Clear Ambiguity

I have added Google Adsense here to test a few things out. Any income derived (I doubt there will be any, but you never know) will go to itshare. I will experiment a little over the layout and type of ads, and also the placement of content to see what works and what doesn’t.

I am going to split content up over the next few weeks so that there is a firefighting site, linux site, etc. That way ads will only be related to the readers interests and will hopefully not be annoying to anyone. ITShare could really do with any fundraising at all at he moment, so it is worth a try.

Please let me know if you find the ads unpleasant or off topic an I will do my best to deal with them. I really hope that they will benefit ITShare a little bit while not having any negative effects.

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broadband » The Broadband Reports Windows XP FAQ 7. Troubleshooting and Repair

I had the rather unfortunate task of helping a work mate sort out a corrupted registery under windows XP today. The above FAQ item worked well for me, so if you ever have the dreaded \windows\system32\config\system is missing or corrupt error on startup, then try it out.

Oh, even better, think once, think twice don’t let your friends use ms windows. FreeBSD or a Debian based linux is far superior.

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Dreamhost are celebrating their 8th birthday by offering 80% off all one and two year packages to the first 888 people using promo code 888. All plans also have unlimited domain hosting, and I am seriously considering buying another package for myself just for this.

I have promoted these guys quite a bit on this blog as I am really impressed with what they are doing. The primary reasons are one free domain registration, quick support, excellent value, ssh access on shared hosting, they use Debian linux, and more bandwidth and hard drive space than you are ever likely to use.

The 80% off is amazing, but you can still get $97 off ($22.40 total for the cheapest plan) by using the promo code ITSHARE97 which I talk about at http://www.pcuse.com/dreamhost-promo-code-itshare97.php.

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Google Search Engine
I had a bit of a play with The Way Back Machine this morning. In particular, I was looking at some Google history. I find it amazing that just a few short years ago some very clever post grad studends found each other and made the Internet and certainly their bank a happy place.

First, here is a very early look at the google search engine front page http://web.archive.org/web/19980502040303/google.stanford.edu/
Cool huh ?

That page has some interesting links on it, first Larry Page’s home page at Stanton University and naturally Sergey Brin’s.

Sergey’s even has a couple of links to Some photos, so you can have a look at the before shots when he didn’t rule the world.

One more nice link is to a description of the early Google hardware.

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Dreamhost now has a one click install for Gallery 2.0. I have been looking around for a decent picture manager for this site and also for one I am setting up for some workmates. Gallery 2.0 is easy enough to install by itself, but this little script makes it a doddle even for a tired bloke. So hopefully there will be a link somewhere to a setup photo gallery on this site shortly. I also found a plugin called WPG2 which will hopefully help it all fit together.

I found out about this new feature from the Dreamhost blog

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I have decided to offer the ultimate Dreamhost Promo Code for anyone who wants it. Please see pcuse.com/dreamhost-promo-code.php if you want a background or more details of the previous offering.

The new promo code is ITSHARE97 (case doesn’t matter), and gives you $97 off any 1 or 2 year hosting packages. I have also provided the highest discount available to all the Dreamhost monthly hosting packages aswell.

Here is what the configuration looked like when I was setting it up, so you know this is for real.

Obviously this promo code can’t be beaten. So if you are looking for hosting, head over to Dreamhost, decide on the best package for you and make sure you enter ITSHARE97 for the best promo code around.

However, if you are feeling like giving a little something back to a worthy non-profit group called itshare which gives people computers running linux for free and could really do with the $7, then use ITSHARE90.

The process is really easy, and the hosting is excellent value for money.

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I have been cycling to work over the last week as a result of a rather average medical. I ended up requiring a clearance from a doctor because my blood pressure was high (145/ 105) at the time. Now this is just a little silly as I consider myself reasonably fit. Each year we have a medical and fitness test called Fighting Fit. It helps my employer keep the fire fighting aspect of the job as safe as possible, which I am all for.

I tested as A1 in 2002/3, A1 Strenuous in 2003/4 and A1 Strenuous in 2004/5. A1 Strenous is the highest level that they do and makes it possible to do interstate and long time campaign fires. The fitness test is in a couple of weeks, so everyone has a medical to make sure they can proceed to the test stage. Don’t want anyone having a heart attack during the test after all.

Anyway, I went to the doctor last weekend after riding around 140km in total for the week and he measured my blood pressure at 135/100, not great but a definate improvement in just a short time.

I asked if I would be able to get a clearance and fortunately he told me “not a problem”, so I am covered as far as work goes. Even better, I asked if there were any issues with me riding so much, and he let me know I can do as much and as hard as I like. Excellent :)

Now the results over just a one week period:
Weight

• Fri Sep 09 110.1 kg
• Sat Sep 10 108.7 kg
• Sun Sep 11 109.1 kg
• Mon Sep 12 108.1 kg
• Tue Sep 13 107.7 kg
• Wed Sep 14 107.1 kg

Feeling
I feel much stronger, healthier and even happier.

Added benefits
I now take around 51 minutes to get to work instead of 20ish in the car. I use this time to think. I am always on the go, so thinking time is wonderful at any time.

I free up a vehicle for my wife, and save money each day on petrol/ car maintenance costs.

A great sense of achievement

I have also been following advice from Ask the Dietition for improving my eating habits aswell. The above figures are first thing in the morning on my home scales. Which may not be accurate, but they will show a trend. One interesting aspect is that I am losing weight a little too fast. I really should be trying to drop around 1kg per week. Hopefully the quick results are because of the fairly heavy excercise (it is a steep hill) and eating better, and not because of water loss.

I just thought about another benefit of all this. I am no longer getting major headaches and eye strain first thing in the morning. A little research tells me that they were probably due to the high blood pressure and now everything is a little less strained. Time will tell (so says my timelady wife anyway), but the evidence is convincing so far.

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A few years ago I won an ebay auction with what I thought was a bargain. I ended up paying something like AU$7 for a years worth of hosting. The greatest part of this deal was that the host nettrohost provided ssh access and enough bandwidth/ hard drive quota to keep me going for a while. Unfortunately they removed ssh access basically as I joined because of “security concerns” and bailed on the agreement. I ended up sticking with them for a while because it did the limited amount I asked of it, and life was busy. I found them very annoying to work with and definately suggest that you look for something else.

I then started hosting at home, when South Australia’s and I guess now Australia’s premium ISP Internode started providing static IP adsl accounts at a reasonable cost. This was a great solution for some time and I definately got my moneys worth out of them. They are without doubt the best ISP in Australia and are run by some of the best thinkers, admins, help desk staff and well all positions in the industry.

I didn’t look around at external hosting for a while, because the four domains I was hosting just worked from this home adsl service. I ran email, web and a few other services on my gateway freebsd stable computer.

I found out a few weeks ago that I can now order adsl 2+ on this exchange and had a look at my options again. Turns out that by going back to a dynamic IP and moving up to adsl 2+ (theoretical 24mb/sec) would actually save me AU$30/ month. Wow, that is amazing, so off to google I go to search for hosting deals again, thinking that a couple of hundred MB of space and half a GB of bandwidth would keep me going for a while and hopefully would not be too expensive.

Well I was stunned at how competive the hosting industry has become and what was for offer. I emailed a few maillists I frequent to get some reviews and feedback which just made the whole process more confusing. In the end I had a really close look at Dreamhost. Basically, in my situation and with my requirements they are untouchable. I found out that I can get ssh, easy installs like this wordpress software I am using now, hundreds of users, email accounts and maillists and so on. The real killer app for me is ssh. With it, I can easily edit and manipulate files on this debian linux server. Also you don’t get 100’s of GB space/ bandwidth- you get GB’s :)

Once I had my mind settled on dreamhost, I did a little more researching and found that they have a referal system where the referer and referee can share US$97. This just floored me and I started looking aroound for anyone willing to share a bit more than most. I looked at quite a few sites where people had stories similar to this one with http://www.dreamhost.com/rewards.cgi or http://www.dreamhost.com/r.cgi type links and were basically tricking people into giving them the full $97 by not disclosing it. I guess that is fair in this strange internet world we live in, but I would always watch my cookies and would delete anything looking like that. So a little more googling, and I found a guy’s blog called http://underscorebleach.net/jotsheet where he had an entry http://underscorebleach.net/jotsheet/2005/08/dreamhost-promo-code. The idea here was that he would keep US$7 and I would get to keep the $90 for myself.

Now I am not one to miss an opportunity like this, and so I signed up for 12 months on a special they were having for the code monster package and then towards the end of the easy and harmless process I entered the promotion code off the above site and it automatically took US$90 off my total. WOW!

I have left it a while before writing this, because I wanted to test the service, but I have to say that dreamhost have been 100% perfect hosting service for me for my needs. I highly recommend them to anyone looking for an incredible value linux hosting service.

UPDATE:

Dreamhost had an outage this week due to a significant power blackout. There is more info at blog.dreamhost.com.

As above, I am more than happy to help the underscorebleach guy out by pointing people there, but if you would like the same deal with the massive benefit of helping out a little non-profit called itshare then please consider using the Dreamhost promo code itshare90. If you do then you get US$90 off any yearly or two yearly hosting deals, and itshare will get US$7 to help with it’s much needed fundraising. I am a member of this organisation which make linux based computer systems out of donated parts and give them away to families and people who cannot usually afford them. They are definately worth supporting.

There are also discounts for the monthly paid hosting accounts. In each case itshare receives US$7 and you keep the remainder. The main problem with these accounts is that there is a setup fee though.

If you have lots of money and just want to get hosting quickly and don’t want to worry about doing the research, then by all means join Dreamhost by clicking throught this www.dreamhost.com/r.cgi?linunix/shared/comparison.html and then itshare.org.au will get $97. I don’t think that you should do that though, as you have truely earned a decent discount by reading this far.

UPDATE:
There are quite a few people linking directly to this article. I just want to let you know that after I created this promo code, I had a think about it, and decided to create one that gives you all the discount possible. The code is ITSHARE97 and there is another post about it http://www.pcuse.com/dreamhost-promo-code-itshare97.php. By all means use that code and get $97 off for all 1 and 2 year hosting plans. To give you some idea, the cheapest plan (which has amazing features) will be only US$22.40 for 12 months (under $2/ month).

If you can spare the $7 though, please consider using the original ITSHARE90 promo code and helping out itshare a little- thanks :)

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So you are concerned about the situation in the USA, want to do something, and either have no money yourself, have given too much to other charities or would just prefer to do a very little bit without bothering too much, well here is a way to send money to Hurricane Katrina relief without spending a dime. Basically this is a link to a blog, where the author will send a US$1 to the American Red Cross for everyone who posts a comment. The site is going to get heaps of attention, and so it should. So post away, help the cause and feel a little better today. Another great find thanks to scalzi.com/whatever.

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Lots of My hovercraft is full of eels translations, because I am sure you will need it one day. Monty Python has had a huge influence on my life, with some of my fondest memories being laying down watching Monty Python’s Flying Circus and belly laughing with my late father.

I am also fortuante that my whole family loves Python humour. Strangely, I think it keeps us sane, happy and closer.

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