Just thought I'd let you guys in on some of my innermost development secrets. Currently, there is no AaronWeb. The plan is to get a second PC running Fedora Core 6 and then use that for all my web development work.

I'm going to try and keep the aims of AaronWeb extremely simple. It's just a development site at the end of the day. 100% of the code will be made by myself. This not only makes the site very original, but it is great as a portfolio to show off my skills.

I won't say exactly what AaronWeb will have. It will have the usual, such as blog and yiyi and forums, but I can't tell you anything beyond that. I will not be demonstrating the website to anybody until I decide that it is ready! Kind of like a Grolsch.

So, right now, I'm still waiting on nabbing an Optiplex SX270 from work. It will only cost me ?20. I'll grab it when I go back to work on December 27th. Work starts on that day. I will keep you all posted!

Cool, I believe this forum will be hosted by you in the new year aswell, won't it?

If you want it to be I'll have a 24/7 server running on a decent UPS in case I get power failure... Well, it will be up and running as much as possible. It should at least have much better uptime than this server!

Cool, sounds good!

I have my new Linux box. I've got it tucked away inside a laptop bag and I am taking it home tonight! Yeah these Optiplex SX270 machines are tiny enough to fit in to a laptop bag Should be just fine / powerful enough running Fedora Core 6 as my web/database/smtp jobby though, or, much more efficient than my machine I now use solely for gaming.

So...

3 PC's: 1 is my server, 1 is my gaming box, and 1 is my chatting and working box, which happens to be my laptop (which I shall now call flapbox)

Are those those tiny machines we see in all your work pics?

Yeah!

I took one back to my girlfriends place last night but ended up staying there so I brought it back to work with me. I am typing this message on it now

Edit: I'll try and get a picture of my new system for you guys tonight.

Ah, cool, aren't these also the systems you suffocate with masking tape?

They're the ones!

I made sure that I picked one with a newer motherboard (the Dell boy replaced the motherboards on them on 22nd December) so the capacitors wont randomly explode.

Cool, so basically you've taken a new PC?

Yeah it's quite new. The warranty expires in a few weeks. It uses a P4 2.8GHz, has 512MB RAM and a 20GB HDD.

Hmm, not bad, the hard drive is a bit sucky, though.

Ah it's not too bad, it'll only be used for storing a few webpages and a MySQL database, and browsing the Internet (checking my bank balance and stuff, which I can no longer do on Windows...)

Hmm, yeah, fair enough. I'd still upgrade it if you find a good cheap HDD.

Naa, I'll get a NAS box of some sort.

Network Attached Storage? Cool.

It will be handy with the new Linux box. I guess a lot of USB external hard drives wouldn't work, or wouldn't work with a lot of mucking around and kernel-breaking.

LOL, yeah. More storage would be needed, especially wth your new website plans.... *shuts up*

The new AaronWeb is on this thing:

That thing is titch! Where's the CD drive?

Heh, I decided against taking a CD/DVD drive home because I wouldn't need to use any. And we need CD/DVD drives at work... Decided that if I needed any data, I could copy it over the network, or move it across on a USB memory stick.

At the moment, I am typing this message on the new computer... but I am connected to it through RealVNC on my company laptop. Fedora Core 6 comes with a VNC Server built in! So... I'm on the laptop, typing a message on my new computer. It's brilliant!

This means that, because I am 1 monitor down, all I need to do is put that spare gigabit switch in my room and run my gaming machine and my Linux box side by side, then VNC in to the Linux box whenever I want. Should probably make it more secure by setting up an SSH tunnel to the VNC server.

Edit: After running the system for a couple of hours, it's running surprisingly cool.... when these machines are running Windows XP at my workplace, they get so hot that the metal plate on top is almost too hot to touch. I can feel a warmish breeze coming from the machine, but nothing compared to a Win XP counterpart! I feel far superior.

I take it it needs to use a USB CD/DVD drive, then?

And Windows is a <FEMALE DOG>, it's using 70% of my 1GB of RAM! I could fix that with a reinstall or spending lots of time fiddling round with the settings, but it will get worse over time again and I shouldn't need to do that!

You see the blanking plate on the front, on the left hand side? That's where the modular CD/DVD drives go. I borrowed one from work just to get Fedora on there, but decided against taking it home due to us being short at work, plus they are expensive to replace.

As for your 70% memory usage, try running [i]msconfig[/i], and optimising your [i]services[/i] and [i]startup[/i] entries. From memory (lol), a few things you could get rid of are: [i]secondary logon service[/i], [i]windows firewall/internet connection sharing service[/i], [i]uninterruptible power supply service[/i] and [i]remote registry service[/i]. There will be loads of other services you could disable. Go through both the [i]services[/i] and [i]startup[/i] tabs and if you don't know what anything is, just type it in to Google, the sites it links to will let you know what the program/service does and whether it is safe to remove it.

By doing this, I managed to get an Optiplex SX270 running at 70MB memory usage when idle.

Ah, I can see the blanking plate now.

Thanks for the MSConfig tip, I'll have to try that... when I can be bothered.

Sorry there hasn't been much AaronWeb development recently. I want to keep certain parts of it locked up so that only a select few users can see it. I'm still working on creating a permissions system, but I have little time since it gets sapped up by 'social events'.