Life of Wiley

Anyone checking out any of the sites I host over the last few days will have noticed some significant problems. This is due to spam.

I had been using SpamAssassin to filter out the rubbish before Exim delivered the mail. However I was noticing that quite a lot of spam was getting through and upon investigation it was clear that I needed to keep the rules updated. Whilst doing this I also looked at implementing rejecting the mail even before it’s accepted by Exim and adding antivirus functionality using ClamAV.

All this lead me down the path of configuring Exim with Exiscan and SA-Exim using this excellent document (pdf) as a guide. Unfortunately it turns out that this is very resource intensive which is no good if your server doesn’t have much memory as mine does (96MBytes). It also doesn’t help when the antivirus daemon, clamd, dies for no apparent reason.

The first problem, lack of memory, lead to the server getting busied out with swapping. The second problem caused all e-mail to be temporarily rejected until clamd was restarted.

I’ve now upgraded to a newer version of ClamAV and I’ve ditched SpamAssassin in favour of Bogofilter (what a great name!) running as a filter after the mail has been accepted.

Perhaps one day I’ll get myself a more capable server. I’m keeping my eye on eBay for a Shuttle.

I’ve had two great rehearsals this week with the bands I’m involved with.

Firstly, the rehearsal on Tuesday with Watford Band was excellent and a lot of fun. Not only did we get a good turn out, but we also worked through some good stuff and had a guest pro with us to rehearse for an upcoming gig. It’s always good to have pros playing around you as they not only make you up your own playing but they can also pass on valuable tips. In this case, Craig Patterson, will be doing The Lazy Trumpeter and he was able to give me some advice on bending notes.

Secondly, I got to play with the brass ensemble I play with. We are currently called City Brass but as we’re moving rehearsal venue and will now be based in Chesham, which is hardly a city, we will need to think up a new name. Anyway, it was the first time in a very long time that I was able to play my trumpet rather than the cornet. I also get to play alongside another pro, Ken Bache, who was also my tutor some time ago. Ken’s really good at letting me have a go on the 1st parts and providing good constructive criticism and advice.

On a final note, we’re in the process of approving the artwork for Watford Band’s CD, so hopefully it will be available within a few weeks. Order yours now via the band’s website and we’ll send you a signed copy, woo-hoo:)

This post caught my eye (via Connexions). I wonder if Michael Moore has seen this!

It seems to have been quite a while since we managed to get to a service at our church together as a family. We managed it this Sunday for our Harvest Festival. Our Minister Rev. Will Hunter lead the worship and used the Parable of the Sower for the basis of the service.

As it was a family service with the all the Guides and Scouts, etc. taking part the sermon was fairly short and took the form of a multiple choice quiz on the pertinent aspects of the parable, namely what happened to the seed the sower planted.

It was a pity that no-one had checked the microphone before the service started as the kids that read the lessons couldn’t be heard. This is frustrating for both the reader and the listeners. I think I’ll have to make sure that this gets added to the list of things the stewards should check before the service begins. Funnily enough the steward couldn’t be heard when she read out the notices!

It’s taken me a long time to figure this out but I believe I’ve finally cracked a URL rewrite problem that’s been bugging me for ages. When I moved from Movable Type to Wordpress, Wordpress produced a set of URL rewrite rules to apply to the apache configuration. All well and good, except I had applied them in the wrong section of the configuration. I’d put them in the main system configuration, rather than the virtual host configuration for wileysworld.org. Hopefully I now won’t get so many 404 errors reported by Awstats.

The band has come through a very productive if not hectic summer season. It’s been good as we’ve had a lot of varied jobs to do and the band have been appreciated where ever we’ve been, including getting several bookings for next year.

We’ve even had to turn a number of jobs down because of other bookings. This isn’t normally too traumatic except one job that we had to turn down was a live appearance on Dick N Dom inda Bungalow on CBBC last weekend.

On a sadder note we’re in the process of saying goodbye to a number of players as they move away from the area either for work or retirement, so we’ve a number of vacancies that need filling.

Last night’s rehearsal was great despite having no horn or trombone sections and me being the only solo cornet. Martyn managed it really well by just playing bits where those that were present were all playing. Now that summer’s over we’re starting to knuckle down to Stantonbury Festival which is the 4th section test piece for the Mineworkers Contest that we’ll be competing in next January.

A friend of ours is devastated that having forked out over £700 to send her son to a Montessori school so that he would get a head start has been told by the head teacher that “it has been brought to [her] attention that [said son] doesn’t recognise letters and doesn’t know his alphabet”!

Now, Euan can’t recognise all the letters yet and whilst he can recite the abc song he doesn’t know his alphabet enough to complete a dot-to-dot following the letters of the alphabet.

I suppose there are two concerns that I have with this as a parent:

1. The potential for huge differences in standards in these respected, but franchised, nurseries.
2. Couldn’t/shouldn’t this have been picked up in the home?

We play games with Euan where it would be obvious if he wasn’t achieving a level that we were expecting. The dot-to-dot books with include letters as well as numbers to follow are excellent particularly for taking on long car journeys or sitting in a restaurant that has no play facilities.

Euan went to a private nursery before joining the nursery class of the school he’ll be attending, this wasn’t a franchise, and was managed quite closely not only locally but also from the companies headquarters. They also provided a day book to record what activities they’ve been doing during the day and it was all built upon play based learning in a completely relaxed environment. It was also half the cost of a Montessori school.

It’s such a shame as all you want is the best for your child and yet, through no particular fault of your own, you could end up setting them back.

Something else I did over the summer holidays was to have a cornet lesson. Not too exciting really, but this was something I’d been meaning to do for some time with a guy by the name of Roddy Lewis. Rod is from South Wales but happened to be coming by as he was flying in to Stansted from Sweden, so I took the opportunity to have him pop and give me a 5 hour lesson.

The first thing to note about Rod is that he is an extreme high register specialist and is lead trumpet of his own Maynard Ferguson tribute band. Now I didn’t take the lesson because I wanted to play in the extreme high register but I did want to learn how to use my embouchure and air properly to make it easier to play in the registers that I use when playing for the band.

Almost immediately the first thing Rod picked up on was the fact that I wasn’t breathing in properly to start playing, instead of taking a full breath through the mouth I was taking a quick snatch of air through the nose. Changing this and the timing of the breath has made significant improvements in my playing. There’s still a fair amount of work for me to do to correct some other aspects of my playing but I couldn’t believe the difference this small change made. As Rod himself said, small changes on their own may not amount to much but taken together with many other small changes big improvements can be made. Now I’ve just got to find the time to fit his practice routine in.

Any brass players out there considering a lesson with Roddy should definitely do it, you won’t regret it. If you’ve never come across Roddy before he’s worth checking out but don’t be put off by his style, he is a really nice bloke. His lessons may seem expensive but a 5 hour lesson is comparable to 5 weeks of 1 hour lessons with any other teacher.

Richard Hall sent me an e-mail the other day asking if I was okay as I hadn’t posted on my blog for a while. It’s nice to know that there are people out there that a) read the blog, and b) care enough to check everything’s okay when time is spent away from the blogosphere. Thanks for your concern Richard.

So why haven’t I posted here for a while? It’s mainly due to holidays and being very very busy at work. It’s good to be busy at work but it does take a lot of energy that means that when I get home the last thing I want to do is sit in front of a computer screen; that and Louise would object:)

What have we been up to during this hiatus? Well, I took two weeks off to spend time with the family during the summer holidays. Euan’s just had his first summer break and has spent a lot of time with his friends and having swimming lessons. I think he’s really into swimming now thanks to the Olympics. Last night he said that he wanted to do 4 jobs: a spaceman, a diver, a police officer and a swimmer. So I’ve told him he can apply to be a police diver.

Also during the holidays we got ourselves a new shed which meant I had to remove the old one. Not a problem I thought as it’s practically falling down anyway. It actually took a full day (9am to 8.30pm) to take it down! I hadn’t realised how much wood a shed is comprised of, it took a day and half to take it all to the waste disposal site.

We visited Gulliver’s Kingdom in Matlock with my brother and his children. Gulliver’s Kingdom is excellent for families with younger children as all the children except 2yr old Nalini could go on all the rides, unlike Alton Towers where they wouldn’t have been allowed on most of the best rides.

On the trip up to Sheffield I wanted to take a leisurely drive up and find a nice family friendly pub for lunch, so I turned to the Internet to find the perfect pub. Dave Edmondson neatly sums this experience up in this article. This lead me to thinking that I should set up a venture to create a family friendly review site covering the UK. Unfortunately family-friendly.org.uk is being sat on and is unused. There are alternatives but I may just add some categories here to do the same job. I think Netmums may have some info, but you need to register to get at it. I’d be thinking of covering pubs, restaurants, cafes, theme parks, etc. and their suitability for the 4-12 age range. So if anyone reading this has some valuable information that they’d like to submit contact me and I’ll see how this can be co-ordinated.

Finally, here anyway, we spent a week at the Sherwood Castle Holiday Forest. This was excellent as we were in a wooden cabin on the edge of the forest. There was lots to do on the site including archery, swimming, mountain biking, a maze, and animal centre, loads. It was safe for Euan to play outside unsupervised (but watched) with other kids on the park, and it was close to a number of very good activities for kids. One worthy of particular note is “Making It!” in Mansfield which is a fully interactive “museum” of how goods are made from the concept through to the manufacture and marketing.