Post your battlestations! Calling all nerds!

[SpaceflightAddict]

Show us some pictures of your computer stations! I love seeing how other people do theirs. Here are a few pictures of mine:

Before mood lighting

http://i.imgur.com/6PJLwER.jpg

Bonus finished pic with sleeping cat:

http://i.imgur.com/Q2ZnlE4.jpg

After mood lighting

http://i.imgur.com/8XBioqY.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/WmCZ1cv.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/p3nu6CO.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/KgaPun0.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/uNLad4x.jpg

[andrew]

Nice!!! I'm more of an XBox dude - not that I've actually switched it on in a while. I intend to remedy that fairly soon :)

[pberggren1]

Show offs.....lol.

I just have a laptop. So you want pics of my lap?.....lol

[andrew]

Show offs.....lol.

I just have a laptop. So you want pics of my lap?.....lol

Wrong website Phil ;-p

[Alysia]

nice idea, Andy :thumbsup:
please show us your cat !
I think almost everyone here have cat or dog or both....
(as for the computer, I have my lap-top)

[SpaceflightAddict]

nice idea, Andy :thumbsup:
please show us your cat !
I think almost everyone here have cat or dog or both....
(as for the computer, I have my lap-top)

I would be happy to show you my cat!

His name is Stanley Ipkiss, and he is 19 human years old.

His activities include sleeping in my lap, sleeping in boxes, and being annoying while sleeping in my lap.

Here are some pictures!

http://i.imgur.com/8Fw9SDt.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/xS0ZGR4.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/scNCnsu.jpg

[Alysia]

Hi Andy,
thanks ! your cat is beautiful and he looks old and wise :sleep:

[SpaceflightAddict]

One more follow up picture. The ones posted earlier were about a week and a half old, and I have had so much energy and time that I was finally able to transform my office into what it always should of been:

http://i.imgur.com/qIQ0T6Q.jpg


Just need to hide those pesky wires now.

-SpaceflightAddict

[gilders]

All the essentials are there....
Bottle of beer,
bottle opener,
Frosted beer mug.


And a coffee machine for the morning after.

:thumbsup:

[pberggren1]

Andy, what are those 2 black box units sitting on the shelving unit to the right?

[Savva]

I wish I could post my setup here, but I have an xbox. My older brother has some nice rig though.
Very nice lighting Andy! Good work on those displays too. I also liked Ipkiss :)

[pberggren1]

I hope you are doing well Savva. We have not seen you on for a while.

[Savva]

I hope you are doing well Savva. We have not seen you on for a while.

Hey Phil, nice to meet you. I am doing great. Have a good day.

[pberggren1]

Good to hear Savva. I hope you also have a good day.

[Savva]

I looked up my gmail archives and found these quite old pics of my brother's system.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/809/gb4h.jpg/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/850/jjuc.jpg/
They were made in early stages of compiling, unfortunately no lighting, no room is shown. Of course now it is a little different :). My brother just hearts these things, he is into programming and many other computer stuff I don't know about :). We both like to play computer more, than xbox of course, but now he is teasing me with gta v pics on xbox, cos he's got a chance to play it day one. Btw, I am studying for winter semester in Prague right now, so I am away from home. :)

[pberggren1]

My brother in law has a few of those cars that are on the desk top.

[SpaceflightAddict]

Andy, what are those 2 black box units sitting on the shelving unit to the right?

Those are two old decently specced desktop computers I am using as servers, below that is a very large HP server with a 6 drive hot swap SCSI RAID array. In another room, on a different electric circuit, I have 4 more servers, and intend to keep increasing that number.

I am building my own cloud cluster, so the more the merrier.

[pberggren1]

Yikes!!! What do you use all those servers for?

[annekat]

Jeez, you guys, I barely even know what a server is...... and didn't know it was something one would set up in one's home. I am definitely not a geek or a nerd, and am probably not going to become one anytime soon. And I don't mean that NOT being a geek or nerd is a good thing! I admire geeks and nerds.

[SpaceflightAddict]

I looked up my gmail archives and found these quite old pics of my brother's system.
ImageShack® - Online Photo and Video Hosting (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/809/gb4h.jpg/)
ImageShack® - Online Photo and Video Hosting (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/850/jjuc.jpg/)
They were made in early stages of compiling, unfortunately no lighting, no room is shown. Of course now it is a little different :). My brother just hearts these things, he is into programming and many other computer stuff I don't know about :). We both like to play computer more, than xbox of course, but now he is teasing me with gta v pics on xbox, cos he's got a chance to play it day one. Btw, I am studying for winter semester in Prague right now, so I am away from home. :)

I LOVE that desk. So clean. So sleek. I really hate showing wires, but by the time I get to the point to hide them, I am ready to get back to work on the computers themselves. This time will be different though. I WILL hide all of the wires.

The under shelf lighting was the biggest pain. I had to solder lots of sections of wire in to get the LED strips in each nook. I did suceed in hiding all of those wires thankfully, but it was a significant project to do the shelf lighting right. The result speaks for itself however.


Yikes!!! What do you use all those servers for?

Right now I have Gluster (Gluster - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluster)) running on the cluster for ultimate data reliability, and ownCloud (ownCloud.org | Your Cloud, Your Data, Your Way! (http://owncloud.org/)) for google like cloud services.

While all of my data is safe, even if a couple of nodes drop out, the services running on any particular node will be lost.

My goal is to get to the point that if a node fails, whatever was running on it seamlessly continues on the remaining nodes. That is quite a bit more complicated to accomplish, but I have a very good IT professional friend who is working hard on it.

There are two significant problems that remain however.

Electricity is the most ovbious.... I do not have enough UPSes and every used one I have got has been DOA. I also do not have a backup generator. This means that when the power goes out, bye bye cloud until it comes back on.

The second problem is bandwidth. I live in a residential suburban area, which limits my ISP options. It is Comcast or bust around here, and 50mbps down 10mbps up is the best they can do for me. I checked out getting a real fiber optic line run to my home, and surprisingly the monthly rates for a very speedy connection are reasonable. The problem is running the fiber out to my house; they are more than happy to do it, but it is very very very expensive to do. Verizon FiOS has not reached my area yet, so I can't even go for channel bonding (Channel bonding - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channel_bonding)). Comcast is the only game in town, so if they go down, my cloud goes down.

I have lofty goals, but ive got time to overcome these issues. Basically I want to create my own google, and have it be just as reliable, and do it cheap as dirt. I just go around asking people I know for their old computers.

It is a very fun project for me.

[pberggren1]

That's quite impressive Andy. Maybe you might be interested in hosting this site. You should give Andrew a shout. Andrew is an IT guy as well.