Recently, I have begun to feel a change, hard to describe precisely, but it feels like the tumblers in an unknown lock have moved into place, and is opening, or maybe the better word is unfolding.

This is how all the best H.P. Lovecraft stories begin. I have often thought that if/when the Great Old Ones return to take over the Earth, that I would think I should have seen it coming, and that news stories like this should have been my first clue…sigh.

INFP personality | 16Personalities.

Today while at the Tracy Sewage Pond I spotted…

A Better Queue.

I recently installed and configured FreeBSD 10.0 on an old desktop so that I could learn the system. I have been surprised by how powerful it is, and I had assumed that since it was a Unix, that I would know everything about it having had a decade of experience with Linux, but I was wrong. It is still very different, and those differences are what make it a good OS. One thing that surprised me, was that you can use a Swap File (in /usr/swap0) instead of a swap partition.

When I installed I went with the ZFS system, and I had assumed that it would automatically configure a swap partition. It did not, and my system really started heating up under the heavy work load of compiling software, and the system fan ran so hard my computer literally started to sound like a blow dryer.

Once I realized the mistake, I followed the instructions from section 12.2 of the handbook...

this command creates the swap file, and writes zeroes to it, I made it 2 gigs, you can make it whatever you want by changing the "count=" flag, a good rule of thumb is swap should be twice system ram.

 dd if=/dev/zero of=/usr/swap0 bs=1m count=2048

and then change permissions on the swap file ...

chmod 0600 /usr/swap0 

then add the entry to the fstab file in /etc

md99	none	swap	sw,file=/usr/swap0	0	0

it is named md99, memory device 99 to leave smaller numbered md's (i.e. md01 md02 etc) available for you to use. The Handbook mentions that a kernel module must be pre-loaded or a custom kernel compiled to use this feature, but from 10.0 on the GENERIC kernel supports this out of box, so no worries there.

Reboot, or start swap with ...

swapon -aq 

and your system should be running more smoothly. the command

 mount -a 

or

mount

will not list the swap file (because it is a file and not a partition), but you can see the added memory listed in the command

top

Now my system runs so much smoother I don't think I have heard the system fan even once, I even wondered if the fan had died, and had to check that it was still working, it was. 

Joe and I went on a trip around town today, taking pictures of all the murals here in Manteca. Some of them are Very Cool.

Joe had to jump in on this one.

Yellow-Billed Magpie, becoming fairly rare in this part of the valley.

I really like this one, it was called "Manteca Snow"

I've posted this mural before, except the Accent Carpet One sign was not put up, I'm not really sure if it needs to be said, but you people at "Accent Carpet One Floor and Home" are assholes. Thank you for hocking your merchandise all over our public art. I think restitution may be in order here.

The most famous Manteca Mural, if you look closely there is a mural inside the mural.

Awesome, I am definitely looking forward to the new mini-fig sets and the Star Wars. I wish LEGO Architecture would hurry up and do LEGO Rome.

Rumored LEGO 2015 Sets Roundup | neoape.