DeepDarkSee

Rest and relaxation…

As of tomorrow afternoon, both the kids will be in summer camp. I’m off to the Villagio Inn & Spa in Yountville for 3 days of pampering, wining, dining, and hanging out with my honey. The salt scrub and massage are on Monday morning (after the leisurely breakfast)…

The Move

Well, deepdarksee.com, several other domains, and a bunch of user accounts have now been moved over from the RackSpace server to JohnCompanies (see earlier post). So far so good…JohnCompanies seems like a good choice. The high traffic sites move next week or so…over 1.5 million hits a day on Menstuff!

Multimedia Messaging on Mobile Phones (MMS)

Really interesting article at Mobitopia on MMS business model and adoption issues. To MMS, or to Email?

Turkish Insight

Michael Ledeen recalls a Turkish General commenting on the problem of allying with the United States, saying, “You never know when the Americans are going to turn around and stab themselves in the back.” Found on kuro5hin.org (always an interesting read). It also includes other commentary on US intentions with Iran.

Blogger, blogging, blogged, bloggerific, blogged-out, blogged-up, blog.

For Sale

Anyone want to buy my mint condition Apple 17″ Powerbook? I just listed it on Craigs List.

“Dude, I got a Dell!” Cry me a river…

Engrish

Not a place where I want to get my hair cut. Lots of other amusing stuff here too.

Cool Unix Sysadmin Tip of the YEAR!

Got a Unix server running sendmail? Have your users complained that they can’t send mail when connecting from major dialup ISPs? This is because most major ISPs now block port 25 to foil spammers (port 25 is where sendmail listens for SMTP connections from your PC – as well as inbound mail from other servers on the internet). What is the fix? Run a second instance of sendmail on a different port – one that is not blocked by these ISPs. Note that you need to keep the instance running on port 25 to receive inbound mail.

Here is how to do it:

Copy /etc/sendmail.cf to another file name (sendmail.cf-6000 in this example)

Edit the DaemonPortLines line

>#O DaemonPortOptions=Port=smtp, Name=MSA, M=E

>O DaemonPortOptions=Port=6000, Name=MSA, M=E

Start the second instance of sendmail with this command

>sendmail -bd -C/etc/sendmail.cf-6000 -q5m

Now have your users set their mail clients to sent via SMTP on port 6000 instead of port 25.

Genetically Modified Fish!

Zebrafish that glow in different red and green patterns thanks to genes from jellyfish and marine coral…

John Companies

Interesting name for an internet hosting company! I’m a happy guy. I’m going to be leaving Rackspace where I have leased a server for the past 2 years, and switching to a hosted virtual server at John Companies. Early indications are positive for this, and I’m cutting the cost way down. This service is worth checking out.

On top of that, since I host a non-profit website, Menstuff, they are giving me the “open source” rate. $45 per month for my virtual linux box, hosting 37 domains (at the moment). Great value.

Bye the way, Rackspace has been great from a service point of view, and they were a good value in the past, but other hosting services like Server Beach and Rack Shack now cost about half as much. John’s looks even better as long as the systems don’t become over-sold.