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For a while now we’ve used other Brother P-Touch printers for labeling equipment… and they worked. But figuring out how they’re going to look with a simple lcd screen was never fun. Then I got my hands on this handy little printer, the Brother PT-1230 “PC Connectable” printer. By PC connectable they mean it has a USB port.  Of course some program needs to be run to design a label, but for PCs with Windows prior to Win7, you can leave the switch on the back in basic mode, and the software’s on the device itself. For Windows 7, you need to download the enhanced version (which you probably want to do anyway for the extra features like barcodes), and throw the switch in the back.

The list price on this little sucker is a bit unrealistic at $79. But it’s often at half that at buy.com  ( Buy.com link ) and sign up for thier daily emails, and every so often (3 or 4 times a year maybe) it will go on sale. It was on sale a few weeks ago for $16.99 with free shipping.  If you want one decide beforehand and wait for the sale. Once you see it, don’t hesitate or it will sell out on you. It happened to me twice, once I “thought about it” and when I went back it was sold out, and the other by the time I read the email it was gone already. But as they say 3rd time’s the charm.

For anyone sending equipment to colo centers this can be a life saver. Label your equipment with hostname, main ip, contact name and phone number. It can really help them find you server in racks of dozens of servers… Also if you have multiple drives label each drive, for example, use /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2, etc.  This way if a drive fails, it makes them determining which drive to swap pretty painless. After all you’re paying for their time usually, you want them to be fast about it.  I also suggest using the brother “Extra Strength Adhesive” series of tapes. Be aware that there are multiple sizes (widths) of tape. The largest this will use is 1/2″, so the TZS231 gives you the largest printing area for black on white labels. I don’t recommend the TZS131 (black on clear) as they can be hard to read unless your surface is a light color.

This was sent to me in email with no source listed… but I thought it was funny and would share it with you. If someone knows the source, let me know and I’ll gladly give credit and put a link to the site.

Webhosting entrepreneurs spend a lot of time online. We work weird hours, day and night, to get the job done. Western Govenors’ University works well for people like us. With WGU it’s all about results. How long you sit in a classroom doesn’t matter. What matters is understanding the material and can you do the work?

Online education has been steadily growing. But you need to watch out… Many of the names you’ve heard are for profits (nothing wrong with that in itself), that worry more about selling courses. There’s the problem… a typical large name accredited (we’ll talk more about that in a minute) online school that’s not part of a state university system charges upwards of $40 to $50 thousand dollars for a undergrad degree.  Let’s take the University of Phoenix, most courses run 3 credits $ 530 per credit hour plus a $85 fee for online ‘resources’, or $1675 per course. To satisfy the 120 credit hour requirement (124 in Kansas), that means 40 course… or a grand total $67,000 assuming you came into it with no credits… That’s a chunk of change.  The value of a degree is substantial, but that’s a big hole to dig out of from the start.

And there’s the time requirements… Usually you can’t take more than 16 hours or so at a time. That will take years to complete the degree! And if you’re working at the same time, it’s even slower.

But there’s another way… the WGU way. I’m currently enrolled in their IT – Software Development program. I started last October 1st. To date I have completed 41 comptency units (their equivalent to the credit). I’m working on another 17 before the end of my term at the end of February. If you were paying attention, you noticed that’s a long term – 6 months. WGU is a continuous enrollment school. Terms start every month on the 1st and go for 6 months. Since you’re working on your courses individually with the help of others in the course as well as course mentors, you get to set the pace. WGU requires you take 16 credits and pass 12 of those every semester to maintain “Satisfactory Academic Progress” or “SAP”. You have to also pass 2/3rd of everything you take… Fortunately, you can add courses as you need. So you start out with the required 16 CU’s at the begining of the term (which figuring in breaks and such as almost twice as long as a normal semester), then as you complete courses you add others in.

Courses are divided up into ‘Objective’ and ‘Performance’  Assessments. For objective assessments, you will take a final exam after completing the course work (or are able to show you are ready). You will go to a testing facility  available at Prometric, most universities, and many libraries  for proctoring.  You will be given a certain amount of time to complete the exam and take it online under the supervision of the proctor. If you’ve ever taken an industry certification exam, that’s what these are like. Actually many of the IT courses use industry certifications as their assessment from known names like Microsoft, CompTIA, CIW, Sun, etc.  A quick word about industry certs at WGU… WGU has decided to place a limit of 4 attempts on an industry cert (1st 2 tries are included in tuition:) !) afterwards, you will need to choose another degree program. I support this move. It prevents people from going over and over until they pass, in something they apparently are prepared for…  but some others were upset about it.

Performance evaluations are another matter… it’s all about the work. You will be given a set of tasks to complete. For example, you may be asked to complete a slide presentation, write a paper, and perform an experiment complete with journals, etc. and submit that to graders. They will use a rubric to evaluate your work and tell you if any revisions need to occur. There are 2 types of tasks, the ‘required’ tasks are more like course-work and can be submitted multiple times. You’ll do this as you go through the course text. Then after you’ve completed those, the final task(s) will be opened for you. These are the what you’re actually evaluated on… You can only revise them once. So you have to pay attention to what you’re doing. Afterwards, a different task is used for the course.

One of the things you need to pay attention to in looking for online college degrees is the school’s accreditation. There are too many ‘degree mills’ out there, and you won’t be well served by them. Others, like the big names, do have accreditation from the DECT – a nationally recognized accreditation authority. There are also many other accreditation bodies, many of whom have no authority to do so see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unrecognized_accreditation_associations_of_higher_learning  … The “gold standard” though is “Regional accreditation” (the same you’re local state university uses) see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_accreditation. WGU is DETC AND regionally accredited through the Northwest Commission. Additionally for teachers and nurses, WGU holds NCATE and CCNE respectively. Actually WGU is the first and only exclusively online university to hold NCATE accreditation. The CCNE accreditation helped me getting approved for tuition reimbursement actually… Just be careful when choosing a school, get DETC at a minimum and preferably regional.

Lastly, let’s talk about cost… WGU has a fixed cost of just $2890 per 6 month term, plus a few fees for library, etc. So figure about $3000 a semester – it varies a little with lab fees, etc. To use me as an example, I’ve already completed 41 CUs, so my cost per CU (credit) is already down to ($3000/41)  under $75. And if I complete the others in time, it will drop to just over $50/credit. I’ve found no other university that even comes close…  Not to mention my goal is to go from zero credits (it’s all too old to count anymore really) to done in a year to a year and half. So my total cost will be $6 to 9 thousand, instead of $50 to $60 thousand! And I’ll have TEN industry certifications to boot!

If you decide you want to apply, email me at rob -at- lagniappeinternet.com and I can get you the application fee waived… Disclosure: I’d also get a Amazon credit for $50 or so (I forget the amount) as well towards books… BTW, most books are included or eBooks. If you want printed copies you have to buy them, and for a couple (2 I think in my case) you will have to buy books period. Those are not included in tuition, but that’s pretty normal.

On the 12′th I blogged about Linux+ magazine and how I never received the magazine nor the “Tux android” they had on promotion… You can see it here: http://HostEntrepreneur.com/2009/09/12/warning-linux-magazine/

Well over 2 weeks have gone by, and I’ve have gotten a couple messages from them. Always the same. “we’re sorry… please wait…”  I can’t help but feel like I’m getting stalled for time. I payed with Paypal, and had started the dispute process in their Resolution Center. It took them a over week to respond there… and then to ask the “order number” which is a joke. Disputes are attached to the original transaction at paypal, which includes the order number. That was a week ago, and NOTHING since then.

I’m tired of this… I don’t trust Linux+ magazine anymore even if they were to send the items. This was for a 2 year subscription… I don’t want it anymore. I highly recommend avoiding this magazine. 

Pretty sure they were trying to let the clock run out. Well it didn’t work… I escalated the dispute to claim status with paypal. Hopefully they’ll be able to get some satisfaction for me.

Oct. 1, 2009 Update:  Yet another reply of “is this your address” nothingness… but finally something substantial. Tux showed up. From what I’m seeing on the shipping documents, it appears it was shipped on Sept. 21st, not Sept. 1. The never claimed they reshipped it, though they said they would if it didn’t show up.

I’ve canceled the paypal dispute hoping they come through on the rest. I have my doubts, but I can’t keep the dispute going when I received at least this piece of what I bought… Hopefully this will be the last update.

As a long time programmer (aka “old fart”), I’m often quick to jump to writing code. But I learned a long time ago to devote most of my time to writing code that’s going to be the most beneficial to the process. That means the common stuff, or the stuff that someone else has already written WELL, should be left to others. One such case is on detecting mobile browsers. There are lots and lots of browser strings for all the different mobile browser devices out there, and it can change across versions of the device or the even versions of the software loaded on the device… Since someone else has written this, and they’ve done it well, let them… Check out the site here: http://detectmobilebrowsers.mobi/   It’s simple to implement, and clean on how it works. It’s kept separate so that updating for all the new devices means replacing a single file. I definitely approve.

Just a quick warning to others…  There’s a Linux magazine out there called Linux+  and while not a bad magazine… I have had a heck of time with this company. On July 31st I ordered and paid for 2 years from a special offer for a Tux ‘droid promotion they were having. I got a ‘order confirmation’ email that specified it was “not a confirmation of payment” up at the top. So I waited a few days to get the follow up payment confirmation message. That never came. On Aug 17, I emailed telling them about it and got back an answer the following day.  Anna Padzik said they did get the payment, apologized for the delay, and that the “We are sending you the missing issues of your subscription and Tux Droid at the moment.”

Sept 7, still no magazine nor Tux… so I email again… next day I get another apology and that “I ve just checked the informations in the data basis and  the magazines have been sent exactely on 1.09.2009. You should get the order in maximum 1 week.”  I respond back the same day asking about Tux… Only to be ignored.

Well it’s approaching a week since they emailed (and 2 since supposedly it was shipped – this last time), so I emailed again today… We’ll see what they do.

FTP is just not secure by itself. So if you value your server’s securely you simply won’t use it for uploading or editing your site. We highly recommend a program like WinSCP, http://winscp.net/eng/index.php,  to upload or edit your site. WinSCP can use your editing PuTTY key pairs with SSH to get to your server. This is MUCH more secure, and you never expose your password.  

We do recommend that you make changes to you site’s files on your local machine and then upload them (with WinSCP) all at once.  But what if you need to make a change on the fly? Sure you could log in with PuTTY and use vi,vim, nano, or one of a dozen other editors. But WinSCP can help you out there too.   You can use your existing Windows based editor with WinSCP. Personally, I love EditPlus, http://www.editplus.com/, it’s small fast and has a lot of features. But it doesn’t work over SSH (at least not last time I looked anyway).

First, setup WinSCP to get to your server like you normally would. It will need the FQDN or ip address, port number (you’re not using 22 anymore right?), your login, and your key file.  Go ahead and save the session… Now on the left side tree menu, select Preferences, and then select the Preferences… button, and a new window should appear with new left side tree navigation.  A few down, there is a leaf called a Editors, select that. It should look like this:

Click the Add button.  Select the External Editor radio box, then click Browse. Find the path to your editor, in my case that was c”\Program Files (x86)\Edit Plus 3\editplus.exe - you’re may be different depending on OS version and what program you want to use. Under editor autoselection, you might want to change the association, say EditPlus for php files or .conf files. There’s another option there too… Inside the Add dialob box, there’s an “Associated Application” – then specify the type of files you want opened with your default Windows application for that extension. For example, I use CorelDraw for .cdr and .psd files, and Windows will automatically open CorelDraw for me if I double-click in Explorer. With the Associated Application radio box, that is extended into WinSCP as well.  So inside of WinSCP if I double-click a .cdr or .psd file, CorelDraw opens automatically, and when I click save it is transferred back to the server. This is even great for using different types of editors for different files.

You probably need to change the order in which programs are checked in the list. WinSCP goes from top to bottom until it finds an editor it can use for the file. So I’d put “Associated application” at the top, then your prefered text editor(s), then WinSCP’s internal editor at the bottom.

Sometimes, you’ll have issues with backup copies that programs make, or you may just want to keep them saved locally… Sometimes this is easily accomplished. For EditPlus, go to Preferences, then Files. There is a checkbox called “Create backup file when saving”, check it if it’s not. Then hit the button next to it “Backup Options”, select your local backup directory, and check the “Create backup file of remote file in backup directory” box. And you should be good to go.

Caution… As with any changes to a system, before you use this for real (ie a real configuration file that matters to you), create a dummy file out in a directory you don’t care about, and TEST it. Make some changes to that file. Check that it works as you expect BEFORE using this for real production files. Of course, best of all is to not use this on production files directly, but to edit them locally then transfer when you’re sure they’re right, but as you know life doesn’t always work that way.

http://www.whatsmydns.net is a cool little website that let’s you check dns across more than a dozen dns servers all over… many are in the US, but the UK and Australia are also in there. This is a great tool that lets you check if your dns changes have propagated yet.

Binary Canary’s, http://www.binarycanary.com, slogan in “We alert you first”. For the past several months we’ve been trying them out, and honestly… they DO! We run redundant Nagios systems – one in each datacenter monitoring pretty much everything. But often Binary Canary will be the first to let us know if something happens.

The service has been excellent. We had tried out Just Uptime, and had an account with Hyperspin for a long time. Just Uptime’s service had false positive as well as negatives, and had several outages that we never heard a word about except through hosting forums. Hyperspin performance is excellent but comes at a price. Service wise, Hyperspin and Binary Canary seemed about equal. There are differences in reports, but as far as notification goes both seem to be of very high reliability.

So it comes down to price… Hyperspin for 10 monitors at 1 minute intervals is $120 per month ($86 and change if you’re a reseller). Binary Canary on the other hand is $5! No I didn’t leave off a zero. It’s $5 for 10 1 minute monitors! And if you upgrade to the Power Plan you get for 30 monitors, letting you  monitor the same 10 sites from EACH of their 3 facilities (Seattle, DC and London) for $10 a month. That’s a bargain! … Now if they’d make it where I could get multiple uptime badges on a single page for a server status page (something happens with the javascript I think where it shows the same badge repeatedly – but didn’t really dig to see what’s happening), that would be icing on the cake.

Disclosure: We have NOT been compensated by binarycanary.com in any way for this review, nor do we expect to be. We have found a service we feel to be reliable while providing quite a bit of value at an extremely reasonable price, and we thought we’d share that with you. (We’re like that.)

Quick Update: Binary Canary’s developer did some work yesterday, and now in FireFox the uptime badges work like you would expect. IE 7 and 8 have issues (but then when don’t they???)  You have to give them credit… within hours of hearing about my wanting multiple badges on a single page they started addressing the issue.  I suspect they’ll get the IE goofyness ironed out too. If you want to see multiple badges on a page you can go to our server status page at http://www.LagniappeInternet.com/servers.php

This handy little device is a Remotely Controlled Power Distribution Unit or PDU. Think of it as a smart power strip…  It has an ethernet connection and gets its own IP address. It has a total of 10 outlets, 8 of which are remotely controllable.  Once networking is established, you can remotely log in to an embedded web server and turn power outlets on and off without having to be there physically.

But it gets better!  The software built into the unit can also monitor ip addresses via ping and automatically cycle the power if the server stops responding. For safety sake, you can set how many times it needs to not respond before cycling. This means your downtime for a hung server goes from 10 to 15 minutes IF someone is at the datacenter, or possibly worse if someone isn’t or is busy with other issues… to a couple of minutes while the server reboots. This can definitely help your uptime SLA.

The only thing I wish this had that it doesn’t is the ability to have multiple logins and be able to limit those logins to controlling individual ports. That would come in handy for companies that colocate servers for others, or offer dedicated servers to their customers. It would let them offer the customer the ability to reboot their box (and only their box). When I asked about it, I was told it may be added in a future firmware upgrade. But I just checked the company’s website and the latest firmware doesn’t address this yet. This isn’t a major issue for us but I could see it being one for some, and it’s a nice selling point if they added it.

We’ve bought ours from http://www.datacenterhardware.com/ and wholeheartedly recommend them – tell Benjamin that Lagniappe Internet sent you if you do order from them (we get no commission or anything like that but a little good will never hurts).