Archive for 'daily life'
Register 365 – fail
Posted on February 3, 2010, under daily life, irishblogs.
Today I got a email from Register365, saying that for security reason they are disabling the online web folder manager. The sneakily make it sound like they are just disabling it until it’s fixed. But in reading this it also sounds strange that they don’t disable it straight away if it is such a threat. Here is the email I just got :
Dear paul savage,
Thank you for choosing Register365 as your hosting provider of choice.
IMPORTANT SERVICE NOTICE
At Register365 we take the security of our customers’ hosting services
very seriously and as such we would like to inform you that our
engineers have discovered a potential security flaw in the WebShell file
manager. In order to preempt any risk of a security breach that may
affect our customers’ websites the WebShell feature will be turned off
as of Midday on Tuesday 9th February 2010 .Please note this is a precautionary measure and FTP will continue to
work as normal and your websites should not be affected in any way by
this action.If you need any support on how to use FTP clients to upload files to
your site please refer to our knowledge base articles located athttp://www.register365.com/knowledge/view_folder.php5?section_id=312
At Register365 we strive to provide the best quality of service and
infrastructure to all our customers and as you may already know, we have
been working hard to deploy a new shared hosting cluster based on state
of the art technology and delivering the most stable and secure hosting
environment on the Irish market. If you would like to find out more
about the new hosting cluster available with Register365 and how you
could migrate to the new platform for FREE, please contact
support@register365.com.If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact our
support teams through the usual channels.Kind regards
Namesco Ireland Limited (trading as Register365)
To that I submitted a support case as the service email came from “noreply@register365.com” .
You are disabling it indefinitely ? or just until you can patch the service ?
This is unclear in the email I got from you.
and to that I got the updated report that they are not fixing it, with some extra padding about saying it’s too difficult.
Good afternoon Paul,
Thank you for your email.
It’s being disabled indefinitely I’m afraid as it would be too prohibitive to have a patch developed, tested and deployed at this late stage in our H-Sphere platform’s life cycle.
We haven’t taken this decision lightly but the issue that has been identified could potentially be quite serious so urgent pre-emptive action was needed. Disabling the webshell feature for the foreseeable future seemed the most expeditious and safest solution.
We apologise again for any inconvenience caused.
Kind Regards,Nathan P.
Support Team
Namesco Ireland Limited
An unconvinced customer
Somehow I am not convinced here, if it’s a security issue why not disable straight away, and why no provide an alternative ? It really doesn’t sound like any level of customer support or attention to security. If it’s a security hole, disable straight away. You are now suddenly not providing a method for people to edit their files outside FTP’ing them, this for many people is not an option because of company firewalls. All in all it seems like Namesco Ireland Limited / Register365 couldn’t give a toss about their customers.
Cork Flooding
Posted on November 20, 2009, under daily life.
Here are some pictures of the recent Cork Flooding, taken on November 20th 2009. These pictures are taken from Jurys Hotel on the Western Road in Cork. You can see that river Lee has burst from both sides and joined in the middle.
The first view is a view down Western Road towards Washington St. You see that there are cars that have water almost up to the widows !
Here is the view of the bridge at Jurys Hotel, and looking out towards the County Hall. UCC was also closed for the day due to flooding in some of their buildings. Here are some pictures on flickr of the UCC Flooding.
The view across to Dyke Parade, which is also flooded.
It will be interesting to see what dirty will be left from the flooding, which will also be smelly mess in a few days.
P.S. I’m not too sure who took these photos as they were forwarded on to me, if they are yours please let me know in the comments.
Map of Cork
Here is a map of where the pictures were taken from (for your reference)
View Larger Map
Using a Moka Express
Posted on November 8, 2009, under daily life, food.
Here is a quick guide as how you can make a great cup of coffee with an Italian Moka. Originally these wonders were first made in 1933 by Alfonso Bialetti, under the name “Moka Express“. Our one below isn’t from the famous manufacturer, but the design is similar. Sometimes Moka’s are incorrectly spelt as Mocha, but that more refers to a mixture of coffee with chocolate. Here is our Moka Express.
For good coffee, you need good beans. We are using Lavazza beans, namely their espresso blend. This is a mixture of 30% of Robusta beans and 70% Arabica beans. Lavazza is apparently Italy’s favourite coffee blend.
The best grinders are canonical grinders, as they don’t heat up the ground coffee unnecessarily. Sadly our grinder isn’t, but it gets the job done.
The Moka Express has 3 parts, consisting of a boiler, which is a holder for the water, a metal filter for holding the ground coffee and an upper part used for holding the coffee once it is brewed.
When you are grinding your beans, make sure it is almost ground to a powdery consistency. This will allow you to pack more coffee into the metal filter. This coffee below needs to be more finely ground.
Coffee that is ready for the Moka.
Here is the metal filter filled up with coffee. It is important to fill it up to the top, and to also compress the coffee down. Compressing the coffee into the filter will ensure that the steam from the boiler will pass through the coffee at a high pressure.
Place your Moka on the stove on a full heat. This will cause the water in your boiler to boil as quick as possible.
Generally you should keep the lid down to avoid the coffee flying into your face and boiling you. But here is what it looks like.
The coffee will continue to bubble up and fill the upper part.
And all that is left to do is to enjoy your espresso, or add a bit of water for a weaker, but still tasty cup of coffee.
Alternatives to a Moka Express
And for those of you who are too lazy to use a Moka, and want to use something a little easier to use, but still want a good cup of coffee, I would suggest a nespresso machine. Nespresso coffee comes in little small pods (see below) which contain ground coffee sealed for freshness. Pop these little capsules in the machine, and out comes a rather nice, aromatic coffee.
The variety of blends also you to give your guests a nice cup of coffee depending on their tastes and preferences. Nespresso also offer decaffeinated capsules, these are the red ones normally. Nespresso rates their capsules on a scale from 1-10 for strength, these are listed on the side of the boxes, with 10 being the strongest.
So what’s your favourite way of making coffee ?
Those crazy scouts
Posted on August 27, 2009, under daily life.
I get my fair share of interesting emails from different websites I own. But this is up there with one of the strangest, it is sent to a domain that has some information about alcohol from a group of Irish scouts. I do wonder what age these people would be if they were scouts and they were drinking. If anyone wants to help them get drunk, let me know 
We are a group of Scouts in a small village and are having a BEACH PARTY NIGHT in Ocotber to raise money for our group.
We are hoping to give out two free cocktails on arrival and will be charging 10 euro a ticket for the night. We are hoping to decorate the function room in
our local pub with palm trees, childrens play sand in areas, wall decorations etc.We were wondering would you be interested in taking up a point of sale on our night with your products or any other suggestions you may have.
We look forward to hearing from you.
Kind regards
XXXX Jones,
SecretaryXXXX Scout Group
Oktoberfest 2009
Posted on July 22, 2009, under Living in Germany, daily life.
Only 59 days until the opening of this years Oktoberfest (www.oktoberfest.de) and the tent preparations are already under way. Compared to this time last year, the building works seem to be a little behind.
This is a still taken today from this webcam.
These “tents” are engineering pieces of art. Some of the larger ones can seat 8,000 people in them. Sometimes the definition of “tent” seems lost on tourists. These structures have kitchens, solid walls, multiple levels and balconies. There are 14 tents, which can seat 110,000 people. Many of the tents have beer gardens around them so if the weather is nice it is probably a good move to stay outside. The only disadvantage is that you may not hear all the live music from the Oompah bands.
Smoking at the Oktoberfest
This year again smoking is allowed in the Oktoberfest tents, they cite problems with dealing with crowds as to why they can’t impose the smoking ban. Some tents have said that they will try to enforce that in the earlier part of the day that smoking will be prohibited. But in a tent with 10,000 people this may be quite the challenge.
Drinking at the Oktoberfest
This year a litre of beer will set you back €8.30 to €8.60, last year it was €7.80 to €8.30.
SEOktoberfest
There are plenty of parties going on at the Oktoberfest, one I would like to go to is SEOktoberfest , but entry to the event runs at €5,000, which is a little out of my range for a startup SEO. If you do have the money and you want some great drinking buddies then I would give Marcus Tandler a shout ASAP. If you can’t afford €5k, then one tip is to get to the Weis’n early. This means getting there before 9am at the weekends and before 5pm during the week.
Eins, Zwei, Drei – Gsuffa!”
Have a Mantra
Posted on May 28, 2009, under daily life.
A little bit longer than a normal mantra, but here is a 15 minute long mantra from Gary Vaynerchuk. He explains the ultimate way to be happy and successful by doing what you love.
I’m still going through the whole moving to being 100% self employed, but as a motivational video, I just love this. Gary Vaynerchuk explains that you don’t need money to do what you love, you simply position yourself to succeed. He explains that you do you can do things after hours, come home from your 9-5 job, grab a bite to eat and then start doing what you love from 7pm until 2am. That’s enough time to have an impact and change the world.
He ends by saying, ” just work” that’s how you get it.
I treat this as my little mantra, and I’ve probably watched* it at least 30 times so far. Do you have a mantra ?
African Safari
Posted on April 11, 2009, under daily life.
view across the valley
Earlier this year I went on a safari in South Africa and I must admit it was one of the most amazing holidays I ever did. We only did 2 nights, which resulted in 4 game drives in total, and that was actually about enough for us. Typically game drives last between 3 – 4 hours , with the morning game drive kicking off at around 7:30am and the evening drive around 5pm. These are the times that the animals are most active, and sights are easier during these times. Once the midday African sun starts to shine they tend to take shelter and take an afternoon nap. By the end of the 2 days we were ready for a break from all the early starts and the bouncing around in a jeep.
Overall it was a great experience to see Elephants, Cheetah, Rhions, Water Buffalo, Zebras, various species of Bok (Blesbok, Oryx, Kudu, etc.), Wilderbeast, Giraffes, and various birds. Safaris aren’t cheap, running between €500 – €1,000 (for 2 people sharing) a night, but for a special break it definitely an experience of a lifetime. When you consider private accommodation, 4/5 meals a day, 7/8 hours driving around with a ranger, and the luxury treatment you can see how you can reach this price.
Video 1 : A view of our accommodation
Here is a quick video looking at our lodge, it was rather spacious, had 2 showers (one indoor, one outdoor) and even had a jacuzzi ! The accommodation was certainly luxurious. Narrated by Lauren.
Video 1 : Elephant encounter
While out in the park we came across two elephants grazing, in this video one comes up to the truck to itch his trunk while checking us out.
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- view across the valley
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- Mom & baby white Rhino
And here is another picture of my favorite animals, the Rhino. Here is an adult female with her 4 month old daughter. They were just lying across the road when we came across them.
Mom & baby white Rhino
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