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10 June 2010
Yeah finally fixed an annoying issue with my Linux Server at home (nice to flex my Linux admin skills!) documenting it here in case I ever need the commands again or its useful to others: Problem: Ubuntu 9.04 no longer booted after a minor update (from .15 to .16) with my Software RAID setup as described in these reported bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mdadm/+bug/330298 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mdadm/+bug/158918 Fix: Following the instructions on https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mdadm/+bug/136252/comments/5 fixed the problem but you need to run update-initfs -u so it updates. Amazing what you learn when having to fix this kind of stuff – for one I now understand the memory based file system that linux uses during boot better.
01 March 2010
Here are some notes / interesting products/thoughts that were mentioned (apologies this is more of a set of notes for me than a proper blog post – if I get time I will refine this!) Started the day on a conference call back to the office so had to miss the keynote which was a shame as it was by quite an eccentric guy who Microsoft have hired (as a UX Architect Evangelist) largely about keeping thing simple and usability from what I gathered of the end of the talk. Day was very tough as a I had a late night catching up on various things to allow me to free up the Friday – its difficult sitting through talks when really tired! Met with several former colleagues from my last company (and former colleagues from my current company) so was a bit of a blast from the past at times. There appear to be a lot of development and interest around NoSQL / document based databases at the moment – definitely something to keep an eye on as it matures as a technology. RDBMS in the social networks age Database Graph Structures via advanced features of SQL, using SQL-99 and SQL-2003 functionality that certainly MySQL doesn’t have any many other DBs won’t have the 2003 extensions. Obviously using this kind of advanced functionality will have an impact on Database server load. This talk felt a bit like it was flying in the wind of most new thinking at the moment (although to be fair – this is partly what Lorenzo has now put on his website below) which is to keep your database tier minimally loaded as it’s the part that has most issues with vertical and horzontal scalability (keep most of the CPU load in the web app tier as its easier to add more nodes there). Slides available at: Legacy Code Talk by Ibuildings ctags.sourceforge.net BOUML bouml.free.fr (reverse engineering capabilities) phpcs – Codesniffer (part of PhpUnderControl) Thoughts for tackling older PHP4 based projects and code bases – get them in Source Control, start to apply Continous Integration type approaches. Suggestions made around CouchDB Web and mobile application monetisation models / Paypal X Paypal appear to be launching a new platform / API
Bit disappointed by this one as it was about PayPal’s API (https://www.x.com) rather than strategies for monetisation which is what the title lead me to believe. Web Services Best Practise Lorna (also from iBuildings) who gave this talk seems to have a bit of a sarcastic talking down to you type tone I found slightly annoying – maybe she gives training to newbies all the time or something. Or maybe I was just tired. She had some interesting things to say about Web Services design particularly towards the end of her talk. The talk was caveated as being a bit of “a rant” and it was exactly that in places – felt like she was having a go at everyone a lot of the time! Beers at the end sponsored by Facebook were a nice touch though, although I only had time to grab a quick one whilst chatting to Mark Schaschke from iBuildings and a couple of guys from my previous company. Think next year I will sit this one out to allow more developers to attend as think they will get more value out of it.
27 January 2010
Filed Under (Uncategorized) by Ollie Cronk on 27-01-2010
Exciting stuff – watch this space!
17 January 2010
Filed Under (Life) by Ollie Cronk on 17-01-2010
Watch out when using the Metro – until they update the signage (going to happen by 2012 apparently) even though you might have a map using Latin characters the station signs and route maps won’t. I worked out which line / tube by a geography and a process of elimation (eg I walked down this way to get here, the tube is heading this way and has 4 stops left on the route; the other way has lots more stops so its not the way I want to go!) Should cost about 300UAH to get to centre from the Kiev to the Airport by Taxi. Icy is an understatement – you’ll see what I mean when I get some pictures up here, crazily thick ice in places – I lost count of the amount of times I almost slipped over! Good prices on Vodka in the Duty free! More notes and some photos to be posted up in due course. Going to be a busy couple of weeks at work by the looks of things…
17 January 2010
Filed Under (Life) by Ollie Cronk on 17-01-2010
Today (Weds 13th Jan) was a day I have been apprehensive about ever since the extent of the “Big Freeze” was realised and I had to cancel my trip to Copenhagen – the day I was due to fly to Kyiv (Kiev), Ukraine. I had started to feel more confident about the weather as the snow had stopped and it was starting to melt. My attacks on key tyre marks with a 2KG bag of table salt were working quite well and I was adapting to learning to drive in the snow… The night before I was running about 3-4 hours behind where I wanted to be in the office, I should realise trying to multi-task doesn’t work and should just have more courage to bin things off I know I’m not going to have time to do properly! Although Enterprise rent a car weren’t helping either – delivering a car that should have been at work for 12 at gone 6.30pm! Anyway so the night before was quite a late one (later than it should have been for a 4am start). As I went to bed the missus said “its snowing again” my heart sank as I looked outside and saw that the Clio Estate (funny car to get as a hire car, and amusing as at one point it was on my cars to consider buying list) had been completely covered in Snow (an inch or so) and that the snow was coming in quite fast at a 45 degree angle. Luckily the snowflakes were quite small so I figured it would probably stop or turn to rain. On waking up in the morning to discover our Velux skylight windows completely coated in Snow I knew I was in for a “treat”! Got myself together and got out to the Clio to discover it coated in a good 3-4 inches of what turned out to be very fluffy and annoying snow to get off the car. At least it wasn’t icy. And so at that point I thought to myself; if I can get the car moving okay on my untreated road and on to the main road through the village ok then the trip should be safe enough. Having warmed up/cleared the snow from the car and assessed that it would move ok, Kat and I had a discussion on how safe it was for me to go and we checked if the flight was still running; it was and I decided if I drove carefully to J13 of the M4 (which would be the worst of it) then the journey should be ok, if not then I would attempt to return (or park the car somewhere safe and walk back to the house). *Even though actually I’m not sure I have driven in worse! The M4 was actually quite a lot more scary that I thought it would be, 1.5 to 2.5 of the lanes were clear – the gritters and lorries driving through the night doing a good job of keeping it like this. Still I had people tailgating me in the middle lane when I was going 60 (before Reading junctions this was the safest maximum speed in my judgement). As I approach London the snow reduced and the road improved (although I think some drivers were completely misjudging things; someone in a Passat estate – the irony – came steaming past me in the 80% clear outside lane doing at least 80mph). Got to Heathrow drop off point not problem although once in the Rental cark park I overshot the turning for the drop off point (didn’t see it in the snow) which mean’t that I slid to a stop a little, but I was there now and just did a small shuffle to get the car where it needed to be in one piece without a scratch. So this was to be my first outing using T5 of Heathrow – quite impressed by I (but I imagine many people weren’t when it first opened due to the computer glitches. Found my gate and then got on to a bus to the plane. Here is a photo out of plane window once I had boarded: Once on the plane we were told by the captain there would be delays, due to only one runway being open. Then he told us we would need to be tugged to somewhere to be de-iced. In the end a de-icing rig (which was a seriously cool bit of kit; I’m sure many small boys would have got very excited by the man in his enclosed cabin up on a crane-type rig spraying the plane wings and body with anti-freeze stuff and blasting off snow and ice). I wasn’t bothered by the delay and was actually very glad to be de-iced as I have read so much about what happens to the efficiency of plane wings when they get misshaped with ice formations (too much reading about planes as a small boy!)
07 January 2010
Thought it might be worth posting about the Big Freeze, seeing as we seem to have been hit quite badly here in my Village (just north of Newbury near J13 of the M4)… I’ve taken some photos and videos: Update – I’ve now embeded some of them – note that they were shot in HD (click the HD button at the bottom of the videos) to enjoy in full 1080!)
I plan to go into work tomorrow as things seem to be improving enough – to get the cars out my neighbours and I cleared the 25-30 metres of 7″-10″ of snow (I have only seen snowfall like this in the Alps previously!) and all 4 of us blokes who live next to each other got 3 cars out (1 driving 3 pushing!!) onto the road which is reasonable (although it is like a snow rally stage in places – in my VW Passat you have to turn off traction control, use 2nd, 3rd and 4th with minimal-ish revs and go no faster than 40 (although to prevent getting stuck up hills when you see a hill you need to give it some beans – otherwise you just wheelspin!) Managed to get into Newbury at Lunch to get some essential supplies from Sainsburys (they are well stocked, and there was a petrol tanker there too) so filled up with Diesel to be safe (as was almost empty) and bought food essentials for me and my neighbour and a colleague in the next village to me After lunch drove the other way to Compton (where my Colleague lives) and delivered his food and we worked together on a bid. On the way back I had to rock the car back and forth using the clutch to get back on the main road but once there no worries as long as you stay at 20-40 (20 ish downhill, 30 ish on the flat and 40 ish uphill to prevent getting stuck) and steer, accelerate etc smoothly! Shame some people are idiots and tailgate you on an uncleared B road when you are doing 35mph!!! Have started a working from home pattern of get up early assess weather do work until the conditions outside warm up enough to clear snow and ice and drive, then work late into the evening to make up the lost time at lunch. Can’t clear snow in the evening (too icy/cold/dark) or drive (ditto) as its getting down to below -8 at night, was -6 this morning and -3 most of the day. My pet theory (as of course everyone in the world with a blog has pet theories!) is that this could be the first signs of the Trans Atlantic Conveyor (that keeps the UK warmer that its latitude would normally allow for – eg we should technically get Canada / Norway-ish style weather) shifting course…? But this link offers the BBC’s take on things. Whatever the science the reality is that its crazy cold here right now! Keep safe everyone – as by all accounts its not going to get better for a few days (depending on which forecasts you believe it could get worse over the weekend – fingers crossed it doesn’t). I am supposed to be going to Kiev, Ukraine next week – we’ll just have to see if that can happen…
09 November 2009
Further to my blog posts involving vista (and the tweaks that can help make Vista/Windows 7 compatible with Samba) I came across a registry setting that needs to be changed to get offline files to work correctly: “Set the following registry key on the Windows Vista client to prevent files from getting pulled down to the client again right after synchronizing changes to the server (due to Linux file systems having coarser timestamp resolution than Windows): Create a DWORD value named RoundUpWriteTimeOnSync under the HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\NetCache key (create the key if it does not exist) and set it to 1.” from the Storage Team at Microsoft’s Blog: http://blogs.technet.com/filecab/archive/2007/03/16/using-offline-files-with-samba-emc-servers-nas-devices.aspx
08 November 2009
Filed Under (Cycling, Mountain Biking) by Ollie Cronk on 08-11-2009
Went out for a great bike ride along the Ridgeway from Compton to Letcombe Bassett yesterday, sky was clear and it wasn’t too wet but the round trip to home made it 33 miles! I stopped a couple of times en route as I had the SLR camera (good excuse to stop!) and took some autumnal photos – very pleased with this one: Been pretty bad with blogging recently – have been using twitter a lot, will have to put my twitter feed on here so it looks less deserted! Still with the cold wintry nights there will be more time for me to blog I guess! Cheers Ollie
24 July 2009
Filed Under (Life, Mountain Biking) by Ollie Cronk on 24-07-2009
Some Recent Tech Discoveries I thought I’d share: The Good: Windows 7 RC – writing the blog post from it – excellent OS (and that says a lot coming from me!) Ubuntu 9.04 -What can I say – wow – is the OS market hotting up or what? Right when they said the Browser will be the O/S – we’ll we aren’t there yet (well not until Google’s Chrome OS anyway…) Spotify – sure lots of people know about this one now but great streaming music service. Kind of like a commercial radio station where you get to choose the playlist. But native version for Linux would be nice (netbooks will make this kind of porting happen organically now I suspect??) Bitly – specifically the Bit.ly Sidebar for your browser – very clever. You’ll notice I’m starting to use more bit.ly links in my blog posts but for Twitter they are essential. The Bad: ebox – Not a good move to just try and install this on a Ubuntu box (tried this at home) screwed lots of stuff up. Nice idea but if you want to try it out use a seperate box. It looks good and the concept is a great idea but I think its a bit too flawed for me right now (sorry ebox devs). Denyhosts (prevents brute force attacks on SSH by adding IP addresses that repeatedly fail to login to a black list – in /etc/hosts.deny) silently stopped working some time ago on my Ubuntu server (due to an upgrade of Python by the looks of things). Following the fix on this forum thread sorted the problem although I found the file you need to change is: /usr/share/denyhosts/daemon-control-dist rather than the one mentioned. The Ugly: HMG Info Sec standards (or rather the OTT implementation of) - I probably can’t say any more or I’ll get burned in acid (its a long and painful story…!) More posts to come. Enjoy the summer everyone. I intend to on a ride around Litchfield tomorrow – embedded Google Map to follow no doubt…!
01 July 2009
Have been very lucky to get in some great mountain bike riding over the last few weeks. Couple of really good rides (albeit challenging and tiring ones!) in the Peaks including riding down Jacobs Ladder (which I was really pleased I managed to ride without coming off in a massive and very painful way!!). Photos here, here (Ladybower classic ride), here (Bakewell and Chatsworth trips – not riding) Couple of nice loops nearer to home with friends over the weekend (photos), unfortunately Kat came off her bike recently and has bruised herself quite badly – which she is annoyed about as is having to hide her legs in the hot weather we are having at the moment!!. Now back to the office and the realities of work (it would be nice to just do an epic day ride every sunny day in the summer wouldn’t it?!!!) |