Monthly Archive for February, 2008

In which I decide to market this site!

Published
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Tryphoon
on February 29, 2008
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I read about The Million Zimbabwean Dollar Homepage on Cruftbox.com a couple of days ago, which is a funny take on the “old” Million Dollar Homepage.

The “US Buck” might be in decline but I can still invest in several thousands of Zimbabwean dollars worth of advertising (or approximately US $3).

So I am now hanging in there, between “Cruftbox” and “The Loose Fish Project” (and Perigil’s “Gamersplay.com” at the bottom), enjoying a massive increase in traffic (almost reached 200 page views yesterday, before I lost all of my logs through my little database problems).

In which I practice CPR on my little blog!

Published
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Tryphoon
on February 29, 2008
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I would normally take the piss without any mercy of any user or sys admin who works without backup…

I have looked after most of the international Disney websites for years and never lost a piece of data. To be totally accurate, I once, almost lost the entire Disney UK site, having performed a wrongfully placed rm -Rf * at the root of the aforementionned site! But I was lucky enough to have hourly backups set up!

But less than an hour ago, chewing on my vegetable sandwich, I thought I would use the occasion to clean a couple of old wordpress installs on my server, using this fantastic tool called “Fantastico Deluxe”. I find a very old instance of this website, called “Beta” and decide that it is time to nuke it.

Menu: Are you sure you want to delete this instance of Wordpress

Me: Yes!

Menu: Are you really sure you want to do this?

Me: Yeah, yeah!

Menu: Do you want to delete the associated database?

Me: Yes, why not?!

Menu: Are you really sure as this is irrreversible!!!!!

Me: Come on, I know what I’m doing… Delete the fu***!

…

Me: [DOUBTFUL] Is it too late to perform a backup? Let’s check my main site!

Screen: “CANNOT CONNECT TO DATABASE!”

Me: Yikes!!!!

I look straight for my last 4GB backup on the server… 12/30/07. USELESS!

I then decide to call my hosting vendor support and while I am waiting on the phone, I start looking for any form of backup available on my server… Luckily [stupid] Fantastico Deluxe had created a very well hidden backup of the entire site during my last upgrade, a couple of weeks ago and looking inside the backup file I discover a lovely backup.sql file (note for non tekky: The holy Grail of lost data!).

I am however still short of a week of posts but luckily, both Mr Google and Mr Yahoo! had cached my home page (a week apart though) and after a simple matter of database-restore-copy-here-paste-there-publish, VOILA! As if nothing had ever happened!

Only issue, my lunch break window is well gone and I still need to finish chewing that veggie sandwich while looking into automated backups (good old crontab)

In which I am a little naughty!

Published
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Tryphoon
on February 28, 2008
in Tryphoon
. 2 Comments

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Far from reaching or even intending to reach the level of the Gizmodo CES prank, I enjoyed a couple of seconds of naughtiness yesterday morning when attending Microsoftâ’s “Heroes Happen Here” event.

I attended the opening keynote by Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, famous for his gaffes and sweaty armpits, and only brought one thing with me: A manilla envelope (I am sure you can guess what’s coming).

I was lucky enough to find an empty seat at the fourth row, and sat there, surrounded by people wearing proudly their MS colors.

Just before the keynote started, as I wanted to take some note (and eventually blog anything of interest), the same way they do it in the commercial, I opened the manilla envelope, extracted my little MacBook Air and booted it, under a flack of raised eyebrows, disapprobation looks and ushered comments.

I know, it’s silly, but it simply made my day!

In which we enjoy another move and the presence a whole set of friends!

Published
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Tryphoon
on February 25, 2008
in Californication
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This weekend was the big move day! After one week of sleeping on the floor on my own, the family was to be reunited and I was to be reunited with my bed!

Thanks to a full week of effort from Sarah, her mother and I, reached Saturday, the only things that had to be moved were the large ones: Sofas, beds, tables and Thia’s garden toys.

My main concern was that everything looked great on paper with regards with timing, but once again, we had cut it extremely fine, with most of the utilities being only transferred on Saturday. The plan ended up being the following:

  • 6:30: Wake Up
  • 7:00AM until 8:00PM: Wait for the Gas man to come and activate our gas account and start the pilot lights.
  • 8:00AM: Agnes comes and relays me in the house, waiting for the gas man, while I go and get the truck.
  • 8:30AM: Pick up truck
  • 9:00AM: Leave truck rental place and go to house
  • 9:30AM: Long list of friends arrive and start loading the truck
  • 1:00PM: Move over
  • 2:00PM: Return truck
  • 2:30PM: Rain starts!
  • 2:30PM: Cable guys over
  • 3:00PM: Satellite guys over (until 8:00PM)
  • Keep fixing and plugging stuff until exhaustion arise
  • Midnight: Pass out and sleep for few hours!

The best part of this day of move was the turn out of friends, colleagues and neighbors! Almost everybody we knew and who was available answered the call and helped us shlep our stuff!

We will all remember the pain of trying to move Thia’s new slide and playground, Alfredo’s effort to try to convince me to take it to pieces in order to get it out of the garden and Sylvain’ push to put all energy we had left to get that stuff out of our garden in one piece (almost)!

Kudos to Brian, our neighbor, whose wife is 9 months and week pregnant and who managed to make it despite the imminent new arrival in his family! (Still to happen at the time I finally publish this note)

Life can now resume!

In which my camping conditions got upgraded! Or maybe not after all!

Published
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Tryphoon
on February 20, 2008
in Californication
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As I am still camping at night in our new “404 Found” house, we decided last night to move more stuff to the new bedroom. The more stuff did include a bedside table on which I can now attach my reading light, a cabinet containing so of my clothes and our TV cabinet, with TV, DVD player and DVR. Sarah also bought me a little 6-pack, to enjoy a beer or 2 in front of a good movie.

So around 10:30, I decided to retire to the bedroom, after having been freezing my bu** off in the family room for quite some time and was looking forward to slip into my sleeping bag and finally watch some of the recorded space related documentaries stored on the DVR. I hence proceeded, switched the TV on, switched the DVR on and the stupid machine kept looking for its satellite feed instead of playing any recorded content.My sole issue here: The DirecTV guys are coming on Saturday to install our new dish. So until then, I can watch a great white and blue screen and nothing else! Life is so unfair!