Now, decoding HD video isn’t exactly the easiest task ever. Routinely, playing 1080p video would peg one of my processor cores at 100%, and I felt that justified keeping the extra horsepower around. About a year ago, I started experimenting with VDPAU, which allows UNIX machines to offload video decoding tasks to the GPU. I bought a new video card basically just to mess around with this feature, and eventually I got it working very well. I’ve been using it for all my video decoding needs. Recently, I found out that YouTube and a couple other sites started supporting hardware video acceleration in their Flash movie players. Since I do actually watch a lot of video online, this was pretty much the last thing keeping me away from low-power CPUs. I found out about the Nvidia ION chipset, which supports VDPAU, and happens to come on a lot of Mini-ITX motherboards. Now, if I could find the right combination of hardware, it would finally make sense to try and trim down my desktop.

My system was a X3220 Xeon Quad core processor. I had 4GB of RAM, but I never touched most of it. I had 3 2TB hard disks in a RAID5, and a 120GB Raptor root drive. I also had a Blu-Ray burner, which brings us to a total of 5 SATA devices. I ended up buying a ZOTAC IONITX-A-U Atom 330 1.6GHz Dual-Core 441 NVIDIA ION Mini ITX Motherboard/CPU Combo for $179, one day before they lowered the price and the rebate came out, which makes it $155 today (lucky you if you choose to follow in my footsteps). It has 3 SATA connections, and 1 eSATA on the back, and about a million USB ports. I’m going to hook up one of my RAID HDs with the eSATA, all the other HDs with the regular SATA, and I bought a $10 converter for the Blu-Ray drive from SATA to USB.

This is where the fun begins. The day I received the board, I quickly stripped the RAM out of my desktop and put it into the little Zotac. Once I got everything hooked up (at this point, just the Blu-Ray and my root disk, along with my TV and monitor). I booted it, and it performed beautifully. There were exactly zero snags getting it to boot into Ubuntu. Once in, I got to work making everything work correctly with the Nvidia ION and VDPAU and Flash. I managed to get it all working with the Nvidia 260.19.06 driver and Flash 10.2 d151 32-bit. This is a bit of a complicated process, and will be much easier once Adobe makes 64-bit Flash support VDPAU. This is only available in the 32-bit beta at the moment, and all this went down around November 2010.

The process for getting all this working is just barely documented here and here. You basically have to install getlibs to download and install a 32-bit version of libvdpau, then download npwrapper, which wraps 32-bit plugins with 64-bit bindings to make it work in all your favorite 64-bit browsers. Yeah, it sucks, but hopefully you’ll only have to do it once.

I can play Big Buck Bunny in 1080p completely smoothly (as long as my connection can keep up) with only about 30% CPU usage! I can also play pretty much everything in mplayer with VDPAU smoothly. But how has my power consumption been affected?

Before the changeover, I measured my computer’s consumption with a Kill-a-watt meter for several days. Idling with everything else off, the computer consumed around 160W. My old processor’s max TDP was 105W, and the idle wasn’t pretty either. The new Atom 330‘s max TDP is only 8W! Just changing this one component brought my current idle power consumption down to about 60W according to the meter, a 100W savings. Since power costs around 10 cents per KWh, and my old computer was using 3.84KWh/day, it cost around $12/month to keep it on all the time. Now, it’s only about $4.50/month. Obviously, this isn’t a HUGE savings, but considering I don’t have a giant loud computer next to me taking up space for no reason, I think it’s kinda neat. Also, this brings my computer well within the realm of being able to run exclusively on solar power, once I get my panels and inverter installed.

Since I bought a Mini-ITX motherboard, I could complete one of the projects I’ve had in mind for about 3 years now – an old-school toaster machine. I’ve had this toaster body for several years, and I really like it. I cut out the back panel with a plasma torch – that thing cuts this sheet metal like butter. Mounting the board inside was difficult – I tried welding the standoffs to the frame, only to realize they were aluminum and promptly melted when exposed to my steel weld wire. Kelsey and I pondered for a bit, and came up with hot glue as a solution. We went to Michael’s (eww), and got supplies. I hot glued all the standoffs to the inside of the toaster and let it set up for 10 minutes or so. This worked very nicely. After checking about 5 times to make sure nothing was shorted, I hooked up everything, and hit the power pins with a screwdriver blade. It powered up! I’m typing on the system right now, and it’s purring quietly. I can feel the very slightest bit of heat coming out of the top. I’ll post pictures as soon as I figure out how I can hook up my USB card reader.

As a result of this, Gabe decided he was out to get the DCC, our computing department, which is portrayed as the Evil Department of Computing Syndicate in the following short I helped film:

As you can see, I have a couple minor roles (playing cards and the exciting finale scene). Good times. Around that time we also constructed a 802.11b antenna from a dish Gabe bought from FAB-Corp, a bunch of packing tape, and my musical horse, Alpo:

He then dropped out and started his own business, called OvernightPC (I still have one of the CDs they passed out at a LAN party). They would come to your dorm room or home or business and fix your machines. The business did alright for a while, but eventually failed. Gabe moved to Portland, OR.

I went to OSCON in the summer of 2006, and stayed with Gabe. He had started running a web proxy service under various different names, like VTunnel. Wanting to expand his business (he was already pulling 6 figures in advertising revenue at that time), he flew a kid from England to Oregon to work on a new idea: Pay VPN service for anonymity. I’m not sure how this ended up working out.

I left after the conference, and the next thing I heard about him was that he moved to Florida and was loving it. Now, he’s at the center of the entire Sarah Palin Email Account Scandal. His service was apparently used to do the email password hacking deed. I’ll have to give him a call and see what he thinks about all this.

Update

I talked to Gabe on the phone today, and he told me he had done a video interview with Fox. It sounds like he’s doing well.

Video mirrored here:

Have you ever wondered what it would be like if no one ever upgraded to Web 2.0? I mean, really, what have we gained. Here’s a list of things that I personally find really stupid about the phenomenon:

Lists

I think there’s a list for everything now. Everyone wants to be David Letterman. Here’s a lists of lists of things, found on Digg by searching for “10 things”:

• Top 10 Things Americans Want but Can’t Have
• Procrastination: Ten Things To Know
• Things Everyone in IT Should Know
• Things No One Gives Microsoft Credit For (But Should)
• 16 Names Of Things You Never Knew Had Names
• Things Republicans want you to forget

Now, lists are all fine and dandy, but nowadays, most lists people put up are simply a ploy to get traffic, show more ads, and make money. Now, I have no problem with this at all – profits are the best incentive. But, really, it’s getting a little insane. Instead of lists, which are easy to skim, why not hide all your points in some real writing? Many of my friends and I, who are internet addicts, have realized that our reading speed and comprehension have suffered over the years due to the way we surf, which is skimming everything for that small chunk of information you want.

Social Bookmarking Icon Diarrhea

This picture says it all:

Really Big RSS Feed Images

Giant Footers

Here’s one:

Nobody looks at the bottom of your site. Sorry.

Lame Layouts

How to waste 2/3 of the screen

How to waste 3/4 of the screen

The first one of these I bought came DOA, but I just let NewEgg know about it, and they shipped me a new working one for free. Brilliant! I highly recommend you pick one up if you’re in the market.

Media Tested

One of the reasons I bought a new burner was the 200 discs I currently have that my old burner is incompatible with. I know now that at least 100 of those will work, since I sampled from a previosly non-working stack for the results above.

• Maxell 16x DVD-R
• Sony 16x DVD-R

Shutdown day is approaching. It’s May 3rd, 2008!

What I will do

• Turn off my desktop
• Turn off my laptop
• Turn off my routers
• Turn off most of the lights
• Read a book
• Go for a bike ride

What I won’t do

• Turn off the AC
• Turn off the fridge

Why

I’m not doing this to decrease my “carbon footprint,” decrease dependence on foreign oil, or for any other political gain. I’m doing this because it is a healthy thing for any human to do once in a while. Taking a break from the highest levels of technology is good for the brain and the soul. Readers, please join me!

----- BEGIN GEEK CODE -----
GCS d- s:+ a-- C++++$ UL++++$ P+++$ L+++$ E---
W+++ N++ o-- K? w-- !O M- V-- PS PE Y+ PGP++
t++@ 5? X R tv b+ Dl D+ G e++ h--- r++ y++
------ END GEEK CODE ------

To find out what that means, go to the link above.