tatey.com

For the previous two years, tatey.com and its various hosted websites have resided on Zingers, a web server in my bedroom. In that period, there has been four or five substantial changes to the server. Whether it be a physical hardware transition or switching to an alternate linux distribution, tatey.com has survived in one way or another. Primarily, this website was simply a place where I could easily communicate and share files on the internet. At the same time, it has also been a learning experience administrating my own server. The amount of information and experience that I have gained from maintaining a linux server has been greatly rewarding. Unfortunately, my house is hardly a commercial entity and therefore I cannot ensure that my internet connection will always function, or that I will have enough time to check through logs and upgrade packages. I always seem to set a goal, but never actually reach it. For example, how long have I been raving on about installing and configuring a mail server?

This brings me to my point. I recently discovered a US based hosting company called “Dreamhost” thanks to Shaun. My jaw dropped when I viewed how reasonably priced their hosting packages were. The “Level 1″ package offers 200GB of storage, 2TB of data transfer, unlimited MySQL databases, unlimited Domain Names and a very generous amount of users and mailboxes. The mailboxes come in a variety of flavours: IMAP, POP and Webmail - all of which can be authenticated over SSL. This package is valued at $9.95US/Month ($15AU) over 12 months. I estimate that Zingers costs $5/m in electricity, eats my upstream bandwidth and consumes time to maintain. For an extra $10, I can have professional hosting and offload all my troubles to someone else. UPS, Power generators, Internet connections are not my problem any more (Provided they work). In addition, I have three computers in my bedroom, two of which operate 24/7. This generates a significant amount of heat which I feel will become unbearable in the coming summer. With the server off-shore, I now only have a single computer operating 24/7.

Currently, tatey.com, Flora’s website and Boycott Sony are on the new Dreamhost server while Adrian and the Eagle Heights Centre remain on Zingers. I intend to migrate the latter two websites over early next week. Consequently, I have a new E-Mail address - tate@tatey.com. I’ll tell you what, IMAP is fantastic! I can finally use my E-Mail on my laptop, and check it from the web.

If you’re looking for cheap, reliable hosting, head over to Dreamhost and sign up. If you enter the promotional code “9999″ you’ll receive $99US off the total price.

Over the previous week, Zingers has been rather flakey. At some point, tatey.com and it’s network of hosted sites experienced an unacceptable downtime of over 24 hours. Fortunately, this is not an issue with the actual hardware or software that is running on Zingers. Instead, it’s appropriate to point the finger at my ISP.

As some of you may be aware, ADSL2+ has been recently introduced into Australia. Now, when I say “recent” I am referring to within the last 12 months. ADSL2+ offers a potential amount of bandwidth up to 24000/1000kbps, however this is greatly dependant on your location and distance from the telephone exchange. Furthermore, it requires ISP’s to install and setup their own special hardware in the exchanges (Called DSLAMS). Once your exchange becomes ADSL2+ enabled by the ISP, you’re telephone line is required to be physically migrated from the Telstra DSLAM into your ISP DSLAM.

My ISP offered a free migration from ADSL to ADSL2 while retaining the same internet plan. Naturally, I accepted the offer and was informed that the migration would take place in March. After March arrived, nothing happened. Eventually, the ISP stated that migrations would take place in August. I was somewhat disappointed, but since it wasn’t going to cost anything I couldn’t really complain. In addition, if I wanted the alternative route it would require me disconnect my existing ADSL connection and wait 10 days until I’m reconnected. Not a viable option in my opinion.

After the above statement, I didn’t worry about purchasing or even researching ADSL2+ modems, or anything related to ADSL2+ for that matter. I found myself in deep water after my ISP migrated me over on the 23 of June without any notice. Okay, I’m thankful that I’m now on ADSL2+, but I would have appreciated some notice. Instead, I lost internet for the entire weekend, and the connection has been up and down since. One week later, it’s under control and I’m making this post. With the extra bandwidth, Owen was able to download off this website at 105kb/sec. I’m quite pleased with that, and hopefully he site should be more of a pleasure to view.

As it currently stands, I’m connected at 5229/1002kbps. I’m about 3.6km from the local exchange and the fastest download speed I’ve been able to attain has been 590kb/sec. Now, that’s comparable to cable and the upload is substantially larger. If I was located closer to the exchange, say less than 1km I’d easily be looking at reaching over 2MB/sec. At any rate, I’m very satisfied with ADSL2+ and relieved that the stability issues have been sorted out. Tatey.com is back!

UPDATE: It appears the connection went down again for a few minutes at around 9pm. I’ll be contacting my ISP later this week.
UPDATE 2 (09/08/06): The TPG Whirlpool forum representative’s are FANTASTIC. After much trouble-shooting and various configuration alterations on both ends, all connection issues have been resolved. In addition, I now have a Static-IP address which is excellent news. I may setup a mail-server in the future.

The individuals unaware of Zingers may mistake a computer that sits in the cupboard of my bedroom for a tasty KFC burger. Not to be confused with Ashley’s server appropriately named Cupboard because of it’s [previous] similar location. Previously, tatey.com and its various other sites humbly resided on Popcorn (formally Shoebox) a HTPC in my lounge room. Eventually, a new task was assigned to Popcorn and Zingers was born. I purposely purchased a cheap PC from a local computer retailer and loaded Gentoo on. For many months I was satisfied with the progress of Zingers until I decided that it became too much of a hassle to maintain a Gentoo server. I felt that I was no longer prepared to commit the extra time required in maintaining a Gentoo-based server relative to a Debian one. As a result, I migrated from Gentoo to Debian. An appropriate choice you would think for a “production” server. Certainly after all the web server administrators rave on about Debian. Undoubtedly, Sarge is great – stable and mature packages coupled with a strong focus on security. Unfortunately for Debian, I found it rather incompatible with my Macintosh keyboard that I use on my PC (That’s whole story in itself) and iBook. After poking around Google and various other websites for 2322131 hours, I decided it was impossible. I opted to put up with misbehaving keys until Ubuntu 6.06 was scheduled to be released.

Ubuntu is a Debian-based distribution and enjoys the same benefits that all Debian administrators do. It is my honest opinion that Ubuntu 6.06 server is an up-to-date Debian. That is, MySQL5 and PHP5 are fully supported under Ubuntu 6.06 but not Debian Sarge. More importantly, Ubuntu 6.06 includes LTS which ensures that I’ll have security updates for at least the next 5 years if I choose to not upgrade any time before then. Furthermore, I’m wrapped that my Mac keyboards now function correctly and the key’s that I push correspond with their symbols. While I understand that some people will be quick to criticise Ubuntu as an immature distribution, I think they’re denying the credit that it deserves. It even includes a LAMP stack that automatically sets up Apache, MySQL and PHP. You’re still able to further configure these packages to your hearts content and they’re up to date. Overall, I feel that I’ve made the right choice and I’m certainly satisfied with my Ubuntu server. It is my intention that I will not have to touch this box for a very long time. Let’s hope that I can keep to my word.

It has been over a month since this website was last updated. I could attempt to justify the lack of content because of Uni, family commitments or some other equally lame excuse, but at the end of the day it was my laziness that got the better of me. I’d rather play Day of Defeat: Source or visit mates more than anything else.

Good news is that I’ve been secretly working on a site relaunch. I eventually came to realise that the XHTML/CSS for tatey.com was messy and not as “correct” as it could have been. As a result, I rewrote and re-sliced the entire website from scratch. There are some minor visual improvements, but mostly stuff under the hood. Furthermore, I’ve cleaned up the directories and more or less tided everything up.

The gallery, which has previously caused me much heartache has finally been upgraded to “Enhanced Simple PHP Gallery” and successfully integrated into the website itself. After recommendations from Ashley Kyd, I’ve completely templated tatey.com with PHP Mesh. It has sure made updating content substantially easier.

On a final note, the inspiration for the entire relaunch came from both Ashley and Scott who recently redesigned their websites. In addition, Adrian has now launched his own website and Flora has also received a facelift.

Slap on your pluggers, eat plenty of pies and skull lots of beer… it’s Australia Day! The one special day in the year where the people of Australia come together and celebrate our fantastic nation. Now, if only we could push for a republic and new Australian flag, that would be awesome. The republic of Australia, with a president as our head of state, not the Queen of a foreign island :P.

On a related note, one of my best mates if hosting a BBQ/Pool at his place for Lunch into the evening. I will be there with Keryn and mates, and it will be a great time. Plenty of Beer, lots of food and a pool, what more could you ask for? Australians all let us rejoice!

Ashley recently informed me of a free service called Bur.st Networking. They’re basically an Australian based non-profit ISP who operate out of donations from it’s respective users. For the time being, I’m trialling this service and if it meets my expectations, I’m more than happy to contribute annually donations. There are several advantages of switching tatey.com over to Bur.st. Using BIND Zones, I have much more control over all aspects of the domains. For example, I can now have http://tatey.com rather than the annoying www because I have a dynamic IP and use DynDNS. Previously, my existent register only permitted A-Records (IP Address) which is useless for dynamic IPs. Secondly, it should be “faster” to resolve, since it’s Australian based. You can check our Bur.st here, they offer a wide array of useful services. This website may appear down over the next 48 hours as the domain name switches to Bur.st. In the meantime, this website is accessible through http://shoeboxj492.dyndns.org. Cheers.

Update: After much stuffing around, I still could not achieve what I wanted with Bur.st and my domain was down for over a week. Completely unacceptable. I opted to switch back to Joker.com and I’ll try Bur.st in the future when I can get my head around forwarding tatey.com to another CNAME without the www. Their help and support was fast and friendly, thumbs up.

Shoebox, the Tatey[dot]com web server in addition to performing HTPC functions will be taken down over the next couple days for maintenance. I feel that configuration files and applications have been altered to the point where I can no longer find anything easily, and managing multiple users is becoming a tedious process. Furthermore, I purchased a brand new graphics for the box, which should improve HDTV playblack with MythTV. A wipe and clean reinstall should address other issues that I am encountering. In addition, I intend to use some funky scripts in conjunction with webmin to help manage the server. In the meantime, the tatey.com domain will point to Ashley Kyd’s box. Thanks for your patience, guys.

UPDATE: Tatey.com is operational again, however I’m experiencing DNS issues with the domain name. On a related note, there is still some configuring required and consequently, tatey.com may appear up and down. Cheers.

It’s time to announce the introduction of Sarah’s *real* blog. Previously, she had a MSN Space which we all know are not real blogs. Fortunately for her, her website now resides on Shoebox. You can view her daily and intellectual rambles here. On that note, Ashley Kyd has updated his website theme. I suggest you check it out. It’s neat, clean and scalable. While we’re at it, I’m pleased to announce a few updates to the #Hash IRC statistics. There are now pictures for almost everyone and it’s generated a lot of interest from channel participants. Thanks to Ashley who also helps maintain them whilst leaving a few surprises here and there ;). I’ve also noted that Linux Kernel 2.6.13-r3 is now available from Gentoo Portage. I personally use the love sources, and the site appears to be down atm :(.

EDIT: Adam has had problems compiling the nVidia drivers against 2.6.13. Maybe it’s appropriate to steer clear of this kernel until nVidia or the Kernel dev team rectify the problem.