Head Rambles

Grandad May 2nd, 2008

What the hell am I doing here?

The laws of nature dictate that you learn when you are young and you stick with what you have learned.   You keep up to date with that, but any brand new technologies, you ignore and leave ‘em to the youngsters.

I did electronics at third level.  I studied valves.  Transistors were a new thing and were barely mentioned.

How many of you can tell me what an Anode, a Cathode and a Grid are [and what they do]?  Not many!

So what the fuck am I doing messing around with laptops and Interwebby things and blogs and servers?  They are not of my era.  I’m not supposed to know anything about them.

I’m supposed to be retired now.  I’m supposed to be out playing bowls or golf.  I’m supposed to be going to night classes to learn how to play bridge.

This Interweb thingy is fifteen years old.  Fifteen years ago, I was in my forties - much too old to learn all this newfangled crap.

Why didn’t I stick with my pen and paper?  Why did I get involved?  Why can’t I live my life in peace on the bowling green?

I’m too old for all this shite.

• Internet , Rambles
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Grandad April 23rd, 2008

I’m sure none of you are interested as to how I got myself a web server, but it’s my blog, so I’ll tell you anyway.

It started a couple of weeks ago, as I mentioned before.  I saw this offer on a web site, and it looked geeky.  I always wanted to be a geek, because it’s the next best thing to being a yuppy.

Now, as it happens, that company is owned by my old friend Michele.  I should point out at this stage that Michele is a man [as far as I know] and he gets very touchy when people call him a woman, so there is nothing untoward going on there.  He may fancy me, but I certainly don’t fancy him.

I rang Michele.

"Howya Grandad!  What can I do for you?"

"I want one of those server things you are advertising.  What are they for."

"Putting web sites on," he sighed.

"I’ll take one."

"Are you sure about that?" he asked.  "Do you know anything about setting up servers and maintaining them?"

"Yes," I lied.

Now Michele may be a friend, but he is also a business man.  He demanded money.  I didn’t mind that as I have plenty old credit cards lying around.  I picked one at random, and MaryLou Kawalszki of Florida paid for my server.

I played around with it for a while, looking into various folders and things, but that got boring.  I stuck a web site on it.  That worked a treat.

On Saturday, I had great fun.  I started downloading web sites from the Interweb, and copying them onto my new server.

On Sunday, the server blew up.

I think it may have been the Bank of Ireland web site, or there again, it could have been eBay that caused the problem.  But none of the sites worked and I couldn’t connect to the server to fix it.

I like to lurk on ICQ, and fortunately [for me] Paul, who works with Michele logged on.  So I sent him a message - "HELP!"

He was very nice about it, considering it was half six on a Sunday evening.  He cried for a little while, but eventually he calmed down and he finally got my server running again.  He suggested that I might like to take Google.ie off it and put it back where it belonged.  He also suggested that I might be having memory problems.  I told him it was my age, but he said no, that he meant the server might have memory problems.

So on Monday, I annoyed them all in their office about my server and just to get rid of me, they put in extra memory.  It has been running perfectly ever since.

They are a very nice bunch in Blacknight, though they do tend to get a bit hysterical when I ring them, for some reason.  They need Prozac.

I have just finished uploading Google Earth onto it, and now I’m going to delete all the stuff in the folder called ‘bin’.

There is an awful lot of rubbish in it.

• Internet , work
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Grandad April 20th, 2008

Head Rambles has moved.  It hasn’t moved far, but it needed a new home.

As with all moves, a few things got broken.  I smashed that nice bone china tea set I got from Auntie Aggie, and a few things got dented.

I had to whip out the Super Glue and everything seems to be now fixed.

One or two of you may have called during the move, in which case you would have seen the mess.  Sorry about that.

So, I hope you like my new home.

You may find one or two other ornaments that were cracked in the move.  If you do, just let me know.

I will leave the windows open to try to clear the smell of fresh paint.

Update:  Had a little ‘woops’ moment [well, quite a few moments].

The floor caved in and the site broke.  Fucking builders!!  You can’t trust anyone these days.

• Blogging , Internet
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Grandad April 13th, 2008

I’m a sucker for messing with things I know nothing about.  It’s called ‘gaining experience’. 

I was browsing the Blogs last week and came across a blog post.  I haven’t a clue what it was about but I thought I’d try it anyway.  I bought a server.  Well.. OK, I leased it, but what the hell.

I always wanted to play around with Linux, because a lot of people say it’s great stuff, and it’s not Microsoft.  It works out cheaper to get a server than to buy a new PC so here was my chance.  I have also heard that they bundle a lot of games with Linux.

“Have you much experience with maintaining Linux servers?” says the nice man when I phoned them.

I laughed.  “Sure, I dream about Vi every night and then have Grep and Bash for breakfast” I said.  It’s amazing the words I have picked up from the Interweb.

“So you can recompile a colonel?” [I think that's what he said].

“No problem,” says I, wondering what I was getting myself into.

So he leased me the server.

I asked him when it was being delivered, but he said I couldn’t have it, but that I would have to run it over the Interweb.  So maybe it doesn’t exist, and that is why they call it ‘Virtual’?

I dialled into this new server and began to wonder if I had done the right thing.

I poked around inside it, and at last found the folder called ‘games’.  But the fucking thing is empty.  So now I have to upload all of Microsoft Flight Simulator, which is going to take a long time.

I also copied Head Rambles onto it.  That was fun, because it blew up.  It started whinging about databases or something, so I told it to fuck off and deleted it.

Now I have to find Vi.  I know she’s lurking around in there somewhere, and when I find her, we’ll come to Greps and have a right old Bash.

Anyone know anything about Linux?

• Internet , Web design
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Grandad April 6th, 2008

Big Brother is alive and well.

And I’m not talking about some crappy television program.

I’m talking George Orwell and 1984.  He was 24 years out.

I checked a friend’s blog at Rantings Diversified.

Apparently, he has been blocked by Imagine.ie, so none of their clients can reach it without disabling a filter

I have a couple of questions I would like answered.

• Who gave Imagine permission to dictate what is appropriate on the Internet?
• What are their criteria for deeming a site inappropriate?
• Who gave them permission to block a site without the client’s consent?

I know the site that was blocked, and I know the bloke who writes it.  He can be outspoken in his writings, but so can a lot of us.  He was barred for this. [and I'm not taking the risk of being banned as well!!]

Is Imagine doing the American Government’s dirty work for them?

• America , Internet , Politics
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Grandad March 18th, 2008

I came across a lovely looking site this morning.  It’s not the design or the graphics, so much as the text.

Apparently, the site is called Head Roaming.

It’s quite like my site, but I think the text looks much nicer.

It is in Chinese.  And it was written for a chap from China who wants to grow a bigger cock.

That’s fair enough.

They must be restocking after the Asian Bird Flu.

• Internet , Rambles
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