Rus Hughes on Rus

Building Character, Brick by Brick: How LEGO Mimics the Process of Personal Growth

Fri, 11 Aug 2023 21:27:00 +0000

Just as the vibrant LEGO pieces come together to create magnificent structures, our life experiences, both significant and seemingly trivial, shape us, brick by brick. Each piece, each memory, each learning curve, intertwines to craft the intricate design of our character. Join me on this journey, as we draw parallels between the assembly of LEGO structures and our own personal growth.

Foundations – From Beginnings and Experiences

Like the foundation of any great LEGO structure, our character’s foundation is laid early in life. Our environment, the people we interact with, and the experiences we undergo, act as those foundational pieces, setting the stage for future growth.

Understanding and Embracing Your Value System: A Guide to Authentic Living

Thu, 10 Aug 2023 09:42:01 +0000

In a world filled with diverse personalities, various opinions, and incessant external influences, navigating through life’s myriad challenges and crossroads can be a daunting endeavor. One of the most profound tools we possess as individuals, often overlooked, is our value system. It’s the compass that guides our choices, influencing not just what we do, but how we feel about it.

What is a Value System?

At its core, a value system comprises the principles, ethics, and moral standards we hold dear. Think of it as your internal GPS, consistently guiding you towards actions and choices that resonate with your soul’s deepest truths. While the world around you fluctuates, these values remain your steadfast companions, helping you make decisions that feel right at a fundamental level.

Rich in Personality: Exploring the Traits of the Wealthy

Sun, 09 Jul 2023 17:22:05 +0000

I subscribe to Chamath Palihapitiya’s Substack What I Read This Week, it’s a weekly dose of a dozen or so interesting links, often related, that he recommends. This week’s newsletter featured a paper published in the British Journal of Psychology titled The rich are different: Unravelling the perceived and self-reported personality profiles of high-net-worth individuals.

I’m fascinated with personal development as my personality used to be abhorrent. Over the decades I’ve become someone I actually like, as well as a high-net-worth individual, so I was curious to see if there was a scientific correlation between who I have become internally and what I have achieved externally.

Why I Bought A Rolex Starbucks

Sat, 15 Apr 2023 14:09:50 +0000

Last year I bought a brand new, Rolex Starbucks.

i dont know if you guys have seen the meme of all the gurus saying everyone in america would make it if they just stopped buying starbucks coffee?

Moguls like Kevin O’Leary can be very judgemental about people’s coffee habits.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/04/kevin-oleary-wont-pay-2-point-50-for-coffee-instead-he-invests-it.html

Medical schools are advising students to save money by not buying Starbucks.

Media

Fri, 31 Mar 2023 20:22:37 +0000

The Business Method Podcast

119 ~ Conquering Health and Business by Controlling Your Environment with Rus Hughes

https://www.boomplay.com/episode/3223299

Gratitude 2022

Thu, 01 Dec 2022 12:34:21 +0000

When I journal I always fill out a gratitude template of 6 things I’m grateful for but reading Tynan’s recent gratitude blog post has inspired me to follow in his foot steps and write my own yearly gratitude post. I want to develop as a writer and content creator for personal development and to help better understand my own thoughts so hopefully I will see you this time next year as well!

Discovering The South Of Morocco

Wed, 30 Nov 2022 17:50:18 +0000

Spain’s starting to get cold and is losing it’s sunshine, also I want to get back to a never ending summer, so I decided to spend a month in Morocco to learn more about this beautiful country.

Surfing in Tamraght

Taghazout is the most famous surfing destination in Morocco, but it’s tiny, lost it’s hippy vibe and has more scammers than soul nowadays. Further down the coast is another town called Tamraght with more surf and yoga camps as well as proximity to the same beaches. I have stayed in a few places and recommend Maroc Surf Camp for basic accomodation, yoga and surf lessons or the Riu Palace if you want more of a luxury resort vibe. The Maroc Surf Camp guys were happy to collect me from the Riu and take me out for surf lessons when I was staying there.

Investor Profile

Wed, 01 Dec 2021 10:09:44 +0000

Soho Nail Bar

Valencia, Spain

https://sohonailbar.es/

Vyou

London, United Kingdom

https://www.vyou.co/

Blue Odin

Remote

https://www.blueodin.io

Importist

Remote

https://www.importist.com/

Unedited

Brighton, United Kingdom

https://unedited.co/

Amazooka

Hong Kong, Hong Kong

https://www.amazooka.com/

Intelligent Labs

Haywards Heath, United Kingdom

https://www.intelligentlabs.org

Financial Responsibility

Sun, 20 Jun 2021 11:59:40 +0000

I’m a massive advocate of personal responsibility and accountability, in all things, especially when it comes to health and finances. But I didn’t always use to be this way.

After graduating with 2 degrees I didn’t want to do and entering the job market out of necessity rather than choice, I ended up keeping up with the Joneses whilst drowning my misery in distractions. This lead to me maxing out my credit cards, and taking consolidation loans, multiple times whilst also permanently living out of my overdraft.

HodlBot Review

Fri, 12 Feb 2021 11:40:39 +0000

HodlBot is a self managed crypto index fund. Essentially it maintains a portfolio for you that tracks the top performing crypto projects based on your requirements.

In November 2020 I deposited $250 into a crypto exchange and configured HodlBot to manage it using a HODL 10 Index strategy and in the 4 months since the portfolio has grown to a value of $1,013.11.

EthicHub Investment Platform

Tue, 20 Oct 2020 13:26:14 +0000

What Is EthicHub?

EthicHub was formed in 2017 and is a crowdsourced lending platform, offering approximately 15% APR on investments of as little as €20.

EthicHub, for now, is focusing on the coffee growing communities near the city of Tapachula in the Chiapas state of Mexico.

Boosting Remote Team Morale During The Coronavirus Pandemic

Fri, 27 Mar 2020 11:18:57 +0000

At the best of times, running a remote team is hard. At the moment the world is battling the COVID-19 Coronavirus pandemic, more and more workers are working from home instead of going to an office. People are in quarantine, unable to go outside and socialise. A lot of what was working before now isn’t, and people are having to change.

I live by myself and work with a remote team of 40 people throughout Europe and Asia, with time zones from the UK to Japan. I have not spoken to anyone in person or been outside, for 2 weeks other than to put the rubbish out.

My Amazon Seller Stack: 23 Tools of the Trade

Thu, 04 Jul 2019 20:23:44 +0000

Software and services to power your Amazon business.

I’ve been selling on Amazon since 2014 and over the years the strategies, services and tools I used have evolved just as much as the Amazon landscape has evolved.

There are now suites of tools dedicated to solving specific problems faced by Amazon sellers but as my business has expanded, becoming more of a business than simply a form of search engine manipulation, my needs have grown

Where Do You Get Your Information From?

Sat, 25 Aug 2018 10:30:56 +0000

Whilst working along side CEO and designer Jon Myers a common conversation thread that would emerge was “Where do you get your information from?”.

Motivational speaker Jim Rohn famously said that we are “The average of the five people we spend the most time with”. A similar philosophy can be applied to the information we absorb.

Limiting the scope of information we gather will in turn limit our horizons. If we live in a bubble we will isolate ourselves from incite and experiences of people outside that bubble.

Philosophy Of Logging

Sun, 05 Aug 2018 17:11:34 +0000

Application logs are one of the most useful diagnostic aids in platform support and it pains me that many developers often ignore such a critical aspect of their system.

When To Not Log

There is only one reason for an application to not generate any logs, and that is for performance reasons, e.g. constrained telecoms or web servers running at maximum IO capacity where even writing to disk will have an impact on application performance.

Contact

Mon, 04 Jun 2018 02:16:27 +0000

Hi, I’m Rus

Mon, 04 Jun 2018 02:16:27 +0000

I’m a successful Amazon seller and the co-founder and CTO of the B2B SaaS solution for product sourcing, Importist.

From systems administrator to senior developer, team lead, CTO and founder, I’ve touched on every point across the complete tech lifecycle of numerous SaaS businesses since the start of my career in 2002. With my Comp Sci BSc and Internet Systems MSc I also have a foundation in the underlaying principles that all computing infrastructure operates on, enabling me to make decisions at the byte and bit level across the whole platform.

Building Your First VR Experience In Decentraland

Thu, 22 Mar 2018 03:20:44 +0000

This is a brief video and tutorial on building your first VR experience in the Decentraland VR platform and getting you started with the tools, a-minus syntax. By the end of this tutorial you will have an area of land with a Lambo on it you can walk around. Publishing the land to the Ethereum blockchain will come in a later video.

Sorry for the fan noise, the client seemed to have killed my CPU 🙂

Building A Virtual Reality Social Network For Digital Nomads

Sun, 18 Mar 2018 15:48:38 +0000

Being a digital nomad, remote employee or perpetual traveller creates as many problems as it solves. Swapping the stability of the office and home environment for a life of travel and adventure on the road also swaps the stability of a supportive, social circle of friends and growth for a multitude of single serving friends, shallow Tinder encounters and continual acquaintance re-engagement. I’ve forgotten your name already but will remember it next time when I feel guilty about it, promise. Another day, another apartment, everything changes, when you live out of a bag, minimalism is key. No posters, no art, no decorations, no books, Kindle is king. Everything becomes digital. Why even have a backup hdd when you have the almighty cloud. #nobaggage.

6 Tips To Help You Read More Books

Mon, 01 Jan 2018 03:02:11 +0000

I’ve been lucky in that I’ve always enjoyed reading. My earliest memories are of consistently getting in trouble as a child due to reading Terry Pratchett or Fighting Fantasy at night, it’s always something I enjoyed but ended up getting sidelined shortly after I turned 25 when I become a jaded, adult with a career.

Since leaving the UK I’ve become an avid reader again as it’s one of the best ways to discover new experiences and perspectives on life as well as engage the mind and reduce stress. Reading is my meditation. It’s New Years Day, 2018, and the end of a cycle which is always a good time for reflection, here’s a short list of some of the observations I’ve made looking back over the last 4 years of my reading habit!

Wishful Drinking – Carrie Fisher

Sun, 18 Jun 2017 10:09:35 +0000

I was legitimately bummed out when Carrie died, I spent December bouncing between Ho Chi Minh City and Bangkok, ultimately spending Christmas itself in Bangkok after watching Rogue One in Ho Chi Minh City!

The amusingly named memoir is fun to read, giving a glimpse in to Carrie’s Hollywood upbringing and partying antics, written in a kind of jovial, this happened, deal with it kind of manner.

Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life – Neil Strauss

Sun, 18 Jun 2017 09:35:41 +0000

I read this book because a group of us were moving to China, just as Trump was getting voted in to be President of the USA and various military exercises(?) were taking place by both America and China that seemed .. awkward. What would we do if something happened? Where would we go? How would we get there? I didn’t know what I didn’t know and now after reading this book I now know a little bit more about what I still don’t know!

The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work – Scott Berkun

Mon, 05 Jun 2017 07:19:01 +0000

The Year Without Pants is an insightful look in to Scott’s year working as a team lead for WordPress and Automattic’s company culture that allows remote work. What’s most interesting about it, is the culture works! Running a remote team successfully can be incredibly difficult at scale. Their culture was unconventional, employees are independent, working from wherever they wished and most interestingly, rarely using email to communicate.

The book makes a great case for why remote work can work, especially if you consider how much time at a traditional workplace is spent purely through the computer. I know for myself I could actually spend days during a busy project not speaking to a single soul in my office and just working through the day on my computer and collaborating with the team on IRC and Skype whilst handling tickets in Jira. The principle is sound and in my opinion the things that make it a success or not are employee commitment and competence and the company culture and processes. A remote team with a paranoid and suspicious company culture will never work.

git push matching vs simple

Thu, 16 Feb 2017 07:08:22 +0000

Recently I built some new infrastructure and started to see messages like this in my Git environments.

Git 2.0 from 'matching' to 'simple'. To squelch this message
and maintain the current behavior after the default changes, use:

git config --global push.default matching

To squelch this message and adopt the new behavior now, use:

git config --global push.default simple

Decisions, decisions. What exactly is the difference between matching and simple Git push?

docker: Error response from daemon: Cannot link to /compose_mysql_1, as it does not belong to the default network.

Wed, 08 Feb 2017 05:36:05 +0000

I’ve been doing a lot of work with Docker recently, infact this website, Remote CTO, is currently running in a Docker container, well 3, one for Nginx, one for PHP-FPM and one for MySQL. Soon there might be a fourth, for either Redis or Memcache, I haven’t decided yet!

I do a lot of cool stuff at the command line. e.g using WP-CLI to manage my WordPress installations.

Peter Diamandis – Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World

Mon, 19 Sep 2016 03:46:32 +0000

Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler was fantastic to read after Exponential Organizations and Abundance. If Exponential Organizations discussed the problems and Abundance discussed the solutions, Bold can be thought of as discussing the implementation!

The world’s biggest problems = biggest business opportunities.

Like the previous 2 books, Bold is incredibly optimistic about the future. The first section discusses the 6 ‘D’s of exponentials

Peter Diamandis – Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think

Sun, 18 Sep 2016 04:58:36 +0000

Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think by Peter Diamandis is a fantastic, tackling the world’s largest and most important problems such as overpopulation, food, water, energy, education, health care and freedom.

This is probably the most optimistic book I’ve ever read.

In today’s hyperlinked world, solving problems anywhere, solves problems everywhere.

Abundance is a great follow up to Exponential Organizations as a lot of the techniques covered to solve the worlds largest problems involve exponential thinking as the human race is growing exponentially.

Salim Ismail‎ – Exponential Organizations: Why new organizations are ten times better, faster, cheaper than yours (and what to do about it)

Sat, 17 Sep 2016 04:16:36 +0000

Salim Ismail‎ – Exponential Organizations: Why new organizations are ten times better, faster, cheaper than yours (and what to do about it) is the first of 3 books I’ve read recently, all stemming from Singularity University, and was full of big thinking around what exponential organisations are and case studies of how some were formed, how they scaled and problems that they went on to solve.

I don’t have an MBA in business, I’m a computer nerd who’s worked with successful startups and large enterprise companies, so I still have a lot to learn and this book filled a few gaps with solid explanations. e.g. obviously I’ve been exposed to the waterfall model of software development (since 1997..) but wasn’t aware of the formal New Product Development process, or NPD, which includes the following steps:

The Science Of Amazon Ranking Graphs And Why They Are Important

Wed, 24 Aug 2016 07:06:05 +0000

A few people have recently mentioned to me that they don’t understand the usefulness of tools like Amazooka or AMZ Tracker for tracking their products, after all tracking a products BSR or rankings for a particular keyword doesn’t lead to more sales, so I’m going to describe how I use them and why I find them to be important for my business.

Really I should have written this 3 months ago as a lot of people have also been asking about sales drops the last few months due to being in Q3. If these same people had graphs of their BSR and keyword rankings, and knew how to read them, they wouldn’t be asking these questions.

Robert B Cialdini – Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

Fri, 24 Jun 2016 03:24:52 +0000

Anyone doing any kind of marketing should read this book, period. Covering 6 key principles of influence, Robert Cialdini is a committed genius who not only uses scientific case studies to back up the principles he describes, but also real world experience, having ‘gone under cover’ working in restaurants, etc. to observe influence in action! Not only do you see how the principles play out but Robert goes in to detail about how your mindset can help you not fall for them when used as a marketing tactic.

Peter Thiel – Zero To One

Thu, 23 Jun 2016 13:44:39 +0000

Zero To One is a great book that pulls no punches, the basic premise of it is, when creating a startup, to really make a difference:

Be first
Be 10 times better than the competition

Obviously it’s up to you what you do, some business models are just about scratching some of the existing market rather than creating a new one and that’s fine, but this definitely echoes a recent project I was late to market for, which definitely wasn’t first and was only objectively 3-4 times better than the competition 😉

Hong Kong – The Worst Of 80s London

Thu, 23 Jun 2016 05:53:27 +0000

I’m not sure if it’s because I don’t drink, or because I stayed in the completely wrong area of Hong Kong, but my week here was not as fun as I had expected and super expensive. A lot of my friends completely love Hong Kong, I’ve friends that were born and raised here then moved to the UK, friends from the UK that moved out to Hong Kong to live for a few years and then I know other nomads that love travelling here. So there must be something about it that’s awesome. I was hoping for a super fun, sexy, James Bond Bottoms Up club vibe, but what I found was basically a super corporate, concrete city reminiscent of 80s London with the price tag twice that of 21st Century London!

Singapore – Grab Taxi Or Die

Sun, 19 Jun 2016 15:42:01 +0000

Just before Christmas I needed to leave Thailand on a visa run as I’d done my 30 day VOA + Extension so after much humming and harring, as I didn’t really want to leave, the day before I booked a weekend in Singapore! It was pretty awesome.

The first thing I noticed though, getting a taxi was impossible. Very few taxi ranks and even when there were, the taxis came and immediately picked up someone who used Grab Taxi, then departed. This actually resulted in quite a few heated arguments between people in the taxi queues and the Grab Taxi users! Fortunately I’m smart and worked it out! Unfortunately I cheaped out and bought a data only SIM card on arrival so couldn’t activate Grab Taxi as I didn’t have an actual Singapore number. Idiot.

Build A Business Website In 4 Minutes

Sat, 11 Jun 2016 12:48:56 +0000

Ready to get your WordPress site up and running in minutes? Even if you don’t have a business plan, even if you don’t have a professional UK web design & development firm on payroll, it’s better to start sooner rather than later. You can increase your income by having more value and now is the time to learn WordPress and kickstart your online life.

Set Up Your Hosting Account

Your hosting account is where your websites will live, so before we get started with WordPress we need to get you up and running with a host!

Barcelona – The Entrepreneur House with Chris Reynolds

Tue, 15 Dec 2015 09:31:13 +0000

The entire purpose of my European rail adventure was to head down to Barcelona, Spain, to live in one of Chris Reynold’s Entrepreneur Houses for 4 months, get some serious work done and get a handle on my type 2 diabetes situation.

The premise was simple, at any time 10-15 entrepreneurs were living together as a social and work collective, with regular organised dinners, social events (beach trips, running of the bulls, etc), co-working and most importantly masterminds. It was absolutely amazing to be able to drop in to a new city (and country) and be given the keys to an affordable apartment as well as an instant social circle of amazing likeminded individuals who have now become friends for life.

Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords: How to Access 100 Million People in 10 Minutes

Thu, 24 Sep 2015 08:02:45 +0000

As a beginner to Google Adwords, who was blowing $100+ a day and making no sales (serious) this book was an eye opener.

In theory Adwords is easy, choose keywords, create advert, throw money at problem, profit, but the reality wasn’t quite like that for me. This book explained exactly why, what I was doing wrong and how to make it right.

I was expecting the Ultimate Guide To Google Adwords to be extremely dry, but instead it was full of fascinating commentary like how to crowd source the best brand name or tagline quickly, by simply by creating Adverts for each one and seeing which gets the most clicks!

Paris – Cities have sexes: London is a man, Paris a woman, and New York a well-adjusted transsexual

Wed, 23 Sep 2015 08:51:28 +0000

Paris is undeniably one of my most favourite cities. It’s nice.

Cinema Paradiso

As I travelled round Europe I used the Stay.com app to help me find my way, which is single handedly the best app you can get for your phone, other than Google Maps and some others. One of the awesome lists of things to do for Paris was a list of places from films! This was good as it kept me very entertained, I got to do a lot of walking and I had to get to grips with the underground system which was hilariously easy. Like most underground systems, it put the London underground to shame.

Why I’m Switching From Google To Bing

Mon, 14 Sep 2015 06:53:52 +0000

Google’s been shit for quite a while now but today I’m finally sick of it, so switching.

Do they think I typed out the word barcelona for my health or something? Or maybe I’m using the Internet wrong (does the Internet actually come with a manual?). So they just decided, again, to drop one of the words I’m searching for, that give my search context, from the first results they provide. Ok, I could quote it. OR .. if I actually wanted matches that dont contain the word Barcelona i could prefix it with a – sign, so fuck that as an excuse.

Results Of A 4 Wave Zonblast

Thu, 10 Sep 2015 16:48:38 +0000

I launched a new product on Amazon recently that had taken a LOOONG time to develop and since day one of conception my plan was always to do a Zonblast with it and see what performance was like. So earlier this month, I did.

To give you some context, the new product I’m launching is a super competitive pharmaceutical with 55,000 products being returned for the exact match product name.

I did a 4 wave Zonblast, on Saturday 28th, Sunday 29th, Monday 30th August and Tuesday 1st September, giving away 75 coupons each day. The product usually retails at $34.99 and we provided coupons so it was available at $1.99

Why I am dropping Bitcasa for Arq as my cloud backup solution

Sat, 22 Aug 2015 10:32:15 +0000

I’ve been using Bitcasa as a cloud backup solution as I work for about 16 months now. Initially they were great, I’d synced about 260gb of photos and work data to them before I left the UK and everything was running smoothly. I felt secure that my laptop backups were working and my data was safe in case of user error or laptop theft.

Then Bitcasa deleted all the data I’d backed up in November 2014 as they were re-architecting their backend.

Al Ries – The 22 Immutable Laws Of Branding

Sun, 09 Aug 2015 18:06:37 +0000

This book is amazing. A must read for anyone who is branding anything, whether it’s a product, a website or themselves, reading this was like a punch in the face with respect to every branding decision I’ve ever made!

With 22 immutable laws, it’s fairly simple, and entertaining to follow. Each law has examples of failures by companies that ignored the law, then success stories, often against all odds, of companies that followed the law and flourished.

Dan Brown – Inferno

Sat, 08 Aug 2015 17:58:47 +0000

I hadn’t realised Dan Brown had written another Robert Langdon book, but here we go, book number 4. When I first started reading it I thought Dan had jumped the shark as it was intentionally confusing for everyone, not just the reader but also the characters, but as it started to unwind and develop it kept my attention.

If you like the other Robert Langdon novels then you will enjoy this, it’s more of the same, but based in Florence, Italy and surrounding the symbols and mysteries of Dante’s Inferno. Which is another book I’ve always been meaning to read! I’ve been to Florence before and know a little about The Divine Comedy, so it was great fun to revisit those ideas and locations in this storyl

Switzerland, Zurich – Everything Was Closed

Fri, 10 Jul 2015 13:00:30 +0000

After a fantastic time in Vienna, Austria, it was time to get the train again to Zurich, Switzerland. By this point I was really in love with the train and the countryside in this area of the world was beautiful. It was so easy to sit back and let the world go by whilst I read on my Kindle.

Unfortunately, because Europe hates me, when I arrived in Zurich it was another national holiday, so everywhere was closed, again. This really sucked as I was in dire need of some shopping and Mont Bell’s only European shop was here.

Christopher S. Hyatt – Sex Magic, Tantra & Tarot: The Way of the Secret Lover

Thu, 09 Jul 2015 12:47:20 +0000

I started learning how to read Kabbalistic Tarot using the learnings of Aleister Crowley and the Golden Dawn about 5 years ago and it’s been an awesome experience. Being a man of science people find it strange that I truly believe in Tarot but the psychological science behind it is solid. At it’s heart it’s just a creative way of approaching a problem or issue from different directions, making you think about the issue at hand differently and creating a story about the process of your concern. So when I saw a book linking Tarot and sex, how could I not read it? 😀

Neal Stephenson – Seveneves

Wed, 08 Jul 2015 12:08:08 +0000

This book was simply amazing to read. I chained it on the train from Copenhagen to Hamburg to Vienna, I simply could not put it down. Spanning 5,000 years, set on Earth as well as in Space I was gripped from start to finish.

Telling the story of a group of scientists trying to save the future of the human race against an unthinkable catastrophe, compounded by ethics and politics it was really engaging watching the story play out across time, with respect to all the individual decisions made along the way.

Daniel Wendler – Improve Your Social Skills

Tue, 07 Jul 2015 11:36:22 +0000

My social life took a bit of a hit when I first fell ill almost 2 years ago now. I went from squatting twice my body weight at CrossFit, salsa dancing, performing fire shows and going out 3-4 times a week on just soda and lime to breaking down, becoming a recluse, feeling terrible all the time and completing GTA V, maxing out my Skyrim character and putting on 20kg.

Austria, Vienna – This Means Nothing To Me

Mon, 06 Jul 2015 16:41:09 +0000

Vienna was definitely one of the coolest cities I went through as I traveled, and I didn’t even get to scratch the surface. After a beautiful 8 hour train journey from Hamburg, Germany, I landed in the capital of Austria only to discover it was Eurovision that day and everywhere was full. Other than possibly one of the most expensive hotels in the area so I had little choice in the matter and had to stay in a gorgeous $500 a night suite 😀

Neil Gaiman – The Ocean At The End Of The Lane

Sun, 05 Jul 2015 16:40:38 +0000

This was a really fun read, although it was aimed more at teenagers and I was expecting something more adult, the only other Neil Gaiman book I’ve read was his collaboration with Terry Pratchett, Good Omens.

The story is a dark one, with death, suicide, witches and a portal to another world, told through the eyes of a 40 year old recollecting his child hood at the age of 7.

Mark Manson – Models: Attract Women Through Honesty

Sat, 04 Jul 2015 16:24:20 +0000

Mark Manson keeps popping up on Facebook as a suggested friend, as we have many friends in common. I have never met the guy, so I haven’t added him, but I did decide to read his book to see what he was about.

It’s a pretty cool book.

The secret is in the title, the entire book is about being honest with who you are and what you like, then expressing that, honestly, in order to be attractive to women. No secrets, no tricks, just honesty.

Joel Fuhrman – The End of Diabetes: The Eat to Live Plan to Prevent and Reverse Diabetes

Fri, 03 Jul 2015 16:22:12 +0000

Joel Fuhrman is a nutritarian and he has a series of books revolving around juicing and ingesting as many nutrient dense foods as possible (fruit, nuts and vegetables) for their health benefits whilst laying off meat and animal products. Claiming that people that follow his diet can put their organs in to nutrient overload, with the ability to lose weight and even cure type 2 diabetes because the pancreas gets so many nutrients it starts working again.

Chris Guillebeau – The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future

Sat, 27 Jun 2015 12:24:52 +0000

This took me much longer to read than it should have. I started it in September 2014 and finished it in May 2015 whilst on the train to Vienna. I think I found the writing style disengaging. The book though does contain awesome stories of success as well as insightful information, the biggest takeaway being

Change your job to change your life

Something I tried to do back in 1998, but thanks to being guilt tripped in to living up to my parents expectations it took me 16 torturous years before I was finally able to quit and change things. Now it is actually too late to do what I wanted to do with my life so I’ve had to pivot and do something else that’s awesome instead.

Copenhagen – The Happiest Place On Earth

Fri, 26 Jun 2015 12:08:22 +0000

Copenhagen is continuously voted the happiest place to live in the world. Some attribute this to the social system that takes care of everyone, others say it’s due to the lack of corruption in the government. Definitely 2 things the US and the UK need to learn from. I say it’s because they are quite liberal and put posters of boobs on buses, and pretty much anything else with a large enough surface.

Jordan Gray – How To Be The Most Engaging Person In The Room

Thu, 25 Jun 2015 11:50:09 +0000

This book was either free or £0.99 so I thought I’d give it a pop. At 29 pages it’s ickle. Very ickle and was a doddle to read. After 15 years of spending my 9-5 mostly isolated at a desk with nothing but Skype, iTunes and a set of earbuds for company I now spend the majority of my time around people, dozens of people, that I have to interact and communicate with. Sometimes this is great and other times it isn’t.

American Diabetes Association – What To Expect When You Have Diabetes

Wed, 24 Jun 2015 11:34:18 +0000

This book is split up in to 170 different questions, questions like:

Can I catch diabetes from someone else?
Why should I work so hard to improve my blood-sugar level?
How will alcohol affect my blood sugar?
I easily get overwhelmed with decisions. Would I do better if I had planned meals?
Why is fat in food so bad?
How can I make my favourite recipes lower in fat?
How can I reduce fat in a meal when I eat at a restaurant?

This book is ok, but subscribes to the false, 80’s propaganda that fat is bad for you. Someone asking the question “Can I catch diabetes from someone else?” probably will buy this book and treat every chapter as the whole truth, furthering the pro-carbohydrate and anti-fat lies that are probably the route cause of the global obesity and diabetes epidemic.

Richard Allen – How To Dominate Property Investing In The UK

Tue, 23 Jun 2015 11:30:24 +0000

This book was very similar to the previous property investment book I read, Property Magic: How to Buy Property Using Other People’s Time, Money and Experience. The buy, remortgage, reinvest technique was exactly the same but one thing that this book covered, which the previous one did not, was ways to identify the going market rate for an area and then ways to find and identify the below market rate properties. This was basically the missing piece of the puzzle.

Sweden

Sun, 21 Jun 2015 20:42:50 +0000

After Norway it was a short rail trip to Gothenburg, Sweden, which was a lot of fun. I did the super tourist thing and went on all the tourist buses and boat excursions etc. to see the city.

Steve Alten – Phobos

Sat, 20 Jun 2015 20:37:20 +0000

The 3rd and final book in Steve Alten’s Mayan trilogy, Phobos was a bit of a head fuck but wrapped things up superbly. With multiple time lines, the story was starting to get more confusing than the Terminator franchise, but it was still an enjoyable read!

Steve Alten – Resurrection

Fri, 19 Jun 2015 20:30:08 +0000

Whilst not quite as awesome as the first book, Domain, Resurrection was still really good. Starting pretty much where the first book ended this one featured far less archaeology but intertwined the Mayan doomsday prophecies with the characters in the story, explaining how they fulfil it. After reading it, I had to push on to the 3rd book straight after for the complete conclusion, fortunately I had lots of train journeys going on!

Steve Alten – Domain

Thu, 18 Jun 2015 20:23:25 +0000

This book was extremely cooky, but really well researched and a great read. Combining pretty much every UFO conspiracy I’ve come across, with the Mayan doomsday prophecies and other ‘lost’ archaeology such as Stone Henge, this is the kind of trash I like. Fortunately it’s the first book in a trilogy and I ended up chaining all 3 back to back ..

Norway – The Home Of Black Metal

Wed, 17 Jun 2015 19:24:21 +0000

After a really nice flight with Norwegian on their new Boeing 787 Dreamliner I landed in Oslo, Norway on Sunday 11th May and the difference hit me in the face with a POW. First up I was still wearing shorts, and it was freezing cold when I landed. Secondly, going from one of the cheapest places in the world e.g. £0.70 for a beer, to one of the most expensive places in the world e.g. £10.00 for a beer, made me cry.

9 Months In Thailand

Tue, 12 May 2015 13:50:29 +0000

My triple entry Thai visa has been used and abused, I’m all out of entries and it’s completely expired so after first coming to Thailand on September 1st 2014, I left for Oslo on May 10th 2015 to meet a friend of mine and for operation Europe!

Weightloss

I got weighed recently and was down from 99kg to 77kg so a total loss of 22kg since I left the UK. That’s 48 1/2 lbs or 3 stone and 6 1/2 lbs. There’s still more to go, maybe another 10kg but I’m extremely happy with my results. The weight was lost the right way, with healthy diet and exercise. I’m currently wearing 34″ shorts.

Blue Penthouse Apartment

Mon, 11 May 2015 13:24:03 +0000

I’ve spent the majority of my stay on Soi Tad-ied staying in the BM Guest House which was nice enough and covered the basics, single room, cheap (12,000 THB / £240 pm), great bed, working air con, separate shower room, balcony, cleaned weekly, but lacked on luxury, a tiny TV that was miles away from the bed making watching anything on it a bit pointless and Internet that didn’t really work. The state of the generic, consumer ADSL on the street is a nightmare featuring regular, daily, intermittent outages, not to mention you’re going to be sharing one 500K connection between 30 other people. Whilst I was able to get work done, it was frustrating and we’d tend to end up meeting up at one of the local restaurants to get work done.

Connecting With Other Digital Nomads

Sun, 10 May 2015 08:43:09 +0000

If you’re a digital nomad, meeting other nomads and entrepreneurs as you travel should be pretty high on your agenda. The benefits of tapping in to the accumulated wealth of local and business knowledge will make a huge difference to your travelling experience and potentially open you up to new business ideas and opportunities you may not have realised.

I’ve been using 4 main resources whilst I’ve been moving around to connect with people, make friends and create opportunities.

KOOLSTOF Carbon Fiber Money Clip Review

Sat, 09 May 2015 08:09:37 +0000

Usually in the UK I carry a leather bifold wallet with a dozen cards, driving license, etc and if I’m lucky, some cash. This was fine then when I was wearing jeans with 4 pockets or a coat, but out here I seem to live in board shorts that only have one small side pocket that also needs to hold my phone and my keys!

Muscle Bar Soi Taid-ied

Fri, 08 May 2015 07:58:08 +0000

One of the cool things that Unit-27 do is offer a body composition service combined with a meal plan service at the Muscle Bar restaurant. They have some magic, electronic scales which will work out your fat and muscle composition, then based on that and your exercise levels they put together a meal plan so you can reach your goals. The body composition service is also extremely expensive for what it is.

Sony RX100 II Review

Thu, 07 May 2015 07:33:15 +0000

Whilst I have an iPhone 5s, which has a great camera and is very portable, sometimes I want to level up my photography so also bought a [amazon text=Sony RX100&asin=B00K7O2DJU] Mk 2. The Mk 3 is out now, which has a few bonus features but the principle and benefits are the same. The quality of the photos compared to the size of the camera is insane and the main benefit. On it’s own, the Sony RX100 is pocket size but with a case. The photos I’ve taken of the camera itself were taken on my iPhone but the photos below were taken with the [amazon text=Sony RX100&asin=B00K7O2DJU] II.

Ho Chi Minh Is The Digital Nomad College

Wed, 06 May 2015 05:26:28 +0000

That’s how Ho Chi Minh was described to me. If Chiang Mai is high school then Ho Chi Minh is college for digital nomads, and it certainly felt that way as everyone I met was a lot further in to their career path than the people I met in Chiang Mai. Ho Chi Minh is also a mecca for members of the Dynamite Circle which might explain the prevalence of more mature businesses and entrepreneurs out there. At one point I was lucky enough to have dinner with several millionaires so it was good to talk about aspects of business other than bootstrapping for a change.

Silicon Power 64GB Jewel J80 USB 3.0 Flash Drive, Titanium Review

Tue, 05 May 2015 04:37:37 +0000

Having a USB stick on hand is always useful, especially as a digital nomad. I’m always meeting people and finding myself needing to share large files or photos. I seem to always be collaborating with someone about something new idea as we mastermind on projects, or finding myself simply swapping photographs of our shared experiences.

I’m always carrying my keys with me, so I wanted something small that would fit on my keyring, blending in with the keys and was rugged enough to withstand being bashed around non stop. The USB 3.0, Titanium [amazon text=Silicon Power 64GB Flash Drive&asin=B00O4VAL32] steps up to that plate.

Hiring A Bike At Tiger Muay Thai

Mon, 04 May 2015 04:21:07 +0000

There are dozens of places around Tiger Muay Thai that hire bikes/scooters/mopeds. Most hotels do it, Tiger Muay Thai does it, and there are a few independent places on the street that specialise in it. I hired a bike from 2Home when I was staying there, naively, and paid 2000 THB (£40) for a weeks worth of hire. The bike was ok, but the cost was way too much.

Gerber 22-01769 Shard Keychain Tool Review

Sun, 03 May 2015 04:04:39 +0000

The [amazon text=Gerber 22-01769 Shard Keychain Tool&asin=B002ZK45IQ] is one of the most useful, little pocket tools I’ve used. Whilst I’d like to be carrying something like a full on Leatherman multi-tool, the overly paranoid security agents won’t even let you take a cork screw on board a plane, let alone a swiss army knife. The Gerber Shard is completely innocuous however, no deadlier than a key but about a million times more useful!

Primal Fitness Gym

Sat, 02 May 2015 03:47:54 +0000

A new gym has opened up on Soi Tad-eid called Primal Fitness, owned by the same people that run Unit 27. This now makes 4 gyms on the street, including Tiger Muay Thai’s, Unit 27’s small gym area and Titan Fitness. Primal Fitness is the best gym here however, hands down.

Primal Fitness only has one squat rack, which is a major let down, 2 would have been nice, fortunately I haven’t seen more than 2-3 other people in the gym at the same time so far and I’ve only had to wait once.

Lifeproof Nüüd iPhone 5s Case Review

Fri, 01 May 2015 03:47:08 +0000

I’m one of those people that likes to actually use things, rather than pamper them, and my phone is no exception. I also like a nice phone that isn’t covered in scratches and hasn’t experienced water damage. When I bought my iPhone 5s back in June last year (11 months ago) I knew that I’d need a rugged case to have a hope in hell of keeping it working based on my experience carrying an iPhone 4 through Kazakhstan and Mongolia. The phone was waterlogged on day one due to heavy rain in England, repaired a week later in Prague, then somehow a hole appeared in the glass front which kept spreading as chunks of glass fell out, letting water and dust in. 2 days back in England it just decided to stop working entirely. Never again!

Property Magic: How to Buy Property Using Other People’s Time, Money and Experience

Sun, 26 Apr 2015 14:29:10 +0000

With the success of my Amazon business I’m wondering what the next stage is, I’m already investing in the development of a SaaS platform which will be an interesting side project to run but property has been at the forefront of my mind for a long time. I was considering saving up and buying a property 100% out right, with no mortgage, for it’s rental income, but this book might have changed my mind!

Blood Sugar 101: What They Don’t Tell You About Diabetes

Sun, 26 Apr 2015 08:45:00 +0000

Blood Sugar 101 is based on the author’s award winning website and as a newbie to diabetes I found the information in it extremely useful and laid out in a well written and ordered manner.

The book is basically a meta analysis of every single scientific paper covering diabetes that Jenny Ruhl has been able to collate, though I can’t help but feel that the book edges on the side of a gentle approach to the reader as it misses out a lot of the pertinent research that I’ve anecdotally read over the years and have been readdressing since I was diagnosed.

Diabetes 2: Diabetes Harder

Sun, 26 Apr 2015 07:21:35 +0000

Last Friday I had my 2nd visit at the hospital with respect to my diabetes diagnosis, this was for a repeat test and some fasting tests for my cholesterol levels. I’d been measuring my blood sugar levels whilst on the treatment and they’ed normalised pretty quickly meaning that I have type 2 diabetes. The results of my latest blood test at the hospital confirmed my readings at home, giving me a result of 96 mg/dL.

Being A Digital Nomad With Diabetes

Tue, 14 Apr 2015 12:03:11 +0000

One of the reasons I quit my job was because during 2014 I felt ill, a lot. My blood pressure was through the roof and numerous trips to the doctor didn’t really result in any progress.

For the past few months I’d get periods of up to a week where I was constantly exhausted, then I’d completely bounce back totally fine and resume training.

For the last 2 weeks, after Easter, I hit one of those periods and it just got worse and worse so I went to the Bangkok Hospital in Phuket to make an appointment. 90 minutes later I’d had the results back from a series of blood tests and a diagnosis of diabetes.

Is An InterRail Pass Worth It?

Mon, 30 Mar 2015 07:12:17 +0000

I’m planning a 4 month journey across Europe, from Oslo, through Poland to Russia, overland, so either rains or buses, and one of the questions in my mind is:

Is An InterRail Pass Worth It?

What Is An InterRail Pass?

An InterRail pass is a train ticket that lets Europeans travel across Europe by train for a fixed price. The equivalent for non-Europeans is called the EuRail pass.

The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play

Mon, 23 Mar 2015 09:59:34 +0000

I don’t really suffer from procrastination, but I wanted to read this as research material for a project I’m working on after I’d heard great things about it. The Now Habit dives in to the psychology of why we procrastinate, essentially it’s because we want to protect ourselves from anxiety or fear.

The book is a practical, self help strategy that you can use to identify the exact anxieties you have that cause you to procrastinate and then exercises and behavioural patterns to remove those anxieties and blockages and actually start on the projects you are procrastinating over.

Blue – The Tallest Apartments On Soi Tad-ied

Sun, 22 Mar 2015 10:45:55 +0000

Since I arrived at Soi Tad-ied, the street Tiger Muay Thai is on, in September, there has been a huge, 8 storey apartment block that’s been constantly under construction. At least 5 months in the making, this week they had a grand opening, pool foam party so I decided to have a look inside and check out the quality of the rooms and their prices.

Jung The Key Ideas: A Teach Yourself Guide

Sat, 21 Mar 2015 08:50:04 +0000

This book is my first introduction to Jungian psychotherapy and proved a great introduction. Whilst reinforcing concepts I’m sure most of us are familiar with already, e.g. the duality of introversion and extraversion, the parts I enjoyed the most were when recent revelations I’ve only recently discovered about myself where introduced in the book as topics, when I was able to relate to Jung’s work.

I enjoyed reading about Jung’s observations as he traveled and explored non-western societies. It’s easy to get caught up in progress but at what cost? According to Jung the driven attitude and suppression of emotion that characterises modern Western culture has been gained at the expense of the intensity of how we now live. Something anyone who has had to get out of bed at 5am to do a 2 hour commute, only to return at 8pm in the evening, before bed at 9pm, can relate to!

How I'm Training At Tiger Muay Thai For Under $1500 A Month

Fri, 20 Mar 2015 08:19:20 +0000

I’ve been training at Tiger Muay Thai and living and eating on ’the street’ for 5 months now and I’ve been getting a lot of questions about how much it costs, where to stay, what to eat and what’s there to do, etc. Especially when compared to the costs of living in Chiang Mai! I’ve stayed in several different places, eaten at most of the restaurants and tried out different gyms. Over time I’ve developed a cost effective, exercise and nutrition routine which is getting me solid results so rather than keep answering the same question, over and over, I’m putting it in to one blog post.

4 Days On A Deserted Island

Thu, 19 Mar 2015 14:41:35 +0000

Freedive UK arranged an incredible shipwrecked event where 14 of us stayed on a deserted island and had to fend for ourselves for 4 days with skills taught to us from some local Moken, learning how to freedive, build spears, spear fish and forage for food!

The first couple of days were spent learning the basics of freediving, getting acclimatised for those visiting from other countries and snorkling/freedive trips by longtail boat. The basic technique of freediving involves resting on the surface and calmly breathing to reduce your heart rate. The less your heart pumps then the less oxygen is taken from your lungs, moved around the body and transformed in to carbon dioxide. It is the build up of carbon dioxide inside you that makes you want to take another breath, not your body asking for more oxygen. You then take a series of deep breaths in, filling all of your lungs and mouth with air to get as much oxygen inside you as possible, then you calmly dive. I managed to hold my breath, on the surface but under water, for 2 minutes and 9 seconds, it wasn’t easy and was a case of mind over matter, I really wanted to exhale and felt very uncomfortable. When actually diving it’s even harder, as you have to equalise all the way to adjust to the pressure and as you swim you use up oxygen faster! I only managed 38 seconds and 10 meters when actually freediving, I need more practice and bigger balls.

Use Of Weapons

Sun, 15 Mar 2015 12:15:00 +0000

I found Use Of Weapons to have an annoying pace to it. The story features two timelines that alternate every other chapter, making the book choppy to read. Whilst the pace of the main plot seems to yo-yo between glacially slow and then super fast.

The concept of the story and what Bank’s tried to do with the timelines are both good ideas but I can’t help but feel that the execution was pretty poor with two many different ideas and scenarios making play.

The Gifts of Imperfection: Let Go of Who You Think You’re Supposed to be and Embrace Who You are

Sun, 15 Mar 2015 11:58:04 +0000

I first heard of Brene Brown after watching her 20 minute TEDx talk The Power Of Vulnerability.

The Gifts of Imperfection offers readers a way to change their lives through adopting the practices of “wholehearted” living, an idea Brené came up with after studying concepts like shame, happiness, joy, anxiety and how they all relate to each other. By learning to embrace our imperfections, and recognise what issues get in our way, such as shame and fear we are able to lead more authentic and compassionate lives.

Fermat’s Last Theorem

Wed, 11 Mar 2015 12:17:58 +0000

Simon Singh makes the story of the 300 year search for the solution to Fermat’s Last Theorem sound like Indiana Jones is searching for a great mathematical, lost treasure. Detailing the history of famous mathematicians such as Pythagoras, Eular and Fermat himself and how their work contributed to the creation of the riddle and the Andrew Wiles’ eventual solution, Singh paints a gripping picture.

This excellent history of the solution doesn’t go overboard on complicated maths but the appendix is full of theorems and proofs if you want to extend your knowledge, it’s a fantastic read.

A Brief History Of Time

Wed, 11 Mar 2015 11:51:25 +0000

One of the best selling books ever, third only to the Bible and Shakespear, Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History Of time was written to help nonscientists understand the questions being asked by scientists today: Where did the universe come from? How and why did it begin? Will it come to an end, and if so, how?

Hawking attempts to reveal these questions (and where we’re looking for answers) using a minimum of technical jargon. Among the topics gracefully covered are gravity, black holes, the Big Bang, Quantum theory, String theory, the nature of time, and physicists’ search for a grand unifying theory.

Tomb Raider

Wed, 25 Feb 2015 12:30:11 +0000

According to Steam, I spent 13 hours playing the latest Tomb Raider game, which cost me about £4.99 in the Steam Christmas sale including all the extras, and it was 13 hours well spent!

It took a bit of a deviation from the Tomb Raider games I’d played before, for one it felt more like a linear RPG, as you could get experience which you could use to level up stats and weapons as you progressed. Also, there was a lot of in game swearing.

Snorkling At The Similan Islands

Fri, 20 Feb 2015 09:01:21 +0000

Last weekend to take a break from training and have a bit of an adventure I arranged a snorkling trip so the Similan Islands through Phuket Dive Tours. There was an offer on at the time and the cost of the trip was 2700 Baht (£53) and included transfer to the boat to the Similans, breakfast and lunch! Snorkles were supplied and fins were 100baht (£2) to rent, I bought my own though, as did a few others, but the gear they supplied was good enough and also in great condition.

The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography

Wed, 18 Feb 2015 12:12:49 +0000

The Code Book traces the history of cryptography from its recorded inception in Roman times up through to the current applications as of it’s publication date circa 2000. All of the chapters held my interest and were riveting other than the, necessary, latter chapter on the the effects of encryption on US politics but it was Simon’s chapters on deciphering the Enigma code and ancient languages such as Egyptian Hieroglyphs and Linear B that I found most interesting.

The Player Of Games

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 15:28:07 +0000

Iain M. Bank’s second Culture book, The Player Of Games, was much more enjoyable than the first one, to the state that I read the last half in just one day! Unlike the first Culture novel, the protagonist this time is part of the Culture society allowing Banks to expand on the universe in greater detail.

The story is compelling, I could hardly put the book down, and the premise intelligent and unique. I was curious the entire time about the various agendas and motives of all the characters and the plot was gripping. It was very entertaining and I’m looking forwards to reading the 3rd in the series shortly.

Diablo III

Tue, 03 Feb 2015 13:16:47 +0000

The first game I bought, played and completed on this trip was Diablo 3, though it took a bit of effort to eventually buy it!

I played Diablo 1 and 2 when they were originally released and loved how you could tweak your character and manipulate your attributes to create vastly different skill sets.

Diablo 3 didn’t feel like those games at all, other than visually. It’s a very forgiving game, you can move points between skills and change your mind etc. It very much felt like Diablo Arcade Mode.

The Legend Of Zelda

Tue, 03 Feb 2015 07:58:27 +0000

I’d never played any of the Zelda series before, despite having a NES as a kid and my brother having The Ocarina Of Time on his N64 so I decided to dive in and play the first one.

Man, this was one hard game, even using a walkthrough and OpenEmu’s memory save feature. It was kind of fun, but not really as it was so damn hard.

The game is split in to two stories, I only completed the first one and have no intention of replying it to complete the second one as it uses the same level data, things are just moved around.

Silent Hill

Mon, 02 Feb 2015 04:49:09 +0000

There’s an awesome game console emulator for the Mac called OpenEmu which lets you play games across a dozen or so old school consoles so for Christmas my parents bought me a Sony Playstation 3 Dual Shock controller as they work with Macs and one of my mates bought it up when I went to visit Chiang Mai!

I’ve always wanted to play Silent Hill as it’s supposed to be extremely creepy. The OpenEmu lets you emulate Playstation games, and Silent Hill was flawless. I like old school games and consoles (before they were just PCs in a box) so over the last month bought a PSOne, Silent Hill and a bunch of random other stuff off EBay as investments. They were all sourced well under market rate and should only go up in price. They’re also pretty awesome!

5 Months In Thailand

Sun, 01 Feb 2015 14:29:11 +0000

It’s now been 5 months since I left the UK and 2 months since my last update. I’m currently in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, for 10 days.

Weightloss

I went to the hospital for a routine check up last weekend and weighed in at 84kg. I’ve lost 6kg since my last update 2 months ago and 16kg in total since I got here. That’s 35lbs or 2 1/2 stone for people that like the Imperial system. I lost most of that 6kg in the last 4 weeks as my training and diet have been impeccable. 0 days off and 0 cheat days. Looking to the future, after I am back from Vietnam I’m going to keep that up and see if I can lose at least 10kg more whilst I still have the opportunity to train at Tiger.

Consider Phlebas

Wed, 28 Jan 2015 08:48:00 +0000

Consider Phlebas is the first book in Ian. M. Bank’s Culture series and demonstrates his talent for suspense in a pretty hard core sci-fi novel detailing the exploits of a shape shifting secret agent of the Iridans.

Undertaking a clandestine mission to a forbidden planet in search of a fugitive artificial intelligence, Consider Phlebas is a serious space opera set in the midst of a war between two galactic empires.

Tiger Muay Thai’s New Gym

Sun, 25 Jan 2015 06:17:08 +0000

When I first arrived at Tiger Muay Thai back in September, the indoor, air conditioned gym had been turned in to a BJJ hall and all the gym equipment had been moved outside, whilst construction on a new, larger gym was underway. The gym equipment was getting pretty weathered and people were lifting with gloves to protect themselves from rust etc. This caused me to join Titan Fitness’ gym for a while instead whilst I was living near it.

SSH Over TorBrowser

Fri, 16 Jan 2015 09:42:26 +0000

The hotel in Thailand that I’m currently staying in is for some inexplicable reason blocking SSH, randomly. 6 hours ago it was working fine, but now when I need to do some work it’s decided to block me. At least that’s what I think is happening as all other requests work fine. I think it’s using some deep packet inspection too, as moving to another port also doesn’t work.

Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World

Fri, 09 Jan 2015 04:20:32 +0000

This book is mandatory reading if you’re planning on running a social media campaign any time soon. Covering all the major players, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Tumbler, as well as Google+ and others, Gary analysis the facets of each network, dissects what makes posts successful, go viral and get over exposure, and what can make posts fail.

Using case studies as the book progresses you are shown exactly what can make or break a social media campaign on each respective network, and they are all different, so what works on one will not necessarily work on another.

The White Temple Wat Rong Khun In Chiang Rai

Thu, 08 Jan 2015 16:44:17 +0000

To the east of Chiang Mai is another city called Chiang Rai who’s main claim to fame is the beautiful White Temple, Wat Rong Khun. As I’ve no plans to be back in the north of Thailand any time soon, now seemed like a great time for me to visit.

Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai By Bus

After asking around, the only place to buy a bus ticket from Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai is the bus station to the east of the old city, apparently there is a shop in the centre but I couldn’t find it. It’s easy to get to buy songthaew or tuk-tuk.

Raising Steam

Tue, 06 Jan 2015 04:50:20 +0000

Terry, with this book you are really spoiling us! Following in the steps of previous books, by revolving the plot around the addition of a real world device in to the Discworld, namely the steam train, Raising Steam has everything! Political intrigue, hijackings, goblins, dwarves, Corporal Nobby Nobs, drama, did I say intrigue?

This is definitely one of Terry’s best books and was a pleasure to read, I couldn’t put it down and took it to every meal as well as my day out to Chiang Rai. Featuring the new character, Dick Simnel, inventor of the Discworld’s first steam engine who, with the help of Harry King and Moist Von Lipwig, must also create a complete railway service!

First Shopify Sale

Mon, 05 Jan 2015 10:23:45 +0000

As part of building up a brand with Amazon FBA I have my own e-commerce store in order to build trust with customers that search for our brand name. So far I haven’t done much more than list my various products on it, with sales copy and images taken straight from my Amazon listings.

I’ve built e-commerce sites in the past, using either Woocommerce or Magento but this time opted for Shopify as it’s much less effort to set up and integrates with Amazon FBA really nicely. Until now though, everything has been quiet!

Profit Per Sale When Selling On Amazon

Sun, 28 Dec 2014 06:35:17 +0000

Now I’m back in Chiang Mai it seems that there’s been a huge swing. A lot of the people I met at the Drop Ship Lifestyle event are now looking at selling products on Amazon as their business model of choice and I’ve been fielding a lot of questions. The most common question is by far:

How much profit are you making per sale?

so I thought I’d answer that here, once and for all! Here are the transaction details for one of our sales, from Amazon.

Basic Security Testing With Kali Linux

Sat, 27 Dec 2014 09:31:37 +0000

I quite fancy the idea of taking some of the Offensive Security certifications, but they are expensive and once paid for time limited to complete! So as a precursor I’m reading up on some of the tools and techniques that you are expected to learn about on the course and playing with the Kali Linux penetration testing distribution.

Basic Security Testing With Kali Linux is a lot of fun. I breezed through the book as I’m familiar with all the concepts already but it is aimed at the beginner so if you have no penetration testing experience you’ll be fine.

Christmas In Chiang Mai

Fri, 26 Dec 2014 08:16:31 +0000

Thailand doesn’t really do Christmas so everywhere was open which made it a very interesting day indeed!

Christmas Lunch At Coffee Monster

In the Phuket Central Festival food hall they were selling Waitrose Christmas puddings, so for a bit of home from home I bought one of each for the total sum of 2000 Baht (£40). I felt my wallet haemorrhaging as I paid.

Artifacts Of The Cambodian Civil War

Fri, 26 Dec 2014 08:16:21 +0000

Siem Reap has a number of tourist attractions related to the war that ravaged Cambodia during the end of the 20th Century and the Tuktuk drivers will want to take you to all of them, ideally on the same day!

Cambodian War Museum

The Cambodian War Museum was built by Cambodia’s Ministry of National Defense and contains artifacts salvaged when the civil war ended in 1998. It is $5 to walk around it and a free guide is available.

Snuff

Fri, 19 Dec 2014 07:25:02 +0000

Hot on the heels of Unseen Academicals is another Discworld novel covering the themes of racism and also slavery. Whilst not my favourite Discworld novel any story featuring Sam Vimmes and the rest of the Night Watch is always entertaining, even when covering such serious topics.

PADI Rescue Diver in Phuket

Mon, 15 Dec 2014 14:59:08 +0000

After passing my PADI Open Water and Open Water Advanced, this weekend I also passed my PADI Rescue Diver course, taught by Dan from Phuket Dive Tours. The course covered the following:

Self-rescue and diver stress
Rescue Diver first aid
Swimming and non-swimming rescue techniques
Emergency management and equipment
Panicked diver response
Underwater problems
Rescue Missing diver procedures
Surfacing the unconscious diver
In-water rescue breathing protocols
Exiting unconscious diver
First aid procedures for pressure related accidents
Two final open water scenarios

Notes from My Travels: Visits with Refugees in Africa, Cambodia, Pakistan and Ecuador

Tue, 09 Dec 2014 06:11:29 +0000

I found this whilst searching for a book about the Cambodian temples and bought it to learn more about all the land mine victims I keep seeing in Siem Reap, busking.

The book is as described, a collection of notes Angelina made whilst visiting refugees in Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Pakistan, Cambodia, and Ecuador, visiting the refugees themselves, talking with them, learning about them and asking them what they want and need and how they can be helped.

Exploring Angkor Wat

Mon, 08 Dec 2014 05:00:46 +0000

Whilst Angkor Wat is the largest temple around Siem Reap, there are many others some of which in my opinion are better. So you want to take some time and see as many as possible else you’re doing yourself a great disservice.

Angkor Wat Temple Pass

No matter how you decide to view the temples, you’ll need to buy a temple pass to let you in the area. These passes get checked on the road as you enter the temple complex and additionally by a guard before you enter each temple, do not lose it!

The Omega Rx Zone: The Miracle of the New High-dose Fish Oil

Sun, 07 Dec 2014 04:44:50 +0000

Since I started weight lifting, 12 or so years ago, fish oil was always recommended as a supplement. Even now at Tiger Muay Thai as part of their supplement plan you get some fish oil and are recommended to take it 3 times a day. I’ve supplemented with it for a long time and I’ve always noticed that I perform better and am happier when I’m on it, then when I run out things get noticeably worse!

3 Months In Thailand

Sat, 06 Dec 2014 07:07:31 +0000

I’ve now spent 3 months in Thailand and am visiting Siem Reap in Cambodia for a week, so it’s time for a bit of accountability!

Weightloss

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here we go:

I’ve lost 10 kg in the last 3 months, training at Tiger Muay Thai and Crossfit Phuket, eating properly, supplementing properly and not really drinking! Clothes that were previously too small, that I bought with me, now fit and I have a good routine going now. In another 6 months I should have easily met my goal.

The Sedona Method

Tue, 25 Nov 2014 05:09:13 +0000

I took Sedona Method classes with Maya Zack in Brighton a couple of years ago to see how the process would work on some of the stresses I was under at the time and found the experience really rewarding and the techniques I learned helpful for all manner of things, so decided to give the book a read.

In essence the Sedona Method simply involves asking yourself a series of questions about your feelings or whatever the situation is that you want to release along the lines of the following:

Scuba Diving In Phuket

Sun, 23 Nov 2014 16:45:05 +0000

There’s not much to do on Soi Ta Aed, the road Tiger Muay Thai is on, other than train, eat and get massages so I’ve been escaping out to sea with the help of Phuket Dive Tours and its awesome owner Dave.

Phuket Dive Tours
https://www.phuketdivetours.com

10/10 Soi Ta Aed, Chalong, Phuket, 83130

Phone: +66 87 022 5356

I’d previously booked a snorkling tour of Koh Phi Phi through Phuket Dive Tours which was absolutely fantastic and before I came to Thailand I knew I wanted to get some scuba diving in and I knew what gear I wanted to try after reading some of the top snorkeling product reviews. So, it was a no brainer to do my PADI Open Water and PADI Open Water Advanced with Phuket Dive Tours too!The PADI Open Water was a 3 day course, day 1 in a swimming pool then 2 days out on the boat, the Open Water advanced was another 2 days out on the boat. It’s a great way to spend a weekend and take a break from training!

Places To Eat Near Tiger Muay Thai

Sun, 16 Nov 2014 09:42:00 +0000

There are a lot of places to eat around Tiger Muay Thai, all selling healthy things to eat. There are a quite a few cheap, small restaurants and shacks selling traditional Thai food and I think every hotel probably has it’s own restaurant too. The hotels are more expensive though.

Most places sell some variety of steak or chicken breast with vegetables and brown rice, which is the healthy go to food in the area. I enjoy mixing it up with some traditional Thai dishes though, like Pad Ka-Prao (minced chicken with chilis and Thai holy basil). You must remember to say no sugar please when you order else all your healthy eating and hard work will be for nowt!

The SEA Coworking Space

Tue, 14 Oct 2014 07:53:13 +0000

The road Tiger Muay Thai and Signature Phuket are on is having extensive roadworks today, with power and water outages. This means no training, as I can’t shower afterwards and no Internet as there’s no electricity, so I’ve headed out to a co-working space to get some work done.

The SEA Coworking Space

The SEA co-working space is located in Phuket Town, next to the historical clock tower and has a lovely nautical ambience when you get inside, with orcas and whales everywhere. The vibe is peaceful, with chilled music playing and people whispering. This is not a busy office environment.

Drop Ship Lifestyle Ride Along #1 – Niche Selection

Tue, 14 Oct 2014 07:22:20 +0000

After the amazing last week at the Drop Ship Lifestyle retreat, due to all the questions I was asked in the evenings, I’ve decided to do a Drop Ship Lifestyle ride along. I am going to create a new drop shipping store and cover every aspect of the process from the very start for you guys. Along the way I will explain exactly what I’m doing, why I’m doing it and how the store is going!.

Living It Up In Chiang Mai

Mon, 13 Oct 2014 01:53:02 +0000

As everyone at the Drop Ship Lifestyle Retreat had such an incredible week, Anton and Johnny wanted to show everyone how they celebrate reaching their sales goals for the month and took us all to the Four Seasons Resort in Chiang Mai. Apparently it costs between $400 – $800 a night to stay there, but for 1500 – 2000 Baht (£30 – £40) you can spend the day there which includes a buffet lunch and, if you wish, a never ending supply of drinks.

Posting Mail In Chiang Mai

Mon, 13 Oct 2014 01:14:34 +0000

If you need to mail a postcard or a parcel in Chiang Mai, Thailand, there are two helpful places in the Maya Lifestyle Shopping Center in town.

Mailing A Post Card In Chiang Mai

On the 3rd floor of Maya there is an awesome little book shop called Asia Books. These guys will sell you stamps for your postcard as well as mail the postcard for you! Postcards in Thailand are around 15 – 20 Baht (£0.30 – £0.40) and at Asia Books, 3 stamps to mail postcards internationally costs 60 baht (£1.20).

Drop Ship Lifestyle 2014 Retreat – Day 4

Sat, 11 Oct 2014 06:22:24 +0000

Yesterday was the last day of the Drop Ship Lifestyle Retreat in Chiang Mai with more amazing presentations and fantastic entertainment.

Drop Ship Lifestyle 2014 Retreat Schedule

Friday, October 10th

8:00am – 9:00 – Open office with coffee (Optional)
9:00am – 9:45 – Content Marketing for eCommerce and Q&A with Brandon Nolte
10:00am – 10:30 – Facebook Ads Session and Q&A with Jill and Josh Stanton
10:30am – 11:15 – Outsourcing your Life and Q&A with Vince Wong
11:45pm – Meet out front of Ibis for transportation to the Elephant Nature Park
12:30pm – 5:00 – Elephant Nature Park
5:00pm – Meet at drop off point for return transportation to Ibis
5:45pm – 6:45 – Free time
6:45pm – Meet out front of Ibis for transportation to the Closing Party
7:00pm – 9:00 – Closing party / Buffet dinner and open bar included at 90’s Bar

The presentations in the morning were cut down and a little rushed to fit the afternoon and evening in. The Outsourcing You Life presentation should have probably been scrapped to allow the others some extra time.

Drop Ship Lifestyle 2014 Retreat – Day 3

Fri, 10 Oct 2014 02:46:47 +0000

We’ve just done day 3 of the Drop Ship Lifestyle Retreat in Chiang Mai! Justin and Joe from Empire Flippers gave a fantastic talk about creating SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) and the monetary potential of selling a profitable website! (Who knew you can sell a profitable website for 20 times it’s averagely monthly profit!)

Drop Ship Lifestyle 2014 Retreat Schedule

Thursday, October 9th

8:00am – 9:00 – Open office with coffee (Optional)
- 9:00am – 12:00 – Empire Workshop with Justin Cooke and Joe Magnotti
  - 12:00pm – 1:00 – Buffet lunch at Ibis Styles
    - 1:00pm – 2:00 – Empire Workshop conclusion
      - 2:00pm – Meet out front of Ibis for transportation to the Sticky Waterfalls
        
        2:45pm – 5:45 – Explore the Sticky Waterfalls

Muay Thai Hand Wraps Instructions

Thu, 09 Oct 2014 02:38:28 +0000

Here is a short video of my personal trainer at Tiger Muay Thai, Pong, teaching me how to tie Muay Thai Hand Wraps.

Drop Ship Lifestyle 2014 Retreat – Day 2

Thu, 09 Oct 2014 02:08:47 +0000

Yesterday was day 2 of the Drop Ship Lifestyle Retreat in Chiang Mai, with some amazing and inspiring talks. The most interesting one for me was a surprise talk by Ben Brandes about the potential of Amazon FBA, one of the methods I’m using to make money online currently.

Drop Ship Lifestyle 2014 Retreat Schedule

Wednesday, October 8th

8:00am – 9:00 – Open office with coffee (Optional)
9:00am – 9:45 – Email Marketing for eCommerce talk and Q&A with John McIntyre
10:00am – 10:45 – Easy eCommerce Wins and Q&A with Brendan Tully
10:45am – 11:00 – Coffee and snack break
11:00am – 11:45 – Pinterest for eCommerce and Q&A with Nate Ginsburg
12:00pm – 1:00 – Buffet lunch at Ibis Styles
1:00pm – 2:00 – Open office
2:00pm – Meet out front of Ibis for transportation to Tiger Kingdom
2:30pm – 6:00 – Tiger Kingdom
6:00pm – Meet at drop off point for return transportation to Ibis
7:30pm – Buffet dinner at Kantary Hills (Optional)

Tiger Kingdom

After a morning of talks and then lunch in the Ibis, it was off to Tiger Kingdom to spank some tigers. Despite their peaceful nature and the fact there were no incidents, these tigers were huge and very intimidating. They were also ripped. Knowing that they could disembowel me in under a second was kind of freaky.

Drop Ship Lifestyle 2014 Retreat – Day 1

Wed, 08 Oct 2014 01:53:23 +0000

Yesterday was the first day of the Drop Ship Lifestyle Retreat in Chiang Mai, primarily featuring Johnny talking about optimisation and a trip to the Doi Suthep temple.

Drop Ship Lifestyle 2014 Retreat Schedule

Tuesday, October 7th

9:00am – 9:45 – Registration on the 8th floor of Ibis Styles
9:45am – 10:15 – Retreat introduction from Anton
10:15am – 10:30 – Member introductions
10:30am – 11:00 – eCommerce conversion tips from Johnny FD
11:00am – 1:00 – Open office sessions focusing on design, traffic, and conversions
1:00pm – 2:00 – Buffet lunch at Ibis Styles
2:00pm – Meet out front of Ibis for transportation to Doi Suthep
2:30pm – 4:30 – Explore Doi Suthep Temple
4:30pm – Meet at drop off point for return transportation to Ibis
5:00pm – 6:30 – Free time
6:30pm – Meet out front of Ibis for transportation to the Coffee Monster Party
7:00pm – 10:00 – Coffee Monster Party
10:30pm – Transportation to Ibis Styles from Coffee Monster ends

Anton has sorted out a complete day of events, with work in the morning and fun in the afternoon and evening. That’s a lifestyle I can certainly get with!

Buying Online Games In Thailand

Sun, 05 Oct 2014 04:18:03 +0000

One of the things I didn’t account for in Thailand is how complicated it is to buy things online. I’m guessing this isn’t just an issue in Thailand but more a global problem when making online purchases abroad.

It is the rainy season in Thailand which means some times, like the last couple of days, if you go outside you drown. I like to play computer games every now and again and I use an Apple MacBook Pro which has no CD Rom drive so anything I buy has to be a digital download. There are 3 main digital game providers I’m interested in, Blizzard, Steam and Guildwars 2. I contacted my banks before I left, telling them I would be away for 12 months travelling and I will be visiting Thailand as the first port of call to make sure that there would be no issues. But oh boy are there issues.

How To Properly Clean Boxing Gloves

Sun, 05 Oct 2014 02:04:31 +0000

This week has been pretty interesting. Now that I’m settled in to an actual routine and have made some friends I’ve been capitalising on the free time I have and making more of it. At least when we’re not in the middle of a torrential rain storm.

How To Properly Clean Boxing Gloves

The guys at the gym are pretty paranoid about Staph infections and advise cleaning everything in Dettol, including boxing gloves and shin guards. After every session I’ve been filling a sink full of water and Dettol, dumping my shorts and hand wraps in to soak and then dipping my gloves in to also soak them in the Dettol solution.

Unseen Academicals

Thu, 02 Oct 2014 04:08:46 +0000

When Unseen Academicals first came out, I remember seeing it in the book shop, sighing and thinking Terry had completely jumped the shark. At the time the last thing I wanted to read was a book about a game of football, even if it was set on the Discworld. Five years later, oh what a mistake I made!! This book is amazing.

Focusing on the nuances of both the beautiful game and the team work that goes in to it, Unseen Academicals features the wizard, Ponder Stibbons, reinventing the game of foot-the-ball whilst the Unseen University try to put a team together!

Getting Work Done

Tue, 30 Sep 2014 11:34:35 +0000

One of the complications with this digital nomad experience is dealing with the UK. Not just time zone differences, that can be mitigated quite easily as the UK’s 9-5 is 4pm – midnight in Thailand. But lack of office infrastructure. I have to send some paperwork to my bank in the UK in order to make some account amendments, back at home this would have been as simple as print, sign, fax or maybe even print, sign, post. Out here though, working in a hotel room I’m stuck at the first hurdle ..

Big Buddha Run #1

Tue, 30 Sep 2014 08:17:41 +0000

Every Tuesday morning Tiger Muay Thai organises a run to the Big Buddha in Phuket. The run is 4.2 km / 2.6 miles long and up hill all the way. You actually climb 1207 feet / 367 meters during the run, it’s hard. The record is something like 24 minutes!

I did it in just over 44 minutes, so in 2 weeks time when I try this again I will see if I can get a sub 40 minute time. This will involve running at some point, rather than just walking..

Taled Kaset Phuket Night Market

Mon, 29 Sep 2014 04:42:54 +0000

The Taled Kaset Phuket Night Market is the largest night market in Phuket, loaded with food from different cultures as well as hilariously cheap knock off goods.

The first part of the market was rows and rows of little stalls and cubby holes selling either cheap Thai or tourist clothing, or cheap knock off sunglasses or other random things. e.g. the Beats by Dre Pill is £170 or you can buy something that looks exactly the same for about £17. For some reason Beats by Dre is HUGE over here and fake/cheap stuff is everywhere, even in the normal more expensive shopping malls. You can even buy fake Beats branded speakers in styles that even Beats by Dre don’t make!

September BBQ Beatdown

Sun, 28 Sep 2014 10:18:29 +0000

The last Saturday of every month, Tiger Muay Thai hosts a BBQ Beatdown. 500 THB in advance, or 700 THB on the door, it’s a pretty cool party with free BBQ, beers and fights!

Due to the preparations the only class is Muay Thai on the beach, at 8am. This felt like more fun than training as we were taken down to the local beach, riding in the back of pickup trucks, or a bus, then did some Muay Thai practice on the sand before heading in to the sea for a swim.

Completed A Muay Thai Class

Fri, 26 Sep 2014 09:17:28 +0000

Ok it doesn’t sound that impressive, but yesterday I completed the entire 2 1/2 hour Muay Thai class for the first time after a week of training. I’m really pleased as it was a hot day and by the first hour mark I was still feeling fresh. Now I know what to expect in order to pace myself better for the future so that I can work harder!

First Thai Massage

Wed, 24 Sep 2014 11:56:53 +0000

I had my first private, 1-2-1 Muay Thai lesson today which was really awesome. Tiger Muay Thai charge 5500 THB for a bundle of 10 private lessons, which works out to 550 THB a lesson, or roughly £10.50, which is great value as it costs that much to join a class back in the UK!

The lesson consisted of pad work, interspaced with sit-ups and massages and lasted an hour. Obviously when you’ve got a personal trainer the format of the class will be based on your own individual needs, I’m starting at the beginning so it’s mostly about technique and cardio for me.

Life Changes Quick

Wed, 24 Sep 2014 03:02:44 +0000

Johnny’s last book, 12 Weeks In Thailand is one of the reasons I’m currently here, living it up in Phuket. I flew out almost 12 months after reading it, so when I learned he was launching a new book, Life. Changes. Quick. I bought it as soon as it was out.

I read the book, cover to cover, in just one sitting. It’s only 126 pages long, so not quite Lord Of The Rings, but every page was gripping and inspiring. Documenting Johnny’s journey from living it up in Thailand with no money, no budget and no responsibilities, to creating his own business, losing weight and falling in love, very inspiring.

Around the world in 80 Girls: The epic 3 year trip of a backpacking Casanova

Wed, 24 Sep 2014 02:38:01 +0000

Around The World In 80 Girls was half good, half boring, a bit of a grind to read but at the same time quite informative. Neil decided to spend 2 1/2 years backpacking around the world, started sleeping with lots of girls then decided to blog and write a book about it as he travelled. Starting in Russia, heading through Asia, down to Australia, through South America then ending in New York before back home to Holland, quite the adventure!

Rolling With The 6.57 Crew: The True Story Of Pompey’s Legendary Football Fans

Wed, 24 Sep 2014 02:16:03 +0000

Growing up in the 80s/90s on the outskirts of Portsmouth football was everything. We played it so much that myself and some of my mates actually started to develop knee issues! As a kid the 6.57 crew were kind of legends. We all loved Pompey and there was always boasts and stories every now and again of someone’s older brother or cousin getting in to trouble for 6.57 related activity. Even now as an adult (?) when I talk to my mates from Leigh Park or Havant usually something 6.57 related comes up as some kind of brag, so there’s still something in the air about them!

How To Prevent Ringworm

Mon, 22 Sep 2014 07:21:20 +0000

All over the Internet there are dozens of posts on Muay Thai and MMA forums of fighters going down with Ringworm and other fungal infections. Most people who have trained long enough will have come in to contact with someone else that has Ringworm and possibly had it themselves. The first time I caught it was my very first session training at ZT Fight Skool when I borrowed some gloves and got it all over my hand. Getting rid of it took over 2 weeks and killed my motivation to train! I don’t want that to happen again here so am going to be a lot more careful.

The Daily Mail Is Banned In Thailand

Sat, 13 Sep 2014 11:06:29 +0000

Seriously, if I try and visit any pages on www.dailymail.co.uk I get the awesome error in the image to my left. This is probably for the best for a variety of reasons 🙂

When Life Gives You Lemons, Make Pancakes

It was inevitable that at some point in Thailand I’d fall ill with some kind of stomach bug, that day was Thursday. I’d managed to wake up at 7:50 am, had a shower and was eating breakfast by 8am, but after the first bite of melon I knew something was wrong. With in 2 hours I was throwing up everywhere 😀 They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger so hopefully this will give me some kind of superman like immunity to other stomach bugs. Also it couldn’t have happened at a better time as I’m out for the count anyway due to the stupid fungal infection, which is slowly clearing up but still there.

Stupid Fungal Infections

Wed, 10 Sep 2014 09:32:57 +0000

Yesterday was Muay Thai lesson number 2, I managed to get through 90 minutes of it and it was totally awesome. We started off with running then drills again. I’ve found hanging at the back of the class is the best place as whilst doing the drills you have more access to the trainers so I had a lot of my technique fixed. After the drills we then did some partner ‘sparring’, or at least practising stand up grappling techniques, which was pretty cool. The guy I was training with had Judo experience so despite the disability of the gloves we managed to pretty much get the hang of what was going on.

The Smell Of A Figher

Mon, 08 Sep 2014 13:56:43 +0000

Is Dettol. You can smell it everywhere like cheap perfume or aftershave and it’s an instant giveaway that someone is training in one of the many fight camps along the road. It’s a necessary evil though as it’s recommended to wash all clothes and training equipment in Dettol or another anti-bacterial solution in order to reduce the spread of staph or ringworm infections. Not only is this a good idea for health reasons, it helps with my travel light policy as I’ve been hand washing the same couple of sets of clothes daily for the past week 🙂 We’ve also been given Dettol anti-bacterial soap to wash ourselves with!

Cross Training

Fri, 05 Sep 2014 13:05:39 +0000

After taking Thursday off because of DOMS and still being jet lagged I decided to do yoga then the cross training today. I went to bed at 10pm and then fell asleep at 6am just before the yoga started, which was useful. So today was just cross training. And it sucked.

The format of the class was a worm up, which killed me in itself, then 2 WODs. I prefer what we did at CrossFit Hove, which was a short warm up, followed by strength or skill training for 30 minutes and then the WOD at the end, so I’m going to have to chat to one of the Strength & Conditioning coaches to sort something out, or just do the Black Iron Beast routine I was doing at CFH originally on the side.

Tiger Muay Thai Fitness Test

Fri, 05 Sep 2014 12:38:59 +0000

As part of Tiger Muay Thai’s weightloss package, every Wednesday they run a fitness test to see how you are getting along. This consists of the usual measurements being taken by tape measure and scales (no body fat callipers) and then a series of timed exercises including:

3 laps around the training site
situps
pressups
burpees
squats
‘quick feet’

I left my numbers with the trainer but it will be interesting to compare them in a months time when I do it all over again! Whilst I was exhausted and soaking with sweat, I felt ok afterwards!

First 24 hours in Thailand

Wed, 03 Sep 2014 03:31:26 +0000

Thailand is hot, like really really hot and after an 11 hour flight on British Airways where they ran out of both the beef and Heineken, followed by a much shorter 1 hour flight and then a 1 hour tax drive, I made it to Tiger Muay Thai and Signature Phuket at about 15:00. After checking my bags in to Signature I went down to Tiger Muay Thai and was given a tour and had a meet and great with all the people that worked there. The meal plan was explained as well as all the other activities that go on around the camp and how to sort out personal training. By the end of the tour I’d been awake for over 26 hours so had no intention of eating right or doing any exercise so decided to have a ‘last meal’ of the Signature Burger with Bacon and Cheese for the very modest sum of 100 BAHT (about £1.80) then crashed at about 17:00.

Travelling With High Blood Pressure

Fri, 22 Aug 2014 12:12:32 +0000

The biggest reason for my trip to Phuket and Tiger Muay Thai is to relax, rejuvenate my health and kick myself back in to the shape I used to be. At the moment I am suffering from High Blood Pressure which hopefully will sort itself with eating healthily and regular exercise.

Travel Insurance For High Blood Pressure

Having High Blood Pressure counts as a pre-existing medical condition, something a lot of insurance companies are not fond of covering. This is compounded by the complexity of getting insurance for extended trips of world travel with no set itinerary.

Is This The Most Important Script You’ll Ever Write?

Mon, 11 Aug 2014 15:42:50 +0000

Since my first IT job ever, I’ve taken part in a tradition started by the guy I was replacing. A tradition known to us as escape.pl, and something people in my local Linux Administrator community have kept with for well over a decade now.

The Most Important Script You’ll Ever Write?

The first time I saw it it was written in Perl, I’ve since written them in Bash, Java and now Javascript. I’ve just seen one written in AWK. Some are cleverer than others, some just do the bare minimum. Some are executed by hand, others are run each time a new terminal is opened thanks to .profile, .bashrc or whatever’s managing your shell environment.

First Item Sold

Sat, 26 Jul 2014 11:54:41 +0000

I’ve been working on several product niches, following Anton’s Drop Ship Lifestyle system for a few months now, along side all my other projects, and this week I got my first sale so I’m very excited for the future.

Drop Ship Lifestyle has a very vibrant community, both online with their members only forums and in Chiang Mai, Thailand where Anton is based at the moment, and watching everyone else getting results has been extremely motivational for me. However there is nothing like actually getting results yourself and it’s very reassuring to know that the Drop Ship Lifestyle system really does work.

yum error: Couldn’t fork Cannot allocate memory

Wed, 23 Jul 2014 10:07:54 +0000

I’ve been doing some awesome things to a new VM for work, namely installing CouchDB, Apache and running Node.JS apps along side a WordPress plugin using Angular.JS. It’s pretty cool. But computer’s are dicks so when it came down to installing Monit to ensure everything was lovely I got the following error: Couldn’t fork %pre(monit-5.5-1.el6.rf.x86_64): Cannot allocate memory. Bum.

error: Couldn’t fork %pre(monit-5.5-1.el6.rf.x86_64): Cannot allocate memory

Seem’s simple enough, for whatever reason Yum cannot allocate memory, so lets take a peak

Downsizing And Travelling Light With A Kindle

Sat, 03 May 2014 16:05:34 +0000

I love reading but reading for myself is something that only happens nowadays if I go on holiday. There’s far too much work related material to read instead.

One of the things I want to do is read more, and for myself. There are at least a dozen books going dusty that I haven’t read yet and many more that I need to catch up on!

12 Weeks in Thailand: The Good Life on the Cheap

Sat, 03 May 2014 13:57:53 +0000

I’d been toying with the idea of escaping my 9-5 for a while and came up with 2 different ideas. The first was to go to the Mana Retreat in New Zealand, volunteer and live for free whilst meditating and doing yoga.

The second idea was a Thai fight camp.

Googling lead me to JohnnyFD and this book, 12 Weeks in Thailand: The Good Life on the Cheap, a sort of motivational biography about how Johnny visited Thailand on holiday and then decided to move there training in Muay Thai and becoming a scuba instructor.

The Trip Is Booked!

Tue, 29 Apr 2014 20:57:15 +0000

Today I took action and booked flights out to Phuket, Thailand and made arrangements for my first week out there.

Most People In Life Don’t Show Up

Technically I started making arrangements last year, when I handed in my notice at work, only to ask for it back and change role.

I also booked a trip to Turkey over Christmas which I didn’t go on as I wasn’t feeling it.

The Albert Burger – Best Burger in Brighton?

Wed, 09 Apr 2014 11:16:23 +0000

It’s rare that I’m genuinely in shock and awe of something, but that’s how I felt last night in The Albert, down under Brighton train station!

The menu came with a crazy amount of options, so for the burger I added bacon and cheese and for the chips, thick cut rather than skinny and chilli and cheese. Not chilli cheese mind, as that was a separate option, as were the beef brisket, hash browns, onion rings, guacamole etc etc etc TOO MANY CHOICES! The entire thing came to £10 on the nose.

Adsense 2014 April Fools

Tue, 01 Apr 2014 11:19:24 +0000

It’s nice to see that idimmu.net doesn’t just have a global audience but a solar system wide audience too!

62.% of my site’s earnings come from Europa, thanks for the heads up, Google and happy April fools to you guys too 🙂

Speeding Up MDADM RAID Rebuilds

Wed, 26 Mar 2014 16:48:52 +0000

I’m slowly migrating a bunch of awesome things from a really old server, it’s still running Ubuntu 10.04.. to a really nice and shiny one. Which has 2 new 3TB HDDs in RAID 1, which are syncing..

 cat /proc/mdstat md3 : active raid1 sda4[0] sdb4[1] 1847478528 blocks super 1.2 [2/2] [UU] [>....................] resync = 0.1% (2061952/1847478528) finish=28857.9min speed=1065K/sec 

authorized_keys vs authorized_keys2

Wed, 26 Mar 2014 14:28:18 +0000

Earlier today I was setting up a brand new server for a migration and just as I was typing scp .ssh/authorized_keys2 my brain went and asked a question..

What is the difference between authorized_keys and authorized_keys2?

I’ve been working with Linux for well over a decade and some of my practices stem from things I learned in the ’90s that still work, putting all my public keys in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2 is one of those things.

do-release-upgrade Checking for a new Ubuntu release No new release found

Sat, 23 Nov 2013 20:08:02 +0000

My HTPC is almost appliance like, in the way I never upgrade it, i.e. this morning it was still running Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal… It’s also not very appliance like in that it’s also full of random development stuff that probably shouldn’t be on it as well as several different types of databases, my backup infrastructure and tons of other things you really don’t care for.

But not today. Today I was bored and decided the best use of my time was to replace MythTV with XBMC. Not only that, I figured I should probably upgrade from

Honey Beer Bread

Sun, 27 Oct 2013 18:01:36 +0000

I gave up drinking 3 months ago, but still have a fridge full of beer which I didn’t want to pour down the sink, so I decided to make something with it. I found My Fridge Food, which is an awesome little site that will take the contents of your fridge and cupboards and suggest recipes! A lot of the recipes were rubbish, poached eggs,

Google Is Becoming Less Relevant

Tue, 15 Oct 2013 10:22:14 +0000

Back in September Google released it’s new Hummingbird algorithm, apparently affecting 90% of search queries, as it strives for greater accuracy and more relevant results. Aimed at ‘conversational searches’, like what is the best cake? rather than simple terms such as best cake. (when is the last time you made a search request like that?)

Then on the 4th October they released Penguin 2.1, aimed at reducing the quality of spammy backlinks, I assume the theory is that better sites have better backlinks, (as they have been around longer?) and newer sites, (trying to use spammy backlinks to gain traction?) can’t be as good or as relevant. Fairly naive thinking, though I guess it might help in ‘cleaning up the web’?

How To Take Control Of Another Computer

Sun, 06 Oct 2013 09:37:54 +0000

There are several things to think about when taking control of another computer, the Operating System running on it, the speed of your network connection and the tools you have at your disposal.

How To Take Control Of Another Computer

Operating System

There are 3 main choices of Operating system that the computer you want to take control of might be running, Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. Fortunately Mac OS X is based on BSD so the tools you would use to take control of it are the same as you would for Linux, simplifying things some what!

sudo: sorry, you must have a tty to run sudo

Fri, 27 Sep 2013 10:58:46 +0000

We’re using an old version of Upstart, on Centos, to manage stopping and starting our Node.js daemons, and one of the things the script does, like any good deamon, is change the user of the deamon process from root to something more applicable, security and all that 😉

The scripts look a little like this

!upstart
description "Amazing Node.js Daemon"
author "idimmu"
start on runlevel [2345]
stop on shutdown
env PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
env NAME="amazing-daemon"
script
export HOME="/root"
cd /opt/idimmu/$NAME
echo $$ > /var/run/$NAME.pid
exec sudo -u idimmu /usr/bin/node /opt/idimmu/$NAME/server.js >> /var/log/$NAME/stdout.log 2>&1
end script
pre-start script
echo "[`date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%T.%3NZ`] (upstart) Starting $NAME" >> /var/log/$NAME/stdout.log
end script
pre-stop script
rm /var/run/$NAME.pid
echo "[`date -u +%Y-%m-%dT%T.%3NZ`] (upstart) Stopping $NAME" >> /var/log/$NAME/stdout.log
end script

Which is nice, as it means we can use Upstart to stop/start/status deamons really nicely. The equivalent init.d script looked really horrible.

pv – Pipe Viewer – My New Favourite Command Line Tool

Thu, 18 Jul 2013 14:51:51 +0000

I’ve got a rather large dataset that I need to do a lot of processing on, over several iterations, it’s a 20gb zip file, flat text, and I’m impatient and don’t like not knowing things!

My new favourite Linux command line tool, pv (pipe viewer) is totally awesome. Check this out:

 pv -cN source < urls.gz | zcat | pv -cN zcat | perl -lne '($a,$b,$c,$d) = split /\||\t/; print $b unless $b =~ /ac\.uk/; print $c unless $c =~ /ac\.uk/' | pv -cN perl | gzip | pv -cN gzip > hosts.gz zcat: 93.4GiB 1:33:18 [26.6MiB/s] [ <=> ] perl: 85.7GiB 1:33:18 [25.3MiB/s] [ <=> ] source: 13.2GiB 1:33:17 [3.57MiB/s] [===============================================> ] 67% ETA 0:44:41 gzip: 12.7GiB 1:33:18 [3.51MiB/s] [ <=> ] 

Enable Linux Core Dump

Fri, 21 Jun 2013 14:03:02 +0000

One of our applications (Freeswitch) just randomly crashed for no apparent reason and didn’t write anything to it’s log files. The service we’re trialling is currently in Beta so there’s room to muck about and do some diagnostics. I want to make the kernel dump a core file whenever Freeswitch dies, in case it happens again, so that we have some stuff to work with after the fact. It’ll also shut up my QA manager.

CouchDB {“error”:”insecure_rewrite_rule”,”reason”:”too many ../.. segments”}

Fri, 21 Jun 2013 08:32:51 +0000

Whilst working an AMAZING NPM repository mirror yesterday (which totally works, despite not really offering the performance benefit I’d hoped, because NPM is rubbish) I came across this error whilst doing things

16 http GET https://localhost:5984/registry/_design/app/_rewrite/-/all/since?stale=update_after&startkey=1371737164294 17 http 500 https://localhost:5984/registry/_design/app/_rewrite/-/all/since?stale=update_after&startkey=1371737164294 18 error Error: insecure_rewrite_rule too many ../.. segments: registry/_design/app/_rewrite/-/all/since 18 error at RegClient.<anonymous> (/root/.nvm/v0.8.15/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/npm-registry-client/lib/request.js:259:14) 18 error at Request.init.self.callback (/root/.nvm/v0.8.15/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/request/main.js:120:22) 18 error at Request.EventEmitter.emit (events.js:99:17) 18 error at Request.<anonymous> (/root/.nvm/v0.8.15/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/request/main.js:648:16) 18 error at Request.EventEmitter.emit (events.js:126:20) 18 error at IncomingMessage.Request.start.self.req.self.httpModule.request.buffer (/root/.nvm/v0.8.15/lib/node_modules/npm/node_modules/request/main.js:610:14) 18 error at IncomingMessage.EventEmitter.emit (events.js:126:20) 18 error at IncomingMessage._emitEnd (http.js:366:10) 18 error at HTTPParser.parserOnMessageComplete [as onMessageComplete] (http.js:149:23) 18 error at Socket.socketOnData [as ondata] (http.js:1367:20) 19 error If you need help, you may report this log at: 19 error <https://github.com/isaacs/npm/issues> 19 error or email it to: 19 error <npm-@googlegroups.com>

Niche Site Duel 2 Participation

Thu, 20 Jun 2013 19:45:45 +0000

Pat Flynn over at Smart Passive Income has just announced the launch of his Niche Site Duel 2 project, and as I kind of called him out a few month ago in my first (stalled) Income Report causing a WordPress ‘ping back’ and his mate Blake to pop in and say hi 😀 Rather than be a massive cynic, I thought I’d give them another dofollow backlink and join in with his new project!

How To Create An NPM Repository Mirror

Thu, 20 Jun 2013 15:18:58 +0000

We use Node.js a LOT, which means we do npm install a LOT. And npm is pretty terrible, with horrible dependency handling so we can end up requesting hundreds of dependent modules with it’s recursive patten e.g. for just one of our projects we can end up with paths like

`
./node_modules/bcrypt/node_modules/nodeunit/node_modules/should/node_modules/mocha/node_modules/glob/node_modules/minimatch/node_modules/sigmund/node_modules/tap/node_modules

[root@hmon workspace]# find . -name node_modules | wc -l
2103
`

That’s 2103 node_modules directories, for an application we’ve written that has only 22 dependencies configured for it!

Volusion Review

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 14:14:49 +0000

Whether you are looking to open your first e-commerce store, or a better deal on your existing one, the e-commerce arena is a minefield that needs to be navigated carefully. Businesses usually always end up paying much more for hosted e-commerce solutions than they originally expected because most e-commerce platforms are not completely upfront about their pricing model. Problems can range from fixed, long term contracts, hidden transaction fees and tiered pricing, as well as frequent network issues and unpleasant customer support. If you accidentally choose the wrong shopping cart it can end up being an expensive mistake, so you need to take the time to make sure you make the right choice.

18th June 2013 Tumilson WOD

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 09:03:54 +0000

Today we did a hero WOD called the Tumilson. The RX is

8 rounds for time of:
Run 200 meters
11 Dumbbell burpee deadlifts, 60 pound dumbbells

But I scaled it with 25kg dumbells ~55lbs.

collectd illegal attempt to update using time when last update time is (minimum one second step)

Thu, 13 Jun 2013 15:24:47 +0000

Whilst debugging our CollectD and Graphite setup, I found that CollectD was generating hundreds of repeated errors.

Jun 13 17:11:14 hmon collectd[15336]: rrdtool plugin: rrd_update_r (/var/lib/collectd/rrd/hmon/processes/ps_state-running.rrd) failed: /var/lib/collectd/rrd/hmon/processes/ps_state-running.rrd: illegal attempt to update using time 1371136272 when last update time is 1371136272 (minimum one second step) Jun 13 17:11:14 hmon collectd[15336]: rrdtool plugin: rrd_update_r (/var/lib/collectd/rrd/hmon/processes/ps_state-sleeping.rrd) failed: /var/lib/collectd/rrd/hmon/processes/ps_state-sleeping.rrd: illegal attempt to update using time 1371136272 when last update time is 1371136272 (minimum one second step) Jun 13 17:11:14 hmon collectd[15336]: rrdtool plugin: rrd_update_r (/var/lib/collectd/rrd/hmon/processes/ps_state-zombies.rrd) failed: /var/lib/collectd/rrd/hmon/processes/ps_state-zombies.rrd: illegal attempt to update using time 1371136272 when last update time is 1371136272 (minimum one second step)

Bing The Most Altruistic Search Engine

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 19:21:01 +0000

I needed to access Bing’s Webmaster Tools to have a look at the configuration for this site. I couldn’t remember the URL off hand so I decided to ‘Google’ the search term using Bing!

That’s very nice of them … I guess part of Bing’s preference engine might rank pages higher depending on where the search words are in the title of your page or something!

Think Carefully About Your Clever Project Names

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 13:30:09 +0000

We’re building a new exciting cluster at work using Linux HA and stuff to make it work magically.

In the olden days of yore RedHat and co were using Pacemaker with the old crm (Cluster Resource Manager / Cluster Relationship Manager, pick one..) tool for cluster management, which was nice. Now it looks like RedHat have removed the crm command from their repositories and have switched to PCS which stands for either Pacemaker/Corosync Configuration System or is the plural of PC (Personal Computers).

Income Report March 2013

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 13:54:10 +0000

Following on from last month’s report March was quite an interesting month. Changing perspective from using this site as a simple memory dump to one that people, other than myself, would find useful lead to some interesting usage patterns, from both myself and my visitors as well as some changes to the blog!

Due to my change of attitude I actually watched my traffic stats, where I noticed some odd things in my logs, I thought I fixed the problem… It turns out having an URL or page with the phrase ‘apache access logs’ in it is a really bad thing as now that page is plagued with bot hits using Russian domains as a referrer, trying to get a back link for their domain in my web stats. It’s receiving about 1500 unique hits a day at the moment which is skewing my stats quite heavily.

Installing Magento

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 12:37:10 +0000

One of my clients wanted an E-Commerce solution for his website and after a little bit of analysis we opted for the community edition of Magento.

We wanted something based on the usual LAMP stack, that was OpenSource so it could be extended, was free as in beer, had great international support, was fully featured and enterprise ready, could pass PCI DSS compliance, allowed reasonable payment gateway options, could scale and was easy to extend as well as backup. Also we wanted complete control of the deployment, rather than integrating with a 3rd party cloud service provider such as Shopify to keep costs down and retain flexibility.

monit: error connecting to the monit daemon

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 11:48:53 +0000

We’re rolling out monit on our new platform at the request of a vendor to manage their new service. I’ve always been dead against these kinds of automated failure recovery tools as they often require human intervention after the fact anyway and all the platforms I’ve managed will have failed the server anyway so why not restart the services after the root cause analysis is done? My tune is slowly changing though and I’m coming to appreciate this method of systems recovery a lot more.

Odd Occurrences In Apache Access Logs

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 23:33:21 +0000

I’ve been watching my Awstats installation this month as idimmu.net is about to peak with over 7000 unique visitors in a month for the first time in it’s history, which is pretty awesome. But there’s been something really weird going on in the results ..

This is kind of ironic as in a recent job interview I was asked

What would you look for to ascertain suspicious activity on an instance of Apache serving static image assets?

Experiments In Bitcoin

Mon, 25 Mar 2013 23:48:02 +0000

Earlier today I got in to discussing Bitcoin Arbitrage with a mate of mine, with the cunning plan of creating a bot to monitor different exchanges and profit on the difference in trading prices. After an analysis this was deemed a silly idea, or conversely we aren’t good enough, as moving real money or bitcoins around the exchanges seems to be an extremely painful process. The first step though was creating a wallet!

Android Create AVD

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 17:55:06 +0000

The second part of this series covers creating our first Android Virtual Device or AVD. The Android Virtual Device (AVD) is basically a configuration for the Android SDK’s emulator that lets you define the hardware and software characteristics of an actual Android advice that you can then test your code on. Whilst not being as good as running your app on real hardware, testing it on an AVD is the next best thing!

Install Android Eclipse

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 17:50:16 +0000

Hi guys, when telling a story it’s always best to start at the beginning, so the first thing to do on my journey is talk about how are we going to install Android Eclipse. My workstation is a MacBook but the process is the same on both Windows and Linux. I’ve put together a short video of the entire thing, from downloading Eclipse and the Android SDK to installing Eclipse, the ADT (Android Development Tools) plugin and then configuring ADT to use the Android SDK!

10 Most Used Linux Commands

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 16:26:24 +0000

Whilst skimming my Bash history today looking for an esoteric one liner I’d written earlier I started to ponder what my most used commands were, it’s easy enough to find out! This is actually output from my Mac, not a Linux box, I tricked you 😀

 Chill:~ rus$ history | awk {'print $2'} | sort | uniq -c | sort -nr | head -n 10 106 ssh 49 ls 44 cd 42 curl 34 scp 25 vi 15 mv 15 cp 12 grep 10 rm 

Income Report February 2013

Tue, 05 Mar 2013 21:44:36 +0000

This blog is and has always been a blog of integrity, righteousness. A stalwart blog where I document my IT struggles and things I like to eat. Basically a combination of everything I hate in the world and everything I love, all in one place. And it’s going to remain that way. I will never sell out!

I like to read the Internet sometimes, I think I’m about half way through and so far nothing’s happened. But over the last few weeks I’ve been reading Smart Passive Income, basically a blog where some guy allegedly makes $50kpm by telling other people that he’s er .. making $50kpm. I think he’s making shit up personally, but it’s kind of inspiring. I’ve had Adsense running on this site for 2 years I think now, maybe more, who knows, and strangely I’m not retired and am still getting my fists dirty with magical computer machines. This blog has become amusingly popular though, although I don’t have a hardcore following it’s nice to read the odd comment about how I’ve helped someone create a Yum repository.

OSX Lion JAVA_HOME

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 10:28:06 +0000

Apple’s OS Lion has a pretty neat trick for handling the JAVA_HOME variable

 Chill:bin rus$ /usr/libexec/java_home /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home 

which is super awesome as you can simply do

 Chill:bin rus$ export JAVA_HOME=$(/usr/libexec/java_home) Chill:bin rus$ echo $JAVA_HOME /System/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.6.0.jdk/Contents/Home 

to make sure you have the correct $JAVA_HOME set up, every time!

I’ve added this commend to my ~/.profile file so that whenever I open a new terminal, the $JAVA_HOME variable gets set correctly!

Hop Poles Burger – Worst Lunch Experience Ever

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Burger At The Thomas Kemp

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 09:55:59 +0000

Last week I helped a friend of mine move house, and in return he also let me buy him dinner .. He lives up near the Thomas Kemp and I hadn’t been there for a while so it was pretty much set in stone what I’d be eating.

From their menu description:

Thomas Kemp Beef Burger – £7.95
Our homemade beef burger with horseradish, gherkins, tomato & mixed leaves.

Google Is So High On Adverts It’s Forgotten How To Search The Internet

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 09:14:39 +0000

So, I really like the song Papua New Guinea by Future Sound of London, so on a whim I decided to try and see if there were any Linux Sysadmin roles going over there, I think there’s a huge oil industry out there and they must use computers, right?

Turns out the first search result returned matches because of the png file extension? Ok, that’s the TLA for Papua New Guinea but what .. that’s the most relevant result? Really Google?

Syntax Highlighting In VIm

Tue, 02 Oct 2012 10:53:31 +0000

Syntax highlighting in vim can be super tricky, by default a lot of desktop environments seem to have white terminals, which is a bit dumb as it’s easier to read white on black than black on white, as such the default vim syntax highlighting is often unreadable if you have a black terminal, giving blue comments on a black background and the like.

The fix for this is to set your vim background to dark, e.g.

Installing OpenSIPS on Redhat Enterprise Linux 5

Thu, 27 Sep 2012 13:31:00 +0000

We’ve got to set up a SIP Registrar for a fantastic new project that one of our clients recently announced 😉 on RHEL5 so we’re going to trial OpenSIPS, backed with MySQL to see how it performs.

There’s a RHEL5 repository mirror here https://centos.leurent.eu/ that I’ve mirrored locally. If you don’t know how to create your own repositories you can read about that here.

First off I installed the opensips-mysql.x86_64 package to guarantee we pull in OpenSIPS as well as it’s MySQL dependencies.

Take Screenshot Mac

Wed, 26 Sep 2012 12:39:42 +0000

To take a screenshot on a Mac you can use the following simple keyboard shortcuts:

To save a screenshot to the desktop on a Mac

Command-Shift-3 : Take a screenshot of the Mac screen, and save it as a file on the desktop.
Command-Shift-4 : Hold down the mouse button and select an area of the Mac screen to save a screenshot of that area as a fiile on the desktop.
Command-Shift-4 : Press the space key and then click a window to take a screenshot of that window and save it as a file on the desktop.

To save a screenshot to the clipboard on a Mac

Iptables Block Outgoing Traffic

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 14:31:30 +0000

We need to give one of our customers to an internal server, for this we’ve enabled remote SSH access. Even though we trust them we don’t want anyone to use the server as a launchpad to attack other remote servers, or a launch pad to attack internal servers for that matter, in case their account and SSH keys are compromised. So to prevent this we are using iptables to block outgoing traffic from the external IP.

Burger At The Seven Stars

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 13:44:22 +0000

I recently went to the Seven Stars for a lunch burger on a hangover day at work. It was the worst burger experience of my life and I wasn’t going to write it up due to the hangover but I’ve been assured that it wasn’t how I felt, the food was actually terrible, so here we go. I will also preface this with the staff were amazing, I’m sure I’ve had a burger here in the past that was pretty good so maybe this was just an off day, but my friend who also ordered the same burger had the same issue.

5 Meat Slow Cooker Chilli

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 17:26:41 +0000

2 weeks ago I came up with an idea. An entire duck in a slow cooker. I’m not sure how it popped in to my brain and I was sober at the time, but it happened. Some people called me crazy, others called me stupid, until today, when I made it, in all it’s glorious glory!

Approximate Ingredients
1 Duck Crown
2 Duck Legs
8 Chicken Thighs
400g Diced Pork
400g Diced Beef
500g Bacon
400g Diced Lamb
1 Table Spoon Mollasses Sugar
9 Fresh Jalapeno Peppers
6 Fresh Bullet Chili Peppers
3 Dried Chipotle Chili Peppers
1 Dried Ancho Chili Pepper
2 Dried De Arbol Chili Peppers
1.2kg Chopped Tomato
4 Diced Onions
1 Heaped Table Spoon Cocoa Powder
1 Shot Tequila
1 Shot Cointreau
1 Large Glass Red Wine
3 Cloves Garlic
Salt
Pepper

Sidey Burger at the Sidewinder

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 12:37:43 +0000

I accidently ended up at the Sidewinder in Brighton and realised I haven’t had their burger in a while so couldn’t say no as I was starving 😀 They have several different burgers, the 2 main ones being their Classic and the Sidey. ‘Why settle?’ is one of my motos so I opted for the Sidey in all it’s delicious glory!

The Classic Burger

Homemade & 100% British Beef Burger topped with melted emmental cheese, a slice of bacon, roquette & beef tomato in a seeded brioche bap. Served with a side of fries and our house lime and coriander redslaw. £7.25

Google Analytics: The site has not been registered.

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 09:59:08 +0000

In my old blog I had Google Analytics working flawlessly and have several years worth of data showing people searching for SVN or Nagios help 😉

Now I’ve moved to WordPress I wanted to keep using analytics and have had great success using the Google Analyticator plugin with my other blogs so wanted to keep using that here!

Google Analyticator has a fantastic feature that completely automates linking your site to Google Analytics, it’s one mouse click and for my other sites worked flawlessly! For some reason on idimmu.net, probably because I’d previously registered with Anaylyics, it kept throwing the error

idimmu.net moves to WordPress!

Fri, 20 Apr 2012 21:04:11 +0000

As you can tell idimmu.net has undergone a fairly hefty overhaul and is now being managed by WordPress! This offers several advantages to me namely

ease of maintenance (someone else is writing the code!!)
code i write is now usable by other people
learning wordpress properly is a new job/career skill
no more lucene bridge! (it broke a lot anyway)

All the content has been migrated, but as you can see, the theme is a standard wordpress skin, so lots to do still!

Elgg 1.8 Tidypics Group Fix

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 16:07:11 +0000

I’m creating a new community site using the Elgg 1.8 platform, but a lot of the widgets are still using the old 1.7 CSS for their displays so it means a lot of fixing.

The existing tidypics/views/default/tidypics/groupprofile_albums.php suffers from this problem but is simply fixed by changing

 


photos_enable != 'no') {<br />
echo '</p>
<div class="group_tool_widget photos">';<br />
echo '<span class="group_widget_link"><a href="' . $vars['url'] . 'pg/photos/owner/' . page_owner_entity()->username . '">' . elgg_echo('link:view:all') . '</a></span>';<br />
echo '</p>
<h3>' . elgg_echo('album:group') . '</h3>
<p>';<br />
echo elgg_view('tidypics/albums', array('num_albums' => 5));<br />
echo '</p></div>
<p>';<br />
}<br />
?><br />

BackupPC ping too slow

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 12:21:39 +0000

Whilst adding a new remote server to our BackupPC configuration, it threw the following error

`
Contents of file /Volumes/2TB/backuppc/pc/www.server.co.uk/LOG.102011, modified 2011-10-25 13:10:23

2011-10-25 12:00:00 ping too slow: 22.21msec
2011-10-25 13:00:01 ping too slow: 49.63msec
2011-10-25 13:10:23 ping too slow: 47.79msec
`

and refusing to back up the server! After browsing the documentation I discovered the following configuration option

 $Conf{PingMaxMsec} = 20; 

Maximum round-trip ping time in milliseconds. This threshold is set to avoid backing up PCs that are remotely connected through WAN or dialup connections. The output from ping -s (assuming it is supported on your system) is used to check the round-trip packet time. On your local LAN round-trip times should be much less than 20msec. On most WAN or dialup connections the round-trip time will be typically more than 20msec. Tune if necessary.

Linux Command Line AVI Repair

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 19:44:03 +0000

Recently I had an avi file with a broken index that needed to be repaired. After a quick search and read of some man pages I discovered these handy flags for mencoder to get the job done!

 mencoder -idx homemovie.avi -ovc copy -oac copy -o homemovie-repaired.avi 

bamo!

List Contents Of An RPM Package

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 12:45:44 +0000

Often when building RedHat RPM packages I want to make sure that the package built correctly and all the files are present before I actually install the RPM, but I do keep forgetting the command to do this, so here it is for prosperity!

 rpm -qlp 

e.g.

root@build:/usr/src/redhat/SPECS# rpm -qlp ../RPMS/noarch/servicemap-0.16-1.noarch.rpm /var/www/html/servicemap /var/www/html/servicemap/amq.png /var/www/html/servicemap/amqfail.png /var/www/html/servicemap/amqreportingprov1prov1.png /var/www/html/servicemap/amqreportingprov1prov2.png /var/www/html/servicemap/amqreportingprov2prov1.png /var/www/html/servicemap/amqreportingprov2prov2.png /var/www/html/servicemap/amqsdrprov1prov1.png /var/www/html/servicemap/amqsdrprov1prov2.png /var/www/html/servicemap/amqsdrprov2prov1.png /var/www/html/servicemap/amqsdrprov2prov2.png /var/www/html/servicemap/amqslee1fail.png /var/www/html/servicemap/amqslee1prov1.png /var/www/html/servicemap/amqslee1prov2.png /var/www/html/servicemap/amqslee2fail.png /var/www/html/servicemap/amqslee2prov1.png /var/www/html/servicemap/amqslee2prov2.png /var/www/html/servicemap/amqvqeprov1prov1.png /var/www/html/servicemap/amqvqeprov1prov2.png /var/www/html/servicemap/amqvqeprov2prov1.png /var/www/html/servicemap/amqvqeprov2prov2.png /var/www/html/servicemap/amqwebserviceprov1prov1.png /var/www/html/servicemap/amqwebserviceprov1prov2.png /var/www/html/servicemap/amqwebserviceprov2prov1.png /var/www/html/servicemap/amqwebserviceprov2prov2.png /var/www/html/servicemap/checks.php /var/www/html/servicemap/config.php /var/www/html/servicemap/hash.png /var/www/html/servicemap/index.php /var/www/html/servicemap/nagios.php /var/www/html/servicemap/script.php /var/www/html/servicemap/sleevipactivenotok.png /var/www/html/servicemap/style.php /var/www/html/servicemap/ttprov1.png /var/www/html/servicemap/ttprov1prov2.png /var/www/html/servicemap/ttprov2.png /var/www/html/servicemap/ttprov2prov1.png /var/www/html/servicemap/ttprovfail.png /var/www/html/servicemap/ttslee1.png /var/www/html/servicemap/ttslee1slee2.png /var/www/html/servicemap/ttslee2.png /var/www/html/servicemap/ttsleefail.png /var/www/html/servicemap/ttvipactivenotok.png /var/www/html/servicemap/ttvipactiveok.png

Cheese and Bacon Burger at The Victory

Fri, 04 Mar 2011 22:24:43 +0000

Recently I went to The Victory with some mates and watched as they ate an epic burger in front of it, so when I went back recently I had no choice but to investigate!

I opted for the bacon and cheese accessories, of course, and it comes with a massive portion of straight cut fries on the side and a small pot of bbq sauce too!

Chili Burger With Cheese at The Royal Pavilion Tavern

Sat, 22 Jan 2011 14:33:09 +0000

The Royal Pavilion Tavern, aka Pav Tav, is a pretty popular student venue in the evenings, but lunch time, on a Saturday, it’s mostly OAPs, but they do beer and a burger for £4.99 so it had to be tried, especially as I’m working today!

I opted for the Chilli Burger with Cheese and a beer, at £5.59, and upgraded to curly fries for an additional 69p, so all it all it came to £6.28, and of course soda and lime instead of a beer 🙂

Beer and a gourmet burger at the Wetherspoons

Fri, 21 Jan 2011 13:43:45 +0000

It’s a Friday and traditionally everyone goes to the pub for lunch as a precursor to what will be a fantastic weekend! A new Wetherspoons opened up near us recently and I was looking forwards to trying a Gourmet Burger from them as I’d had one of their normal burgers before and quite enjoyed it!

It’s a 6oz burger, made from British beef, and from their description:

 Topped with two bacon slices and a Stilton, Shropshire blue and spring onion sauce. Includes six beer-battered whole onion rings. 

Beer and a burger at the Wahoo bar

Mon, 17 Jan 2011 12:40:43 +0000

We decided to go and watch the football at the Wahoo bar yesterday and I saw their beer and a burger for £4.99 offer and couldn’t say no!

For £4.99 you get a burger on a white bun, loaded with salad, gerkins, 2 hash browns and a side portion of chips. You also get a drink, either a bottle, something on draft or a soft drink, I opted for a pint of Kronenburg!

Changing A DRAC Password On The Command Line With racadm

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 08:21:46 +0000

All Dell DRACs come with a default account set up as root / calvin which is a huge security risk if left!

The web interface doesn’t let you change the password but the firmware does when you boot the server.

A second way to change the password is with the racadm tool, if installed, at the command line! This means you don’t have to reboot that precious production server!

In DRAC 4, the first index slot is root by default. In DRAC 5 and 6, index 1 is Administrator, index 2 is root.

SVN Rolling Back A Commit To A File

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 07:56:18 +0000

I needed to roll back an SVN commit done recently to an init script for one of our daemons, it’s a very easy process!

First we need to see what the latest revision number of the file that we want to roll back is

Chill:files idimmu$ svn info slee Path: slee Name: slee URL: https://svn.idimmu.net/msu/trunk/puppet/modules/jnetxslee/files/slee Repository Root: https://svn.idimmu.net/msu Repository UUID: 573313b0-15b8-499c-acf0-a5a26a3c7166 Revision: 1517 Node Kind: file Schedule: normal Last Changed Author: idimmu Last Changed Rev: 1256 Last Changed Date: 2010-08-12 10:51:15 +0100 (Thu, 12 Aug 2010) Text Last Updated: 2010-08-12 10:50:57 +0100 (Thu, 12 Aug 2010) Checksum: 8940fdf3ed6ee8281b94f55c2fe7880a

Keeping Linux Users In A MySQL Database With libpam-mysql On Ubuntu

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 10:46:26 +0000

I want to have a set of users on my Ubuntu 10.4 Lucid Lynx box managed by MySQL, rather than LDAP for a change which means delving in to the sexy world that is libpam-mysql!

As ever, the first thing that we need are packages! Remember when installing mysql-server to set a strong root MySQL password. As we’re managing user accounts in MySQL we need to really make sure everything is locked down tight!

Disk Quotas On Ubuntu

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 07:42:35 +0000

I’ve recently needed to add disk usage quotas to a server in order to limit how much data users can store so as not to affect the quality of service for other users.

Linux has a method called quota which can help you do this.

Ubuntu provides some packaged tools which let you manage quotas

apt-get install quota

To enable quotas on a partition the first step is to edit the /etc/fstab entry for the partition and append usrquota to it so the kernel knows to manage that partition using quotas.

Unique Article Wizard needs strip slashes!

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 18:59:42 +0000

I’m playing about with the Unique Article Wizard plugin for WordPress (for a friend, not for this site!!!) and there’s an obvious problem where all of the articles need their slashes to be stripped. It looks like a serious case of magic quote paranoia!

A look at the plugin code makes article_mods.php the obvious candidate for tweaking:

Change lines 370 – 384 from

$uawarticle_id = wp_update_post(array ( 'ID' => $pageposts[0]->post_id, 'post_author' => $uawuser_id, 'post_title' => stripslashes($title), 'post_content' => stripslashes($article . "\n\n\n\n" . $_REQUEST['resource_box']."\n\ncategories: ".$_REQUEST['keywords']) , 'post_excerpt' => stripslashes(stripslashes($description)), 'post_type' => 'post', 'post_status' => $uawstatus, 'post_modified_date' => date("Y-m-d H:i:s"), 'post_modified_date_gmt' => gmdate("Y-m-d H:i:s"), 'post_category' => array ( $uawcategory_id ),

Delete Linux MBR

Thu, 29 Jul 2010 13:29:36 +0000

We run a build system using PXE and Puppet which lets us reliably and quickly set up production and development environments on our servers and maintain their consistency.

Every now and again we need to wipe the MBR of a Linux box in order to reboot it so it can PXE boot and reinstall itself. I like to use this command:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=446 count=1

which fills up the start of the disk with 0s, a simple reboot will then kick the box and start the PXE cycle!

Canon EOS Utility On A Mac Without A CD

Fri, 16 Apr 2010 12:50:46 +0000

Canon have a fantastic little app, which works on both Windows and Mac, called EOS Utility, which among other things allows you to do time lapse photography!

I lost my CD ages ago, because you know … everyone knows that all responsible companies let you download support tools from their website ..

Unfortunately no one informed Canon of this amazing new way of thinking, and they only let you download an update for the EOS Utility application, which throws a massive hissy fit if you try to install it on a machine that doesn’t already have it installed!

Slow SSH and SCP connections on Ubuntu

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 01:36:04 +0000

My home Ubuntu Jaunty installation often takes a good 40-60 seconds to connect to using SSH, none of the other servers I maintain have this same problem, they’re pretty much instantaneous, and today, on a Friday evening at 1am this irked me enough to fix it!

The first step is of course to make the SSH connection with debug output on.

Chill:~ idimmu$ ssh -v cordy OpenSSH_5.2p1, OpenSSL 0.9.7l 28 Sep 2006 debug1: Reading configuration data /Users/idimmu/.ssh/config debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh_config debug1: Connecting to cordy [192.168.0.10] port 22. debug1: Connection established. debug1: identity file /Users/idimmu/.ssh/identity type -1 debug1: identity file /Users/idimmu/.ssh/id_rsa type -1 debug1: identity file /Users/idimmu/.ssh/id_dsa type 2 debug1: Remote protocol version 2.0, remote software version OpenSSH_5.1p1 Debian-5ubuntu1 debug1: match: OpenSSH_5.1p1 Debian-5ubuntu1 pat OpenSSH* debug1: Enabling compatibility mode for protocol 2.0 debug1: Local version string SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_5.2 debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT sent debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT received debug1: kex: server->client aes128-ctr hmac-md5 none debug1: kex: client->server aes128-ctr hmac-md5 none debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REQUEST(1024<1024 debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_GROUP debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_INIT sent debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REPLY debug1: Host 'cordy' is known and matches the RSA host key. debug1: Found key in /Users/idimmu/.ssh/known_hosts:7 debug1: ssh_rsa_verify: signature correct debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS sent debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS received debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_REQUEST sent debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_ACCEPT received

Proper use of grails:exec

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 23:02:02 +0000

Whilst trying to run mvn grails:exec with more complicated requests it kept erroring:

Chill:superted idimmu$ mvn grails:exec -Dcommand="jack-be-nimble net.idimmu User Profile" [INFO] Scanning for projects... [INFO] Searching repository for plugin with prefix: 'grails'. [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [INFO] Building Unnamed - net.idimmu:gymlife:war:1.0-SNAPSHOT [INFO] task-segment: [grails:exec] (aggregator-style) [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [INFO] [grails:exec] [INFO] Using Grails 1.2.0 Running pre-compiled script [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [ERROR] BUILD ERROR [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [INFO] Unable to start Grails
Embedded error: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
[INFO] ————————————————————————
[INFO] For more information, run Maven with the -e switch
[INFO] ————————————————————————
[INFO] Total time: 14 seconds
[INFO] Finished at: Thu Jan 07 22:49:41 GMT 2010
[INFO] Final Memory: 32M/81M
[INFO] ————————————————————————

Latest release information is not available for plugin ‘nimble’, specify concrete release to install

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 22:16:10 +0000

Whilst trying to install the Nimble plugin for Grails using Maven I ran in to a spot of bother!

Chill:superted idimmu$ mvn grails:install-plugin -DpluginName=nimble [INFO] Scanning for projects... [INFO] Searching repository for plugin with prefix: 'grails'. [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [INFO] Building Unnamed - idimmu.net:superted:war:1.0-SNAPSHOT [INFO] task-segment: [grails:install-plugin] (aggregator-style) [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [INFO] [grails:install-plugin] [INFO] Using Grails 1.2.0 Running pre-compiled script Environment set to development Reading remote plugin list ... Reading remote plugin list ... Latest release information is not available for plugin 'nimble', specify concrete release to install

Integrating Grails and Maven

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 22:08:27 +0000

I’ve started investigating Grails for some projects and have been making some good headway and I like to use Maven for everything as it’s amazing, and generating projects is easy.

Chill:stsworkspace idimmu$ mvn org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-archetype-plugin:2.0-alpha-4:generate -DarchetypeGroupId=org.grails -DarchetypeArtifactId=grails-maven-archetype -DarchetypeVersion=1.2.0 -DgroupId=idimmu.net -DartifactId=superted [INFO] Scanning for projects... [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [INFO] Building Maven Default Project [INFO] task-segment: [org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-archetype-plugin:2.0-alpha-4:generate] (aggregator-style) [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [INFO] Preparing archetype:generate [INFO] No goals needed for project - skipping [INFO] Setting property: classpath.resource.loader.class => 'org.codehaus.plexus.velocity.ContextClassLoaderResourceLoader'. [INFO] Setting property: velocimacro.messages.on => 'false'. [INFO] Setting property: resource.loader => 'classpath'. [INFO] Setting property: resource.manager.logwhenfound => 'false'. [INFO] [archetype:generate] [INFO] Generating project in Interactive mode [WARNING] No archetype repository found. Falling back to central repository (https://repo1.maven.org/maven2). [WARNING] Use -DarchetypeRepository=<your repository> if archetype's repository is elsewhere. Define value for version: 1.0-SNAPSHOT: : Confirm properties configuration: groupId: idimmu.net artifactId: superted version: 1.0-SNAPSHOT package: idimmu.net Y: : [INFO] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [INFO] Using following parameters for creating OldArchetype: grails-maven-archetype:1.2.0 [INFO] ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- [INFO] Parameter: groupId, Value: idimmu.net [INFO] Parameter: packageName, Value: idimmu.net [INFO] Parameter: package, Value: idimmu.net [INFO] Parameter: artifactId, Value: superted [INFO] Parameter: basedir, Value: /Users/idimmu/Documents/stsworkspace [INFO] Parameter: version, Value: 1.0-SNAPSHOT [WARNING] org.apache.velocity.runtime.exception.ReferenceException: reference : template = archetype-resources/pom.xml [line 147,column 20] : ${java.version} is not a valid reference. [WARNING] org.apache.velocity.runtime.exception.ReferenceException: reference : template = archetype-resources/pom.xml [line 149,column 23] : ${java.home} is not a valid reference. [INFO] ********************* End of debug info from resources from generated POM *********************** [INFO] OldArchetype created in dir: /Users/idimmu/Documents/stsworkspace/superted [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [INFO] BUILD SUCCESSFUL [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [INFO] Total time: 15 seconds [INFO] Finished at: Thu Jan 07 21:45:39 GMT 2010 [INFO] Final Memory: 12M/79M [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Technorati Have Crappy Systems Designers

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:59:07 +0000

I’ve signed up to Technorati and to prove I own this blog they want me to post an entry with this code in it:

4VPEAZA86VHN

or maybe this code

7W3G7P94H3PU

They don’t seem to be sure and the email they sent me and their website both say something different ..

Most sites that are better, such as Google or even MS Live/Bing/Bling/whatever they’re calling it this week ask you to create a file on the server, but noooooooo Technorati are forcing me to actually make a post advertising their service .. I really hope it has a happy ending!!! 😉

Python support for SSL and HTTPS is not installed

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 13:42:13 +0000

I wanted to give Google’s new Go language a try which requires checking out the source code with Mercurial.

Mercurial was installed from ports on my Mac with

 sudo port install mecurial 

But checking out the code threw an error.

 Chill:~ rus$ hg clone -r release https://go.googlecode.com/hg/ $GOROOT abort: Python support for SSL and HTTPS is not installed Exception exceptions.AttributeError: "'httpsrepository' object has no attribute 'urlopener'" in > ignored 

Error: Could not open command file ‘/var/log/nagios/rw/nagios.cmd’ for update! on RedHat

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 13:57:43 +0000

I’m currently setting up some new clusters under RedHat and each cluster is getting it’s own Nagios instance, trying to use the web based management interface however threw and error.

I’ve seen this error before on Ubuntu and was getting it again under RedHat. Of course I revisited my Ubuntu solution and realised that it didn’t help at all, due to using dpkg overrides, also the situation was very different!

 root@nagios:/var/log/nagios/rw# ls -al total 8 drwxrwxr-x 2 nagios apache 4096 Oct 30 13:37 . drwxrwxr-x 5 nagios apache 4096 Oct 30 13:40 .. 

Creating A Local and HTTP RedHat Yum Repository

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 22:05:41 +0000

We’re rolling out a RedHat platform for a major product delivery to a client in the next couple of weeks, which is a great chance for me to build a fresh platform using all the skills I’ve acquired and actually do things properly (TM).

We’re using RedHat Enterprise Linux 5 because this is a very critical deployment and we want an Operating System that is certified to both our hardware and software applications, something that unfortunately Ubuntu does not deliver.

Bash Shortcuts

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 12:33:40 +0000

Meta-< -> go to beginning of history file
Meta-> -> go to end of history file
Meta-f -> go to next word in command line
Meta-b -> go to previous word in command line
Meta-d -> delete next word in command line (from the actual position of the prompt)

Ctrl-a -> go to the start of command line
Ctrl-e -> go to the end of command line
Ctrl-p -> previous command in history
Ctrl-n -> next command in history
Ctrl-f -> next character in command line
Ctrl-b -> previous character in command line
Ctrl-r -> reverse search in history file
Ctrl-d -> delete current character
Ctrl-k -> delete from the prompt to the end of command line
Ctrl-_ -> undo (yes, but limited)

Burning an XVid to DVD in Ubuntu Jaunty from the command line

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 11:59:57 +0000

I needed to burn an XVid of one of my performances to DVD last night, remotely, as my MythBuntu box was being used by someone else to watch some crappy TV and I wanted to show off! It was a pretty simple process, just involving a bit of a wait during the transcode 🙂

First you will need to make install the relevent packages:

sudo aptitude install dvdauthor ffmpeg ~nlibav.+-unstripped.+

If you already have dvdauthor and ffmpeg installed, you must install the unstripped libav packages as they contain a tool called mpeg2video and it’s this that does the heavy grunt work!

google-apis-mavenized does not compile

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 13:11:55 +0000

I need to write some backup software for our hosted Google Apps, so as we’re a Java shop I’m going to be using the Java API. Also we’re heavy users of Hudson and Maven so want to get the checked out source building with that.

There is a Google Code project called google-apis-mavenized which looks like it has done most of the work for us, but it does not build when it’s checked out.

New Ubuntu Jaunty Screen

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 14:30:46 +0000

At the moment I’m trying out the beta for Ubuntu Jaunty and one the first thing I noticed was the new version of screen available!

Initially you are provided with a menu to choose a theme!

I went with option 3, Ubuntu Dark! You’re then presented with an interesting new screen display, with 2 rows of status at the bottom, in lots of colours, displaying information about the CPU and RAM etc!

Generating Secure Passwords With pwgen

Mon, 06 Apr 2009 10:29:12 +0000

At my current place of employment we have a fairly strict password policy for everything, all passwords must be unique (so no single password used everywhere) and we use KeePass and KeePassX to manage them, so we can have fairly long passwords that aren’t immediately rememberable full of fun characters.

Generating the passwords is a dull process so we take the sting out of it using the pwgen utility!

rus@boosh:~$ pwgen -y 12

Changing variables in a BASH while loop

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 15:11:11 +0000

There is an error that I often run in to when working with files and while loops in BASH. Often I have scripts similar to the following, where I cat a file and read it in using a while loop to process variables in the file:

#!/bin/bash
count=0;
cat testfile | while read line
do
 count=$(($count+1));
 echo $count;
done
echo "Total $count";

and using the following test data in testfile as:

Error: Could not stat() command file ‘/var/lib/nagios3/rw/nagios.cmd’!

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 09:42:48 +0000

I’ve been doing a lot of Nagios deployments recently, and this error always bites me, on all Ubuntu versions, including Hardy and Intrepid (haven’t quite bit the bullet to try the Jaunty beta yet 🙂 )

 Error: Could not stat() command file '/var/lib/nagios3/rw/nagios.cmd'!

The external command file may be missing, Nagios may not be running, and/or Nagios may not be checking external commands.

An error occurred while attempting to commit your command for processing.

Burger At The Mash Tun

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 18:51:18 +0000

For lunch today we all decided to go to the Mash Tun pub. I argued blind that they didn’t do any food, but it turns out, fortunately, that they did!

I had a most fantastic burger, which was almost the size of my pint glass. The patty was really nicely flavoured, with onions and green bits and all sorts, and not over blown with pepper, which seems to be the norm nowadays. The chips were also really good, a lot of places seem to be mimicking the style of Heston’s Thrice Cooked Chips!

Resize LVM ReiserFS Partition

Fri, 13 Mar 2009 11:29:22 +0000

Mucking about with LVM and partitions isn’t really taxing, it’s all well documented. Trusting it however is a different matter. I’ve resized loads of Ext3 LVM partitions in the past, but was asked to resize a ReiserFS one today, which made me ask the question:

“Is there anything writing to it currently, as I will have to unmount it first ..”

Wrong assumption, or so says the guy sat next to me! ReiserFS can be dynamically resized on the fly! Woohoo says I, lets have a look at the resize_reiserfs man page!

Tomcat HelloWorld Servlet with Eclipse

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 16:21:14 +0000

I’m really trying to get in to this whole Java web development frame of mind, as it’s a bit of fun, a bit of a giggle, and it’s massive in this area of the world! So obviously my first port of call was dusting off Eclipse and kicking out a HelloWorld style Java servlet!

I grabbed a copy of O’Rielly’s Java Servlet Programming to get started and found it really invaluable, and definitely recommend this book to anyone starting out in Java servlet programming.

Nexus on Tomcat 5.5 on Ubuntu Hardy

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 20:58:26 +0000

I’m trying out this Continuous Integration fun at the moment.

My end game is to get Hudson, Maven and Nexus working together to continuously build and run unit tests against code, which then gets turned in to Deb packages. A new Xen VM will then be created and configured using Puppet which the new Deb package is then deployed to. Finally Selenium will then be run to automate testing of the deployment.

Thats the plan anyway ..

BGP: Building Reliable Networks with the BGP

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 20:22:07 +0000

I recently had to learn BGP in order to fully understand what I was doing when migrating from our Linux based Zebra routers (crappy and unstable) to our nice shiny new Juniper routers.

We had a couple of books at work, but by far the best was BGP: Building Reliable Networks with the Border Gateway Protocol. It hasn’t changed much since it was released in 2003, but neither has BGP so that really isn’t an issue, and with the recent BGP issues that keep occuring, a good knowledge of it is pretty important to any network admins out there, especially those like me with their own AS numbers!

svn: Aborting commit: remains in conflict

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 10:54:10 +0000

I got this annoying SVN error today, that I hadn’t come across before. Even after resolving the conflict in the file, highlighted by lots of «««<, I still couldn’t get my commit to work!

idimmu@boosh:~/work/systems/trunk/dns$ svn ci idimmu.net -m “new funky domain”
svn: Commit failed (details follow):
svn: Aborting commit: ‘/home/rus/work/systems/trunk/dns/idimmu.net’ remains in conflict

After some reading it was easy to resolve!

idimmu@boosh:~/work/systems/trunk/dns$ svn resolved idimmu.net

Resolved conflicted state of ‘idimmu.net’

rpmdb: Lock table is out of available locker

Mon, 09 Feb 2009 12:39:20 +0000

I had a crazy weird bug today whilst running Puppet on one of our CentOS boxes where no packages were being installed. A quick investigation with yum yielded the following scenario!

Id I tried to use yum as root or with sudo it gave the following error ..

[idimmu@server ~]$ sudo yum check-update rpmdb: Lock table is out of available locker entries error: db4 error(22) from db->close: Invalid argument error: cannot open Providename index using db3 - Cannot allocate memory (12) Repository update is listed more than once in the configuration Repository base is listed more than once in the configuration Setting up repositories https://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/mirror.centos.org/Null/updates/i386/repodata/repomd.xml: [Errno 14] HTTP Error 404: Not Found Trying other mirror. Cannot open/read repomd.xml file for repository: update failure: repodata/repomd.xml from update: [Errno 256] No more mirrors to try. Error: failure: repodata/repomd.xml from update: [Errno 256] No more mirrors to try.

File Roller and 7zip

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:26:31 +0000

I recently needed to extract a file with the new, popular 7zip compression, which Ubuntu’s File Roller doesn’t support out of the box. Enabling 7zip support in File Roller was as simple as:

 apt-get install p7zip-full 

Saving the RAID

Thu, 22 May 2008 19:33:22 +0000

I managed to screw up my home machine when upgrading from Dapper to Hardy somehow, so decided to flatten and reinstall Hardy from scratch.

This is all well and good but I have a RAID 5 array on my machine which stores all my important documents and stuff (I really hate drive failure). Ubuntu didn’t suddenly detect my RAID array and figure everything out, which was not entirely unsurprising but was a little scary.

xend refusing to start

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 22:56:25 +0000

We recently had a few power outages at work, some scheduled, some not, and this played havoc with our xen servers.

One of the problems we had was that xend would not start (and thus xendomains would also not start).

Checking /var/log/xen/xend.log gave us the following snippet:

inst = XendNode() File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/xen/xend/XendNode.py", line 164, in __init__ saved_pifs = self.state_store.load_state('pif') File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/xen/xend/XendStateStore.py", line 104, in load_state dom = minidom.parse(xml_path) File "xml/dom/minidom.py", line 1913, in parse File "xml/dom/expatbuilder.py", line 924, in parse File "xml/dom/expatbuilder.py", line 211, in parseFile ExpatError: no element found: line 1, column 0 [2008-03-10 21:37:40 18122] INFO (__init__:1094) Xend exited with status 1.

Changing deb package architecture

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 11:03:29 +0000

We have several PHP applications and libraries incorrectly packaged for i386 rather than all, which means they wont install to our nice new shiny AMD64 servers. Unfortunately we don’t have (or at least we can’t find) the original package sources, so we need to ‘frobble’ the packages and change the arch by hand!

Deb files are just an ar package so we must first extract it! (FYI ar is like tar, but for pirates .. 🙁 )

Turning CPAN modules in to deb with dh perl make

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 16:24:52 +0000

Some of our PERL tools require some CPAN modules that are not part of the standard Ubuntu distribution. It’s obviously possible to install the module using CPAN but I like using deb packages where possible as then you only have one repository to manage. Fortunately with dh-make-perl it is possible to quickly turn any CPAN module in to a debian package!

First make sure dh-make-perl is installed

 apt-get install dh-make-perl 

Apache2 with SSL and Tomcat5.5 on Ubuntu

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 12:21:15 +0000

One of the newer features to our site is an access control mechanism to force specific paths to only be delivered over SSL when our customers have particularly sensitive data. We already use Apache2 with mod_jk to talk to the Tomcat5.5 instance running our app so the only part left is to enable SSL!

First make sure mod_ssl is enabled:

 root@reltest-tcj0:/var/log/apache2# a2enmod Which module would you like to enable? Your choices are: actions asis auth_anon auth_dbm auth_digest auth_ldap cache cern_meta cgid cgi dav_fs dav deflate disk_cache expires ext_filter file_cache headers imap include info jk ldap mem_cache mime_magic proxy_connect proxy_ftp proxy_http proxy rewrite speling ssl suexec unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias Module name? ssl This module is already enabled! 

Damn caffeine

Sat, 26 Jan 2008 23:48:51 +0000

Well, I guess I’ve already broken one of my New Years resolutions although I don’t feel too bad about it.

After a long stint of only drinking water in pubs (really bloody annoying) I had a diet coke .. not the end of the world. The spirit behind that resolution wasn’t really to completely give up caffeine anyway, but to stop having 8 cups of coffee a day, so I don’t feel too bad about it!

Restoring Vista personal folders

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 16:47:09 +0000

I accidently deleted my Pictures personal folder on my Vista laptop earlier and was stuck trying to recreate it. If I created a new folder and called it Pictures then it would turn in to a file, if I copied an existing folder and then renamed it to Pictures it, once again, would turn in to a file.

The trick to restoring it was to run the following command via the Run prompt in the Start Menu:

Apache2 ldap auth on Ubuntu Dapper and Feisty

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 14:30:02 +0000

As part of our internal office systems upgrade we have a shiny new LDAP server which we like to use as much as possible. One of the things we use it for is Apache user auth, mainly we control SVN with it so people can only commit to the projects they’re allowed to but we also use it so secure our system’s services from the developers that like to play wannabe sysadmin!

Ubuntu and webcams

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 11:38:15 +0000

I’ve had some debugging to do for work for a part of our site that uses webcams but I’ve been a bit hazey about starting it because the last time I plugged a webcam in to a Linux box, 100 years ago, it was a bit messy. I decided to risk it as I’m too lazy to go home and get my laptop, and .. it .. just .. worked ..

Using sed to replace all strings in a file

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 10:44:51 +0000

As part of our test environment rebuild one of the first things we tackled was moving the databases to the new virtual environment, this means changing the database address in a lot of config files, fortunately sed makes this job really easy!

 sed -i s/olddatabase/newdatabase/g *.xml 

We’re also using CNAMEs now for the addresses to make this change a lot easier next time the database moves hardware 🙂

Atom feeds with PHP 5 Dom and XSL

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 12:27:33 +0000

All blogs require silly amounts of feed generators, right? And this is a silly blog so requires a silly generator. The entire site is written using PHP5, and my automagic ‘datahandler’ activepage concept creates an XML document using DOM that then uses XSL as a templating engine, so I figured it wouldn’t be too hard to knock up a stylesheet to turn the default datahandler for the blog in to a nice atom feed! Just make sure you set the content-type to application/atom+xml when generate the page!

PHP Java Bridge in Ubuntu Gutsy with Lucene

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 20:21:26 +0000

The php/java bridge it a pretty awesome little protocol that basically lets us use java classes inside our own PHP applications! This lets you harness the awesome power of all the Java libraries that exist, including the popular Lucene search engine library.

I referenced two excellent blog entries here and here whilst implementing Lucene search for this blog, but I am writing up the experience anyway to compare issues and difficulties and enhance my understanding of the process.

Copying files between servers with netcat and tar

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 11:28:39 +0000

One of the quickest ways (faster than scp at any rate) of copying a large number of files between 2 servers is by abusing the awesome powers of Linux’s pipeing and netcat and tar!

Basically we set up netcat listening on the server you want the files copied too which pipes it’s output to tar which extracts anything sent to it.

 root@tanglefoot:/exports/archive# nc -l -p 7878 | tar -xzf - 

Using PowerDNS with PostgreSQL on Ubuntu Gutsy

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 17:57:11 +0000

We handle DNS for thousands of domains for our customers and whilst our existing solution worked it was very messy to maintain and work with so we decided to trial a new solution for our offices to see how it would perform. We wanted something that could be database driven for ease of maintenance and we were personally recommended PowerDNS, so we decided to trial that one first.

For the database we would normally go with MySQL but we wanted an instance of PostgreSQL to play with as we are considering moving our main platform to it at some point in the future.

Configuring Tomcat 5.5 and Apache 2 with mod_jk

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 15:01:54 +0000

mod_jk is a conduit between a web server and Tomcat, it supports a variety of web servers including IIS. Using mod_jk to put Apache in front of Tomcat lets you use all the power of Apache (caching, gzip, mod_rewrite, etc) whilst at the same time serving content from Tomcat, also with Ubuntu it’s really easy to set up!

First of all install the software, you will need to enable the backports repository on Dapper for this.

High availability with LVS using LVSadmin

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 14:05:48 +0000

The Linux Virtual Server is a highly scalable and highly available server built on a cluster of real servers, with the load balancer running on the Linux operating system. The architecture of the server cluster is fully transparent to end users, and the users interact as if it were a single high-performance virtual server.

We use LVS extensively at work to provide a scalable and highly available website which gets around 300 hits per second. Setting up and managing LVS can be made a lot easier using a tool that our ex staff wrote called LVSadmin. Written in perl it is easily configurable and provides a curses based front end to manage the servers. Setting up a new LVS cluster is really easy.

SVN COPY 502 Bad Gateway error

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 11:57:09 +0000

Our developers were experiencing a weird problem recently with our SVN installation where they couldn’t copy any files in SVN, they would always get the following error

 svn: COPY of /project/!svn/bc/5121/trunk/path/file.gif: 502 Bad Gateway (https://svn) 

A quick fix of course would have been to just create a new file and copy the contents but this wouldn’t have kept the file history. A quick google lead to this page and a solution!

New Years Resolutions

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 11:39:37 +0000

A lot of people hate the idea of new year resolutions, but if you want to make some changes and the fact it’s the start of a year will give you motivation, then so be it! Lets see how many I keep in 2009!

Give up smoking
Give up caffeine
Stick to diet and gym
Less red meat and fatty meats
No takeaway pizza, McDonalds or Burger King
Attend martial arts classes more regularly
Join a yoga/pilates class to improve posture/flexibility
Visit another contenant

Last year my resolution was to give up McDonalds, I only wavered once when stranded at Liverpool St. Station!

Resize Xen Filesystem

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 11:51:38 +0000

We run a lot of Xen instances for our development and test servers and a few were starting to get full. Fortunately the disks in the real servers were very large and the xenlet partitions were made using LVM so resizing them to add more space was possible!

root@dev-myfiles0:~# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda1 4.0G 3.8G 200M 95% /
varrun 257M 48K 257M 1% /var/run
varlock 257M 0 257M 0% /var/lock
udev 257M 40K 257M 1% /dev
devshm 257M 0 257M 0% /dev/shm

Basically we just have to shut down the xenlet, resize the partition and then restart the xenlet again, simple!