Recent posts have been alittle dry and techie recently so here is something a bit more creative, a new Spike Jonze Adidas Ad ad - very beautiful it is too.

http://www.boardsmag.com/screeningroom/commercials/1586/

Just been updating my DNS for timc3.com as I ran a health check from DNS report a tool that I wish I knew about ages ago as it checks many things to do with the domain, the output looks like this and although there are still a couple of warnings this is down to my mail provider and not me!

There are other tools that are useful over at DNS Stuff that are as useful as any over at SamSpade and would help in tracking down a problem.

I also took the opportunity to put in an SPF (Sender Policy Framework) record into the domain, this is the first one that I have done and I went straight ahead using the tools at http://spf.pobox.com/ to do this. It seem straightforward but the test will come by seeing if I get any problems with my mail in the next few days!

SPF helps to confirm the identity of a mail sender by listing all the mail exchanges and hosts allowed to send an email for a domain. Hopefully it will cut down on spam before I get too much as I am reasonably lucky so far. I already use auth SMTP as my provider uses this (yes for this domain I am not hosting my own mail servers - it costs so little and I couldn’t be bothered to keep patching sendmail though as other posts have concluded I am now rather taken by the debian default of exim.

The SPF records can also be certified, so if you send out large volumes of email then this can help with the authenticity of your messaging. To explain it in one minute I have lifted this from the spf site:

Domains use public records (DNS) to direct requests for different services (web, email, etc.) to the machines that perform those services. All domains already publish email (MX) records to tell the world what machines receive mail for the domain.

SPF works by domains publishing “reverse MX” records to tell the world what machines send mail from the domain. When receiving a message from a domain, the recipient can check those records to make sure mail is coming from where it should be coming from.

With SPF, those “reverse MX” records are easy to publish: one line in DNS is all it takes.

There is more interesting information on SPF in the FAQ at http://spf.pobox.com/faq.html .

After installing GDLib to version 2 I have now been able to get thumbnails on share.timc3.com, which makes it much easier to browse to.

Going to integrate the sites abit more in the future when I get the chance.

If you like the browser be sure to get it at: http://editkid.com/EUWDPCpix/

You might have noticed that the server has been abit up and down of late, well thats because I have been upgrading Apache and PHP to the latest versions. At the same time I thought I would take advantage and upgrade GDlib to the latest version.

And what a little nightmare that is, but I finally managed it. I –prefix everything to /usr and used this as my configuration:

./configure --prefix=/usr --with-PNG=/usr --with-freetype=/usr/lib --with-jpeg=/usr/lib --with-xpm=/usr

Then when I was configuring PHP, I used the following:

./configure --with-mysql=/usr --with-apxs=/www/bin/apxs --with-IMAP=/usr/local/imap-2002e --with-XML --with-gd --with-jpeg-dir=/usr --with-zlib-dir=/usr --with-freetype-dir=/usr --with-PNG-dir=/usr

If you get stuck then this ONLamp tutorial might help you: http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/php/2003/03/27/php_gd.html

Why can I never seem to find a download of GDLib when I need one?

Well I am not sure if this is the ultimate place to get it but, it seems like a good start and the latest version as I write this is 2.0.33, and I am pleased to say that they have got Gif support back in since version 2.0.28.

http://www.boutell.com/gd/

Looks like there are some other interesting resources in there. Now hopefully, with an upgraded PHP on the server I can run http://www.editkid.com/ EUWDPCpix properly.

Of course to use this it helps to have the following installed:

Linux zlibc Compressing File-I/O Library
PNG Libraries
Portable JPEG Libraries
Freetype portable font engine
XPM pixmaps lib

Had to reinstall this the other day due to a problem on the server, so in the end I installed a fresh copy of Windows 2003 server, implemented Terminal Services in the server configuration menu (can also be done from add/remove windows components) and pointed the licensing to the licensing server running on our Active Directory Domain cController. At this point, its good to do the windows update and get on with something else as Microsoft tries to patch itself in to semi-security!

There is a nice little download that will install the remote desktop web connection for Windows 2003, enabling users to browse to the box using Internet Explorer and use an ActiveX component to bring up an almost fully feature terminal services session. It requires IIS (what doesn’t!) to run, but again this is very trival to install. If you are installing IIS at the same time then it is one of the configuration options for IIS6, just install it at that point.

There are somethings that Microsoft do well (SQL server 2000 being another) and this is one of them.

Good news for those in the UK, Skype and Broadreach are teaming up for wireless free VOIP calls in the UK where ever the Broad Reach ReadytoTalk service is available.

I have been testing out Skype on a HP iPaq 3715, and apart from not finding out where the microphone and speakers are it works really well.

This will open the application of using this even further as it is already possible to phone outside lines through the skype out service.

A list of locations where it works are available here. And although its not the whole country being covered it is better than nothing and I am sure more will be added soon.

I must admit my usage of Skype is limited often to outside calls, as I often use MSN Messenger to communicate with friends, but most don’t have Skype enabled or they don’t have a headset or microphone and speakers on their PCs but I hope that will change in the future.

Nice little resource on Windows Scripting for Logons:

http://www.rlmueller.net/LogonScriptFAQ.htm

There is a new update to the best SSH tools on Windows, Putty, available to download now. This fixes a security hole and if you need a SSH client or you are already using it you are advised to upgrade.
Download here:
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html
Also glad to hear they are now using subversion for version control now.

I have recently been using Skype around the house, to make calls to friends on mobiles in the UK, to offices in the US and the only problems I got was trying to use it to call Norway, but I am sure this will get resolved at some point in time. I have a cheap headset bought from Ebuyer which is plugged into the motherboards built in sound card, leaving my other high quality cards plugged in for other duties.
It has gone well so I thought that I would try it out on a Pocket Pc, the 3715 that I have blogged about earlier, and I must say that it works like a charm. Its working over a WiFi connection, and is plenty clean enough. If only there was Wireless everywhere in London and I would be happy.

If you care to you can also get hold of me using skype: