Hosting Changes

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Hopefully no one’s noticed that I’ve moved my websites (including this one) to a new hosting provider (well, new for this site, but not new to me in general).  When I first decided to move away from shared hosting at Gradwell, I wanted to find a VPS solution to give me more control over the sites.  At the time, I was hosting an EverQuest guild website which got a reasonable amount of traffic, and so I chose a VPS solution that would definitely have enough oomph and bandwidth to deliver that.  Not a huge amount, but enough.  It was my first time in the VPS market and I wasn’t really sure who were best, what was good value and what the different offerings resulted in.

The 1and1 service I went with was pretty good, but not what I would call cheap.  Over the 18 months or so I’ve had the service it’s been pretty reliable, a few unexplained outages, and a couple of periods of downtime that were longer than I would have liked.  But the VPS was powerful, had plenty of memory and lots of network capacity and easily delivered the 7 or so domains I hosted on it.

Not long after I moved the sites though, the EverQuest guild site dropped off dramatically in terms of load (lots of people left the game), and after 18 months it’s become apparent that the 5 or 6 vanity domains I host really don’t justify the cost and performance of the 1and1 VPS.

I looked again at shared hosting, because I’m a pretty good example of who should use it.  I tried tsohosts and while they’re excellent value and I have nothing bad to say about them, I really don’t get on with cPanel and the shared hosting mentality, especially after running my own VPS for so long.  I wanted to get into the config files and set things up ‘just so’, and after only 2 or 3 days fighting with cPanel I gave up and bought another VPS from Gandi.

I love the Gandi system (I already have another VPS from them hosting a usenet server), and although a single share VPS is pretty low resource you can deliver quite a lot from a Linux machine with not much in the way of power these days, especially when what you’re delivering are vanity domains with almost no traffic.

So I’ve got a single share (256MB memory) VPS from Gandi and over the last couple of days I’ve moved everything over, and I’m pleased at how easy it was.  The 1and1 VPS was running CentOS but I’ve gone for Debian with Gandi (I prefer Debian) so not everything could be simply copied over, but the content (static and mysql data) was easy enough to transfer, so now it’s just a case of making sure the VPS is secure and managed properly.

If you’re looking for some domains or a VPS, I really can’t recommend Gandi enough, my only gripe is there’s no easy way to pay monthly (no direct debit facility, so you have to top up a pre-pay account when you remember), but it’s a small issue when the service is so excellent.

Movies, ten and twenty years ago

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So, although it’s hard to believe (for me), 1990 was twenty years ago.  Here’s the movies that did well in 1990 (top US grossing movies that year, source IMDB, full list).

  • Home Alone
  • Ghost
  • Dances with Wolves
  • Pretty Woman
  • The Hunt for Red October
  • Total Recall
  • Die Hard 2
  • Dick Tracey
  • Kindergarten Cop
  • Back to the Future Part III
  • Days of Thunder
  • Another 48 Hrs

Ten years ago in 2000, this is the list (or part of it, full list here).

  • How the Grinch Stole Christmas
  • Cast Away
  • Mission Impossible II
  • Gladiator
  • X-Men
  • Charlie’s Angels
  • Unbreakable
  • Space Cowboys

Doesn’t feel like 20 years since Home Alone, or even 10 since X-Men.

It’s just cricket

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There was something moving about in the lounge, near the bin in the corner.  Fizz was really interested but I couldn’t see anything and forgot about it.  Just been in there now, and there was a cricket about 3cm long hanging on the net curtain.  I grabbed a cup and slip of paper to get it back outside.  There’s just one thing – when crickets move, they jump, and they jump vertically.  However, vertically to a cricket which is hanging on your net curtain is essentially horizontally straight at your face.

I’m not nervous or scared of insects, but a 3cm cricket jumping for your face is always cause for a sudden involuntary grunt and duck.

Anyway, it’s safely outside now!

It’s the Cavalry

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Finally have some aphid eatin’ Ladybirds on the Willow.  During the day, they’re fast little buggers, this one was hoovering up aphids as fast as it could!

I have about 50 shots of it, blurry, running all over the leaves, it paused here just long enough for the autofocus to get it.  And then a moment later, it took off, this next shot was pretty lucky timing.

Went out a bit later, and there’s another one sleeping on the tree (looks asleep), which is good news for me, and bad news for the aphids.  Also, I think this ant was interested in me too.

And this one, I’m really pleased with, very pleased with this shot indeed.

The Story of our Willow Tree

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Myself and Grete, we both like trees.  We were sad when we had to fund cutting down a very large tree in the garden (for various reasons) and we promised we’d plant some to make up for it.  We tried a cherry tree, but got it badly wrong and the tree it was grafted onto was the only thing grown (and would have been huge, so that had to come up).  Then we saw a miniature willow tree and that sounded perfect.

So this year we got it, planted it and cared for it, within only two days it had sprouted a load of extra leaves and branches (more than the cherry tree ever did) and we thought we were onto a winner, and then it went wrong.

We’ve got several large ants nests in the garden, and either I plant the tree in one, or they moved into the soft earth shortly after.  They swarmed all over the tree, and although I couldn’t see them doing any specific damage, they weren’t helping the root ball settle in.  We also got a spot of super-hot weather (just two or three days) and the tree didn’t get enough water.  The new foliage died.  We were sad, we were killing another tree.

But I took some corrective measures, more top soil, and some solid application of the end of a lump of wood on the ground left the tree solidly bedded in.  I watered it every day.  I tried to kill the ants (but failed, as usual).  I watered it some more.  And it stuck it out, survived a few weeks of miserable weather and made it to the long strip of hot weather we’ve had.  I’ve been out every day making sure that tree has enough water (even if the rest of the garden is turning into a desert).

I think it’s paid off – it flourished, new leaves, new branches, thickening of the branches already there.  I think it might pull through.

But now we have aphids.  Not one or two, but billions.  We’ve never had aphids in the garden that I can remember seeing in any number, so it looks like we’ve brought them in with the willow and they may well be a specific willow based aphid.  I’ve just been out to squish them, again.  The ants look like they’re milking them.

I need a ladybird infestation!

Anyway, I don’t think the aphids will kill the willow, but they do generate some annoying issues (honeydew and the stuff that feeds on it, including wasps and mold).

So I’ll be out making sure they stay as dead as I can for the next few weeks, washing them off and squishing the hangers on.

I’m rootin’ for you miniature willow (pun intended), we can do this.

Willow when we got it in April:

Willow in mid-June:

Willow now:

My hands are too shaky, I don’t own a big enough tripod and the camera is really not good enough to take photo’s of  ants and aphids, but I tried anyway.

Just aphids.

Ant vs Aphid (I think it’s milking them)

And last, but not least, more aphids.