Today, I was giving a one-on-one PHP training course covering databases (we were trying to get mssql to work with PHP on Windows, but various factors seemed to conspire against us - possibly permissions related, as it seemed to refuse to allow us to select from a table that fricking well did exist.). Anyway, the amusing story was.....

This year, again I entered the Bromsgrove LRF charity fun run, and despite the horrible temperature, managed to finish 26th with a time of 44 minutes and a few seconds.

Last year, I did it in nearly the same time - although it was somewhat cooler and I hadn't been off-colour for the preceeding week.

On Sunday, I did my 5th Dyfi Enduro (at least, I think it's my 5th). As always, I had a great time, and pretty much knackered myself - which is to be expected. Oddly I reached the half way point and felt quite perky, so decided I'd better push myself harder in the second half. Thankfully I completed it, and now have one more mug to add to my collection :-)

Not wanting to complain, but I don't understand customers. Back in December, they seemed quite scarce - almost endangered. Now, they're everywhere. Perhaps January was "breeding season" or something.

I keep expecting everything to go really quiet, what with this "credit crunch" lark, but seemingly not. I'm not complaining.

Introduction

Reinstalling many machines with essentially the same content, is a time consuming process... here's how you can clone Linux machines...

This page details how to take an image of/clone a Linux system to use for restorating or wide scale rapid deployment, simplar to how utilities like Ghost work.

This document outlines how to use 'dd' or 'tar' to take a sytem image.

"Lactivist" is a popular term for an advocate (generally quite a militant one) of breastfeeding. When I got pregnant I presumed I would breastfeed but didn't think it would be the end of the world if we went on formula, although I knew it would be annoying to do all the faff with bottles.

This is just a quick note, incase it helps someone else in the future.

It seems that MySQL server, when using MyISAM tables doesn't truncate the index file when you run "ALTER TABLE x DISABLE KEYS", so when running "ALTER TABLE x ENABLE KEYS" you end up with an MyISAM index file (xxxx.myi) which keeps growing. In my case this hit 90gb on a customer's server.

Ways to fix this :

1. Upgrade to MySQL 5.0.52 (apparently ... see
   http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=4692 )
2. Run "optimize table xxxx"

Some time ago, I bought a Neuros OSD which we're really happy with.

What surprised me today, is that due to Neuros migrating the user interface over to QT, they're providing a free CF flash card to all owners of the device.

Most other companies would tell you to go out and buy your own, or release a Neuros OSD v2 with the CF card built in and expect users to buy a new device. It seems as if Neuros truely do care about customer satisfaction and loyalty. Thank you!

Nigel made me aware of ZygoHubs today; basically it provides a 'group wide' number to which you text. This text is then relayed to all other people in your group. So, presumably it would provide a great way for people to stay in touch as a group - and have the ability to notify everyone else by only sending one single text message.

Naturally, users of the service can belong to multiple groups.

For the last several years we've gone camping in Aberystwyth / Machynlleth for the weekend of the Dyfi Enduro. I really want to go again this year, especially as it coincides with the bank holiday weekend, and we might get a chance to visit some friends in Aber and have a mini holiday.