Induction day at the Zoo

Yesterday was pretty much my first day working at Australia Zoo. The whole time was dedicated to introducing us to the operational side of the zoo, what to do, what not to do. It was fairly intense with a lot of information to absorb in one day but it was very useful knowledge none-the-less.

The parts I found most interesting were the health and safety, privacy and security aspects. I haven't been exposed to an organisation that was so much within the public eye before. So simple things like "don't point out visiting celebrities" I would never had considered.

The staff there seem like a happy crowd that will be good to work with. Plus there's a lot of variety in roles and personalities so there won't be any of that small business monotony to contend with. However, being a reasonably large organisation, it will be my best interest to stay away from any gossip/rumors that tend to breed in such environments.

Hotspot Client Interface

Idea:

XUL + WISPr Smart Client (iPass style)

In addition to what I've already done with the hotspot interfaces and whatnot - I am thinking about writing a user installable client application that does everything automatically upon discovery of a supported hotspot.

Using the client would also be beneficial for users with particular needs. It could automatically adjust the hotspot to suit a particular application on the users PC. It can provide accessibility options for people with a disability as well because it will basically use whatever they have set in their OS (I guess?).

From the outset XUL looks like it will suit my particular requirements neatly. It supports multiple platform with little fuss, it uses the MDC approach and its based upon standard and future proofed languages/formats.

I'll fiddle around and see what I can come up with.

Setting up for Production

Things are swinging into production now. Two sites have gone live in 'Test Mode' - once I'm happy all the bugs are gone I'll push them into production and see how it all goes. Here's hoping.

I started to play around with the FreeRADIUS rlm_perl module to see about modifying radius requests/replies before they hit the database. Main reason is to swap those bloody Colubris accounting values. I must be getting good at this Perl stuff because it was stupidly easy. Now I have a single perl script sitting in radius land that shuffles data around - so many possibilities have opened up with this level of control.

Curtin is still a ongoing interest. Agreements have been signed and supposedly the project should be in full swing. And so it should be, they have specified a end of April deadline. However I haven't even received equipment, nor has it even been ordered. Something about leasing it or something - I don't care because if they want me to finish the preparation before I leave then I'll need to see something next week at the latest.

Hotspot Website Details

As promised, more details on the Hotspot interface. This will make it a lot easier to roll your own anyway.

A change in career

Today I gave notice at AccessPlus. I have accepted a position as systems administrator at the Australia Zoo beginning the 5th of April.

My primary role will be administrating two web servers located in a datacentre in the US and looking after the local e-mail services. I will also assist in desktop support.

Still yet to put detail into my initial plans for the new job but I have some lofty goals in mind for the current environment. I'm hoping my responsibilities will expand into the netadmin side of things, it's only natural for me to pursue my comfort zone no?

As a result of this move I have lost my webhosting capability at AccessPlus. Thus I have set up a Google Applications Account and shifted my domain over - so now www/mail/blog/docs/start.naturalnetworks.net all point to one google app or another. I'll be using this as a kind of fancy wiki - documenting my knowledge and publishing articles. Still need a place to store downloads though.

Revised Hotspot Interface

Things have come a long way since I started to develop my own hotspot backend. It now has PayPal and Subscriber support. The administration backend was written by another lad but essentially that's just a PHP interface to the database. I few extra scripts such as the PayPal IPN receiver and a subscriber account scrubber cron job runs in the background.

The interface supports Mikrotik RouterOS and the Colubris MSC series. It's not difficult to add different Access Controller types. Once again I will be looking at making the Access Controller stuff modular to make additions easier.

At some stage I will write in my own administration interface. Its a fairly large task in its own right when you consider that I have to support multiple locations with their own pricing plans with various pricing items. Throw in all the user management and invoicing/revenue sharing among locations and its a complicated task that requires a fair bit of thought.

I'm definitely getting better at coding in Perl at least. I still have a fair bit to learn about more advanced aspects of the language such as Object Oriented Programing (OOP) and package/module writing, probably best to start on the packages/modules first.

Trouble Shooting Process

This has been hanging on my wall for sometime now, thought I'd record it here just in case it gets lost.

1. Initial issue description
2. Collect further information
3. Define the issue
4. Document and create brief
5. Identify associated systems and subsystems
6. Devise and apply tests
7. Assess and document test results
8. Develop and assess solutions
9. Implement and monitor solutions
10. Document outcome