Tag: Web Dev

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Work, Music, News

Thanks to Pete emailing me recently, I learned that the Second String Bluegrass Band songs that I had linked to on music.www.willchatham.com were not actually there. I am currently uploading them all to my server, and they should be there within the hour.

On another musical note (get it? GET IT??? 😐 ), I am keeping my eye on iTunes for the day Speed appears. Not that it’s that big a deal really, but I’m excited about it. The re-release comes out April 5th. Don’t forget!

On a work related tip, I finally have something to show from my day job. It’s not much, but it gives you a glimpse into what sorts of crazy things I’m doing for the DoD.

At work this week I have been setting up a new installation of Red Hat Fedora Core 3 on a Dell 1750 for the Intranet site we are re-developing. This has proven to be a lot of fun. I have been more impressed with each new version of Fedora, and this one is working out well. Of particular interest is SELinux, which installs as an option with Fedora.

I have also been doing a lot of side work through home-based Asheville Technologies, setting up a site for a local realtor, getting ready to start one for a guitar player, and doing other odds and ends for other clients. I’ll show some stuff soon.

And soon there will be some important/exciting news I will be reporting on here, so keep your eyeballs peeled and your earballs waxed.

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Oracle

I’m in Oracle Application Server 10g administration training all this week. The AF brought in an Oracle person to teach us how to use the software since that’s what we will be developing the new site on. We have two more weeks coming up soon. So far, I have learned a good bit of cool stuff.

A large part of the training has related to using the Apache web server, which unfortunately in Oracle AS 10g is version 1.3 instead of 2.0. I am realizing that much of what this expensive piece of software does is simply make it easier to edit Apache configuration files. They just present you with a nice GUI interface in which you can change config settings, add virtual hosts, and restart the httpd service.

I’m sure there will be a lot more to it than that though. I learned a lot about mod_rewrite today, which I have used in the past in a limited capacity. It helps me a lot to learn in a classroom setting though, and I now understand it much better than ever before. Being able to ask questions and get things explained in various ways if need be helps a lot.

This is a link to the learning track we are on. Note the URL in the address bar once you are there. Wonder why they don’t use mod_rewrite to clean that up?

Hopefully, once the training sessions are complete, Oracle will offer the 10g Web Administrator certification. Right now it’s still only offered in 9i.

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Link Goodness

Allrighty, how about a little linkitudinal updatage going on here?

First, for those of you in the Asheville area, I have for you perhaps the best online weather info available. Current NCDC Weather Conditions provides you with current data from atop the Grove Arcade in downtown Asheville. There are also links to regional radar maps (loopable) and lots of other cool weather geek info. I have an inside track on this sort of thing these days, which makes me even geekier. I know you are jealous.

Montage-A-Google is a neat way of creating photo montages by searching with Google Images.

If the news that Microsoft is finally releasing an update to its bug-ridden, non-compliant, piece of doo security threat called Internet Explorer (for XP users only, mind you) isn’t enough to make you crumple over with a hernia from laughing, check out their “A parent’s primer to computer slang” article.

Key points for learning leetspeek

  • Numbers are often used as letters

40w 08|?10U$, M@N.

And about the Internet Explorer thing, it’s not really a new version of the browser, it’s a service pack. Looks like they are feeling a wee bit threatened by someone.

In case you didn’t know, you can opt out of a lot of credit card junk mail. It’s your legal right, so do it.

Lastly, for those of you who need to surf the Internet in style, I give you Pimpzilla the bling-bling Firefox theme.

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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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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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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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Changing Directions (again)

First off, 5 unknown people and 1 I sorta know grabbed up the Gmail invitations. Congrats!

Second off (is that even a term?), I can now announce that this is my last week as the webmaster at Ingles. After 6 short and enjoyable months, I have been offered a position with a government contractor, working for the Air Force. I’m not sure how much more I should say yet, but it was too good to pass up. I will be developing a really cool web application with a co-worker whom I already know. I will provide more info when I can.

clicky