export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=1

From http://www.ubun2.com/question/334/clicking_eclipse_buttons_not_working_or_does_nothing

If you have command line access to the server, and can login as a root user (or use sudo), do the following to reset your mysql root password.

1. Stop the mysql server, either by directly killing it, or using a startup script (recommended).
2. Create a text file on the server with the following in it (replace “somepassword” with your new password):

   UPDATE mysql.user SET Password=PASSWORD('somepassword') WHERE User='root';
   FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

3. Start the mysql server manually, using the –init-file switch:

   mysqld_safe --init-file=/path/to/file/created/above &

4. Your mysql root password should now be reset, test it out.
5. If you can connect using the new authentication details, delete the created file, and then stop the mysqld service and start again using the correct startup scripts for your system

Simple as that. No need to re-install any software, nuke your data, or spend longer then 15 mins fixing the problem.

Now the playstation is great for gaming, buy isn’t really suitable for casual play, not to mention the fact that as its plugged into the big tv downstairs, I have to make sure I don’t monopolise use of the living room.

All this has driven me to explore the current state of gaming on linux. To my surprise I found quite a few games in the Ubuntu repositories. A few of the picks are listed below.

• Battle for Wesnoth – an excellent turn based strategy game.
• Tux Racer – a classic. Simple but addictive.
• Aleph One – the open source Marathon engine. Marathon was the FPS game series released by Bungie studios before their Halo success. Great story line and world creation in this game.
• Frets on Fire – a guitar hero clone that is surprisingly as addictive as the real thing.
• Nethack – gets a special mention. No fancy graphics, bloody confusing at first and huge learning curve, but once you grasp it – surprisingly addictive and very fun . Play on the public nethack server on alt.org.

So I guess I’ll let them fill you in!

Suffice to say that the Guardian article should be taken with a healthy dose of NaCl. It reads like quite a sensationalist piece. Much of the “Dark Web” they talk about are things like company Intranets and non-public social networking sites (your facebook profile for non friends for instance). It’s not all scary Russians and kiddie fiddlers. The readers that are shocked by the ‘hidden’ Internet tend to be those that don’t really know what the Internet comprises in the first place.

Still, if you want to see what the Internet looked like 10-15 years ago  – fire up a copy of Freenet and browse around. It’s a good project that deserves a little more positive publicity.

I approach it like this – I have 3 targets I try to hit every month. The first is to earn enough money to keep the company costs ticking over for the month. The second is to earn enough so that I can also cover what I take out of the company each month for me (a wage!). The last target is to earn enough on top of the first two to cover an amount that can stay in the company for lean months or dividends at the end of the financial year.

You can keep these targets as financial ones, or convert them via your daily rate to bookable hours in a month. Then all you need to do is ensure you put enough sales effort in to hit the targets. Booked work is key.

Whatever the measurement you use the key thing is to track your progress. Printout a calendar with all 3 targets on them for the next year and as you do the work and pass the targets, tick them off. It’s key to give yourself the boost of knowing that you’ve done what you need to in a month – or the kick in the rear to get you chasing work.

The side benefit of all this tracking is that it can help stop you from overworking and booking in too much work. It may seem counter productive, but don’t take on all the work you are offered, just what you can handle.

Burning out makes you no use whatsoever to your clients.

It’s easy to book in a full month or two of work, and it feels good to be able to say to yourself “I’m on target”. Remember though, if you book a full 5 days to your clients, when do you do your admin? If you book out a full month, when do you sort out your invoicing. You need to be careful with it otherwise you’ll soon be doing 10 hr days to keep up with it all.

I’ve found that so far, running my own company (of one person) is quite easy once I got things off the ground, but there is a constant admin cost associated with it – small, but it’s there. Make sure you keep room in your schedule for it.

Beyond that, when you do get your down time, make sure you enjoy it and step completely away from the work. Working for yourself so you can work in a flexible manner is great, but not if that’s all you do.

1. Even my bookmarks are on a RAID with off-site backup
2. Yeah I keep meaning to get around to that
3. What’s disaster recovery?

Most people coming to freelance/self employment will be coming from an employed background. I.e. They’ve had a company surrounding them which provides more then a few creature comforts, one of which was most probably an IT department which looked after things such as network file stores, Internet access and backups.

However now you are on your own.

If you fall into camp 1 in the list above, then pat yourself on the back and go take a look at something else for a bit. If you don’t fall into camp 1, then read on, as you need to get seriously worried about your recovery plans.

One thing that all IT managers/Sysadmins etc will do before anything else is ensure that they have adequate backups. With a decent backup and disaster recovery plan, you can get yourself out of pretty much any IT hole with the minimum fuss and stress. Ever noticed how when something on the network goes critically wrong your sysadmin is completely laid back and un-stressed (sometimes almost annoyingly so)?

It’s because he/she has that safety net behind them.

Think about this scenario for a bit:

You’ve got work booked in that has to be delivered today, but your main work computer has [been stolen/died/had milkshake dropped on it/got a horrible virus]:

• How do you get back to being able to work for clients as quickly as possible?
• What steps do you need to take to get back to the status-quo?

What I do

Now – having been working in the IT industry for a long time and having been responsible for company IT departments for some of that time, I’m naturally quite obsessive about backups. This is what I currently do – hopefully this can give you a few ideas about how to secure your disaster recovery plans, and therefore secure your turnover.

Geographical separation

Quite simply don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Want to host client websites for preview etc? Don’t do it at the end of your ADSL line. Make sure that all key resources you use are split out over physically different systems. I currently have three resources that I use: My home computer, web server and Amazon S3 storage.

Version control

Store anything important or even mildly important in version control. I use SVN, but you can use whatever you like. All code, writing, notes, configs get stored in SVN. That way I can rollback easily in event of an error. If I am rebuilding my server as it’s failed, then it’s one checkout command to get back all my configs for apache etc.

The SVN server is offsite (not in my house), so is not at the whim of a break in/fire/flood etc. If I do work locally, once the data is checked in I can stop worrying about the security of it on my local machine.

Backups

Backup all this data that you store. As everything of importance that I use is stored in SVN, I just worry about backing up SVN on a regular basis rather then backing up 50 distinct locations. All my backups are stored in multiple locations and on separate physical devices/media.

The main backups are the SVN system and associated files, these upload themselves securely to Amazon S3 daily and, in addition, copy themselves onto an NFS backup mount. So I have each file in 3 secure locations: SVN server, Amazon S3, NFS mount.

Ad hoc backups (images, other binaries that need to be stored once and not version controlled), are stored in S3 as well. I dump these in a local folder on my machine, and this pushes up to S3 daily via a cron job.

I use the s3sync ruby script to manage all these transfers.

Once the data is on S3, I don’t really need to worry too much about it being lost:

Amazon S3 gives any developer access to the same highly scalable, reliable, fast, inexpensive data storage infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of web sites. The service was designed for 99.99% availability, and carries a service level agreement providing service credits if a customer’s availability falls below 99.9%.

However I do also grab down from S3 on a regular basis and backup the files to CD, just to ensure I have an offline copy of data in an emergency.

Local Machine

I, like any other tech worker, am very fussy about my machine. The mouse sensitivity has to be just so, the desktop environment has to be set up in a specific way and of course the applications I need to use have to be at my finger tips.

In order to get this back as quickly as possible, with minimum fuss, I’ve used mondo rescue to image my machine to DVD(s). It’s linux specific, and your mileage may vary for Windows/Mac partitions. Have a hunt on Google for other options for Windows/Mac – Symantec Ghost suite is a windows app I’ve used in the past.

Remember, all important docs go into SVN, so all I really need to back up here is the system – not personal files, these are already covered.

If my machine dies, and I can’t recover manually, I just pop the mondo rescue DVD into my drive, boot, and it sorts out the rest.

Summary

These are the main systems I use to ensure that I can recover from most problems. Beyond this I use various forms of encryption for data security, but again this is down to user choice and the type of data you store. I’m also about to get a laptop so I am not so reliant on my home machine and Internet connection.

One key thing to remember: when you have to use these systems to recover, try to make a note of what didn’t work too well in the recovery process. I image my local machine because the last time I did a rebuild it took too long.

If you can make a change now that will make your life easier in the event of a problem occurring, then do it.

Please ask any questions about specifics in the comments, and I’ll collate and respond in another post where appropriate.

However, I know nothing about starting a business and running it. The nuts and bolts of getting things done that have to be done. Accounts, insurance, taxes, expenses, PAYE, VAT – the list of things I knew nothing about towered over me and I was scared. Chances are if you are at this stage of striking out on your own, you are probably feeling the same. Luckily help is on hand.

For me the help came in the form of NWES – a local, council funded, business advice organisation. Most cities will have a place like this. Business Link are another that cover the UK fairly well and have a sizable online presence.

You can’t be afraid to ask for advice, and if the advice is free, all the better for the potential entrepreneur who is looking to bootstrap a company on the minimum needed.

Before starting a company, or registering anything official – seek out the advice of those that know.

I had an hour long session with an NWES advisor in which I laid out my plans bare, talked about what I knew and more importantly – what I didn’t. I got a lot of advice but essentially for my problems (the nuts and bolts of running a business) it boiled down to one thing:

Get an accountant.

They will register your company for you, and set it up in the most tax efficient way possible. Shop around, I had one guy try to charge me over twice on a monthly basis what I am being charged by the guy that I chose to use.

All accountants should offer a free first meeting, don’t just email them and ask for a quote – get to know them on a face to face basis – you will be placing your money in their hands. Prices will vary but from what I’ve seen the average monthly fee for running the books on a one person ltd company is about £60 – £70 in addition to one off charges for company registration.

In this period of the company (described on the Tim Ferriss blog as ‘Uninformed Optimism’), I don’t want to be worrying about tax liability or sorting out the PAYE, I want to be getting out there and getting work in, finding clients and pushing for business. If Overthink ltd survives past it’s first year or two, then I’ll look at doing some of the books myself – maybe.

At the moment my energy as the director (and caretaker) of the company is to ensure success. I can’t do this if I am struggling with end of year accounts and VAT returns.

Good Luck!