The client for HA has really got me in to programming for the platform, I’m no epic programmer but I can see myself writing a few public apps if and when I come up with some ideas! Although Matt has recently got an Android phone it really has woken me up to the fact WP7 is still limited on the App front from the major players etc, for example Sky News, that is probably the one app I miss the most on the iPhone. It really did keep me up to date on the world outside of student life! I’m not going to bail just yet though on WP7 I’m sure they’ll be working on it, if not they hopefully will start soon!

So what’s changed in the Home Automation Project…

The task list now includes saved tasks, they are a list of tasks or other non-script tasks, for example uTorrent, you can access the uTorrent API via HA.

Never bothered implementing the Wake On Lan support for the client. As I now have a new Asrock HTPC on the way I thought I best get it done soon! Also properly implemented the settings and application menu bar!

Now to put my new found skills too making an app to put on the market place!

The box is not the only thing having its budget cut. Being close to the end of University I thought it would be wise to consider my future finances as I didn’t know what, if any, budget I’d have come summer. My phone contract is another expense that is taking a cut. Although I’ve got a new phone I purchased this out right as opposed to getting another phone contract and in the long term I’ll be saving money once I’ve moved to a sim-only contract..

Here are the sums…

Current Phone Contract
£35/month * 24 months = £840

New Phone Contract
£15/month * 24 months + Phone £270 = £630

In the next two years I’ll have saved £210 and I’ll be able to sell my new phone when I get bored of it.

Back to the hosting, I’ve opted for the Rackspace cloud not really for any reason but I suppose I already got to play with Amazon’s platform during placement so Rackspace is something new to add to my skill set I suppose. Pretty good service so far, I got the call to confirm and activate my account at 2am after opening my it at 1.50am.

Although the service is flexible I figure it’ll cost around £15 a month taking a guess at my current bandwidth consumption. So lets see how much I’ll be saving on hosting for the year…

Current Hosting Plan
£50 * 12 months = £600

New Hosting Plan
£15 * 12 months = £180

So in the next year in total I’ll have saved £625! WOW, no wonder I have no money at the moment!

I’m glad I had this cost cutting idea two months ago and started to put a plan in place to complete. Since then I’ve been offered a job after university. It would be very tempting now to just keep paying for what I’m using rather than finding cheaper alternatives etc…

All I need to do now is find a hosted Exchange solution as I can’t do without that! The initial plan was at my next house to get an ISP that offers multiple static IP addresses thus I could then host my exchange server at home! Since then I’ve got a job and had to consider on where I’ll be living. As it turns out I’ve decided to commute from Newark and will move into a house there, but guess what, the only decent ISP in Newark is Virgin Media and they don’t offer such a service as I desire so I’m shelving that idea for the time being.

Although on the plus side it should be a cheaper cost of living so I’ll be saving more money.. Although I need to decide on what I’ll be spending this money on! I’ve got a few ideas..

My holiday in Spain at the FIB festival..
A nice huge TV!

Spec

Motherboard + Processor: Intel D945GSEJT Low Profile Fanless Atom Mini-ITX Motherboard
RAM: 1GB DDR2 667 SODIMM Memory
Case: M350 Universal Mini-ITX + PCI Riser
Network: Intel PRO/1000 Dual Gigabit Network CardJ1679

100% fanless / no moving parts

Anyway, Happy Christmas and New Year Internet!

In terms of university I heard my option module has been cancelled, lack of a student interest apparently, I would not be surprised if I was the only one that signed up. I have now decided after not much thought as well a lot of modules did 1) Not appeal to me, 2) I am already doing and finally 3) I could not do as I did not do the required level 2 modules, chosen to do Information Systems Engineering in Industry. This however has just put a dent in my timetable and I no longer appear to get Fridays off in the first semester, shame I know but then I’ll be at university and be able to study during the gaps between lectures.. I say that but if it is anything like last year the Library staff seem to enjoy baking and working in the Library with the heating on not only in the winter but the summer to is really off putting, its not even warm, its just hot in there but anyway.

I’ve not had much final thoughts on my final year project but I think now that I have the forthcoming weeks off I’ll start to press on with that, I can imagine doing something with IPV6 but I’m getting put off by that idea if every other person is doing it to..

Placement has been fun although in the last month my role has been to step aside and be more of a supervisor to ensure my replacement is up to speed and knows what he is doing so I have not been as hands on as I like to be.
Lately I have been brushing up on my C# skills ready for September and have created a few applications, I may release one or two so stay tuned for that if your using XBMC…

Anyway I had a look at the booklet for my course and it gave a start date. 27th September, seems ages away but honestly I bet that won’t take too long to come around.

The modules are not very good this year. In the list they include options like 3D Computer Graphics. Although it sounds awesome being on a network course it is no use to me. Even if I wanted to go on that module I would have had to have done related modules the during the past too years, which I haven’t.. because I’m on a networking course.

A cisco module caught my eye, Advanced Wireless but I’ve decided not to go for that as I’d rather not do too many cisco modules. I feel like it would restrict my horizons too much plus I didn’t do the second year wireless module as I took Network and Grid Computing instead. That was a good choice I think I bagged a 1st in that module and really enjoyed the work, would recommend it to anyone. Anyway another module, the only one that seems justifiable to be honest caught my other eye, Ubiquitous Computing. The description sounds interesting…

This subject looks at the current and future of anytime, anyplace, anywhere computing. It includes areas such as pervasise computing, mobile devices, located based services, and allows the student to look at the future of computing.

I did wonder the other day as the weather was warming up that I could actually take my iPhone get a few apps, SSH, RDP, etc and sit on a nice park bench or even the beach working remotely from the office…

Seems I’ll be back to Stafford this weekend to get some books for some backgrounding reading and also maybe a house party or two what with it being a 4 day weekend for the 9-5 type.

I’m at Bluesquare today installing a server that died over xmas. It was a weird one. The server’s motherboard had died, it lost its network ports a while back but it has finally given up. It took a memory stick and two hard drives with it. The memory stick was a new one for me, I had never seen a duff memory stick before but the hard drives where a common model to fail so they are no surprise. Also xmas a dual (supposedly redundant) power supply also failed in another server. That was a quick fix and I replaced it when I was here last. Although two other servers were complaining about losing power supplies, I’ve had to replace 3 PSU modules now.
Today has been a long day, I arrived at about 10am (Note to self: Destroy the satnav) it’s about 6.30pm now. I installed the server this morning which took about 2 hours as I had picked up the wrong rack rails. They are not compatible with the server case. The holes on the rail are too small for the screw holes on the case. I thought this was all standardised but obviously not.

We’ve had quite a lot of hardware failures lately including a cisco switch. I’m taking it back to HQ to investigate it more but it is sending scrambled text over the console connection.

Update: I didn’t post this on the day so it’s a little delayed. Also back at HQ the cisco switch weirdly fixed it’s self :/ *Scratches head*

1. 123456
2. 12345
3. 123456789
4. Password
5. iloveyou
6. princess
7. rockyou
8. 1234567
9. 12345678
10. abc123
(Source: PCWorld)

Although some may have, many seem to not be aware just how easy it would be for hackers to brute force attack someone’s account and again access.

“To quantify the issue, the combination of poor passwords and automated attacks means that in just 110 attempts, a hacker will typically gain access to one new account on every second or a mere 17 minutes to break into 1000 accounts,” Imperva said in its report.

Just looking at the SSH logs from my two Linux servers they are subject to thousands of login attempts everyday. Internet bots trying to gain access.

Its not just users that are the problem I find by not picking good, strong passwords. I have several passwords for various services/accounts etc. Some passwords make sense, some don’t, some I don’t even know by memory. Sometimes I forget these and go though the password recovery steps on websites. I find there is about 50% chance that the website will send me my password in an email. I have even come across one certain website that will send me a password reminder whenever it chooses to. Although that’s great and I have my password its not great in the fact I now have an email displaying my password sitting in my in-box. What happens if my email account gets compromised? You’d just be able to search my inbox for various passwords. Although I delete these emails I suspect a large sum of people don’t. This is one trick someone used in gain access to various things relating to twitter.

I think in some respects you can hardly blame users when companies are sending out passwords in plain text which is just as bad. This shows two potential problems which would have dangerous consequences if account details ever became leaked or compromised 1) They store your password in plain text or 2) They store your password in reversible encryption.

So.. Change your passwords, don’t have the same password, delete those password recovery emails would be my advice!

So not only did I have to move the servers I also had to incorporate into the network the new unit which was already wired up with Ethernet sockets. This was a slight challenge as I had to relocate a lot of cable. Considering the previous tenants dealt with electrical wiring they had not wired up the office space very well,  not mentioning any names. I however succeed. I was going to take a picture of my neat job at cabling to the patch panel but I forgot.

Although quite pleased with my work I seem to go back every holiday and complete new requirements and think back to why on earth I did certain things, for example the old network setup. I suppose this is a sign university is paying off as I am learning how to complete tasks better.

I’ve nearly finished converting a website from a static html design in to a content management system called Kentico. I’ve never worked with Kentico, let alone aspx, but after about a week of scratching my head and wondering what the hell is going on I finally made progress. Its been a good learning curve and it takes me back to my web designing day. The site its self is nothing fancy the aim of this is to allow the site to be developed further so it is very much a conversion process than creating the site from scratch. Which brings me on to a little rant…
A web development company designed this site considering this I was quite shocked at how poorly this website had been built. Its seems like consistency has been thrown out the window. An example; Half way though a page the text font would change! How do people get a way from designing such rubbish quality work?

Any who it seems like a new project for me is to create a new Windows 7 domain set-up for a local company. I’ve got experience in 2003 domains so but a 2008 domain shouldn’t be too different or maybe even easier? I think not but that what research is for!

On that note I think I’ll end this rather short but slightly informing post. This weekend I’m off to Sheffield to see my sister are university