OMG, they killed del.icio.us! You bastards! //at 02:45 //by abe

Yeah, it happened already a while ago, but I still get angry about it, so I need to rant about it in my blog:

Yahoo!, the owner of del.icio.us, recently renamed the cool old del.icio.us to the no more cool and two bytes longer delicious.com. WTF? Part of del.icio.us’ popularity was its cool host name, why drop that? And even if a few dumbasses don’t understand the wordplay on the perfect host name, they could have offered delicious.com as a second domain name which works in parallel.

But no, they dropped the good old del.icio.us in a way so that all old bookmarklets, bookmarks, plugins, etc. don’t work right anymore and I need to login each time I want to save a bookmark on all browsers where I once was logged in on the old site even if I’m already logged in at the new site in the same browser session. delicious.com sucks.

And no, I don’t let count Gabor’s argument that people have difficulties with domains like del.icio.us, since many sites are well known or can be easily remembered because of their creative host or domain name: del.icio.us, script.aculo.us, wua.la, identi.ca, certifi.ca, laconi.ca, cr.yp.to, pix.ie, buenz.li (Swiss German), go.to, bit.ly, chickensh.it, gibts.net (German), doma.in, moinmo.in, etc.

No wonder, Montenegro sells many second level domains under their top level domain .me as “premium domains”.

Can’t resist this meme //at 20:38 //by abe

Just stumbled over this meme at Adrian (the meme seems to be started by madduck involuntarily), and since I’m fascinated by how people choose hostnames since my early years at university, I can’t resist to add my two cents to this meme.

To be exact, I have two schemes, one for servers out there somewhere (Hetzner, xencon, etc.) and they’re all wordplays on their domain name noone.org, e.g. symlink.to.noone.org (short name “sym” :-), gateway.to.noone.org (usually an alias for one of the machines below), virtually.noone.org (always a virtual machine, initially UML, soon a Xen DomU), etc. So nothing for a quiz here.

My other scheme is for all my machines at home and my mobile machines. I’ll start this list with the not so obvious hostnames, so the earlier you guess the scheme, the better you are (or the better you know me ;-). One more hint in advance: “(*)” means this attribute or fact made me choose the name for the machine and therefore can be used as hint for the scheme. :-)

azam

My first PC at all, a 386 with 25 MHz and MS-DOS. (Got named retroactively(*). Hadn’t hostnames at that time.)

ak (pronounced as letters)

Got it from my brother after he didn’t need it anymore. It initially was identical to azam, but once was upgraded to a 486. Still have the 386 board, though.

azka

My first self-bought computer, a pure SCSI system with a AMD K5-PR133 and 32 MB RAM. Initially had SuSE 4.4 and Windows 95 on. Still my last machine which had a Windows installed! :-)

m35

Same case and same speed as azka. Used it for experimenting(*) with Sid years ago.

azu

Initially also an AMD K5-PR133, later replaced by a Pentium 90 and used as DSL router.

azl

An HP Vectra 386/25N book size mini desktop I saved from the scrapyard at Y_Plentyn before his (first) move to Munich. The cutest(*) 386 I ever saw.

ayce

A 386 with 387 co-processor(*) and solded 8 MB of RAM.

ayca

A 1992 Toshiba T6400C 486 laptop bought at VCFe 5.0.

bijou

My 1996 ThinkPad 760ED, which is still working and running Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 Lenny (I started with Debian 3.0 Woody on it and always dist-upgraded it! :-)

gsa (pronounced as letters)

My long-time desktop after azka. A Pentium II with 400 MHz and 578 MB of RAM at the end. Bought used at LinuxTag 2003, it worked until end of last year when it started to suddenly switch off more and more often and now refuses to boot at all. Hasn’t been replaced yet though. I mostly use my laptops at home since then.

gsx (pronounced as letters)

An AMD K6 with 500 MHz I got from maol and which was used as Symlink test server more than once. (It was the machine initially named symlink.to.noone.org because of that.)

hy

My 32 bit Sparc, a Hamilton Hamstation.

hz (pronounced as letters)

My 64 bit Sparc, an UltraSparc 5.

tub

An HP Apollo 9000 Series 400, model 400t from 1990.

tpv (pronounced as letters, too ;-)

My Zaurus SL-5500G.

tryane

A Unisys Acquanta CP mini desktop with a passively cooled(*) 200 MHz Pemtium MMX. Used as DSL router for while, but the power supply fan was too noisy.

lna (pronounced as letters)

A 233 MHz Alpha

loadrunner

An IBM ThinkPad A31 running Sid. I use it as beside terminal.

pony

A Compaq LTE5100 laptop with a Pentium 90 running Sid.

dagonet

A Sony Vaio laptop which ran Debian GNU/kFreeBSD until it broke.

Those who know me quite good should already have guessed the scheme, even if they can’t assign all the names. For all others, here’s one name which doesn’t exactly fit into the scheme, but still is related in someway, but you need to knowledge of the theme’s subject to know the relation:

colani

A big tower from the early 90s designed by Colani.

Ok, and now the more obvious hostnames:

rosalie

A very compact Toshiba T1000LE 8086 laptop running ELKS and FreeDOS.

amisuper

Also an old Symlink test server from maol. He named it “dual”. 2x(*) Pentium I with 166 MHz. Unfortunately doesn’t boot anymore.

visa

An IBM NetVista workstation running Debian GNU/kFreeBSD. My current IRC host.

nemo

My ASUS EeePC running Debian 5.0 Lenny.

pluriel

My current WLAN router running FreeWRT.

c1

My MicroClient JrSX, an embedded 486SX compatible machine with 300 Mhz for VESA mountings.

c2

My MicroClient Jr, an embedded Pentium MMX compatible machine with 200 Mhz for VESA mountings.

c-crosser

My Lenovo ThinkPad T61 running Debian 5.0 Lenny.

c-cactus and c-metisse

The KVM based virtual(*) machines on c-crosser running Sid and Debian GNU/kFreeBSD.

jumper

My NAS(*) at home, currently a TheCus N4100. Soon to be replaced by some Mini-ITX box.

Any one who hasn’t guessed the scheme yet? For those understanding German it’s explained at the end of my old hardware page. For all others I suggest either to look at the domain name in my e-mail address (no, it’s usually not noone.org).

Still not clear? Well, feel free to ask me for all the gory details or mark the following white box to see the scheme as well as the explanations for nearly all hostnames hidden in there:

All the machines are named after Citroëns. Old machines after old Citroëns, current hardware after current Citroën models or prototypes.

Those names starting with “A” are 2CV derivatives since the 2CV was Citroëns “A” model. “AZ” was the 2CV, AZU and AK were 2CV vans and everything starting with AY (e.g. AYA, AYA2, AYB – but those don’t sound that nice ;-) is Dyane based, but I currently only use Méhara names (AYCA is the normal Méhari, AYCE the 4x4 version). Interestingly not everything starting with AYC is a Méhari: AYCD was the Acadiane, the Dyane van.

HY and HZ are variants of Citroëns “H van” (HX, HW and H1600 as well, but they don’t sound that nice), TUB was the pre-WWII “H van” prototype and later the nickname of the “H van” in France.

TPV was the name of the pre-WWII 2CV prototype and an abbreviation for Toute Petite Voiture (French for “Very Small Car”), hence the Zaurus, my smallest Linux box, got that name. Rosalie was the nickname of a rear-wheel drive pre-WWII Citroën.

M35 was a Wankel engine prototype of the Ami 8 and the Ami Super was the 4 cylinder version of the Ami 8. Bijou was a 2CV based coupé build by Citroën UK in the late 50s and early 60s.

Visa and LNA were 2CV predecessors which were available with 2CV engines, but were stopped before the 2CV. GSA and GSX are GS late derivatives.

C1, C2, (C3) Pluriel, C-Crosser, Jumper and Nemo are current Citroën models and C-Cactus and C-Métisse are recent Citroën prototypes and show cars.

The 2CV Dagonet was an aerodynamically optimised 2CVs by Jean Dagonet in the 50s. The Tryane is an aerodynamic and fuel efficient, three wheeled car by Friend Wood based on the 2CV and with a body of wood. And Colani once dressed a 2CV so that it broke several efficiency world records.

The Namco Pony was a 2CV based light utility truck (similar to the Méhari, but with steel body) built in Greece under license in many variants.

And Loadrunner is the name of some CX six-wheeler conversions.

Some links about the naming items:

• Tryane II
• An original Loadrunner and a just recently built Loadrunner. I even saw the base of exactly that one in RL shortly before it was converted into a Loadrunner.
• Luigi Colani
• Dagonet
• Namco Pony
• C1, C2, C-Crosser, C-Cactus, C-Métisse, Pluriel, Nemo, Visa, LNA, GSA, Ami Super, Rosalie
• AZAM, AZL, AZKA, AZU, AK, AYCD, Bijou, TPV
• HY, HZ, TUB.

Hope you had fun. I had. ;-)

Now playing: Willi Astor — Gwand Anham Ära

Häppi Börsdaih, Schlabonskis Welt //at 00:28 //by abe

Dieter hat’s grade noch rechtzeitig einen Tag vorher gemerkt, daß er ja seit nunmehr 10 Jahren auch im Wörlt Weit Wäpp existiert.

Herzlichen Glückwunsch!

deuxchevaux.org is back //at 00:11 //by abe

My primary e-mail domain deuxchevaux.org was offline for one and a half week due to my (former) domain provider Korypet went bankrupt and probably hadn’t paid the registrar’s invoice for deuxchevaux.org although I had paid Korypet’s invoice. (The domain wasn’t expired. Its expiration date was somewhen in 2009.)

Korypet itself just told its customers (and told it only on request) that they a) will shut down their business because it doesn’t pay off and that b) their service won’t be as good as usual since their head is currently in hospital. I should have noticed that there is something fishy and some details were missing at lastest when they told customers (also only on request) that they have to shut down some services earlier than announced because one of their providers has terminated their agreement with Korypet at short notice. I also should have expected that they couldn’t keep their promise to continue domains and DNS until May 2009 as they couldn’t keep other promised grace periods.

I’m quite sad about how Korypet went down and how bad blood they caused — not only for me — since they offered not only good services for money but also had really good (and personal) support. But I guess that this quality at very low prices was also one of the reasons why they couldn’t keep up their business for longer.

I had one of their UML based, low-end virtual “VD” servers for about six years, and used it as secondary DNS server and IRC client host. I also often thought about getting a second one at some other geographical location (they offered virtual servers in three German cities).

That was the reason why I started to move my domains to them a while ago. They even could fully answer me domain registration questions for which the eDNS and the Hetzner staff only had partial and therefore confusing answers.

Since it was the easiest way, I tried to transfer the domains I had registered with Korypet to the B2C division of their registrar Key Systems, to DomainDiscount24. The web interface isn’t as bad as the name “DomainDiscount24” suggests, but they seem to have communication problems if – as in this case – more than one of their business divisions are involved. It took at least two phone calls until they did the all the necessary things to get the domains transferred from Korypet’s business customer account to my newly created end customer account although they have a special form for former Korypet customers.

Domains I registered after Korypet stopped accepting new domains (well, they just didn’t answer on my domain registration requests anymore) I have registered via eDNS which was a recommendation form someone on the DaLUG mailing list.

My conclusion after these hassles: No more domain registration resellers, only directly interacting with registrars. Never register all domains at the same company. Have more than two DNS servers at different hosters. Don’t have domain registrations and DNS servers at the same company.

So I now register my domains either at DomainDiscount24 or at eDNS. And .ch domains of course directly at SWITCH. (If only all domain registrations would be so simple and uncomplicated as with SWITCH!) And my DNS servers are currently hosted at x|encon in Hannover (Yes, it’s a Xen DomU :-) and Hetzner in Erlangen. And a third one in Switzerland is already planned.