I’ve posted this over at http://canonleeschool.douglasradburn.co.uk/ – my attempts at building an alumni type space for people at Canon Lee School, York. If you’re at Canon Lee School now, or you’ve been there at some point in your life, then join in!

“Was pleasantly surprised last night to find an email from my old music teacher in my inbox. Thank you very much for sending me a mail! Its great that someone has finally found the site. Its also put many thoughts running through my head about the fact that I should really do something with the site, so keep your eyes pealed for new things!”

I’ve also just launched a set of forums over there at http://canonleeforums.douglasradburn.co.uk/

ratm.comstates : “You may have heard the rumors, it was confirmed by the L.A. Times and KROQ Monday morning. Rage Against The Machine will be headlining Coachella. New information will be posted here shortly, please check back soon!”

Well, tickets went on sale for Coachella yesterday, and I got some! Rather impressed by the fact that I heard about all this before it happened and I was left to be sat in the corner rocking backward and forward. Thanks go to Scott ‘fountain of knowledge’ Mallinson who pointed this out about a week ago :)

So, time to pack my bags for LA – I need to make a list of things to do in America now….

I’m now officially one day into my notice period at Ad Agency. I’ve been tempted to find a new job for a while, and one has finally come up that I’m really excited about. As of 22nd Feb I’ll be working over at 9xb in Knaresborough.

I took a look around their offices and met Rob and Ben when I went in last week and I got a phone call from Rob on Monday offering me the job.

Its exactly what I’ve been looking and hoping for. A larger environment with other Web Developers with true drive and focus on being solely a Web Development firm. I know its early, but I really think I am going to enjoy my time with them.

Lets hope they can make a good cup of tea.

1and1’s PR sent theregister.co.uk the following statement:

Yesterday, a number of UK customers experienced some delay in receiving inbound email. The delay was due to a surge in email volumes over our email servers. Our email system continued to receive all email during this time, with only its delivery to inboxes being delayed.

The email delay was handled according to set procedure, emails were queued and stored and no email was lost during this time.

The technical issue was resolved and all emails involved are being delivered safely. Only 1&1 email users were affected.

We sincerely apologise for any inconvenience caused to our customers due to the queuing of emails.

Today, 1&1’s UK Customer Control Panel was temporarily unavailable for a very short time whilst systems were maintained.

Am I the only one waiting for service to resume, even though they’ve released this.

I’ve been playing about with FreeNAS at home. Its an operating system based on Free BSD for a NAS system using old machines for network attachment.

I didn’t really have an old machine, I had a fairly new one, but that meant I could boot from USB/CD etc so I shouldn’t have too many problems.

Everything went well – got a 400gb Hdd for it – but it wouldn’t install. Instead, it would boot off CD and save the settings to a floppy disk.

All has been fine for a week or so, been gradually filling it up with stuff. Its on my 100mb switch downstairs so it easily streams stuff to my XBox for my TV.

Anyway, tried to change some settings yesterday and the disk appeared to fail. Then the fun came. Could I as hell get the disk to format and re-mount my HD drives. Finally managed to get it working by instead installing it to a USB pen I’d got.

Play.com had a few USB pen drives last week on sale and a Maxell pack with a 1gb stick and a 64mb stick. Who, i thought, would use the 64mb stick? I almost threw it away when it came. But, i’ve installed FreeNAS onto it now, and apart from taking alot longer to boot than the CD, its much more stable, and wont (fingers crossed) go corrupt like the floppy.

I’d recommend FreeNAS to anyone wanting to run a NAS system. Installing to USB (or CF or HDD) means there is an extra channel for another HDD now too. FreeNAS will also RAID, however you need all the HDDs to be the same size… which mine aren’t.