Technomonk - Diary of a geek

Dreamhost have some pretty amazing deals on hosting. With this code FLIBSAVES you can save even more.

The one year prepayment on the Level 1 package just can’t be beat imho, where else could you get a years hosting with 200Gig of space and 2Tb or bandwidth a month (raising month on month (by 16gig/mo for me)) for $32.40 per year?

Level 1: Crazy Domain Insane!

• 200GB storage space, 2TB monthly transfer.
• Monthly payment: $59.90 - $40 = $19.90 (In the first month)
• One-year pre-payment: $119.40 - $87 = $32.40
(This is the package I’m on)
• Two years pre-payment: $190.80 - $87 = $103.80

Level 2: Sweet Dreams

• 300GB storage space, 3TB monthly transfer.
• One-year pre-payment: $239.40 - $87 = $152.40.
• Two years pre-payment: $382.80 - $87 = $295.80.

Level 3: Code Monster

• 400GB storage space, 4TB monthly transfer.
• One-year pre-payment: $479.40 - $87 = $392.40.
• Two years pre-payment: $766.80 - $87 = $679.80.

Level 4: Strictly business

• 500GB storage space, 5TB monthly transfer.
• One-year pre-payment: $959.40 - $87 = $872.40.
• Two years pre-payment: $1534.80 - $87 = $1447.80.

All they ask is that you don’t abuse the service, even allowing the setup of shell accounts on your space on their servers.

My account hasn’t been active long but already I’m impressed, even to the extent of being able to point subdomains of my current domain at their servers without having to move my whole infrastructure over to their services (which is the one reason I have moved away from some of the other providers I’ve used.)

I’ll quickly compare the dreamhost offering to one of the providers I have used in the past: abodehosting.com

This is a fairly standard offering on the current internet, Their bronze package comes with 50 MB web space (which is 4000 times smaller than the dreamhost offering), 1GB of bandwidth (which is 2000 times small than the dreamhost offering), 2 MySql databases (Dreamhost offers unlimited mysql databases) Unlimited Pop3 (Dreamhost say the limit on level 1 is 3000 pop3 addresses, but how many companies even hit 300 let alone 3000? The mailbox space is more important!) and PHP/CGI Support (Dreamhost gives the option of both PHP4 and PHP5, allows the option enablement of extra security features for the virtual host (which I hadn’t seen before) and is pretty secure by default)

In addition, dreamhost also allows the setup of QT streaming from your space, jabber instant messaging and can even support frontpage extensions. All in all, I was very impressed.

Just caught the first 2 episodes of ‘The IT crowd’. Funny as hell.
Even if you miss them on tv you can catch the first two episodes on the channel4.com website.

Why is it that jobs are like buses? None arrive for a while then many come along at once…

Currently working on two control panels for two different copanies. One for PBX control, the other as a replacement for plesk/cpanel. However this doesn’t mean I’m not on the lookout for a fulltime job still, just trying to fill the time I have availible.

Its not accually that complex its just a matter of getting the database structure right so that stuff can be modified at a later date without needing to build a completely new database structure.

Found this page while searching, seems to explain the procedure fairly clearly.

As part of my job hunting, I’ve registered on a few job sites and with a few agencies. Many of these have appitude tests and personality tests. One of these jumped out at me by being pretty accurate…

‘As a Believer you believe the world has almost infinite possibilities. You believe people should be pursuing their passions and not be caught up by what others say they should desire. Your entire life involves continuously having new experiences and learning from them. It is the challenge, the risk, the prospect of what you can achieve that drives you, rather than simply making money. You’re a self-motivated individual driven by your passion and so need a job and environment with loose boundaries and maximum freedom.’

It pretty much sums up most of what I’m about.

For a while now, I have seriously been considering moving from XP as my desktop OS of choice to Linux. I already use Linux on my laptops and firewall and the only things that were stopping me changing over were a couple of applications that I need every few days that I couldn’t find equivilents for in Linux.
After playing with Windows Terminal Server at a clients premises I thought I had found the answer to my problem.

There was no problem with the windows part of the configuration, which slightly suprised me, and the majority of the Fedora Core 4 install went well. The only problems being a bizzare high pitched hiss whenever sound was played back on the onboard soundblaster clone and the nvidia drivers causing X to crash.

After much googling I found a forum post that mentioned that the IEC952 in the mixer settings needs to be enabled and turned off. This seemed to cure the problems with the sound. Its strange since I don’t recall any problems with the sound on this machine before this install.

The nvidia driver was a little more complex but I can now understand why it happened.

When FC4 is installed it uses a basic nvidia driver called nv. This supports very few features and its recommended to replace it with the drivers off the nvidia site.
I downloaded these and installed the modules without a problem. When it came to the xorg.conf file the instructions with the driver worked first time with a single monitor.

I started X and used the display settings applet to add the second screen into the xorg.conf file. When I restarted X it caused it to attempt to start and then crash out.
In the end I noticed that the display settings applet was adding the second screen correctly, however it knew nothing about the new nvidia driver (nvidia), so it used the old one (nv).
Once this was changed everything worked fine and I know have a loverly dual headed desktop under Linux.

In addition I have a single XP box on my network which I use a terminal services client to access. This allows me to run any applications that are availible on windows only with no alternatives on other OSs.

Maybe in the future I’ll grab myself a little MacosX box to play with….

Aching.
Hot.
Stuffy.
Drowsy.
Hard to beathe.
Cracked lips.
Sore nose.
Producing tons of snot…

I hate flu.

Since I came back from Ireland, I’ve been looking for a job. They say that changing jobs and moving house are some of the most stressful events in your life. I did both at the same time.
After all the problems I had in Ireland I didn’t feel I could face another dose of stress straight away.
I’ve managed to make some serious headway on projects that have been sitting on the back burner for months or in some cases years. Living on donations from family and a small amount of contract work.

I’ve had a lot of time to think since then. My aims in no particular order are:

• To get a job, something that I enjoy, something that pays reasonably (not necessarily a large amount), somewhere where I am happy with the ethical and moral standards involved.
• To get transport, preferably a motor bike. Probably on the DAS so I’m not driving something that looks more at home sitting under a 10 year old.
• To get my own space. I know it cheaper to live with parents, but it would be nice to get my own space again like I did in Ireland. Somewhere that I have space to do my own projects, maybe with a like minded geek.
• To get relevent qualification and/or finish my univeristy course, probably with a credit transfer to the OU, but I haven’t ruled out part time study.

I don’t believe these are impossible goals, in fact once I manage to get a reasonably well paid job most of the others should fall in to place.
To get a bike from scratch it’ll probably cost about £2000 including tuition.
I’m already considering an offer to get a place with someone likeminded only money and a location (well I suppose I have nothing then) are stopping me.
I already have some industry qualifications, but they are old and not worth much anymore ( MCP in Win NT 4 anyone?) and I have most of the Cisco training material (and have actually read a lot of it), so I just need to sit the exams.

Anyway… back to bed, its gonna be a long day tomorrow.

Been playing with PXE booting lately, pretty cool tool.

Currently got it working so I can simply put a mac address and ip address into a web page… set a system to pxe boot, reboot it and within 15 minutes I have a freshly installed linux server sitting on my network waiting to be put into use…

The web page will even tell me roughly how far the install is done.

Just been reading about the canvas tag and decided to have a play…

Mike’s Canvas Demo
Mike’s Canvas Rotation and Translation Demo
If anyone knows the correct way to add the tag to a page please let me know since it currently fails parsing. I’m sure it has something to do with namespaces…