Recently I got my new iPhone 3G, so I have been playing with the new apps that are available with the 2.0 software.

One of the is the ability to blog to wordpress from the iPhone .. This is a test using that app

I am also finding I can now type really fast with the iPhone keyboard, guess it’s just a matter of one getting used to it

Also testing the ability to add a photo

Well .. Here goes nothing.. I will try publishing it now, if you can read it.. It worked

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Well, my new blade server is running at Hosting365

I’m quite pleased, even so the server is in Ireland, ping times are in the low 30ms regions, here are a PING test from my location

64 bytes from 82.195.xxx: icmp_seq=7 ttl=56 time=33.289 ms
64 bytes from 82.195.xxx: icmp_seq=8 ttl=56 time=34.724 ms
64 bytes from 82.195.xxx: icmp_seq=9 ttl=56 time=33.542 ms

Now here is my ping test to a site in a Manchester datacenter (30 miles away from me)

64 bytes from 85.159.xxx: icmp_seq=0 ttl=56 time=29.258 ms
64 bytes from 85.159.xxx: icmp_seq=1 ttl=56 time=28.759 ms
64 bytes from 85.159.xxx: icmp_seq=2 ttl=56 time=27.768 ms

So, thanks for 365’s superb peering, it’s only 4-6ms more .. amazing ..

I have been doing some testing to the server for a few days now, nothing had broken and lagged down, so far, it’s all gree, I am hoping to start moving my Live sites to it this weekend, here are some specs:

Processor #1 Vendor: GenuineIntel

Processor #1 Name: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU 5140 @ 2.33GHz

Processor #1 speed: 2332.701 MHz

Processor #1 cache size: 4096 KB

Memory: 1031608k/1048576k available (2081k kernel code, 16072k reserved, 868k data, 220k init, 131008k highmem)

And the best !!

/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00 7.7G

fas940head4:/vol/nas0/rcnlnas0 10GB

The first Volume suppose to be 10GB, but not a problem at the moment, can easily be changed later on when I need it, thats of course the root drive in the HP EVA system, the second is a backup drive NFS volume, with it’s own network interface … cant beat that

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So last night I am made aware that the RC NUT website was down, ok, I checked the webserver .. no response, so I sent out a e-mail to support and didn’t tough much of it .. surely it would be up in 5-10 minutes

30 minutes later and no show, I started to get annoyed, told support to get a grip on things and since it was very late, I went to bed.

This morning I woke up early, about 6:00 AM to check it out, site was up, but no DB connectivity .. I have my DB on a separate server (thats the proper way a H-Sphere install is done) .. so I ping the DB server .. no luck, I then checked the IP of the webserver and .. i’ll be dammed, I was on a US server, not a UK server, I ping the MySQL server by name, and sure enough, it was there, but also in the US.

I changed my config files and removed the old US ip, the site was fully up .. except the site was 13 days old !!

Now, for 99% of people out there, this is not a biggie, but for a online shop with sometimes dozens of orders in one day .. this is a catastrophe .. over 100 order records are lost and all since we do inventory by the website stock level, a messed up inventory as well.

Upon further investigation, I found out that Relio’s (webhost) server provider in the UK seems to have decided not to pay their bandwidth bill, and the bandwidth provided cut them off, in essence rendering companies like Relio’s UK servers .. dead (notice, it was not Relio that did not pay their bill, but their server provider, UK Easily)

So I called the bandwidth provider (Uk Grid … all those UK names, they confused the hell out of me today), explain to them our situation and after some negotiations, they agreed to open up traffic to the server for 3 hours to allow me (and others) to access and backup their data out, that was commendable .. those guys where true stars in doing that, after I got the database back, I restored it and the website was up to date … gosh was I relieved.

Why was my site 13 days old to start with ? .. well .. simple, Relio backups my data every day to another server, and every week or two they backup that server to another server in the US .. ok, at first glance, not a bad setup .. but this experience taught me .. not good enough, I need more.

So, since Relio’s UK servers where dead in the water .. and no access to the backup server was possible, they had to do an emergency recovery from the US backups.

I will give Relio credit, to restore every UK account in the US servers, move DNS, remap ip’s, etc .. etc in less than 6 hours .. thats not bad, they did a good job, but it goes to show, no matter how good your first Tier is .. somebody up the ladder is bound to mess it up !!.

Thats the problem with the Web Hosting market these days, too many idiots working on it, we put out livelihoods in the hands of people who later turn around and mess it up for you .. and does not matter how big or small the company is, your are always at risk.

What is the solution ? well, nothing below 50K of hardware and a few K’s a month in fees, so sometimes .. you just have to pay up and shut up.

Thats what I am doing next, first I am going to hire a local hosting company (when I mean local, I mean 3 streets over), I feel the threat of a 300lbs+ guys walking into the office and breaking your nose is a good incentive to make sure they dont screw with you .. that can only happen if they are local, second, I am going VPS (Virtuozzo) .. my idea is to find a setup I can create a Virtuozzo Failover Cluster with a backup residing off-site.. third, I am setting up a mirror of all this on a VPS server in the US, with my DNS residing also offsite (easily re-routable) so if something happens to RIPE itself (The IP consortium of Europe) .. I can still be up, fourth … dont know fourth yet .. but it’s sure to pop up while we doing this.

Overboard, overblown, over-budget ? .. of course .. but piece of mind, i’ve been in this business for 10 years .. I have seen some huge companies working with a setup that would make anybody cringe, promises of redundancy are usually all hogwash, backups many times are simply not practical, yes, they will back your data, they just cant extract it back, customers are at huge risks all the time of loosing all their data, and for some, thats instant bankruptcy, I have try to give away control on how my data is stored and managed, but it’s proven once again, if I want it right, I have to do it myself.

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For the past few days, my Laptop (Macbook Pro), started to complain at times that it’s memory was a bit full (It asks you to close or pause running programs)

I merely closed a few extra programs and keep on working, but for some reason I decided to check, how long has this laptop been on ?, now keep in mind every weekday it gets carried from the house to the shop and office .. so it goes to sleep, but never off

carlos$ uptime
0:06 up 35 days, 13:32, 2 users, load averages: 0.53 0.69 0.78

Yikes !!! .. 35 days

You have to love MAC’s

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I went to google today and was surprised by a black page .. initially I tough either I had mis-typed google or the CSS file had not properly loaded (upon further investigation, it seems th do not call a CSS file) ..

Nop, google simply went black to mark awareness for Earth Hour .. very clever

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I am so fed-up with BT .. everything I ever got from them fails.

Last year I decided to drop SKY .. they where charging me about £60 per month for SKY/+/HD .. so I decided, since now I had the AppleTV, to drop them and just get a PVR for Freeview instead.

Until I learned about BT Vision .. great concept, basically a Freeview PVR, with on-demand via Broadband .. the idea is great, so since I needed to have Broadband with BT in order to sign for Vision, I dumped Bulldog and signed for BT Vision (Broadband included)

Well .. thats when my problems started, I got from BT the following

- BT Vision Box

- BT Wireless Hub

- BT Vision Phone (VOIP)

I have now gone thru 4 BT Vision boxes .. these are PVR’s that can record from Freeview and on-demand .. they simply fail, Hard Drive and software failures plague the damm thing, on demand shows rarely work properly (fail half way) .. etc etc

I am on my second Phone .. the first one’s speakerphone was a dud, crackling and loss of sound made it impossible to use, and since I do allot of conference calls at home, I must have a speaker phone

And . I am on my 3rd Wireless Hub .. the hubs wireless is a nuisance .. they drop constantly .. so replacement number 3 is now being used .. it’s version v1.5 (new style) .. we shall see if it holds

But to make matters really worst .. I am now on day 6 of virtually no Broadband .. and BT does not seem to have a fix anytime soon ..

Since Sunday night, my broadband stopped working .. occasionally it would come back to live, at speed raging from 126K to 512K .. quite ways from the 8MB I am suppose to get, I called BT, they say our account was suspended by error (??) .. apologized and said it would be back to norm soon .. that was Monday ..

But thats just BS .. we are able to connect if we do the following .. take the phone off the hook, let it sit for a minute until a audible warning is heard and try to connect to broadband .. presto .. it connects .. at very slow speeds .. but it connects .. at least for a few minutes .. then it goes down again.

Another indication of trouble, the phone line is incredibly noisy when broadband is trying to connect, there is definitely something wrong between broadband and the phone line

Anyway .. 6 days now, 3 calls a day to them to piss them off, and still, no fix .. they have done the whole “lets go thru the troubleshooting steps” routine a few times now .. it just does not work .. I even try a different router .. simply does not bloody work .. but BT .. they still oblivious, not a clue and not a single engineer visit to troubleshot.

Dang it…. yes .. I am pissed off.

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Last month, when i got my iPhone, it took me less than 24 hours to decide I wanted to Jailbreak him (So I could run other Apps, no need to unlock since I am on O2 anyway)

So I did, and sure enough it was great, but then Apple introduced v. 1.1.3 and there was no Jailbreak for it, I decided to upgrade and go back to having no Apps.

But it did not took long for a new jailbreak to show up, and a few weeks back I try to jailbreak my 1.1.3 phone, and sure enough, it was the same old routine, I had to downgrade to 1.1.1, download almost 300MB worth of firmware from the web, etc etc .. the entire process was similar to 1.1.2 jailbreak as described HERE .. certainly allot of work and took 1 - 2 hours to do.

But I had no luck, for some reason, my Jailbreak 1.1.3 was complaining I had a “unauthorized” SIM (funny, since I actually had a O2 on O2 Iphone contract, card) .. so it was back to 1.1.3 .. non-jailbroken

Until today, when I read about iJailBreak .. the program made some bold claims … 1 minute Jailbreak ?, no downgrade needed ?, surely I was reading it wrong ..

So I downloaded it and fired it up

Firth thing one notices is that it actually calls for the phone to have 1.1.3 (preferably) .. cool, so I clicked Jailbreak, the iphone went to a restart, then I saw a bunch of code being processed on the iPhone, less than a minute later the iphone rebooted and … it was Jailbroken .. WHAT ?

No downgrade to 1.1.1, no fiddling with contacts to access the installer URL, no re-installing 1.1.3 .. no downloading of large firmware files, nothing at all, just worked as a “patch” and it was done.

……. nice

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Yep, it’s valentines day today, me and the wife celebrated it yesterday with some wine and shellfish, but anyway, we have been now together for 10 years .. quite a milestone for a guy that used to consider a 2 week relationship a “long one” ..

On a different note, and the reason for this post, on my travels on the web, I have come across the following two “Valentines Logos” today .. if I find more I’ll add them later

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I have been looking for a new design for the blog non stop for 3 days now.

What happen was, I upgraded (finally) from Wordpress 1.5.x to 2.3.x .. in the process I lost my old (and tired) design .. so I went on the prowl for a new theme I can modify to my taste

Problem is, there are hundreds of themes out there, and most of them .. well, they plain suck.

I think I found something that will work for me, it’s a Theme called Purple Fever .. it only costed $49 .. I have paid, just waiting now for the download link.

Then the task of modifying it will begin …

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At my last count, I now have about 170 movies and over 300 TV episodes saved on my iTunes.

This of course means, I need space, lots of it .. I was using 2 external 500gb’s HD (1TB) for my iTunes library, but because it’s 2 separate drives, it created a bit of a problem for iTunes, I had to keep movies on one, and shows/music on the other, this made (for some reason) AppleTV very slow to load up, also I was always afraid, if one of the drives failed, I lost ether my movies or my shows .. either way, a huge loss.

I looked into some RAID solutions, but the problem was, I use a Mac Mini to stream to the AppleTV, the mini does not have slots for me to use a RAID card, I did found some self raid enclosures, and was about to buy one when I found out about drobo

What sold me on drobo was the ability to use different Hard Drives, and still you are on a raid 5 type of system where you have failover, if one of the drives dies, no big deal, jut replace it, your data is safe

Anyway, I am not a journalist, people can find about drobo on http://www.drobo.com

I have ordered 2 x 750GB drives, and will use one of the 500GB I have, this will give me about 1.1GB of safe data, as a single volume .. nice

Here are the pics of it .. I’ll post more about it as I set it up.

Technorati Tags: drobo

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