I recently kept getting this problem in Firefox:
If you use Firefox and have recently come across this error, fear not. This intention of this page is to resolve these errors once and for all!
There are a few key steps to resolving it:
If you are a blogger, and you use WordPress, you will undoubtedly heard of Jetpack. Jetpack for WordPress provides a ton of enhancements to any WordPress install. Among the goodies is something for the socialite in all of us: the ability to automatically “broadcast” our blog posts to social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+, via the Publicize feature.
All this free stuff of course comes with a “price” – having a user account on WordPress.com itself. But, if you are a blogger – or at the very least you read other people’s blogs and contribute comments – this is not exactly a hardship.
Setting up Jetpack is as easy as installing a WordPress plug-in. If you are familiar with the process, you will probably have already seen Jetpack in the Add Plugin page.
The Publicize feature is equally easy to set up: you simply click on the button corresponding to the social network you wish to link with, a page/pop-up opens to allow you to authenticate with that social network, and then you return to the Publicize page with a “Connected as…” confirmatory message.
The next step is to write a post and then publish it. Simple, huh? Well, not quite.
Due to the different ways social networks publish posts, your “write once, publish many” WordPress post may need a little tweaking before it looks as good as possible.
Links:
plus.google.com/+SteveDowe/posts/5eSkkPVLAfb
twitter.com/doweio/status/629950053499584512
Finding the most effective way to post requires more testing. My main aim was to find a way in which one post can look great on the three main social platforms (Google+, Twitter and Facebook – not that I care too much about the latter).
[ This is a legacy-published post, originally written but unpublished on 13 August 2015. Some details may not longer apply to recent software releases. ]
So, if Google+ disappears, where am I going to share all my "Google+ is a ghost town" myths..?
Maybe one for +Philosoraptor ..
Beware, that not all Cat5e is the same!
If you look closely below, you’ll see that the lower, grey cable is type 568A, whereas the upper, black cable is568B. Ethernet cables come as UTP or STP (Unshielded or Shielded Twisted Pair), meaning that each pair of conductors (wires) inside the outer sheathing are twisted together. This helps cancel noise and improve transmission.
The difference between A and B is in the way these twisted pairs are paired up. If your router has N-Way negotiation on its network connections, it should be able to work around using the two different types of cable. But on my router, with N-Way negotiation, this didn’t appear to be the case.
Testing this using speedtest.net with cable type A, I got a paltry 5Mb/s down and 4Mb/s up. Over wireless, I got 20Mb/s down and 17Mb/up. It turned out that my router can’t handle type A cables very well. Using a type B, I got 44Mb/s down and 18Mb/s up. More like it!
So the next time your network is running slowly, check your cabling. Even if it’s a well-known brand (my type Acable is a Belkin Cat5e), it may be causing a drop in performance which is easily, and cheaply, corrected.
H/t +Bob Beattie
#networking #speedtest #cat5e
Show less
Less is more, as the saying goes.
While I love using Fedora in my daily work, sometimes when I want to relax I find using an alternative distribution is good therapy. Fedora is fabulous with its GNOME Shell finery, but occasionally I hanker for something simpler and more lightweight. It’s also good to see how the other half lives 🙂
So, I decided to put Debian on my netbook. With no GUI. Everything I do on it must be by the command line, including web research. Compared to Fedora, Debian‘s system requirements are practically non-existent, which is especially good if you want your system to still run nice and quick.
I visited the Debian Mirror List and grabbed a NetInst CD image.
Therefore, my software changes are:
$ sudo aptitude remove exim4 exim4-base exim4-config exim4-daemon-light vi mutt
$ sudo aptitude install emacs w3m-el sendmail
$ sudo aptitude install xserver-xorg-video-intel
You’re on to a winner here, because Debian Squeeze is already set up for Kernel Mode Setting. In other words, as soon as your system starts booting up, the video drivers get loaded and the optimal video mode is enabled (or, at least, that’s the intention).
Whether or not it’s worth specifying screenmode in grub is open for debate. FWIW, I put this in /etc/default/grub:
GRUB_GFXMODE=1024x600
GRUB_GFXPAYLOAD=1024x600x16
… And in /etc/grub.d/40_custom:
set gfxpayload=1024x600x16
Then, I simply updated grub with the new config:
$ sudo update-grub
Please note that this step relates to my Intel-based netbook. Yours may vary.
$ sudo aptitude install wireless-tools iw wpasupplicant autofs nfs-common
** PLEASE NOTE: this step assumes your wireless network device doesn’t require firmware or that you already have the firmware installed in /lib/firmware. **
Once done, you need to uncomment the /net line in /etc/auto.master and restart autofs:
$ service restart autofs
If you want to refer to server by hostname and are not running a DNS server, add the hostname to /etc/hosts (somewhere below the localhost lines):
111.222.333.444 myserver.mydomain.com myserver
At this point, assuming all went well, you can cd to /net/
So, this takes care of a basic local network configuration, but we still need to actually get connected to it on wifi. So, there is, in my /etc/network/interfaces:
# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
# The primary network interface
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
# Wireless
auto wlan0
iface wlan_mynet inet dhcp
wpa_ssid my-network-ssid
wpa-psk my-network-key
Once done, save this file and change the permissions for extra security:
$ sudo chmod 0600 /etc/network/interfaces
– and connect up, like this:
$ sudo ifup wlan0=wlan_mynet
Voila! With luck, maybe a little patience, and possibly an extra step or two (which you can hopefully figure out, if needed) these are the key set up steps which will make your netbook/laptop nice and lean, and perhaps more fun to play with.
Next time, I’ll go through a few tools I use for ‘net stuff.
Strong headline maybe, but if you’re not on Google+ then you might consider your stance after reading this.
Jeri Ryan, best known as borg escapee “Seven of Nine” in Star Trek:Voyager, hosted a Hangout today on Google+, in celebration of having over 1 million fans subscribing to her feed.
 |
| Someone lucky enough to participate in Jeri Ryan’s hangout! |
There was a lot of buzz around it, with hundreds of comments flying around under the Hangout post, updating in real time. It was pretty hard to get a video stream from Google, such were the number of simultaneous subscriptions.
In many ways, this reminded me of the excitement of the early internet, where we learned about things such as bandwidth… The kids today, they have everything!
Still, the excitement wasn’t only in the new broadcast/interaction (intercast?!) method through G+ hangouts, it was the realisation that, should they choose, celebs can now use a nice, safe way of engaging with their fan base. Directly. Over time, this may disarm broadcast controllers and empower people, be they celebrities or fans, into collaboration through constructive, enriching dialogue.
Wil Wheaton, self-confessed geek and well-known actor likewise, was notably impressed with hangouts. It was refreshing to see people observing great netiquette while chatting with Jeri. How much more enjoyable, this, than suffering typically mundane updates as you might in another social networking system.
As Google measures and expands upon functionality in G+, I hope they’ll see fit to bring more interactive tools to the table. I get the feeling that hangouts are just the start of the next revolution. As Android gathers increasing momentum and Google+ apps appear on both major mobile platforms, we could see real-time social networking emerge as the number one communication method.
People, known and unknown to each other, will communicate, partly in mimicry, utilising all tools at their disposal. And, with open source platforms gathering adoption, they will inevitably add both their biological and technological distinctiveness to our own.
Resistance, my friends, is futile.
UPDATE – here’s the recording:
Ok, so I check my email first thing on Wed 16 Feb to find a message from a close friend.
“What’s that email all about then mate?”, he asks. “No idea – which email?” I reply.
Turns out, it was this email (I have removed private email addresses, etc):
 | |||
| Join me on Ecademy
|  7 day FREE Trial | ||
| ps. Join today and receive a free trial PowerNetworker subscription> This email was sent to To avoid receiving these emails in the future go to http://www.ecademy.com/blockinvites.php?e= The Ecademy Limited. Registered in England and Wales. Company Registration:3651083 VAT:718037736 | |||
So, from a contact list I’d imported probably 2 years ago, since which I’d downgraded from a PowerNetworker to a Free member, suddenly is sent a whole load of invites to people I’ve not spoken to. This is not good.
Now, before the critics chime in, yes I know that the terms of importing the contact list are that ecademy will send out invites on my behalf. This is not an issue – I agreed to that…2+ years ago. A lot changes in that time.
Miffed as I was that this had happened, I considered blogging about it and finally let it lie … until the same message was again dispatched, early this morning (24 Feb), to the 180-odd contacts who had not yet responded or read their email. This, in my book, is tantamount to spamming. “Oh, you didn’t buy my product? Here, try again…”. Ad infinitum. This, a happy member does not make (especially since finding out that a customer of mine has received 3!).
So, sorry to all the contacts past and present who have endured these messages. At least I was able to obtain the list of contact data back out of ecademy so that I could message everyone separately and invite them personally to LinkedIn.
Let me just say, however, that despite this I have otherwise been happy using ecademy. Support has been good and the web site is useful in connecting people. But this method of increasing memberships is a little too covert for my liking, and the time is coming for one or more new platforms in business/social networking, with open, user-controlled features and content.
In the meantime, I await with interest, the outcome of my correspondance with ecademy’s support team:
Sent 24 Feb 2011
Hello,
I wish to close my account.
Can you also promise that the details of people who are in my contact list, but who are not members of ecademy, will be removed from your database?
I look forward to hearing from you.
Many thanks,
Steve
Update – 24 Deb 2011
Well, an automaton can do that for me too! I quote:
Delete Your Account
Deleting an account is a major step. Once the account has been deleted, you will not be able to re-join using the same email address. All your records, contacts, posts, comments and messages will also be deleted. Deleted records cannot be recovered.
This process is irreversible.
Are you absolutely sure you want to do this?
As an alternative, Click on ‘No. Just hide my profile’ to hide your profile and turn off all email messages, leaving your account intact.
If you definitely want to be permanently removed from Ecademy, type in your password, check the confirmation box and choose the ‘Yes. Please delete my account’ button below.
this week (wk 8)
work
life
misc
last week (wk 7)
work
life
misc
I recently came across this slightly bizarre issue. I was trying to mount a NFS share from one server to another server, using very loose permissions (I was basically sharing a DVD to a machine which had no DVD-ROM drive).
So, what was happening? Well, basically nothing. On the NFS server (the machine with the DVD exported) I ran tcp dump to see what traffic was being received (the server was IP 192.168.10.200):
No output was displayed when I was trying to mount the share on the client. None at all. Well, almost none. The one bit of output that got me wondering was a broadcast packet which was received from the client.
10:14:45.651572 IP 192.168.10.1 > 192.168.10.255 arp who has 192.168.10.201 tell 192.168.10.1
The IP address 192.168.10.201 was a typo made by me the day before. I’d meant to type in .200 in my mount string. My incorrect mount command thus read:
# mount -t nfs 192.168.10.201:/mnt/share /mnt/dvd
It seemed strange that an incorrect mount command that I’d typed in yesterday (and then hit CTRL-C to)might still be working in the background.
Back to the client, I realised that perhaps the mount command worked in a queue/serial-like way. Therefore, each mount command would have to complete – either successfully or not, so long as it finally returned – before the next one was attempted. Checking out this theory, I investigated local processes:
Sure enough, there were lots of mount entries pointing to the wrong IP address. These were all my attempts to mount a non-existing server’s share to a local directory. Dumb mistake, eh. Still, CTRL-C didn’t cancel the mount request, which continued to run in the background.
The easiest solution was to reboot the server, but in situations where that’s not practical, killing the rogue processes should suffice.
3 Nov 2009
I have recently been conducting a little research into hosting companies/ISPs/data centres to understand more about their speed.
One hosting provider in the UK, UKFast, has recently been marketing the advantages of speed as a prime factor. Consequently, they have allegedly invested 25% of their profits year on year into improving their internet connectivity while at the same time ensuring that they never exceed [by that I infer “sell more than”] 40% of total bandwidth available*. Fair play – we all like stuff to be faster. I was also pointed to a 3rd party web site who provide speed measuring of UK-based web hosting providers – WebCop.
* I was told this by a UKFast sales representative.
I was interested by WebCop’s claims, namely that by distributing their testing servers across UK-based hosting centres, they eliminate bias of one or another datacentre and concentrate instead of the actual, average throughput delivered by them. It’s a fair claim, but there could be issues. Today, I sent them this message:
Hi,
I’m interested by your web hosting speed statistics, for two main reasons.
Firstly, there isn’t much info on your site about how you conduct tests – e.g. which web sites are used to measure the hosting companies relative speed. This concerns me, as hosting companies can easily make the most prominent web sites the fastest, putting them on the front line of the data centre, while allocating less bandwidth to smaller web sites.
Secondly, you don’t mention from where you test each hosting company’s sites/servers. So, for example, you could be testing a London-based server using servers in Manchester and Leeds, but the contention in one direction may be significantly higher than in the other direction. Therefore, you could have skewed results. In addition to this, if one hosting provider/ISP has a faster network, how can you prove this by testing on their competitors’ slower networks?
I’m looking forward to hearing back from them. Currently UKFast appears to have leapt ahead in terms of the speed ratings, according to WebCop.
Whois WebCop?
Good question. I ran a #whois on webcop.co.uk and found that the domain is registered by a company in the Netherlands who has a POBox address in Gibraltar! Because whois output is subject to Nominet copyright, I cannot redistribute it here. But if you want to see it, try www.123-reg.co.uk.
I have tried to dig a little deeper; the web is very unrevealing of a company that seemingly wants to stay hidden. I did find out that UKFast’s sister brand, GraphiteRack.com, registered their domain name through ENom, the same registrar that WebCop used, but nothing more.
The public-facing WebCop server seems to be hosted by Tagadab.com, a Clara.net Group company. Interesting that a company (WebCop) with testing servers distributed across the UK, use a London-based ISP with only 6 IP addresses allocated from IANA and some very “comptetitive” prices. Perhaps they want to keep their web traffic well away from testing servers…
Stay tuned…
5 Nov 2009
Not heard anything from WebCop yet…
9 Nov 2009
I got a reply from WebCop:
Our testing servers are located on many different networks and effort has been taken to ensure that they are also geographically evenly located throughout the country. This means that if we test a server located in London it will be tested from all over the country and the average result given. This allows us to display results that are averaged not only across different provider’s networks but also across different geographical locations.
As for your first point, we are currently addressing this and looking to find the best way to ensure that providers don’t cheat in the same way we know they do for Webperf testing. Currently for the larger providers we test a server located in the standard customer space and not their main website, and for smaller providers we test their company website server. We are looking for a way to make this fairer and are working with some of the larger providers to do this.
On the surface this is a fair strategy. However, it’s very, very easy for a data centre to prioritise traffic to/from a particular machine. My feeling is that this could be happening already although, of course, I can prove nothing.
My gut instinct tells me that if the majority of datacentres in the UK felt they could increase sales by claiming the fastest network connectivity, they would.
However, every UK datacentre (apart from one) seems to hover around the same speed of connectivity, which suggests that either the system of tests is not respected amongst the datacentre community (in other words, it isn’t perceived as being particularly accurate), or the service provided by one is much faster than the bigger ISPs with which it peers… which seems rather unlikely.
I respect the WebCop team for this endeavour, but strongly feel that until the testing methodology is properly published for the networking and datacentre community, there can be little value in its findings.
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