Present Perfect

I guess I see enough shows to be able to draw statistically relevant conclusions on the evolution in concerts...

• concert prices have gone way up... five years ago, fifteen to eighteen euro was the norm for a band with two albums under their belt. Now I regularly end up paying twenty-thirty euros and more for the same bands. Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan were thirty at the door yesterday. Jonsi, with just one album, was 40 euros. I'm ok with that - I'm sure this is compensating for falling CD sales. I just hope the band gets a big enough cut here.
• The second encore has become a real rarity. I can't remember the last time it happened. I've never been able to figure out if this is more up to the band or the venue. I know some bands simply don't play encores - the XX for example. It used to happen all the time.
• Artists seem more approachable. These days often they come out after and sign stuff for people. Again example yesterday - Mark Lanegan usually goes straight to his hotel room after his show... who'd have thought he'd ever stay out and sign stuff ?
• While they're more expensive, concerts are shorter than they used to be. 90 minutes isn't that common anymore... Even bands that now have a bigger catalog than they used to now play shorter shows. I've always wondered how the dynamics of this work... Does a band list different prices for different show lengths?

I thought I had more useful insights but I can't think of any more. Oh well.

One thing has not changed however - the audience stops clapping and cheering as soon as the lights go on and the house music starts playing. People are conditioned, so it's easy for someone to decide whether there will be another encore or not. Just can't figure out if it's the venue or the band deciding.

I guess I see enough shows to be able to draw statistically relevant conclusions on the evolution in concerts... concert prices have gone way up... five years ago, fifteen to...


[thomas@otto ~]$ dropbox stop
Dropbox isn't running!
[thomas@otto ~]$ dropbox start
Dropbox is already running!


Seriously, if you shout harder either statement might jump out of quantum space and correct itself into reality.

[thomas@otto ~]$ dropbox stop Dropbox isn't running! [thomas@otto ~]$ dropbox start Dropbox is already running! Seriously, if you shout harder either statement might jump out of quantum space and correct...

From top:


13815 thomas 20 0 3813m 1.5g 13m S 6.3 40.4 632:22.30 pulseaudio


W. T. F.

From top: 13815 thomas 20 0 3813m 1.5g 13m S 6.3 40.4 632:22.30 pulseaudio W. T. F.

Googling isn't helping me much with this question. Pretty soon I'm going to want to buy a video card that can output Full HD HDMI video with audio integrated, all from Linux. This card should be noiseless, so fanless. Do cards like that exist yet ?

Googling isn't helping me much with this question. Pretty soon I'm going to want to buy a video card that can output Full HD HDMI video with audio integrated, all...

Fedora comes with NetworkManager enabled out of the box. AFAICT it starts the network as part of a service script in init.d, then later on after logging in it reconnects as a user. At least, that's what it looks like to me.

The problem is, I just came home, and for some reason the media server was down. The media server also has the primary of my new DRBD setup, and bringing the machine back up didn't bring back the DRBD sync.

Digging deeper into /var/log/messages, it turned out the network wasn't active when drbd got started, and so it failed to connect to the peer.

Obviously, if this machine reboots I want drbd to Just Work.

NetworkManager's init script is S27, drbd is S70, I would have expected the network to be up by the time drbd kicks in. It looks like this wasn't the case. And I can foresee situations where NetworkManager re-connecting after my (automatic) user login not helping either if anything in the background is trying to connect to the network.

What should I be doing instead on a machine like this ? Remove NetworkManager entirely ? Is that even still possible today ? How do you set it up?

Fedora comes with NetworkManager enabled out of the box. AFAICT it starts the network as part of a service script in init.d, then later on after logging in it reconnects...