Philby Whizz

Well, that didn’t last long did it. I got toally frustrated with different flavours of linux. After about the 5th distro, I got frustrated. While I wanted to ‘be cool’ and try something new, I didn’t want to spend my time fixing quirks, or tweaking settings, or dealing with ‘not-quite-there’ features. I wanted something that just worked.

This weekend I went back to Vista. While I cringed through the whole installation, it is suprisingly nice to use. Everything just works! I might actually enjoy this.

If anyone wants to look at Vista, I would suggest you install all the patches and install SP1 first, before judging it.

While linux might be a really stable platform, but for ready for the desktop, it just isn’t there yet.

Well last week I finally did it – migrated off my windows machine at home and now running 100% linux. I was becoming frustrated with WindowsXP, it just wasn’t working for me anymore. Most of my apps I run I can run on Linux so I took the plunge.

The latest version Ubuntu Linux was released last month (8.04), and thought that I’d give it a go and see what happens.

I am quite impressed as to how far ubuntu has become. I have a dual head 19″ LCD monitor setup, and it just worked out of the box. Blender absolutely flies on ubuntu compared to windows!

I used to play around with gentoo, but again I felt as though I was fighting the computer just to do something (hmm.. maybe I should get a mac). I just want something that just ‘works’. Ubuntu detected all my hardware except my webcam (which I can live without for now).

I still have a small windows partition on my PC for when I am desperate and have the urge to play a game or two. I’ll most likely need it when spore comes out in a few months time.

I really think Microsoft has a bit of competition on its hands if Ubuntu keeps going in the direction it is heading.

I’ve cut out the foam underlay to allow the plumbing of the weir to poke through.

How did I get it in there? well, to get it out, I slide it to the left a little, and rotate it clockwise 90 degrees, then i can slide it out the front. It only ‘just’ fits (by cm’s). anything longer and I wouldn’t be able to rotate it 90 degrees to fit it in.

Hopefully the hole is in the right spot. All I need now is some bodies to give me a hand to lift the tank off the stand so that I can slide the foam underneath it. Without it, I’m reluctant to put any extra weight in or on the tank.

I also have a photo of the newly positioned sump, and where it will end up sitting:

There are no divisions in this yet as I am still to determine where the plumbing is all going. I plan to place the skimmer to the left of the sump (external).

I’ve also got 2 x 150w heaters, but after doing some calculations I think they are a little on the small side, considering I have about 600L to heat up.

That’s all for now.

Yesterday, I bought a sump for the reef tank. It’s size is 24″x18″x18″ which fits snuggly in the cabinet on the right hand side.

This was the biggest size I could fit. I would have loved to have a 36″x15″x15″ sump, but there was no way to actually get it in there without some major hacking to the cabinet. But the different between the 2 in terms of water volume isn’t really that big. Having the smaller but taller sump leaves the entire left hand side of the cabinet for other things.

I’m planning to get an external skimmer to sit next to the sump. I’m currently looking at the Reef Octopus Hurricane 800 shorty, which will fit quite nicely (and it looks good). The idea is to connect this directly to the input from the weir, and the output into the first chamber of the sump. Might have to wait until next pay day before I buy one of those.

What I need to work out now is how to divide up the sump into its different chambers. My current thoughts are 3 chambers: Input -> Refugium/DSB -> Return.

I’ll put up some photos when there is something more exciting to look at (it is just an empty glass tank at the moment).