Tag: Internet

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Server Woes

So I just got my web server back in order after about 12 hours of problems. I ran some upgrades early this morning that borked the entire server.

It turns out something got misconfigured in lilo, the Linux boot loader, and it wouldn’t boot up after the upgrades. Once that was resolved, I had some problems with my root directory being full. After that, I learned that there was a PHP file that didn’t get upgraded, which took down all WordPress installations (me, chris, chris, lauren, etc). I finally got that resolved. Lastly, webmail started showing up in Arabic, and that was due to the same PHP problem.

I’m glad I got everything straightened out with no loss of data. Downtime stinks and is stressful when you have a bunch of clients hosted who rely on email and generate money off their sites every day, but it happens to the best of them.

Thanks for the patience of everyone.

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Hil-ariousness

This is just too funny. Microsoft just launched a new Internet Explorer Security Newsgroup. 4 years too late!!!

The comments posted are just too funny. Here are a few choice ones:

“This blog is a great metaphor for how well Microsoft understands the full implications of everything it does. ”

“I found a security flaw where IE accidentally loses massive amounts of market share every time I launch it.”

” Hi, can you make IE as secure as firefox?

Shouldn’t be too hard right, since you guys have like 30 billion dollars? … and mozilla has … 2 … million?

Thanks.”

(link via waxy)

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Crain – Speed

So I got my 25 advanced copies of the new Crain Speed LP on CD the other day. The official release date is April 5, 2005.

I was completely blown away by how good the CD sounds. John Golden took the original 8-track tapes and remastered them. The sound is full, wide, and for lack of a better word…rocking!

I set up a web site at CrainSpeed.com that has all the details. There are a few downloads of the new tracks too! Check it out.

I still have a hard time believing that 13 years after the original record was released, there is still enough interest to make something like this happen. Thanks to Jeremy and Temporary Residence for spearheading this project!

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Le Bien, Le Mal

The bad news is that my Forum got borked during my recent server move. The good news is that I reinstalled it from scratch.

The bad news is Louisville is playing Marquette tonight, who always finds a way to beat them. The good news is, Lousiville is up 13 at the half.

The bad news is I was getting pounded by referrer spam in my visitor logs. The good news is I found a method of using .htaccess to stop the spammers cold and waste their own bandwidth.

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New Kids on the Block

Let’s give a big welcome to Chris and Chris, two guys I work with, who recently started blogging at the urging of yours truly. It took a while for them to come around, but they finally saw the geek light, got their domain names, and established camp on the World Wide Web (on yours truly’s server).

Elsewhere, I heard the other day that the re-release of Speed, the first record by Crain, the band I was in back in 89-92, is ready to go. I set up a site for the occasion at CrainSpeed.com, where there will soon be some of the remastered tracks available for download. I am supposed to be getting some advanced copies of the discs soon. They put three unreleased songs on there too, and it allegedly sounds excellent!

And how about them Looeyville Cards?

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Firefox Flourishes

Firefox Downloads
This image (borrowed from Asa) shows us the number of times Firefox has been downloaded over the last two weeks. As Asa speculates in his post on why the spike around New Years occured, it all seems to be attributed to yours truly. Well, maybe.

It’s good to see Thunderbird taking flight as well, with over 2,000,000 downloads since it was released last month. Go smart people, go!

And for those non-smart people remaining, check out the latest “Extremely Critical” Internet Explorer flaw and think about changing your browser.

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World Domination

“How Walmart Is Destroying America And The World: And What You Can Do About It”

A book by Bill Quinn, for sale at walmart.com.

“Since Wal-Mart opened two superstores thirteen miles from Grand Saline, Texas, half of the retail businesses in Bill Quinn’s once-thriving hometown have closed. But dismantling the American dream wasn’t enough for this retail Goliath, and now Wal-Mart is aiming for world domination. If you’ve ever wanted to fight for the little guy, now’s the time — and this feisty Texas grandpa will show you how.”

List price: $10.95
Our Price: $7.55

You save: $3.40

Oh, thank you Walmart.

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Out of mourning, on to Xmas

The mourning period is over. Yes, UK has bragging rights for the next year (but barely, and a questionable barely at that), and Louisville continues to have bad luck, but there is a gleam of hope.

On to other matters, the New York Times published an interesting article on Firefox saying how the fox is in Microsoft’s henhouse (and salivating) (reprinted at CNET for your login-free perusal).

The people at American Antigravity are doing some cool things. Maybe this means my dream of having a jet belt, or something similar, will finally come true.

I love small innovations that don’t really seem like that big of a deal, but offer some simplistic improvement to your life. These cool ‘disc hubs’ do exactly that. Stick them to a flat surface (verticle or horizontal) and pop a CD or DVD onto them for easy storage and retrieval. The only downside is the price, but I am sure someone will come out with a cheaper alternative soon.

First there was Tiny Linux, then there was Pocket Linux, and now comes Damn Small Linux, a 50MB operating system that will fit on your USB drive. You can boot to it, or even install it on your PC. I will be testing it out over the holiday season, and will report the results later.

Lastly, I have added a Paypal Donation button to my Music page to hopefully get some fundage for the hosting of all the free MP3’s I offer. I’m not requiring anything, just hoping that if you download some tunes, you help keep them alive for the enjoyment of the next person to come along. 🙂

Adios for now, cucarachas.

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Many Things

Today I shall endeavor to post a long update. I have been collecting a lot of good things to say here but haven’t had time to elaborate until now.

First, if you are one of the hundreds of people who leave comments on my posts each day, you will notice a new “captcha” that you must get by in order to submit a post. This I implemented using Gudlyf’s AuthImage plugin for WordPress. The spam bots finally got to be too much to handle, so this was necessary.

On to the world of Mozilla, the excellent email client Thunderbird was officially released this week. I have been using the Beta version for about a year, and am highly impressed with all the cool stuff version 1.0 offers. If you want to reduce spam and have a much safer email experience, download it now.

Since I know you are already using Firefox, I will throw out a handy link for the free MozBackup tool that will back up all of your Thunderbird mail and settings, as well as Firefox settings, and save them as a self-executable file for easy restoration. I use this tool weekly in case of a disastrous catastrophy. Additionally, I found the Firefox Deploy tool a great way to install Firefox on multiple machines with the exact same settings, extensions, and bookmarks.

Folks, free, reliable stuff like this is why Mozilla and the whole open source movement rule. Of course, this guy seems to have been in the bathroom when they passed out the brains.

I found an interesting article at 43 Folders called 5 Mistakes Band & Label Sites Make that lists some very common web design no-no’s. I couldn’t agree more. I learned a few things from the article that I will definitely resolve on the two band sites I have done so far, and will keep them in mind down the road.

Place The State is a fun game that tests your USA geography skills. Do you know where on the map to place the state of Delaware? I have to brag and say that the first try I got 90% with an average error of 53 miles.

For you iPod owners out there, you can now download the United States Constitution as an audio book for free. All it takes is an email address.

I was interested to read Jakob Nielsen’s recent post regarding Most Hated Advertising Techniques. I had a feeling about many of these, but now I can back up that feeling with facts when I try to convince a client that popup windows are just not cool.

While doing some research on Web Accessibility, I found HP’s site regarding the subject. I was laughing alound in my cubicle when I read their page about What to do if your screen reader says “horsepower”. Yes, it’s sad when one’s sense of humor slumps so low that jokes about screen readers are funny (but the higher geek factor is cool).

And lastly, but not leastly, Mackie, the maker of excellent sound equipment, is giving away a full-featured audio editing application called Tracktion. Again, all it takes is an email address. (link via my new favorite blog, Plastic Bugs).

whew!

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Irony

The brand spankin’ Firefox 1.0 gives you an option of setting your default Home page to a Firefox-branded Google search page calledFirefox Start Page. This is cool, and I have chosen to use it.

However, it seems ironic that Google chose to befriend Firefox users in this way and not create a valid html document out of this start page. What gives?

This would have been a perfect opportunity for Google to lead the way with Web Standards. Firefox supports standards, so why not use them? It would certainly give them a little more clout if they are worried about the new Microsoft MSN Search Engine, which is built with XHTML (albeit slightly invalid). Not to mention, it could even save them a little bandwidth.

C’mon Google – show us what ya got.

clicky