I'm very happy with the results from using a Pi-hole for blocking all kinds of internet advertisements. Running on a Raspberry Pi 3 in my home network, it 
takes care of allmost all ads. It works by acting as DNS server, but it has an automatic maintained list of ad-serving domains and every request for such an domain results in a blockade. I've now got it running for more than three months.
I hardly get any feedback through the contact form, so whenever something pops up, I'm always curious. This time it's Marilyn Shaw informing me that I've got a broken link in one of my articles. And, very helpfull, she pointed me to a useful replacement.
And that's when the cautious mode kicks in, the message contains a shortened URL , and the shortened URL and the useful replacement both end up at the same domain www.whoishostingthis.com , and the email address also points there. The ip-address that's used for the posting originates from the Philippines. Searching the internet reveals more of these spams, including another message if you do not reply or change the link.
What surprises me the most is the effort that went in to sending me the message, as the contact form I've used requires you to select a picture to send the mail. There's no simple way to script this, so an actual human, in my case Marilyn, has to type that message
Message after the break
Because SME 8.0 is based on Centos 5, support ends at 31 March 2017. I planned the upgrade to SME 9.0, a long time ago, but some things made me postpone it for a while:
After an inventorisation I started on a day off. The backups worked, I had tested those with a partial restore. The re-install went smoothly but soon the first problem arose:
Inspired by Matt Dyson's Raspberry Shake and hackaday (twice) I decided to build something like that myself. I liked the idea of monitoring my washing machine, but of course I had to make it different, just to enjoy the creative process.
I attached two MPU-6050 sensors to an Raspberry Pi, so I could monitor both the washing machine and the dryer at the same time. I built both sensors in a seperate box, and connected them with a CAT5 cable. The Raspberry Pi monitors the two sensors and notifies when the vibration starts or stops.
I went and bought some RGB-led's , because I could.
