I have purchased several new toys over the last couple of months, and I kept meaning to write a little about them. The one I got about two months ago was my Belkin F8T003 bluetooth USB adaptor. Got it working with Gentoo without too many problems, I just needed to add bluetooth support to my kernel and used the HCI USB driver without any problems.
Coupled with bluez-libs, bluez-utils, openobex and kdebluetooth I was able to communicate with my mobile phone (Sony Ericsson P800) and my girlfriends new mobile and use the OBEX protocol to transfer files around. Still not got round to trying to use the GPRS feature of my phone with my laptop yet.
The next toy I got was the new Motorola V3 Black, T-Mobile offered me a great upgrade deal so I didn't even have to change tarriff or phone number. It worked well with my bluetooth adaptor and had a much better camera than my old phone. It is also quad band which should be better with all the travelling I am doing soon, and does everything through a mini-USB connector (even charges).
Then I bought my girlfriend an iRiver iFP 899 1 GB flash player. Main reasons for selecting it were because it was flash based (no moving parts - better for use at the gym etc), good memory size and it plays ogg vorbis files. My music is encoded about 50/50 mp3 (old stuff) and ogg vorbis (new stuff) so this was important.
I contemplated using the open source drivers developed at
here, but then decided that I would much prefer the freedom of the UMS firmware - so I upgraded it immediately. It mounted without problems using gentoo-sources-2.6.11-r9 and the USB mass storage stuff I had for my flash memory cards. Transferred some music to it, and it worked just great.
Only had it for about a day but it seems great so far, I am thinking of getting one for myself. I may end up getting the iRiver iFP 999 though - we'll see. That is about it for all my new gadgets - thankfully they all get along with Gentoo Linux just fine on my AMD64 box.
After more than two months of chasing this refund, dozens of phone calls and a few dozen emails (I am not exaggerating here I am afraid) I have finally received the rest of my refund from them. What can I say, it amazes me that these guys are in business and this has been one of the most costly mistakes in terms of time I have made. In the end it became a matter of principal ensuring my money was refunded after several threats of getting my credit card company involved.
If anyone if thinking of using these guys I would advise you to think very carefully. I would also appreciate any recommendations of trustworthy, honest and approachable UK based colo/dedicated servers. I just need a decent dedicated server in London or preferably Manchester (closer to me) with affordable rates. I am hoping to put this whole thing behind me now, but I really cannot believe how terrible 1&1 have been from start to finish.
Hard as it might be to believe it just goes on with these guys. I got an email from some person informing me I wouldn't be getting a refund as they didn't offer one on the root servers! I phoned up a little angry about this, and point the guy to their web site. After being on hold for about ten minutes the person informs me that they do offer refunds and said he would refund my money right then.
He then went back on this and said the system wouldn't let him refund until 4 April. I protested, but as it wasn't too far away I unwillingly agreed to wait until then. On the 8 April after another phone call they sent me an invoice saying they were refunding £18.92 of the £197.41 I paid them! I found this quite unbelievable and mentioned again that I would be contacting my credit card company about this and expected a full refund as offered clearly on their web site.
On 13 April they sent me another invoice saying they would refund me £116.33 to me. I have since sent yet another email saying that they have still missed £62.16, and I expected all of it back. I have had all I can take as it is nearly a month later. I have sent them a courtesy email but I will be talking to my credit card company about recovering the money. I still haven't seen a penny back from them.
What got it for me was the guy on the phone right at the start, who felt the need to say "We are a legitimate company". What more can I say, I seriously have my doubts that you are and would certainly never touch 1&1. I wish I had never gone near them, but I thought they must be OK having been voted 2nd best hosting provider in the Linux Format Awards. I do not think any company should be allowed to treat its customers so badly.
I still need to sort out a dedicated server once all this is over with too...
Well what can I say... I am amazed that this company managed to scoop second in the Linux Format Awards for hosting providers! Their service is absolutely terrible, they have a poorly set out automated cancellation system and take out the money they are supposed to be refunding on the day they confirm the cancellation! Then won't even tell me when they intend to refund the money for the account, for which they did absolutely nothing.
I am glad I cancelled this account, as with service like this I do not think that this would have been a productive business relationship. If anyone has any recommendations for reasonable hosting providers please let me know. I just want root and will either build a 2U box, or rent one. All I really require from the company is a reasonable price, good transit links and the ability to tell me the truth/do what they say they will. Is this really too much to ask?
It obviously is for 1&1.
Well after much messing about, and some pretty poor after sales service I have cancelled my root server order with 1&1. The rumours were true - different members of staff quote much different time scales from days to weeks, and frankly the person I spoke to on the phone was quite rude. I had already waited nearly two weeks and was led to believe they were able to deploy servers within a week when I first ordered.
So back to looking at dedicated server options with root, preferably using Gentoo Linux with reasonable bandwidth allowances in the UK... I am playing with the idea of building a 2U solution myself and colocating! I have made plenty of server systems already, just no rackmount systems yet. 1U seems pretty difficult, but 2U looks fairly simple. Whilst I am building it I will also get time to think about where I colocate too.
Ordered a dedicated root server II from 1&1 last night, and was pretty excited to be getting a new server. Their site was pretty vague about how long it takes them to set up the server so I gave it a while. I phoned them up today and waited for over 15 minutes to talk to someone who was quite rude when he anwered! Apparently it takes five working days, although I fail to understand why they cannot be upfront and put this on their web site. He didn't even pause to think about it!
When I asked him if I received an email to notify me that the server had been set up he promptly replied no, and said I had to just keep checking my control panel randomly! I found this quite hard to swallow. They do have a 60 day money back guarantee, and from the poor start they got off to I may need it. I will remain patient and keep an open mind, but if they charge for the waiting time I will not be happy.
If I ever get the server it should be a positive step forward though. I intend to install Gentoo onto it once I get access of course. It is a P4 2.4 GHz I think, with 1 GB of RAM and an 80 GB hard drive. They also bundle 100 GB of transfer with that, but I fear at the price of poor customer service. Time will tell, but first impressions are not very good at all.
I have gotten so many new toys in the last few weeks. My credit cards are feeling it, but I think it is worth it. In my quest for the ultimate office I managed to get two LG L1710B 17" TFT screens for my office! They are great too, I got the nVidia TwinView stuff working in Linux really nicely - although it wasn't as easy as I had thought.
One is coming from DVI, and the other from VGA. I am using Xinerama, and thanks to the excellent AMD64 nVidia driver both displays are still hardware accelerated and perform very well. I also got Dual View working in Windows, but rarely use that any longer.
Then I also got an NEC 2510A Dual Layer DVD writer. It is very good, and fully supported under Linux too. Wrote a few backups of all my photos, all my data files and when I get chance I am going to make one with all my ripped MP3/OGG tracks as it took ages to scan them all in!
Then Louise surprised me too, and had saved up to get me an SLR camera! I didn't expect that at all, but I have been after one for ages but never thought I could spare the money for one. She got me a Nikon F80 with the 28-100 mm and 70-300 mm G lenses. From the first roll of film it all looks great - and we are going down to London this weekend too. That should give me a chance to really get some good shots out of it hopefully.
Still managing to prove that I am not very good at writing regularly... It was quite successful over at ILL, although very intense. We got an extra half day on D17, but that meant that I had to go in to ILL at 6PM after arriving in Grenoble at 5PM!!! I think we worked until about 12:30AM that evening and then went back in the following day for about 9:30AM.
The runs had to be quite long, between 5 and 6 hours. This meant that we couldn't run anywhere near all the samples I had prepared - so I had to pick the best ones to go on and leave the rest. We only had two days on D17 but I learnt so much in that time. Andrew explained how to operate the instrument, and showed me LAMP and how things can be automated by scripting them in LAMP.
Altogether we only got reflectivity profiles of 7 samples - one gold nanoparticle sample right at the end along with mainly C16O3 with and without Li ions, and one C16O4 sample. Now the task of analysing all the data begins - Andrew was very helpful though and explained how to use Cosmos to extract profiles from the raw data.
Also managed to get a TFT screen finally! It is a very nice 17" LG TFT screen that arrived on Friday. I will be getting one for home very soon too - it is so much nicer to work on than even my Iiyama 19" CRT screen (and so much smaller).
It would have been Aaron's 21st birthday on Monday, so I have been feeling pretty down about that... It never seems to get any easier. Mum seems to be taking it pretty hard too - I hope she is OK.
That is it for now anyway...
I think I have managed to prove that I am not very good at writing a blog very frequently! I just get so busy, and stuff like this slips right to the bottom of the pile... Lots and lots has happened, most fairly good. Had the Hicks Ball, and that was pretty good - I think most people who attended had a nice time anyway.
Just about all my friends are now finishing, and getting ready for their exams now. Alex has managed to get a PhD in my group which is nice. Had our last Thursday out last week, and I am having a BBQ on Saturday (if the weather holds) for everyone before their exams start.
I have also built a new computer, and it is very nice. Built Matt one to a very similar spec too. AMD Athlon 64 3200+ with 1MB L2 cache. 1 GB Geil CAS2 memory, and a 128 MB nVidia FX5900XT graphics card, 74 GB Western Digital Raptor 10,000 rpm hard drive, a CD-RW/DVD combo drive and a very nice Antec case/PSU. Got some nice big 5.1 speakers for it yesterday too - running a little short on cash so I hope to buy a TFT when I next get paid may be.
Anyway, really busy with work and need to get home early to try and finish my fence
I will try to write more often, but it's so hard to discipline myself to do it...