Technology, Books and Other Neat Stuff

I've recently configured our mail server to use a mix of different real time block lists to stop spam hitting our mail boxes - with most of the success coming from using Spamhaus' blended Zen block list (which mixes known spammer addresses with known zombie senders).

It's cut down spam significantly (from around 500 messages a day in my spam quarantine folder to about 40 or so)- but I'm sure there'll always be the odd false positive. So if you're getting mail bounces from us with a 550 SMTP-error message indicating you're on one of the block lists I'm using, try sending mail by another route, or let me know so I can whitelist you...

Oh, and if your mail server (or better still, your upstream ISP) gives you the option of using a RBL, I recommend turning it on. It'll save you a lot of time dealing with spam, and quite a bit of disk space.

Thanks to those nice people at Merula we're now on ADSL Max, and are getting an order of magnitude more speed than our old 512/256 DSL connection. I've also just replaced the main house switch with an unmanaged gigabit beastie from D-Link that works rather well, and gives me a few more free ports for future expansion.

So, things are currently looking a little like this:




It's rather nice being able to download a DVD image from a software company on the west coast of the US in under an hour. (Something I have had to do several times this week last, as we've been churning out lots of features and reviews about some pieces of software that came out this week...)

Next: Build a new house server with the VPro Core 2 Duo motherboard that arrives next week, and source a gigabit network card for the current server.

Anyone after an unmanaged 16-port 100 Mbit rackable switch, drop me a line, and we can negotiate. I seem to have one for sale...

As I'm doing a lot of writing about Windows Vista at the moment, I've finally got round to hooking my 64-bit Athlon Vista box up to my dual monitor rig. My old KVM wasn't able to handle a dual-head set-up, so I did a little research and ended up purchasing a shiny new Belkin dual-head capable OmniView Soho 2-port KVM. Unfortunately I didn't do my research well enough, and failed to spot that Belkin have a completely new set of cabling for USB-enabled KVMs, so I had to wait a few days while a new set of cabling arrived.

Ten minutes of crawling under my desk untangling cables and adding the new Belkin cables (they also do sound and additional USB devices) and things were ready to go. Press a button and I'm on a different machine, press another and it's back again. I don't even need to reach down to the KVM - it'll recognise certain key combinations as instructions to switch machines.

(One thing to note - the KVM is unable to cope with multiplexed USB devices, so I can use either the mouse from my Wireless Laser Desktop 6000 or the keyboard - not both. I think I might be able to hack it with two wireless USB dongles, but that's experimentation for another day.)

Expect to see the old four port KVM and some coaxial VGA cables on eBay soon!