Incremental vs Iterative Software Development

Recently at my university, the fourth year students had the excellent idea of having a trivia night to help study for their upcoming Software Project Management exam. From the sounds of it the night went fairly well – I think anything that making studying even marginally fun is to be applauded. The questions were taken from the subject text book and one seems to have generated some controversy. The question was what is the difference between incremental and iterative lifecycles? Read On →

The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya: Aussie Release

Madman has [semi-officially announced][1] the impending release of the Australian release of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. For those who don't know, Melancholy has a number of things that are different from your typical anime. Two of these were the rather strange introduction to the series (an amateur video made by the show's characters) and the fact that the series was broadcast "out of order", which meant that just trying to keep up with the show was a mind trip in itself. Read On →

Chris Upgrades His Monitor

I figured I had lived in the world of yesteryear for far too long – it was time to retire the CRT monitor that had served me faithfully for so long. It was an LG Flatron T910B (19″ flat screen CRT) which cost around $380 brand new. A fine monitor indeed. I think I finally decided to upgrade because my sister recently got a LG Flatron L194WT (19″ widescreen LCD) which almost had be drooling. Read On →

Ubuntu on a Dell: Happy Ending?

I think my RAIDing days are over. I tried and tried … and tried, and failed. Perhaps Ubuntu is not yet ready for RAID. Perhaps I am not worthy. Regardless, I packed in the towel on having an ultra-cool and very geeky RAID1 system set up and started setting up a boring rsync backup system. At least with Linux I can rsync most of the system files as well so, should the dreading day come, recovering from a catastrophic hard drive failure will be fairly quick and painless. Read On →

HTML Is Dead: Long Live HTML!

HTML5 is the long-needed update to the core HTML specification/standard, which has been stuck on version 4.01 for quite a while. The W3C has been most visible in promoting and developing the XHTML standard but that's not really taking off in a significant way and is almost always used incorrectly. For an excellent overview of the updates that will come with HTML5, read the article HTML5 differences from HTML4. One of the key areas that HTML5 is meant to address is creating tags specifically for web applications. Read On →

CPU Shootout: Intel vs. AMD

I was just browsing the catalogue for MSY and discovered something interesting: the AMD Athlon64 X2 6000+ is going for $227. This is interesting because the closest Intel processor to this price is the Core 2 Duo E6320, at $217. All the buzz on the internet says that the Core 2 Duos are superior processors but with a price differential like that, I wanted to big a little deeper as see what provides the best bang for buck. Read On →

Free Ubuntu stickers!

If you're looking for a snazzy Ubuntu-flavoured replacement for the "powered by Windows" nonsense you currently have then look no further: ["powered by Ubuntu" stickers][1]. The details for Australia are to send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to: Sticker Offer P.O Box 1412 Lavington, NSW 2641 [1]: http://system76.com/index.php/cPath/53_64

Ubuntu on a Dell: RAIDers of the Lost Disk

Quick and to the point: the software RAID, despite booting properly and having everything appear to work, is useless. I disconnected the second disk in the RAID1 array and the OS refused to boot. I have no idea why. I think this has gone far beyond frustrating at this point. If I'm left with a RAID1 system that can't even boot if a disk is missing then there's no point having it the first place and I want my 250GB back. Read On →

Ubuntu on a Dell: Episode 3: Revenge of the RAID

The saga continues! Well, after looking into software RAID on Linux everything pointed to me having to install the system all over again. I tried to find an easy way of using the existing partitions (such as by setting up the secondary disk as a RAID device, copying the partition data from the primary disk, then formatting it, adding it to the RAID device and finally rebuilding the RAID) but that was going to be a lot of hassle with no guarantee of success. Read On →

Madman Stocktake Sale

[Madman Entertainment][1] are currently having a stocktake sale on their website. All of the DVDs I looked at are going for $10. The sale isn't on their entire catalogue (mostly on their non-anime titles) but if there's anything that you want I suggest you head on over there and check it out. [1]: http://www.madman.com.au/actions/catalogue.do?method=browse&saleId=20