howto
What is SQL?
Mar 28th
Had an interesting question at work today… “Steve, on any of your sites, do you have anything that explains what SQL is? I mean, I know its a database or something, but what exactly does that mean?” Now, the guy that asked this question is still young and still pretty new to the IT industry.…
Howto: Are you sure? prompt in Outlook
Mar 6th
I had a really bad day at work on Thursday. A client asked me to research something for them regarding Outlook. Ideally they want a server side (Exchange) solution where possible, but given thats not possible, a client side script is necessary. VBScript in Outlook. :-/ Two products I really do not like. But, what…
RHEL5 "yum upgrade" problems
May 31st
In the middle of doing a big upgrade of my babies… Err blade servers… Doing an upgrade from RHEL5.1 to RHEL5.2 across the internet in an SSH session and hit a hell of a problem. File “/usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/sqlite/main.py”, line 97, in __getattr__ raise AttributeError, key AttributeError: CHECKSUM_VALUE I don’t know what caused this to happen, I…
Virtualisation – A sideways glance
May 17th
One of the biggest trends moving through the IT industry at the moment is the concept of virtualisation. Running multiple operating systems on a single piece of hardware is seen as a way of reducing costs while at the same time getting better utilisation of your existing hardware. A single server becomes host to multiple…
The new Gmail interface
Nov 7th
Update: Okay, so I was totally wrong and this only works if you’ve already had your account upgraded to the new interface. Sorry. My bad. So I have to come clean. I’ve been enjoying the new features of Gmail for at least the last week now. The new interface is fantastic and the IMAP functionality…
Resolving Network Manager PPTP VPN issues in Ubuntu
Oct 29th
This will be a bit of an ongoing thread. I had a pretty frustrating problem with the NetworkManager in Gnome (and KDE apparently) that was causing me to rip my hair out. The solution I eventually found was buried so deep in forums that it took me quite a while to get to it. I…
Steve’s IPv4 Subnetting 101
Sep 9th
Before I continue on with my little Security ramblings, I thought it would be a good idea to cover IPv4 subnetting. There are a couple of reasons for this, but primarily it will help you when I start getting into some of the topics I want to cover later on. Understanding this is essential for…
(Un)Obfuscating the regexp-fu
Aug 21st
Some things in life are just not intended for the new user or the beginner. RegExp, ore Regular Expressions, is one of those things. The powerful syntax allows for some amazing manipulations of strings. Because of the powerful capabilities of RegExp, a very elitest club is forming amongst those that can use and understand RegExp…
Knot Impossible
Jul 3rd
Seriously, don’t try this on your shoe laces. The Impossible Knot – video powered by Metacafe Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to bed ;-)
Download POP3 into Gmail
Feb 12th
Finally! After months of waiting the feature has gone live for everyone. You can now access up to 5 POP accounts from within Gmail itself. This means your ISP account could be added to your Gmail account easily. This is something I’ve been wanting for a long time now. To finally have it is a…