Nope. I went round to Philippa’s on Friday night and stayed the night, then I went onto campus did some revision, came back here, uh… didn’t do much else! Did ‘The Phil Show’ on the radio. Today, I went to Fordham this morning and stayed for lunch (it was very nice!)
And then I came home and played Red Alert 2. Oh, the fantastically exciting life I lead…
Right. I know that I didn’t post up anything about this before, but anyway… I’m posting it now. I’m having problems with the hosts that I signed up for webspace with (Streamlinenet). Basically, the problem is that I signed up for their ‘unlimited user’ package, which including VAT amounts to about £40 per year (£80 for two years, which is what I paid). The reason I bought the webspace (as I’ve said before) was to be able to run a photo gallery type thing and let people upload photos and stuff to it, to replace the current MSN “Campus Crew” photo gallery (where each user has limited space).
I downloaded the gallery software, and installed it — but it wouldn’t run. StreamlineNet have got some PHP functions disabled which means that unfortunately it won’t run. I emailed them about this on Tuesday… I got a response back which wasn’t very helpful. In fact, it was so helpful I’ll post it up here.
Hi Phil,
Thanks for your email.
Unfortunately those functions are disabled for security reasons.
Kind Regards,
Support Department
E-mail: support@streamlinenet.co.uk
Telephone: 08709 22 06 99
Fax: 01283 550119
Website: http://www.streamlinenet.co.uk—–Original Message—–
From: Sacre, Phillip D [mailto:pdsacr@essex.ac.uk]
Sent: 04 May 2004 19:24
To: Streamlinenet – Support
Subject: RE: site mail: logging in to the control panelHi,
Sorry to be a pain, but — I’m trying to run a piece of software called ‘Gallery’, which is an automated gallery type system written in PHP.
The trouble is, it requires some image programs to be run, and every time I try and upload a file I get the error message:
Warning: exec,system,passthru,popen() has been disabled for security reasons in /home/fhlinux196/p/phillsacre.co.uk/user/htdocs/campuscrew/gallery/platform/fs_unix.php on line 34
Would there be any chance of enabling the necessary function just for this?
One of the reasons why I chose an unlimited hosting package was so that we wouldn’t have to worry much about the limits imposed by “free” groups etc, and it’s very handy to have an automated image indexing system.
Regards,
Phill
As you can see, the response wasn’t exactly the most helpful. So, I sent an email to the orders department, asking if it would be possible to have a refund because their servers couldn’t do what I wanted them to. This is the reply I got today.
Hi Phill,
Thanks for your mail.
We are afraid that although we can transfer your domain free of charge. We cannot refund you for this reason. This is because there would be no problem running a photo gallery on our web space.
If you like we can send you some links to web sites that we host that have photo galleries on them.
Any further questions please get in touch…
Kind Regards
Support Department
(etc…)—–Original Message—–
From: Phillip Sacre [mailto:pdsacr@essex.ac.uk]
Sent: 05 May 2004 12:09
To: ‘StreamlineNet – ORDERS’
Subject: RE: Important info from StreamlineNetHi,
I wasn’t entirely sure where to send this email, so sorry if it’s the wrong place!
Basically, the reason I bought webspace with Streamlinenet was to run a photo gallery on the webspace. Unfortunately, it transpires that I am not able to run this on the Streamlinenet webspace (I wasn’t made aware of this before purchasing the webspace).
This means there is very little point continuing with the account! So would it be possible to cancel the account, get a refund and have the IPSTAG on the domain changed back to HOSTEUROPE ?
Regards,
Phill
Sorry to vent, but — the upshot of this is: if you’re considering using StreamlineNet for using Gallery, don’t! They’re not particularly helpful. In fact, I haven’t had fantastic service from them all-round… my current hosts (OpenHosting) I believe will refund any money that is unused if you cancel before the time you’ve paid for. I’m not entirely sure about that though 😉 But not giving a refund is, I think, a tad unforgiving considering I think I have a legitimate grounds for dissatisfaction.
I sent another email back today spelling it out, and if the matter isn’t resolved then this little matter is going to be escalated. £80 is a lot for webspace that you can’t use…
Um, yes. All for now…
Well, I’ve finally got the new phillsacre.co.uk set up (as in, the campus crew section…). It took them a while to get the control panel sorted out, but now everything seems to be working except SSH!
I’m quite happy about that 🙂 Anyway. What have I been up to, the past few days? Well. On Friday night, we had a ‘murder mystery’ evening. I’d never done one before, but the premise is quite simple… you invite people along to play a ‘character’ (in our case, it was me, Alex, Phil P, Esther, Anne-Marie and Philippa). You have dinner, and converse in your character. There are several stages (you learn more about your character as you go on) and more things are revealed as you go on. It’s quite fun actually, I’d like to do one again!
Anyway. Saturday I didn’t really do much… we hired out a couple of videos but they weren’t that good so me and Alex ended up playing ‘Red Alert 2’! (a great game, I ordered a copy last week and it arrived on Saturday).
Sunday, I went out to Church in the morning … in the afternoon I went out for a walk and stuff … in the evening I went to St. John’s and did some DJing at an event they were having there. It went quite well!
Yesterday, I did some revision, and then Philippa came round in the evening and we (as in me, Philippa, Alex and Phil P) went to the Fish and Chip shop and then to the Rose and Crown, before heading back to watch some TV.
And that brings us to today… I haven’t really done a lot! I’ve just had a revision lecture. I’ve been working on a Java chat client / server type system (it’s coming along quite well!), and … yeah. I’ve been working on the new campus crew gallery type thing.
I think that just about brings us up to speed… all for now!
Well, phillsacre.co.uk seems to have transferred ok! So now it’s just a matter of getting the galleries and everything set up… heh.
To be honest, I’m not that enamoured with Windows either. But I’m definitely fed up with Internet Explorer, and the fact that it keeps getting Adware. Grrrr. Anyway, I’ve just ‘upgraded’ to Mozilla Firefox. I used Firebird before, but went back to Explorer (I’m not entirely sure why). Anyway, it seems to be pretty fast and everything, stuff looks OK… and hopefully it won’t get stupid Adware components installed!
That’s about all for now…
I’ve changed the IPSTAG on the phillsacre.co.uk domain, but it still seems to be up. That might be a good sign…
Anyway. I haven’t done much interesting at all… just revision, and Fusion last night. Fusion last night was pretty cool actually, I really enjoyed it! It was about prayer, and I found it quite helpful. It’s good just to talk about stuff with other people and then pray for it!
Um, I don’t have much else to say at the moment. I do apologise for the completely boring blog that I’ve been producing recently! I just haven’t been up to much…
I’ve just transferred the domain phillsacre.co.uk to a new host — basically, I’m going to set up a website where people can share photos and stuff. It’s unlimited space, so that’s good! Not paying too much either — about £40 a year including VAT. That’s pretty decent, considering that’s what I’m paying at the moment for domain and hosting for the Moose of Ming website!
Anyway, you might want to use the Moose of Ming address to this website for a while; otherwise you might not be able to access it!
I’ll update you with more details when I know (I’ve opted for Linux servers on the new hosts, which means I’ll have to learn PHP and so the hit counter will probably go down for a while…)
Well, I’ve just got my assignment mark back for CC371 Formal Methods. It’s the lowest mark I’ve ever got for an assignment, definitely since my second year but possibly since my first year! I’m not too happy about it, but I’ve looked it over and it was just a whole bunch of stupid mistakes that I’ve made. I’m not happy about the low mark, but it’s only worth 20% of the module, so there’s still a small chance that I’ll be able to get a decent mark in the exam. This is the problem with me, I’m always making stupid mistakes! I think it’s down to my sloppy and unmethodical thinking.
Ah well! I don’t have anything today, so I’m just trying to do some revision and failing miserably. Why oh why is there always so much else on when you want to revise??? There are just way too many distractions!
Right, back to (pretending to) revise whilst simultaneously working on a script for the house party… hmmm…
Well, the internet is now back up at home! I reset the router and ran the setup utility type thing again, and it seemed to work fine. Strange, how it just suddenly stopped working — unusual, but there you go.
I had my final year project presentation this morning. It went quite well, actually… I don’t think I’m the best speaker ever, but my supervisor and second assessor asked some good questions and I think I managed to talk quite well 🙂 So hopefully all that will be OK. I’m just going to do some revision for the rest of the day… there’s a media society (RED) night tonight, but I don’t think I’ll go as I’m feeling rather tired! Had two relatively early mornings in a row. Ah well, that’s just the way the cookie crumbles.
Anyway. Yesterday I went to Fordham as per usual in the morning, and then in the afternoon Philippa came round, we had some dinner and then went onto campus for the Matrix trilogy. Or at least, the second two of the Matrix trilogy. Or at least, in my case the second one and half of the third one (I was feeling quite tired and as my presentation was at 9:30 this morning I thought it best to go to bed relatively early…)
Right, I think that’s about it for now. See you later..
Have a read through of Core Servlets… I’m currently doing revision, and that’s one of the things that we have to read through. Not the most exciting thing in the world, by any stretch of the imagination… Still, I guess that’s just the way the cookie crumbles.
The internet STILL isn’t working (again, I’m on campus at the moment). I tried giving them a ring this morning, and it suggested turning the router off for at least three minutes before trying to reconnect. This didn’t work, but by the time I found out that it didn’t work I had to go for my radio show (which went well, incidentally). I’ve left the router off anyway, I doubt very much that it will make any difference whatsoever but you can always hope. I’ll give them a ring tomorrow…
Later, I’m going round to Philippa’s place, have some dinner there, and then we’re going to try and find the Beehive (or whatever it’s called, I can’t remember).
Anyway, I’d better get back to JSP. Laterz…