three 350GB drives would get you precisely 700GB of space. As you can see, the more drives you add to RAID 5, the more space you get. The ratio stays the same, but you have more to work with. I think that if I ever actually used RAID 5, it would be three gargantuan drives. Probably 500GB or possibly 750GB... But, then again, the Seagate Barracuda series (which I adore as a drive) now comes in a lovely 1TB. Seriously... three 1TB drives in RAID 5. Expensive, but you wouldn't have to upgrade for a very, very, very, very, very long time. $250 a pop, right now, so... That's $750 right there in hard drive space. I would rather spend that on two video cards.

So my conundrum emerges from a little issue with read/write speeds. Remember that dream computer I built a while back, but then got the smackdown by college and couldn't finish my work? Yeah, well, the price dropped from a whopping $3250 to a measly $1950. But! The point is... It's a gaming system, and it's going to be built for pure speed, right down to matching bus speeds on the RAM. As such, I am going to have multiple drives, as I have always done with my desktops, sans the Linux server. One drive for the operating system and one drive for programs and documents. Yes, as a matter of fact, I installed all my games and applications on the second drive and I remapped My Documents there, too, so I can literally reinstall Windows and everything is still intact. However, I soon learned (as a true geek would know by just this second line) that the Windows Registry threw a wrench into that plan. I really should have known it before I started doing it, but I didn't... Even though all my programs were safe, they still needed to be reinstalled, more often than not, because of the Registry. (Or, even if they didn't, I wanted to do it anyway, because I'm obsessive-compulsive like that.) So... It didn't work out as well as I planned, and I relegated that drive to pure document storage. Moves and music and projects. Applications on the OS drive, documents and projects on the data drive. Worked like a charm.

But... I decided to look into RAID and I started seeing all these notices and warnings about RAID read and write speeds. RAID 5 seems to have it the worst (of course). Since it has all the error correction checksums, writing files to the drive is excessively slow, while reading is also negatively impacted for the same reason, but not nearly as much. So you get an impressive fault tolerance system, but it's not nearly as fast as, say, the completely unprotected RAID 0. However, I'm wondering if this RAID 5 performance hit is still better than operating off a single drive? In fact, I'm starting to wonder if RAID is even worth the investment as far as a gaming system goes. I mean, for issues of speed, anything but the dangerous RAID 0 is a no-go. But do I want to sacrifice fault tolerance just so I can load a game level 5 seconds faster than everyone else? Right now, I'm thinkin' no. If I do RAID, it'll be RAID 5, because I've been around this industry long enough to realize that losing data is a nasty experience... Even losing my bookmarks is a bad deal, much less losing an entire drive. Technically, I've had that happen a few months ago. My data drive began making clicking noises and it got incredibly hot and smelled terrible and Windows stopped reading it entirely. (I was able to get my sensitive information off of it using Linux, and then got it working in Windows again, but still... I know what it's like to lose data, even for a fleeting moment.)

But then there's my geeky side that enjoys screwing around with the dark depths of my computer and I've been known to cause some... Er... Problems that required a complete format and reinstallation. I was prepared for it, of course, but it's happened. That is one of the nice things about separating the OS from your data. But with RAID 5, it's going to put two huge drives together and treat them as one, so if I reformat it, it's going to wipe everything out, and I don't know if I like that idea. Having two separate drives for that reason is really nice, indeed. So my dilemma is... dangerous but lightning speed RAID 0, or slow, but absolutely fault tolerant RAID 5? Is RAID 5 faster than a single drive? Is it faster than two separate non-RAID drives? Do I even want RAID? Do I want to simply have 2 drives, one for the OS and one for data and leave it at that?

Or... How about this? A separate set of portable, external drives in RAID 5 for all my data, plugged right in to FireWire or eSATA? If I did that (which is, honestly, a much better idea that I just came up with around 10 seconds ago), it would completely forgo the problem of "where do I put my most sensitive data?" Then it would simply be if I wanted two drives in RAID 0 for that ultimate speed increase, or three drives in RAID 5 for that ultimate fault tolerance. But, honestly? If all my good stuff was on an external RAID 5, I could very easily just pick two drives on RAID 0 for the massive speed increase and if something goes wrong, I would only have to reinstall Vista and my programs. Unless, say, I didn't want to bother with reinstalling Vista when a drive dies. But, honestly, this is Windows we're talking about. Even though I'm in love with Vista, I still realize that clearing it off every now and then is a good idea. Doesn't need to happen nearly as much as pre-2000 systems, but it's still nice to do sometimes.

You know what? I think I just answered myself during this post. I think that I'm going to invest in a nice, external RAID 5 contraption that sports a high-speed connection that I can use to connect to whatever I want, and then shoot for ultra-fast RAID 0 on my desktop. I would put all my music and special, one-of-a-kind, commit-suicide-if-I-lost files on the RAID 5. The things that really don't need to rely on speed. Wow... I think this post was really informative! I should do this more often.

Feast your eyes on this big guy...

You betcha! The original Japanese edition of Okami Official Complete Works. (At least, that's what the English edition is going to be called, if they ever actually release it... In fact, the fact that the release date has been pushed back for several months scared me into purchasing the Japanese edition before something made them think nobody wanted it anymore.) And when I say this is the Japanese edition, I'm not kidding... The only English words in the entire thing are "Capcom" and "Clover Studios", that you can see right there on the front cover. As for the book itself? It's cram packed full of Okami goodness... And the book goes from right-to-left, instead of our way of reading from left-to-right. It's... really funky and really fun. For the record? That black trim on the bottom is only a slipcover that I decided to leave on for originality's sake. If you want to check out the rest of the photos I took, clicky the More below! Oh! Also, the cover of the book looks like it's flaking off, but this thing is in pristine condition. It's printed to look that way. I was hoping that the little string was real, but... It's just printed on paperback. Oh well.

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Vista SP1 has been released!

Let's see if all those people who were waiting for SP1 before trying Vista were only talking out their butt. I mean, I already made the prediction, which was verified with the screenshot of Slashdot I posted... My guess is that people aren't going to use Vista because they don't want to explain their opinion that Vista isn't worth it when they haven't even tried it, yet. (You know, that line they feed to everyone that doesn't like Linux?)

I'm eager to watch the irony unfold!

Can't believe I didn't... Actually post about this earlier! I won't make a huge post about it, because I realize that half of my readers have either already seen it and the other half probably won't bother to see it at all... So there you are! But anyway, this movie is an independent film from the UK... The basic story is that the Sun is starting to die in 2057, and two expeditions were dispatched in an effort to deliver an incredibly massive nuclear device to reignite the Sun. (The second device is several times states to have been created from every ounce of Earth's remaining fissile material.) The first expedition didn't finish the job, so the story is about the second expedition trying to get the job done and discover what happened to the first.

I honestly think, without having seen it in about a month, that this is one of the very few movies that I, personally, didn't find anything wrong with, nor cared to see anything wrong with it, because it's just... amazing. I would file it under psychological horror. It's Rated R, and rated R for a reason... There's a few language bombs and several disturbing (relatively speaking) images and violent scenes, but... I don't know why I like it, to be honest. It's very deep and emotional... It's... Romantic? I don't mean romance, either... There's perfectly zero love interest here. Romantic as in:

(usually initial capital letter) of, pertaining to, or characteristic of a style of literature and art that subordinates form to content, encourages freedom of treatment, emphasizes imagination, emotion, and introspection, and often celebrates nature, the ordinary person, and freedom of the spirit (contrasted with classical).

The technology is very believable... The space craft look like they affixed a giant rocket to the back of the International Space Station, made some parts rotate, and pointed it at the Sun. In fact, they manage to get so close to the sun by driving a giant mirror in front of the ship to reflect and dissipate everything. Interesting idea that is a perfect example of the "it's believable, but I don't know if it can actually be done, but I don't care" mentality that I have.

And the music! OH MAN... The music. Perfect. It's awesome. No other words can explain it. I wanted the soundtrack so very badly, so I started browsing Amazon and Gracenote and... I couldn't find it. I was able to locate the thing on Bittorrent, so why can't I find the real thing? Turns out, sadly... That the Sunshine soundtrack is indefinitely on hold because, apparently, John Murphy, the composer, collaborated with a band by the name of Underworld. They'd do work and send it back and forth to each other and then stick it on the film and, man... Amazing music. Unfortunately... the official soundtrack is on hold. Why, you ask? I'll give you three guesses.

Okay, no, I won't, because I bet you don't need three. The lawyers for Underworld couldn't agree with Fox Searchlight (the movie publisher) on licensing terms or something... Imagine that. Publishers disagreeing and hurting the consumers in the process. It makes me sick, honestly. There are people begging for them to get the thing done, but someone, somewhere, doesn't think it's fair and is asking for more money and won't let them publish a music CD. Bah! Further proof that DVD movies need to have an option to listen to just the musical score while you're watching the movie. It would be insanely easy to do, too... It would be exactly like a commentary track! Everyone knows you record music when the thing's done, anyway... It's not like you're mixing the music in with the voices... They do that in the final product!

Anyway, here... Since there's no official CD, I ripped the best track (that I can remember) for you to hear. There are voices and sound effects, and there are spoilers (trivial spoilers, as in, you'd just know what happens to a certain character and not destroy the entire point of the movie), but, like I said, half of you have already seen it and half of you will never see it, so... Here you go! Tentatively called "Kaneda, What Do You See?" (Personally, I would much rather hear voices than chops and cuts and frequency modifications to get rid of them.) It's also untagged, because it's not a real track, and I don't want Last.fm picking it up.

EDIT: Actually, the torrent with the funky, nasty rips? They were tagged, and people have been listening to them, so they have nearly 8000 listens on these rips, so I decided to rename and tag this to match the other rip, so you WILL get picked up by listening to it.

John Murphy - What Do You See?

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