IPv6 – Are You Ready?
An excellent ‘viral’ video from Cisco.
Category: Links
Irish Radio Stations on Linux
UPDATED VERSION AVAILABLE:Â https://www.barryodonovan.com/index.php/2013/02/12/irish-radio-stations-on-linux-2013
I’m a bit of a newstalk junky and like to have the radio on in the back ground. It’s quite painful jumping between websites and even more painful getting them all to work under Linux so I have some simple Bash aliases for VLC and RTE Radio 1, Today FM and Newstalk:
alias 2fm='cvlc http://dynamic.rte.ie/av/live/radio/2fm.asx' alias newstalk='cvlc http://newstalk.fmstreams.com:8008/listen.pls' alias rteradio1='cvlc http://dynamic.rte.ie/av/live/radio/radio1.asx' alias todayfm='cvlc http://audiostore.todayfm.com/audio/todayfmIRL_64K.asx'
UPDATED 2011-02-07: 2FM added.
Testing SPAM and Virus Filters
I’ve recently performed a complete upgrade of Open Solutions’ mail servers and I’ve now moved onto doing likewise for one of our ISP customers with a lot of users.
These retrofits include installing virus and SPAM filters to protect both ourselves and the ISP customers but also to stop customers who have infected computers from spewing these emails out.
When everything’s up and appears to be working, I like to test both filtering systems to ensure they’re working. Quoting from eicar:
Using real viruses for testing in the real world is rather like setting fire to the dustbin in your office to see whether the smoke detector is working. Such a test will give meaningful results, but with unappealing, unacceptable risks.
Fortunately, test files exist for virus checkers and SpamAssassin:
PostgreSQL 9.0 Released with Mission Critical Features
At work, we’ve always used and advocated MySQL for high availability mission critical applications thanks to it’s built in binary replication features.
This was a feature PostgreSQL sorely lacked but it is some thing that has also been rectified in the 9.0 release which, among many other features, includes:
- Hot standby;
- Streaming replication; and
- In-place upgrades.
We’ll be studying and testing this new release carefully as, despite the previous lack of the above features, PostgreSQL had a lot of other features over MySQL and was also ahead of MySQL with such taken for granted features as views, triggers and stored procedures.
Go That Way, Really Fast
In the vein of Release Early, Release Often, Jeff Atwood, CTO of StackOverflow.com, has posted an interesting article on the topic and on the huge amount of work they have gotten done in five months and their fears that they’re still not moving fast enough.
We’re going to go that way, really fast. And if something gets in our way, we’ll turn.
Link: MySQL Best Practices
I came across this site today which has some good advice for MySQL. I’m particularly happy to see that Doctrine, a relatively new ORM for PHP which we’re big fans of, is gaining some traction.
I came across this site today which has some good advice for MySQL. I’m particularly happy to see that Doctrine, a relatively new ORM for PHP which we’re big fans of, is gaining some traction.
I also noticed that Piwik, an open source analytics package, are using some interesting quality assurance tools which may be of interest to PHP developers (along with a continuous integration tool I came across recently: phpUnderControl).
Amazon AWS Keeps Getting Better
Amazon’s Web Services have just launched a health dashboard which should prove very useful and can be found at http://status.aws.amazon.com.
They’ve also announced paid support services.
An eagerly awaited feature for me is persistent EC2 storage which they are trialling right now and hopefully I’ll get into the beta program. Fingers crossed!
Stargate SG1 – Finishing the Story
Following up from a discussion on how the series finale disappointed a few people over on Donncha’s blog, Holy Shmoly!, I thought I might point out that a straight-to-DVD movie which actually ends the two-year story arc has just been released.
You can buy a copy (at a great price thanks to the dollar rate) from here on Amazon.
A spoiler-free review and a discussion on the decision to end the series in this manner can be found here on GateWorld. And just to whet you appetite, a trailer follows below.
I’m in yr datacentur…
The last thing I want to do is point and laugh at anyone else’s problems – God knows we’ve all been in the trenches – but this is just too funny a pun and deserves a link:
An Apology to Wesley… ish…
I wrote in my last blog (and first for quite a while) that “to be clear – I always hated Acting-Ensign Wesley Crusher.” Strong words. So Wil’s book arrived from Amazon yesterday and I finished it this morning. And, 267 pages later, I’m feeling a little guilty about my clarity above.
![[Just A Geek]](http://rcm-images.amazon.com/images/P/059600768X.01.TZZZZZZZ)
A recurring theme in the book is the many many times Wil took shit for all the people that hated Wesley. From his own blog and also reproduced in the book:
“So you didn’t like my fucking character on a fucking TV show I haven’t even worked on in Ten. Fucking. Years. Thank you for blaming ME for the writing of a fictional character, on a fictional TV show. That makes complete sense, considering all the input the writers would take from a 15 year old kid. Have you ever bothered to ask? Did it ever occur to you that I just said the lines I was given? I’m sorry Wesley messed up your precious television show. Fortunately, there were whole seasons after I quit, without me. So you can watch them, and feel better. But don’t take it out on me. I’m just an actor, doing the best job he could with what he was given. So I worked on a TV show. So I have made a living as an actor. Big deal. I’m no better than anyone else, and I have never said I was, or thought I was…
“Congratulations, sir. I’m glad that your empty, pathetic existence is made whole by shitting on a person who you’ve never even met.
“You know, I promised myself that I wouldn’t get into this. I promised myself that I wouldn’t get sucked in to the mire with the lowest common denominators. Well, guess what, guys? I don’t care if you’re “The Guy From TV” or if you’re “The kid from math class”. Being personally attacked hurts. It sucks. I wonder, do you spend a fifth of the time you spend dumping on me doing something constructive with your life? I certainly hope so.”
Now, I don’t feel guilty about the above. I clearly made the distinction between character and actor in my post. But I do feel a bit guilty and I empathise with Wil that there are so-called Trekkies out there that wouldn’t or couldn’t make this distinction and, furthermore and worse, would take it out on the actor. Gobshites.
I also stand over my cringe and credibility comments about Wesley yesterday but I didn’t go on to say that, to be fair, the character grew up over the years. In particular, I thought The First Duty was a great episode and it showed Wesley as a real person. It also had a fantastic scene between Picard and Wesley where Picard lectures Wesley about duty and truth. We saw the boy become a man and face his fears on the Battle Bridge in possibly the best two-part TNG episode of all time, The Best of Both Worlds. The Game was also a good episode but that may have had more to do with Robin Lefler (Ashley Judd) than Wesley 😉