So I got the Canon 20D a few days ago, on a great deal that saved me 160£ off list price, and with a free 4Gb Card (20D list price is £999, with no memory).

And content I was, until a friend of mine (Chris) made a very good point, why keep the 4GB card ? very unlikely one will take close to 1000 shots all at once, and they are set to come down in price soon, why not sell the 4GB card now at a premium, get some cheap 512’s or 1GB’s and buy a portable storage device with 20 or 40GB.

That got me thinking, so after looking around for a nice portable device, I found the Epson P-2000 .. with a great 3.5″ TFT, 40GB,, and the most important off all, RAW support.

There are others who are cheaper, but I cant view my RAW images on them, the RRP is about 350£, but I found it on Fotosence for 299£.

SO I put the card for sale … and sold it in .. 10 minutes .. £230

Initially I was asking (on the canon forums) for 250£, but this was a local chap, so cash on collection will save me any shipping and Paypal fee’s ..

So, doing the Math again, 20D RRP is £999 (no memory), I got it for £840, deduct the £230 .. and it means I got the camera for £610 .. WOW
I’ve ordered a Scandisk Extreme II (512MB) to get me going, that only costed £17 (1/2 price special) and will order the Epson P-2000 this week ..

Yes,, I am putting in another £90 on top of the sale, but I am getting 40GB of portable space.

Not bad at all

Technorati Tags: 20D, Canon, whoohoo, Photography

Popularity: 28% [?]

Yesterday I went by Jessops and bough the Sigma 18-200,, they did the pricematch of £254 … so that was all set.

This morning the Parcelforce currier arrived at about 8:00 AM .. I was all excited and ready to start using the camera when I realized .. it was not my package,, it was something the wife had ordered .. not happy.

I had then to wait till about 11:00 when the Royal Mail Parcel deliveries usually come, and sure enough, 11 Am and they were at the door.

I quickly ripped the package apart, took the camera, fitted the Lenses and the 4GB card and started to shoot away

It took me a few hours to get aquatinted with all the options, but by late afternoon I was taking shots like a wanna-be pro
It’s simply a great Camera, and now it will take me a few good months of fun training to take full advantage of it.

Technorati Tags: 20D, Canon, whoohoo

Popularity: 27% [?]

After allot of research for my next camera, I was still undecided if I should buy the Canon 350D, 20D or the Nikon D70s

SO yesterday I went down to Jessops in the Trafford Center and asked to take a look at them.

I had already skipped the Nikon, the extra 2 MP of the Canon and some review I read gave the clear advantage t the Canon cameras, but I was still unsure was if the 20D was worth about 250£ extra than the 350D.

As soon as I picked both of them up I knew .. yes, it was

Technorati Tags: 20D, Canon, eBay

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Popularity: 29% [?]

For safekeeping

backup.conf file for my h-sphere backup script

# CP
dir:/hsphere/local/home/cpanel/shiva/psoft_config/:conf/cp-psoft.config.tar
dir:/hsphere/shared/SiteStudio/psoft_config/:conf/cp-psoft.ss.config.tar
dir:/hsphere/local/home/cpanel/apache/etc/:conf/cp-hs.apapche.conf.tar
dir:/hsphere/local/home/cpanel/shiva/shiva-templates/IMAGES:conf/cp-templ.img.tar
dir:/hsphere/local/home/cpanel/shiva/custom:conf/cp-custom.tar
dir:/hsphere/shared/SiteStudio/var/websites:conf/cp-websites.tar
dir:/var/lib/pgsql:conf/cp-pgsql.tar
dir:/hsphere/local/home/cpanel/.kb/:conf/cp-kb.tar
dir:/hsphere/local/home/cpanel/.attachments/:conf/cp-attach.tar

#WEB
dir:/hsphere/local/home/:conf/web-home.tar
dir:/usr/local/frontpage:conf/web-frontpage.tar
dir:/hsphere/local/config/:conf/web-local.config.tar
dir:/var/spool/cron/:conf/web-cron.tar
file:/hsphere/shared/apache/htdocs/phpMyAdmin/config.inc.php:conf/
file:/hsphere/shared/apache/htdocs/phpPgAdmin/conf/config.inc.php:conf/
dir:/hsphere/local/network/:conf/web-network.tar
dir:/hsphere/shared/awstats/wwwroot/cgi-bin/:conf/web-awstats.tar

#MAIL
dir:/hsphere/local/var/vpopmail/etc/:conf/mail-vpop.etc.tar
dir:/hsphere/local/var/vpopmail/domains/:conf/mail-vpop.domains.tar
dir:/var/qmail/control/:conf/mail-qmail.controls.tar
dir:/var/qmail/users/:conf/mail-qmail.users.tar
dir:/hsphere/local/config/:conf/mail-local.config.tar
dir:/var/lib/mysql/:conf/mail-mysql.tar
file:/hsphere/shared/apache/htdocs/horde/config/horde.php:conf/

#DNS
file:/etc/named.conf/:conf/
dir:/hsphere/local/var/named/:conf/dns-named.tar

#MYSQL
dir:/var/lib/mysql/:conf/mysql-mysql.tar

#PGSQL
dir:/var/lib/pgsql/:conf/pgsql-pgsql.tar

Technorati Tags: Backup, H-Sphere

Popularity: 19% [?]

I have been in the UK now for 1 whole year, and loving every minute of it .. except ..

When it comes to buy clothes.

I’m a big man, no doubt about it, heathy size 46/48 (yeah, thats married life to ya), and in the US I can walk into any store and buy clothes that fit .. but here ? .. no such luck.

So far the only place I find that carries my size is the men stores “Slaters” .. and it pisses me off that one walks in and they have thousands of pants, hundreds for each size up to … 42

When you look into 46 and 48 .. and they have at most 8-10 pairs, and worst, they are always the lowest quality cheap looking crap one can buy.

What’s the problem ?, do Brits think fat people cant afford nice things ? or am I the only fat guy in the UK ?

For f’sake .. I feel I need to go visit the US in order to buy nice clothing .. and thats not saying much, since the perception of style in America is as dull as a spoon, and I’m too lazy to go on a diet

Technorati Tags: Fat, pissed-off, Clothes

Popularity: 17% [?]

One has to love big corporations.

I started to work for Comodo a few months back, and being on “the inside” has landed me a sweet deal on a SSL reseller package, that is usually reserved for people with 20k and more to put down.

I decided to take advantage of it on the upcoming relio site re-design, and offer SSL certs for a good price, then I remembered, how about domains.

Currently I buy domains thru Bulkregister .. and even so they nice, they are expensive .. so I went looking for a enom account .. they have these nice $6.95 accounts, but they require you to put down near 7k .. so once again, look for corporate handshakes, and I found somebody on our organization who knows somebody in theirs .. and voila .. I’m on my way to a $6.95 account for free
You just got to know how to play the game

Technorati Tags: Comodo, WebHosting

Popularity: 17% [?]

For the past 6 years I been working in the Web-Hosting industry.

During that time I created 3 companies, WizardsHosting, DataColo and Relio, the latter is simply a re-branding of the first. And while WizardsHosting and Relio worked great as a Shared Hosting outfit, DataColo was a disaster.

At the time I put DataColo up (end of 2000 / beginning of 2001), we offered dedicated servers and co-locations, and at that time, we could package a server with 50GB of bandwidth for $500 a month, or sell 1Mbs of traffic for $500-$700, the profit margins were great, and we made good money.

But then a shift on the market, sometime in 2001, RackShack (EV1) came along and started to offer servers for $99 per month with a staggering (back then) 100GB of transfer, clients flocked in, and outfits like ours started to feel the pain……

Technorati Tags: Computers, DataColo, tired, WebHosting

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Popularity: 21% [?]

I was looking around on my HD for a Iptables string I had to allow Blogger.com users to post to our servers

here it is

-A INPUT -s 66.102.15.83 -p tcp -m tcp –dport 1024:65535 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -s 216.34.7.186 -p tcp -m tcp –dport 1024:65535 -j ACCEPT

Technorati Tags: Blogger, blogs, Computers, firewall, iptables

Popularity: 26% [?]

Today was Savannah’s first day at school, we got her all outfitted with her school uniform, she looked very adorable,, and very British.

When we got there, the teacher tough her the procedures and then she went outside to play, part of me was very sad to see her go outside on her own, on a place she never been before, surrounded by kids she is no acquainted with also, but the other part of me know it’s OK, she will be fine and start making new friends right away.

We usually take the girls to the creche on Saturdays,, and they play there for a couple hours while we shop, and it’ been OK because they go together, to see one of them go on by herself was the tough part .. my girls are growing before my eyes, and I need to adapt to it.

I’m a very protective person, and it is tough to accept your kids will bee away form you our your spouse for such a long period of the day, and you relegate the task of keeping them safe to others .. very tough .. as one always believes nobody else can keep one’s kids as safe as one self ..

I just don’t want her to think we abandoning her at that place called school, or for her to be scared or hungry, cold, hot, […], lonely, or anything else but happy.

But in the end, she seems to have loved it, and will be going back tomorrow (and every day from now on) .. I guess it bothers me more than it bothers her

Technorati Tags: family, school

Popularity: 18% [?]

My Blog is featured today on http://www.bloginspace.com/

Supposedly they transmit it into space .. cool, so any day now, ET will give me a buzz .. or maybe reply to one of my posts
All in good fun

Technorati Tags: blogs, NullMind, featured, space

Popularity: 17% [?]