Web and domain move complete

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This is mostly a test post to check things like file uploads, image linking and mod_rewrite are functioning correctly. After a bit of research and discussion I’m using a place called Gandi.net to host my domain and have configured Apache on my own server to handle this site.

Setting up my domain was straight forward. It took about an hour for the domain to be transferred and me to recreate the host names. DNS then slowly propagated the changes over the next few hours.

Configuring Apache was also reasonably straight forward once I’d worked out how to do wildcard domains properly – the order Apache reads the virtual host configurations is important. What caused me a few hours confusion was that no images on my sites would load, but the http rewrite was working. This turned out to be a file permission problem within WordPress, and as soon as the webserver user was granted access the site sprang to life.

The next thing I am trying is SSL. I have a free SSL certificate for 1 year (after that it’s €24 a year) and once that has been generated I can create a private SSL site for a few services I want to use.

11 Years of excellent service

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Way back in 2001 I wrote a short note on here about my website moving. Back then the company I worked for had a colocated Linux server with a company called UKShells (they started off as a CAD company and did colo on the side). We found maintaining the colocated machine difficult when it lived in a warehouse in Birmingham. This was 2001 Linux and not some clustered cloud instance so messing with LILO and vmlinuz images was required.

UKShells started a Linux shell account service which offered domain hosting, mail and web space for a reasonable price per year. We moved to that service and I gained my own domain to play with.

11 years later and unfortunately they’re ‘retiring’ the service I use and I need to find a new home. Bit of a bugger really, they’ve provided faultless hosting and caused me zero problems.

Currently I’ve asked them to update the tag on my domain so another host can claim it, Google Apps are configured to do my mail and once I reconfigure Apache I’ll host my site from my own machine.

Quite interesting how technology changes in 10 years. I could buy a cloud instance and use that (that’s the backup plan if hosting my own website becomes unusable), and my home broadband connection is fast enough to cope with doing this to it. Also Google appeared.

So yeah, I’ve kind of gone in a circle with my hosting.

This message is for the intended recipient only

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… so if you got it, that’s actually our fault but we can’t do anything about it.

I just paid my credit card, I got this rather nice email. Email has been suitably mangled to vainly hide the place issuing my credit card (although it’s really not hard to work it out if you’re moderately intelligent)

Spot the logical inconsistency, win a prize* I really like the bit where they refer to me as an ‘it’ at the end.

* Prize not real, prize not valid in countries where breathing oxygen is permitted. Limit of zero per entrant.

Dear You (although at the end of this message we refer to you as an ‘it’),
Thank you for your payment made through Leading Brand Supermarket Credit Card.
Payment was submitted on xx/yy/zzzz aa:bb and will take 4 working days to reach your account.
Payment amount £ooo.oo.
Best wishes
Some Bloke
Marketing Director, Place that owns most of your life
Many internet users have recently been targeted through bogus e-mails by fraudsters claiming to be from their bank. These e-mails ask customers to provide their internet banking security details in order to reactivate their account or verify an e-mail address.
Please be on your guard against e-mails that request any of your security details. If you receive an e-mail like this you should not respond.
Please remember that, for security reasons, apart from when you create them at registration or when you change your Internet Pin or Password, we will only ever ask you to enter random characters from your Internet PIN and Password when you logon to this service.
We would never ask you, by e-mail, to enter (or record) these details in full and we would therefore request that you do not respond to e-mails asking for this information.
[Calls may be recorded]
Please do not reply to this e-mail as the mailbox doesn’t accept incoming messages. If you have any comments or queries, we can be contacted via our website at Redacted.com.
Supermarket Personal Finance plc. Registered in Scotland No. 12345. Registered office: Address of a mailbox where there aren’t actually any people present.
Authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority.
This e-mail message is confidential and for use by the addressee only. If you are not the addressee, please return the message to the sender by replying to it and then delete the message from your computer.
Internet e-mails are not necessarily secure. Whoever Personal Finance plc does not accept responsibility for changes made to this message after it was sent.
Whilst all reasonable care has been taken to avoid the transmission of viruses, it is the responsibility of the recipient to ensure the onward transmission, opening or use of this message and any attachments will not adversely affect its systems or data. No responsibility is accepted by Whatever Personal Finance plc in this regard and the recipient should carry out such virus and other checks as it considers appropriate.

My Dad’s Total Knee Replacement

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Dressings on a total knee replacement

I’ve just been to hospital to visit my dad who had a total knee replacement on Friday. Despite being an NHS patient he got a choice of hospitals and was able to choose a private one which only has 14 rooms. It’s quite a nice place for a hospital really.

Before my dad is allowed out he has to complete a series of tasks of increasing difficulty, ranging from being able to bend his fancy new knee to going up a set of stairs. We went for a limp around the corridors and his leg didn’t fall off so it seems that with constant gentle exercise it’ll start to work properly; at the moment he complains it’s very stiff and uncomfortable – but not painful, unlike the remains of the knee they removed.

Bruising and tape marks around the site of an epidural

He was telling me about the operation. At the start you get made to sit on the edge of the bed with your knees bent up while an epidural is stuck into you. The sensation of this was described as being like hot water flowing down both legs… After this they rolled him onto the bed and stuck the desired leg up into the air. The strange part is that my dad didn’t know this was going on until he saw his leg in the air – supposedly your brain remembers the position of all your limbs, so when the epidural took effect the last position of his leg was all he could sense. This might be like the phantom limb sensation felt by people with amputated limbs.

Once he’s out and has the dressing off I’ll try to get another photo, there’s a rather interesting line of staples down his knee that I’ll ask him to photograph. He did ask to keep the bits of knee joint they removed, but it seems there’s certain rules about disposing of body parts so they didn’t let him.

Where has my Egg VISA card gone?

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Ages ago I signed up for an Egg.com VISA card for a trip to the US. Since then I’ve used it for various random things before signing up for a Natwest VISA and pretty much ignoring the Egg one. At one point I reduced its credit limit to £300 (the lowest it would go) and put it in a box for safe keeping.

I tried to cancel it yesterday, only to discover Barclaycard now appear to have bought Egg’s VISA card system and that I now need to do all my dealings with them. Fair enough, a letter or something might have been nice, but whatever.

Tried to visit Barclaycard’s website to see what’s going on and it seems I should have received a new Barclaycard because my Egg one is now invalid. Well no, I didn’t.

Do you know how impossible it is to get anywhere with Barclaycard’s customer service system if you don’t have one of their cards? The immensely patronising automated phone system explains three times to me about typing in my “long number from the front of the card” or pressing ’1′ to open an account.

Eventually their system gave up and put me through to a moderately helpful human who was completely unable to find me on their system. Seems I have no account with Egg and no account with Barclaycard.

… then he put me on hold and the line went dead … Oh well, I was bored anyway (have you noticed how when this happens they never call you back? And you never get given any form of ID to contact the same human you had last time?).

If I suffer mind-crushing boredom next week I’ll root around amongst my stuff to see if I can find an Egg card and see if the “long number off the front that starts with 4263″ (I know what a credit card number looks like, I’m not a moron!) is magic enough to work on them.

If not, I guess an admin cockup has worked in my favour! That’d majorly suck if this was my proper VISA card I actually used though.