I have just taken a look at my favourite computer supplier, eBuyer with a view to building another system, and discovered that RAM prices are up a staggering 65%, at 46.36GBP for 512MB PC2700 (I paid 30.21GBP, plus tax), with similar price increases at other, similar suppliers. Wonder what could be the cause?

Well, it's been a few days, but I have finally got my new system set up and working almost as I want it. Keeping the Athlon 2200+, the Asus A7V8X-X, the Radeon 7500 and the (unbranded, but tested) 1GB RAM, it now has two DiamondMax Plus9 120GB 8MB ATA133 hard drives set up in a RAID-1, running Debian GNU/Linux (running kernel 2.5.75) on SGI's XFS filesystem, all in a nice big aluminium Coolermaster ATC-201C-SX1 case. Phew, what a mouthful!

After using Slackware for a year or two, I'm going to try Debian. Debian has my favourite programs all conveniently compiled (over 8000!), and I'm fed up with compiling everything from source, and having it not comple cleanly. More often than not I spend more time getting the thing to compile than using it. (I hate using binaries. Really.)

Anyway, I was intending to get two 120GB Maxtor Diamondmax Plus9 7200RPM HD's, and have them together in a RAID-1, with XFS filesystem and probably kernel 2.5.

With regard to XFS vs. ReiserFS vs. EXT3, etc., there is an excellent guide to the various filesystems, the Advanced filesystem implementor's guide over on IBM developerWorks. It makes excellent reading.

I was about to order the drives, but reading various reviews of the Diamondmax line, reliability seems to be a serious problem. The ones that work seem to perform excellently, but reviews from owners of those that have failed gives me serious doubts about it's reliability. Taking all that on board, I think I'll look around for a better model. Suggestions will be welcome.

On a completely different note, following the reaching of its trigger level, BT has announced that my exchange will be enabled by the 8th October. Result!

Today my exchange triggered. That means that enough people registered their interest in broadband for BT to consider it ecomonically viable here. I think some person or persons unknown entered in some fake registrations, but with any luck broadband will be on it's way in the very near future, arriving before Christmas!

Here is my new toy, my journal. How cute.

Today I have received modpoints for the very first time. It feels like when handling a gun for the first time. Eager to play with my new toy, I instantly decided to try a practice run. Aiming for an easy target (a bit like when firing a gun at a target range as a beginner, you pick the easy targets), *BANG*, I modded a nice juicy troll down -1, Redundant.

As it happens, it wasn't Redundant, it was merely Offtopic, I just wanted to try it out. I don't think anyone will complain anyway.

I feel very much better now. I could get a feel for this! *Insane cackling*.