Uncategorised – Page 18 – Jack Scott's Blog

Ten Reasons I Like Writing With A Fountain Pen

It’s shiny. Very shiny.
The pen flows much more easily across the page. It just glides.
You learn quickly not to chew on the end of it. Metal things are hard on the teeth.
If you suck on the end, ink doesn’t go everywhere (though this is countered somewhat by the refilling process, which can cause ink to go all over your clothes if you do it wrong).
There’s less waste. When the ink runs out, I can just refill it. All I have to buy is the ink, which comes in a glass bottle, which is recyclable. Beat that, ballpoint!
It’ll last forever. It’s made of stainless steel and chrome. Unless I care for it very badly, it’ll outlast any other pen money can buy.
It’s manly.
It’s simple. I can understand all the parts. While I also understand all the parts in a computer and can tell you exactly what happens every time you hit a key on the keyboard, most people don’t. They could however have a good guess at how a fountain pen works (or a pencil, but hey, I don’t care about those).
It impresses other people who like shiny things. I’m an egotistic bastard, and I like it when people are jealous of the things I have. A character flaw, but I don’t care.
It just feels good.

My RSS Feeds

I thought it would be interesting to share some of the blogs and other websites that I’m a regular reader of. It’s quite surprising really that despite how much time I spend on the Internet, I follow very few blogs (I think) especially in comparison to other people I know.

Web Comics:

I only read two web comics, xkcd and Ctrl+Alt+Del. I’m fairly sure everybody on the Internet reads xkcd (and if you don’t, shame on you), so I won’t talk much about that. Ctrl+Alt+Del is a web comic I started reading back in 2007. I remember being in fits of laughter for about 3 days as I read the backlog. It follows the lives of three gaming-obsessed flatmates, Ethan, Lilah and Lucas. I feel quite a lot of empathy for the half-mad protagonist Ethan, so that may be why I read it. 😀

Personal Development:

There are two main blogs I follow in this area: Zen Habits and The Art of Manliness. Zen Habits is a simplicity-focused blog written by Leo Babauta. It focuses on topics mainly revolving around de-cluttering life, both physically and mentally (or spiritually). Seeing as I get stressed quite easily and have a huge desire for simplicity, this is one of my favourite blogs. My other favourite blog, the Art of Manliness (AoM) is centred around reviving ‘the lost art of manliness’. I’ve started doing all sorts of weird and wonderful things since I started reading this blog, such as shaving with a proper double-edged safety razor, write with a fountain pen, learn to tie some knots, get fitter, and so on. I’ve even started dressing better. The resident style guru is very helpful in balancing my innate laziness with style.

I used to read a lot more blogs in this area, such as Steve Pavlina’s blog and Puredoxyk’s blog, but I found the signal/noise ratio to be too high. I still check in with them every so often, just to see how they’re doing.

Personal Blogs:

The blog roll to the left contains a list of the personal blogs I follow, all of which (currently) are my personal friends. I won’t say much more, except that they’re all absolutely awesome, and much smarter and wittier than I.

And Just One More:

I wasn’t quite sure where to put it, but it just has to be included. PostSecret is a community-driven art blog where people write their deepest darkest secrets on a postcard and send it in to be published anonymously on the website. It’s thrilling stuff, and it serves as a wonderful reminder that absolutely everybody is simply human. Here’s one of my favourite secrets of all time. I can’t work out if it simply means what it says, or whether there is some hidden meaning… but it’s just beautiful.

Water, Water, Everywhere, But Not A Drop To Eat

Today, I’d like to talk briefly about water.

It’s one of the most amazing substances on earth, and also the one most taken for granted. It’s mind-bogglingly small. A single water molecule is made up of just three atoms. Two hydrogen, one oxygen. Of course, we never see it as just one molecule (outside a chemistry textbook, anyway). There’s actually an amazing amount of water on the planet. The oceans of the planet cover 71% of the surface of the earth to an average depth of 4 kilometres. That’s huge.

Unfortunately, due to the rampant consumerism in western countries, coupled with our love of dodgy waste disposal methods (and a bit of bad luck), the oceans are fast filling up with human rubbish. A single litre of oil can contaminate 8 million litres of sea water. That’s 8 million litres that isn’t suitable for aquatic life. Chris Jordan has some amazing photographs of sea birds who have stomachs full of junk. All the junk that ends up in our oceans (either deliberately or accidentally) takes a huge toll not only on aquatic animals, but on our future.

The trash we put into the ocean will slowly be crushed into minuscule pieces, which poison the tiny plankton (among other animals). Any animal that eats plankton is then affected by the lower populations, and it all works it’s way up the food chain until eventually we run out of fish because they have nothing to eat, and we all run out of fish and chips and have to eat chicken instead die.

So what can we all do about this salty, vinegary problem?

Firstly, we can put rubbish in it’s proper place. Rubbish in rubbish bins, recycling in recycling bins, compost in compost bins. Throwing plastic or cigarette butts out the car window is probably the worst thing you can do.
Secondly, whenever you see a rubbish bin somewhere (like a bus stop or a food court) that doesn’t have a matching recycling bin, ring up the relevant authority and complain.
Thirdly, cut down on the amount of plastic you consume. Plastic products take years and years to break down (if they aren’t recycled) and use up precious supplies of oil that we need so that I can drive to the beach and take a swim in that lovely 71% of the planet.

This post is part of Blog Action Day 2010, an annual event in the blogging community that brings global attention to a single issue.

Quick Hosting Reviews

Over the last few years I’ve used quite a few different hosting providers, so I thought I would give a few quick reviews of them all, so I can share my experience with them.

Silentflame Web Hosting

During the time I was with Silentflame during 2007-2008, I was very happy. Although the service was a bit slow for me, I suspect that this was purely because I was on the other side of the world. The novel thing about this service is the fact that it gives away all it’s profits to charity. It’s a great idea, and one that I think we should see in more businesses (perhaps a tithe would be better though). No native IPv6 on their services yet, unfortunately.

DirectSpace Networks

I only had a VPS with DirectSpace for about a month or two, before I switched to a different provider. I was fairly happy with these guys, never had any issues that weren’t resolved promptly. The biggest criticism I had with my service was that the CPU allocation was too low. I had severe speed issues from the lack of time my processes had to run. No native IPv6 either.

ServerPronto

I had a dedicated server with ServerPronto for around six months this year, and although I no longer have it, this server performed very well for me over the time I was with them. They do have a somewhat convoluted exit process (it involves filling out a paper form and sending it to them snail mail along with a copy of some ID) but this is no problem to navigate, and unlike what others are saying on the Internet, does not result in your identity being stolen and your credit card being abused. The main selling point of ServerPronto is the price, they are extremely cheap dedicated servers. That said, quality does not appear to be an issue. No unexpected restarts, hardware never failed, and the network is very fast. No native IPv6 here either.

The only reason I got rid of this server was that it was costing more than an equivalent VPS and I wasn’t really using it. I’ve since turned the money over to other VPS services, increasing the number of services I can test.

Nullshells Networks

I’ve used Nullshells Networks’ web hosting for a few years now, and I am extremely happy with the service. All the services I had with them (web and email hosting) have always worked flawlessly, and if I’ve had any queries, the owner of the business has been more than happy to help out. I have only two nitpicks; one is the lack of IPv6, and the other is the fact they use a self-signed SSL certificate. While the lack of signing of an SSL certificate is no technical problem, and while I’m savvy enough to check the certificate and add an exception, it is a bit unprofessional. I’m still using Nullshells for my web and email hosting.

For my full review of Nullshells from around a year ago, click here.

Mammoth VPS

Overall I’ve been very pleased with Mammoth VPS, which is an Australian-owned company with servers located in Sydney’s CBD. While they are more expensive than other offerings, this is simply because the bandwidth in Australia is much more expensive than it is in Europe or the USA, so this is no fault of Mammoth. I have had a few issues with unexpected reboots, but apart from messing with my uptime statistics, this is no real problem. It’s always nice to support local businesses, too. No native IPv6 yet, but almost nowhere does.

BuildYourVPS

I’ve only had a BuildYourVPS (actually TOCICI) VPS for a couple of days now, but I wouldn’t recommend them, based on what I’ve experienced so far. When I first signed up, it took 4 rebuilds of the VPS before I could even log in via SSH. I’m assured this is not a regular thing, but I’d take care. After it was set up, the VPS did work very well. No CPU cloggage issues like on most other VPS providers. The network was extremely fast (as you’d expect from having the servers located in a US west-coast Internet exchange). One thing I did notice is that the server is behind a NAT. Fine, I guess, except that it makes some network configuration tasks a bit more confusing, and that the gateway IP they use is actually a special-use IP reserved for testing. Ouch! Zero marks for that one. On the up side, they do support native IPv6, albeit on request.

Edit 8/10/2010: After playing around a bit more with BuildYourVPS services, I’m happy to report that the issue with server builds has been fixed. All my other complaints were simply OpenVZ issues. Pending a few more weeks with the server, I’d be happy to give them a thumbs-up.