Bog Roll :: blog

Last year I bought a new DSLR camera. As part of the deal, I agreed to use it and not let it gather dust in a corner. One of the things I've been doing is trying to take regular pictures and upload them to a daily photo blog.

For most of last year I was managing to load one or two pictures or "blips" per week at best. Since Christmas I've been able to maintain a daily stream, and while only a third are actually DSLR images - I don't take it to work - I think it has been useful forcing me to think creatively and my DSLR has been used more than it would have been otherwise.

If you have been following this blog you will have noticed a fall off of postings here over the past year. This is partially a result of more tweeting and Google+ use, but increasingly because of my blipfoto efforts. This blog isn't dead it's just resting a bit more of the time than it use to.

You should find at the top right a link to my current blipfoto entry, which should contain a picture, which if you follow the link will reveal some trivial diary entry and a larger image.

www.blipfoto.com/ajt

posted 23:18 :: /blog :: permalink :: ^

This evening I helped a friend out with his Debian box. We did a few basic things, including me teaching him some basic shell scripting and making some tweaks to his blog.

Working with someone else can be very useful at helping you improve your skills. It doesn't matter if you are the teacher or the student, as both can learn from the process.

posted 21:47 :: /blog :: permalink :: ^

I'm giving micro-blogging a go for a few weeks to see if I can see any point to it. It seems like a lot of effort for minimal reward, so I'll need to keep an open mind to see if anything useful comes out of the experiment...

• twitter.com/drajt
• identi.ca/ajt

posted 18:34 :: /blog :: permalink :: ^

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I started last year with a list of aims. I managed a few and failed on the rest.

• I know have a new home server. The old Compaq was recycled too
• Home server is running Debian Lenny as is my father's new system
• Backup solution in place using rsnapshot to local disks and external disks
• My web sites redesigned and my intranet moved over to ikwiki. No new blogging solution in place though
• I scanned in about 10 slide before I gave up - not good...
• I've not won a million on the Premium Bonds - in fact with falling interest rates I've not won much at all!

posted 12:34 :: /blog :: permalink :: ^

Yesterday someone commented that I hadn't blogged for a while. I realised that if you don't have my combined "planet me" feed you may not know that I blog in three different places and you may believe I've dropped off the net because I've not written in one of the blogs for a while.

You could say it's sad that I even thought about this but when you are crammed in a train in conditions worse than a sardine you think weird thoughts...

• use perl: mostly perl and programming
• Debian Administration: mostly Debian and GNU
• iredale.net: my personal everything else blog.
• planet ajt: my combined RSS feed

posted 11:28 :: /blog :: permalink :: ^

As an experiment I've added "Add to Any" links to this blog. I don't know if it's any real use. It does increase the pages render time quite a bit so I may take it away if I can't see any benefit of it.

posted 22:18 :: /blog :: permalink :: ^

I've turned on my experimental combined RSS feed planetajt.rss. I've yet to properly validate it or feed it into any other site, probably just Planet HantsLUG but so far so good. It combines my three blogs into one single feed and is at the moment updated daily.

posted 21:47 :: /blog :: permalink :: ^

I've decided to combine my various blog feeds with modified version of perlanet to create a single RSS feed. I'll probably run perlanet from a cron job and simply create a static xml file(s) with the corresponding feed in it as that's the simplest solution.

posted 10:23 :: /blog :: permalink :: ^

It's a done deal, my production server has been refreshed and my home server is now in the process of shutting down!

posted 18:38 :: /blog :: permalink :: ^

Unless something unexpected comes up I plan to shut this site and blog down, moving everything over to my hosted server at the weekend. The new site is now 95% done, with just a few cosmetic tweaks left. This blog will move over at the same time. Shortly after that this server will be replaced with my shiny new one.

posted 13:19 :: /blog :: permalink :: ^

It's been a long time coming, but I'm eventually getting round to my site redesign. This site and my production site will merge into a single entity on the ByteMark server. This blog will transfer from the current server to the new one once most of the site has been done.

At the same time the server this site is on will be decommissioned as my newly purchased DNUK server comes on-line to replace it. To simplify things, I won't be running a publicly accessible web server from the new home server, all my public web hosting will take place on the ByteMark server.

posted 23:10 :: /blog :: permalink :: ^

I've got a lot of stuff to do this year. Some of it will be fun, some of it will be expensive, and some of it just needs to be done.

• Replace my current antique Compaq home server, with something more powerful.
• Upgrade my home server from Debian 3.1 "Sarge" to the current 4.0 "Etch" release or even directly to "Lenny". Until I have new hardware I'm not going to touch the software.
• Set up proper backups for the data on the home server and the desktop systems. I've got a cheap 0.5TB hard disk and the enclosure is on order.
• Redesign my web sites, merging them onto my ByteMark server, and look at new blogging software.
• Scan in and index a shed load of 35mm colour slides and prints. I can either pay a lot of money to some one to do this, or buy a decent slide/negative scanner...
• Win a million or two on the Premium Bonds, I don't seem to have won yet, so it must be my turn this year!

posted 14:17 :: /blog :: permalink :: ^

Last week I took ownership of a nice new Bytemark server. My previous hosting arrangement was a virtual web server over which I had little control. By paying a little extra I get a virtual server that I have total control as if it were a real dedicated server.

It is going to take a while but I plan to design a new site that takes elements from both of my sites, my hosted one and my self hosted one. This will mean that this blog will move to the new server sometime in the next few months.

Other than planning nothing much has really happened since I switched server. I do now control and filter all my own email, which means that I've been able to tweak the settings a little better and got the number of emails in my spam folder down from 400-500 per day to around 50-60 and the number that reach my in-box daily from a dozen or so down to one or two.

posted 21:56 :: /blog :: permalink :: ^

By default Blosxom doesn't publish RSS feeds with a <pubDate> in them. This makes using the RSS feeds from Blosxom a bit difficult. A fellow Hants-LUGer has published a simple hack pubDate which fixes the problem.

This is really useful, and means that the this RSS feed can now be used at planet hantslug.

posted 20:55 :: /blog :: permalink :: ^

Today I discovered that a fellow Hants-LUGer is using Blosxom for his journal Linuxlore. I had no sooner sent him an email to ask about his implementation of RSS feeds, than I spotted an article about Blosxom on NewsForge: Blogging with Blosxom.

posted 19:01 :: /blog :: permalink :: ^