I have found the general loading times of this blog pretty darn slow recently so I’ve been looking at some Webhosting alternatives in Germany to figure out what kind of service I can get for the money I am currently spending with my current host 1blu.de.
My requirements are actually pretty simple. Here they are, ordered by priority: 99,9% availability, fast response times, at least 1 MySQL database, PHP 5, no traffic limitation, at least 1 domain included, if possible an SSH interface and all this for (at the very most) 10EUR per month.
After a few minutes of research I got quickly directed to http://www.webhostlist.de, an excellent resource to gather information about Webhosting companies in Germany.
The company that caught my attention was all-inkl.com, as being recommended not only on the above site but also on ciao.de with 55 reviews written and an average rating of 4,5/5. Excellent service and product overall, amazing customer service etc.only positive….
Now the thing with most Webhosting services is that they all pretty much offer the same products with some small degree of variation (features/price), so it gets difficult to make a decision based only on this information, especially when the difference is made on features you don’t really care about. I was only wondering myself: “Why is it that these guys never offer a trial account for a week or so?”. *That* would help me in my buying decision!
Well all-inkl.com really surprised me - these guys offer a 1-week trial account that allows anyone to test a specific product for 1 week. I grasped the occasion and immediatly signed up for it… 1 minute later I had access to the account and started installing Wordpress and importing this blog’s data to test response times of the server, usability of the FTP interface etc.
All-inkl.com definitely scored points in my books with that one… if I was 1blu I would start getting my sh*t together right now!
I am quite excited as I have just managed to do what has been preventing me from completely switching to Ubuntu for a long time: import my iTunes library without losing my precious ratings and playcounts - a very time-consuming activity but extremely rewarding.
In this little tutorial I’ll be outlining the 6 steps I followed in order to achieve the above result. I’ll try to be as clear as possible in order for all audiences to repeat the process successfully. Let’s get started… You should achieve this in about 10min maximum.
1. First thing you need to do is to copy the “iTunes Music Library.xml” to your Linux partition and rename it in order to remove the spaces and make the path as simple as possible and as little error prone as possible. This file is used by iTunes to store all your library’s information and is usually located in a place like /My documents/My music/iTunes/. I for example placed mine in /home/nathan/itunes.xml. Make sure you have access to the path of this file as you will need it soon…
2. Rhythmbox uses a similar technique for storing your library’s information. You just need to locate this file on your disk. To do this, launch the terminal and type in locate rhythmdb.xml. This will output a line which should look like /home/nathan/.gnome2/rhythmbox/rhythmdb.xml - Like earlier, make sure you have access to this path as you will need it soon…
3. Make a backup of the above file by using the terminal command cp rhythmdb.xml rhythmdb.xml.bk - check that the file has been copied by doing a small ls.
4. Now you need to download a little script developed by Bowen Dwelle which I found via this blog post. You can find this script there. Unzip it in a place easily accessible. I for example placed it in /home/nathan/downloads.
5. You are just a few steps away from having your iTunes ratings and playcounts in Rhythmbox! Now open a terminal window and go inside the directory where the file you have downloaded and unzipped is located. Now you will need to run this script using the paths that we got earlier on by typing in the following command: perl [path/to/itunes.xml] [path/to/rhythmboxdb.xml] - In my case I typed in perl /home/nathan/itunes.xml /home/nathan/.gnome2/rhythmbox/rhythmdb.xml - if perl isn’t installed a simple sudo apt-get install perl will do the job.
6. The script will now output a couple of lines and tell you when it is finished. It took about 10 seconds on my laptop… Open Rhythmbox and you should now see your library updated with ratings and playcounts! Note that if you have purchased songs from the iTunes Music Store, these will of course not appear in the library.
Note that I did not write this perl script for importing your iTunes Library into Rhythmbox. If you need support I would suggest you to contact the developer of the script directly.
Hope this will help a few!
If you are trying to adopt Agile principles within your team and wondering how to best share your knowledge so that the entire team has a common understanding of these principles, then Tasty Cupcakes might be a good place to look at.
The concept is based on the idea that individuals generally understand things much better when they are learning by doing. Don McGreal and Michael McCullough, the people behind Tasty Cupcakes, ran a session at Agile 2008 on how to use games and exercises to help improve our understanding of Agile principles and practices. [InfoQ]
This repertoire of little games, sorted into 3 categories (Physical, Emotional and Impressional), can be a very nice resource for Scrum Masters or any other change agent willing to be a little creative when educating teams with Agile principles and practices.
Definitely on my list of things to try out!
The Scrum Gathering Fall 2008, which I unfortunately cannot attend, is currently taking place in Stockholm. The programme looks extremely interesting and the line-up of hosts…well…IMPRESSIVE!
For the unfortunate who cannot attend but would have loved to, the Scrum Alliance website has made the slides of the various presentations available for your viewing pleasure.
On a side note, although having the slides is good starting point, I hope some videos of the actual presentations will be uploaded after the conference as well. Like kids, I like being told stories!