Ben Shephard

It’s been a good few weeks since I last managed to write a post because things have been getting a bit on top of me just recently. There has been lots of good and bad things happening that have managed to keep me off here.

I suppose the biggest thing to happen over the last few weeks has been my decision to go a bit further with the idea of setting up my own business. I bought a domain name a few months ago but never did anything with it but now I’ve got my site set up and something half decent on it. It’s a brief description of the kind of services I can provide along with a contact page. You can find it at http://sts-it.co.uk I’ve also had a batch of 500 business cards printed up to hand out and I’ve been doing as much work as I can for family and friends to try and spread the word.

Setting up the website and back end software to organise myself and any work I get has posed me with a few new technical challenges. I wanted my emails to go into a ticketing system so that I can manage my time better and keep a track of indavidual jobs easily. I already use software like this in my day job and although it’s neither open source or the most reliable of applications it’s free for single users and the biggest advantage is that I already know where everything is and I’m used to it’s quirks so I decided I’d go with the same for STS. I’m using Service Desk Plus by Manage Engine. It’s pretty easy to set up on a Linux box and it sets up everything it needs including a web server and My-SQL database. The downside of this is that if you are already running on a machine with a My-SQL server on it they tend to conflict as they both run on the same port number. I decided I’d like to keep ServiceDesk reasonably seperate from my main box but I didn’t want to have to run two machines because electricity costs money. I set up an Ubuntu machine in Virtual Box and installed ServiceDesk on that only to realise it wouldn’t talk to my mail server. I had to think this one over for a few days but eventually came up with a solution by setting up Postfix, Dovecot and Fetchmail on the VM and used that to get mail in and out of ServiceDesk. It’s become a pretty complicated set up but it’s working nicely for me now.

I’ve also revisited some old problems with my CCTV and managed to get that back up and running. My Live Video page has now made a return and people can once again watch for me putting the bin out and all that exciting stuff. I thought the problems I encountered were due to changes in the way Ubuntu 9.10 handeled video but it turned out that I just needed to specify a few extra options in VLC to get the image working properly. I’d tried all sorts of things to get it going again even reinstalling the older version of VLC from source which proved to be a learning curve. I’m just happy I didn’t manage to do any damage since I was doing all this on a live machine that already does tonnes of other stuff which I didn’t want to break. The problem with running everything on one machine is that all the eggs are in one basket and if that dies I’m pretty screwed. I make regular backups to a remote location but if my machine died and I had to build another from scratch it would be expensive and time consuming but then if I had the money for more hardware now I’d already have it running so I’ve got no choice. I did see a nice upgrade kit the other day that consisted of case and motherboard with an Intel i7 processor and 6GB of memory. My processor loads are pretty low on my current machine (Intel Core2 Duo 1.8GHz) but It’s the memory that’s a killer because the motherboard will only take 2GB which I’m already up to. Ideally I’d like atleast another 2GB so I can play with more VM’s without running out but sadly that’s a no go without a new moterboard and even case upgrade (since the current one is BTX form factor).

Hopefully I can make enough money out of STS over the next year to be able to get that upgrade

Aside form my personal projects things with Janine and the kids seem to be going pretty well. I’ve taken Janine out on a couple of driving lessons and she’s starting to get the hang of it. It’s a strange thing for me teaching someone else to drive because there is a lot to think about but we’re going out on quiet roads with plenty of room so we can both get used to things together. It certainly feels strange to be sat in the passenger seat of my own car but it’s an enjoyable experience. Things seem to be going really well in that respect and I think we’ve managed to calm down a bit after the initial excitement of getting together and being together is becoming normal but we do miss one another when we can’t be around.

On a less than happy note nothing seems to be changing for the better at work and I awoke this morning and by chance hapened to spot a small brown patch on my blue bedroom carpet under the radiator. Closer inspection revealed the radiator was leaking slowly so I put a loaf tin under it catch the drips but I’ve got a bit of a plumbing job lined up for the weekend now. Life can’t all be a bed of roses I suppose but hey ho tomorrow is another day. and speaking of which it’s time I wasn’t here.

Later

Ben

= 6.2