Ever since I rewrote the code behind this site to be all static (oh you didn’t notice) I’d been meaning to update the theme.

Part of the original ploy was to swap out the backend code from wordpress and replace it with my own backend without altering the site appearance at all. This meant slicing up the shocking HTML code which came out of the theme I was using and adapting it to my code.

Fortunately I wasn’t using too many features in wordpress and ultimately it had become a maintenance issue. To reduce risk (from software issues leading to a compromise/defacing) and service side resources (I was running mysql only for wordpress) I wanted to produce all the site HTML code from simple simple text files offline and sync them to the web server. Rather than generating on the server or on demand. Ultimately I selected markdown as the formatting for these files (with some minor metadata) and knocked up a tool in C# to iterate over my post files and produce the site (from a template not too unlike T4). This was then synced via rsync-over-ssh to the web server. I considered allowing dropbox to sync it but didn’t in the end (yes that was a referral link).

Fast forward over 12 months, and I finally knocked up a new BootStrap based theme. The final motivation to do this was the file server rebuild post which will follow this one. In the previous theme it looked like crap (mainly bulletted list issues). My only issue with building a theme from scratch again is colours. However after some messing around and studying other sites which work I decided on these. Unless someone points out it’s utter crap I think I’ll leave it as is. To me the colours aren’t too strong or in your face which is what I prefer, and it’s not far off the default theme colours in Sublime Text which is the editor I built it in. I have to admit, CSS has come a very long way since I last tried to build a clean site with content/presentation separation and a framework like BootStrap gives you an excellent flexible foundation to build on. I’ll be sure to use it in a future project (the nas one).

So recently I took a whole week off to work on personal projects. I started by creating a list of things I wanted to achieve in that week, mainly things I’d not quite got to in my normal downtime and then expanded from there. Despite trying to not let this list grow too big - for fear of building an insurmountable task list - I managed to keep it to two main projects and a handful of smaller separate tasks.

The two main projects were deliberately not related, with the idea of being able to spend alternate days on each, or simply swapping when I got stuck or simply needed a change.

Unfortunately I never quite got started on these two projects but did make major progress on nearly everything else. These included rebuilding my file server, regular exercise, rebuilding my desktop pc, catching up on recent TV and a laundry list of random odd jobs around the house.

The file server rebuild deserves a whole post so I’ll keep that separate.

The desktop PC was simply an overdue thing. My previous main desktop died (north bridge failure) probably about 2 years ago. Since then I used an Asrock Atom330 as a desktop which then became my media pc and then an AMD based desktop (which began life as a bitcoin mining box). The AMD machine had to run windows due to the linux ati drivers being an epic pile of crap.

So to cut to the chase, I replaced the whole machine;

• Shuttle SZ77R5 ($420)
• Intel Core i7-3770 ($300)
• 32GB RAM, 4x8GB 1600Mhz ($200)
• Nvidia GTX670 factory OC’d ($440)
• (reused a 120gb ssd)
• Total cost $1360 + ssd.

I think the thing I was most impressed with was at idle the machine uses 40W and at 100%CPU and 100%GPU (CUDA) it was pulling 220W. Oh and I’m back on linux again too which is nice.

The graphics card barely fit in too, which was funny.

That’ll do for now. The file server rebuild post is going to be huge!