Systems management is very easy.
- Start with a blank slate.
- Write on the slate.
- Demonstrate that, in the event of the slate being wiped clean, you can reproduce the contents of the slate in full.
- Wipe the slate clean.
- See 3.
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September 1, 2010 12:28 am
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August 9, 2010 7:45 pm
I am fairly frequently asked for tips on getting less junk email. There’s quite a few things you can do that will cut the amount of junk you get, or at least let you get an idea of where it came from.
- Don’t have a catchall account, only ever accept mail for real mailboxes.
- Use as few generic or role addresses as you can. sales@, info@, help@ etc will all draw in unwanted junk.
- Delete or disable legacy mailboxes, don’t alias them to another user’s mailbox.
- Use different email aliases for different sites. So I might have martin-slashdot@ for Slashdot, martin-elreg@ for The Register, martin-dominos@ for Dominos etc etc. If mails arrives to these addresses, and it’s not from that specific organisation, then something has leaked when it shouldn’t have.
- Once you’ve finished with a particular site, remove the alias.
- Don’t be afraid to pick up the phone. If you get email you didn’t want from a company, call them to get yourself removed. Where you’ve had no contact with a company before, tell them politely that they are breaking the law by sending you unsolicited email.
- Understand the difference between spam and UCE. With spam it is rarely worth your time tracking down the sender, UCE may well be.
- Don’t click on unsubscribe links in spam messages. Do click on unsubscribe links in UCE messages. With the latter, if the unsubscribe isn’t instant (“It may take up to 10 days….”) then blacklist the sender.
And, of course, if junk mail really is a big problem for you, consider using a commercial anti-spam and anti-virus filtering service to get rid of it. Obviously I would recommend antibodyMX, but there are plenty of other providers out there.
July 7, 2010 12:02 am
In the finest tradition of itch scratching, I have written a short HOWTO on backing up data using an excellent open source tool called Duplicity, using Amazon’s S3 service as the datastore.
You can read the HOWTO here.
April 18, 2010 3:11 pm
Last weekend I started cleaning up the garden. First job was to break out the pressure washer and remove 6 months of bio-film from the patio, shed and fences. Then we unpacked the our large teak table and were dismayed to find that it had not fared well under cover.
The wood was covered with watermarks and had various genera of stuff living on it, including large areas of black mildew. This was not a cheap table, so I started researching about how to go about saving it.
Firstly, I just left it to dry out. After 3 to 4 days of airing I was relieved to see most of the watermarks had vanished. Next I took a small hand sander, found the finest grade sandpaper I could and went over the entire table lightly, taking off just the very top layer of the surface along with most of the crud that was clinging to it.
Next I washed the table down, removing as much of the dust as possible and left it to dry out completely.
Looking around the shelves at my local DIY store, I found this stuff which is apparently highly dangerous to just about everything living, if the dire warnings on the back of the pack are to be heeded. Sounded perfect 
Painting this stuff onto the teak immediately brought back the colour and the grain of the wood and was soaked up like the table was a sponge. I kept repainting until the stuff stayed on the surface rather than being immediately absorbed.
Left overnight, all the excess was drawn into the wood, leaving it feeling slightly waxy and beautifully textured. Picture here.
Perhaps not the most interesting thing I’ve ever written here, but will hopefully be useful information for people with a similar problem.
February 5, 2010 10:35 am
It’s been a while since I’ve blogged, I find Twitter a bit easier to keep updating. In the fine tradition of itch-scratching, I recently rebuilt my own personal mail server based on a virtual private server from Bitfolk using Exim, Dovecot and Squirrelmail. You can find the HOWTO here, I hope you find it useful.