Mickblog

For those who occasionally check up on my blog (both of you) you might have noticed that it was gone for a while.

The server holding my blog self-destructed. Which was kind of annoying, since the same server also received my mail, mail for about 5 other people, contained 2 CVS repositories, a dozen web sites, and gigs of precious pr0n and warez.

How did this all happen? I’m not sure but I think it can be blamed on XFS. Silly me, not heeding the warnings.

It’s mostly all still there but there were some casualties. Files got scattered all over the place in lost+found, and some disappeared altogether. The CVS repositories were both damaged, and lots of system files were too. Essentially it meant rebuilding the server from scratch.

This all happened while my dad was over for a few days whlie he helped me look for a car. So I had to coordinate that with making sure nobody lost their mail. And it all started while I was on 1 hour of sleep. Great fun.

I’ve recovered everything cept for a bit of CVS history and a couple of other bits and pieces. There’s still some stuff to go though. If you see something missing or broken let me know.

With a textbook I got today I got a FREE TRIAL SUBSCRIPTION TO infotrac-college.com!!1!

Whoopee.

Anyway, the free trial came in the form of a 10 character alphanumeric code. Typical random impossible-to-guess and impossible-to-mistype (supposedly) thing.

The reason I’m mentioning this otherwise totally menial information is that under the code were the words “This access code contains no vowels”. I wondered about that for a moment, then I realised why they did it. Four letter words!

And guess what - utbox.net (my job) gives a referral code to each new customer. And it doesn’t take out vowels. Well, not all of them.

I did a quick calculation… There is approximately a 1 in 400000 chance of getting a rude word in your referral code when you sign up. And to make it more fun, the characters in the referral code are separated into groups of 4.

So sign up for a trial today, and you could be one of the lucky few!

Mick.

This idea is awesome.

http://develop.consumerium.org/wiki/Main_Page

It’s a wiki where consumers can share information about products.

It’s still in development, but the creators appears to be paying a lot of attention to the polotics of wiki, to attempt to minimise any abuse of power etc.

It’s about fucking time I wrote in my own blog.

I felt a need to share this. It’s an article on sleep deprivation and its effects on the US. I’m guessing the pattern is pretty much the same in the rest of the western world.

Some tidbits from it:

• People sleep around 2 hours less per night on average than they did a century ago
• Sleep deprivation is a major cause of vehicle and workplace accidents

And my favorite:

• Daylight saving time causes accidents!

But hey, it reduces energy consumption by 1%!