UberServer LIVES!!

Filed Under News

Yesterday, at about 4 Budweisers past 6 O’clock, Ubuntu 7 finally booted on the UberServer 😀 🙂

A very nice Linux consultant called Keith came round and spent a good 5 hours trying (ultimately unsuccessfully) to get UberServer to play ball but he did leave me with the right direction to go in to get it up and running finally.

I didn’t know how long these things take to fix/get up and running and I have worked in Tech Support long enough to meet the types that come out on-site and tell you that your IRQs are scrambled and out of order and upsetting the DMA frontside bus which is generating line noise on the PCI Express. I even met someone once (back in the days of 486’s) that told me the difference between a 486SX and a 486DX was that the DX could have an internal modem!

All credit to Keith, he came round with the understanding that if it wasn’t working when he left, there would be no charge. He worked tirelessly for 5 solid hours and made great progress. He left in such a state that I, linux n00b of n00bs, could continue and finish the install. He was meant to only be here for a maximum of 2 hours and spent well over 5. And when he left, he said it wasn’t working so there would be no charge!

However, I will be asking for an invoice, because as I said, I’ve worked in the industry long enough to recognise good work. And good work should be rewarded. Cheers Keith!

At this point in time (several hours before beer O’Clock) Merlijn is installing all sorts of softwarey goodness so we can get it all up and running.

Shell accounts are available to all #GC members! Or will be when it is set up!

Onwards! 😀

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DVD Creation Canceled

Filed Under Rants

No that is not a typo – that is the error message I keep getting from ProShow Gold v3.00.1974.

Why am I mentioning this? Well it is because apparently it is quite a common error message and the best advice I could get from the interweb was to disable an option within the program. I even looked on the ProShow Enthusiasts forum.

There are a few things about this that bother me.

  1. $80 for the full version. You can’t even spell your error messages correctly!
  2. It doesn’t work properly so rather than investigate what the problem was, you (and your enthusiasts) suggest just disabling a function.
  3. Emails to your tech support go unanswered 🙁

Now I’m not a software programmer – but the fact that disabling the function stops the problem, indicates to me a very good place to start looking. So I did. And the problem was with DirectShow (quartz.dll). Using Sherlock,  Codec Sniper and DirectShow Filter Manager meant that I could correct the problem in a few minutes.

Now what are the chances that this is the same problem other people are having (since 2006)? Pretty good I guess because the problem relates to video thumbnails which use … video codecs like DirectShow … *sigh*

Yet you still expect people to spend their hard earned dollars/pounds/euros/smarties on your product when the problem has existed for over a year and emails to your techsupport are left unanswered? Let me explain to you what happens then- FrustratedUser(tm) gets hold of a debugger to try and track the damn error down himself. On the way to finding the problem he notices the registration routine and saves himself $80.

Of course, that didn’t happen here – honestly 🙂 It’s just a what-if type scenario. You know, like what would happen if you found the blacklist of names and serials in PLAINTEXT in a DLL (with a cunningly renamed extension … oh noes … wh4t j00 going to do now h4x0r?)

Sheesh.

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UberServer Update

Filed Under News, Rants

UberServer is nearly ready to go online. A little behind schedule but still … hey ho.

The main reason for the delay is the morons at NST who failed, quite spectacularly, in every department except the ChargingOfTheCreditCard. Promised delivery for the 19th, come the 26th it still wasn’t here. Getting a call back from Jamie Williams was like getting blood out of a stone.

It’s on its way… The Driver has it on his truck… The Driver is nearly there…
The Driver says there is too much traffic to make the delivery!!!

WTF? The Driver wants to get himself another job if the very presence of traffic deters him from doing his job. Alternatively Jamie, you should learn not to lie to your customers. Else we cancel our orders and then we get the bank to chargeback the credit card payment you took and that costs you extra money. All because you decide that returning customer’s money is not a priority before you fuck off on holiday!

Cunswup.

Righty – how is UberServer looking? Hardware wise … pretty damn spanky even if I say so myself!

Here are some piccies of the birth of UberServer

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Skill can’t beat luck

Filed Under Misc

A Tale of Texas Hold ’em Tragedy.

They say a picture is worth 1000 words

Skill vs Luck

I have to say ‘fair play’ to Inferno for soundly beating me up on that hand – at no point did I suspect even a flush, let alone a straight flush (unsurprisingly at odds of 72192:1).

But I am a big enough man to say ‘Well Done!’ …

You lucky son of a bitch 😛

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