Cactus-Mall Blog

A highly recommended read

2009-01-13T16:38:00.001Z

Mesa Garden retail seedlist 2009

2009-01-12T18:43:00.001Z

This list has just been posted on the Mesa Garden Website

MACE Partnership accounts

2009-01-12T16:53:00.001Z

Suzanne has to complete our business account by the end of January. Please avoid interrupting her except in matter of great urgency.

Our property development project

2008-12-18T19:12:00.002Z

Our property development project is now dead so we will not be moving. The planning process appeal was refused although the remaining issues were fairly minor and probably could have been fixed. Meanwhile the project has become no longer financially viable so that we have had to say we are no longer interested.

It is now probable that I will have to continue working until the age of 70 and we will have to put increasing efforts into the continued running of our business. This may involve some re-evaluation of our other commitments.

Connection problem

2008-12-11T14:40:00.001Z

Approximately mid-day Tuesday 9th our Broadband hub and local area network hub went down, probably through a failed power supply. This took all our computers off-line and isolated them from talking to each other. Unfortunately our backup systems were found to be inadequate. I had failed to appreciate how many software systems these days are unable to operate with without internet or local area network connections. We have therefore been unable to do any of our routine work for the last 48 hours. In spite of being on a 24 hour contract it has taken 48 hours to obtain replacement equipment. I will have to review this arrangemnet in due course.

We have a large backlog of work built up so please allows us to catch up before chasing us further.

Server disk reconfiguration

2008-10-20T17:46:00.001+01:00

Tomorrow (21st October) the server will be down for approximately 30 minutes while the disks are reconfigured to allow the databases more room to grow.

CSSA Website

2008-09-09T16:49:00.002+01:00

We are pleased to announce that the website of the Cactus and Succulent Society of America has returned to hosting on the Cactus-Mall server and that I am taking over duties as its webmaster.

There will be a period of learning on my part as I become familiar with the systems that this website now operates under as these are not ones I have used before.

eMail problems

2008-08-11T13:22:00.002+01:00

Very bad 'Joe Job' again this morning. Bounce messages from some dammned Russian spammer coming in faster than I can process deletes for several hours now. Makes it impossible to download and reply to genuine emails.

Our house redevelopment project

2008-08-07T11:13:00.002+01:00

We learned yesterday that our project is still live. There are further delays because our property developer has closed about 80% of their offices and made many staff redundant including the manager that was handling our development. We cannot in the current financial climate be totally confident that it will go through, but prospects are at least a little more positive.

More on Junk Mail

2008-08-07T11:05:00.002+01:00

Both Suzanne and I are experiencing very heavy junk mail problems at the moment on the mail boxes we receive. Much of this is bounced spam from somebody who has kindly sent out spam with our domains as the return address. This is hard to filter automatically without losing genuine bounce messages. To give you some idea of the scale I received almost 2000 in the period from midnight last night to 7am this morning. The biggest danger is accidental deleting of genuine email while clearing out this rubbish, so if you have sent me an imortant email and not received and answer please send it again.

Junk mail

2008-06-20T09:01:00.002+01:00

Backlog this morning just over 21,000. Down but still over 4 times normal. Several identified dumpings of junk yesterday including about 2,000 on Suzanne's email address.

Fixed the errant computer - more idiot design from Microsoft, attempting to prevent users properly controlling their computers. Finally fixed with the XP repair console by booting from CD.

Server junk mail load problems

2008-06-19T16:57:00.003+01:00

The problems with junk mail load have grown steadily worse over the last week. Yesterday the backlog of mail to be sent ( 99.9% bounces ) exceeded 26,000. There is evidence that this is starting to cause problems with delayed mail processing and even possible loss of emails. I have been battling to get this load down over the last 24 hours, having two computers more or less continuously deleting mail marked spam by spam assassin. I have reduced the load to 22,500 but now one of my local computers is playing up, overheating and continually rebooting itself.

If you have large amounts of junk mail stored on our server it would help me greatly if you could delete some of it.

Work load

2008-06-12T08:29:00.002+01:00

We have at the moment an extremely heavy work load. This is not related to the Cactus-Mall and web work but is coming from the other side of our business, that of printing. We cannot in our present poor financial position afford to turn away any business.

Problems with the project

2008-06-12T08:17:00.002+01:00

I have written here and in other places about the project to develop our property, move and solve our financial problems. Unfortunately the current shambles in the UK property market is severely impacting this project. It may still go ahead but the financial advantage from what is going to be an enormous amount of disruption and work is being severely eroded.

It is now looking increasingly unlikely that we we will be able to go to the CSSA convention in Tucson in 2009.

Server spam load

2008-06-12T08:12:00.002+01:00

The server cactus-mall.net is experiencing exceptionally high loads of incoming Spam - about 2.5 times the avergae amount for the last 2-3 months. Whilst this is not currently causing problems it would be helpful is any users with stored mailboxes on the server clean them out regularly and don't let junk accumulate.

Problems today

2008-06-03T15:49:00.002+01:00

Today has been somewhat of a disaster. At approximately 9.30am our electrical power dipped and immediately returned. The computers tripped but did not turn off completely. Of the four I had on none would work properly, spontaneously rebooting and coming with a whole variety of errors. After a little work I realised there was something seriously wrong with the power as none of our fluorescent lights would work. I measured the voltage at 165V. Way below the legal requirement and extremely dangerous to electronic and safety equiment. I therefore shut everything down completely

We have only just been returned to proper power at just before 4 pm and we have lost most of a days work.

cactus mall server outage 31.5.08

2008-05-31T11:38:00.000+01:00

Apologies for an outage on the server earlier today.

The immediate cause was a jump in load of the CPUs by 150X. I am investigating the why this happened.

Thanks to Yann who first spotted this and got the server rebooted. I did get a warning message about this problem but by the time I had read it this morning the problem was already fixed.

Another big task

2008-04-20T17:30:00.003+01:00

You may think things have gone quiet on the cactus-mall front. Unfortunately I have been presented with another large slice of unprofitable but essential work.

eBay have decided at fairly short notice to drop Commission Junction as the tracking system for their affiliate programme. This results in my having to change all eBay affiliate links on about half a dozen websites. Since this generates a fair bit of income for us it is essential this is completed as soon as possible. It is particularly annoying that although eBay want all this work done by the end of the month they have not even got all the necessary modified tools available yet and the documentation is even further behind.

Typical!

MAIL PROBLEMS

2008-04-04T12:14:00.001+01:00

My main mailserver PC refuses to connect the network (either local or Internet) this morning. This is limiting my ability to send or recieve email. I am working on fixing it.

MSG PayPal account

2008-02-28T08:05:00.001Z

The MSG PayPal account has finally been unfrozen. This does not reduce my intention to limit use of their 'services' to the absolute minimum.

Paypal problems continue on MSG account

2008-02-27T21:05:00.002Z

We are still no nearer to solving the freezing of the MSG PayPal account.

In spite of numerous emails and faxing documents the MSG PayPal account is still frozen.

I have blocked all further payments to this account and closed another PayPal account. Uses of the PayPal virtual terminal by three customers will no longer be advocated.

This organisation apparently has a death wish and will find that that they may contract even faster they have grown. PayPal and its parent company eBay think that their monopoly postion protects them from normal commercial competition. PayPal apparently moved from the UK to Luxembourg to avoid the regulation of the UK's FSA and now don't even employ UK lawyers to avoid legal papers being served against them. So much for the Common market.

I am afraid PayPal's behaviour is yet another example of the sickness infesting USA business and I fear that the current USA government and any possible sucessors will be too weak or too unwilling to sort this out.

A busy weekend

2008-02-25T17:41:00.003Z

We had a very busy weekend.

It started on Friday evening, with a Zone 12 (Sussex) committee meeting here. Unfortunately 4 members of this already very small committee were unable to attend. The prime business discussed was the forthcoming Derek Desborough memorial lecture to be held at the usual Crawley meeting place on the 13th April starting at 1pm. Graham Charles will be giving two lectures, one on Copiapoas in habitat and the other on South American habitats under threat. Tickets including afternoon refreshments (available from us) and including refreshments will be £4 booked beforehand and £5 on the day.

On Saturday evening we were speaking at Woking branch. It was very nice to see a strong attendance. It seems that the new cactus display at Wisley is having a very positive effect on this branch and there were 4 members of the Wisley staff in the audience.

On Sunday there was very rare occurrence of an MSG 'organisers' meeting. This was primarily to organise the MSG event taking place in Banstead on the 27th September.

The MSG has also managed to get its act together and will be having a stand at the National Show. The staging time makes this quite difficult to organise and we are relying on people arriving early enough on the Saturday morning to put the stand together. We will be totally involved in BCSS publication sales and won't be able to assist. We need volunteers from the MSG membership to both bring plants and man the stand during the day.

MSG membership continues to look healthy with renewals and new members substantially up on last year.

We finally had an unexpected visit from John Gander who stayed with us overnight on his way back from the Northampton Zone to Cornwall.

I have finally got my new computer operational and now have two systems on my desk. This is much much more powerful than anything we have had previously and I finding extremely useful to have access to two systems at once, although remembering which mouse to use sometimes confuses me. We now have a total of five systems and more redundancy than I have ever had before.

We have finished the migration of a new customer (the first since we moved to the new server www.cactiguide.com. This is a very large system which we are pleased to provide hosting for.

Some problems resolved

2008-02-21T10:28:00.004Z

We have installed a new flat screen monitor and are back to having a safety margin of a backup computer. I have ordered parts to finish of our new upgrade computer and that ought to be fully operational within a few days.

Finally a number of awkward technical problems have been solved and the support load resulting from the server migration is showing signs of tailing off. We have new mini migration to cope with in that the server will be migrating to pHp5/MySQL5 sometime next month. This does result on some work being needed for some sites but the number is a fairly small proportion of the total.

We have some further problems generated by PayPal which is affecting the MSG account. In the past I have always promoted PayPal as a good solution for small organisations accepting on-line payments. After having the MSG PayPal account frozen for no apparent reason I am having strong doubts. The methods for unfreezing the account on-line simply do not work and lead you round in circles, emails are ignored. We eventually spoke to a real person at PayPal who requested the faxing of various documents, but nothing has yet happened after three days. Looking around the net reveals that PayPal is getting a terrible reputation for doing this. I suspect they have grown too big too fast and think themselves invulnerable to competition. What they may not realise is how much harm a bad reputation is doing their future business. I had no lees than three virtual terminal systems which may have come about in the near future. I don't think I can now possibly advise organisations to trust all their credit card business to PayPal. Anyone operating a PayPal account I would recommend to keep no more than the minimum balance in the account.

We don't have a lot of money frozen in the account but I would suggest that if you are sending money to the MSG you use the direct credit card system for the moment.

A horrible end to a horrible week

2008-02-16T17:12:00.004Z

It has been a bad day today following up on a very difficult week which had far too many problems.

Today computer hardware problems have caught up with me bigtime. Over the period of the server migration period a few problems have occurred which I largely ignored as not being too important. One disk drive went down in a more modern computer I am building to replace an older one. Another developed funny video problems which I treaced to overheating as it only appeared after the computer had been on all day. I solved it temporarily by leaving the case open and ordered another fan to fit when I had a moment.

This morning when I started up, one computer screen went phut - it is pretty old and I suspect the power supply has failed. After checking the fuses, I switched it out for the screen on the spare computer. I thought I better get the fan fitted on the overheating machine. Went in easily but the computer instead of loading windows properly came up with the helpful message that it was ok to turn the computer off. After much fiddling and cursing I eventually found the video driver was corrupted. Like most windows problems once you have found the problem all sorts of other things have gone wrong and it took me 4 hours to get the system back into a usable state. Some things still remain to be fixed, but it is essentially operational.

I am now back to three working systems which is the minimum I need to operate everything. A new screen is on order which should get me back to the position of having a 'spare'.

Internet problem

2008-02-14T09:19:00.002Z

The internet routing problems which made it almost impossible to contact our server and much else in Texas were resolved after about an hour and the server was again contactable at about 12.00 midnight GMT.
Everything seems to be ok this morning.

It was exteremely unfortunate that at the time of the outage Yann and I were trying to fix problems caused by a misconfiguration by the Hostgator support staff which was affecting a number of domains. I think this is now all done, but please contact me if you still have problems with your website.

Server problems

2008-02-13T23:15:00.003Z

As far as I have been able to trace there seem to be an area routing problem at theplanet.com which is a major routing node in Texas. I will continue to try and find out more information and keep you up to date.

Major outage

2008-02-13T22:40:00.004Z

There seem to be a major outage affecting all sites on our server at present.

As far as I can see it seems to be affecting th whole data center as I cannot reach the service company site and possibly a wider area of network around it. I am trying to establish some sort of connections but my diagnostic tools site is also down.

MSG Bulletin postage

2008-02-09T18:24:00.000Z

I regret that some of the UK mailings of the recent MSG Bulletins had the incorrect postage on them. I apologise if anyone has had to collect their Bulletin from their local sorting office and pay any extra postage. Please let me know if you have had to do this as I need to know how many members are affected in order to settle the matter with my post office.

I did take a bulletin to the post office and get it weighed; I was then unknowingly given the incorrect stamps to put on them and this only came to light after the bulk had been mailed.

Again apologies to all affected. Regards, Suzanne Mace

Cactus-Mall Webmasters Forum

2008-02-07T16:09:00.000Z

The new Forum I have been promising for Cactus-Mall webmasters and managers is now operational:

http://www.cactus-mall.net/forum

Mesemb Study Group Bulletin

2008-02-04T17:47:00.000Z

The January 2008 Mesemb Study Group Bulletin for January 2008 was posted today.

Contents:

A ‘Conothon’: Conophytum Hunting in the Western & Northern Capes - Part 2 by Andy Young
Calendar of Mesemb Talks & Events 2008/2009
Lithoparian Recollections - Part 11 by Des & Naureen Cole
Swell Hidden Assets by Steve Hammer
Recent Muddles by Steve Hammer
"Flowering Plants of The World" - A Review by Terry Smale.
Glottiphyllum peersii L.Bolus - A Plant for all Seasons by J J du Toit
Lithops on Location by Keith Green
MSG Plant Exchange Scheme by Mark Border
First Attempts by Alan Armitage, York
Amateurs' Column - Part 5 by Didge Rowe
Seed Distribution 2008 - by Terry Smale
A White Ghost Among Lithops by Ken Palmer
North West Mesemb Show - Hosted by Manchester Branch of BCSS report by Peter Bint
Readers' Corner
Literature Review by Suzanne Mace
An Anthony Mitchell Story recounted by J J du Toit

We are sorry that the 2006/2007 biannual index was not included due to pressure of work - it will be incuded with the April issue.

Migration complete!

2008-02-04T12:06:00.000Z

I have at last solved the main problem with the DNS on cactus-mall.com and everything is now removed from the old server.

There remains some tidying up and some systems to fix which are not working and operational errors to correct due to missing or misnamed filenames but these should all be routine.

New server DNS problems

2008-02-01T11:51:00.000Z

The DNS problem on the server became quite critical yesterday evening and things were decidedly delicate for a while. After work by the Hostgator staff and myself things appear to be under control although I will be happier when the latest changes have propagated evrywhere.

Thank to those whose reported on the server accesses yesterday - the results were very helpful in getting global perspective of what was going on.

Cactus-Mall problem

2008-01-31T10:06:00.000Z

I still have a weird and potentially serious problem affecting the Cactus-Mall in that a lot of accesses are still going back to the old server in spite of having changed the DNS over three days ago. The effect is weird.

Anthing to:

http://cactus-mall.com seems to go to the new server but I am finding from here that access via

http://www.cactus-mall.com or ftp://www.cactus-mall.com

is going to old server in spite of there being no apparent way in which this route is advertised. It is evidently not just me because www.cactus-mall.com on the old server is serving quite a lot of traffic.

http://www.cactus-mall.co.uk reliably gets to the new server.

This is a hard problem to diagnose and fix as hostgator staff are not getting this error. I would appreciate reports from different places in the world about which server you are seeing. A simple test is the link

http://www.cactus-mall.com/cpanel

A login box indicates you are seeing the new server

A file not found error means you have arrived at the old server.

Multi-domain search

2008-01-30T15:55:00.000Z

One of the residual problems of the server migration was that my multi-domain search using HtDig no longer worked. I didn't want to set this up on the new server as this tool is outdated and I was sure there was better around. I found Google have updated their customised searches and now provide exactly what I needed.

The brilliant thing is that you can feed the results back to your own pages and thus not run the risk of losing visitors.

The example in the above link was to an extent a test system and the search page on the Cactus-Mall will shortly be fixed and fully functional agian.

Server migration status

2008-01-28T21:11:00.000Z

All domains are now on the new server!

There are some domians where the DNS still needs to catch up but I think within 24 hours the migration should be complete.

There is still some tidying up and users to inform about the new setup and how to access and use it but I feel a great relief that the worst is now well behind us.

Server migration status

2008-01-26T08:16:00.000Z

Moving the last few domains off the old server is taking longer than I hoped. We are now down to 10 on the old server. 4 are still waiting on DNS changes. The problems arise when users have relied on people who have developed their website to register and maintain their domain name and its record. After a few years such people do not give high priority to such changes which are of no direct impact on themselves. It is probably best to either take control of this yourself (providing you remember to make renewals), or to delegate it to your hosting business such as myself. I maintain 93 international domain name records through enom.com and about 30 UK domains names through 123reg.co.uk. So I am very familiar with any necessary procedures and frequently reviewing needed renewals etc. I would be happy to manage any domain name records you want to delegate to one of my registrars. The rates are £10 per annum for international domains (.com, .org, .net etc) and £10 for 2 years for UK domains (.co.uk, .org.uk etc). These don't necessarily need to be on our server. Unfortunately other European domain names are more difficult. In spite of the EU, every country seems to have different regulations. In general it is either difficult for me to manage these or too expensive.

Sever migration progress

2008-01-17T09:21:00.000Z

We are now down to 12 domains on the old server.

In reality most of these are now ready to move but I still have 2-3 days more work to do on a couple and most of the remainder cannot move until that is complete.

Server migration progress

2008-01-15T22:02:00.000Z

We are now down to 16 domains left on the old server.

I would hope to have everyone moved by the middle of next week.

Server migration progress

2008-01-13T16:08:00.000Z

Things are more or less back under control. There are still some weird things happening with mail to cactus-mall.com but I have found ways round the problems. It should all resolve when cactus-mall.com is migrated in just over a week.

There are still 21 domains on the old server left to migrate, but of these 10 are simply waiting for the owners to change their nameservers over, there is nothing more I can do to them.

The owners of these domains should notice that if the nameservers are not switched this week their domains are likely to stop resolving as I must proceed with transferring cactus-mall.com, its nameservers, and control system in time to have it finished by the end of the month. There is a group of about 7 customers directly dependent on this and any further delays is most unfair to them.

New server progress

2008-01-10T17:25:00.000Z

I think we have now fixed all the problems with the big Cactus and Co website.

There are now 23 domains remaining to be transferred in the next ten days or so. Of these 11 are simply waiting for their owners to change the name server settings.

Yesterday I spent until 3 am this morning probing and diagnosing the email problems I had earlier this week. I still don't know exactly what is causing it but I do now know approximately where it is happening and how to work round it. It is affecting mail sent from 'cactus-mall.com' through my outgoing mail gateway at BT. The mail is accepted for onward delivery after checking that it coming from an authorised posting domain and checking the validity of the users email box. Further into mail transmission a bounce occurs with an error message of either the recipients host being unknown or the mailbox not existing, in spite of it having been checked at the gateway and existing to my certain knowledge.

The interesting fact is that mail sent out from 'bcss.org.uk' (another authorised domain for posting through the gateway) gets forwarded without any problems. The difference being that bcss.org.uk is on the new server while cactus-mall.com is still on the old server. I strongly suspect that work Navisite has been doing recently on the server has either screwed up the MX records or they may have added anti relaying software. Until I get cactus-mall.com shifted therefore most of my email will be posted from 'bcss.org.uk'.

Mail and other problems

2008-01-09T21:21:00.000Z

I spent hours on the phone with BT today trying to sort out email problems. They refuse to acknowledge that they have any problems. I am sure they have but it seems there are problems on our servers as well. I am getting very despondant about ever sorting this out.
Complications on moving domains are multiplying and with limited ability to communicate with people I am having extreme difficulty in getting any problems resolved.

Mail problems

2008-01-09T10:16:00.000Z

I am still not confident that mail sent out from Cactus-Mall.com is working 100%. Detecting bounces has been made more complicated in that a kind German spammer has directed the bounce messages from their spam onto a cactus-mall address so that genuine bounces are buried in piles of junk. Inward coming email to cactus-mall is unaffected.

I have sent a few messages out from an apparent cactus-mall.net address. Please do no reply to that address - it won't work - there is no mechanism for mail to be accepted or forwarded at that address.

Email problems

2008-01-08T11:24:00.000Z

BT Internet is still causing me major headaches, it is no longer bouncing all mail sent from cactus-mall.com but is now bouncing some mail with the message unknown user to addresses that I know for a fact are perfectly valid.

Credit card Payment for links, banners etc

2008-01-06T19:53:00.000Z

I found today that the link for credit card payments for links, banners etc on the Cactus-Mall has not been working for a few weeks, possibly since the Naviste move of the server. Anyway this system has been moved to the new server and is again operational.

If you have paid for such a link, banner etc recently and have not had any response from us and your credit card has not been charged perhaps you could resubmit.

Thanks,

Suzanne and Tony Mace

PS . Any payments by the PayPal system are fine and not involved in this problem.

Server migration progress

2008-01-06T18:32:00.000Z

As at today we have 17 more domains to migrate and a further 4 completed but awaiting DNS changes for the switch to be complete.

Today's little problem is that BT Internet seem to be bouncing some of our outgoing mail with messages like no such user or invalid domain in spite of the fact that these addreses were working this morning. I assume their DNS servers are overloaded or broken in some way.

Software problems

2008-01-04T13:49:00.000Z

The peculiar problems which affected a number of sites yesterday are still not entirely resolved. The majority of affected sites are now behaving normally with the aid of small patches or work arounds. The main site I know of which is not behaving correctly is columnar-cacti.org, some of whose pages are returning empty files, some not parsing pHp and some behaving normally, although there is no apparent differences in the files behaving these various ways. At the moment we still do not know why this is happening. If any similarly odd behaviour is happening elsewhere please let me know.

Major software problem affecting a number of sites

2008-01-03T10:33:00.000Z

I have a serious problem affecting a number of the Cactus-Mall websites this morning. Something we have installed to sort one set of problems has caused other software to stop working. The most noticeable effect is that a number of sites are missing their top and bottoms menus.

It is being worked on with the highest priority.

Problems on Navisite Server

2007-12-28T08:51:00.000Z

The old server seems to be very sick this morning. Very slow reponses, frequenting timing out, if it can be contacted at all. I hope we shall still be able to move the BCSS websites this morning but it may make it difficult to do the final backups.

Demon Internet

2007-12-26T10:46:00.000Z

Today much of Demon Internet seems to have vanished into a black hole. Some of our mail still comes through this route so some communications will be disrupted. Seemed that it started sometime late yesterday. It shouldn't have any directe effects of the Cactus-Mall websites or our other internet services. Any urgent posts can go to suzanne [at] paperweight-mall.com.

BCSS Domain move

2007-12-24T10:42:00.000Z

The move of the BCSS internet systems has been fixed to start at 10am on
Friday 28th December.

Affected services
-----------------

The BCSS website
The BCSS forum
BCSS Mailing lists including BCSS announce, the fgp list, convention
list
BCSS Mail boxes including future@bcss.org.uk and those of officials
BCSS Subscription form
BCSS Publications sales system
BCSS Sub-domains that are part of the main BCSS site:

exeter.bcss.org.uk
high-wycombe.bcss.org.uk
highlands.bcss.org.uk

BCSS Sub-domains that are independent accounts apart from the domain
name:

anglia.bcss.org.uk
essex.bcss.org.uk
fife.bcss.org.uk
london.bcss.org.uk
macclesfield.bcss.org.uk
oxford.bcss.org.uk
northants.bcss.org.ok
portsmouth.bcss.org.uk
southampton.bcss.org.uk
sussex.bcss.org.uk
teesside.bcss.org.uk
yorkshire.bcss.org.uk

Not affected
------------

The journal system
The finance system
The enquiry system

as these are already migrated

The teeside sub-domain is a special case as they have their own domain
name which has already migrated.

The subscription form I hope to migrate earlier than the other changes
as it is highly critical and there are special considerations attached
to it. I will send my plans directly to David Kirkbright and David
Slade.

Some of the BCSS domain synonyms have already been shifted to the new
server.

Timescales
----------

Most of the files will have been copied prior to the move.

There will be some last minute copying to cope with any late changes. I
would appreciate notification of any changes made to any of the sub-
domain websites on the 26th or 27th.

When I change the nameservers on bcss.org.uk, there will be a fairly
transparent switch between the old and new servers as far as the
websites are concerned. Currently messages on making these switches
suggest a period of 24 hours should be left before the worldwide
nameserver systems are updated to the new location. Experience over the
last month has shown that most accesses switch within an hour.
Attempts to send email within this period are likely to be unreliable.

The Forum will take longer to get back as a very large database has to
be copied. 5-6 hours is likely. Ian will be handling this aspect for
me so that I can concentrate on other systems.

Resources
---------

Most of the aspects of the BCSS accounts will have at least twice the
amount of resources in terms of disk space, transfer etc on the new
server.

I will discuss the resources of the branch and zone sites directly with
those concerned. Basically they will be able to chose between having
substantially more resources at the same price or the same resources at
a reduced price.

Individual mailboxes will be set up as previously.

The operation of the mailing lists will be very much upgraded. We have
a choice of two different systems which are suitable for very different
uses. The pHp mailing list is particularly suitable for those wanting
to send out Newsletters or the like to a considerable number of users.
The other system, Mailman is more suitable for discussion groups where
some or all of the contributors can post. This is particularly suitable
fro BCSS-announce. This currently has around 140 members. I have been
very reluctant in the past to allow this to expand too much as the list
is manually maintained and keeping large lists of email addresses which
are always changing is a major task. The new system however has very
powerful management systems for such a list including bounce tracking,
subscription validation, so I will be opening it up for additional BCSS
members who may find it useful. Ability to post can be controlled at an
individual level, including moderation systems.

Of the new software available on the new server which has not already
been mentioned I think the alternative Image Gallery systems and Blogs
will be of most interest to Branch and Zone sites while the Wiki, Adds
and WebCalendar system are most like to be of interest to the National
Society website. This is apart from the more general website
development tools which will be of interest to both.

More after the migration.

New server progress

2007-12-23T09:23:00.000Z

We now have around 70 domains transferred to the new server.
Progress the last couple of days is largely down to my French colleagues as I have been plagued with power cuts (3 in the last 48 hours with a total downtime of around 6 hours and more if you add recovery from broken processes etc. I hope today will be more productive.

The BCSS domains, their websites, forum, sub-domains, sales and subscription systems are likely to be moved either the Thursday or Friday after Christmas.

21st December 2007

2007-12-21T14:07:00.000Z

Today got of to a bad start with a five hour power cut preventing me from getting on with work and also answering your queries. I will get to them as soon as possible.

New Server progress

2007-12-19T09:18:00.000Z

We now have 66 domains operational on the new server and around ten more are in various stages of transfer, some just awaiting name server switches so we are definitely over half way.

There are still some large and complicated domains to switch including that of the BCCS, Cactus&Co, The German Cactus Society and indeed the Cactus-Mall itself. I am currently drawing up plans for the switch of the BCSS domain which also involves around a dozen sub-domain accounts for branches and zones as well as the main account. This will involve some down-time for the Forum which we will keep as short as possible. I hope to undertake this in the course of the next week.

Old Server down again

2007-12-13T11:53:00.000Z

The old Navisite (Alabanza) server is refusing http connections. I have posted a fault report but I don't know when it will get fixed. This affects all those domains not yet transferred (including that of the Cactus-Mall and the BCSS) and will may affect mail from those domains although I can still get ftp access.

A checklist of Brachystelma, Ceropegia and the genera of the Stapeliads

2007-12-10T22:57:00.000Z

This new publication is now available for order via the IAS website. The order form is also included with Asklepios 99 which is now in the post. Unfortunately the printed order form refers to a web link on the old Cactus-Mall server which is no longer functional so please go through the title link to order this fine publication.

Lost Mesemb Study Group Subscriptions

2007-12-10T22:53:00.000Z

Whilst working on the domain transfer today (10th December) I lost at least one, possibly two Mesemb Study Group subscriptions which accidently were transferred to a spam bin. If you sent one today please send it again. The payments are manually processed through a card terminal so will not go through twice.

New Server progress

2007-12-10T09:12:00.000Z

Progress continues, we now have about 40 domains operating from the new server, and work is in hand for about another 10. A server security certificate is now in place and some society subscriptions and other sales now operate through the new server. I have fixed a few problems with the society subcription page and believe all are now working correctly.

I expect progress to accelerate from here on as most of the potential roadblocks have been identified and resolved. There is however still a very large amount of work to do.

New Server Progress

2007-12-04T19:13:00.000Z

I have now transferred just over 30 domains, but have slowed down over the last couple of days because of a whole variety of technical problems. It hasn't helped that BT is bouncing some of my outgoing email back to me as 'not authenticated'. I have a number of email domains registered with the them to accept on their outgoing mail service, but during busy times of the day this is failing meaning I either have to keep reposting until it works or wait until the evening. It doesn't help when you are trying to sort out problems with people.

New Server Progress

2007-11-30T15:24:00.000Z

I have been transferring domains all week. We are now up to around 20 domains transferred or about 15% of the total. So far most issues have been resolved reasonably quickly and more features are becoming routine to implement. I probably won't get any done tomorrow as it is an F&GP meting in Milton Keynes.

New Server Status

2007-11-26T14:33:00.000Z

There are a now four of the Cactus-Mall domains transferred. The only issues encountered so far were with pHp parsing which were fairly quickly resolved. If any owners of domains who are fairly experienced computer users who would like to reload their own websites to the new server themselves please let me know and I will create the appropriate accounts for them. Note I have not yet undertaken any moves involving SSL or MySQL databases yet so it might be as well to leave these until Yann or I sort out any potential issues.

New Cactus-Mall server

2007-11-24T18:47:00.000Z

The new server is now configured and I am started to transfer domains to it. If you want to check out the speed you can look at [www.cactus-mall.net]. Note: it is possible that the domain might not resolve for you yet as the new nameservers were only registered this morning.

New Cactus-Mall Server

2007-11-22T10:04:00.000Z

After an exhaustive search for a new home for all the Cactus-Mall websites we have identified what seems to be a very suitable server. This server can provide virtually all of what we use at present, plus many more features and with greater capacity and at a lower price. Virtually all the reviews and user comments I can find are very positive.

There is one aspect that gives myself and Yann Cochard, who is working closely with me on this project cause for concern. This is that the server is again in the USA. What we have decided to do during 2008 is to build a second server in the EU (probably UK or France) which could act as a hot standby. This should insure us against any recurrence of the Navisite/Alabanza fiasco.

Yann and I will be transferring all the websites from the Alabanza/ Navisite server during December - one at a time so that we can eliminate any problems as we go. For our customers who need more space and can make good use of it I will be setting up their accounts with double the disk space they are currently allocated

New server update

2007-11-19T17:30:00.000Z

We had hoped to be signing up for a new server this week, but the one which looked most promising would not allow us the volume of traffic that we need so we are having to follow up further alternatives.

Customer messages

2007-11-13T10:02:00.000Z

I am fairly certain that a number of our customers are not getting our announcements sent via customer-announce at cactus-mall.com (Replace ' at ' with @) because we get quite a few bounce messages. Please add this address to your friends list, approved list or equivalent. This applies particularly to those of you on AOL and other similar ISPs who tag almost any message sent to multiple receipients as spam.

Server status

2007-11-11T18:22:00.000Z

Our server seems reasonably stable at present.

Looking at the independent Albanza host discussion group I see that some of the moved servers are still down after 8 days, and some are regularly going down even now. Unbeleivable.

There have been some comments on slowness of our system. Some of this may be due to a number of big databases and sites doing backups as I suggested would be advisable.

Mesemb Study Group

2007-11-10T18:22:00.000Z

SPECIAL OFFER UNTIL 31st JANUARY 2008

Join now for 2008 and get the October 2007 Mesemb Study Group Bulletin free

UK £.8.00, Europe and Rest of World surface £10.00, Rest of World Airmail £15.00

Subscribe for 2007 and 2008:

UK £15.00, Europe and Rest of World surface £18.00, Rest of World Airmail £25.00

Cactus-Mall Server

2007-11-10T09:11:00.000Z

I have just sent this email to all our customers. I am aware that the list of email addresses I am using may have some obsolete addresses so if you do not get this sometime this morning please let me know at what address you would like to receive such messages:

I would like to thank all our customers for extreme patience over the last very difficult week as well as those of you who have sent messages of support. Suzanne and I have had a particularly difficult four weeks - some of you know some of the details and more will come out over the next few.

The server seems a little more stable although I have no particular confidence in there not being more breaks of service. You can contact me on cacti@mace.demon.co.uk if necessary during an outage.

As you probably know I have been looking urgently for a new server to move all our domains to. I had been told over the last year that our Alabanza server was looking increasingly expensive. Having now got a feel for costs from other providers I can agree that the cost was above average although not hugely so - perhaps 15-20% - and in former circumstances that would not have made me move because of the good support I got from Alabanza staff and the amount of work involved in a move. A lot of the cost related to the large amount of data moved in and out of our sites (I was purchasing 700 Gb per month, although not all of it was used - peak month earlier this year was around 400 Gb)

One thing has emerged and that is I shall be able to get a lot more disk space for the same price. I will be allocating you all at least double for the same price as some compensation for the problems. Some sites will not perhaps need this but they can in that case allocate it to one of the Society sites who I am sure can find uses for it. I would hope that once past this initial financial and technical crisis (and more of that elsewhere) I will be able to double this allocation again by next August.

For some of the higher cost sites I also hope to be able to offer some reduction in price assuming there is not an exodus of customers.

One thing I will be strict about is the some half dozen hosting customers who are excessively behind with their bills (in some cases more the a year) I can no longer afford to carry these sites.

I have a number of technical issues still to resolve about certain specialised facilities and I will be contacting the small number of customers involved to discuss the best solutions. This only involves domain hosting customers. Advertisers and those with pages on cactus-mall.com will not be affected in any way.

I have had a number of comments on slowness of the server since the move. I have found it somewhat erratic - occasionally very slow but mostly unchanged from before the move. Some of it was undoubtedly routing tables and the like settling down, some due to catching up with backlog of mail but I think also there may be a large effect from customers from all the moved servers copying all their data from the systems to move to other suppliers. Which brings me to another point. Those of you responsible for your own domain should make sure you have
an up-to-date copy of your website on your local system. When we move you will need to reload your files. Those of you with Forums etc may need to copy MySQL databases as well. If you don't have your own expert in doing this probably one of our more experienced user can help.

Mesemb Study Group Bulletin

2007-11-09T18:11:00.000Z

Mesemb Study Group Bulletin Vol 22 No 4 was posted today.

Contents:

Editorial
Observations in the field on Delianthe peersii (L.Bolus) N.E.Br. by J J du Toit
Lithoparian Recollections - Part 10 by Des & Naureen Cole
A ‘Conothon’: Conophytum Hunting in the Western and Northern Capes - Part 1 by Andy Young X Gibbaeophyllum `Grand Marnier' - A Mixed-Marriage Bonanza by Gordon Rowley
Navigation by Divagation by Steve Hammer
Conophytum Herrei, Schwantes by Dr. N.E. Brown
Further Divagations by Steve Hammer
Mesembryanthemum by T.M. Endean (Resumé of a talk given on April 24th, 1935)
The Genus Mossia, N.E.Br. by N.E. Brown
Lithops terricolor cv. Speckled Gold by Bernd Schlösser
Literature Reviews by Suzanne Mace

Downtime was about 30 minutes

2007-11-09T12:00:00.000Z

Now back up

Cactus-Mall Domain stats

2007-11-08T16:47:00.000Z

It has been reported to me that the Stats package on our domains are not updating. I have issued a ticket through the help desk which is fortunately now working again.

Situation re compensation from Alabanza/Navisite

2007-11-07T17:48:00.000Z

My contract with Alabanza includes a Service Level Agreement. I assume since Navisite took this contract over and indeed charged me under it they will be liable for the same payment.

If this is forthcoming I will of course feed back to customers who have incurred financial losses due to the outage. If not I will have to consider legal action against Navisite, but of course this is likely to be a very protracted procedure. I am not quite sure if non-USA residents can join the Class Actions which are proposed. I have already been approached by the ambulance chasers over this.

Use of the Blog

2007-11-06T21:06:00.000Z

This Blog has been very useful over the crisis of the last few days and has convinced me of the value of a Blog over which I was a bit skeptical in the past. I will try and keep up with a bit more regular entries in the future and will hopefully attract a more regular audience.

I have sent out a general message to customers over the problems of the last few days but I am fully aware that in the current email climate not all of these get through. If you think you should have received this email try adding customer-announce@cactus-mall.com to your friends list or perhaps send me an alternative email address which may be less heavily filtered.

To give you a few more items of news. This Thursday will see the publication of the last edition of the Mesemb Study Group Bulletin for 2007. The good news is that membership of the MSG is actually up on 2006 (any other groups match this?). Membership costs for 2008 are unchanged except that we have had to increase the airmail subscription outside Europe due to increased postal costs by £1.

Last sunday the Convention committee of the BCSS had its first meeting to consider the next BCSS Convention. Suzanne was elected Chairman of this committee which has a number of new members and lots of ideas were floated to make this a different event from previous conventions which will appeal to a wider spectrum of members. Several venues will be inspected in the near future and prelimanary proposals made to the F&GP of the BCSS. We will then be able to suggest a date and venue for your diaries.

Note: Blogs to this site recently have all apparently come from Suzanne, whereas actually they might have been from either myself (Tony) or Suzanne. This was due to limitations imposed by the absence of the server which had also sorts of complications on our internet access. I will get this sorted in the next few days so that it is clearer who is posting.

Back on-line now

2007-11-06T13:09:00.000Z

Back for the moment - but god knows for how long.

I will endeavour to answer some of your emails before it goes again.

It has all gone again

2007-11-06T09:47:00.000Z

If I was in Baltimore/Andover now I would be strangling somebody.

It was mostly working for about two hours, Now nothing is working again, no mail, no FTP, no HTTP, no DNS resolution. This is totally impossible.

Cactus-Mall Status

2007-11-06T08:43:00.000Z

It seems most things came up somewhen between 2.00am and 7.00am on the 6th November when I was in bed. I suspect it was toward the later end of that period, so well over 60 hours downtime. If anybody can exactly pinpoint the time it would be useful in my claims for compensation. (I cannot use data from other Albanza hosts as the time they came back varied by at least 12 hours and some are still not up). I have only found one or two problems so far and have been able to fix them. Reports of any others would be useful.

I will not repeat the statements which I have posted to the Cactus-Mall and to the BCSS Forum, but it would be most helpful if the situation can be relayed to other news sources, forums etc - particularly in non-English languages so that all are informed as to what has been going on.

It would also be useful if any of our commercial customers can quantify likely costs to their businesses so that I can guage what is needed in terms of compensation.

Not much more progress

2007-11-06T00:26:00.000Z

I regret I still cannot contact any of our websites by HTTP. They either give 'connection refused' and time out. Those that give connection refused I can contact by FTP. email I think is working on those that I can contact by FTP but not on the others.

I have successfully got through to our account manager and requested that the apache http module is restarted. He has sent this to the engineers but if they have done it there is no result yet.

Cactus-Mall FTP success

2007-11-05T18:04:00.000Z

It is possible things are moving - I have just been able to access www.cactus-mall.com by FTP and load a new message to the front page.

I have not yet managed to load it in a web browser, but looking on Google Urchin there are records of a few accesses so I gues a few may have suceeded

Another source of information

2007-11-05T17:34:00.000Z

It does seem from this link that some ex Alabanza sites are coming back on-line, although I have yet to have an luck with any of ours. I can get some traceroutes to work however.

Latest Navisite messge

2007-11-05T15:46:00.000Z

Latest message from Navisite suggests some Alabanza sites are up although I have yet to actually find any that are,

They say the remainder are affected by a 'DNS issue'. I find this hard to beleive since none of the sites are contactable by IP address. I suspect the real problem maybe that they have screwed up the routing tables.

Another source of information

2007-11-05T12:31:00.000Z

Cactus-Mall server downtime.

2007-11-05T11:30:00.000Z

We are now up to 50 hours downtime on all our websites and I have had no update from Navisite since 3.00am GMT this morning. No answers to any emails.

Some have suggested posting tickets to the Alabanza help desk. Very thoughtfully Navisite have included this system in the move, perhaps this was intentional.

I have been combing the web for information on this bunch of cowboys and note that Hewlett-Packard are one of the major shareholders so I have accordingly alerted them to the situation.

Data Center Move Fiasco

2007-11-05T09:35:00.000Z

The above link contains a fair summary of the current position.

Data Center Move

2007-11-04T21:56:00.000Z

This link may illuminate the current position:

Alabanza and Navisite

Data Center move

2007-11-04T19:59:00.000Z

Here is the latest set of ~~lies~~ messages from Navisite. Pity they don't say which day (or year) it refers to.

Message at 16.18 GMT

We would like to update you on the status of the Alabanza Platform migration. At approximately 7:30 AM EST, the netblocks were brought online and routing traffic to the new platform in Andover. Shortly thereafter, significant network instability was encountered and the netblocks were removed.

The design of the platform is such that significant LAN traffic is generated. As you know, there is a portion of the platform that is being shipped from Baltimore to Andover, and a review of the network traffic is showing an extreme amount of packets destined for servers that are not on the network.

A team of Network Engineers is provisioning an interim solution while the servers are in transit from Baltimore to Andover. The ETA of the servers still in transit is 5:00 PM EST and the interim solution is targeted for 12:00 PM EST.

Message at 17.59 GMT

We would like to update you on the status of the Alabanza Platform migration. As stated in the last status update we continue to experience a high level of traffic saturation and network instability.

Our Network Engineers are continuing to build out a solution and we anticipate that they will have that in place no later than mid to late afternoon.

Help with getting information out

2007-11-04T10:14:00.000Z

If somebody could relay the information about the the Cactus-Mall server sites downtime to cacti_etc and other mailing lists it would be most useful. Unfortunately I am subscribed to most of these using cacti@cactus-mall.com and I cannot get mail out from this address even using alternative smtp servers as they insist on the address resolving.

Data Center Move

2007-11-04T08:48:00.000Z

Nearly 9.00am in the UK, 23 hours since the server was taken down and still no further news. I have posted many compliants throgh the few chanels that are open to me (most are totally clogged) but had no replies.

Cactus-Mall downtime

2007-11-04T04:40:00.000Z

I am sorry that all Cactus-Mall sites are still down but this is totally outside my control.

Here is the latest statement from Navsite but I have pretty low confidence in it as they seem to be extremely incompetant. Please feel free to complain bitterly to them:

We would like to update you relative to the timing and status of the data center move. As of
this update, the Rsync process has encountered technical issues which has forced us to move
the migration window roughly to 6 AM EST. Please note that services will not be fully restored
until all hosts have been moved and the netblocks have been moved. We anticipate that we will
have these technical issues resolved shortly and have this process move forward through out
the night. We will continue to update you as the move proceeds. Thank you for your patience
as we focus on completing this move.

If you have any questions or concerns, please send us an email at nocmonitor@navisite.com
or call us at the number listed below.

NOC Monitor

_______________________________

Client Care Group
NaviSite, Inc.
888-264-4662 (US)
978-946-5999 (Outside the US)
nocmonitor@navisite.com

Server Migration

2007-10-30T09:57:00.000Z

The server migration has again been postponed. I am sure you are getting as exasperated as much as I am with this continuing disruption which is making it impossible to get on with any real work. If the new times are to be trusted it will mean the server will essentially be unavailable next Saturday:

The purpose of this communication is to inform you that the move window scheduled for this
evening has been postponed until next weekend. The new maintenance window will be Friday,
November 2, 2007 from 10 PM ET to Saturday, November 3, 2007 12 PM ET. At that time, as
indicated in previous communications, we will be moving all servers from Baltimore to our
Andover Data Center.

•Change Window Start Date: Friday, November 2, 2007 at 10 PM ET
•Change Window End Date: Saturday, November 3, 2007 at 12 PM ET
•Impact Type: All servers and services will be unavailable during this change window
•Reason for Maintenance: Data Center move

If you have any questions or concerns, please send us an email at nocmonitor@navisite.com
or call us at the number listed below.

NOC Monitor
_______________________________
Client Care Group
NaviSite, Inc.
888-264-4662 (US)
978-946-5999 (Outside the US)
nocmonitor@navisite.com

SERVER MIGRATION UPDATE

2007-10-28T17:02:00.000Z

The server migration supposed to occur yesterday and then postponed 12 hours has still not happened. It has now been rescheduled for Monday and Tuesday of next week as per the message below. I am very sorry about this but it is entire beyond my control although I have made my extreme displeasure known to those managing this transition.

The purpose of this communication is to inform you that the move window scheduled for this
evening has been postponed. The earlier networking issue had been isolated and addressed
and we had begun the migration as some of you had noticed. We were not long into the
migration when it was noted that while 90% of the platform was very stable, the remaining 10%
experienced some degree of instability. In an effort to minimize downtime for all Clients and be
able to offer stability across the board NaviSite has opted to roll back and reschedule. The
new maintenance window will be Monday, October 29, 2007 from 10 PM ET to Tuesday,
October 30, 2007 until 12 PM ET. At that time, as indicated in previous communications, we
will be moving all servers from Baltimore to our Andover Data Center.

•Change Window Start Date: Monday, October 29 at 10 PM ET
•Change Window End Date: Tuesday, October 30 at 12 PM ET
•Impact Type: All servers and services will be unavailable during this change window
•Reason for Maintenance: Data Center move

If you have any questions or concerns, please send us an email at nocmonitor@navisite.com
or call us at the number listed below.

NOC Monitor

VERY IMPORTANT NOTICE

2007-10-20T13:45:00.000+01:00

The hosting company of our server was taken over a few weeks ago and all the hosted websites are being moved the new owner's data center. I have been waiting for a formal notice of when this move will occur so that I could transmit it to you because it will involve some website down time.

Here is their quoted message:

Dear valued NaviSite (Alabanza) client,

This is to inform you of a change window scheduled on Friday October 26th, 2007, starting at
6:00 pm Eastern Time, and ending Saturday October 27th, 2007 at 12:00 pm Eastern Time
During this change window we will be moving all hosts from Baltimore to our Andover Data
Center. Please be aware that this is a client impacting event and there will be downtime during
this move. We will start the final synch between Baltimore and Andover to the new platform
starting at midnight on Saturday morning. We will finish the first replications at approximately
6:00 am Saturday morning and immediately start the reconfiguration process. The first Hosts
will be online by 8:00 am and we expect that all hosts will be available no later than 12:00 pm
Saturday.

We will have a client hotline available for your use should you experience any issues during or
after the move. The details of our communication plan will be presented to you no later than
this Friday. Please keep your eye out for it in your email and let us know if you do not receive
that communication.

Lastly and most importantly, thank you for your patience and understanding during this move.
We are confident that this move will result in an increase to your overall client experience.
Along with being hosted in world class data center in our Andover facility the new platform will
offer greater stability, flexibility and extensibility to your hosted applications.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the Network Operations Center at
1-888-264-4662 (US), 978-946-5999 (Outside the US) or nocmonitor@navisite.com.

Cactus Mall email problems

2007-10-19T09:58:00.000+01:00

Some of you will know that cactus-mall.com has been suffering a very serious email attack over the last couple of weeks. This particular exploit involves thousands of connections to the server and basically throws a dictionary at it to try and find out passwords to take over the server to send out spam viruses and the like. This naturally downgrades the performance of the whole server and could result it crashing completely. To avoid this mail to cactus-mall.com was blocked and I rerouted as many emails as possible through other domains.

We now have a more permanent defence in place with software provided by MX Logic. This intercepts mail before it ever gets to the server only passing on 'good' email. This has been very successful but my fear now is that some good email is not getting through.

I have sent out a number of emails to the customer list in the last few days. If you have not received any of these and are either a hosting or advertising customer can you let me know by emailing cactusmall at btconnect.com. Similarly if you have emailed me in the last week or so and not had a reply can you also alert me and I will try and sort out the problem.

I intend to try and use the Blog more in future for communicating with customers. It has the advantage of not being dependent on the cactus-mall server so I can communicate with you even if the server is down.

Trichocereus flowers at last

2007-08-03T16:38:00.000+01:00

Some thirty years ago one Brighton branch member had to give up his collection as he was moving to a flat. We acquired a number of his plants amongst them a two foot Trichocereus. It had a thick stem about 4 inches in diameter and very stout long sharp spines. It was never going to be a prize winner being a masochist in that the spines recurved strongly and scratched the plant stem as it grew leaving a series of small scars behind. While we were in Brighton it was kept in a large pot and had grown to about 4 foot by the time we moved to Ansty when it was given free root run in our central bed. It grew much faster producing a number of branches, but still no flowers. Eventually at about 8 foot a portion of the top stem broke off under its own weight and was planted in a pot to root. The bottom by now was very ugly and almost submerged in the rioting vegetation of our central bed. One winter after some heavy pruning it decided it had enough and rotted off. Meanwhile the potted branch was growing steadily and had reached an unbranched 8-9 foot. This year to our pleasure it decided to flower. It only had one flower but it was enormous at about 12 inches in diameter. The flower with the stem characteristics has enabled us to identify the species with reasonable certainty as Trichocereus tacquirensis.

On-line payments for small organisations

2007-01-28T12:41:00.000Z

Setting up on-line payment systems for small organisations has always been tricky. Merchant accounts to accept credit cards were expensive and complex to set up and on-line programming with shopping basket systems a major headache.
I have being doing some work, initially with the International Hoya group, on a PayPal based system which is extremely easy and economical to set up. It is not necessary for subscribers or people wanting to buy items to have a Paypal account as they can pay with a wide variety of credit cards.
The organisation has to have a business PayPal account set up which is then linked to their Bank account. This is free and can be set up in few minutes by visiting www.paypal.com (or your local countries equivalent). The bank account linking is done by PayPal depositing a couple of small deposits (less than a pound) in your bank account which have to fed back to PayPal to verify your ownership of the account.
PayPal provide free shopping basket software which automatically provides code to link into subscriptions, donations or sales items. All the back end processing is done by PayPal and the funds end up in the organisations PayPal account and can be transferred to the Bank Account when required. The only cost is the usual PayPal percentage which is comparable to the usual credit card processing fees.
I am setting up such a system for the Mesemb Study Group to replace their reliance on our (MACE) Business terminal. The other thing I like about this is that it saves us time entering transactions on the terminal which can be quite slow at times and we don't have the problems which occur with incorrectly supplied credit card data.
I am already talking to a number of other clubs and Societies about setting this up for them. Please let me know if you want to explore this further.
For organisations wanting to take this a step further PayPal provide a 'virtual terminal'. This is in effect a credit card machine on your PC into which you can enter credit card transactions received by fax, phone or snail mail.

New Pest Control Option

2007-01-28T12:13:00.000Z

The Brighton Branch had a very interesting meeting last Thursday, unfortunately with a rather small attendance, possibly becuase of bad weather and clashing football matches. The speaker was Neil Helyer from Fargro an entymologist and pest advisor for the horticultural and agricultural trade. We had a talk from him a few years ago and he also gave the Hampshire Memorial lecture to the BCSS AGM (about 3 years ago?). There have been a number of exiting developments since then and one in particular has great relevance to growers of cacti and succulents.
It has always been known that detergents (and even before that soft soap) had an insecticidal activity due their effect on the surface coating on such things as mealy bugs and also a suffocating effect due to blicking their breathing pores. A class of very long chain sulphonates has apparently even more pronounced effect and a product (SB Plant Invigorator)is now available containing them. This is apparently effective against mealy bug and red spider as well as other sucking pests of the aphid type. There are several extremely good features to the use of this product, in that it is very safa and not prone to the pests developing resistance. The other factor not brought out on the manufacturers website is that predatory insects such as lacewings, ladybirds etc are not affected as they are more active and larger and can escape the suffocating effects of the spray.
We have samples to try out and will probably have some for sale at the AGM

Mesemb Study Group Bulletin

2007-01-28T12:05:00.000Z

We were hoping to collate and bind the January 2007 Mesemb Study Group Bulletin today but unfortunately the printer of the colour plates has let us down and they will not be availbale until tomorrow. It will now be later in the week before we can finish the production and get them to the mail.

The contents is as follows:
Editorial
Lithops and a Londoner by Keith Green
Lithoparian Recollections - Part 6 by Des & Naureen Cole
MSG Plant Exchange Scheme by Mark Border
Accounts 2005/2006
An Amateur's Column by Didge Rowe
Didge Rowe Comments
Climbing the Brandberg the Easy Way by Naureen A Cole
Seed Distribution 2007 - by Terry Smale
Many are Cold, but Few are Frozen by Steve Hammer
When Not to Water by Steve Hammer
Daniel Saved from the Lions’ Den –
the Curious Case of Conophytum danielii and jarmilae by Terry Smale
The Japanese Conophytum Society by Yumiko Nishikawa and Terry Smale
Readers' Corner
Calendar of Mesemb Talks & Events 2006/2007

BCSS Bradleya 24 and June Journal delivery problems

2006-06-28T06:30:00.000+01:00

The mailing house responsible for sending out Bradleya 24 and the June BCSS journal have not done a good job. This has caused the following problems in delivery:

1. In the case of Bradleya 24 a number of members have reported that they received Bradleya 24 in open envelopes because the flap had not been stuck down firmly enough. We are not aware of any actually being lost, but if you received an empty cardbaord envelope please report it to me (cacti@cactus-mall.com) and I will send you a replacement.

2. Some address sheets in the June Journal were not separated adequately resulting in two sheets going in some envelopes. From the number of journals sent out we think this happened to between 50 and 100 journals. If you received one with two address sheets please return the inner one to David Slade, the membership secretary as it will mean that a member has not received a journal. If you renewed before the end of May (*see item 4) and have not received your June journal yet please report it to David Slade (membership@bcss.org.uk).

3. The address sheets for some overseas members did not contain the postal code line. This is resulting is some journals being returned to David Slade as having an incomplete address. Overseas members who have renewed but not received a June journal please report as in item 2.

4. Delivery of the excess June journals and Bradleya 24 was not made to the correct BCSS officials. We are therefore having to ship publications and labels around between each other to meet deliveries of Bradleya 24 and June journals to members who have joined or renewed in June. This is a lot of extra work for myself, David Slade and David Kirkbright and is inevitably causing some delays.

Please communicate this message to any BCSS members you are in contact with who are not members of the forum so that all are aware of the situation.

A peculiar English drought

2006-05-27T17:24:00.000+01:00

Our overseas members may have heard that we are suffering from an extreme drought in England, particularly in the South East. If you are wondering if you should send us emergency supplies, don't bother. In this peculiar English drought it rains heavily every day and we are kept busy mopping up floods, emptying overfull containers and trying to prevent plants from rotting.
The real reason for the problem is that corrupt and inept politicians have forced the construction of huge amounts of extra housing in the region without providing any equivalent extra provision of services. It seems that they expect rainfall to be always above average rather than providing for adequate storage to cover years which are below average which seem to come as a total surprise and shock to them.
Unfortunately this propaganda flood about the 'drought' is only one example of the increasingly 1984 like use of language to mean precisely the opposite of the truth for political reasons.

MSG Bulletin 21. No 2

2006-05-25T09:40:00.000+01:00

We are very sorry that the second issue of the Mesemb Study Group for 2006 is extremely late. Various other matters have needed our time and effort and we have not yet been able to complete its layout. However the colour pictures are being printed today and we hope to put the text together this weekend and publish the bulletin sometime next week.

BCSS Swap Shop

2006-05-11T09:24:00.000+01:00

There was some discussion of this facility a little while ago on the
BCSS Forum.

We tried to restrict the Swap Shop to BCSS members so that it could be
advertised as a membership benefit. It did not work, because the system
of posting the password in the journal was too messy and made the system
less than simple to use and did not have the desired effect. The Swap
Shop forum has had almost no use over the last twelve months and the
possibility of making it more commercial did not fit well with the BCSS
sponsoring and financing it. I have therefore moved the system to the
Cactus-Mall. Here it will be open to all users and there are no
restrictions on commercial usage and any costs of running it I hope to
cover with Google advertising.

The URL is:

http://www.cactus-mall.com/swap/index.php

All you need to post items for sale, exchange or wants is a logon
username and password which you can sign up for directly on the system.
There are no charges involved. The new system also replaces the very out
of date Cactus-Mall Trading Post pages. I hope you will find it useful.
No doubt the operational details will be refined as the system goes into
use.

For those technically minded the system uses a new version of the
software used on the BCSS Forum and experience gained in its operation
will be valuable in a proposed upgrade of the BCSS discussion forum in
the future.

Cactus-Mall Blog

A highly recommended read

Mesa Garden retail seedlist 2009

MACE Partnership accounts

Our property development project

Connection problem

Server disk reconfiguration

CSSA Website

eMail problems

Our house redevelopment project

More on Junk Mail

Junk mail

Server junk mail load problems

Work load

Problems with the project

Server spam load

Problems today

cactus mall server outage 31.5.08

Another big task

MAIL PROBLEMS

MSG PayPal account

Paypal problems continue on MSG account

A busy weekend

Some problems resolved

A horrible end to a horrible week

Internet problem

Server problems

Major outage

MSG Bulletin postage

Cactus-Mall Webmasters Forum

Mesemb Study Group Bulletin

Migration complete!

New server DNS problems

Cactus-Mall problem

Multi-domain search

Server migration status

Server migration status

Sever migration progress

Server migration progress

Server migration progress

New server progress

Mail and other problems

Mail problems

Email problems

Credit card Payment for links, banners etc

Server migration progress

Software problems

Major software problem affecting a number of sites

Problems on Navisite Server

Demon Internet

BCSS Domain move

New server progress

21st December 2007

New Server progress

Old Server down again

A checklist of Brachystelma, Ceropegia and the genera of the Stapeliads

Lost Mesemb Study Group Subscriptions

New Server progress

New Server Progress

New Server Progress

New Server Status

New Cactus-Mall server

New Cactus-Mall Server

New server update

Customer messages

Server status

Mesemb Study Group

Cactus-Mall Server

Mesemb Study Group Bulletin

Downtime was about 30 minutes

More Server problems

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Situation re compensation from Alabanza/Navisite

Use of the Blog

Back on-line now

It has all gone again

Cactus-Mall Status

Not much more progress

Cactus-Mall FTP success

Another source of information