A Blog from Another World

In my last post I talked about how I was struggling with assignments and had difficulty accessing the JANET UK Univesrsity Roaming Service. I am glad to say that I have now finished the assignment I was struggling with and that I have resolved the issues I was having with Roaming.

I think the main issue with the Assignment – which was to write a report about a Engineer/Technologist who had made a significant impact on society, was that I had tried to go too deep. No word limit was specified and although pointers were specified about the sort of information required I didn’t really know how much detail to write about each bit.

Anyway, its all over now and I just have to get an assignment done for a module called “Product Realisation” which is about how the electronics industry actually works. I have 2 circuit diagrams and I have to copy them into a SPICE simulation package called Multisim, then do the PCB layout in Ultiboard (which is part of the same package as Multisim).

This is a fairly easy task, but unfortunately Multisim/Ultiboard are not available off campus due to licensing restrictions and the licenses are a bit difficult to bypass. But I have until 17th December to do that, so I expect it will be OK in the end. Incidentally Multisim is a very bad package and my tutor says he was once given a spec for a military project which specifically said “DO NOT USE MULTISIM!”

The issue with the Roaming Service was that I had my wireless driver set to verify the certificate provided, clearly something dodgy is going on at Bolton, because there instructions specifically say to turn off certificate verification! Again this is another example of how bad a University it is and how it has become too big for its boots! Never enough computers available for use, very small library and a general penny pinching attitude – we’ll try and get as many students on a course as we can, never mind if its booked for a room where there aren’t enough computers or we don’t have enough licenses for the software they are using!

I will try to decide in a few months time what to do next, weather to stick around or take my credits and go somewhere else…

So, I guess we all (Students) have this problem, assignment x is due on date y, Time is now y-4 and it isn’t done! Like I said back in “Hello from Newcastle“, these things are difficult for me.

I think that the latest batch of undergradates are probably members of the ADD generation – not that they have ADD, but more that life has too many distractions. Facebook, Myspace, IM, email, texts… we can now access these services anywhere at any time. Nearly everyone has a laptop or some kind of computer of their own and the temptation to go off and chat/social network is probably greatest when we are bored, but know whe have stuff to do: Procrastination. Workplaces have to block these sites because people would get no work done otherwise (not to mention the possibility of litigation).

Now I know I cannot blame anyone for this, no-one held a gun to my head and said “join Facebook” but sometimes it seems that way! I guess in these modern times our lives are bankrupt to the point where we just have to know what everyone else is doing to be happy!

Tonight I had a plan, thanks to agreements between North West Universities I am able to go to any University and use their library to study. I am also able (theoretically) to use Internet facilities of  any University in the UK that participates in the Eduroam Service. I made this choice because home is too distracting and Bolton has a very poor library with little space to study and never enough computers.

So I went to Lancaster University, because I know that there is no requirement there to show ID to get in, so no arguments with jobsworth security guards. I did do some work, approxmately 300 words about Alan Turing for an assignment due Friday, but sadly Eduroam failed. I could not logon to the system and I don’t know if this is the fault of Bolton or Lancaster, but according to JAnet their systems are supposedly up to scratch. I have emailed Bolton to ask what’s up.

Possibly this wasn’t the best of ideas, an hour’s travelling time or so each way to do 300 words, but I did do something and I suppose I should think about that rather than thinking “I can’t do this, there is no point in me remaining at University”.

I have recently moved to a new virtual server hosting provider, Linode have hosting centres in 4 locations in the US and allow you to pick which centre you would like your server in. They have a great web user interface and are cheaper than my previous provider, Slicehost. So now I am paying about half what I was for hosting. I have also got away with using a lot less memory for my virtual server, by implementing some different ways of getting around spam.

Realtime DNS Block Lists (DBL)

DBL’s store a list of known IP addresses which should not be trusted when receving mail, either they are IP’s assigned to home machines (DSL/Cable clients) or known spammers caught out by traps. There are a few DBL’s, but until now I have only been using one – Spamhaus, but sadly this doesn’t catch most spammers. I have now been through my configuration and included a few more DBL’s which are listed below. The advantage of this is that looking up an IP in a DBL is not processor or RAM intensive and does not require an external program – like Spamassasin. I have also implemented a few features in postfix which allow the looking up of hosts who try to exchange mail with my server, if the hostname they are giving doesn’t match their actual hostname or they have no A record or MX record for the domain they are using, postfix will end the connection.

smtpd_recipient_restrictions =
permit_mynetworks,
permit_sasl_authenticated,
reject_unauth_destination,
reject_invalid_hostname,
reject_non_fqdn_hostname,
reject_unauth_pipelining,
reject_non_fqdn_sender,
reject_non_fqdn_recipient,
reject_unknown_sender_domain,
reject_unknown_recipient_domain,
reject_rbl_client dnsbl.sorbs.net,
reject_rbl_client zen.spamhaus.org,
reject_rbl_client b.barracudacentral.org,
#reject_rbl_client t1.dnsbl.net.au,
reject_rbl_client dnsbl.njabl.org,
reject_rbl_client dnsbl.ahbl.org,
permit_mx_backup

It is very important that “permit_mx_backup” goes at the end, because I am finding that spammers will take advantage of backup MX servers to get their spam accepted in some way, which then causes a lot of dead return to sender messages in your queue later.

With the “reject_rbl_client” lines I have in this config, I don’t have to use Spamassasin or other spam anaylsis programs at presnt, the few spams I am getting are minimal and may have been things I accidentially signed up to in the past! t1.dnsbl.net.au was blocking Google Mail last night, which is why I have blocked it. barracudacentral.org requires that you sign up to use their service first.

Moving MySQL

I have to admit that I am no programmer; Systems Administration, Network Administration and troubleshooting come fairly easily to me, but programming has always passed me by. I have often just blindly copied something someone else has done to get by and I remember when I was young spending hours typing in source code from magazines to see try out programs and stuff!

So when it comes to SQL people say “well its not that hard, its mostly english!” but you have to remember the order things go in and weather a line needs a ; at the end, etc… I have tried to get into PHP and stuff, but I just get really bored and give up. I have a load of programming books on C and PHP if anyone is interested!

I use some SQL on my server – WordPress, which makes this blog work uses MySQL… but to keep it going I had to move it from my old server to my new one.

I followed the usual instructions, to backup your databases use:

mysqldump -u root -p --all-databases > database_backup.sql

And then to restore:

mysql -u root -p < database_backup.sql

Then presto and everything is back, but is it working? Well it might be a good idea to try:

/etc/init.d/mysql restart

Because when you import your old databases, you overwrite the passwords for the users that are stored in them. In the file /etc/mysql/debian.cnf there are settings for a user called debian-sys-maint which is setup when you install MySQL. A password is generated for this user and then stored in the file, when you import all databases you overwrite the users database which then overwites this password, causing debian-sys-maint to be unable to access the database and a failure when you try to start MySQL, although the daemon is running.

phpMyAdmin is your friend here, because you need no knowledge of SQL commands to go in and change the password for a user, therefore fixing this nasty problem! Once you’ve done that you can then use this command to stop MySQL (as /etc/init.d/mysql stop won’t work):

kill | cat `/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid`

Then go ahead and start MySQL as normal:

/etc/init.d/mysql start

Uninterruptible Power Supplies and their lack of Uninterruptible-ness

An Uninterruptible Power Supply or UPS is a big battery that will keep your computer running if the power goes off, it will also protect it from surges and incidents when the power dips to what it should be. They are very useful for when you need to move things around or if you have electricity that you have to pay for in advanced (and will therefore be switched off automatically if you have no credit).

I have had small UPS’s for a few years which are about enough to keep an average desktop PC going for about 10 mins if the power fails. However, I have recently had to start dealing with them at work, since we have moved away from Co-located hosting to hosting our servers at our office. When you are running UPS’s commerically, the need for power cannot be overstated – you need things to be as overkill as possible! Most UPS’s (anything designed for keeping more than just one PC going) will have overload detection and if the UPS detects an overload, it will start to shut itself down – because if the power were to be lost, the batteries could not take the load and the servers connected would not be able to shutdown gracefully.

However this means that mains power is lost to these connected servers and hence zap – no power… Well, in our case it means a 50% reduction in power as the servers have 2 PSU’s each which are redunant. However, it is not so easy to build redundancy into a network, and taking out the UPS that the network switches are connected to will take down the servers as they can’t talk to the outside world… resulting in my mobile phone ringing and someone giving me grief that they can’t do any work!

Teamed Network Cards are network cards that can run in pairs (or more) providing greater throughput or redundancy if they are connected to different switches (in different UPS’s!) however my employer apparently has little interest int he redundancy aspect of this and uses teaming only for throughput… why have 1Gb/s when you can have 2Gb/s?!

After this happening twice today, I had to bypass the UPS’s entirely as they were getting less reliable than the service from the electricity provider!

Whilst I like my job, I hate the fact that my employer prefers to buy his parts on eBay and expects great performance from a limited budget!

Well, I think that is all for tonight… until next time (in the imortal words of Sara Cox) – “rave safe kids, rave safe!”

So I think I have finally figured it all out; no, not the answer to the great question about life, the universe and everything, that would be 42! What I have I finally realised is why I have so much potential (or at least people keep telling me that I do) but fail to use any of it.

About three weeks ago I re-enrolled on 2 modules that I failed 2 years ago when I took the Foundation Year in Technology the first time. So I am back to being a student at the University of Plymouth; the computers may have gotten faster, but they broke the Intranet system!

Hurray for me; so why so glum, you ask?!

When I was a kid, I had trouble learning maths, tables would never stick in my head, I would always use a calculator when I could. You’re probably saying “but most kids do that!”. Well giving into the calculator is fine when you’re just adding up a few numbers, but when you are trying to factorise quadratic equations or solve simultaneous equations, you kinda wish you hadn’t given so easily.

Maths is the foundation of the Universe, it is also the foundation of electronics, communications and every form of engineering. Everything I want to do over the next 5 years relies on maths. So the fact that I can’t do maths at around high school level is a problem.

I said this was about all of my problems not just maths, right? Well I give in too easily, so therefore I never exercise my brain enough to keep it going. So my brain atrophies and I get more frustrated that I can’t learn new stuff and get past this foundation year.

You know what the biggest problem of all is? Doctor’s don’t believe me, apparently I do not have ADD and all of my problems can be explained by Asperger’s. Maybe I just didn’t explain myself properly or perhaps I come across as someone who might abuse stimulant drugs. I don’t know, but my suspicion is that Adult ADD is just too controversial for the British National Health Service (certainly at a local level here in Plymouth) and so I will never get referred to someone who actually knows what they are talking about – something I have been asking for for the last two years, ever since my trip to Newcastle.

Perhaps the worst thing is that I can’t put the required effort into CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) because I give up and think its a load of BS! So I can’t cure myself of my wanting a silver bullet for the ADD or the giving up on everything.

So I am going to try again to keep going and not loose hope in my course and myself, but its hard. When I was younger I didn’t give in so easily, but now I guess I give in before I have really tried most things.

Perhaps getting this out there will give me some hope, but I doubt it…

…the room won’t stop spinning! Someone help me.

That was 2am, now its nearly 6am I have slept for a couple of hours and can’t get back to sleep!

I was out for a quiet drink with my housemates and then bumped into a couple of people from my course at Uni (which was nearly 2 years ago now!). The upshot of it was that I got brought lots of beer and then a shot of tequila, complete with salt and lemons!

They suggested I go back to University and try to do the course I originally wanted to do – computer systems and networks. Whilst I know I have the brain to do the work, I have this alter ego, lets call him Mr ADHD, that likes to get in the way of doing that work. My original plan was to try and get treatment for that and THEN go back to University. Well, two years after being suicidal because I couldn’t get the work I knew I could do done, I’m STILL waiting for some kind of treatment for that, although I have seen 2 shrinks now!

So, what do you think? Continue the search for mindless annoying jobs or go back to Uni?

Written on the train and then posted later…

So, you find me on a train from Plymouth to London (“The Mayflower”), but for a change this isn’t a random trip to escape the demons in my head! Maybe I will finally see them in Technicolor because I am going for an MRI scan.

I have volunteered to take part in some autism research at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London. I am not sure of the full details of what they are looking for, but I know that it involves an MRI scan – which will be at 8:30pm tonight.

Anyway, my point for this blog is to discuss the problems I am having right now. Yesterday my folks were in town and we went to see a mental health social worker who I saw previously back in January. This all relates back to my previous incidents in Newcastle, Brussels and of course New York.

Now, if you were at the point of suicide and had been rescued from a disused railway viaduct by the Police, then admitted to psychiatrists, mental health nurses and your GP that you felt suicidal, you wouldn’t think that it would take 4 months before you actually got someone assigned to you from the mental health service; You wouldn’t expect to still be waiting to see a psychiatrist (other than an emergency assessment at a Police station), would you?

But this is the reality I am facing in Plymouth, which is one of the poorest wards in England. Clearly no-one in a position of power cares about human life; otherwise I would have gotten some help by now, right?

So, subject to approval, the social worker will soon be seeing me on a regular basis. But this doesn’t really help me with the problems I had back in November. Things have only gotten worse since, I took my trip to see Gina in New York after I missed a coursework and a test in Maths at University, I was in a position where I just concentrate and didn’t get the work done on time. The coursework was essentially to do the sample version of the test, since I knew I just couldn’t get what I needed to know into my head for the coursework, I really didn’t think I had much chance with the test. Whilst I was in NY I missed another deadline for a very easy (albeit tedious) coursework in computing, the lecturer wrote to me telling me that she was ‘disappointed’ since I had gotten such high scores in previous assignments and tests.

So, I am told that the ball is in my court now. I have two more assignments with deadlines looming, more maths and also statistics, if I can get these in (before the end of the week) then I might be able to pass those modules. I am not so hopeful, the maths assignment involves writing a Visual Basic program to rotate a cube around its x, y and z axis (using matrices) and the stats assignment covers work that I missed while I was in NY and I haven’t been to many lectures since I came back.

I probably can’t pass electronics since the deadline for most of this terms work was last week, although I got 74% in my work from last term. I haven’t done any work for my project, other than write a proposal, although that doesn’t have to be in until May. There is one last computing assignment (write 3 pages of HTML on a computing related subject!), due April 27th.

I need 120 credits to pass this year, if I get between 60-120 credits I will have to do referral work over the summer and if I get less than 60 credits I will have to repeat the year. Unfortunately maths is worth 40 credits, statistics, electronics & computing 20 credits each and the project is worth 10 credits. I don’t think I can pass.

So, what’s this about the habit of a lifetime? Well ever since I left high school in 1996 I haven’t managed to pass any course that I have signed up to and I have taken quite a few. Admittedly, it wasn’t all my fault; I found out a few months into one course that I had Asperger’s Syndrome and was sent off to a residential college for instance.

So after 10 years of messing up courses and maybe 12 years of running off when things got too tough I am not sure I can ever change my habits. Don’t get me wrong, I really do want to do this degree, I just don’t know how I can fix all my issues.
Take 24hrs in my life for example: yesterday, after seeing the social worker, my university tutor and a disability advisor at university, I did think I could try and do the maths and stats assignments, but then after my folks went home I laid down for a nap and got up 4hrs later. I didn’t do any work apart from briefly looking up matrices in a maths textbook (then thinking ‘shit how will I use this to make a cube move’), I stayed up late, watched a DVD and chatted to Gina on the phone for an hour.

Before I took that nap I had agreed to meet up with some course mates to catch-up with stats, which would have happened this morning but I stayed in bed until 1pm and then had to rush around to get my stuff together for this London trip. I didn’t bring any work with me.

So you see, its futile if I can’t keep the promises I made to myself for 24hrs, what hope do I have of keeping them for the next 2 months to get this year finished, or even the next 4 years to get my degree?

If anything, going to New York messed things up even more. When I didn’t have to focus on maths, stats, electronics and computing, I found that I wasn’t too bad at looking after kids, making sure folks were up to go to school and cleaning other peoples houses! Heck, I even got to walk around 127 acres of farmland and shoot a 30-30 Winchester rifle (I missed the target though!).

But I am kidding myself if I thing I can live that life. The American government would never let me live and work in the US. I have no degree, no hotshot job and most importantly (given I have diabetes and pancreatic insufficiency) no medical insurance.

So, I guess I all I can do is try and wait. Try to do my best at University and wait and see if any Psychiatrist is interested treating my ADHD.

Meanwhile the Voyage of the Mayflower continues. See you in London!

So, after all that hassle of last term I am proud to announce the following results:

TECH029: Introduction to Computer Systems

Initial Assignment on Computer Systems/Binary:
84%

ICT & Society Group Assignment:
Presentation: 54.5%
Writeup: 48.5%

Overall module score:
63.78%

TECH028: Introduction to Computer Programming and Applications
Visual Basic Section:
In Class Test 1: 78%

End of Module Test: 72%

Programming Assignment: 85%