Home of DJ and technophile Jonathan Puddle (aka J Puddy)
Archive for May, 2008
How to email FROM specific IPs, using Linux and Postfix
May 19th
I was asked recently to find an email solution for a new marketing firm. The solution specifically, was for the problem of outbound IP binding. That is what IP address email is sent from. If you’re providing email outsourcing for multiple clients, it’s important to keep each client on it’s own IP(s) so one being blacklisted won’t affect another. It’s a simple matter to add IP addresses to a server for the purposes of listening, but to tell a mail server to send from a particular IP(s) (and not just the default IP) can be a pit tricker. Depending on More >
Body science
May 18th
A few articles have sprung out at me this week, on the incredible advances in science and medicine. It’s something I’ve been thinking a bit about over the last 6 months, but anyway. Enjoy:
Turning off the speech centre in the brain, with magnets. (You’ve GOT to watch the video.)
I wanted to recite the rhyme but stumbled and stuttered as my speech area was disabled… Intriguingly, I could still sing Humpty Dumpty as he buffetted my Broca’s: it turns out that singing is controlled by the right side of the brain, the opposite hemisphere to the one he stimulated.
Guess what’s coming to dinner
May 17th
I have to take a moment here to praise Battlestar Galactica. If you’re not watching it, or have never watched it, just do yourself a favour and pick up the DVDs. You’ll be in for some of the greatest television ever. If you don’t know what the show is about, that’s fine, you’ll like it. It’s the best.
Season 4 is blowing my mind. I am overwhelmed every episode at the creative genius, and fine storytelling. The most recent episode, bearing the title of this post, is possibly the best episode of the entire show, in my opinion. I am in More >
Providing clean power to disaster stricken areas
May 16th
Found this on Engadget today:
Getting power to disaster-affected areas is always a tough task, but Andrew Leinonen’s undergrad industrial design thesis (and recent first place entry in the 2008 ACIDO Rocket Show) might be able to solve the problem in an efficient and clever way. Dubbed Solarial, the idea is to use small unmanned airships made out of materials embedded with CIGS solar cells to autonomously deliver clean power to disaster sites by deploying anchored “power boxes” that have 12 total 120V outlets and 2 240V sockets.
I think this is absolute genius. As one of the commenters said, feels like “Why More >
UK trip, May 08
May 10th
We’re having a great time on our UK visit. We arrived at midnight on Monday, and spent the night with Rob King in London. Great to catch up, albeit briefly. Then we took the Megabus to Sheffield and spent Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday morning with Mark & Bethany & Adelaide. Had a wonderful time, so good for the soul. Thanks also to Mark’s folks and his sister and Brett for a great time!
We visited York on Wednesday which was really lovely. Now we’re in Birmingham. Yesterday while here, we visited Warwick, took some photos of the castle, and returned a More >
Non admin users running scheduled batch tasks
May 5th
I ran into a problem a few months back where I found non-admin users on Windows Server 2003 couldn’t run batch files in scheduled tasks. I just gave up then as it wasn’t important, but I had to find a solution for the same issue today. Didn’t have to look far, it turned out:
SYMPTOMS When you run a batch job that runs under the context of a regular user account on a Microsoft Windows Server 2003-based computer, the script may not run. If you run the batch job by using the Scheduled Tasks feature, the following error message may be More >
Iron Man
May 4th
I’m not going to write a long review, as there are enough others out there that I feel are on the money. In brief, Iron Man was excellent. Masterfully acted, cleverly scripted, story was engaging enough, effects were top notch; superb movie.
Jeff Bridges played an excellent villain. Totally well done. Robert Downey Jr… what can you say? Tony Stark. To the letter. The suit, perfect. Pepper Potts, lovely! For those of you in the know, who stayed till the end of the credits, Nick Fury: Excellent! Can’t wait for Hulk.
What’d you all think?
Shortcuts to Maturity
May 3rd
A short piece by NackedPastor resonated with me this morning:
There are no shortcuts to maturity. Someone has an intense spiritual experience, insight, or revelation, and the impression is that this person suddenly will be more mature, responsible and exemplary. This is often not the case. How many men and women have we seen who set themselves up or are set up by others as spiritually advanced or insightful only to find, in due time, that they are just as human and fallible as the rest of us?
Take Ken Wilber’s article on “The Strange Case of Adi Da”, the Fiji guru who More >