Category: Computing

General computing with a bias towards Unix, OS X, Apple products, for use in Music and Photography

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Blog Setup

Well tonight after a cold motorcycle ride home (1.5 C), followed by a hot chocolate, it was time to do some more wordpress configuration. This blog which may or may not stay is fairly basic, just the default options with all the hard work done by my service provider. Tonight I started a fresh install of WordPress to give me a more custom and unique look. I have to admit its all Chris B’s fault, his new blog does look rather professional so it was time for me to have a go.

First a new Sub domain to host the test site (if this works i’ll move it over to the blog.brown-family.org.uk).

Then I download loaded WordPress and uploaded to my site, now for the technical bit, mysql. This will be a first for me, never used mysql before. I’ll let you know how I do.

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to WordPress or Not

Hi world.

Well, our first Blog entry.  Normally we have the odd bike related entry on the Motorcyle page, the bits that are family related on the family etc.  These are written in a simple text editor using html and ftp’ed up to our website.

Most people now are using Word Press, a far easier way to publish your thoughts, so this is a simple experiment, to see how it goes.  I am going to keep updating the other pages but also add the odd thought or two here.

Let me also add this is not what I would call a real WordPress site, just the default blog option that uses WordPress, that my web hosting company gives users for free.  Getting the mysql database up and running, and downloading the WordPress application and getting a real site up and running is the job for later this week.

As this moves from Development to Live and possibly back again, and I also repost some old favourites, it might prove a little hard to follow at first, but please bare with me.  Any posts before this date have been moved from the old website.

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Back to Work & more Photography

After our amazing holiday, visiting all round England, a bit of Wales and round the coast of Scotland it was time to go back to work, but my body had other days.

Bank holiday monday saw me come down with a terrible cold, and Tuesday our first day back at work I was no better. After that I managed to drag myself in, but we had to travel by car, I was not up to riding the motorcycle.

 

In the middle of the month I also did a studio photo shoot, as you can see above, not bad results.

The big thing was the release of iPhone4. Richard has the original iPhone, and has been very pleased with it, now that its three years old it was time for the updated model.

I am sure in the news you have all heard of its problems, but I have found it to be the best phone I have every had. The display, camera and gps are excellent. The reception is certainly better then the previous phone, and I have had no problems with it. If the phone is gripped tightly the signal strength does drop but this causes no issues in actual use.

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a Wedding and Project Work

This month saw a move at work. Instead of working in our Network Operations Centre, I was moved to the IT Projects division, to head up a major internal project as the head IT Infrastructure Engineer. Well there go my weekends for the next month or two.

The highlight of the month was an invite to Tris and Nicila’s wedding.

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North Yorkshire Holiday and a Portrait Session

The start of this month found us still on Holiday. Enjoying the good weather in North Yorkshire.

Unfortunately it could not last, and we had to go back to work.

This month was more stress and long hours. Power issues in the server room. Then the gym went and cancelled the Yoga classes without telling us. Good customer service there! At least with us all complaining it looks like there going to address that. We will see, if not there are plenty more gyms in this area.

I also got to do a family portrait session for people at work.

Many months ago we had a charity auction for comic relief. I had offered a portrait session. With the nice weather once again with us the winner came to claim her price.

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Colds, and the end of an Era

The big event this month was Ethan’s Birthday, Sofia’s big brother, now 4 years old with a growing collection of Dinosaurs.

Mum Brown also gave us a fright when she was admitted to hospital with a suspected heart attack. Luckily everything was alright, it was just a very bad cold which brought on an angina attack and low blood pressure.

Both of us have also had very bad colds this month, requiring us to have days off work, and worse, causing Caroline to cancel horse riding and Richard to have to cancel flying lessons!

Work was also important this month; as on the 27th February the last of 120 Novell NetWare 4.11 Servers spread around the county of Lincolnshire was decommissioned. These systems were designed by me and have been in sites all over Lincolnshire, England running happily for over 8 years. Whilst the replacement system was co-designed by myself, my colleagues and our partner company, you don’t get quite the same feeling of pride as when it was all yours. Lets see if the new Windows 2003 systems with AD last as well as the NetWare 4.11 systems with eDirectory.

As someone who uses LINUX, UNIX, NetWare, Windows and OSX, all operating systems have their advantages and disadvantages but the old system is I feel something that I and Novell can feel very proud of! I have to admit I am a much better Network designer then html writer (as I am sure you can tell looking at these pages)!

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College Award Ceremony

Tonight the Lincoln College held its 2005 student awards ceremony, to award those students who it believed had either over come great difficultly or performed way above that which was required.

Caroline, Richard and Alan, Caroline’s father, were all there at The Lawn in Lincoln, to see Caroline pick up her award for outstanding achievement in Part Time Higher Education in Computer studies.