Since I saw In Bruges I am always happy to see Coling Farrell (don’t just judge him by Miami Vice). His performance of the somewhat dim witted Irish fisherman is also very good and the mermaid in question is also veeery nice to look at (@see Alicja Bachleda) No wonder she got preggas while shooting this film … how romatic!

7.5 / 10 – Slow and touching, a relaxing flick for a sunday evening.

“Kirot” is a drama about brutal sex-traffic Mafia exploitation and a woman trying to get out of the business but she ends up being forced into assassinations by her boss. He is keeping her passport and without it she cannot leave. So she does what she is told to just to be able to get away from this at some point. Doing so she befriends her neighbour, who is a victim to her wife beating husband. Together they comfort themselves and try to cope with the situation – and to find a solution to their problems eventually.

6.0 / 10 – Quite okay but doesn’t really kick off at any time, could have been a lot better.

Still, I wanted to look into it anyway, because it seemed a fun and pretty simple task to write a little JMX client that probes the desired MBean. But it is even easier. JBoss offers a little helper out of the box that is up to the task in no time. It’s a little tool called twiddle. Usage is self explanatory:

A JMX client to 'twiddle' with a remote JBoss server.
 
usage: twiddle [options] <command> [command_arguments]
 
options:
    -h, --help                Show this help message
        --help-commands       Show a list of commands
    -H=<command>              Show command specific help
    -c=command.properties     Specify the command.properties file to use
    -D<name>[=<value>]        Set a system property
    --                        Stop processing options
    -s, --server=<url>        The JNDI URL of the remote server
    -a, --adapter=<name>      The JNDI name of the RMI adapter to use
    -u, --user=<name>         Specify the username for authentication
    -p, --password=<name>     Specify the password for authentication
    -q, --quiet               Be somewhat more quiet

Now you only have to decide which MBean to probe. As “are u there” is one of the most basic thinks to ask for this isn’t too hard either:

twiddle.sh get jboss.system:type=Server Started

As soon as this returns true the server is up and running.

So, just put this command in your shell script and you can easily probe your JBoss AS if it is ready to go app serving.

I tried to pick the top 5 retro games I should have played (High Fidelity anybody?).

1985 Bard’s Tale, The (C64)
I love RPGs (like Eye of the Beholder, Ultima) and I guess The Bard’s Tale series would have let me dive into a great fantasy world that I just missed by a few months of age – at the time I didn’t own a Commodore 64.

1985 Super Mario Bros. (NES)
My fist (non-handheld) Nintendo was a Super Nintendo. I already played Super Mario Land with great enjoyment, and loooved Super Mario World. I missed out on the “original” Super Mario Bros. though (I consider this the original, not the single screen arcade Mario titles).

1986 Metroid (NES)
One of my all time favourite game is Turrican (respectively Turrican 2). Well, this reminds me of Turrican AND I loved the Metroid Prime games on the GameCube.

1985 Elite (C64)
In fact I don’t know much about this one, except that it is some kind of space trading simulation, right? Anyway, one of the first games that everybody talked about and I didn’t have a clue what it was all about, it just seemed to be an unmissable game at the time.

1985 Thexder (PC)
Years after I madly fell in love with Turrican I realised that there used to be a title that reminded my of Turrican. So I guess I would have liked Thexder.

Writing this list I did not realize that almost all games I kinda missed out on were released around 1985. I guess this is due to my increased interests in computers at the time without owning one yet. I got into computing with an Commodore Amiga 500 in 1986 and into “consoling” with a Super Nintendo aka Super Famicon in 1992 (apart from the original GameBoy in 1989).

BTW: This is NOT me, just a fun 80′s picture. I would have never put up a Duck Tales poster (the rest is pretty close )

Latest toy: Phillips Streamium NP2500

This replaces my eee pc 901 as a music player. Nice display, appealing design and a remote. Primarily an internet radio, it also connects to UPnP servers (Jehovah!), so there is even more fun in it for me: rearranging my whole mp3 collection to meet UPnP needs (albums, genres, years, … sometimes even completely missing id3 tags) and setting up a proper server. Ah, the fun just never ends …

What was the shortcut for getting back to the Java perspective again?
Hmm, dunno, hit Ctrl-Shift-L
What’s that?
That’s the shortcut for the shortcuts.

True Story.

P.S. Technically Ctrl-Alt-S doesn’t mean “switch to the team sync perspective” but “sync with repo” implicating a switch to the team sync perspective.
P.P.S. Don’t tell me to use Ctrl-Shift-F8 – first, it’s not “switch to Java perspective” and second that’s the dumbest non-accessible shortcut ever. I always reassign it to Ctrl-Tab thus being far more convenient IMHO.
P.P.P.S. Yes, I know you can assign a shortcut to the not bound by default Java perspective.
P.P.P.P.S. If you are still reading this you didn’t get the post’s joke. It’s not about the Java perspective at all.

I would like to sum up all the components I decided to buy. While writing this I haven’t ordered the pieces yet, so this will be in a “draft” status as long as the machine isn’t up and running. The list should help me not to forget what endless review readings revealed and maybe help you my dear reader deciding what’s best for your next computer as well. Please don’t start with “what” you want to buy though, start with the “why”. My old computer still works. I can do all my office needs. Still, I want a new one. Let’s see why I still want a new one:

First, I want a machine that is silent, as in SILENT! I don’t want to listen to my fans rattling and my hard drive scamper over my full and pretty much fragmented partitions. My OS should not give me the feeling of an unstable bloated system that doesn’t accept me as its master, rather dictates IEs or iTunes. Apart from not being noisy why squander power? It feels good to know you’re doing the right thing, maximum power with minimum effort. As if golden rims ever improved a car …

So I am dreaming about a machine that just sits there, pretty and neat, performing in a slick way as if there is no tomorrow. All together I come up with these non-functional requirements:

• fast
• silent
• efficient
• free os (as in free speech)

With these in mind I chose the following components that are up to the task (at least on paper):

CPU

Yes, yes, I’ll still start with the CPU. Even though it is not the sole component responsible for the systems’ speed still is the central proceeding unit, right? First I had to decide whether to go for AMD or Intel. Some of my decisions are not rational, this being the first one: the Core i series just felt better than the Phenom with 3 core CPU seconds that can be pimped to 4 cores just by switching a BIOS flag – dodgy somehow. AFAIK the Core i series also “wins” in terms of overall power consumption and features – talking about Clarkdale‘s build in GPUs and automatic overclocking – and its 32 nm architecture.

A Core i it should be then, but which one?? I tried hard to understand the differences between Core i3, i5 and i7 and their different series. Wikipedia helped a lot and so did Passmark’s CPU comparison table. The i7 was pretty much out of the question right away – too expensive in terms of money and power for what it delivers -or- better said, in comparison to its smaller competitors. As this is not intended to be a gamer’s machine the Clarkdale series build in GPU was something I wanted as well – 2 Cores are enough for my needs, decent 2D GPU inside, no extra power consumption / noise / heat by an external card. I wanted to go for the slowest i3 for a long time (Core i3 530) considering it up to the task. Then I wasn’t too sure if I wanted to miss out on the automatic overclocking features the Core i5 series provides for load peaks. The smallest Core i5 is the 650 (6xx being the only Clarkdale Core i5s), and costs twice as much as the smallest Core i3 – just for overclocking? No, the “smallest” i5 is a bit faster in terms of MHz, the Core i3 530 has a 2933 MHz clock compared the i5′s running at 3200 MHz (going up to 3466 MHz with automatic overclocking). But how much do you pay for automatic overclocking then? I compared the fastest i3 with 3200 MHz to the slowest i5 et voilà, about 40 bucks. Now I only had to decide whether I needed that.

I decided I don’t.

Mainboard

I just chose a board another retailer used for his system, the GigaByte GA-H55M-UD2H – it seemed to be decent enough, the only real decisions here where eSATA support and USB 2.0 only. I don’t want USB 3.0 because I don’t want to pay the early adopter’s fee. Simply put: I don’t need it. The mainboard has been out there for a little while now and should be working fine.

The eSATA could become useful as soon as I want to use a hard drive that I only use now and then and still keep the SATA performance. I can have it switched off most of the time (power / noise again) and use it as a data grave as needed. But this is just a future consideration.

RAM

Another irrational decision. RAM = good. 2 Gb now, 4Gb better, buy 8Gb. CL 7. It just felt right

Right now I am going for GeIL DIMM 8 GB DDR3-1333 Quad-Kit because it is not *that* expensive and has a CL of 7 rather than 9 like most others. I have no idea if this is something that really makes a difference, but hey, it can’t be bad, right?

GPU

not applicable I am using a Clarkdale CPU

Hard Drive

Now we are going to talk performance. I used to think “quiet” buying my data graves in the past. It never occurred to me that my frickin’ disks could be the bottleneck of my system. Right now I am using a “green” HD with 5400 RPMs as my system’s boot device. These times are over. I will buy myself the fastest HD available for the system – data will still reside on the slow green disks, but I don’t want my OS and programs to wait for I/O any more. I’ve read reviews of fast SSDs that said: “I thought my double clicking wasn’t done yet with CS3 already up and running”. I want that. Period.

An OCZ Vertex2 E 60 GB should do the job (or a Patriot Inferno maybe?), with read AND write speed being close to 300 MB/s. Whoooosh!

Additionally I will be using a HD silencer from Silentmaxx for my old HD. Let’s hope it keeps what it promises.

Case

Most PC cases are fugly. I didn’t go for a cheap-must-do case either, I fell in love with a satin aluminium case from Silentmaxx, the ITA Pure. Build for quiet systems and lean looking it was a good choice for me. I love understatements, meaning I would never go for a bling bling Alienware PC. This is the only component (and the HD silencer) already residing on my living room’s table waiting to be stuffed with sweet components soon …

Power

Again, efficiency and silence dominated this decision. I am going for the smallest be quiet! power supply, the 300 Watts Pure Power L7, simply because it’s enough power for my system’s demands.

Fans

First I wanted to build a fanless system. Now I decided to try be quiet! Silent Wings PWM, one for the rear part of the case (front has a special Silentmaxx kit) and maybe one more for the CPU cooler. Hope they will be silent enough … I just read about the new Silent Wings “Pure” – maybe I should go for these?

CPU cooler

Anything big and silent, a Scythe Kabuto SCKBT-1000 maybe. If the fan’s too noticeable I will go for another be quiet! Silent Wing.

OS

Linux Mint. Debian based. Ready to go. Elegant. (Thanks Tobi for making me a Mint fan since Daryna)

As you can see, a lot of my decisions were concluded on a gut level – but I have the feeling that I did the right thing and I am happy with my personal “perfect” PC. Disagree? Suggestions? Praise? Pleas leave a comment! I still might change my mind …

Apart from being a brilliant computer game’s tune it starts with a dingelingding that draws your attention (thus “wake up”) but gives you enough time to hit snooze or get up before the song really kicks in.

From a psychological point of view it is a also a good start into the day because it subconsciously reminds me of childhood memories that draw a faint smile on my face – even though I have to get up… try it yourself here.

From now on I will be known as “The Animal”. Well, not literally, the avatar is just something that resembles me quite well in certain situations, tape recording for instance … whrock!!