Ubuntu on early 2009 Mac Mini (3,1)

Well that was a pain but at least it seems to be working now. I wasted so much time on this that I figured it would be worth while leaving some notes.

Here's what didn't work:

• Creating bootable USB drives using the following method http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/create-a-usb-stick-on-mac-osx
• The default 64 bit 12.04.3 server image
• The default 64 bit 12.04 desktop image
• The default 64 bit 13.04 desktop image
• All three of these show up as 3 options when booting and fail to start the installer
• Then I discovered that there are mac specific images for 12.10 and 13.04 - I chanced upon these and never once saw them mentioned in any guide that I read elsewhere. Check the releases site, eg. http://releases.ubuntu.com/raring/
• Still I had problems with 13.04 desktop - it installed but would not boot into the desktop unless I started it in recovery mode. I almost got caught up in trying to make this work but then remembered I only wanted a headless server install in the first place

So here's what did work:

• The 64-bit Mac (AMD64) server install image worked fine and now I have what I wanted (almost - I would have preferred the 12.04.3 LTS version but I can live with 13.04)

BuildItAndTheyWillCo.me part 2

Well I don't think they will. I got this running and along the way I learnt a bit more about AWS, Chef and Knife. But now I kinda lost interest :o and will take my new knowledge on to the next project.

For now there's a blank word press installation running at test.builditandtheywillco.me but it won't be there long. I'll keep hold of the domain name for a while though and add it to the list (along with IKnowTh.is).

AWS Revisited - the birth of BuildItAndTheyWillCo.me

I've been playing with Chef a lot recently, mainly with Vagrant to separate and control development environments, but now I feel the need to get fully into the whole DevOps thing. With that in mind I'm going to see if can't get something running in a whole continuous deployment kind of way with AWS.

What to build though? To be honest I don't really care so first I figured, how about a personal web site. Then I realised that I may like to blog about the experience and remembered this blog. Then I had a moment and thought what about a blog site that documents the process of building itself (Wooooah!).

What about a name then? Well, as I'm building something and maybe hope that people will visit it I've gone for 'BuildItAndTheyWillCo.me' (now duly registered) in honour of the Kevin Costner classic 'Field of Dreams', ghosts are not welcome though ;)

Becoming fascinated with bitcoin

Is this the future of currency?
Image source: www.online-accounting-degrees.net