Hicups and Hostings

Ok.  Part of my retrochalllenge entry was to get the viewdata website sorted out - it's been in the process of being Wikified for over a year now!  Some of the work involved in that relates to simply translating the article markup from one markup language to another, but it also means I need to re-write all my custom plugins too.  And to do that, I need to finish the re-write of the viewdataviewer code... and holding me back on all of this was a webhost that made everything behave as if I was walking through molasses whenever I tried to change anything..   It used to be pretty good, but as with all shared webhosts, seems to have become oversubscribed and slowed to a crawl as a result.  Add in a good stir of never-updates, some virus infections, and I should have waved them goodbye a long time ago!

Anyway, I've taken the plunge and shifted my hosting... I'm now renting a VPS which means I'm effectively in control of my own server (albeit merely a tiny part of someone else's system) but I can keep everything up to date, and I don't have to worry about somebody else letting a virus in.  It's very nippy, compared to the previous host anyway, so I'm satisfied.  Maybe I'll not see visitors getting fed up waiting for the next page, now .. (how they would have coped at V23 speeds I do not know ...)

As of yet, there's no new content (although I've got a little titbit waiting to be released - thanks Ant) but that's because it's taken about a week to get everything shifted over - there's 17 websites to deal with! Most are placeholders or simple html-only things, but there are a few complicated ones.  But everything seems to work.. phew.... now to concentrate on more interesting things...

The other part of the challenge is re-working the hardware running the BBS.  This, I might not manage.  Rather than tidying up the mess in the photo, it's got worse!  I had to move everything on the left over in order for a surveyor to examine the floor joists - back in 2008 we got a builder in to put in a "proper floor" and better access, so we could actually use the space, among other things.   Unfortunately, he turned into one of those cowboys you see on the TV, and did a job that nto even the worst DIY nut would be proud of.  There's a lot more to tell, which I'll no doubt blog about eventually, but there's a chance we might finally get some of it sorted soon.  This, unfortunately, will mean packing everything up from up there while it's done, making it impossible to do the BBS side of things.

Websites down

My apologies to anybody trying to access any of the websites I run; it appears that my hosting provider has a problem, and any access to any website is giving a page saying "Great Success ! Apache is working on your cPanel® and WHM™ Server". This normally appears when I point a domain at the server without having set it up in the control panel, and uploaded some content.

It's been down 24 hours that I know of so far.. at least I'm not relying on them for mail or anything else. And this only a week or so after I give them a glowing referance on a review site ... but I guess it is the first incidence of downtime that I've had with them in the almost two years I've used them.

We're just in the middle of listing some items on eBay, so I'm rather glad that this time we didn't rely on self-hosted images, as otherwise none of them would be showing up! (Several images in other posts in this blog will appear broken, though, sorry..)

"What I Did on My Holidays"

OK, I think it's time I gave a list of some of the few computer related things I've got on the boil at the moment. Apart from this blog, anyway. This is an incomplete list..

The Streamlist - an attempt to produce a website hosting a list of live video streaming servers, which will actually monitor them and ensure that the list is kept up to date. Intended to integrate with a plugin for XBMC, or however you wish to view them.

I've got an OpenWRT based router that I'm trying to configure up to replace the firebrick I'm currently using. Only because the firebrick has a max throughput of about 6.5Mbps, and I've got almost 18Mbps of available external bandwidth on two ADSL lines.. The tricky bit is trying to get my head around the firewall and routing under linux. (I've only really played with FreeBSD before.)

I'm working on business idea for a telephone based service that will necesitate getting my head around asterisk configuration files. I've got a trixbox server running all the household telephony, but the FreePBX GUI configuration isn't flexible enough for what I want to do.

I keep meaning to backup and catalogue all my old BBC Micro software, bulletin board data, and other miscalaneous files. I spent ten years writing software and using the Beeb, so there's a fair bit to sort out. I did manage to restore a fileserver backup onto an A5000 and get a two station econet up and running on my desk, but it's moving on from here that's taking some getting around to..

I run a website devoted to solving the puzzles featuring on UK TV Quiz Channels. Of which there are no dedicated channels left, so it's a little quiet there now.

And I'm over a year behind on updating the photos on our baby daughter's website! (Oh and looking after her and the family takes the majority of my time!)

Thoughts on blogs

OK, let's try this again. I've never been able to keep a diary more than about two days, so I don't know if I'll manage this one, but I'm going to try again.  

There are so many things I find I would like to note down, but have nowhere to put them. Maybe this will help.