Enjoy your swineflu :)
Starting on some rocky tunes, going over something spoken or electric and ending on a slow note.

1. Beastie Boys vs. The Sweet – Right Right Ballroom Blitz [DJ Stab]


2. The Beatles vs. LCD Soundsystem vs. The Kinks – The Birts are playing at my house [DJ Faroff]


3. Spin Doctors vs Clucha Candela – Hamma Princes [DJ Schmolli]


4. Kool & The Gang vs. Sean Paul – Kool Temperature [DJ Mashup]


5. Jamiroquai vs. Sly & The Family Stone vs Grandmaster flash – Deep message [DJ Moule]


6. Fettes Brot vs. Seed – Schwules Ding [DR. Waumiau]


7. New Order vs Dizzy Rascal – Blue Rascal


8. Bob Marley vs. The Beatles – Let it Be, No Cry [DJ Faroff]

I decided to ditch dreamhost to switch for my own little vserver. It's basically like having your own server (full root access, ability to install stuff and have long running processes) with the small limitation of actually sharing the ressources of the actual server with other people. It's basically like having an instance of VMWare running (which might be more familiar to most people).

The reasons why I quit using Dreamhost for my primary domain (the one you're currently reading this on) is the fact that I basically want to have control over all of the stuff my webpages are running on (webserver, database server, …).
Dreamhost has an awesome deal when it comes to diskspace and bandwidth (basicall unlimited), but when it comes to running a little bit more advanced web applications than the usual blog, you reach the limits of the standard Dreamhost Webhosting account. They also seem to overbook their servers quite a bit (too much users for the available hardware). While I don't have any partiucular complaints when it came to the hardware usage, they f*cked up some small stuff over the last few months.

When their backup servers ran out of storage I really was pissed. Having administered some servers over the time myself, I know that it shouldn't be all that difficult to detect when your remaining space is about to run low and act accordingly. Another thing is that the servers are in the US and I'd prefer them to be a little bit close to home (Germany).
This might also reflect the distribution among my visitors. In April the origins of the visiting IPs so far split up as follows:

1. Europe: 1466 53.68%


2. Americas: 972 35.59%


3. Asia: 173 6.33%


4. Oceania: 94 3.44%


5. Africa: 24 0.88%

My new Provider is Keyweb [ref link].

At the moment, I use their "VRS-Start 09"; Server which has those nice features:

• 30 GB of HDD


• 512 MB of RAM (786 MB Flexi-RAM)


• 1500 GB Traffic included


• 2 IP Adresses


• Reboot + Reinstall (of the chosen Distirbution) via Web Interface


• Plesk / Keyweb Panel (I didn't use any of those for too long… I like webmin)


• OS: Debian, SuSE, Fedora,CentOS


• Price: 7,90 Euros (monthly basis. 5% rebate if you pay 6 months in advance, 10% for 12 months, 20% for 24 months)

This will allow me to host unlimited domains and play with my own custom configurations (other webservers / …).
An additional bonus for me personally is the fact that I can use the 30 GB of hdd space to back up my most important documents via SCP (WinSCP can do scripting, did you know that?) to my server.

If I ever need more ressources, I could switch to the "VRS – Profi 09"; package (50GB HDD, 768-1GB RAM, 3 TB traffic for 9,90 Euros/month (also up to 20% rebate available) ).
As far as support goes, I have to say that I'm very happy with keyweb so far. They answered all of my tickets (I decided to switch to Debian after initially chosing redhat to see Plesk) within a few minutes and seemed to be very competent.

Keyweb's respective web-interface could use some work :)
Their customer (billing etc) web-interface is kinda crappy… the "Parallels Power Panel"; which is used to reinstall/backup the vserver is pretty decent and webmin works find as far as the actual server administration is concerened… I'm more of a commandline guy though.

In other hosting-related news:
As far as Domain registration goes, I switched to https://www.inwx.de. Their interface is REALLY slick.

Aaaand another presentation.
This time about Security in DECT. Most of the stuff is form http://www.dedected.org as those guys pretty much wrote the book about DECT security :)

PDF: security-in-dect-ms241

Slideshare:

Just a short heads up for the people who own a G1 and have already gained root access:

Over at google code, there is a nice little project that aims to port the Firmware that was extracted from some newer (aka: beta) Android devices to the G1.
Haykuro is the lead on the project and does a pretty decent job at that.

There are basically 2 versions:

• H (as in "This one is branded by HTC";)


• G (as in "I'm an original Google Firmware";)

I am currently using the HTC one and I have to say that I'm pretty happy with it so far.
Some of the new features are: Video Recording, On-Screen-Keyboard, PDF Reader, Calendar on the Homescreen, …

I guess I'll write a bit more about it once I find some free time on my hands

I recently had some problems with my backup user's account (Dreamhost actually gives you 50GB of personal backup space). But this answer pretty much makes me want to leave… sadly, I don't think Dreamhost will give me a partial refund for the money already paid.

Just read the following Answer I got from the Dreamhost support:

Sorry about the continued inconvenience the backup issues are causing.
The problem is that the volume of the backup server where your user
stores its data is currently full. Our admins are working on distributing
the users and adding more space, but the very rough estimate I received
is that this won't most likely be done until the end of next week. There
is also some user misconfiguration issues going on, so that would explain
why you can't delete the files. Sorry about that.

Finally, amazon managed to bring their mp3 store to germany.
I just bought a song and thought some of you might be interested in the data that came out of the interwebs in the end ;)

Something that is quite a bummer: from the faq

Kann ich nach dem Kauf meiner MP3-Dateien weitere Kopien herunterladen?
MP3-Dateien können Sie nur einmal herunterladen. Dies gilt auch für Dateiverluste nach Systemabstürzen oder Festplattenfehlern. Daher empfehlen wir, eine Sicherheitskopie Ihrer MP3-Dateien anzulegen. Wenn Sie gleich nach dem Kauf Probleme mit einer MP3-Datei haben, kontaktieren Sie bitte unseren Kundenservice.

Well… better than nothing… here's the data:
Tags:
Artist Name : The Ting Tings
Track Title : That's Not My Name
Album Title : That's Not My Name
Date : 2008
Genre : Alternative Rock
Composer : Katie White
Performer :
Album Artist :
Track Number : 1
Total Tracks : 3
Disc Number : 1
Total Discs : 1
Comment : Amazon.com Song ID: 206912415
<BAND> : The Ting Tings
<COPYRIGHT> : (P) 2008 SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT (UK) LIMITED

File:
File Name : 01 – Thats Not My Name.mp3
Folder Name : D:\music\tagged\The Ting Tings\That's not my Name
File Path : D:\music\tagged\The Ting Tings\That's not my Name\01 – Thats Not My Name.mp3
Subsong Index : 0
File Size : 9.07MB (9 510 622 bytes)
Last Modified : 2009-04-01 22:07:40
Duration : 5:11.400 (13732740 samples)
Sample Rate : 44100 Hz
Channels : 2
Bitrate : 243 kbps
Codec : MP3
Codec Profile : MP3 ABR
Encoding : lossy
Tool : LAME3.98b
Tag Type : id3v2|id3v1
: 576
: 1980
: yes
: joint stereo

Ok, das sind dann wohl meine "5 minutes of internet fame";: http://blog.daimler.de/2009/03/23/sind-sie-alle-so-ich-glaube-schon/

Zu meiner Verteidigung:
Ich habe das "Sind die alle so? – Ich glaube schon"; im Satz danach relativiert…

Without further ado, the music:

Ahhh… makes you wanna go out and go crazy :)

Didn't have that for a while…

Ok, I decided it's time for something new to play with :)

Welcome the ALIX.2d3:

It's a small (15×15cm), low voltage system board made by PC Engines
The model I chose, 2d3 has the following specs:
* CPU: 500 MHz AMD Geode LX800
* DRAM: 256 MB DDR DRAM
* Storage: CompactFlash socket, 44 pin IDE header
* Power: DC jack or passive POE, min. 7V to max. 20V
* Three front panel LEDs, pushbutton
* Expansion: 1 miniPCI slot, LPC bus
* Connectivity: 3 Ethernet channels (Via VT6105M 10/100)
* I/O: DB9 serial port, dual USB port
* Board size: 6 × 6″ (152.4 × 152.4 mm) – same as WRAP.1E
* Firmware: tinyBIOS
Thanks to the 3 ethernet jacks, I will be able to replace my DSL router with it. It's power consumption is about 5 watts when being under load. The operating system will be run from a 1 GB CF flash card which comes with the bundle I bought from varia store.
There is an article in German over at toms hardware, describing  the installation process of the embcop Linux distribution.
I think I'll try to use pfsense in the beginning. Maybe even try ubuntu…

Things I am going to try:

Adding a miniPCI Wlan card:
I basically only use Wireless LAN with my Laptop, so it would be nice if the alix could serve all my wireless needs as well.
I don't know how well the newer intel chipsets  (e.g. the intel 5100 agn) will work on linux/*bsd and if 11n is actually supported yet, but I guess I'll find out.
On the downside, I'll have to drill holes for antennas myself…
I might even think about buying a simple access point, but I don't think the extra watts will be worth it.

Use a proper filesystem on my external HDD
My dream setup would be FreeBSD on the alix and zfs on the HDD. I'm not sure if the 256 MB RAM will be enough for the, apparently, RAM hungry ZFS.
Maybe I'll use NTFS with ntfs-3g to be able to use the windows internal backup tools. I'd prefer ZFS by far, but we'll see.
If both of them don't work, ext4 should be fine…

Installing and running a torrent client
Probably rtorrent downloading directly to the external HDD. Should be enough power to do that.

Anything I missed? :)