Al’s WebLog

I have a need for external storage. Mainly to make ‘backups’ portable *cough*. I also feel the need for more disk on my MacBook so I can install Windows (work means I need to, sadly). So, I was thinking I’d buy an external 160GB 2.5″ drive and swap that disk into my MacBook and put the 60GB in my MacBook into the enclosure. PC World have Maxtor jobs for 80quid, which is nice, but I note from http://www.maxtorsolutions.com/en/catalog/OTIII_Mini/ that these claim to be ATA, now ATA to me means PATA and not SATA. I need SATA so ATA wouldn’t work – but of course ATA could be PATA or SATA so I am confused. Anyone know if a) the Maxtor minis are SATA b) the drive is swapable? Alternative options welcomed. Ta.

Update: It is a Seagate Momentus 5400.3 inside, which is an Ultra ATA/100 drive, so no go.

What with OW going bye-bye in 3 weeks, I figured I should remove any OW servers from my domains – things like secondary MX and DNS. I could just use Morgins (colo in Manchester) and Avoriaz (ADSL in my house), but ADSL is not to stable and Avoriaz gets turned off now and then when people stay over and turn it off so they can sleep (fair enough!). So, I needed someone that did secondary stuff. I read UKNOT and Gradwell.com gets mentioned a bit so I had a look. They do slave DNS and MX relaying for up to 50 domains for 20quid+VAT a year. I couldn’t argue, so signed up. I have to say it was the smoothest on-line technical thing I have done in ages and apart from them not making it clear which IP I needed to allow transfer from (its in the FAQs but they could stick it on the set-up page) I can’t fault it. So now I have nice secondaries and I can remove OW (well, I could if 123-Reg would answer emails!).

Speaking of 123-Reg, they suck. Since they got bought by Pipex they have restructured they now never answer the phone and take up to two weeks to reply to basic support requests (like removing a 5th name server. Their on-line system only deals with up to 4). I will be moving my domain registrations to Gradwell ASAP I think, before the rooting carcass (a quote from UKNOT) creates too much gas and explodes sending maggots everywhere. Sorry to be graphic, but its a good analogy!

In other news, a US ISP I’m working with for a client is telling me LVS doesn’t work how I want – they thus suck. I am right damn it, so I am setting up LVS at home to prove I am indeed as correct as the documentation

I have a router downstairs and a computer that needs access to it upstairs. Could I cable in hub into an AirPort Express upstairs and have it connect to another AirPort express downstairs that connects to the router? I should just stick a wireless card in the upstairs box shouldn’t I, why did I only think of that as I type this. Anyone recommend a wireless card to go in a Dell server running Linux (WPA 802.11g network)?

I other news, work looks bleak.

Am I wrong, or is the end dot on a domain name / host name technically the correct form and the lack of the dot a technical incorrectness that is tolerated? If so, please explain why the BBC can’t manage http://bbc.co.uk./

Anyone?

A while back, told me off for using nested tables on my homepagey thing and said all the cool kids were using CSS. So… I give you my new CSStastic homepage/blog/thing http://www.bullit.net/al/.

Its not actually finished, I messed up a mv ../../../ which should have been a ../../ and went live early, but hey… I’ll add the random gallery image and such like back on shortly.

Okay, how do I make it so mail for which my Exim is a relay (high MX) is not scanned by spamd? Whilst I don’t mind filtering spam out of ‘s and others mail, I’d like the option in case they do. Thanks.

I have given spamassassin a thorough going over on Morgins. Configs tweaked, razor2 added, RBL stuff added though no SPF for an odd reason I have yet to work out. Several thousand spam mails stuck through sa-learn too. Hopefully this will help stop mailboxes filling up with junk and ham mail ending up in spam folders (which really annoys me).

Arse. Two things I discover are broken today. Firstly, Codetek VirtualDesktop Pro does not run (well, it runs but doesn’t work) on Intel Macs, so I have only one desktop ATM which is like, wrong. Secondly it appears that although SpamAssassin has been letting thousands of spam mails a week through, it had a mad moment last week and tagged a bunch of mails as spam that aren’t! I have updated SA and tweaked some settings and hopefully all will be well again. I will sort through my SPAM folder tomorrow and make sure nothing else was caught wrongly.

Good news though is that my MacBook has been sat on my lap for an hour now and isn’t all that hot, tepid I would say (running on battery). Bed time now, night night world.

In the old days I would move the Apache logs to one side, renaming them as I went, then restart the Apache. When I could use a ‘graceful’ restart this wasn’t to bad, but now I need to use a ‘restart’ (‘cos graceful seems to bork with PHP) I feel uncomfortable about kicking out connections. So I was looking for options I came across something I should have known about before, but didn’t, “rotatelogs – Piped logging program to rotate Apache logs“. This seems like a nice solution, but I worry about reliability etc. Has anyone any experience of doing things this way? I would be interested to hear about them

Up at 4am this morning, to watch the Australian F1 GP. It was a good race overall, thought sadly for Button there were to many safety cars. I spent a bit the the early hours taking a look at the a look at the external site interface API for Gallery, used it to stick a random image on my homepage but I could not quite work out how to add a list of newest galleries; I only managed to make it say “Array” I upgraded the Gallery software to version 2.1 whilst I was about it too. I should hack about with PHP iCalendar to make it generate the calendars down the right hand side next.