As mentioned in thatlinuxbox.com now runs on a Linode, I switched from A2 Hosting to Linode a few weeks ago. The new Linode server is running great so today I canceled my A2 Hosting account.

I ditched A2 Hosting because the low apache MaxClients settings meant my sites were giving 503 errors and when pages did load ok they were generally missing images.

Beware so-called "Unlimited" shared web hosting plans. They are cheap for a reason. The MaxClients setting makes an effective bottleneck to limit site traffic and usage. When I asked A2 Hosting about this problem they suggested that I upgrade to one of their own VPS hosing packages. Um, no thanks. I switched providers instead.

It seems like there is an un-tapped niche in there somewhere. My Linode 360 costs $20 / month. I was paying $6 / month for the A2 Executive Web Hosting Plan. I would have loved to pay $12 for shared hosting that did not suck.

However, now that I'm on a Linode VPS plan I am probably hooked... it is really darn convenient to have my irssi client logged into IRC all the time and available to me anywhere I can get an SSH shell.

Probably no surprise to anyone, my home desktop computer runs Linux.



I recently posted Heatsink Bracket and Clips for new CPU cooler so I thought I ought to post more details about that system.


Here are the specs:

This Zalman is too loud:



Here is the funky bracket the Zalman uses:

Due to issues with shared web hosting plans (mostly due to insanely low apache MaxClients setting), I have moved all of my thatlinuxbox sites over to a Xen VPS solution offered by Linode.com (www.linode.com).  Linode compares well with SliceHost and other VPS providers, although Linode offers 360 MB RAM and 20 GB of disk space (the plan I chose) which gave them an edge in my comparison.

There is a lot more administration overhead with VPS compared to shared web hosting, but my sites actually work and I have flexibility to run whatever software I want including rsync and irssi.  I am very pleased so far and all of my sites are snappy again.

Here is the complete list of fiction that I read during 2009 (total of 84 works, mostly Speculative / Science Fiction):

 

I'm sure that other sites will do a better job of reviewing the Droid in-depth, so I will just give some impressions and post a few pictures.

Here are the first pics (note: Jabba is not to scale):

The Droid sitting next to my semi-ancient work-provided BlackBerry: