Peter's Blog

My new One and One server is all set up now so I thought I'd summarise what my current preferred server setup is.

• Apache2 web server.
• Phusion Passenger mod_rails apache mod for running Rails web apps. Passenger makes this so easy compared with the nginx+mongrel approach that is so last year.
• postfix mail for notifications: postfix seems less hassle than exim and is more likely to Just Work. Exim would be great if the online docs were a bit less academic.
• openssh of course
• mysql for older websites (including Peter's Blog), sqlite for newer (low traffic)
• a bash script does full/incremental tgz backups of /var/www, /etc and /home. The tars are then synced to Amazon's S3 cloud storage. I chose tgz as it is an open format so the data is accessible without special tools (even on windows) and restores are a doddle. I only backup data, not stuff that can be reinstalled. Transfers from the server to S3 are very fast: two gigabytes takes under two minutes. I use s3 rather than one and one's included FTP backup space as that is only accessible from the server itself meaning data + backups would both be dependent on one company.
• iptables firewall blocking most ports, tested with a web-based tool.
• openvpn gateway for development. Love openvpn, a bit fiddly to set up first time but once done its rock solid and much easier than messing with ssh tunnels. Only downside of openvpn I can think of: iPhone says no. Much easier to set up than that horrible IPSec crap.

I think that's it. Cron does mysqldumps which are backed up, freebie monitoring site emails me if server dies.

Setting this up only takes a couple of hours, most config is just copied from old server. This is why backing up /etc is a good thing.

Frenzic is an iPhone game that I have been playing for a few weeks now. Any iPhone game that I play more than twice is worthy of a mention.

It is a simple game kinda like Tetris but with pie slices. Make up the circles and clear them kinda thing. Sometimes you get a slice like the 12o'clock slice and all the 12o'clocks slots are already taken and you get a few seconds to lament, then you lose a life. Complete a circle in one colour you get an extra life. The game boils down to prioritising between building single-colour circles and simply clearing circles.

This morning I woke at 5am, all hay fevery and insomial and had nothing better to do than play Frenzic. Hum, lifetime best score of 1600, beating prev best by 400. I'm off out for some high speed motorbiking, this tiredness being a killer thing must be more Health and Safety nanny state crap.

I bought a book, Guitar Aerobics by Troy Nelson.

It contains 365 exercises covering a year, going from beginner to advanced. The exercises are fun as each one is musical in it's own right and could become part of my repertoir. As a beginner they start off at my level. The hardest one seems to be arpeggio's as it involves fine plucking as well as fluent chord changing and I can only concentrate on one hand at a time. Really needs autonamous chord changing or ability to find string 3 without looking.

I've worked on chord progressions a lot and they are getting a little smoother each day. A major to G is still awkward but C A F G is easier.

Two of the exercises from the book involve the pentatonic A minor scale which is being burnt that into my brain. I've had a try at improvising solos and I get some satisfying sounds but they sound more like Irish Jigs than Eddie Van Halen.

I suddenly realised that because I always look at the fret board from above my perception of it is in reality upsidown. The higher sounding strings are nearer the floor yet to me they are at the top.

My 1and1 dedicated server has had an annoying tendancy to freeze about once every two weeks. This has continually annoyed me and resolving it has been on my todo list. The freeze is sudden and total: no clues in the logs. I suspect dodgy hardware. I haven't contacted 1and1 about this as their customer service is notoriously poor and I suspect it would take me months to convince them I even had a problem.

I'd go for another provider in an instant except for one big problem: 1and1 are very cheap. The hangs are annoying but do I really want to spend £20 a month for more reliable hardware? I have monitoring in place and can reboot the server from my iPhone.

1and1 recently changed all their prices and I was able to upgrade to better hardware for the same money. For £30 a month I get the following improvements:

• dual core 64 bit AMD
• 2*160 g disks in raid 1
• unlimited traffic

This is running on the same chipset as the previous server (Nvidia C51) so fingers crossed that the hangs were not related to that (can't be as poor as Via?). I'd prefer an intel CPU if only because i've never seen problems with intel chipsets.

This is the crunch: the server you get from 1and1 compares very favourably to VPS's from other vendors. It's cheap because it is four or five year old technology: they are making money from their old racks (new hard disks I would hope).

I've invested in the £50 setup fee rather than be locked into a 24 month contract

Now to find the time to migrate everything over

Yesterday was hot and humid, a nice day for a splash in the paddling pool. This was another reason for buying a pump. Pool was very tempting but way too small for me

Kept Elizabeth awake all afternoon and she slept early. Success all round.

If you are in the Market for a paddling pool, avoid yellow as it seems to attract lots of little black insects.

Guitar Toolkit is an iPhone app that I am finding really handy. It provides a number of guitar tools:

• fretboard reference with scales marked (below is pentatonic C major). The notes on the fretboard can be played although as an instrument it doesn't compare to a guitar.
• chord reference. Can strum the strings to hear the chord. Changing chord is too laborious for this to be useful for developing chord progressions. No tools to help with that.
• metronome for people with no innate rhythm
• tuner. This is cool, listens to the note you play and tells you what it is and how far out of key it is. I find this easier to use than the tuner in the line6 pocket pod although I use the pod's tuner if it is plugged in

As with all things iPhone, the best thing about the Guitar Toolkit is that it's always in my pocket. Wish iPhone had access to guitar tutor ebooks though.

I've been reading about the pentatonic scale and how it is used a lot in guitar soloing. I didn't give it much heed since soloing is a long way off for me.

I was doing my guitar practise yesterday and figured out how to play 'Oh Suzannah' the old american tune. Today something about the few notes in this song made me wonder if it was pentatonic, since the pentatonic scale has only five notes (six including the octave). I consulted a pentatonic scale chart and all the notes are on the major pentatonic scale apart from the 'Oh'.

Armed with this I started noodling around with the pentatonic notes and soon fell upon 'God gave Rock and Roll to You' by Kiss. Now there's a leap.

I think I can see some reasons why the pentatonic is popular: the notes are basically a rectangle on the fretboard and can be played with two or three fingers. Also, since the intervals are quite large it may make it easier to play by ear.

I found one of the really fast bits from Iron Maiden's 'Phantom of the Opera' and I can see how they pluck so fast: it is played on two strings next to each other with three fingers, two of the notes can be plucked in one stroke. I'm not saying it's easy, I could only play it as a ballad, but it's not impossible.

What IS impossible is the main riff from Stevie Ray Vaughan's Scuttle Buttin'. It says on Wikipedia he had large hands, I guess this is because he had seven fingers on each. 'I wants to hug ya, kiss ya, squeeze ya till my arms fall off': the world lost a big romantic.

Bubble machines are great fun for little kids. This one is from the Early Learning Centre and was on special offer for £10. I switched it on and it made a loud crack as the fan split in half. Couldn't be bothered to return it so araldited it. Much fun was had until the damn thing split again.

Here is a picture of me from my Fathers Day Card, complete with a cup of coffee.

If I am to be a competent rhythm guitarist I am going to have to learn about chord progressions. I found a neat iPhone application to help in this, 'simple songwriter'. You dial in the key of the song and it gives buttons for the major chords (I, IV and V) and various other matching chords. From this you bang the buttons to play the chords and develop a nice progression.

This is fine in theory but in practise I am abysmal at figuring out what key a song is in. I can go through all the keys available in the app without finding a good match for whatever I am humming. Still, I have figured out a nice one (D D A A G G G G G G A) now I just need:

1. to find a tune to go with it
2. to develop the dexterity to take less than three seconds to finger the G chord