Paul Holbrook's Weblog

Now on centos 5.1

2008-06-04T16:50:11Z

My VPS server is now on CentOS 5.1, moved up from CentOS 4.6.

My server is hosted on RapidVPS.com, a virtual hosting provider. Since going to CentOS 5 is a major upgrade, the safest way to do it was to create a new virtual server, install it clean with CentOS 5.1, and migrate services over one by one.

I love virtual servers. Doing the migration by creating a new server was much less stressful and less hassle than upgrading a physical server in place.

The cost was creating another virtual server, but I could do that for extra $12 a month on RapidVPS. And once the migration is done, I kill the older server and go back to paying for a single server.

RapidVPS has been good to me

2008-02-04T18:58:49Z

I moved this weblog and my personal email out of the closet and onto a virtual private server last summer. After looking around, I picked RapidVPS as a hosting provider. They had good reviews and reasonably priced service.

After I moved, I was quite happy with the performance of my server, but increasingly unhappy with its reliability. My server was sometimes down or hard to reach, and indeed it was in fact less reliable than it had been living on a Dell P3/550 in my closet. When I contacted RapidVPS about the problems, they generally responded quickly, but the problems kept occurring.

In November I vented my frustration and sent a message to them. I was "reluctantly unhappy," I told them. I got a response from Rick Blundell, the owner and chief tech person: what can I do to make you happier? Make my service more reliable, please, I replied.

Today I just sent Rick another message thanking him. For the last three months, my service has been everything I could want. It just works. No more slowdowns, no issues reaching it. It's been boring again, and that's just what you want out of infrastructure.

Doing server Infrastructure is hard work. People only notice when it stops working. When it works, they don't care. I know; I've run server farms at CNN and EarthLink. Problems happen. And sometimes fixing it can be difficult, frustrating, and expensive.

Rick and RapidVPS have made me a happy customer. Thank you, guys.

Take your Kindle to the beach

2008-01-25T00:13:26Z

Just after Christmas I got away for a few days to Jamaica. All I did for 5 days was read. I read by the beach, by the pool, in bed. It was lovely.

But unlike every other vacation I've ever taken, I didn't take a large pile of books. Instead, I took my Kindle. And a small pile of books. (I wouldn't want to end up in another country with nothing to read. Heaven forbid!)

Understand, even if I don't have time to read more than a few books, I like having choices. And I like to be able to leave off a book for a while and try something else.

The lure of the Kindle is instant gratification: you get bored with a book, you can download another one in less than a minute. But that doesn't apply if you're outside the US. So the night before I left, I bought five more books. Ah, choices.

I did end up finish four books over my little vacation:

Pride and Prejudice, which I have been trying to finish for years ..
Founding Brothers by Joseph Ellis, about John Adams, George Washington, and others from that generation;
Punching In: The Unauthorized Adventures of a Front-Line Employee, a quick read about a guy who takes jobs at UPS, StarBucks, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, the Apple Store, and the Gap;
Wild Fire, a Nelson DeMille novel

I read more than I have in years. And I think I know why: no internet!

Another reason I like my Mac: it's QUIET

2008-01-25T00:07:40Z

My Mac Mini may not be the most powerful computer I have in the house, but it has one huge virtue: it's quiet. I love that.

The earliest Mini's didn't have a fan. This one has one, but it is amazingly quiet.

Nice work.

A great laptop bag: The North Face Surge

2008-01-18T02:54:44Z

I carried around an Intel-branded laptop backpack for perhaps 8 or 9 years. I got it when I worked at CNN, and at the time computer backpacks were not common.

Various parts were finally giving way, so I decided to buy a new bag as a Christmas present with money my folks gave me.

I started trying to do some research, but ended up going down to REI to see what I could find.

I picked up a North Face Surge, and I've been very happy with it. Features I like:

Unlike the Intel bag, this is a true backpack, and it feels very good on the back. I've learned why hip and chest straps are good.
It has a little pocket for power cords. It actually took me a while to find it - it's on the front of the bag at the bottom.
No separate sleeve - the pocket closet to the straps is padded.
Small pocket just for electronics - iPod, etc.
Very well organized outer most pocket for pens and all the random stuff I carry.

It's not a cheap bag - around $100 - but if it lasts as long as my last bag, it could serve me for 10 years. Highly recommended.

I'm happy with my MacBook - no Air for me

2008-01-18T01:56:46Z

My experience with the the Mac Mini I bought in October has made me a convert. Even though I built a new AMD-based Windows system at the same time that's faster than my Mini, I like the Mac environment. And for those Windows applications that I can't live without, VMWare Fusion works just fine. So since October, the Mac has been my primary environment.

I've never spent my own money for a laptop. I work in IT, and since 1996, every company I've worked for has provided me a Windows laptop. But it seemed unlikely that a company would buy me a Mac laptop. So in December the bug bit me, and I bought a black MacBook.

I was never really in the market for a sub-notebook, and the specs on the air don't attract me. 1.6 Ghz processor vs my 2.2. 2 gig of ram vs the 4 gig I put in mine. (From Fry's - only $90 with rebates!) No DVD. 80 gig 4200 RM drive vs my 160gb 5400. Higher res screen on the Air - that's nice - but not worth the extra money.

The lower weight and sleekness isn't necessary for me. The Macbook is already thinner and lighter than the other Windows laptops I've had. I like it a lot.

Changing my Kindle order to next-day delivery moves me up the list

2007-11-28T13:17:15Z

I was paying close attention November 19th when Amazon announced their Kindle reading device. In the morning, you could order the Kindle for next day delivery, but as the day went on, the delivery date starting stretching out. That evening I wasn't sure if I wanted one, but I decided to put my order in to hold a place in line. With 2 day delivery, Amazon said I would get my Kindle Tuesday December 4th.

I'm an Amazon Prime member, so changing the order to overnight delivery is only an extra $3.99, so I decided to change the Kindle order to see if it would change my delivery date. I expected Amazon to immediately come back and say I'd get it one day early - next Monday - but instead, Amazon said to check back later for a delivery date.

I check this morning, and it says my delivery date is November 29th - tomorrow! Changing to overnight clearly moved me up in the queue.

Techdirt reported last week that Amazon has a patent on juggling delivery dates based on the value of orders they expect you to place. Interesting ....

Leopard's built-in VNC server doesn't quite work

2007-11-12T16:31:45Z

Mac OS 10.5 has a VNC server built in to allow remote access back to your Mac. Many sites have claimed that standard VNC clients will work with Mac OS VNC.

Well, that may be true for some people, but I haven't been able to connect back to my Mac outside of my local network using Apple's built-in server.

It worked fine from a Windows machine on the local network. But outside my network - no go. I tried opening port 5900 across my Buffalo home router. I tried RealVNC and TightVNC, both from a Windows XP system, and both would let me get to a password prompt, but then died promptly. I tried tunneling port 5900 across an SSH connection to my Mac. I tried squinting and chanting "Apple is my friend." Nothing worked.

My solution was to download the Vine Server VNC server from Redstone Software. I configured it to use a different port to avoid conflicting with Apple VNC server. Vine Server is free.

It works very well. Vine Server also pays attention to other VNC options that Apple's server doesn't - it will work with 8 bit color, for example, which is important for speeding up the connection.

I also went in and turned off the Dock animations. (I wish there was a way to do that automatically when logging in via VNC.)

It still doesn't work as nicely as Remote Desktop does for the PC, but it's a good start.

If Emacs is broken under under Leopard, time to reinstall

2007-11-04T13:59:26Z

I bought a Mac Mini a few weeks back. I bought it just one week shy of Apple's release of Leopard, knowing that I'd have to do the upgrade myself and pay an extra $10 for the DVD, but the siren call of pretty new hardware was too strong to resist.

I did the upgrade the Monday after Leopard came out - a straight in-place upgrade - and everything seemed to be fine.

But all was not well. Emacs was my canary in the coal mine; when I fired up a terminal and started emacs, I got the cryptic message " Fatal malloc_jumpstart() error"

This discussion convinced me that something broke doing the Leopard upgrade in place, so I went back and reinstalled Leopard using the archive and install method. Problem solved.

My back says 'thank you' - a new chair

2007-11-01T20:16:44Z

For years, I've been using Lifetime folding chairs as computer chairs at home. They're relatively affordable - perhaps $35 - and quite good as folding chairs go. No more. Last night I bought myself an Steelcase Leap chair.

At work, I've sat in Aeron chairs for the past 10+ years. They're good, but it took me a while to discover that the Aeron chair has one nasty flaw - the mesh fabric is abrasive. I started getting holes in the seat of some of my khaki pants, and I finally figured it out - that's where my wallet is. (And I have a very thin wallet - the ALL-ETT, which despite the weird name, is quite good.)

The wide consensus is that you get what you pay for in an office chair, and that really you can't get a decent chair for less than $500. The Leap chair isn't cheap - mine cost $800, but it should last a long time.

I bought mine at Sam Flax in Atlanta. I think of them as an art suppy store, but they carry office furniture, and they service what they sell - if I have a problem, I can take it back to them.

I like my iPhone a heck of a lot better than the Treo

2007-10-30T04:07:46Z

I carried a Treo 650 for perhaps 2 years. When I first got it, I was pleased to have a true smart phone for a change. I liked the Palm OS side of it - the calendar and to-do features, the third party apps. But as a phone or network device, the Treo was frustrating. The Treo had a quite nasty habit of freezing when I went to answer a phone call. Not a good thing for a phone to do. The Treo had a web browser, but using it was frustrating - too slow, and too many pages that didn't display properly.

When I left EarthLink, I knew I wanted a smart phone. I briefly considered a Helio Ocean, but user reviews were lukewarm.

Then Apple dropped the price of the iPhone from $599 to $399. I went out and bought an iPhone the same day.

I like my iPhone a lot. Web browsing and email are good. The EDGE network is slow, but in metro Atlanta, web browsing is at least acceptable. Calendar support is weak, but good enough for what I need right now. But on the intangibles - the fit and feel - the iPhone is very good. I like carrying it around.

My chief complaint is that the speaker isn't loud enough. If the iPhone is in another room when it rings, I often don't hear it. The same is even true if I have it on me and I'm in a noisy place. I'm sure Apple's target audience has better hearing than me!

The other thing I miss is having an IM client. I'm waiting for those Apple-sanctioned third party applications ...

A mac owner again, 20 years later

2007-10-30T01:14:40Z

Last week I gave into temptation. I'm now the owner of a bottom-of-the-line Mac Mini - the 1.83 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo model. 80 gig disk, 1 gig of RAM.

I couldn't stand the idea of paying Apple $150 for one more gig of memory, so instead I spent at least that much and time and energy by getting 2 gig of RAM from Fry's and installing it myself. Jonathan Young supplied the putty knife and the company.

It's the second Apple device I bought in the last 2 months. When I left EarthLink (company-wide layoff) in September, I needed a cell phone, and Apple was kind enough to cut the price by $200, so I bought a phone that day.

It's not the first Mac for me, though. We bought a Mac SE in '86 or '87 for Jen to finish her PhD thesis. I played with a first generation iMac when I was at CNN in about 2000, and I had a first generation Mac Mini on loan from EarthLink for a couple of months. Both of those machines were just too underpowered compared to the PCs I was using. My new Intel Mac is on the lowest rung of the Mac line, but hardware has improved enough that even the Mini easily trumps my Intel 3.0Ghz P4 Windows system.

I'm pleased. The Mini is low end hardware - built in integrated graphics, 5400 RPM hard drive. It comes with built-in Bluetooth (which cost extra on the original Mini), WiFi, 4 USB ports and a Fireware 400 port. But especially with 2 gig of RAM, that's plenty to make a system that works very nicely indeed.

Even better, I've been playing with a copy of VMWare Fusion, and it runs Windows XP well enough to handle the PC applications I'd like to run.

If this were my only system, I'd like something with more power. But for everyday use, it's fast enough, and the polish of OS X makes it all the better.

I'm now hosted on a virtual private server from RapidVPS

2007-08-24T17:34:41Z

I've been hosting my email (@bluepenguin.us), my weblog, and a bunch of pictures on an old Dell P3 550 in the closet of my house for years.

No more; all that stuff is now on a virtual private server hosted by RapidVPS. It looks like I have my own very own server, but in reality my server is running under OpenVZ on one RapidVPS's servers. Timesharing returns!

The old Dell in the closet https://www.rapidvps.com/worked reasonably well. The biggest hassle I'had came a few years back when Bellsouth started blocking inbound port 25; when they did that, I couldn't receive email directly. To get around that, DynDNS's MailHop relay service. MailHop relay received email my domain, and then contacted my home server on an open port and delivered the mail.

MailHop worked well. It also had the benefit that if my home server went off the air, my mail would not bounce; MailHop would keep gathering the mail until my home server was back up again.

The one thing I did not like was the cost. MailHop relay is $40/year per domain, and I have two domains.

I'm been thinking about moving to a VPS for a while, but the cost stopped me. VPS services seemed to be at least $30 a month.

My VPS costs me $10 a month. For that, I get 5 gig of hard drive space, 10 gigabytes network bandwidth, 128mb of RAM, and 100mhz of processor. I actually pay $13/month - I bought 3 more gig of disk space at $1/month, so I have 8 gig available to me. I have a choice of Linux distributions - I'm running CentOS 3. RapidVPS increased their price to $15/month on this service in Sep '08. Still a good deal, I think.)

A couple of those spec numbers - 128mb memory, 100mhz processor - gave me pause. My P3 dell was a 550mhz box with 256mb of ram. However, the specs from RapidVPS are minimums. I'm only guaranteed 100mhz of a processor, but if the physical server isn't busy, I can burst up to 3 Ghz. Same with memory: I'm only guaranteed 128mb of RAM, but I can burst up to a couple of gig if I need it.

In practice, it works great. When I fire up Movable Type, type in a new entry, and then rebuild my index files, the build happens much faster on my VPS server than on my Dell. I need that extra CPU for a few seconds, but then I'm done.

Other wins from running on a VPS:

The disks underlying my VPS are running under RAID, so I'm much better protected against hardware failures.
My VPS itself is backed up; if the physical server at RapidVPS goes down, they can restore my server from a backup and have it back on the air quickly.
My network connectivity is far better. My Dell was running behind a home DSL service - 3mbit/s down, at most 384kb up. And of course this frees up bandwidth on my home connection, too.

I've read good things about RapidVPS, and so far I've been impressed. My server was up in a couple of minutes after signing up. Today I was uploading lots of data and ran out of space; RapidVPS automatically gave me more space and encouraged me to either purchase addition space (I did) or delete files.

Changes here: now on movable type 4

2007-08-21T21:42:36Z

I've moved up to Movable Type 4. I know there are lots of folks who prefer WordPress, but I still like Movable Type.

The new administrative interface design is very pleasing to the eye. There are real improvements, I'm sure, but when part of the point of weblog software is to encourage one to write, the look and feel of the blog software is important, too.

there's lotsa wifi 27 stories up

2007-04-01T03:30:25Z

i was at a meeting the other day on the top floor of a hotel in Midtown Atlanta trying to connect to the wifi router over in the corner of the room. It was a bit of a problem, though, because from 27 stories up, I could see 52 wireless networks. I did figure it out.