This last week has been quite challenging. Last weekend I managed to pretty much ruin my servers php installation. I wanted to serve video files in WordPress that had been directly uploaded to the server rather than being constrained by WordPress’ maximum media upload size limitations. To do this I installed a plugin. This plugin required a newer version of PHP. I tried to upgrade PHP and broke the LAMP stack. I couldn’t figure out how to roll back to the old version, and that wasn’t ever going to be a solution as I still wanted to use the plugin.
I’ve had some “new” hardware sitting around unused (used to be a gaming computer) that I had been planning to use for an upgrade to my server for ages, so the catalyst was me breaking the old installation.
A week of feverishly working on the new server has now paid off! I have a super fast server,  core i7, 8gb DDR3 RAM, Intel SSD for OS (now Ubuntu 16.04 LTS), and 4TB data storage.
All the websites and other data have been migrated across. Samba, proftpd, Minecraft server, Zone minder etc have been set up.
The old server will probably end up in my garage as my workshop computer as it’s still way better than the old Pentium 4 that I have in there at the moment.

I’ve been messing about with indoor security cameras and found the VStarcam to be pretty good. Works in any browser (doesn’t have to be IE like some others) and has a great Android phone app. Easy to set up too. I tried to get it working with Zoneminder, but for some reason I couldn’t get the path right. It does have an SD card so can be used as a stand alone unit with motion recording. Video quality is excellent, and the two way audio is hilarious. I’ve put one into a retail environment and doing another next week. For the money, they are a bargain. You can score one here

Got one of these the other day, most excellent value for money!