Archive for June, 2005

Yesterday I finally finished upgrading all my forums to phpBB 2.0.15 and today I finished patching all the external scripts I thought I had. Huzzah! Like a months work finally finished. I joked with Ceon that I would be seriously annoyed if phpBB released phpBB 2.0.16 tomorrow.

Well I am pretty sure they won’t be doing that. Mainly because they released it today! Yes, I had just finished patching everything and they bring out a new version. And things just kept getting more annoying.

I managed to streamline the phpBB upgrade process however. I managed to update the 16 installs I keep up to date in an hour or two. Deep down I think I wanted the new release to see how fast I could do it and it came off well.

I realised other problems though – I had a version of Coppermine that I hadn’t checked for an update, there had been one which I am doing now. I missed phpAdsNew off the list altogether and have remembered two of those that I haven’t updated, although one I am taking offline. Finally I think I have some Snitz to upgrade.

So I’m not so upgraded after all. But don’t get me wrong I am a lot closer when I was. I had two wikis that needed upgrading which has been done along with upgrading one of my vBulletin‘s from 3.0.3 to 3.0.7, some other script upgrades and of course all my phpBB installs.

Some of these were really old. Like 2.0.6. In fact, Audio Senate was 2.0.5 although what I did there because of the mods was scrap the original script, bring in a whole new set of files and re-mod them. I actually took out several mods so make it easier to update, I’ll be staying on top of them now.

Something that is weird and doesn’t make sense is the idea of crossover cables. Ok, they do make sense but I’m not going to get into that here. Crossover cables are just like regular network cables except, and here is the surprisingly bit, the wires inside them are crossed over.

When to use them

Crossover cables are used when you are linking two computers directly. When using hubs, switches, routers, etc you want regular network cables but if you are linking two computers from one network port to the other you need a crossover cable.

Alternatives

Of course one problem is if you have just wired everything up and taken up half the carpets in your house. Putting a new cable in doesn’t sound like something you will be wanting to do any time soon.

There are two ways to work round this (you could also buy a network hub but that’s expensive and pointless so I won’t be covering that solution). The first is to get a connector and stick two crossover cables together, so the wires crossover twice and therefore cancel each other out.

The second solution is to get a connector that does this for you. You plug one end of the connector into your computer and the other end has a port to slot your regular network cable into. It’s just like a little box that does the crossover for you.

I always considered myself an MSDN person and believe me, I still very much am. Although today I have drifted over to being a TechNet person. I don’t really like the whole techie thing as getting computers to work that aren’t is beyond annoying. But certain developer style developments led me there.

The firm rooting in MSDN here is that to drift over I have been developing two websites. The websites in question are Server Admin Newbie and Hardware Tutorials. The first one I launched today and the latter I have just been working on.

I have been toying with the idea of doing a guide for new server admins as I know how clueless I was when I first got my VPS hosting. I had also been thinking that I don’t have a big enough range of developed sites. I’ve put everything into celeb sites, I have loads of others I guess but it didn’t feel like I did. End result I started that site.

Secondly I am going to be spending some time on Hardware Tutorials as it has plenty of potential. I wrote a new tutorial just now and I have realised it isn’t in any of the search engines or Worfolk Online’s database so I will be letting the world know it is out there this evening.

PCI cards are easy to install. The first thing you obviously need to do is turn everything off, unscrew your case and remove it so you can get in. Your PCI slots will be near the pack of the unit, and will be brown ports (usually). You will have anywhere from three to six.

Next you want to push out the panel on the back of your computer. They put these metal strips on so that you don’t have a hole in the back of your computer when you don’t have a PCI card in there. Keep this safe somewhere as you will need it again if you ever take the PCI card out.

Now get your PCI card and insert it into the spot. Push it firmly until it lines up, you will notice the metal strip end will replace the area where the old metal strip you pushed out used to be.

Once it’s in place and fits nicely lining up with the edge of the case you want to screw the metal strip into place so that it can’t move. Now close your case and switch your PCI back on. Chances are it will be picked up automatically but if not go to install new hardware or use whatever software you were supplied with.

The latest thing to arrive through my letterbox from Screen Select is Dawson’s Creek series 5. They have really slowed down by the way. They seem to take more time to dispatch and Royal Mail seems to take more time to deliver. But that is a different story.

I got watching the first disk. Disk 2 arrived two days ago but disk one only got here today so I thought I would stick the first episode one. End result is by 2 pm I had watched the entire first disk.

It really got to me. I think I had an anxiety attack at first as everything had changed. DC was always a safe insular place for me in Capeside but now everyone is off in different places. Well it’s not that bad, at the moment everyone is in Boston which reassures me a little.

It really got me thinking though. I’ve spent the last 40 minutes, an hour starring out of random windows and walking around. I’m trying to get some revision done but I just keep starring at the page of the book thinking about DC. Dawson is at a crossroads in his life and I think I am at the same point in my own.

Which is what scares me. The series, right from the opening doesn’t seem to be about Dawson and his creek anymore. It’s about Joey and as Dawson put it "this city of yours." It’s almost become a show titled Joey’s Boston. I don’t want that I want the story to be about Dawson and for him to get his happy ending. Because I want my story to be about me and my happy ending.

I’ve always considered Dawson to be my counterpart in the world of fiction. As I think I have explained before we are quite a like. Except obviously he has this perfect life in a beautiful creek and I have, well, Leeds, and currently a life that sucks). So what seems to be a downturn in his fortune has a knock on effect for me.

Dawson has always known what to do. He was going to be a film maker. I know what I am going to do. I took comfort in that. But for the first time I feel that he doesn’t know what to do. Or that he is making the wrong choice. What if I am doing the same?

As Cassie was disappointed that she didn’t come up in the images search, I decided there was only one thing to do – post a pic on Nerd Fed and trying to get it listed.

Sorry, this image is no longer available.

As you may have noticed, Nerd Fed has changed slightly. Well actually only two things appear to have changed at the front end – there is now a search on the right hand side and the text at the top has changed slightly.

The reason is that I finally got round to upgrading to pLog 1.0.1 (previously we were running 0.3 or something like that). The real changes to the script are at the back end though, and it looks a whole lot different to before.

The admin panel looks much better. The old one wasn’t actually that bad although the improvements are huge. It’s a much more slick and cleaner interface now; I no longer have to be jealous of Blogger.

I’m tempted to start a second blog just so I can do some track backs between them ;).

Finally! After ages working on the site, re-designing it to fit in with other things, many crazy projects, a VPS (which I will talk about in a later post sometime because its soooo cool), Celeb Storm has finally taken to the internet in full flight. Well, as far as I know.

It’s totally integrated (well pretty much) with Rawice which launched version 2.0 of the site last month and so when that update it updates Celeb Storm with the end result being that it should actually get updated.

Two routers on one network, that is crazy talk. It is indeed but the problem is that with everyone trying to provide out of the box home network solutions at cheap prices, routers are bundled in with everything. It seems these days you can’t buy a networking hub without getting a router with it.

Picture the situation. A few years ago you bought a Linksys 4 port switch / cable router so you could connect several computers to your internet connection. Now you want to go wireless with your laptop and so you buy a wireless access point. However it comes bundled 4 integrated wired ports and a router too. It happens, it happened to me.

They can co-exist quite peacefully though. That said it isn’t plug and play. I never expected it to be though. I thought when I got the first router it wouldn’t be but that plugged in and worked fine pretty much straight away. And to be honest, this wasn’t much harder.

First thing you want to do is to plug your new router into a separate computer disconnected from the network and head to setup. Here you want to change its address on the network.

The main problem I had was that both routers were trying to use port 192.168.1.1, which was not a good situation. So I connected the second router to my laptop and changed its port to 192.168.1.5.

Then you connect everything together. In this case I connected a cable into the uplink port of my first router and plugged the other end into one of the standard network ports on the second router. I’m guessing you can also plug a cable into a standard network port on the first one too, though I didn’t try that.

As only one actually needs to route internet traffic and such I then went to my second router and disabled the local DHCP server. This one was basically just acting as more ports to my main router.

And that is all you need to do? Simple huh? Well actually save the relaxation for when you actually have it working as you know how reliable technology is ;). Once done, sit back, log onto IM and brag about your advanced network.