Comments(0) We printed their own beer labels with the Dharma Initiative logo on them, just like the rations on LOST. There’s a PDF so you can print your own. Clearly, we have too much time on our hands.
Comments(3) My Poundhost server was in-accessible for most of yesterday again. The main cause of the outage for PoundHost, was due to their fibre provider, TeliaSonera, *disconnecting* the wrong fibre when testing another customer’s link, due to them mis-labeling the fibre in their London datacentre suite (Telehouse East).
This affected many of my own and my customers web sites. Although this was not Poundhost’s fault per se, they have been having many of these sort of problems recently. They seem not to be able to cope too well when something unexpected happens. They supposedly have redundancy in place for these sorts of occurrences but they often don’t seem to work as planned. And the worst thing is that their system status and announcement mailing lists seem to be hosted in the same place, so when their network goes down they have no way of keeping us updated. Their phone lines also go down as they are all VOIP.
The good news is that once I got email access back I had a very (very) quick response from them (at 9.30pm):
We are rolling-out some significant changes over the next few weeks and months, namely a new client Portal and support system, which will eventually be hosted off-site.
This will also include a status mini-site, as our current one has been unavailable for some time, as you pointed out.
Thank you for your time listing these concerns - I have noted them and will be sure to bring them up when discussing future service improvements.
They also mentioned the issue with their phone lines in a follow up email:
Some customers have mentioned that contacting us via phone was difficult, this is due to our phone system being VoIP (voice over IP) based, so the bad connection meant we had troubles hearing customers, and in some cases no phones at all. I have this morning ordered 4 BT lines to replace the VoIP system to be installed within the next 14 days direct into our support office using the existing numbers, to avoid this happening in the future.
It’s great to hear they are aware of the problems and have plans in place to sort them out, so I wont be switching just yet. They may not have the best infrastructure yet, but they certainly are trying their best to give a good service. If they could just keep us more informed when something goes wrong I’d be much more happy.
During the outage one of the most annoying things was not having access to my main email account. A good friend (who also has a Poundhost server and didn’t lose his email access) said to me - ‘It’s best not to have all of your internet eggs in one basket’. He’s right, of course, so last night I set myself up a Dreamhost account and moved over my personal domain. This web site is now hosted in LA :).
So far Dreamhost seem very good. I’ve heard lots of good reports about them, and so far they seem to be true, at least for developer hosting anyway. My account is on a Debian shared server that looks like it is hardly being used. Of course they oversell, but apparently you don’t get penalized for using everything they are offering. For less than £50 for 2 years, here’s what I get:
Plus loads more. They even throw in a free domain registration!
To get this deal go to the Dreamhost web site and when you sign up enter the following code ‘ADREAM’. This will give you up to $94 discount.
I’m not sure exactly what I am going to use it for yet. At the very least I’ll use some of the disk space for backups. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Comments(0) A lot of companies prefer to hide their contact details or try and force you to go via web-based forms when trying to get in touch, but that’s no help when you really do need to speak to a human or send an email from your own account.
Comments(0) Sorry I haven’t posted for a while (understatement). Just upgraded to WordPress 2.1 and it’s looking good! More updates soon.
Comments(0) A beta version of the long awaited Flash 9 for Linux has been made available today.
Update: It works a treat!
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I’ve created my first Netvibes module! I was searching for a Dilbert module but couldn’t find one so had a go at making one myself. It’s turning out to be quite popular.
If you have a Netvibes page (and you should), click on the button below to add the Daily Dilbert module to your page.
If you are thinking of creating a module yourself, using the Netvibes mini-API is surprisingly simple.
Update: By request I’ve also created a Sherman’s Lagoon module
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I’ve been ranting for ages about how ugly most PCs are compared to Macs. What has been stopping PC manufacturers making anything close to being as asthetically pleasing as a Mac?
Check out the new Vaio N10 on Reg Hardware due to be on sale next month.
I might have known it would be Sony who would step up, as they have always been closest to building a trendy PC - but is this just a cheap Mac rip off?
Update I decided on a Macbook Pro and I’m very very happy with it! 
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I’ve finally got compiz and AIGLX working on my desktop (ubuntu 6.06). I’ve only got an Intel i915 onboard graphics processor, but even so it’s surprisingly smooth!
You’ve really got to use it to fully appreciate how cool it is - especially 3D desktop switching which rocks!
Thanks go to gandalfn for the howto that finally got me up and running.
Comments(0) You may have noticed the new box on the side bar entitled ‘Where I Am’. Powered by Jaiku, this is a service for Nokia 60 series phones that amongst other things logs your location and enables you to display it on the web. I was only thinking on my walk home the other day that a service like this would be great.
Other possibilities are using location-aware devices to find friends in your vicinity. TechCrunch are running a good article on the subject.
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If you are using Windows XP or 2000 and you have accidentally deleted a file from the recycle bin, don’t start panicking just yet - you might still be able to get it back. But if that file is important to you, you need to take immediate action.
First and foremost, if you are using the PC where the file was located you must stop using it right away! Your computer will be constantly writing temporary files to your hard disk as you use it which may at any time overwrite the contents of your lost file forever.
Get yourself on to another computer by any means necessary. Don’t even shut your PC down, but if you have to, switch it off at directly at the mains (un-plug it) rather than using the shutdown button in the start menu. Even the shutdown process writes files to disk and should be avoided.
Once you are on another computer, download file recovery free ware ‘restoration’
Copy the software to some form of removable media (USB memory stick, floppy or CD). Run the restoration program on the computer where the file was deleted directly from the removable media. The software will list deleted files and allow you to restore them easily.
If you have already shut down or powered down your PC, first set up a BartPE bootable Windows Live CD (you will need your Windows installation CD). You can boot your PC from the CD to avoid over-writing your lost file. Run the restoration software from your removable media as before.
Make sure you restore the file to the removable media and copy it back to your PC later. This reduces the risk of overwriting your file data when you attempt to restore it.
A useful page with more in depth information can be found at http://www.aumha.org/a/recover.php
