I think it’s time for something completely unrelated to the Home Office! A recent poll done by VentureBeat shows that Metallica is the #1 most popular artist to listen to while writing code. The poll also shows that as far as the type of music goes, Rock/Pop makes up 42% of the total. Not that I am surprised about that. However, putting rock and pop in the same category is a bit of a stretch for me since I prefer my rock on the rocks!

Lately I’ve been listening (and coding by) Pearl Aday’s latest album, The Swing House Session, Live & Acoustic. I’ve written about Pearl before, back in 2007, and more recently in 2010, and she never ceases to amaze me with the passion and soul for her music which is a very honest and classic rock style with modern influences and, of course, great vocals! For me, that’s my personal #1 choice to write code by.

The Swing House Session album is a great addition to the original Broken Thorny Crown and the debut album, Little Immaculate White Fox, the latter of which has been recorded into a full acoustic set during an afternoon at the Swing House Studios in Hollywood. The acoustic versions of the songs have an interesting twist to them and while completely recognizable to anyone who’s heard them before, add a new level of depth to the sound that is otherwise hard to catch when performed “fully plugged”.

The Swing House Session also includes “Angel from Montgomery”, the original John Prine song. I first saw Pearl perform that song in May 2010 in San Francisco and you know, it was great then and it’s still great now. A timeless piece that is guaranteed to never bore you.

You can see some of the video shot at the Swing House here and listen to some of the songs being performed. If you like what you’re hearing I suggest you buy the album (iTunes link provided for convenience!) and support this great artist that is true to her music and deserves our rocking support for it.

Yes, it’s a milestone. Office 7.0 (beta 3, by now) is officially done, functional, installed, running, and ready for action.

I’m not going to make any final “beauty” shots of the current state because there’s not much point in doing that until the other half of the office completes the current ensemble and that won’t be for quite a number of months yet. I’ll just have to make do with this setup in the meantime. And yes, you can imagine it’s painful and under-powered and under-monitored, and boy am I missing the extra pixels… not.

I’m quite happy with the 3 x 2560 x 1600, actually. But of course, the office won’t be complete until it’s complete. And besides, my camera gear is all in The Netherlands anyway, so there’s no point in trying to create perfect RAW shots and then editing them for a final “beauty” pass.

I didn’t take shots of other parts of the office since nothing has changed there but if you want to see then anyway I refer you to the other Office 7.0 beta blog posts and images.

There’s a server, a workstation, a second workstation, a Mac Pro, the MacBook Air, and the Clevo laptop. That should be enough for the intermediate stages of getting up and running. The three Lian-Li cases look nice together and all have watercooling for the CPU’s. ATI 6970 Eyefinity cards take care of the two workstations, each of them hooked to the 3 x 30 inch Dell U3011 monitors using StarTech DisplayPort switches to allow for an extra set of DisplayPort ports on each monitor. The server is hooked up via DVI connection (and also capable of doing 2560×1200) while the Mac Pro is using 3 x DVI where one of those is run from a mini DisplayPort port via an Apple converter that turns it into full dual-link DVI.

All the PC hardware has been built, tested, and tuned by Computers USA in case you have failed to notice my previous blog post about my new dealer here.

Things are going well here in Oakley. I got my work authorization a few weeks ago. Which was a huge surprise because it came 10 weeks before the government said it would. Also, the last of my “burdens of development life” is now luckily no longer an issue, leaving me free to get involved in new fun projects. In fact, I am talking to some interested parties about some real interesting top secret “stealth projects”.

Oh, I was going to post some pictures, right? Right! Here they are…

The new Home Office is starting to take a little more shape every day but there’s still much to do and a lot of things to complete before I can consider having properly settled in. This post, however, is not about the office itself but the people who have built the new systems that are in it.

The company is called Computers USA and are the home where BTO Diablo computers and BTO AngelFire servers are built to spec. They are local to me with both stores (a short drive to Brentwood or a slightly longer drive to Clayton) and I think people should support local business more. Instead of telling people that I hope to lead by example here.

Don’t be fooled by the website that needs some work. These guys know what they’re talking about and really have tons of clues about what they’re doing. That’s a rare thing to find these days when it comes to computer stores that claim they can build machines with amazing specs. In my experiene most don’t but these guys certainly do! If you’re around the area here and are in need of great quality and support, definitely check out Computers USA.

There’s also a very funny story to tell here. As you may know there have been a number of people and businesses that have taken images of my Home Office over the past years and either passed it off as their own or pretended they had some kind of association with it. So a few months ago I walk into the Clayton office of Computers USA because they came recommended to me by Shel Holtz. I strike up a chat with Chris about me looking for a new place to have my systems built and in the process I hand over one of my business cards that has a picture of the office at the back.

As it turns out, Chris had seen my website and the office pictures before and knew about the images being used by others all over the place and wasn’t quite sure what to make of it and wondered if I was one of those. He googled me after I left and discovered, oh, yes, this actually IS Stefan Didak.

The other reason for me writing this post is to pre-empt any potential negative flak that might arise from the new office pictures. If you see these guys using any images of my office or talking about it, then really, they are allowed to do so and yes these are the people building my systems. Don’t go accusing them of ripping off my images or anything of the sort. Since I very rarely give people permission it seems prudent to me to make this statement here just in case there’s any trouble in the future that causes any doubts about who has been instrumental in getting my new office together. As further proof, just to be completely and utterly clear on things, here are some images of Andrew and Chris of Computers USA at work in the new Home Office.

Andrew of Computers USA working on the ESXi Server

Andrew of Computers USA swapping out an SSD in the ESXi Server

Andrew of Computers USA swapping out an SSD in the ESXi Server

Chris of Computers USA bringing by a new workstation and checking if everything
is functioning the way it should.

It’s time for a little announcement and yes, you heard it here first… I’m officially Autodesk-free! And what a great feeling that is to not have to deal with an entity “where software goes to die” (can’t remember who first came up with that one but don’t mind me quoting you). Not having to deal with lacking and/or online only docs and the poor state of the Civil 3D API is not unlike wearing shoes that are too small and being able to them off… a feeling of relief, that is.

Development has not been as fun and exciting as it was prior to Autodesk acquiring Dynamite VSP (and rebranding it as Civil View, integrated with 3ds max Design) and because of my 6000 mile relocation and in particular other plans I have for my business and the directions it should be heading into it seems about the right time to leave the Dynamite development arena so I can reclaim the time I normally spent on it and put it towards cool and new things. You can learn about the cool new things on ignyter.com and ignytion.com once I am (legally) able to unveil those. Which, granted, may be a while yet before I can, and will.

It’s been an interesting 10 years developing on Dynamite VSP and it’s been great to see all the hard core Dynamite VSP/Civil View users pull off some stunning and amazing state of the art civil engineering visualizations. My last development activities were mid this past year so any future bugs, don’t hold me responsible for any, ok?

Of course, many of you reading this are thinking “yeah, yeah, so what, show me more new office pictures, what’s happening with THAT?”. Trust me, I’m working on it along with some words of what is taking so long and how great my new dealer has been in providing support for a few (very strange) hardware issues that I have run into. I’m waiting for the office to be a little more complete before I start posting pictures again and doing a slightly better write-up. Sitting down to write posts and stuff has not been easy with a lot of driving and traveling and not being at home but once I get more settled expect me to catch up properly.

It’s time for another installment of pictures and updates in the ongoing Office 7.0 Beta Buildup.

There is good news and bad news. The good news is that I have completed the cabling of the new office (and that I got married while the cables were still shipping out to me). The bad news is that I am waiting for the new workstation and server systems to be completed by my new (local) dealer. I will not be making any major pages with photos until the full office is complete (and that, yes, will take some more months actually) and when I have my full camera gear with me, which I do not at this time.

But just to give everyone who’s been asking an update of how things are looking, here you go, a whole page with pictures. Made with Sallie’s Nikon P100. I swear, large heavy cameras just seem to work better for me than the ones with a ton of cool features and are light enough to swing from your pinkie. Some of the images might look a bit familiar to all of you who follow me on Twitter.

Let’s start with a general overview of the space and the current situation.

The chair is a Herman Miller Embody, the successor of the Aeron. I loved the Aeron. But I like the Embody better. However, as always, check out a chair before dropping serious cash for one because it may not fit you as well as it fits me. It also requires a bit of actual use before you can really tell if a chair works or not. I prefer the air-ness of the Aeron but I often banged my elbows into the hard edges. Of course, once my other stuff gets here I’ll probably switch between chairs quite a bit.

The Best in the corner of the picture below is a APC SMT2200, a 2200VA 2000 Watt UPS. And yes, it’s on a 20 amp circuit. Heck, after all the trouble we had to go through, I now have more 20 amp circuits and outlets that I can possibly use in the next few years. That is, until the first round of huge expansion, I bet. The fan is always on but it whispers and doesn’t bother me at all.

It was a biatch to get that thing into the office, though. The poor lady from UPS had a hard time getting the thing out of her truck, and even harder time (though that might have been because I helped) getting it on the dolly to get it in through the door. Then it was up to me to get the thing out of the box. Not easy since the thing is like 140 pounds. After opening it up and getting the two huge batteries out it was still heavy but I could carry it upstairs and re-assemble it. However, because of the high-pyle carpet it is impossible to move it around if needed so I took a shelf and some casters and created a solution. I’ll need to turn the shelf black at some point because the white doesn’t look too good. But for now, that’ll do.

Yes, you are seeing an air-conditioning unit there. In addition to the 6000 watt central AC in the home I have added a portable unit for some extra cooling that helps with more local cooling. It’s loud. Very loud. Time to fire up iTunes and put on the headphone when using that thing. But it does help with boosting the cooling down to 75F in the home office.

One of the other work “islands” that will remain empty until I get the rest of the office (the 6.0 office) here. It’ll have three systems below the desk along with 4 of the 24″ monitors. And a few other things, of course.

The other great thing about the new office space is that I have quite a bit of storage space with four large sliding doors. A good place to store all those handy cables and office supplies without having them scattered all over the office and cluttering the desks. I still wonder what fun thing I am going to do with that nook up there at the ceiling. It is just screaming to me that something fun needs to be done with that area.

A view from the back and side. Just in case you wanted one!

 The new rack…

The top half of the rack with the audio equipment and its power switches.

The bottom half of the rack with the (UPS powered, by an APC 1500VA) network equipment.

Someone commented a while ago that the cables would destroy the nice looks of the rack. But that’s what the cable routing blank is for in the lower 1U slot. The cables hardly stick out at all and things are very easy to manage. And of course, at the back of the rack everything is very nicely done with velcro and bundles that don’t turn things back there into a total spider web. Except it’s more difficult to get you a picture of that without contorting myself into a bad position under the desk.

The thing currently powering the 3 x 30″ Dell U3011 monitors, a Mac Pro, yes! As I said, I am still waiting for the other systems to be built and delivered. But the cables for all those systems are pretty much ready to rock. There’s a 12TB Mercury Elite Pro QX2 there for the backups and RAID5 storage. I originally wanted to do an Areca SAS controller but decided I’ll skip boosting the Mac Pro until the new Mac Pro’s are available, you know, the Sandy Bridge 12 (or more) core systems with ThunderBolt. Until that time I’m not going to spend too much more dough on the Mac stuff. I just had to bite the bullet on this one because it was starting to be clear that the new models would not arrive soon enough for my needs.

Cables.. Let’s talk cable management for a bit here, ok… I know you’ve been dying to hear about it. Better yet, I just made some pictures to illustrate what it is I do to keep the cables from dangling everywhere and getting caught into the typical web that you see almost everywhere a computer is involved.

Isn’t that just nice, no?

The trick I am using is real simple. Velcro, for starters. But I’ve explained that before. But to get things going with the Ikea Galant desks I just went to Amazon and ordered a bunch of plastic towel racks. Modified them with the Dremel to get some screw holes going and then just screwed them into the desks at the back end. In addition to that I went to Lowe’s and picked up two dozen little handles that you can screw on drawers. Well, I screwed them near the back of the desks as guides to hang and tie the velcro rings on. As for Velcro, just get a bunch of rolls from Monoprice. You can never have enough Velcro. Ever. Really.

Also useful, some extra heavy duty 3-prong PDU’s. Again, just mount them under the desk.

As you can see, the results are pretty good. Still some work to be done but so far I’m pleased with the results. Lots of cable loops to bundle the professional audio cables and all the CAT6 network cables that run under that portion of those desks. I am using blue Velcro to group cables into bundles and then some red Velcro to bundle larger bundles together. This identifies the path of the cables and means you don’t have to always use the rails or handles to create Velcro loops but rather use a cable bundle as a guide for more bundling.

OK, that’s all folks. More later.

This is starting to be my fourth blog post in the series “The New Place”, it seems. You can read part 1 (regarding some serious delays in getting things set up) and part 2 (about finding the actual new location of the new office) and part 3 (the early results of setting things up) at their respective links. Or just follow the Office 7.0 Beta tag.

Let’s start by the good news. The quotes for some new systems are starting to reach me and the new cables have arrived. Another poor iPhone camera shot, but that’ll have to do because I’m not about to waste too much time trying to get really nice shots of the office. I’m saving that for when everything gets together and I can do a proper job at a new “making of” with all the details.

It doesn’t look like a lot of cables because of the lousy angle I shot it from but those were two big and heavy boxes that reached me overnight from Monoprice. A total order of $544 worth of network (all cat6 of course), audio, DVI, HDMI, DP, and power cables of various types and lengths. Anyone familiar with Monoprice knows what $544 worth of cables buys you.

Once I’ve received some other stuff (like some small and a big APC and some computers, of course) I will be posting some pictures of the new way of how I decided to do cable management. It’s much like what I have been doing with Velcro but in a slightly different way. I’d have to either show you or draw it for you to understand what I mean when I say “hanging loops at multiple depths, segmented and divided, under the desk”. In short, it involves a lot of little drawer handles and a few big ones (also known as towel rods) that are mounted under the desk (to the back of it) on which different size loops of Velcro will be guiding bundles of cables under the desk, out of sight (mostly) and leaving the floor (mostly) empty enough to still be able to have the vacuum cleaning done. But more on that in a later post.

I’ve been asked a few times now whether the pictures I showed in my previous post are part of me trying to do different configurations with the desks. No, they’re not. It’s just a larger office than the previous one so there’s more desk space and, likewise, more desks, involved. Just to clear up any confusion, though, here is the original layout I planned for the space and it has come out pretty much exactly like this. The yellow block is a 27″ monitor (the iMac), the green ones are the 24″ monitors, and the blue ones are the three new Dell U3011 30″ ones.

The old Aeron and the new Embody (once it arrives sometime in the next days) will complete the seating arrangement. Since it’s impossible to use that much screen realestate and that many pixels as a single overview and the 3 x 30″ provide a very nice area by itself, I have decided to split the monitors into islands of their own where, along with the computers that’ll hook onto them, are more task-based and defined as to their use and purpose. The 3 x 30″ area will be the new “main” area.

Oh, and to answer another question that I’ve been asked a few times now. The desks are IKEA Galant desks. In particular, two corner desks, two regular 120x80cm desks, two 80x60cm extensions, two 60cm half-round extensions, one 80cm quarter-round extension, and five desktop shelves to complete it all.

It’s true, I haven’t been posting much. Then again, I have been rather busy with that thing called “life” and in particular the move to the new place. But things are starting to slowly shape up. The emphasis here is on the word SLOWLY. Things are not going as fast as I had hoped for. So, no, no new office pictures, won’t be any for a while, it’s going to take some more time. But, in the meantime, I can show you some of the current progress. Pictures taken with the shaky camera of the iPhone.

Those are pictures of the same office. If you see something that looks like it had been modified, it wasn’t, it’s just that the office is really big and has more than one work area. So, definitely, lots and lots of desk space for… lots and lots of workstations, servers, monitors, and a few Mac’s thrown in for good measure. Oh, yeah, about them Mac’s. Going to the Apple Store in Emeryville was a major disappointment. They didn’t have anything I wanted, didn’t have anything I needed, and the result was “best to just order it online from us”. Yeah, that could’ve saved me an hour’s drive from Oakley (not Oakland!) to Emeryville. Why those stores even exist, I have no idea. It was very busy, but people there were clueless. And with people I mean the staff, not the potential customers in the store. I bet those had more of a clue.

The big battery backup stuff still has to arrive and I am still waiting for a quote on some systems from my potentially new hardware builder out here in this area. Until that time I will allow the wires and the office to be a mess. I might allow it to be a mess until the new office and the old office get reunited in the same place. Depends on how things go. We’ll see. The 30″ Dell U3011 monitors arrived, though. Wow, real nice. Zero dead or bright pixels. Lots of screen realestate to use. Now if only I had some machines that would make use of all those pixels!!

It’s official. The new location of the Home Office 7.0 will be in Oakley California. That’s OAKLEY, not OAKLAND. Not even nearly the same. Oakland is a dump IMHO and Oakley is a nice low-crime no-grime area towards the east of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Don’t mind the odd copyright notice on the image. That’s the image of the real-estate company that had it advertised. I’ll be posting better and nicer images once I get around to it and once I get to actually have some decent content to show.

Now the real fun starts; getting the electricians over to see what we will do about getting tremendous power routed to the new office space, furnishing, getting hardware and systems installed, all that good stuff. Or if  you will, all that frustrating stuff.

In the meantime, however, we are packing, stacking, moving, driving up and down (because our new location is 40 miles from our current one) and expecting the movers in the next few days. So, if you I haven’t gotten back to any of your e-mails, don’t despair, I’ll get to it when I can but right now is a really bad time to deal with e-mail and being online.

I will be writing about the reason of our relocation in the next weeks and it will be juicy and interesting, I can tell you that. Especially since the city of El Cerrito is going to get their building inspection asses kicked to high heavens. I will probably also be writing about all the other fun stuff one finds in Oakley, like, rattlesnakes and black widow spiders. Yeah, those, the deadly ones. And yes, we have already spotted one in a small crack around our garage and the damn thing wouldn’t die after we tried to kill it with some RAID spray. Maybe I should add a Black Widow Antidote Farm to the list of business activities I’ll be deploying?

This will probably be my last blog post for a little while. But since I don’t blog that much in the first place I doubt any of you will really notice it.

No matter how well you plan something and how much detail you put into it, there are always things that can throw things off. While most of the detail planning of the new office is still valid, the general timing is going to be way off thanks to an unforeseen relocation to a new location. A new location that at the time of writing has not been found yet, I should add.

Recent discoveries about our place in California has left us no other option than to find a more suitable location. I’ll spare you all the details regarding the sub-standard piss-poor third-world electrical wiring. Instead, let me just tell you there’s no way in seven hells I’d consider hooking up a ton of expensive computer equipment to the electrical network as it is. And the required overhaul is not what I would ever consider spending on a rental. We had several electricians check things out and provide quotes for the kind of overhaul required to bring the place up to snuff.

My biggest issue, and you might be reading more about it here in the weeks to come, is with the El Cerrito Residential Rental Inspection Program who checked the place out months ago and after a few minor changes gave it a clean bill of health. Except they never looked at the electrical panel and the lack of ground wires (failing to notice 3 prong outlets on a 2 wire connection) and basically not noticing the very things that the California Electrical Code would label as a potential fire hazard. If the El Cerrito Building Divison flagged these things I would have known about the dire situation and could have taken measures and prevented a huge loss of time trying to plan things based on a location and layout, size and shape, to start building up the new home office in.

Whether all this is the result of severe negligence or just because the whole inspection process is a total sham for money (that’s what seems to be the vibe in the area according to landlords) remains to be seen. But seen to it, it will. In the meantime, looking for a suitable location and new place will take some time and needless to say is going to delay the build-up of the new office by a currently unknown amount of time.

On the positive side of all this, Mitch Haile has been great in “beta testing” a few things I had in mind for the new setup, like the Herman Miller Embody chair and the APC SMT2200 (1980 Watt) UPS’es. So if it’s new images you’re waiting for here, sorry, they’re delayed, but check out some new ones over at Mitch’ Home Office page!

I’m outta’ere in a few days. Counting down… 2 more days before my internet lines stop working and 3 more days before total power-down of the Home Office 6.0. I wonder if the electric company is going to investigate why there is such a sudden drop in usage and this enormous surpluss of energy in Rotterdam!

In the first post about planning Home Office 7.0 (beta) I showed the general plan for the layout and shape of the new setup. As some of you have labeled the new cave. Since I’m nocturnal and happen to like bats perhaps CAVE is fitting.

Layout Plan

As you are reading this various new parts of what I consider the infrastructure requirements of the new setup have either already arrived at its destination or are in transit. In the next few weeks a bunch more stuff will be shipped from the various different vendors and with luck most of it will be waiting for me by the time I arrive. The DLink DSR-500N has already arrived. The Honeywell HHT-149-HD is in transit. And a bunch of APC Performance SurgeArrest 11 Outlet power splitters will be arriving in the next few days.

In the next weeks a new HP 1810-24G Procurve Switch and four APC Back-UPS Pro 1500 units should be dispatched along with a NeatDesk Desktop Scanner which came highly recommended by my friend Shel Holtz.

In the meantime, planning has taken on a more detailed form. Normally when I plan a new layout, new hardware, and everything that entails, I usually start with a rough plan, then a more detailed plan, then a more detailed plan that includes the wiring for network, power, and audio, then some more details on monitor cables and how to hook them up to the multiple inputs. The trickiest part is usually the cables, network cables, power cables, and monitor cables, and in particular the LENGTH of those cables. I’m leaving the length planning so I know what to order and how many of each for later. I could possibly get away with my simple layouts and just guess things based on experience but since it’s a fairly different layout this time around I’m going to wait with that until I’m on the spot.

Audio Plan

In the layout image on the left you can see the process of going from a desk top (surface) layout to one that details what equipment will be under the desks. Primarily the under-the-desk planning is to provide enough leg space as well as the most efficient placement of computers relative to the monitors (again, a cable length issue) as well as planning which area I would be using the most. Combined with the under-the-desk layout there’s also some markings that allow me to plan which inputs on which monitors will be hooked to which outputs on
which machines.

At the bottom of the schematic there’s a bit of height measurement stuff to ensure things will fit properly, like the small 8U rack that I have planned for the combination of audio and network equipment. I’ll be using a simple Raxxess ER Rack (on rolling casters) 19 inch rack to hosue the current HP 1800-24G 24 ports gigabit switch and the new HP 1810-24G 24 ports gigabit switch. Along with the DLink DSR-500N.

Network Plan

There’ll be a pair of 9 individually switchable outlets in 1U strips in the rack. One will provide UPS backup power through one of the APC’s (for the networking equipment and some other related parts that will have their power cables run from it. The other will be hooked up just as surge protection and provides power to the audio portion of the rack. The audio portion will consist of a new Behringer Eurorack Pro RX1602 and the current RX1602 and Behringer DEQ1024 at a later stage. I’ll also be adding a new Behringer Ultracurve Pro DEQ2496, though. And of course the MiniAMP 800. Not sure yet what kind of speakers I will be hooking up. Since I will continue to use my Sennheiser HD650 headphones the choice of speakers is not a priority to focus on right now.

Power Plan

The image on the right provides an indication of what I plan to do with the audio wiring and setup. And yes, feel free to call me insane for all that audio stuff just to hear all my system sounds, mixed.

Equally important when planning a new layout and office setup is to plan the network ports and cables. The image on the right shows the current plan and as you can see I’m nearly filling up two 24 port gigabit switches.

But the most important thing, of course, is power. Without power there’s nothing. I’m going with four relatively lightweight UPS units, the APC BR1500G’s, because a lot of server based stuff is being decentralized in the new setup so having lengthy and extended run-time is less of a concern this time around.

The layout plan of the power configuration on the right gives you an idea of the number of outlets required to power everything that’ll be in the new office. As usual I probably forgot to include 10 different things which is why I’m making sure there’s plenty of sockets all around for convenience.

Most of the other hardware, computers, workstations, servers, monitors, cables, and just about everything else will have to wait a little longer because I first need to get the office in proper shape, which means power distribution circuits and outlets, carpet, and desks and furniture. In that order.

A lot of external USB and eSATA harddisks

Of course it is possible to travel with a few dozen virtual machines! After looking at the stack of external USB and eSATA harddisks I use to travel with essential materials I just had to take a picture of it. Sorry about the quality that isn’t up to snuff but I used the iPhone to take the snap.

Over the past year people have asked me, “when you have so much local storage, how do you decide what you travel with and how do you carry it with you”. Well, the picture here probably says more than a thousand words. Not that I couldn’t write a thousand words on it, if I really wanted to. And no, it is not a joke. I really do travel with 22 external HDD’s (over 13TB of storage).

Since I travel with the Clevo D900F “laptop” (ahum, sort of, mobile luggable workstation) I also travel with enough storage and data that if I need to grab a VM and do a quick fix on a bug somewhere, I can do so without having to wait until I can return to the larger workstations.

The current “travel batch” of disks consist of various brands because I usually get them as-needed but most are either Western Digital, Samsung, or Seagate’s in external enclosures that I just put together myself. The collection at this time are 8 x 1TB (USB), 6 x 500GB (USB), 2 x 500GB (eSATA 7200rpm), 4 x 320GB (USB), 2 x 160GB (USB).

Why so many? For the most part because I take a lot with me ranging from (encrypted) business data and mission critical data as well as quite a few development VM’s but also because I travel with my data in a redundant fashion. That is to say, I don’t have one set of files on one disk only, I have exact copies of those disks. So each external disk is a copy of another. Imagine a disk failure on a 1TB disk. That’s no fun. Especially if you can’t easily get to the data at any given point (or location) at any given time.

I would definitely advise everyone to do the same. If you travel and need to take important data and files with you, don’t cheap-out and go for double the backup. Anyone who has had a drive failure while traveling will know why spending a few extra bucks can save you a lot more in the long run when there’s a failure.

Cloud storage is not an option for me. I have never been a fan of storing important data somewhere where you don’t have any control over it. Recent revelations regarding, for example, DropBox, are only further proving my point. Would I ever trust a cloud storage service with business critical data of mine and my clients? No way! Even if I apply my own compression and encryption to it? Maybe but I’d still rather not.

Of course when you’re talking about the amount of data I travel with, cloud storage isn’t an option anyway. What am I going to do when I need to get 100MB of data from an external HD along with a 30GB virtual machine to work on the data? Download it via whatever crummy internet connection I might be hooked onto when traveling? And waste how much time doing that? Cloud storage can be useful, within reason, as long as you know what the drawbacks are and how much data you wish to put at risk.

In the past few months I’ve been asked several times what my new planned Home Office will look like, whether I plan to take any pictures, and if I already know what hardware will be running in the new Office. The short answer is; yes. I will be posting pictures as stuff arrives, will be writing posts and reviews when it makes sense to do so, and I will be creating the new Home Office 7.0 pages in the process. However, this time around it’ll be a bit more of a dragged out process. Because of logistics, international transport, timing, and really a TON of other practical details I will be splitting the full build of the new office into 3 stages.

The first stage is to get the electricity and power requirements sorted and made available and to furnish the new office with plenty of desk space. Then I’ll be adding the first new bits of hardware to it, for the time being a small server, a big PC workstation, and about the biggest baddest Mac Pro money can buy (12-core, 64GB RAM, 2 x 480GB SSD, 4 x 3TB RAID10 HD’s, 12TB external RAID5 storage).

Confused? Surprised? More Apple stuff? Yes, more Apple stuff, you read that correctly. The first stage will also require some 1500VA UPS’es, metered power distribution, a fresh 24-port gigabit switch, and for starters 3 fresh 30″ Dell UltraSharp monitors that will form the new main “work area”.

There is, of course, a lot more involved but specs on the hardware are still being adjusted based on requirement projections and I have not yet decided on a preferred vendor for who gets to supply me the new custom servers and workstations. Because I like to do business locally when possible and need a professional place that actually not only understands what they’re required to build but will provide top notch warranty and service it’s an on-going search and decisions are “pending”.

You can imagine, I bet, that any vendor would be more than happy and roll out the red carpet for a customer like myself who burns through more hardware than a QE lab does. Well, not quite that much but… substantial enough.

If you know of any professional kick-ass custom system builders in the San Francisco Bay Area who could build the kind of systems you’ve come to expect of me, let me know by e-mail stefan at (the domain you’re looking at).

The other thing to expect from the new office is a lot more LED lighting around the desk surfaces at the back and in “strategic” places (mostly to accentuate things a little bit and create a fitting “mood” that will match the glow of the monitors).

Once the first stage is completed and while I wait for other practical issues to be dealt with this will be the temporary setup I’ll be working with. After that stage two will require the transport of the current Home Office 6.0 (I’m not going to be shipping everything, though, just all the big stuff). Systems will be given a new purpose and different tasks and integrated with the temporary result of stage one. At that point it probably will look a lot like the current plan:

The current six 24″ screens are integrated, the iMac gets integrated near the main 3 x 30″ monitor area, and the real fun of velcro and cable management will probably take me a few days to deal with. Depending on yet more practical matters this stage 2 result will remain like that until space for expansion is available. The exact details on how that will look are unclear at this time but I have some ideas. I always have some ideas. I’m not posting them here because I get accused of “going overkill” so I certainly wouldn’t want to show anyone what real overkill might look like!

The real “nice” photos will have to wait until stage 2 has completed because all my camera gear will travel with me as carry-on when I fly back and forth to arrange the international transport of the office. Until that time I’ll have to work with considerably less in terms of cameras and lenses.

I know, I should blog more. But unfortunately I just don’t have enough time to keep up so I stick to only blogging about what I think has value or is worthwhile or fun to mention. Whether this post is funny, worthwhile, or valuable I’ll leave up to the reader to decide.

If you are having trouble debugging your addons/plugins for Autodesk Civil 3D release 2012 you are certainly going to want to read this. The information presented also appears to be applicable to other products such as Autodesk Inventor 2012 and AutoCAD MEP. Probably even all AutoCAD 2012 based products.

You probably found this post while searching for things relating to debugging your AutoCAD Civil 3D 2012 addons and running into a problem where the Visual Studio 2010 debugger fails to hit your breakpoints and does not show you the source of your application that you are debugging. If that’s the case, you are not alone, and you are looking for some detailed information about this problem.

It is starting to become clear that others are inquiring about this very same problem at the Autodesk forums for Autodesk Inventor as you can read about here (screenshot). Liam Smith believes this might be an issue with the location of PDB’s. Which is a logical enough assumption but very likely not what is really going on.

Allen Holman, on the other hand, thought this could be a VS2010 problem and sought help on the Microsoft MSDN forums. Instead of finding answers to the problem he’s trying to identify and solve, however, Allen gets publically accused by an Autodesk employee (Chris P. Johnson) of trying to break the licensing of the product and is reminded of the unethical nature of such activities as you can read here (screenshot). Chris adds that he confirmed that Allen is not an Autodesk employee, which is within his capabilities since Chris does work there.

It is so disappointing to see an Autodesk employee communicate in such a manner but it does make me wonder if I should conclude that developers who run into this particular debugger problem and attempt to seek a solution publically are to be accused of acts of breaking the licensing. I don’t know if Chris is fully aware that the accusation, depending on the country of origin of the original poster, constitutes a crime. Are all developers creating plugins for host products and wish to use their debugger and breakpoints suddenly potential software pirates?! To to best of my knowledge Chris doesn’t even work on AutoCAD based products but in a different product group.

Please Chris, if you don’t have something of value to bring to a problem forward it to someone within the organization that could help and don’t start accusing developers, publically. Think about what you’re writing in public and how this reflects on your employer.

Now, for everyone running into a “no source” and failure to hit breakpoints while debugging, your solution is very simple:

DO NOT CREATE MICROSOFT .NET 4.0 ADDONS for Autodesk Civil 3D 2012 if you wish to use the Visual Studio 2010 debugger. OR use the FIBERWORLD and NEXTFIBERWORLD ‘workaround’.

It’s that simple.

If you want to create .NET 3.5 addons and be able to use your debugger you will have to do two things. First, make sure your addon is targeting the .NET Framework version 3.5 (or 2.0). Second, change the acad.exe.config file so it reads:

<supportedRuntime version="v2.0.50727" />

instead of

<supportedRuntime version="v4.0"/>

The reason you need to do this is explained over at this blog (screenshot) and also this blog (screenshot). Unfortunately both of those detailed descriptions fails to mention the situation specific to .NET 4.0 using VS2010. It is as if this particular situation, which is the most logical situation if you want to develop .NET 4.0 addons for a .NET 4.0 host application, is obfuscated by the many technical explanations regarding this issue but is not actually addressed in any way.

All my tests, and trust me, those have been extensive and went as far as building clean VM’s to repro the problem in detail, show that while Autodesk’s 2012 release says it’s .NET 4.0, it fails to mention that it comes with a few quirks that prevent you from actually using .NET 4.0 features if you also wish to use your debugger. I consider a debugger to be the bread and butter of every developer so unless you wish to give up debugging, stick with .NET 3.5 and make the change in the config file or make use of the following, much better, and much more useful FIBERWORLD workaround for the problem.

Another thing to pay attention to is that this particular problem debugging .NET 4.0 addons for AutoCAD 2012 based products is that they are particularly prevalent when you are setting breakpoints inside the code of a Windows Form. There is some awful context switch going on. For example, you can still debug into the .ctor of a Form and code called by the .ctor but not any other code in the Form. Likewise, you can also debug into and hit breakpoints on code that is unrelated to any Windows Form. So even when you think you’re not hitting this problem, try it when using some Windows Forms. I have had mixed success using modeless vs. modal forms but in the end it doesn’t take much for the problem to rear its ugly head. Additional information about this particular fiber issue can be found on this page (and its original source in Chinese).

In case the Chinese is too hard for you to follow (it is for me too). There’s a system variable in AutoCAD called FIBERWORLD (read only and set to 1). If you start C3D from your debugger you can check this variable as being 1. Then just set NEXTFIBERWORLD to 0 (zero). Close all documents. Open your new document and start debugging. You will find FIBERWORLD be set to 0 (zero), also solving the problem.

Isn’t it surprising how this information comes from a far-away source and not from more official sources like at this blog (screenshot) and also this blog (screenshot)? The latter even gives an answer in the comments that they (Autodesk) have no idea about any of this.

So there you have it, the solution to your 2012 + VS2010 breakpoint/debugger/no source problems. And all without being accused of being a software pirate trying to circumvent the product’s licensing.

On a final note, though, expect a major performance hit when debugging .NET 4.0 using an AutoCAD 2012 based product. I am seeing a huge difference in performance when running and debugging with Civil 3D 2012 and a complex drawing using .NET 4.0. The 3.5 version and its associated workaround for the debugger issue does not lag and creep along as slow.

The following is a public announcement.

On several forums on the internet someone using the nickname EndeverouX, claiming to work on PS3 hacks and something called ONYX 3.56 CFW 3.56, is using the images of my home office in his posts and signatures. THIS IS NOT ME but just some pathetic individual who is often called a fake and a fraud by his peers and who felt it was a good idea to use the images of my home office in the false hope of gaining some credibility from his peers.

Needless to say, EndeverouX has now accomplished exactly the opposite because any credibility he might have had is now being taken away as I expose him for the fraud that he truly must be.

EndeverouX has been making waves and noise in the world of the Sony PS3 (PlayStation 3) with various claims about him working on some firmware hacks under the name of ONYX 3.56 CFW. Don’t ask me what that is or what that’s even about. Anyone who knows me or has read my FAQ knows that I don’t play computer games and that I don’t even own any computer game console of any kind. But from the stuff I’ve seen on the nextgenupdate.com site it seems it all revolves about hacking this ONYX 3.56 CFW stuff for the PS3.

Many of EndeverouX’s peers in the PS3 forums have considered his statements and claims to be bullshit combined with a serious level of lies and fraud. Whether that is true I don’t know but I think all those people who say that about him are probably correct in their assessment of EndeverouX.

There is no doubt in my mind that if someone has to show off my office and claim it’s their workstations and their “studio” and then have the audacity to use them as images in every post they make it is nothing less than a sign of very low self-esteem. It is also a sign of being incredibly stupid and DUMB because so many millions of viewers have seen the images over the years on my site and recognize them as such.

If you examine the above screenshot of one of his posts I’m sure you’ll get a laugh out of it. Notice how he’s having arguments with his peers and claims he “will not stop down to anyone’s low level”. But, EndeverouX, you have stopped much lower than anyone’s low level and this is the proof!

The reason I discovered this was after getting a lot of hits from some Spanish PS3 forum in which EndeverouX “studio” was mentioned. One of the Spanish users ran the image through TinEye and called EndeverouX for what he really is; a complete and utter fake who wanted to impress his peers with something that isn’t his. A quick search led me to the “home base” of this pathetic individual (who claims to be a 29-year old with 9 years of experience yet that is drawn into doubt by his peers).

I have asked EndeverouX why he is using the images of my home office in the manner in which he does but he has not come up with any explanation as of yet. Not that it really matters because anyone reading this can probably figure that one out without his help.

I have also sent an official copyright infringement notice to the folks over at the nextgenupdate.com forum since it is their forum that EndeverouX is using to publish, without permission and obvious fraudulent intentions, the images of my home office. I expect the forum admins will be removing the images as per my request (I bet they wouldn’t want to be held liable for someone who’s so clearly a complete fraud). I wouldn’t be surprised if they end up banning this EndeverouX person from their forums in violation of the policies (such as not posing copyrighted material).

Of course, what someone like EndeverouX wants is attention and it is very clear from his actions in the whole PS3 scene that it is what he craves. I doubt he wanted the kind of attention this will now bring to him, though. Especially on a site that’s so heavily visited as mine. I bet a little extra exposure on the officethieves.com website wouldn’t hurt either.

It’s a new kind of category for EndeverouX. I don’t think I have ever encountered an individual who’s claims are questioned by his peers and then to counter the doubts that are issues decides to use my office images to “buy” him some (non-existent and baseless) credibility. Wow, EndeverouX, you really are a piece of work, aren’t you?

Update: I was wondering why I was getting so many visitors looking for EndeverouX and CFW and ONYX 3.56. But the Google search results on the left explains exactly where all those visitors and web traffic is coming from. Welcome to your last 15 minutes of “fame”, EndeverouX. You’ve worked very hard for it so please be proud of yourself.

For the past few weeks I’ve been looking around for some bigger and more serious hosting and created a bit of a shortlist for myself to examine more closely when I have some more time. However, one of those hosts on the list WorldStream is now scratched off the list. I need to offload some of the local server tasks to something hosted outside of my office.

The reason for this? Because the host has shown themselves to be a company I would never wish to do any business with. Today I learned that WorldStream rolls over and plays “happy puppy” when a private organization with zero legal mandate requests the confiscation of *private property* that WorldStream is getting paid for to take care of.

For those who haven’t heard, there’s this private organization called BREIN. They’re often referred to by their opponents as an organization that operates a bit like a terrorist organization and lives off intimidation and anti-piracy activities they undertake for the members that they represent. Now, if they were doing a decent job and sticking within the confines of the law I have very little problem with it but it seems this slick operation of BREIN has grown to believe it is above the law.

Instead of doing the traditional takedown notices and going through the legal system to ask the courts to confiscate and seize material and equipment that might or might not have been used by those involved in the piracy of movies and music they decided, based on a very liberal and broad interpretation of the law, to head for WorldStream and confiscate 8 servers from a South American hosting company that had its physical servers hosted there. As if the hosting company was suddenly responsible for what one or more of their customers had been using server capacity for, without even being provided fair warning by this despicable organization called BREIN.

Without a court order, WorldStream cooperated and handed over these servers. It even appears that this privately owned extortionist operation called BREIN only wanted to return the servers to its rightful owners after discussing a financial settlement. Call it what you want but I call that theft and extortion.

But what is clearly more important in this evolving story (which is now getting BREIN into trouble for various forms of privacy violations) is that WorldStream rolled over for a privately owned organization without any legal mandate or powers to provide access to and physical confiscation of servers a client paid them to host.

That, dear WorldStream, is what got you knocked off my shortlist. You have shown that you can’t be trusted to host anything, much less the important corporate data and development systems I might have otherwise chosen you to host for me.

Needless to say, I am recommending to everyone else not to use this company for any hosting activities because it should be clear that your data and continuation of business might be at risk if a company is this negligent about its responsibilities towards its customers.

Oh, and BREIN, thank you for breaking the law and showing yourself as ordinary criminals. If you had not done so I would have potentially picked StreamWorld as my new host.