The people at printjob24 are really nice, so I can really recommend them if anyone else needs an engraving. Here is the video:

When I looked at the HTC Desire’s screen, I found it to be looking really odd. I could see red pixels between black and white transitions, which is really irritating when reading text. When looking at a pure gray image, it looked like I was looking at a white background through a mesh. It gave me the feeling of looking at a cheap $100 low-res phone where pixels still could be seen.

After having used high-res screen devices like the HTC Touch Diamond or the Motorola Droid, I’m pretty sure that something was wrong with the screen of the HTC Desire, it simply didn’t look like a 800×480 screen to me. Well, I dropped the seller an email, saying that the phone my cousin got is broken. But today, I got my hands on a Google Nexus One, which I immediately examined for this weird behavior. The Nexus One got the exact same problem. Is that coincidence? I started asking other people whether they are seeing the red pixels, too, but most of them replied no.

I started to dig deeper and found an interesting article on arstechnica.com describing this problem. Basically, the Desire/Nexus One screen only has 2 colors /pixel instead of 3. So the screen is a mesh of red/green and blue/green pixels instead of every pixel having red, green and blue. The whole thing is based on quite a lot of rules of human eye reception, like

1. Green is a color the human eye is most sensitive to, the screen has the full amount of green pixels.
2. As the human eye is more sensitive to contrast than color, having a high display density should make this effect invisible.
3. Having the color information only on every 2 pixels is a very commonly used procedure in compressing video to save space without visible quality loss.

But there is one problem with not beeing able to show all 3 colors at the same time. To show one white pixel, you would need to turn on 2 pixels, as red, green and blue has to be on to mix a white. This wouldn’t be a problem it the colors weren’t alternating between red and blue. So instead of having a nice black with almost invisible blue side, you get a eye-catching ugly red/blue border on every white to black transition.

Well, I sure hope that is the only device HTC will build with such an ugly screen, if not, I’d recommend people to switch to that nice Retina Display of the iPhone 4.

But this time, it’s a legitimate offer from Microsoft. It’s called “das wahre Office” here in Germany and offers Office 2010 for the unbeatable price of €52 to students. You can only buy Office Ultimate 2007 right now, but as soon as 2010 is released, you will get a free upgrade. I’m a big fan of Outlook with Exchange, so well I guess the €52 are well spent here. Don’t hesitate, the offer is limited to the end of june 2010!

Not only Microsoft is offering these increadible cheap packages, if you use Adobe Software for example, they offer 80% savings for their CS5 packages on their education store. Adobe even allows commercial usage of their software, so if you happen to design websites with Photoshop or create videos with Premiere Pro, the production premium set is available for around €350 on several online shop.

aptitude install php-apc

Afterwars, edit the /etc/php5/conf.d/apc.ini and replace it with the following:

extension=apc.so
[apc]
apc.enabled = 1
apc.shm_size = 64
apc.ttl = 7200
apc.user_ttl = 7200
apc.mmap_file_mask = /tmp/apc.XXXXXX

Now restart Apache with /etc/init.d/apache2 restart and APC is up and running.

Next you will need to setup mod_expires to configure client side caches. mod_expires is usually already installed when you use apache2, so you will only need to enable it via a2enmod expires. After that, find the default vhost configuration file (usually /etc/apache2/conf.d/default-config) and add the following lines:

ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault "access plus 300 seconds"
ExpiresByType text/html "access plus 1 day"
ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 1 day"
ExpiresByType text/javascript "access plus 1 day"
ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/jpg "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash "access plus 1 day"

Now restart Apache again with /etc/init.d/apache2 restart and client side caching is ready to go.

The next step is installing a WordPress caching plugin with APC support, like W3 Total Cache and setting up Page, Minify and Database Caching with Opcode APC, which is so easy I don’t even need to explain it any further.

There is one optional step, which helps improve page loading time on site with a lot of static content (like images). As connections are limited per hostname, having a lot of images will cause the site to load really slow, as the browser has to wait until the current images have finished loading before it can load new ones. To solve this problem, simply create multiple ServerAlias in your virtual-host file and serve your static content from them. It is strongly recommended that you use a hostname wrapper in this case, which generates the same Alias for each file. You certainly don’t want a user to start loading the same file from different hostnames, as that would actually slow down the page speed. There are several ways to solve this problem. I created a function that calculates a number from the filename and use that as a subdomain where the file is being loaded from.

With this steps, page loading time dropped from 10-20s to 1-2s on my web projects (Full page load with images and scripts). It feels really nice to see the page load up so fast.

But if you really want a keyboard for fast typing, it’s no match for the diNovo edge, nor the diNovo Media Desktop. I guess I’ll keep the Arc keyboard to be my home server keyboard, as it is really compact.

First, I want to specify what the server has to be able to do IMHO:

• Mail Server with Exchange
• VPN Server
• File Server
• DHCP Server
• DNS
• WDS
• Print Server
• Fail Safe to some degree
• Silent
• Low power consumption
• Cheap

So the first 7 can all be solved by running a Windows Server 2008 R2 with Exchange 2010 (luckily both are free for MSDNAA), so no problem here. The next point, fail safe is a little trickier. First, a RAID system is needed because the last thing I want is that I lose all my data because my hard disk died (which happens pretty often). To get a lower power consumption, the only possible solution would be running a RAID 1 (Mirror) with two hard drives. To keep it cheap and get the power usage down, only “green” hard disk should be used. I choose the Western Digital Caviar Green 1500GB (WD15EARS) drives with Advanced Format as they are really cheap and offer better performance and hopefully better security due to better CRC calculation with longer CRC data. Next was the main-board and CPU. Well, to run Windows Server 2008 R2, I would need a x64 capable CPU with at least 2 cores. And guess what, there is only one solution for this, the Gigabyte GA-D510UD. It’s the only board that supports RAID onboard while have 2 cores (+ Hyper-threading) and is really power efficient.

Gigabyte not only offers the board with CPU, but also the smallest Mini-ITX case “Gigabyte MIB T5140″ with 2 native 3.5″ drive slots, perfect for my RAID 1. The only thing that didn’t match my criteria was the 40mm CPU fan of the Gigabyte board. Why on earth didn’t they make the system passive like the competition? Well, what is the first thing you do if you have a noisy fan? Right, you remove it and replace it with something bigger and silent. I took a old 120 mm Arctic Cooling fan out of my old server and mounted it right above the CPU and guess what? It fits perfectly, like it was designed to be used this  way.

Now after inserting 2x2GB of RAM, I’m ready to get incredibly silent and cheap server filled up with data. And just in case anyone whats to recreate the server, here is the list of things you’ll need:

• Gigabyte GA-D510UD (€ 70)
• Gigabyte MIB T5140 (€ 50)
• G.Skill DIMM Kit 4GB PC2-6400U CL5-5-5-15 (€ 80) or similiar 2x 2GB DDR2 RAM
• 2x Western Digital Caviar Green 1500GB (WD15EARS) (2x € 80) or similiar SATA hard disk
• Arctic Cooling 12025 L (€ 5) or similiar 120 mm fan

Total of € 365 in April 2010.

The Gigabyte MIB T5140 comes with a passive power supply which converts from 110/220V AC to 12V DC and has a labeled efficiency level of “V”. What the hell is that supposed to mean? Is that good or bad? I started to look at my other passive power supplies and found another label on the Toshiba R400′s. This time, it says “IV”. I guess they are meant to represent numbers, 4 and 5. But is higher better? I started searching again until I found the be-quiet notebook power, which has a “CEC” efficiency of “V”. That was the missing clue. CEC stands for Canadian Energy Commision  (Energy Star) and would be perfect for certifying power supply efficiencies. But how efficient is level “V”? I started going through white papers of CEC and they only mentioned what I-IV mean, showing that V is reserved for future use. How can I have a level V power supply then?

I started to dig deeper and finally found a paper about International Efficiency Marketing  Protocol, which finally revealed what efficiency a power supply has to have at what level including level V. And  here are the results. I created a little table to show you how the the levels correspond to the actual efficiency.

So when you look at those values, you can see that III and IV are pretty much the same, only level V shows real improvement. At the same time, when you think that you are using a PicoPSU with 96% efficiency, you would actually only get 87%*96%=83% total efficiency, which isn’t so great at all.

So I waited until Thursday, the appointment was between 12:00 and 18:00 and the technician did show up at 17:20. The only problem was that he had broke his diagnosis tool, making it impossible to fix my line. How great is that? Anyway, he promised to come back on Friday morning at 10:00, hopefully with a new diagnosis tool. Well, I waited until Friday 10:00 and guess what, no technician. 20 minutes later, the technician called and told me he would come a little later because he’s busy with another costumer. So I waited and waited and at 12:00, he finally came. Well, after running around testing things for an hour, he finally managed to get a sync with his diagnosis tool, but still couldn’t get my modem to sync with the line. He simply told me that the modem is broken and I should get a new one as he doesn’t have any replacement hardware. How I do that is my problem, but he won’t charge the €100 because the line was broken too. So I still don’t know why my line is broken and now, when it is finally fixed, I don’t have any hardware to go online. WTF!

Unluckily, my VDSL modem is more than 2 years old, so it’s already out of the warranty, so I decided to call T-Com to ask for new hardware. They have a special hot-line for ordering hardware, but it costs 14 cent/min! What kind of rip of is that? I called the normal support hot-line (which is free) and let them transfer me the the hardware hot-line. A quite unfriendly and nerved service lady picked up the phone and after I told her the story, she told that I can either buy a new modem for €80 or a new router with integrated modem (W920V) for €199. OMG, I’m paying €70 every month for my VDSL line and after a whole week offline, I should still pay a whole fortune to get new hardware? Any other ISP would have given out the hardware for their long term customer for free (I know that from 1and1 as my girlfriend is using it and she just got new hardware). I told her that 1and1 is offering the same VDSL now for €20 less each month, free hardware and €200 bonus if I switched, but I’d stay with T-Com if they give me some hardware to go online with. Guess what she answered: “Sorry, I can’t do that, I guess you’ll just have to switch” I seriously didn’t know what to answer to that. I mean, doesn’t the T-Com want to keep me as their customer? I’m one of the few people using their most expensive packages right from the beginning. Is this the way early adopters are treated now? I recommended a lot of people for VDSL at T-Com, but that is over now!

As my contract is still going for a few month, I went on eBay and bought myself a new W920V for €100, thats half the price than what T-Com wants from their paying costumers!