Matejunkie » Matejunkie

Next stop: Hamburg, Germany

Mike Adolphs — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 00:40:56 +0000

For the record:
I just quit at nugg.ad after 2 1/2 years full of hard, honest and mind-opening work for which I’m really thankful. Without nugg.ad I don’t think I wouldn’t have had such a good start. They’re all good people there and work like hell to make targeting successful without violating everyone’s privacy.
Specializing on a high availability system with over 12 billion PIs per months with a ruby (and several rails) backend(s) is still mind-blowing and gave me a lot of knowledge – something I should(‘ve) mention here more often in detailed articles though.

I’ll relocate to Luebeck, Germany this weekend. After a few weeks off I’ll start at my new employer’s place on 1st February as a Rails/Linux system administrator right in the middle of Hamburg, Germany at the famous Gaensemarkt.
Although – subscribers might know – I’ll visit Berlin regularly twice a month to bring the Monkey Island Tattoo project to an end before summer (and other Tattoo projects as well). The left leg is almost finished and work on my right arm has just begun so stay tuned.

Becoming a bone marrow donor

Mike Adolphs — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:31:34 +0000

Something completely different this time, but since it’s quite important I thought to let you know that I decided to become a bone marrow donor last week because of a guy within my circle of acquaintances who recently got ill with leukemia. Although the chances are minimal to find a potential donor that actually fits it’s at least a chance for him and for others as well.

Becoming a bone marrow donor is simple. All required information can be found on the DKMS’s website. Once you’ve signed up you’ll receive a package including two Q-tips with which you have to harvest cells at the inner side of your cheek which is mailed back afterwards to do the typecast. Then the information is being anonymized (Donor ID plus the characteristics of the biological tissue) and stored in the central database of the ZKRD (Zentrales Knochenmarkspender-Register Deutschland). From then the information can be queried to help affected people worldwide.

Be aware of the fact that the cost for becoming a bone marrow donor this way is about 50 Euros in Germany since the DKMS can’t afford to pay all typecasts by itself, but you may also give a blood donation which makes it completely free of charge. Therefore thanks to nugg.ad and especially Stephan Noller who enabled me to do this.

Urban Shooting

Mike Adolphs — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 00:14:37 +0000

Every now and then it’s time to break out of the so called nerdiness which almost every keen technician in the information technology experiences. That’s why we’ve did a few shots in the middle of Berlin several weeks ago with David Noelte, a brilliant photographer.

The other guy you’ll see within the album is Dirk, my roomie, who’s a famous Barkeeper here in Berlin, Germany. Feel free to browse the photo album and visit David Noelte’s portfolio! His work highly deserves it!

Enjoy the silence

Mike Adolphs — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:18:03 +0000

I was on holiday for about a week and a half and I just wanted to say that It’ll be a bit more quiet around here for the next weeks. It’s just way too hot to stay inside. Expect a few updates, but nothing major.

Go out, meet your friends, enjoy the sun and have a nice time! So do I.

Monkey Island Tattoo Project

Mike Adolphs — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 08:01:53 +0000

Over the past months we’ve been working on a little project here: Getting various Monkey Island artworks (2 packshots and an ingame scene) tattooed. Now, the first of three tattoos is finally finished. It’s the packshot of Monkey Island II on the right calf (with a little variation, of course).

But why Monkey Island?
It’s not only because I’m mostly a nerd, but also because Monkey Island builds a bridge to what I’m doing today. I was a teenager when I discovered Monkey Island and got excited right from the start. Simply put, Monkey Island got me addicted to the IT and that’s why I want to keep it in memory this way.

… and because I’m a mighty pirate! Yaaarghw!

Since my tattoo artiste spends her summertime in San Francisco, CA we’ll get back to work in October or November with the packshot of Monkey Island 1 on the left calf. Meaning, it’ll be finished around spring next year.

Blog/SVN maintenance

Mike Adolphs — Fri, 15 May 2009 21:38:12 +0000

Just a short note: I’m currently migrating my web-applications to nginx since it seems to be a quite fast and stable software. I simply have to get rid of Apache’s webserver since it’s way too much for my intentions. I’m working with Apaches all day long so looking over the rim of a tea cup isn’t the worst idea…
Therefore it’ll be a bit of a pain around here for the next few hours. Public SVN access is currently disabled, HTTPS and my redmine is not ready yet as well. If you’re interested in my Nagios Plugins take a look over at ~~Nagiosexchange~~ Monitoringexchange and get’em there.

I’ll update this article as soon as everything’s back online.

Update: Blog is back online, Redmine is back online, main svn repository is accessible read-only via svn://svn.matejunkie.com/nagios-plugins/. I’ll have to do some additional work on that though, but it’s working for now.

Public SVN access now available

Mike Adolphs — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 21:44:36 +0000

Just a short note:
I finally got public svn read-only access now running, means you’ve got more ways to get the scripts here than doing the good old copy’n'paste style or using NagiosExchange.

Here’s how it looks like when using svn:

user@host:~$ svn list https://svn.matejunkie.com/svn/nagios-plugins/
stable/
trunk/
user@host:~$ svn co https://svn.matejunkie.com/svn/nagios-plugins/stable/ nagplug-stable/
A    nagplug-stable/check_memory
A    nagplug-stable/check_memory/LICENSE
A    nagplug-stable/check_memory/check_mem.sh
A    nagplug-stable/check_bind
A    nagplug-stable/check_bind/LICENSE
A    nagplug-stable/check_bind/check_bind.php
A    nagplug-stable/check_bind/check_bind.sh
A    nagplug-stable/check_apache
A    nagplug-stable/check_apache/LICENSE
A    nagplug-stable/check_apache/check_apache2.sh
Checked out revision 41.

You’re also free to browse my personal redmine which I’m using for development purposes. Nothing’s special over there at the moment, I’ve just started using it though. At least it works well to browse the svn repository of my Nagios plugins.
I also fixed the ssl certificate problem with the svn subdomain. If you’ve got the cacert root ca integrated in your browser you now shouldn’t have to click through various dialogues anymore to access the redmine.

Let me know if it doesn’t work for you or if you’ve got problems with one of the scripts. I’m always looking for new opinions and improvement suggestions!