Category: Housekeeping

The icon at the left kind of describes what just happened to this website.

You'll recall I moved it to a rented 'cloud' server in Hungary a few weeks back? Well, the 'cloud server' turned out to be a bit of a 'mushroom cloud server'. I went to bed Monday night with everything working just fine; I woke up in the morning to discover the entire site was inaccessible. I couldn't even ssh into the server. I did the usual thing: turned it off and back on again, using the control panel web interface the company provides... still no joy once the server was back up running, however. Heart sinking, I contacted the help desk. I explained the problem carefully, including all the steps I'd taken so far to try to fix the issue. Their response was, "We just turned your server off and back on again. Try it now." Not what I would call a support desk's most considered response. [...] 

Welcome to Hungary!

That is to say, I've moved the website from my loft in drizzly Nottingham to a server located somewhere in (presumably!) sunny Hungary. If you're reading this: the web server move has been a success! [...] 

Well, that turned out quicker than expected!

A house was viewed about a week ago in south Lincolnshire (about due east from the current home, close to The Wash and thus within striking distance of all things East Anglian). An offer was made ...and accepted within the time it took to drive half-way back home! [...] 

After nearly six years living in Nottingham, we've decided it's time to move on. Our house has, in fact, already sold (but the English system of house purchase means that "sold" doesn't have a really good definition: either party can pull out, for any reason, right up until the time money hits your bank account!). We therefore find ourselves now doing frequent day-trips to Norfolk and Suffolk, our preferred new counties of potential habitation. Unfortunately, we haven't yet found a suitable replacement for the place we are shortly to be required to move out of, so further day-trips are required.

That, in turn, means little time is presently available for software development, so the new Niente is likely to be delayed a bit. Sorry about that. [...] 

As expected, Monday and Tuesday turned into absolute scorchers and in a land almost entirely devoid of real air conditioning units in domestic settings, it was pretty nasty and definitely uncomfortable. The thermometer on the left is decently accurate and, although that shot was taken with it in the sun, when it was placed in the shade, it was still showing 37°C.

And that was outside! Inside the house, the temperatures just kept rising and the decision to shutdown all my servers in the loft for the duration turned out to have been wise, I think! [...] 

On Monday 18th July 2022 and Tuesday 19th July 2022, the bit of the cold, grey and damp United Kingdom in which I've chosen to live (!) will experience peak temperatures of potentially 38° Celsius (the old 100° Fahrenheit).

For myself, this is bad enough (I much prefer -6°C and an open fire!). [...] 

Not that it makes much difference in the great scheme of things, but just in case you use a VPN service that has servers in either Russia or Belarus: I've blocked visitors from both those countries from accessing this website, until further notice.

Of course, any Russian or Belarusian citizen will be able to VPN their way around such a block, fairly trivially, in their turn... but maybe every little helps. [...]