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News: Happy New Year |
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 Well, another year has just rolled by in what seems like a blink of the eye. Christmas is now over, and things are all returning back to normal. I've put on the customary half a stone over the Christmas period and have now stocked up on my 'statins' ready for the start of the fat and cholestorol reduction!
It's been a busy year, still a ton of work to do on the house. George is now running about and fast becoming a little monster, which I suppose is a good thing as my exercise routine should pick up a little as I have to keep jumping up from the couch and running after him. ;)
Anyway, enough from me, more to do, so I'd just like to wish you all a very happy new year.
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News: Free operating systems - any good? |
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It's several years since I last played with Linux but I thought I'd try out the latest version of Ubuntu Linux operating system to see how much Linux has evolved. I've left Windows 7 well alone for the last week or so and only used Ubuntu as my operating system to see if I could use it comfortably for everyday use. So, how has it faired?
Well, installation was a breeze, just loaded straight up and away I went. The wireless network started up with a message saying I'd have to update the drivers from the web but it allowed me to do this wirelessly! Firefox is installed as the default web browser and this worked fine so I was on the internet in just minutes. The installation was fast, the system boots up quickly, and all aspects of operation are lightning fast. Shutting down takes seconds! So all is good from there.
I next set up an email account with the built-in Evolution mail program. I looked up how to set up a hotmail account in Evolution on Google and found several short tutorials. Setting up hotmail was easy! And it worked straight away.
It has a built in office suite called LibreOffice so you can do all the usual word documents, spreadsheets, etc. but I haven't had a chance to test that out yet.
I have installed Skype and it works but doesn't seem as slick as the Windows counterpart. Google Chrome also went on and runs without issues.
However, there are still things that are not so straight forward and so doing more than the basics, e.g. setting up a domain account, takes a little bit of work. There is loads of information available on the 'net to help out, you just have to search a bit for your answers. However, I have achieved it with a little work and now have the wireless connection joining the network before I logon so can log straight into my domain account. I have set up an exchange mail account so I have access to my mail, calendar, tasks, contacts, and notes and all works well so far.
I have just installed Adobe reader so can quite easily read any PDF documents.
OK, so this is just a brief introduction to my journey so far with Ubuntu. So, do I like it? Yes, I do. I'm using it quite happily and so far have achieved everything I want to achieve on the computer and with only a little effort and absolutely no outlay. Of course, I'm not daft, I set up a dual boot system so I can still get on Windows 7 if I need to but for now I'll persevere with the free OS. I'll let you know of any further developments as I go along.
Anyone else tried Ubuntu recently? If so, how have you found it and how have you got on with it?
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 Time to create a new Topic area, I think... perhaps titled Rants!
I've spent a week in Rouen, France to attend a radar course. It's been a hard slog but I've actually enjoyed it. It's all new to me.
Still, on to the subject matter. We travelled from Ashford to Paris by Eurostar. I'd never been on Eurostar before so was quite looking forward to the trip. Anyone else travelled by Eurostar?
Anyway, the train arrived at the station and that's when things didn't look so bright. The doors opened and we found the carriage already packed, to the point where actually boarding the train itself was a difficult task. Once on we squeezed our way into the carriage and looked for our (expensive) seats. But they were all full. So, we had to politely ask the people sitting in our seats if they were supposed to be there and ask them to leave. There was a young woman in my seat so was I supposed to feel bad about it? Well, if I was it didn't work, I asked her to leave anyway. This applied for the other people boarding the train at the same time as me.
Well, we got going and I must admit the compartment was rather warm. This was probably generated by the cattle... oops, sorry, all the people who were squashed in down the carriage. People could barely move either way through it as the aisle was completely blocked. Trying to get to the buffet car was a job in itself. The raher rowdy French rugby fans then started whistling away together, before starting to sing. The singing got louder and louder as they drank more and more beer, or wine, until even my iPhone volume wasn't enough to drown them out (I took the opportunity to listen to some old Led Zeppelin favourites).
The carriage itself looked old and worn and the seats were showing signs of fraying. The journey I was looking forward to just felt reminiscent of the days of travelling on the well overcrowded British Rail trains of the past.
I come back tomorrow from Paris to Ashford. I no longer look forward to the experience, I have the feeling that I'll just be Eurostar livestock again.
What can I say? If I had paid for the journey myself I would have been bloody annoyed. Thankfully it was paid for by the firm who carried out our training so that softened the blow somewhat.
If you're thinking of travelling by Eurostar, I wish you luck.
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Posted by Rob on Thursday, March 03 @ 22:45:56 GMT Standard Time (363 reads)
(comments? | Rants | Score: 0) |
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News: I'm still here! |
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Hello all!
Yes, I'm still alive, and being kept very busy. House isn't being completed as quick as I'd like but that's my fault. Laziness always kicks in when you get to the harder jobs, or you're very easily distracted by other things.
Our work has been almost non-existant for the last 5 weeks and we've tried a few things to try to regenerate business but it seems no-one wants to spend any money!
I have been busy writing code for two of the other websites that I host, our business one at http://4d-cctv.com, and our aikido one, http://mushin-aikido.com. Although there doesn't seem to be much to see from the coding to the general user's eye, I can assure you there's a lot going on in the background! If you are a member of mushin aikido then you will get to see a little bit of it when checking out your user control panel.
However, for the admins there are lots of administrative pages which I have written from the ground up using PHP and MySql. This also applies to our business site where I have been giving us a customer database and the ability to search for customers, get their details, etc. I have just completed a page whereby we can actually create and produce a quote in pdf format. That was fun. My PHP and MySql understanding is certainly taking a turn for the better, I can do so much more now than the old days. :)
I've also taken to repairing the odd PC. To help advertise this I have produced a basic website at http://it.webhop.biz. Take a look at all these sites, I have to shamelessly plug them!
I've been helping my son to start up his website and discovered some nasty little bugs with PHP Nuke software. One of the first that I found was that new users could register themselves, receive their email, but once they followed the link they were sent they were registered but found they couldn't login as their password was found to be invalid. That's not the case! The problem was that the user's details never made it as far as the user table in the database! So they never existed! This is caused by a lack of default values in the initial sql database. Using PHP_MyAdmin I created default values for the two offending fields and hey presto, it now all works! This only occurs with newer versions of MySql, above v5.2, I believe. I know why. :) Anyway, my son's website will be found at http://concretefox.blogsite.org. It's a work in progress, he hasn't set it up yet but early advertising can't be a bad thing! Good luck, Jack.
While at it, I also found out that my site hasn't been accepting new users either! I have absolutely no idea how long this has been the case but I have resolved the issue now so lets see what the future brings.
I will try and post items on a bit more of a regular basis and we'll see where it goes from there.
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Posted by Rob on Sunday, May 23 @ 14:21:58 GMT Daylight Time (355 reads)
(comments? | News | Score: 0) |
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News: White Birthday |
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Hmmm, I have a white birthday. Pictures taken a few minutes ago (relative to the time I wrote this - tch!).
 
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News: Draytek Router - Part 2. |
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Well, my router has now been on for a few days with no further issues. I reported my problems to Draytek and let them know my findings and they have been extremely communicative with me. I'm pleased to say that they have been able to re-create the problem under lab conditions and their R&D lads now have the task of resolving the issue. So hopefully I've helped them identify a problem and they can resolve this issue once and for all and help out all the other people who have been suffering with similar issues.
Thanks, Draytek, for your support. I remain a loyal user of your prodcts. :)
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Posted by Rob on Friday, December 18 @ 16:46:08 GMT Standard Time (480 reads)
(comments? | News | Score: 0) |
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News: Draytek 2820Vn Dropouts! |
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Firstly, I must apologise to everyone who visits my sites on a regular basis or uses my mail server as the service lately has been fairly awful! The biggest cause of my problems has been my Draytek Vigor 2820Vn router.
I bought this router because of the reliabilty I have had from my previous two Draytek routers. However, this latest one seems to have had quite a few issues. It has been rebooting itself on very many numerous occasions with no apparent rhyme nor reason, or just plain locking up. I thought it was down to the wireless part of the router being faulty so I disabled wireless to see if things would sort themselves out. The router appeared to be a little bit more reliable then but not completely, it would still reboot randomly and the lockouts seemed to still be quite frequent.
Well, for anyone out there who stumbles across this article and is suffering the same problems here is what I believe the solution is! The router has now been up and running flawlessly for the last 14 hours, probably the longest period of time since I bought it! I'm not going to say it's definitely the answer just yet as I'd like to give it a couple of days first to ensure I'm happy with it. Also, for anyone interested I am running with the very latest firmware, V3.3.3_232201.
If you are running your own DHCP server then this is what you want to check. Obviously you will not be running the DHCP server in the router, and if you're like me you'll have the router relay agent enabled pointing requests to your own DHCP server instead. DON'T!!! Disable the server completely! That's it! Obviously, if it changes then I'll update this page but for now I'm smiling. :)
A little tip for anyone who has two ADSL lines like me but has their second line with a completely different subnet. How do you route between the two subnets with your 2nd router connected to your 2nd WAN connection of your 2820? Easy! Run your 2nd WAN router onto one of your lan ports. Then connect a lan port to the wan port of the 2820.... tada! :D
If you're wondering why I'd want to do that here you go. My first line has a download limit, my second has none. I occasionally grab files through the newsgroups so I have a rule which allows my news articles to be pulled through the 2nd router while retaining other traffic through the first. Also, it means that my servers can run without detriment if I want to download files at full rate for a while, people can still view my websites and collect their mail.
Anyone got any other tips they'd like to share? Leave some comments to let everyone know.
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Housework! |
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Really should start looking at adding new topic headings and icons...
Preparing for new staircase to go in, hopefully next week.
Well, started getting back to the deconstruction of our houses. I've starting pulling down the ceiling above the stairs in number 8 and have removed the loft hatch and refitted it back up at the real ceiling height. Unless you know the layout of our house that seems a bit weird but the ceiling height at the top of the stairs was about a metre below the room / hallway ceiling height so it needed to be done.
Today I need to remove the porch inside the front door of number 8. You would think all this deconstruction lark would be easy but it's far from it! For a start it means clearing all the area around you but as they're places that are in use constantly there's a lot of stuff to find homes for. The amount of mess generated is unbelievable, even though I'm trying to dismantle everything as carefully as possible so as not to destroy the surrounding areas. Then there's the electrics and central heating which just happen to have cable / pipes just where I happen to be working!
Going to have to make some trips to the tip today, I think, and dispose of more building rubble.
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Posted by Rob on Sunday, September 06 @ 11:44:18 GMT Daylight Time (524 reads)
(comments? | Score: 0) |
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Search engines. |
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Interesting results tonight... was looking through my logfiles and saw an amazing number of hits from various search engines, so I thought how popular has my site become?
I tried various search engines, entering the simple text Steelrat, to see what happened. Now, I thought that the novels by Harry Harrison, where I took my nickname from many years ago, would feature up at the top. I was surprised to see that I came second in every search engine I tried... second to Wikipaedia. Damned Wikipaedia getting in my way! :)
I suppose that perhaps I should post something interesting on the site now and again, shouldn't I?!
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www.mushin-aikido.com |
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paul4d writes "Hi all,
As some of you know, Rob and I have been training in Aikido for a while and have recently started a new club in Folkestone. Have a look here for more info. www.mushin-aikido.com
Hope you are all keeping well, keep in touch.
Paul.
"
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Posted by Rob on Thursday, August 27 @ 22:43:29 GMT Daylight Time (507 reads)
(comments? | Score: 0) |
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