Category Archives: Blogging

Short update

Sorry for not posting anything for a while. A lot has happened and I’ve been busy with work (a lot of it), travel, health problems in the family and preparing to move (in two weeks).

In short; The Chest Case mod is finished, I’ve been to Prague and around Sweden, health situation the family is still under investigation but somewhat stable, and I have enough tasks on my to-do list at work to last me for at least 6 months.

Further updates on the above will come, but right now I don’t have time to focus on that until things settle down for a bit.

New Host, New Server, New Everything

You might have noticed this page being down for about two weeks. 
That's because I decided to move from my self-hosted solution with a server in the apartment to a professional hosting solution. I've been thinking about this to and from for a few years now, but what set it all in motion was the fact that I am going to move in about two months (more on that later).  I didn't want to worry about the mail server being down while moving, setting up the DNS to to a new IP address etc. In retrospect, the server would probably be down less time if I had just stuck with the previous solution. But this also gives an additional peace of mind if there were to be a hardware breakdown or power outage at home during a vacation etc. 
Since the domain name killersnail.com has been down for about two weeks, any mails sent to me or the other people with killersnail.com addresses has NOT been delivered.
I'm sorry about that, but there is not much I can do. That domain name is still not fully functional, so emails will still not be up. Meanwhile, you can reach me by simply writing a comment to this post. If I know you and it's of a personal nature, just leave your name and address (will not be seen by others) and I'll contact you by other means. 
So, how did the transfer go? Well, I first signed up with One.com. Big mistake. After reading through a lot, they seemed like a good choice with good pricing. So I went ahead and transferred the main domain name (killersnail.com) there, since it was the one most important to get transferred first on account on being the mail server as well. Then I was going to transfer my other domain names (like frankjohansson.com), to add to the same account, acting as CNAME aliases. 
Turns out they can't handle that. Basically every other serious web hosting company offers the ability to add several domain names to one web hotel, except One.com. They COULD do it, but then I would have to pay for web hosting for each domain name, and the domain names would likely just be redirects instead of aliases. In other words, the price went up 8 times. 
Yes, I know I have many domain names, but they are not all for me.
So I asked for a refund, on account on their 15-day money-back guarantee, as well as the domain name unlock code so that I would be able to transfer the domain name to another host as soon as possible. Their support department told me that I had to send all my bank details to their British office in order to get my money back, and I could not get the domain transfer unlock code until everything else was processed. The details I had to send them were:
  • Bank name
  • Bank address
  • Account number
  • Name on the account
  • Swift code
  • Iban number
  • Clearing number for the bank. 

So I sent it all to their british office as instructed, and asked for the domain name unlock code again at the same time.

After two days I got a reply, where they asked for the following details:

  • Bank name
  • Bank address
  • Account number
  • Name on the account
  • Swift code
  • Iban number
  • Clearing number for the bank.

AND MY ORIGINAL EMAIL WHERE ALL THIS WAS STATED WAS LISTED BELOW. They couldn’t possibly have read more than the subject of the email. I politely pointed out the fact that I have already provided all the necessary information, in the email they themselves replied to, and asked for my domain name unlock code a third time. A few hours later I finally got the code, and transferred it to another host. It then took a week after that before the transfer was actually approved by One.com.

Today I got a letter stating that the money I demanded back from one.com has been deposited into my bank account. From One.com in DUBAI. So I signed up for a service and paid a company in Sweden. I had to request the money back to a British company. I then get paid from a company in the United Arab Emirates. Tax evasion, anyone?

My new host, Surftown, have so far been great, and the support crew seems friendly. Getting a domain name unlock code from my previous DNS service, Loopia, took less than a second since you can do it yourself from their control panel. The entire transfer to Surftown from there took about 20 minutes. In comparison, One.com once again shows their lack of competence.  Surftown is a bit more expensive than One.com if you want the extra features I require (MySQL, PHP, support for multiple domain names etc). However, they currently have a campaign where you get all of this for only 10 SEK/day for the first year, so it’s actually cheaper right now.

In conclusion:

  • Domain transfer almost complete
  • Email not yet up, use comments in this post instead
  • One.com sucks monkey balls.

Analog week

Greetings, humans!

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and all that. Hope the holidays have treated you well.

Personally, I’ve been spending to much time in front of the computer and the screen and have decided to take a break.

Starting to day, I will not sit in front of the computer, watch any movies or playing any video games (including RISK on my cell phone) while at home. Right now I’m at work where I have to use the computer, so I justify some minor blogging and facebooking from there with that.

I will try to catch up on my reading and possibly some project that has been laying around (Got a brand new wireless Dremel for Christmas!), but the main reason is to simply disconnect for a while.

Let’s see how long it takes before I forget myself – I hope I can last a week anyway. 😉

Update:

I lasted the whole week and finished reading two books. Although on Sunday evening I watched a movie because I was utterly bored. 😉

Woot? Root!

Just a quick update:

I have decided to skip my regular homepage and have everything on this blog instead. This is not done yet, and music/photo pages is planned to appear here in the near future.

So from now on, “www.frankjohansson.com/blog/” will be redirected to the root level (“www.frankjohansson.com“). Easier to remember, especially since here in Sweden, many spell blog with two g’s (blogg), and that might be confusing when you have a url ending in that very word.

Posts and permalinks will however keep the same structure, so any bookmarks and links will still work as before.

Should I get a Facebook account?

Long have I resisted, long have I clinged on  to the statement  that I don’t need a Facebook account, that I am social enough in other ways. Also, many of my friends are also on Helgon.net, where I have been a member since 2002.

But it feels like everyone has a Facebook account these days.  And apparently a lot of party invitations and just plain contact-keeping is swarming around there. More so than on Helgon, which is becoming more and more stale.

On the back side of the coin, I tend to get addicted to these kind of things. And I don’t want to feel the need to check it several times every day. Especially not at work.

Help me out here, vote in the poll and tell me what you think I should do.

Poll: Should I get a Facebook account?

  • Yes, and I want to be your friend there! (60%, 9 Votes)
  • No (33%, 5 Votes)
  • Yes, but I don't want to be your friend there... (7%, 1 Votes)

Total Voters: 15

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Edit: It seems that to be able to vote, you have to use the frankjohansson.com domain. frankjohansson.se or killersnail.com will not work. If you still cannot vote, please leave a comment so that I can fix it.

Edit2: Now it seems to work with frankjohansson.se but not with frankjohansson.com! Strange. Will have a look at it during the weekend.

Edit 3: Seems that there were conflicts with having multiple domain names using the same IP, which confused the poll code. Or something like that. I have changed the DNS settings for frankjohansson.se and killersnail.com to forward to frankjohansson.com. This should also help my google rank a bit. Anyway, poll should be working now.

Make your own 3D paper figurines

Yesterday I discovered cubeecraft, a site with lots and lots of templates for making your own figurines out of paper. No glue or tape is required. All you do is print an image, cut along the edges and fold it together. I made a Bender from Futurama in about 20-30 minutes, and it was really fun seeing it come together!

There are a lot of characters to choose from; most are from movies or games, but there are also political ones (see the Obama figurine in the gallery below)

Oh, do yourself a favor: If you want it to survive cleaning and moving around, use thicker paper. The 80 gram paper I used worked, but was definitely on the limp side.

A few samples:

Lots more can be found on cubeecraft.com.

Another site with similar paper figurine templates is Toy-A-Day. A bit flatter, but also with a big selection.

New domains: frankjohansson.com/se

As you might have noticed, I have now changed the URL of this blog to the newly registered frankjohansson.com.

So, to clear things up, the following addresses are valid:

http://www.killersnail.com/blog
http://www.lumien.se
http://www.frankjohansson.se/blog

They will all go to the frankjohansson.com. Eventually, I might move the hosting from my own server to a dedicated web hotel. But nothing is decided yet.

Happy browsing!