6 June 2016

Buying a real Japanese knife

Recently, I was looking for a Japanese knife made of VG-10 carbon steel, santoku or gyuto, 7"-9", and preferably damascus steel. I had bought one a few years ago as a present from Paul's Finest website and it was a good purchase. This time I was looking around at different websites and as I'm not a chef, I didn't want to spend too much on a knife.

I found an interesting series of knives labeled Japanese knives. The prices were very attractive along with VG10 steel, multiple layers, and pakkawood handles. However, these knives are not "Made in Japan" by a master knife craftsman. The details indicate that they are made with Japanese top grade steel (imported from Japan)!

So, when choosing to buy a real Japanese knife, it is very important to do your research as a good knife made by a Japanese master craftsman will stay with you for life (provided you sharpen the edge regularly). A good knife is an investment, so budget accordingly. Good places to go and learn about Japanese knife for beginners: Reddit Cooking, Reddit knifes, GlobeandMail article, blade types, about steels, knife sharpening basics.

PS: I'm waiting for the Hattori san's Santoku or Gyuto to become available.

5 June 2016

CloudAtCost - VM performance pathetic

I had bought a VM (with one-time billing) last year in October. The price was the main attraction, $28. Also, it was not really for any kind of serious work.

However, over time the conclusion has been that the performance in general is pathetic. SSH login prompt takes about a minute or so to ask for password. This could be due to other issues, e.g. DNS response, so I thought it might be a one-time think i.e. at login only. However, the minute you are logged in to the console, simple commands like ls, uname, hostname, etc. take a few 10s of seconds to provide any kind of output.

Today has been the worst though. An apt update command took several minutes to get the updates from a us.debian.org repository, and apt upgrade command downloaded files at almost "dial-up era" speeds.
Get:24 http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ stable/main libxapian22 amd64 1.2.19-1+deb8u1 [983 kB]
Get:25 http://http.us.debian.org/debian/ stable/main openssl amd64 1.0.1t-1+deb8u2 [664 kB]
Fetched 49.7 MB in 12min 9s (68.2 kB/s)
Reading changelogs... Done
Preconfiguring packages ...


To top it all, was the error message below:
Message from syslogd@cacVM at Jun 5 17:07:31 ...
kernel:[2320366.614749] BUG: soft lockup - CPU#1 stuck for 22s! [mandb:1286]


SSH connection started at: 16:08:36
APT update and upgrade staus now 17:37:00
Progress: [ 52%] [###########################.........................]

Update:
Here are three commands run on the clouldatcost(CAC) VM compared to the same commands run on a VM on a homebrew Xenserver host.



CommandCAC VM outputxen VM output
~$ time dateSun Jun 5 23:06:11 EDT 2016

real 0m3.468s
user 0m1.296s
sys 0m2.136s
Sun Jun 5 23:12:15 EDT 2016

real 0m0.002s
user 0m0.000s
sys 0m0.000s
~$ time uname -aLinux cacGuest 3.16.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.16.7-ckt25-1 (2016-03-06) x86_64 GNU/Linux

real 0m6.387s
user 0m1.372s
sys 0m4.360s
Linux xenGuest 4.5.0-2-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.5.5-1 (2016-05-29) x86_64 GNU/Linux

real 0m0.002s
user 0m0.004s
sys 0m0.000s
~$ time host google.comgoogle.com has address 172.217.2.142
google.com has IPv6 address 2607:f8b0:400b:80b::200e
google.com mail is handled by 40 alt3.aspmx.l.google.com.
google.com mail is handled by 30 alt2.aspmx.l.google.com.
google.com mail is handled by 10 aspmx.l.google.com.
google.com mail is handled by 20 alt1.aspmx.l.google.com.
google.com mail is handled by 50 alt4.aspmx.l.google.com.

real 2m9.744s
user 0m8.400s
sys 0m51.124s
google.com has address 172.217.3.142
google.com has IPv6 address 2607:f8b0:400b:806::200e
google.com mail is handled by 10 aspmx.l.google.com.
google.com mail is handled by 50 alt4.aspmx.l.google.com.
google.com mail is handled by 20 alt1.aspmx.l.google.com.
google.com mail is handled by 30 alt2.aspmx.l.google.com.
google.com mail is handled by 40 alt3.aspmx.l.google.com.

real 0m0.550s
user 0m0.024s
sys 0m0.008s

2 June 2016

Waiting for pfSense appliance

Can't wait for the in-development μFW appliance for pfSense. It is expected to be out in 2016 Q3 i.e. as early as July! Here is a image of the product that pfSense devs have been teasing with.

Highlights

  • Runs pfSense on ARM
  • Size 74mm x 43mm, smaller than a credit card
  • 2 GbE ports (not on USB 2.0!)
  • 4GB eMMC and microSD card support
For full details head on to the product page at ADI Engineering. Also, initial version of manual for the μFW.