Bluetrait

I upgraded from my white macbook the other day (10 days ago :p) to a MacBook Pro 15" (base spec: 2.4GHz, 2gb Ram, 250gb HDD, Geforce 9600 256mb).

I picked it up from the online apple store for $AU2699 (refurbished model, but in perfect condition) and it is great. The screen is much better than the old macbook and it can play some games too.

I'm currently dual booting Mac OS and Windows 7 Beta.

Photo

I just picked myself up an old PowerBook Ti off ebay (yes I like collecting random old stuff), and I was surprised how fast it was.

Specs:

• G4 800MHz
• 512mb PC133
• Radeon 7500 32mb

I installed Leopard on it via Firewire (off my iBook G4) and it works really well. The screen is great and it is more than fast enough to browse the internet on with multiple tabs.

So I've had the pleasure of looking after some Blackberries and I just don't understand why anyone would purchase one over say a Windows Mobile device or an iPhone.

So here is my list of why Blackberries suck:

• The user interface on the phone feels like a palm from the 90s. The screen on the newer phones is better, but the interface is still really nasty, I hate that crappy ball thing they use.
• It doesn't sync correctly/at all. Do a quick google search to see for yourself. They just don't work correctly. Half the time the contacts don't sync wirelessly, the email reconciliation doesn't work (you know, when you delete an email off the phone it should also delete from exchange) and they don't activate quickly.
• Blackberry Enterprise Server is shit. There are so many hooks it requires into Exchange that it just isn't funny. Do an update on Exchange and you'll be spending the rest of the day trying to fix the BES user permissions.
• With an ActiveSync device (WinMo, iPhone etc) you don't need any extra server software as long as you're running Outlook Web Access, unlike Blackberry that requires the BES server.
• Security. If you're using a Blackberry your data must flow through the RIM Server Relay Protocol (SRP) system. Where as Exchange can talk directly to the Phone via SSL. So there are less security issues and you don't need to worry if the SRP goes offline (which has happened before).
• BES puts a lot of extra load on the Exchange Information Store as it polls for incoming messages.

I can't really think of much else. But yeah I really don't like looking after Blackberries and have no problems recommending the iPhone over it for business users.

If you think the only way of getting push email on your phone is via a Blackberry you are very wrong.

I've had a chance to work on Bluetrait Board today. I'm hoping to have the next version out in a few weeks.

Version 0.6 should include the following updates:

• All new interface (thanks to Matthew)
• Full login system
• Pie chart break down for money spent
• Full Installer (I hope)

Yah should be cool. The program has been really useful in tracking what we spend. Maybe I should setup a full hosted version that people can sign up and use...I do have some spare web hosting.

Well I finally got around to removing all the spam off my old websites, and I've disabled all the commenting. Awesome.

I also had some old contact forms that I was getting spam from too. These now have links to my main contact form.

My contact form also got a bit of an update, it now has akismet support.

Got myself a new dev box today:

AMD Phenom x3 8450 (3x2.1GHz)
2gb Ram 6gb Ram

Currently running Windows 2008 (for some Hyper-V testing). Seems to run pretty quick, just needs more ram ;)

We're just in the process of replacing our server. Specs:

• Windows 2008 64bit (with Hyper-V for Web and VoIP)
• Intel Q6600 (Quad 2.4GHz)
• 4gb Ram (soon to be upgraded to 8gb)
• 2x300gb Raid 1 Boot drive
• 4x750gb Raid 5 Data drive

So email is currently down but will be back up tonight.

I've just had another seagate drive die on me.

This time it was a 320gb SATA2 one, so pretty new. One of the chips on it died and there was an awesome smell.

We've had so many seagate drives die now it is not funny (2 this week). I've personally had about 5 this year.

Anyway as I've said before do not buy seagate drives, they just don't work.

We've been using Samsung drives, they're cheaper and work better than seagate drives.

Last week we upgraded housefiles to 4x750gb HDDs in Raid 5.

Right I wrote a small PHP program that manages who has spent what for our house.

It can be download here and requires PHP 5.2 and MySQL 4.1.

I've noticed that the web server has been running slowly today.

Anyway I think I've found the problem. One of my old blogs sites is currently being spammed. Currently there are 3.3 million comments in the database!

EDIT: Problem fixed:

mysql> delete from comments WHERE id > 556;
Query OK, 3305122 rows affected (2 min 21.45 sec)

EDIT2: The spam has been coming from caravan.ru a Russian ISP (who's logo is very similar to optus' old one...).