Sadly, no error is thrown to let you know you have no permission to call and use mod_rewrite – it just fails silently.

So, if you are using Joomla and trying to use Search Engine Friendly (SEF) URL’s, you must go in and edit the httpd.conf file for the slice that you are using.

Config files are normally stored in /etc/apache2/sites

Open up the config file, and find the line that says:

AllowOverride None

Make it say:

AllowOverride FileInfo Options

This little adventure has three players, and none of the outages are in any way related to each other – it just so happens that they all occurred on the same day. Firstly – NetRegistry, where we currently host our VoIP servers; Faktortel formally a VoIP carrier for us – now just a legacy connection because of some old DID’s that we can’t port away from them; and NetSIP our primary voice carrier.

With ten days notice NetRegistry advised that we were having both of our servers relocated at the same time. As soon as we were made aware, I called to discuss the relocation – and was told there was nothing to discuss. The server relocation has been planned “for months”, and the lack of notice was simply at the discretion of NetRegistry.  Boiling down the conversation – I was basically told the server relocation had to happen, and NetRegistry were not prepared to work with us to ensure up-time for our clients.

When the relocation occurred, instead of contacting us when they were unable to shut down one of our servers – a decision was made by technical manager Jonathan Gleeson to simply pull power to the server. It’s at this point in time that things started to go very pear shaped.

Because of this (very) ungraceful shutdown of the server, we have had to spend hours rescuing it this morning. NetRegistry have our emergency contact details – but not even an attempt was made to contact us. Not even an email to advise us that the server had to be shutdown in such a fashion.

Obviously once the server was revived, it wouldn’t restart properly – causing our first issue.

Once we were revived, we find out that Faktortel are not delivering calls via our DIDs to our gateway. We trace the call traffic, and see no attempt to deliver the call. A ticket was lodged with Faktortel – and our infrastructure was immediately blamed. Coincidentally, shortly after our ticket is acknowledged – the calls resumed. In the interest of full disclosure – Faktortel insist that they did nothing, and when they checked our DIDs there was no problem. I only have my experience and time line to work from.

Now our infrastructure is all back online, at around lunchtime today – a few outbound calls failed. As soon as we were aware of the fault, I contacted NetSIP to find the issue had been detected and already resolved. I was apologised to, I was happy – and that was the end of it for me.

It wasn’t the end of it for NetSIP however. Less then 10 minutes after my call, I get an email from NetSIP to again apologise for the outage and explain in detail what caused the issue. And also – that we have access to a backup gateway that we should have been using, which would have negated the effect of the outage in the first place.

To briefly jump back to NetRegistry – after several phone calls, and emails today – I was called “difficult” by their staff (internal email that I was accidentally CC’d on). And another staff member was wished “good luck” in having to deal with me. It took a lot of communicating with NetRegistry just to get a decent explanation about what precipitated the urgent relocation, I still have no explanation about why our server was just pulled and no contact made with us.

To review..

NetRegistry caused what I consider a major outage for us, were obstinate and rude – and still have not explained their actions. I have however had an email conversation with Larry Bloch (CEO NetRegistry) which has calmed me down a little – but the whole experience is exceptionally disappointing.

Faktortel immediately blamed our equipment, and then somehow our DIDs started working without us doing anything. Their management has since followed up and suggested a different way of connecting that may resolve some of the issues we experienced today, but this is after the fact, and after a lot of my pointing out issues.

NetSIP have left everybody for dead. Not only have we had fault free service from them since they became our primary carrier, the first fault we experience is dealt with before we even detect it. A decent explanation is given for the fault, along with what actions have been and are being taken to avoid it in the future. And an immediate solution put in place to ensure the risk of any future outage is mitigated.

Perhaps I just expect too much of companies. Or maybe providers like NetSIP “spoil” me, by providing such excellence in customer care that other providers just aren’t equipped to live up to.

It leaves me wondering, when there are companies providing such good care – why are the other companies still around?

The LED’s on the User Panels are controlled via the command LEDOnOff()

It takes four hexadecimal values to determine which primary, and which auxiliary/backlight LED’s to turn on or off.

eg LEDOnOff(0x0f,0x0f,0x0f,0x0f)

The above example will turn off ALL LED’s on the User Panel.

LED’s are addressed from the top down, and in groups of four in a binary fashion. So – if you had a UPan9 with 8 buttons (only the first 6 have LED’s) Their addresses would be:

BUTTON 1 = (0×80,0,0,0)
BUTTON 2 = (0×40,0,0,0)
BUTTON 3 = (0×20,0,0,0)
BUTTON 4 = (0×10,0,0,0)
BUTTON 5 = (0,0×80,0,0)
BUTTON 6 = (0,0×40,0,0)

You add the binary equivalent of these values to turn more then one LED on at once. Eg. Turning on Button’s 1 + 2

LEDOnOff(0xc0,0,0,0)

As you can see above 8 + 4 = 12 (which is expressed as “c” hexadecimally)

The first “bit” of each pair is for ON, the second is for OFF. So, to turn LED’s 1 and 2 off, the command would be

LEDOnOff(0x0c,0,0,0)

The backlights (where available) are accessed in exactly the same fashion, but in the third and fourth sets. So – to turn backlights ON for button 5

LEDOnOff(0,0,0,0×80)

And again, by adding the values, you can access more at once. Turning backlights on for 3 and 4 and turning LED’s off for 1 and 2

LEDOnOff(0x0c,0,0×30,0)

The above are examples for Dynalite / DyNet Event (.EVT) code. I have had no formal Dynalite Training, and this is based on the ~scarce~ information available online. Your comments about errors / omissions are encouraged.

Tasks can be triggered by various means:

Events (eg At 9pm every day, run the first Task);
By buttons in User Panels (eg Button 2 executes the seventh task);
DyNet traffic (eg “5c f3 53 10 37 00 00″ will trigger the fifty-fifth task in a D2Brg box 83);
Area Presets (eg Start(P=1,A=1));
Other Tasks (eg StartTask())

Tasks can also be stopped by similar means above. That means you can have a looping task, or a task that has long delays in it that can be “aborted” if you need. This comes in handy when you want to automate lighting changes after a long delay, unless something (like a motion detector) is triggered.

Task2()
{
// Monitor the Garage Movement Event
Name="MOVE Garage"
Start(P=36,A=255)
Delay(0.2)
Preset=17
Join=0xff
Fade=1.00
Preset(A=15)
}

Looking at the above, the first line shows we are declaring a Task. This is the second task within this event file, so it is written “Task2()”. Some devices are capable of more tasks then others, but most are able to store at least 8.

The Event Code supports comments, and they start with a double forward slash.

This task is triggered by area 255 going to preset 36. In our installs we use this area as a “Functional” zone.

Our automation panel sets area 255 to 36 whenever their is movement in the Garage area. Eg, the Garage Door is open, or the PIR’s are triggered.

In this example, all this task does is to set Area 15 to Preset 17 whenever it is triggered. This is the most elementary of tasks, and you could consider it some sort of a message relay.

Tasks are incredibly powerful, and through “Assembly” like constructs support variables, conditions etc. I will try and provide examples of these in other posts.

A slightly more powerful adaption of the above would be in the following situation. Assume you have several areas serviced by one User Panel. Your customer would like one button to turn the lighting on in those areas. You have selected Preset 3 as the preset you would like to apply to all the areas.

Task8()
{
// Entertainment Lighting
Name="Lower House Entertainment"
Preset=3
Join=0xff
Fade=4.00
Preset(A=3)
Delay(0.2)
Preset(A=5)
Delay(0.2)
Preset(A=6)
Delay(0.2)
Preset(A=7)
}

This code will set areas 3, 5, 6 and 7 to preset 3. The delay’s are important after each preset message to not bombard the network with too much traffic. The above could also be written:

Task8()
{
// Entertainment Lighting
Name="Lower House Entertainment"
Preset(A=3,P=3,F=4.00,J=0xff)
Delay(0.2)
Preset(A=5,P=3,F=4.00,J=0xff)
Delay(0.2)
Preset(A=6,P=3,F=4.00,J=0xff)
Delay(0.2)
Preset(A=7,P=3,F=4.00,J=0xff)
}

But given that we are setting several areas to the same preset, I feel the initial example is a little easier to read.

The above are examples for Dynalite / DyNet Event (.EVT) code. I have had no formal Dynalite Training, and this is based on the ~scarce~ information available online. Your comments about errors / omissions are encouraged.

Cheers, Troy

Under instruction from a client, I have been trying to get pricing and availability to mount a production in one of their venues later this year.  With every other venue that I have ever dealt with all over the world – I gather this type of information by making a phone call, sending an email and then awaiting a response. I generally get back a technical specification, along with a schedule of charges – and dates that are still available around the time I was looking.

In the case of Queensland’s Premiere Entertainment Complex… QPAC… it took, 8 phone calls, 6 emails and that is to just find out that it’s $22,000 per week for venue hire and about $200 per night for first aid. I still don’t have availability, or any other schedule of charges.

Time and time again I hear discussions about why we don’t get any of the larger touring shows being mounted at QPAC… I can only assume those production companies experience the same problems I have and come to the same conclusion – stay well away from QPAC.

There are many companies who get around this, the major banks, Telstra, Optus… pretty much any major institution has a clause in their contracts requiring you to forgo any protection offered to you by the Privacy Act 1988, if you want to do business with them. This particular undertaking by these institutions is of interest because, you can never sign a contract waiving your rights afforded to you by law – it’s just not possible. So – how these companies get away with it, confuses me.

One particular point of annoyance for me comes from the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsmen. The TIO does a fantastic job, and I applaud their work. One thing they don’t do well, is protect the privacy of their members.  Several times (most recently this week) emails have been sent out to every TIO member, listing the email address of every other TIO member. Once is forgivable, but repeated breaches of privacy should be dealt with. The TIO has displayed an inability to deal with it themselvs, so perhaps somebody external needs to come in and facilitate some process changes.

[EDIT] The original leaking of all member details was not direclty via the TIO. It was an email from ACMA to all members of the TIO.

FREE Domain and Mail Server Health Check

The Domain Name System (DNS) is without a doubt one of the most important components of a funcitoning internet. Without it, we would have to remember IP addresses (like phone numbers) to bring up web sites, email wouldn’t exist as it is now, and life would just be plain difficult.

For years I have been using many tools to test and verify validity of domain’s and domain servers for our own internal use and for our clients.

It’s amazed me the number of times that I have found moderate to major faults with the way some domains are set up in their DNS servers.

One of my favorite tools is DNSReport from DNSstuff.com. It is a very thorough look at how a domain name is configured in the DNS, and it will raise issues from core setup, to mail (MX), to web configuration.

There are a heap of other tools including Realtime Blacklist (RBL) monitoring, whois lookups etc etc

I consider their yearly fee’s somewhat expensive, but I can atest to their value.

lighting desk

Those who know me, know my rule about NEVER hiring fresh university graduates to work for me on theatrical projects. Especially from a particular university, where most of the technical theatre lecturers have never worked even a single day in “the real world”.

I have been spending a bit of time at my old high school recently, working with the stage crew students there. It has been a really rewarding experience, seeing their crew work hard on projects, eager to learn and ready to listen.

After discussions with a few other great technicians that I know and respect, I have decided to spend some time and energy offering real technical theatre training to students in schools by a great team of people. I’ve decided to call it Theatre Training Australia.

The goal is to provide a mentoring type program for students who have a keen interest in the production side of theatre. Lighting, Sound, Mechanics, Audio Visual, Costumes, Venue Management, the list is nearly endless. I have already whipped up a fantastic group of trainers who are keen to impart their knowledge and can’t wait to start the program next year.

If you run an educational institudtion, or know somebody who might be interested, please make sure to let them know about our training program.

I can only assume that it’s greed that has led Optus to prohibit the purchasing of App’s from the Market when users have an Optus SIM in their phone. There was a way around it using this app, which until recent versions of the Android OS worked just perfectly on rooted phones.

My solution at the moment is to swap SIM’s between my two phones (to a Telstra SIM) when I wish to purchase app’s, and then swap back.  If you don’t have a Telstra SIM of your own, get a prepaid (it doesn’t need to have credit if you have a WiFi connection) or borrow a friends.

I have asked Google for comment on the issue with the Android Market and Optus, and will update the comments here when I get a response.

As an aside… for ADP1 users – to regain “root” access on your phone in 1.5 or 1.6  – simply:

Become root in adb

$ ./adb root
restarting adbd as root

Then connect to the shell on your handset:

$ ./adb shell

And execute the following commands:

# mount -o remount,rw -t yaffs2 /dev/block/mtdblock3 /system
# cd /system/bin
# cat sh > su
# chmod 4755 su
# reboot

After your phone restarts you will have the “root” access you were used to previously.

A little while ago I wrote about our home automation experiences at Belcastro. The experience that I was relaying was one of frustration with a less then operational lighting solution, that can not be reliably controlled.

Dynalite has now stepped up, and are attending site tomorrow to start what I hope will be the process of recovering the installation, and making good with their product. Given the recent email exchange, I am assuming things will be a little uncomfortable, and I hope that our aligned goal – to leave this site with a working lighting system – will smooth things over.