Luana.me

Computer Tragedy (Ongoing…)

This week must have been targeted by some evil troll who wants to see me pull my hair out and scream.

You know, someone like this –>

Imge by James Shields via Compfight

Ehm, yes.

Well, I don’t believe in trolls and evil spirits, but I do believe that one thing going bad attracts more things to go bad, like in a domino effect.

Around July 27, my Acer laptop decided it wouldn’t connect to the Internet anymore. To date, I have no idea of what triggered the issue — my theory is that the update I ran the night before contains a bug that affects the Network Manager (my laptop runs on Debian Linux).

Then, about 24 hours later, my Asus netbook (that helped me work when the other device failed to connect) came up with the brilliant idea to erase the entire graphical server (Xorg) and leave me with nothing else but a dark terminal to type in. Once again, I suspect it was a bugged update to cause this, but I can’t be too sure.

The good news is that my netbook never lost its ability to connect to the Internet, so we have to thank that if I’m able to type this entry right now. The system is still a mess, I can’t work with it, and it will probably take me another two or three days to sort everything out.

My fiance is on vacation, so he can’t help me here. I’ll have to dive deep into the ocean of Linux administration and management and come up with some fix (no matter how ugly it might end up being; I’m not an expert in this area).

Let’s see how (and when) this story ends. I hope to not lose any of my current freelance clients, or I’ll be really in trouble. 🙁

I’m Loving Memopal! :) A Safe Remote Backup Service

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Memopal. All opinions are 100% mine.

Hi babes! 🙂 How have you been? I’m sorry, I know I still owe you some blog comments, but I’m getting caught up on work first, as my ISP has been naughty lately (more about that on Luana.me, though).

Today’s post is about a sweet online backup provider I learned about a few days ago called Memopal.

Memopal is pretty cute in my opinion. By ‘cute’ I don’t mean only graphically, but even feature-wise. Memopal, like Dropbox, saves files to remote servers that you can access anywhere, but it’s different from Dropbox because it does so via secure internet connection, thus adding a layer of security for your privacy.

I won’t go too much in technical detail here; it suffices for you to know that ordinary HTTP and FTP connection send data packets that can be intercepted and read by anybody; on the contrary, secure connection encrypts your data so that, even if intercepted, they can’t be read.

A free account with Memopal gives you 3 GB to store your files. Paid accounts allow you to store 200-300 GB or even more, depending on your needs. A free account is more than enough for me at the moment, but in the future, who knows?

Easy-peasy installation process

My first advice as a geeky girl is to read the manual at http://memopal.com/en/writable/cms/Memopal_User_Guide_EN.pdf – but if you don’t like reading before doing, just follow these steps:

1. Go to the Memopal website
2. Click on “3 GB Free” and activate your free trial
3. Download the version of Memopal that’s right for your operative system (I use Debian Linux 64-bit, so the site redirects me to the /en/linux.htm subpage)
4. Follow the instructions to start using Memopal on your computer. For my Linux distro, the site gives me https://linux.memopal.com/index.php/Memopal_for_Linux_How_To to read and put in practice.

How to start Memopal on Linux

Just open your terminal and type

$ memopal

Memopal will start automatically.

To know the commands to use with Memopal, type

$ memopal man

into your terminal. In the manual, you will learn that you can use Memopal with a nice and friendly user interface via localhost on the 5876 port:

http://localhost:5876

Before you do that, though, you need to configure your account username and password. In my case, since this is Linux, I followed the procedure listed in linux.memopal.com (see URL above).

Inside your /etc/memopal.conf, just edit the lines under

# Edit the following 2 lines with your Memopal account info

with your username (your email address) and password. Now, run the following line in your terminal:

service memopal start

and you’re done! 🙂 Just visit localhost:5876, add a folder to backup, and get started!

Click on the image for a higher resolution.

If you use a Windows or Mac OS, just follow the instruction in the PDF file I added above in the instruction list.

What kind of backup system do you use? What do you think of Memopal?

Domains, Coupons and A Crazy Head. Yep, That’s Me!

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of DomainPromoCodes.com. All opinions are 100% mine.

If you check my Archives, there’s a post about the reasons that led me to buy and mantain over 200 domains across the years.

My friends Georgie and Jhoice know how crazy I can get on that matter. 😉 Thing is — it’s not really about going crazy about domains or developing a compulsive obsession for digital shopping.

No, it’s more about imagination.

Look at the navbar above — under the main navigation menu for Honey-Babe.net, I have another bar with ‘Featured Characters’ and ‘W.I.P. Characters’ — that is, character blogs (role-play) where I let my imagination run wild and create new universes.

Don’t think I spend that much. I don’t.

I don’t because I make massive use of coupon codes at any registrar I run into. 😉 Just to bring an example to the table, every time I get an idea for a new character blog and I want to register a new domain, I load up DomainPromo Codes.com (one of my favorites, really) and pick the best coupon at hand.

GoDaddy is not my favorite registrar, but I use it often for first-year registrations because its coupon codes make it very cheap. Right now, GoDaddy is offering a heck of a coupon at $1.99 for a new .COM domain! 😉 There, that’s a kind of coupon I’d use right away for a character blog.

Code is cjc199 if you’re interested.

But it’s not just Characters…

Heh no. I have registered domains for several personal and work projects over the last two years. I don’t want to spoil W.I.P. stuff, but among the things there’s a free advertising community that will probably help bring some ethics back into the world of blogging. Not sure how it will go, but so far people I told about liked the idea.

For business, .BIZ domains look great. 🙂 Right now, NameCheap has a sale for .BIZ domains:

Get .BIZ domain + Business email plan for only $1.99 for the first year

Also, both .BIZ and .US without additionals services cost $0.98.

If you had to buy business domains on a budget, wouldn’t you take advantage of offers like these? ^_^

And Name.com? Ah, I don’t need coupon codes there. I’m a member of their Investor Club since I registered (and keep) 151 domains with them! 😀

A bit of advice

Don’t buy domains on a whim — wait for a good coupon to be released before you purchase! You will save a lot of money and the return on investment (ROI) for the domain will be higher, whether that’s a name you need for business or for a personal project.

Question: How much did you spend on a domain name last time you bought one?

Photo credit: Widjaya Ivan on Flickr (Creative Commons 2.0)