I’m a PHP developer by trade with a strong Linux background. One thing that has been lacking from my skill set is how networking really works. In an effort to rectify this, I bought myself a 2nd hand managed network switch from ebay. A 26 port (24 x 10/100mb + 2 x 1gb) “3com SuperStack 3 Switch 4500”. Flashing lights and noisy fans, I feel like I’m headed in the right direction.

Vagrant - Great Hosts Updater plugin - very handy Having to enter your sudo password when the plugin edits your hosts file - really annoying. I finally got around to addressing this on my dev system. Looking at the plugin source there are two sudo commands that we need to cater for. One to add hosts and one to remove. Adding the following to my sudoers file worked a treat:

When something really note worthy happens, I usually don’t go longer than a few days without knowing. But, for some reason, I just learnt about something that happened 19 March 2008. Only by reading this comic in this book did I learn of Arther C. Clarke’s passing. This is particularly shocking as Arthur C. Clarke was the main author of the books I read in my childhood. You’d have thought that it would have been bigger news.

[this is a bit of a random rant, excuse me whilst I ramble] Every year, the sale of fireworks seems to come earlier and earlier. In the UK, we used to use them on the 5th November (or the closest weekend). Now they seem to be in use from the 30th October to mid November. And then over the whole Christmas period. When in the right hands, they can be great fun.