Long story short: if you have issues with a PCI-E card like video cutting out randomly and never returning it’s because the designers were on meth. The solution is to only have RAM in DIMM slots 3 and 4. If you put anything in 1 or 2 you’ll want to commit suicide.

What the hell, Dell. This is why I build my PCs.

Anyway, I had a battery die on a controller again and write cache was disabled. Replacing the battery on that controller did not fix it — it was still saying the write cache was suspended. After a LOT of poking it finally came back, but I don’t know exactly how or why. I currently have a theory though that I hope helps someone out some day.

1) Known issue that MD3000i units ship with writeCacheEnabled=true and mirrorCacheEnabled=true, which puts the write cache into a suspended mode because it can’t mirror with only one controller. (They come with one controller unless you order two)

2) Fixing the above problem requires disabling both, then re-enabling only the write cache.

3) Trying the above did not work. Mirror disabled, but still suspended. Somehow with mirror disabled and forcing it to ignore the battery (cacheWithoutBatteriesEnabled=true) would get write cache working again. That’s not a good or safe solution, though.

4) Disabling all write cache settings, doing an offline/online of each controller, and then enabling all the write caches and fixing paths seemed to work.

I think it refuses to mirror the cache which keeps it suspended because the controllers still have some weird cache setting that doesn’t get cleared until you offline/online both controllers to “reset” them. It’s currently the best theory I have, but doesn’t explain why I could force it to work by setting cacheWithoutBatteriesEnabled=true.

tl;dr this SAN is a big box of shit.

We’ve never had much luck with mysql-proxy as we’ve seen it crash its fair amount of times or not start properly on boot, but this was unending. Core dumps weren’t giving anything useful; logs were no better. Here’s the MySQL-Proxy alternative that we should have implemented ages ago. Note, we’re running FreeBSD, so adapt to your own OS/Linux distro:

What you need:

net/socat
net/haproxy

FreeBSD’s rc.conf:

# mysql_proxy alternative
socat_enable="YES"
socat_flags="UNIX-LISTEN:/tmp/mysql.sock,fork,reuseaddr,unlink-early,mode=777 TCP:127.0.0.1:3306"
haproxy_enable="YES"

HAProxy’s config:

global
log 127.0.0.1 local0
maxconn 4096
daemon
#debug
#quiet
#
defaults
log global
mode tcp
option tcplog
option dontlognull
option tcp-smart-accept
option tcp-smart-connect
retries 3
maxconn 200
#
listen mysql :3306
mode tcp
option mysql-check
balance roundrobin
server mysql1 1.2.3.4:3306 check port 3306

Ultimately, HAProxy manages the connections very well and socat fixes any old clients trying to talk over the /tmp/mysql.sock file.

Enjoy.

Ask any game developer and they’ll tell you that publishers are the scum of the earth. It’s never a question of “if” the publisher screws you, it’s “when”. During my 15 years as a developer I have seen publishers pull every dirty trick imaginable, from telling the dev team of a certain AAA title to remove all the black kids from the game (“it hurts sales in Germany”) to informing a small studio that they were only going to pay half what they owed for work already completed, and then only if the studio signs a legal waiver first (knowing full well that because of late payments the studio would be out of business long before it reached court). This story is not about publishers, but it is about the kinds of situations that publishers create and the lengths that we developers are often forced to go to in order to clean up the messes they leave us with.

via The Day MAME Saved My A**.

Game Dev Story is a business simulation about choices.

What genre, what platform, and what theme do you want for your game?

Is the game cute and simple or realistic and innovative?

Do you want to use an in-house art, story, and audio folks or outsource assets and writing?

There are quite a few choices and you’ve got the freedom to make larger decisions about advertising campaigns and which development path to focus on.

Nothing is free, you’ve got to pay platform holders for devkits, employees their salaries, and fees for everything and everyone in the studio. Game developers won’t choose to grow on their own, you’ve got to prod them forward with research data gathered during development. Once they’re more talented their salary has to rise too. Though at least the game doesn’t simulate headhunters to recruit your developers out from under you.

Your team of developers will approach you during the various stages of development with costly suggestions that could result in a dramatically superior game or it could fail and fill the game with bugs. You’ll pay for those in development time before the game ships. Alternatively you can choose to ship early and chance critical disaster.

Maybe you should show off a vertical slice at Gamedex, or you could spend that money on advertising instead. Buy some Dead Bull to keep the developers motivated and read the latest Game Guy magazine to see what people are saying about your studio. Lets hope you don’t suffer a power outage and no-one else releases a similar game before you ship your own.

What makes Game Dev Story fun is interacting with your staff to create the best game, watching it develop, taking risks, making a name and shipping it. Was it well-received or did it fail miserably at the hands of critics and the gaming public? Maybe you’ll do better next time and eventually the fans will be lining up for launch day.

It is a never-ending dream come true for anyone who enjoys simple simulation games and is curious about game development.

The default interface left two black bars at the top and bottom of my iPhone screen, didn’t support landscape mode, and doesn’t support task-switching. Just enable the superior virtual gamepad and save often. This initial release is otherwise extremely promising and bodes well for future games from Kairosoft.

10/10 Magical Aardvarks Will continue to waste many hours into this sim, and heck it even got me to write my first game review in a year.

Buy Game Dev Story for $3.99 on the iOS app store. it is a truly special once-in-a-lifetime sim that will ruin your life with its addictive gameplay.

The big deal about these old keyboards is their lovely, positive key-click. When you use a keyboard that doesn’t have a good positive click, it’s hard to tell when you’ve depressed a key properly. You have to watch the screen to make sure you don’t leave letters out, or you have to really hammer the keyboard, which is not good for your hands.

Most of the mid-priced keyboards these days use some variant of the “rubber dome” switch technology, which gives a definite little popping sensation when the dome buckles, but doesn’t necessarily give you an actual letter at the exact same moment, thanks to uncertain contacts. The old buckling spring tech absolutely positively does give you the letter when you feel the click. These keyboards feel very much like an old IBM Selectric typewriter – there are plenty of these ironclad behemoths still in service, and they may herniate anyone that has to move them but they’re darn nice to type on.

Rubber-dome keyboards are just not as reliable, ergonomic, or fun to use as mechanicals. Though you do have to give up some goofy options for mechanical keyboards, this Adesso keyboard is kind-of goofy as far as mechanicals go.

Most mechanicals are fairly boring and extremely beige. At most you might get a trackpoint or trackball. This is why you have to go with somewhat more modern options if you want something closer to the gaming keyboard experience without the rubber-domes.

Which features does the  Adesso Mechanical Gaming Keyboard have over the basic Model M? An integrated, powered two-port USB 2.0 hub, windows keys, multimedia controls, and audio jacks. If you too dislike the beige style you might also be happy to know this keyboard is a glossy black everywhere but the keycaps. Speaking of which, the key caps are painted with a good ink that doesn’t feel cheap.

Even my Keytronic and Logitech G15′s keycaps have faded over time, but my original Model M hasn’t. However, until this keyboard has been in my possession for a few years I can’t give any kind of definitive answer as to the quality of the ink process on the keycaps.

After yesterday’s non-review of the Tango Pro, I’m happy to say that this keyboard feels great, the throw on the key press is close to Model M perfection and far superior to anything you can buy from Logitech or any of the other major peripheral manufacturers. With the Adesso I’ve played enough RTS and FPS games and had a similar experience to my old Model M, except without the pain of giving up normal gaming keyboard features.

The only real downside for the Adesso compared to the Model M is that the plastic isn’t as solid. Now don’t misunderstand, most cars aren’t as solid as the Model M, it is just that the Adesso doesn’t have a metal backing plate and thicker plastic like the Model M so maybe it’ll only last for ten or fifteen years instead of twenty-five.

Buy a Model M if you don’t need the extra features, or if however you too do not like the color beige and enjoy these extra features buy the Adesso. I’m not returning it for anything else.