Come fly with me…

Take it, Frank:

Come fly with me,
Let’s fly, let’s fly away
If you could use some exotic booze
There’s a bar in far Bombay…

But I’m not going anywhere near India, Bombay is now Mumbai, and this isn’t actually an invitation. Still, while we’re on the subject, much new found respect for Frank Sinatra in keeping a straight face while telling us about the possible entertainment on the South American leg of our shared trip:

In llama-land there’s a one-man band
And he’ll toot his flute for you

Really, Frank? Really?

Nope, we’re UK-bound this evening at the end of a couple of hectic weeks which have exemplified this year for Family 6000. As ever when on the road, I will continue to attempt to blog each day, but I promise nothing. But you should probably expect fewer words and more photos – maybe a bit of Tumblr mode. You’ll survive.
If this is an issue for you, please drop me an email stating why you deserve a full refund.
Oh, and your bank details, obviously.

Look after SA for me while I’m gone, OK?

Fair Play: Afrihost sorted my internet problem

You may have read that I had issues connecting to my blog from home and from the lab yesterday. There was plenty of to’ing and fro’ing with Afrihost (who are both my ISP and hosting provider) on email and twitter, but nothing got sorted.
Many kind people made suggestions here and on twitter, but I had floppy beagle issues last night (Colin got snipped and chipped), so I didn’t get chance to do a lot of exploration.

Then, this morning, incoming email from ‘Critical Care’ at Afrihost. I had no idea I was in such a perilous state. And here’s what they had discovered:

As suspected from my side, the Netstat rules for your IPs on your public connection were on the temporary prohibit list which I have now removed and you will be able access the website from all devices from your home network.
I have investigated the reasoning behind the listing and the reason seems to be that the website was attempting to be accessed from these IPs during an update – when security becomes most strict – and rather to be safe than sorry they were listed.
These updates only happen once a year so the likely hood of this happening again is extremely minimal 🙂

Thanks, Michael.

I don’t really understand what went wrong, but to find some sort of analogy, it seems that my home and work network were being tjatjarag and the website felt threatened, probably remarked something along the lines of “So you think you are a king?”, pushed them to the floor and barred them from entering the metaphorical building.

All is sorted now.

Oh, and Colin is much recovered this morning too. Thanks for your concern.

Weird Internet Problem and a Manx Lighthouse

I’m having a weird internet problem. I thought it was due to my ADSL connection at home, but now I’m having the same issue at work as well. I can’t look at my blog. “Lucky Bastard!” I hear you cry. And you could well be right, but it’s also a bit annoying.
Afrihost don’t seem to be able to explain it, so just in case you’re a internet whizz, here’s the info:

When connecting via my Afrihost ADSL, I get a connection timeout error if I try to look at 6000.co.za, or any of the back end. I noticed this yesterday evening. This was across multiple devices: 2 PCs, an iPad, an Android tablet and my Android phone. As soon as I hopped off the wifi and used my Vodacom cell connection, things were fine.
And it wasn’t just on Chrome or any other browser: the WordPress app didn’t connect either.

I could seemingly access every other site (.co.za’s, .co.uk’s and .com’s) with no problem. And other people (including those with Afrihost ADSL in Cape Town) could access 6000.co.za.

So it looked like an issue with my home ADSL, but then exactly the same thing is happening at work as well (where we also have Afrihost ADSL). I’m using TunnelBear to connect via a proxy in Sweden to write this, and that seems to be working just fine.

So, my Einsteiny little friends, what’s going on here? I’m really hoping that someone will turn round and go: “Well, obviously, that’s your QBR settings; go here and click this and it’ll all be fine,” and I will go there and click that and it will all be fine.

Anyway, if you’re still here after that admin and gobbledygook, you’re probably a dies hard reader and you know that I light lighthouses. Here’s one just down the road from us in the Isle of Man: Langness. It’s a great photo, but it was emailed to me so I don’t know who took it, but give that man (or otherwise) a Bell’s. Or even some decent whisky.

langness

And now things are slowing up, presumably because my bear is growing tired of tunneling under Stockholm or Malmö or wherever in Sweden he is (EDIT: Just checked – he’s in Borlänge), so I’m going to end this. Hopefully by tomorrow, I’ll have some answers and will be able to give my ursine assistant some well-deserved time off.

Trying Serial

Despite my veritable smörgåsbord of podcasts, I’ve found myself a little short of listening material of late. I’m not sure if I’m spending more time listening or more time in the car or even if the podcasts in question are getting shorter.
Maybe it’s a combination of these things, maybe it’s none of them. Like I said, I’m not sure.

Either way, it seems that I am short of podcasts. And that’s something that needs remedying.

Step forward, then, Serial – the podcast that everyone is currently talking about. As far as I can work out, Serial is popular because it’s popular, rather than any other reason right now. It’s very not me, but I’m going to give it a go with an open mind because I’m fed up of downloading crap and then having the choice of either sitting through the crap or not having a podcast on. And I’ve been very careful to not read about what Serial is about, because then I won’t be swayed. There are now eight episodes downloaded onto my phone and there’s a weekend of Cape Agulhas to play them at.

I’ll let you know.