Life « Andy Gibson

Due to a change in circumstances I have had to move my blog and a number of other websites away from a VPS hosted with 1&1 to another provider. After asking around I was drawn to Amazon Web Services, specifically EC2.

The process of getting a Windows instance operational was painless and I had everything relocated inside of an hour, even the DNS took less than 5 minutes to update. Still got some more things to move across but so far I am quite happy. The amount of control available through the administration system is impressive and I am already having thoughts about how I could be using other parts of Amazon’s cloud services.

I have done some sums on the expected cost of the instance running this server and for what I am getting as well as the configuration options available, the price is extremely reasonable. If I wanted to go with a “micro” linux instance I could be running for a year without paying a penny but alas, the curse of being a .NET dev is needing IIS.

So, hello cloud, lets see if we can get along.

Just been looking through some of the graduation stuff from the other week and came across the class photo of those who also graduated as members of the BCS. This actually turned out quite well given that we were staring up at the sun while trying to look at the camera. Well done once more to the Applied Computing class of 2009, all the best in whatever you find yourself doing.

The full article can be found at: http://www.computing.dundee.ac.uk/newsandevents/newsdetail.asp?861

rockstarnorth Things have been changing in my life over the past 2 years and I felt it was time to close the last few doors to my teenage life as I move forward. After 6 years of further and higher education I have entered into my first full-time job with the great folks over at Rockstar North in Edinburgh. I am really looking forward to starting so I have my fingers crossed.

This prompted me to look back through my life and my online personality, reading old journal/blog posts and realising how much has changed in even such a short space of time. I used to use the internet handle or nickname “Syberius” which was entirely made up on the spot back during 2002, four years after I first found my way onto the internet. It has been used all over the place, on the PHP Code Gallery, my tag for UberNet and IGUK when I work with them, a domain name… the list goes on. An added irony is that in the new Star Wars film, there is a debate over whether or not Kirk says James ‘Tiberius’ or James ‘Syberius’ which I find amusing if a little strange that people obsess over these things.

So, while playing on the 360 this week between sorting out admin stuff and unpacking the flat (GTA 4 for anyone interested, wanted to complete it before I start work ) I felt that the Xbox Live Gamertag needed to change, that I needed something newer and fresher. It took 4 hours, 5 Simpsons episodes and the Simpsons Movie to do it, not to mention a string of names that were already taken but my new Gamertag has been created!

I give you… ForbiddenBacon

Syberius Rune Ok, so I changed my Gamertag, why write a post about it? Two reasons, if I am on your Xbox Live or GFW Live friends list then you may be wondering who ForbiddenBacon is, well now you know. Second so I can close this door in my own mind and say goodbye to the tag that served me well for 7 years.

So, I look forward to see you out there on Live, just hoping I get more time to play games once I start work but somehow I doubt it

University of Dundee

Hard to believe that my 4 years of student life at the University of Dundee are coming to an end today. In some respects this has been an uphill struggle, in others it has been a wonderful, enjoyable and rewarding experience. I have made mistakes a long the way, I have learned important lessons and I have worked hard to better myself not only as a software engineer, but as a person throughout this experience.

I was planning on collating a number of resources and tit-bits of information and then posting them to the internal mailing list at university, however I changed my mind and decided to write this post making what I have to say open to all. I hope it is of use to someone as the advice I provide here comes from real, solid, “Been there, done that, got the t-shirt” experience.

Not all of it may be relevant to you but it has helped me. Use the links below to view each page (I apologise as it is rather long).

[Update 06/07/09] – Need more proof of how social networking can ruin you if used carelessly? – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8136395.stm (see 5. Be social but be responsible)

Courtasy of a couple of power cuts earlier in the week which affected most of the City Centre and as far out as the University Campus I had to replace my trustworthy Netgear DG834G router. At first it only appeared to be the power adapter which had gone however yesterday the modem inside of the router failed and forced me to replace it.

Now networking products are a point of contention for me, there are certain brands I just refuse to buy on principle, the worst being Linksys. Despite being owned by Cisco Systems, I just keep reading about how bad their equipment is and so despite being cheaper, I still avoid them. Belkin and D-Link are supposedly allright butÂ when it comes to routers and networking I work on the same principle I do with hard drives; If a brand hasn’t failed on it’s own within it’s reasonable lifespan then why change?

So sticking with the devil I know I bought another Netgear and effectively the same one, the DG834GT which has 108mb wireless instead of 54mb and came with a USB wireless dongle, that was the only difference. Thanks to the handy configuration backup and restore facility on both routers I could copy the settings across instantly so no need to re-write 30 or so port forwarding rules.

Everything is back online and working quite happily again.

Andy Gibson

Code Monkey very simple man

Category Archives: Life

Hello Cloud!

Class of 2009 Graduation Picture

The End (And Beginning Of) A Gamertag

Software Students: 6 Tips From A Graduate

Power cuts and router failures