Aptness failed to overcome frustration when my attempt to inform my email provider of their spam filter’s recent overzealous attitude towards its job failed because…their spam filter bounced my email. Plodge.net provide a great service in offering Cambridge students more personalised email addresses and this is, admittedly, the first technical trouble I have experienced with them. Nevertheless, although he irony was not lost on me, the unsolvable problem of contacting them is more irritating than intriguing.
We eventually settled on a Linksys Etherfast router for the entry system that will act as a basic DHCP 4-port switch. It’s a cheap but reliable solution from a decent brand and can automatically assign IP addresses to each connected machine. We had previously discounted wireless networking to avoid interruptions caused by poor weather, though this is no longer an issue as we are using a single entrance point for maximum security (believe me, Andy “Alpha Whiskey” is on the warpath — crashers really will not be tolerated). So the fact that the router lacks wireless capability is now almost a feature, actually making it more secure since a physical connection is the only way to access the system.
Now that Apple are providing certain equipment for the Ball, I had to swallow my pride and place a silvery logo on the sponsorship page of the site. Which several of you no doubt found highly amusing. You know who you are. Rather than linking to the main Apple site, it points instead toward the Cambridge Apple Rep Page, run by the “campus rep” I didn’t even know we had. Whilst I’m admittedly not the most impartial when it comes to judging products gaudily branded with the ripened ovary of the Malus domestica, I was perplexed by the inclusion of a small “Made on a Mac” logo at the bottom of every page. That must, I can only assume, be some sort of esoteric Apple-user code for “looks like crap”. Perhaps the maximum screen resolution allowed by the Mac in question was 640×480 so it’s not his fault. Although that renders those 40″ plasma displays a bit redundent, doesn’t it?
And finally the image problems caused by the adoption of permalinks should now have been resolved. It required a modification of the way we access images which involved updating every post with an image, but fortunately the SQL Replace function made it an effortless procedure, running through the whole database and taking care of it in seconds.
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