The electricity bill at home had grew quite a bit since I moved to San Francisco, that makes me wonder how much of this increase is from the new computers at home; A NAS, Linux web server, Thinkpad T60 laptop, and a MCE has being introduced.

In order to balance lifestyle and being nice to the environment, the first step is to identify any power usage point that is power hunger. With this information, I can decided how best to minimize the power consumption. The tool for the task is this:



The "Kill a Watt" meter measures power usage, that can be used to estimate month power usage of an appliance.

I used the meter and collect the following information:

MCE (AMD Athlon X2 3800+ 2.0Ghz)
- turn off/sleep: ~4W/hour ~2.8kW/month
- idle: ~49W/hour ~35.2kW/month
- heavy use (movie encoding): ~88W/hour ~63.4kW/month

Promise N4300N NAS
- in service: ~58W/hour ~41.5kW/month

web server (AMD Athlon X2 4800+ 2.5Ghz, Cool n' Quiet off)
- in service: ~107W/hour ~77.1kW/month

Thinkpad T60 (Intel Core2Due T5600 1.8GHz, power stepping on)
- in service idle: ~25-40W/hour ~18-29kW/month

Aopen MiniPC (Intel Celeron M 1.4)
- off ~2W/hour ~1.4kW/month
- idle ~24W/hour ~17kW/month

Currently, I keep the MCE suspended when not in use so it can be instant on when I want to watch movie, it sips ~3kW/month. My Thinkpad is 24/7, which consumes ~30kW/month. NAS and web server are also 24/7, that eats 42kW/month and 72kW/month. MiniPC is currently not in use, so no power consumption.

In total, the minimal total power consumption is 147kW/month. A quick check from PG&E, a 200W/hour (144kW/month) consumption costs ~$20/month. This translate to 1 pound/kWhour == ~106k pounds of CO2 generated..... quite a lot! ( info: http://tinyurl.com/8d2hae )

Even with a moderate power usage and coat, I can do better by turn on Cool n' Quiet on my web server since it's on 24/7 and use quite a bit of electricity. In addition, maybe considered suspends my T60 at night when the suspends bug on F10 is fixed.

A few updates:
- Pidgin crashed from time to time when sounds turn on.....
- Pulseaudio + Skype + Youtube/Flash aren't working together, still getting Skype audio playback error after played a Youttube video. After some research, I found that it looks like Flash hogs the audio device, which manually kill it sort of solve it.
- GNOME-Packagekit was broken for a few days, until a new version available [update] It was reported here
- GNOME Bluetooth applet won't hide when bluetooth is turned off

I've spend most of the Thanksgiving weekend tweak Fedora 10 and installed applications. It's finally completed and back to normal.

I continue to use Desktop effect on Fedora 10. It's mostly stable but still crash once in a while when using cubed desktop. Turn off this eye candy solved this problem for now. On the other hand, performance seem degarded when desktop effect is on, dropped frames are noticed when playing full-screen video.

There seem to be a problem since 2.6.27 that X is struck on resume. I've experienced the same problem on F9 recently after 2.6.27 kernel is available.

The Bluetooth problem I encountered is known and a work around is available... in fact it seem like the same bug I reported from F8..... Meanwhile, some recent updates seem caused the Bluetooth applet to stay on tray when I want it to hide when Bluetooth is off..... WTF.

The improved Pulseaudio subsystem seem work better for me, I no longer see pidgin hangs due to unable to output sound. However, there is still no easy way to normalize the gain of each output device/application.

One last observation, Flash plugin on firefox still taking too much CPU when it's running.....

My dad subscribed to the second lowest (of 4 tiers) DSL Internet service from AT&T (formerly Pacbell). My feeling is that it barely meet our bandwidth requirement, I have to shutdown services to compromise from time to time.

A speedtest shows in number what level of bandwidth we are getting.



It's at roughly 1Mb downlink and 200Kb uplink. According to AT&T, I should be getting 1.5Mb downlink and 384 Kb uplink.

Related reading:
How fast is 5MB DSL line?

Continue the tweaking of my newly install Fedora 10 on T60.

The mouse problem I encountered seem to be happened only during Firstboot, the mouse back to service after reboot. Maybe a software update fixed the problem?

Desktop effect is working, but I am unable to get more than 4 desktops going. However, the subtle window movement resistant is missing, which I'm kind of missed. Otherwise, desktop effect is pretty cool.

On GNOME, window list is still unable to restore iconified window to current desktop. Also, GNOME still have problem with Windows file sharing; It seem failed to connect to windows network, and lost connection to a remote folder after a while even when it connected with a icon show on the desktop. This yeild and annoying error only unmount folder and reconnect can fix. Furthermore, GNOME is not saving session, which is note in the common problem already and soon to be fixed. Lastly, bluez is unable to send file via bluetooth, complaining OBEX send is unsupported...??

Installed a bunch of applications using PackageKit. It's not really a user-friendly tool, It's hard to browse through a long list of packages, the size of the window keep changing and hard to follow.

As part of user data migration, I rename my user directory before upgrade. Then after the new user created, I manually copy files I want to keep. The hairy part is the hidden files (aka the "." stuff), some of them I need but others are not. I ran into problems in the past that GNOME acts badly while new version using leftover files from older version. Therefore, I have to manually transfer user data on each upgrade. It's a problem that configuration and user data are mixed together and I have to pick them apart. There must be a better way to do this?

Video playing is always a weak point for Fedora since it cannot distributed with proprietary codec. But I think Fedora/GNOME found the best solution for the situation, one that even better than Windows!



When you play a video with totom and it do not know how to play it, it can search and install it for you. Work together with rpmfusion, this operation become seamless. I highly recommend anyone using Fedora to add rpmfusion to their setup, which has a lot of useful free or non-free applications.

Just did a fresh install to my Thinkpad T60 using a Live CD on USB thumb drive. The installation is almost perfect, somehow the Forward button and its clickable area is mis-aligned in one of the steps. It's really weird. The install is really fast since it's only contain application from Live CD.

After reboot, the real pain of upgrade hit. First, the bluetooth is turn on and unable to disable. Second, the build-in mouse no longer work and I have to switch to a usb mouse for now, which is really annoying. Thirdly, there are some screen refresh artifices by the Firefox window.

I am running a software update first, and going to tweak GNOME to my liking. i.e. fonts size, icon size, applets on panel.

So, I got a T-mobile htc G1 finally. It's my brother's early x'mas+bday gift. (thx, kal!).

Looking back to all the phones I got over the past 10 years, realized just how the industry has changed and the impact on my lifestyle. It's a personal journey of technological discovery.

Back in '99 when I first become a Fido customer, my first phone was a Nokia 5190. It's a 1900Mhz GSM phone. GSM is the first global digital cellular wireless standard. In North America, the industry was moving from AMPS (analog) to IS136 TDMA (dgital) under the PCS push. However, some of the green field deployment went to GSM instead. The move to digital helps carriers improve spectrum efficiency (means more users/channel), also better voice quality (via EVRC) and battery life for users. I picked Fido/GSM even through I work for Nortel's TDMA team at the time generally because I believed it's the future; Afterall, most of the world adapt the standard, there are more cool phones and supposedly I can roam seamlessly worldwide (even it will cost me $$$$). Also, the pricing from Fido was just cheaper.

The next few years there after, I changed to a Nokia 3390 and Sony /// T200. The main reason I upgraded was that a friend works at a phone store that he can get me a great discount, plus some improvement on the device; smaller size, hidden antenna, better ringtone, T9 text input for SMS, and worldphone (as for T200).

When I got Sony/// z600 in 2005, there is for some exciting new reasons; camera, bluetooth, and MMS. In addition, z600 has a clamshell form factor, a good japan-ish design that rarely seem in phone here in N.A. Also, many friends of my finally got a cellphone, so we call and SMS each other more. Meanwhile, carriers start to push for MMS and better priced SMS plan. A $3/100 SMS plan become one of the most used features on my Fido plan. In addition, the camera on the z600, in a way, getting me started to use my phone more than just a communication device. I enjoy the freedom to take snapshoots, keep track of things with todo list, calendar, and note. This fuel for a desire to upgrade to my next phone - Moto Ming.

I was on a business trip to Guangzhou, China in Q2/Q3 of 2006, Moto Ming smartphone was just released in Hong Kong at the time, where I travel to often over weekends to visit friends and families (it's only a 2 hours train ride). I was instantly attract to it; a cool design in small form factor, music/video player, touch-screen, Chinese hand-writing input, improved camera, GPRS/EDGE data, Java, and PDA functions. The phone becomes an essential part of my life; listen to podcast, take snap-shoots on the street, keep track of bits and pieces of information. These functions roll into one device with my voice and SMS needs, while it still fit into my pants pocket.

Since last year, Fido introduced a $5/500Kb plan. In general, it's a joke. I start Google maps, and it uses over 300Kb just to load one map. But fortunately, this sad fact changed after I moved to San Francisco; T-mobile's $20/unlimited GPRS/EDGE Total Internet plan is just the plan I needed. Google maps becomes the most important tools on my Ming, especially when I am lost somewhere; I can get up-to-date tweets on MUNI. It's not very fast, but able to provide what I need reasonably.

But, I really need is a device that has a bigger pipe, larger screen that allow me to connect and stay in contact. UMTS has been out for many years, but never catch on here in N.A. Its evolution, HSPA, is finally makes a début as a response to popular 3.5G 1xEvD0 data service from Verizon/Sprint. I am almost seeing it - Hyperconnectivity. A must-have list of required features for my next cellphone: 3.5G, GPS, WIFI, and bigger screen.

Anyway, I think this post is really getting too long, I am going to continue in the next post.

After re-evaluated PHP opcode caching used on my web server, I go further to tune MySQL performance. I've been seeing mysqld hogging 1 of the cores on the Althon 64 X2 constantly for no good reason, that really bother me.

I started with running a MySQL benchmark test to collect a baseline. At the same time reading the on-line manual to get familiar features and area for optimization.

Then I run mysqltuner to see what need to be optimzed. After followed the recommendations, mysqld no longer hogs the CPU continuously. In fact, my web benchmark improve almost 40% (now load time ~0.260 sec). Yeah!



However, there are still work left to do. sqltuner founds that my application (which one?) is not closing connection properly, and join queries might be able to improve further. In addition, MySQL manual has some good advice on how to make better database design and performs faster query (here and here).

Furthermore, one of the tunings done is enable the build-in query cache. I think there is further improvement if I deploy a memory object cache like memcached, it minimizes the overhead of querying MySQL. However, coding change is needed. I will be looking at implement it into NucleusCMS in the future.