Reduce The Risk of Human Error on Live Servers

This is another quick and easy tip, this time help to reduce human error when working between live, development and staging environments.

In short the tip is to visually distinguish between live/staging/dev environments; the idea being that you don't accidentally run something on the live environment instead of staging or testing. Assuming you're connecting via SSH, you should be able to configure your console program to use a background image and you should be able to customise your command prompt.

Enabling Alt+f and Alt+b shortcuts in Gnome Terminal

I though each time I find a solution to a problem I have I should blog it to make sure the knowledge is out there for everyone. This is a super simple one to start with.

I've been switching from KDE to Gnome in Ubuntu, but been finding it hard to let go of Konsole.
Then I realised the the Gnome Terminal allows background images the way Konsole used to. Anyway, that's another post, standard terminal shortcuts weren't working, like Alt+f to skip forward a word and Alt+b to go back a word, as they were conflicting with the window menus, as in the image above.

There's a super simple fix.

How To Interview A Web Programmer

So you've got a vacant Web Developer position, you've advertised on the best IT job sites, (you didn't use a recruitment agency did you?) you've got an interviewee. But how do you know if he can actually do the job? You need to test him. But how do you write a good test that is fair? Here's how...

Communicate
No one likes a surprise test. Least of all when at an interview. So let him know there'll be a test. Even let him know the topics that will be covered in the test.
For example you might say the test will cover:

Fixing Ubuntu 11.04 Partial Upgrade

I use Ubuntu at work and at home and normally the upgrade process is very smooth.
However, the upgrade from 10.10 to 11.04 has been a pain to say the least.
In fact I'm still grappling with it. (Haven't even started it at work yet.)

So I thought I'd share some tips to in case they might help anyone else.

Best Economical Small Cars

My car is dying and I need a new one. So I've taken a very geeky approach to finding a new one.

The Costs

I realised the main cost from running my car are from:

1. Fuel
   By my calculations, I spend about £40 a week on unleaded petrol. Which works out at quite a large yearly cost. 40 x 50 (52 weeks minus a couple of weeks holiday) = £2,000
2. Maintenance
   I checked my credit card statements for last year and I spent just under £1200. So about £100 a month. I've spent about £300 already this year.

So it's costing me about £3,200 a year to run my car. Not including tax, which is relatively small compared to these 2 factors.