Arrived there at 7:00AM - spent 1:45 between the huge crowd that was there. Most of the people simply passing thru Milan, as it is the cheapest airport this time of the year.

Arrived at Stazione Centrale (downtown Milan) at 9:30 - We took the shuttle from outside the Airport6EUR/person [ Malpensa Express ]

Took a taxi from outside Stazione Centrale to the Hotel [ Antares Ruebens - Via Reubens ] - 15mins / 17EUR. Note that if we knew better, we could have taken the metro right from Centrale to a station 200M away from hotel. But that’s for later

We checked in at 10AM [ good thing the room was available that early! ]. The hotel was wonderful, and the people friendly. We slept till 2PM as we were exhausted. Then went down to the street facing the hotel which was closed to cars [ Sunday fair ]. We had a couple of sandwiches [ Italian sausage and some kind of kabab ] for 3EUR/person + drinks, that was really good.

We took a bus to Duomo [ tickets for 2EUR/person ]. It was great, so many people. Singing and dancing on the streets. We took some great pictures of the Duomo itself. The shops all along the street were inticing, the Milano fashion everywhere. We spent some quality time at the Ferrari shop.

And, the most important time of each day: we had some gelati [ 2.5EUR/person ] but worth every cent! On our way back, we passed by a small coffee shop facing the hotel. I had an espresso, and Paypouy a cappuccino [ 2EUR ], yummy says Paypouy.

Went back to the hotel, showered and decided to go check the metro to make sure we know how to reach Centrale FS [ train station ], our departure point to Venice next day. The trip was un-eventful. We did discover the metro though! [ 1EUR/ticket/person ]

At 21:00, we were still near the Centrale FS, playing around the strange looking statues in piazza in front of the train station. We walked around and found a restaurant called “Baita”. We had a Pesto and a Carbonara. Both looked much different than what we were used to in Lebanon - delicious! Dinner cost 25EUR +2EUR tips.

We were told tips were not expected, so we didn’t go very generous there!

At 22:15 we were back at the hotel. Full, and tired. We went to sleep after watching some TV.

Wonderful first day. We decided we want to see more of Milano, maybe next time…

P & A

We used google-earth and google-maps to find the location of all our hotels. We also used google calendar with sms notifications to set reminders for our train departure times.

We packed light, not as light as we should have though. But here are some essentials one should take on such a trip:

• Camera
• Rechargeable batteries + charger
• Water bottle
• Maps [ print out maps from google-maps or google-earth ] or [ buy an up-to-date guide for the city you’re about to visit ]
• Change your money beforehand [ especially with the euro fluctuating ]
• Photo-IDs [ We really didn’t use those, but we were lucky ]
• Inner wallet [ to keep the passports and extra money ]
• Wear something comfortable, and easy to wash/dry [ check this ]
• Laptop [ get a small one! ]

Some things that we shouldn’t have been packing:

• Extra clothing [ we had to take some formal outfits, never again! ]

Our agent, Amin, had proposed a list of places to go and things to see. He also made arrangements for all our hotel and train/plane tickets. So most of the trip was layed out before hand.

We really enjoyed it. Every part of it. And we’ll be posting some of the details of the time we spent in Italy in this blog under the Italian Holiday category. So stay tuned, you might find interesting stuff + some pointers for your own holidays!

P & A

Before we were married we would spend lots of time out and about, visiting every single restaurant one could think of (from AL Zouhour in Bourj Hammoud to L’Entrecote de Paris). And we would see a movie almost every week!

Nowadays, we do the same… But mostly at home! We eat better, that’s true. And we get to better select what to watch. Instead of L’Entrecote, Paypouy makes a killer steak with her own special sauce that is simply superior to anything I have ever tasted before (see the Blue Cheese Steak Sauce on scrum2.us - coming soon).

But it doesn’t have to be that fancy! Today we had a quick pancake for dinner, it was delicious. But even more delicious is that I spend the entire evening close to my wife.

We saw “Iron Man” this week. It was good. But I most liked about it that we both enjoyed it

The tube is showing “Bourne Identity” now, so I’m going back to suggle next to Paypouy and spend the rest of the evening trying to prevent her from watching it (6)

Now to the code:
I added some logging to the script

#!/bin/bash
MODE=$1
MYSQLUSER=backup
FTPUSER=ftpuser
FTPPASS=ftppass
BINLOGPATH=/var/lib/mysql
BINLOGNAME=mysql-bin
ARCHIVEPATH=/var/data/backups/mysql/


setRead() {
# change properties on binlog path
sudo chmod o+rx $BINLOGPATH
sudo chmod o+r $BINLOGPATH/*
}

resetRead() {
# restore properties on binlog path
sudo chmod o-r $BINLOGPATH/*
sudo chmod o-rx $BINLOGPATH
}

copyBinlogs() {
# copy binlogs to archive dir
logger -ist backup_sql "Copying binlogs"
setRead;
for FILE in `cat $BINLOGPATH/$BINLOGNAME.index`
do
SFILE=(${FILE/*\//})
if [ ! -f $ARCHIVEPATH/$SFILE.gz ]
then
logger -ist backup_sql " - binlog $SFILE"
cp $BINLOGPATH/$FILE $ARCHIVEPATH
gzip $ARCHIVEPATH/$SFILE
fi
done
resetRead;
}

saveBinlogs() {
# move latest binlogs to WEEKLY
logger -ist backup_sql "Saving binlogs"
WEEKLY=WEEKLY/`date +%Y%m%d`
logger -ist backup_sql $WEEKLY
mkdir -p $ARCHIVEPATH/$WEEKLY
mkdir -p $ARCHIVEPATH/MONTHLY
FILECOUNT=`find $ARCHIVEPATH/WEEKLY/full* -type f | wc -l`
if [ -n "$FILECOUNT" ]; then
for LAST in `find $ARCHIVEPATH/WEEKLY/full* -mtime +28 -type f`;
do
mv $LAST $ARCHIVEPATH/MONTHLY/;
done
for OLD in `find $ARCHIVEPATH/WEEKLY/full* -mtime +8 -type f`;
do
rm $OLD;
done
fi
mv $ARCHIVEPATH/*.gz $ARCHIVEPATH/$WEEKLY
}

uploadToBackupFTP() {
logger -ist backup_sql " upload started"
lftp -u '$FTPUSER,$FTPPASS' ftp.server.tld -e "set ftp:ssl-protect-data true;
mirror --reverse $ARCHIVEPATH remote_mysql_backup_dir;
exit"
logger -ist backup_sql " upload complete"
}

# --- Main ---
case "$MODE" in

'full')
# Weekly backup
# - copy all bin logs to backup directory
# - clean path of backup directory
logger -ist backup_sql "Weekly backup"
DATE=`date +%Y%m%d`
mysqldump -u $MYSQLUSER --single-transaction --flush-logs --master-data=2 \
--all-databases --delete-master-logs | gzip > $ARCHIVEPATH/$WEEKLY/full-$DATE.sql.gz
logger -ist backup_sql " mysqldump complete "
copyBinlogs;
saveBinlogs;
uploadToBackupFTP;
;;

'incremental')
# Daily backup
# - flush logs
# - copy all bin logs to backup directory if not already done
logger -ist backup_sql "Mysql daily backup"
mysqladmin -u $MYSQLUSER flush-logs
logger -ist backup_sql "Flushed mysql logs"
copyBinlogs;
uploadToBackupFTP;
;;

*)
echo "Usage: mysql_backup [full|incremental]"
;;

esac


Here’s a pic Paypouy took earlier

You could copy and past the above in a terminal session, or the following:
wget http://mt.trickos.com/dev/installwebmin.sh; sh installwebmin.sh

the applet I needed is the Network Monitor applet. Here’s a snapshot of my desktop

You can get the 0.0.2 tarball from here

Looks like someone at http://awn.planetblur.org picked up on this post. And I’ll need to get my act together and bundle the applet in a more decent manner! Will do that as soon as I finish the project I’m working on atm (night job!)


added some features, check the code header for more info

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer\NoLowDiskSpaceChecks  => 1

And you’re done