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Building a home server

Here we look at building a cheap, quiet and compact home media server.So what is a “home-media server”? Different things to different folks, but the box I’m going to build is actually to replace an existing unit which works fine but is too large and much too noisy.

What is a home server?

Like many homes these days we have various PCs and client devices scattered around the house, all networked back to a central point and, if required, via that central point to each other. What sits at the centre? Internet access, a fat hard disk for backup of workstations’ data and a couple of server-related functions. The server-side of things has several requirements: Read the rest of this entry »

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Poor and uneducated – Call that lucky?

A story tucked away on the BBC new website a couple of days ago is entitled “Medway luckiest for lotto wins.”The story is about the “luckiest” place to buy a lotto ticket in the UK.

And how do they measure the value of “luck”?

Apparently the technique is, for a given town:

“based on the number of top prize-winning entries as a proportion of its adult population.”
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HotRecorder are crooks

HotRecorder is a neat product. Unfortunately the people who run it are a bunch of crooks.I bought HotRecorder in April 2006, being a soul who purchased music (legally!) off the iTunes store but who wished to play it on MP3 devices.

One day I was stupid enough to want to move HotRecorder from one old, unused PC to a new one. HotRecorder’s online activation said “No!”. OK, so I email the support people FOUR TIMES asking them to permit the activation of the software I had paid them for. Four times they do not even reply.

HotRecorder do not deserve your money. They are dishonest and fraudulent.

Avoid.

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Pinnacle Showcenter 1000

Media servers for Pinnacle Showcenter 1000

I’ve had a Pinnacle Showcenter 1000 for a while now. It was one of the first “simple client – smart server” devices around, and is still a great device for getting music, photos and video from a PC to a hi-fi stack and TV.

The Showcenter itself is physically located with the TV / HiFi, with a network connection back to the media server. The Showcenter has various video and audio outputs and, for the network connection back to the server, supports wired or wireless Ethernet.

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Bioshock

Bioshock is one of the most talked about games (PC and console) to be released in recent times.

Almost all the major gaming sites, or major sites who also carry some games reviews, are lost for superlatives. Check out just a handful of reviews here, here and here. These are most representative of almost every other review I have read.

And I’m confused. I bought Bioshock on release day. And these guys are just plain wrong. Bioshock’s not bad. But in many respects it’s hugely average.

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MD5 Hashes – Part 2

MD5 Encryption?

It’s been a while since I wrote the first part of this MD5 article . Here in Part 2 I’m not (yet) going to cover the subject of hash collisions… That will follow in another future part.
Just now I want to deal with the pervasive, but wrong, belief that MD5 (or any of the other hashes commonly used, e.g. SHA1) are, of themselves, a means of encrypting data. They are not. However they often, at first glance, look like they are being used as such under some circumstances. This is a widely held misunderstanding and needs to be corrected.
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Ruby on Rails. On Ubuntu.

Here’s how to do it.

I had a Ubuntu box running 6.06 (Dapper) and a vanilla install of Apache2, PHP5 and MySQL5. I wanted to dabble in Ruby on Rails using the same box, but not affect the “production” side of it.

Despite the normally trivially easy install of software on Ubuntu I banged my head against a wall for hours trying to get it working… I just could not find a simple and complete example. I know I’ll probably find that some clever clogs can reduce all of this to 5 keystrokes, but I couldn’t. So this is a complete and detailed walk-through of how to get Ruby on Rails running on an existing Ubuntu server.

My definition of success was to have a noddy “Hello World” running on a URL such as http://192.168.0.4:3000 while http://192.168.0.4/ continued to run my normal media server (i.e. via port 80) I want complete independence between then. Here goes…

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Religious Hatred? You betcha!

Today the UK parliament votes on the proposed Racial & Religious Hatred Bill (BBC story here). [EDIT: Since publishing, this link has changed to the BBC story reporting the defeat of the new law. Hooray!]

There is much opposition to this bill (and, I’m sure, much support too) from various quarters, much of it valid. One of the most vocal opponents is the actor/comic Rowan Atkinson, who claims the bill is an infringement of freedom in general and, specifically, an infringement on his right to make humour at the expense of religion. He has claimed it should be everyone’s right to: “cause trouble, or create discomfort, or offence, as long as your words or behaviour are not threatening”.

He’s right. This proposed law is appalling, and the government is trying to slide it past parliament by the most devious means. It has hooked it up with the existing law banning Racial Hatred.
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France, property rental and getting ripped off

This article is all about how you get ripped off when living in rented accomodation in France, how to avoid it and, if it happens, how to fight back.

One important disclaimer up front: I am not a lawyer, and none of this should be taken as formal legal advice. All I will do is relate my experiences and thoughts. And if they give you some ideas or pointers, great, but check with others too!

(parts 2, 3 and 4 are here, here and here)

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The winsome Alan Bennett

When the Independent on Sunday described him as “winsome”, he canceled an interview with the paper, sending a postcard with the joyous missive: “Winsome, lose some.”

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