Tiplet: PuTTY disconnecting when checking Exim via telnet? (554 SMTP Synchronization Error messages of doom!)

I've been checking the configuration of an Exim mailserver recently; from another server I could connect to the mailserver on port 25 and manually verify addresses. However, using PuTTY on a Windows boxen resulted in immediate "554 SMTP Synchronization Error" messages being shown in PuTTY before the connection was closed. (Protip: set your PuTTY windows to never close on session end; as PuTTY defaults to this, the error message was eluding me for a few minutes).

Checking exim's rejectlog showed this for all the PuTTY connections:

2012-06-08 11:27:12 SMTP protocol synchronization error (input sent without waiting for greeting): rejected connection from H=mypc.rdns.tld [1.2.3.4]:58772 I=[remote.mail.server.ip]:25 input="ÿû\037ÿû ÿû\030ÿû'ÿý\001ÿû\003ÿý\003"

Evidently PuTTY, even in Telnet mode, is sending raw control characters to the server which Exim's balking at. So, if you're using PuTTY, enable Raw mode when connecting on Port 25 (and/or 587, depending on your MTA config). And, in your defaults, in the Session section choose "Close window on exit: Never" then save the settings in the Default Settings preset. Happiness will ensue.

Ever listened to Chef Aid and wondered why some of the vocals' sound quality is 'weird'?

I bought Chef Aid: The South Park album years ago. Great album, love it to bits and every so often still listen to it. However Track 18 always bugged me - Chef's vocals alternate between crystal clear studio quality and some dingy, Skypesque highly compressed garble (in reality probably closer to a 64 kbps ISDN codec).

These days I'm a qualified sound engineer and technician but I was always 'into' production, sound quality etc. I picked up on the weirdness of Track 18 from first listen but could never find anyone to ask or discuss it with. However Scott Smitelli outnerded me to the punch (in 2007) and wrote an entire article on his web site - with empirical evidence, good work that man! In his article he explains the differences between the portions of vocals contributed by Isaac Hayes and really goes into quite a lot of depth before coming to his own conclusion as to why the sound is as it is. Kudos to him... Because now when I'm talking to people about this I can just reference his page instead of explaining again from scratch. 😉

His article about the strange audio on Track 18 of Chef Aid is on his web site - go read if you're a fan of the album.

An' tha's yer lot fer now...

Is Skrillex Dubstep? I say no (in an open letter)

... In which Christopher, after being shown a video making the case for the current brand of dubstep, and why using the term "real" music is stupid (by composing a poorly considered cat-based analogy), adds his 2p to the ongoing debargument around the evolution of genre-defined music, where one genre ends and another begins... And why Skrillex is rubbish. Read on for the juicy bits

I ♥