jfw.id.au

I’m a bit of a late adopter when it comes to new toys, mainly due to insufficient fundage when they first come onto the market.  The latest toy that I have been drooling over is the Nintendo Wii.  Mainly this has been from the fact that it looks like it would be a lot of fun.

I finally got to try one out.  And Oh Mii God! It’s too much fun.  It’s now 11:30pm and I’m sitting in a sweaty heap after only about 20 minutes of Wii Sports.  I tried them all, with the exception of boxing as the friend I borrowed the Wii from forgot to pack his nunchuck.

I thought it looked like it would be fun before trying it.  I can’t believe how instantly addictive and fun it really was.  And how easy, both to set up and to use.  The interface was easy to undestand and the in game instructions made everything quick to pick up as well.  I can’t wait till I have some time to play it with Kira, I think that will be even better then playing solo.

Want!

I hit a small problem with a subversion server I recently installed at work. It was nothing major, just the listing of repositories from the SVNParentPath folder was not working. It had worked when I initially set up the server and the repositories, but I later found that it was no longer working.

Digging through multiple forum and blog posts about it I found reference to some people getting joy from ensuring that the Location stanza in their apache config had a trailing slash. After not finding the solution through google I decided to stop looking for the easy solution and started watching the log files. What I found surprised me a little.

My location stanza looks like this:

<Location /repositories/system/>
DAV svn
SVNParentPath /home/www/subversion/repositories/system
SVNListParentPath on

# access control policy
AuthzSVNAccessFile /home/www/subversion/.svn_access

# authorisation section
AuthType Basic
AuthName “My Subversion Repositories”
AuthUserFile /home/www/subversion/.svn_passwd
AuthzSVNAccessFile /home/www/subversion/.svn_access
Require valid-user
</Location>

And the log was showing this error:

Access denied: ‘jacob’ GET repositories:/system

In order to compare the error to an equivalent error for a path inside a repository that is legitimately blocked I added a test user and denied them access to anything inside the project1 repository. The url for the repository is http://my.svn.server/repositories/system/project1/ and the error message that I received was:

Access denied: ‘test.jacob’ GET project1:/

Lining up the error messages and the paths that each one was reporting I found that the problem was solved by adding a permission for all users to read the parent folder of the SVNParentPath into my AuthzSVNAccessFile file

[repositories:/]
* = r

I was surprised that I needed to put it a level back up from the location of the SVNParentPath folder, and believe that this may have been why there was so much speculation on the internet about what the solution could be.

My Internode ADSL has finally been provisioned and is up and running. Had a small drama getting it all sorted out, but thankfully the dice went my way.

I submitted the churn application on Dec 20th, wanting to move away from Westnet after I reached the conclusion that the plan changes they were implemented were detrimental to me and my usage habits. On the 21st I got an email about my order being in the system, apparently this is the email that comes through when the request is submitted to Telstra wholesale. The email indicates 3-5 business days from submission should see the churn completed.

On the 27th of December I got another of these emails. The 29th was 5 days from the original email and I called Internode to see what was happening. Apparently there had been some error at Telstra’s end and the application had been rejected and had to be resubmitted, hence the second email. Unfortunately for me the 3rd of Jan was given as the estimated date of churn.

This would push me into another month with Westnet and require me to pay another months access fees. It would also push me out of the period they were waiving the early termination charges and add that charge to my account as well. As there was no way we could speed Tesltra up with all the public holidays and stuff I had only 1 option.

I cancelled my Westnet account and had them set the cancellation date as the 1st of Jan so that I would still get the fee waived and not be charged the additional month access. This is bad because it could have seen my Westnet codes removed from my line before the churn happened. If that had happened it would have caused the churn to fail and I would have had to start the application again as a new connection which is more expensive and more delay.

Happily, this didn’t happen and I am now online through Internode.

I got a phone call from an Optus rep yesterday to thank me for my loyal patronage.  We’ve had our mobiles with them for a little over 2 years now, having moved over from Telstra after they got too greedy.  As well as the thanks for still being with them I was informed of the discounts available to us on optus home phone and internet if we were to have all services with them.  I told Optus-guy that the Optus internet plans were not good enough as they didn’t compete with the services from my current ISP Westnet.  The churn hasn’t compeltely gone through yet so I can still say my current ISP, can’t I?

This wasn’t enough for Optus-guy.  He asked me what those services were so I rattled off basically everything that had helped my decision to join Westnet, coincidentally the same features that they have just removed from their plans.  When he asked me to name the ISP I hesitated slightly before responding.  I figure if they use the information to check into the competitors plans that I would be sending them bad information by sending them to Westnet now that the plans have been made less attractive with the recent changes.  Luckily I did a bit of research before making the jump to Internode.  Netspace still have similar plans to the old Westnet ones so I pushed Optus-guy that way.

So I lied.  It was only a little white lie.  I would have gone to Netspace if I had any belief that the plans would have stayed as they currently are.  I doubt it will be long before Netspace change their plans as well.

Recent changes for Westnet’s ADSL plans have proven too much for many to accept. Such massive changes with such little return to the customer happening all at once was just too much for me. I completed my churn application with Internode this morning and finished migrating all the websites and email that we used to host at home last week.

A few days from now I should be a happy ‘Node customer. :)

Pretty much most people have heard of the **AA tactics against file sharers, but this time the RIAA appears to have gotten it so horribly wrong it’s just funny.

According to this article they have filed suit against a family that don’t even own a computer. How many more of these bogus extortion attempts will it take for the US legislators to sit up and take notice of the shit that these organisations are getting away with?