I'm midway through a huge (~20GB) "PST2IMAP" conversion for a client and I've decided to share my notes about the process. Outlook 2007 PST…
I'm writing Regdel, another open source bookkeeping and accounting program in Ruby using the Sinatra framework. Sinatra supports Sass…
There are at least two Ruby library gems that provide bindings to the same C-based XSLT engine: libxslt. For the record, I'm using Ruby/XSLT…
Heroku is a really cool idea for hosting Ruby web applications, but right now its failing on me. I've been trying to update my app for the…
I love testing different combinations of software and so its should come as no surprise that Ruby, Rack, and the plentiful middleware for it…
Behavior Driven Development (BDD) is an awesome paradigm that I've recently learned about while transitioning to Ruby as my primary…
This one had me stumped! Thankfully this Debian bug report about netbase setting net.ipv6.bindv6only=1 in /etc/sysctl.d/bindv6only.conf…
I've read a little bit about Cucumber: "Behavior Driven Development with elegance and joy". ( Behavior Driven Development = BDD ) Sounds…
I'm having some trouble testing a Rack application I have setup with Rack::Rewrite. Even though by tweaking the Rack::Rewrite code a tiny…
I'm reviewing the invoicing gem. Its nice that the author has scoped it well, meaning that it doesn't try to do everything or be everything…
I just found that I had mis-configured my General DNS settings on my pfSense firewall. I had set the first entry to a DNS Server I have…
I was hesitant to try Rake because it moved away from the XML style of modern make systems like and and phing. I tried it anyway, and I…
I finally managed to setup grace on Varnish so that it works when a backend server goes down AND when the backend does not have polling…
A few months back, I started getting strange output when issuing the pstree command. Not too strange - just the tree was not looking how it…
As a quick update to Trends in Technical Syntax: Hyphens and Underscores, I'm just posting to say that I'm now pretty much using hyphens in…
I seem to recall a post Joey Hess made within the past few months about the oddity of folders that have the same name as their parent folder…
Here we go: Uh-oh: I'd rather use the debian packages, but there's a Rake task for it: The gems were installed, and then I ran:
A client called me this morning, reporting that he was unable to use his email. He uses Microsoft Outlook 2007, and read me this error…
Just fixed a SquirrelMail installation. I guess the latest SquirrelMail update on Debian caused some conflicts between the courier_vacation…
While I'm getting into Ruby, I'm also getting into Git. Examples of my interest: http://www.established-sites.com/blog/2009/12/code…
I've read some positive words about Unicorn, so I decided to try it out, even though its not in the debian repositories yet. I haven't…
An important part of learning XSL is understanding the identity template. What is the "XSL Identity Template"? An XSL identity template will…
I'll soon need a new laptop / notebook computer. Why? Apple knows. I tripped over my power cable and while the resulting cable yank didn't…
Here are a few Squid version 3 configuration notes I've take lately. To avoid this log warning, I've removed the localhost settings from the…
A few days after learning about and using the yui-app-theme CSS framework, I realized that the core YUI javascript library isn't needed for…
I'm really enjoying Ruby, and I'm pleased to remember that Puppet is written in Ruby, too. Puppet is one of those packages that I have to…
The idea is to feed the output of a stylesheet back into itself, but how can the process be managed, not infinite? Andrew Welch suggests: So…
I'm going to make another attempt to try using Ruby 1.9 on Debian. Its going to power www.labs.docunext.com, and I'm really hoping it works…
I'm working on a set of standard XSL templates for web application interface markup. They are called 1bb02b59 hosted at github.com and are…
Awhile back I found web-app-theme and it looked like what I was looking for. Upon closer inspection, it was RoR-centric, which wasn't so…
I've got a class that has a property that is the same name as the symbol for another class it has a "belongs_to" relationship with. Looks…
Long story made short: I can't definte a save hook with one class that involves another object getting saved, because it triggers the same…
Just updated DataMapper: But now I'm getting this error.... Looks like I'm missing something.... Had to remove the dpkgs too: That worked…
I've been using XSL for a long time, and I know I've used XSL in the past to generate XSL, but today I found a very handy technique for…
I'm trying to use a custom error page in Sinatra, but I'm getting this error: If I try to create a custom error like this: I get this page…
As I work on Regdel, a (Ruby, Sinatra, Datamapper)-powered accounting web application, I'm revamping the future of how I will develop web…
I finally got invited to Google Wave. As a potential GW developer, my interest has waned, but I did login to check it out. My first…
Here is an example of Flash ActionScript 3 with addEventListener: Test.hx compile.hxml
Sinatra Helpers I had just about finished my first Sinatra helper module (Sinatra-XSLView) when I realized what I was trying to achieve…
I have to admit I'm thoroughly impressed with Sinatra and DataMapper. I've tried merb, but I didn't get too far. I'm accustomed-to and…
This one has had me chasing my tail for the past hour... and I finally found a reproducible example: In general, I realize that Float…
I'm working on database models defined in XML, aka data model schema, and I've decided to use XML schema to specify how they should be…
After some initial excitement learning about DataMapper, I became concerned that it might not be all it that I thought it was. Thankfully…
I've added some new CSS to the stylesheet used here at sketch99.com (this is supposed to be a testing ground for new javascript, css, and…
I just happened to notice that Sinatra has made it into Debian - awesome! Looks like Merb is about there too: Thin is there, Rack is there…
I've just written up some notes on running Sinatra on Debian over at Docunext. While I finally got some Rack middleware operational between…
I'm installing libsinatra-ruby1.8 on my debian development machine, aka "dev-48-gl". So librack-ruby1.8 gets installed too. SIDE NOTE: The…
This was way easier than I thought! I'll explain my setup, but first let me digress into gateway interfaces and proxies. If I understand…
Here's a great intro to Rack middleware: http://vision-media.ca/resources/ruby/ruby-rack-middleware-tutorial The example in the above…
Before I learned how to use RRDTool, I stored some time lapse data in a simple CSV file. When I learned how to use RRDTool, I had to convert…
WP-Cumulus is a really beautiful implementation of a three-dimensional (3D) tag cloud the in Shockwave Flash format. It was originally…
Doh! I haven't used Inkscape in months and when I tried loading it today nothing came up. From the command line, I get this: I decided some…
I'm getting this error while trying to build as3tohaxe which as the name might suggest is a code converted of actionscript3 to the haxe…
In GD over FastCGI, malloc is used with the cdb functions. Malloc refers to memory allocation.
The Chrome browser is simply outstanding in my humble opinion. The performance blows away every other browser I've ever used (with the…
I recently read up about Unicorn, a web server written in Ruby. The README file states the following: This is a very clear and concise…
I had refrained from using MVC web application frameworks like Rails because they didn't include View support for XSLT. Catalyst, an MVC…
Files that end in ".pptx" and ".ppt" are Microsoft PowerPoint files (unless they are improperly named, of course). The ".pptx" file…
I tried this in a Catalyst powered application, using DBIx and SimpleXML: I got an error I'd never seen before: I found this page about Perl…
Now this is some cool news... kernel.org now hosts the ability to boot computers over the internet! http://boot.kernel.org/ I am very…
Headlines today are reporting on the Pystar versus Apple lawsuit and the tone doesn't bode well for Pystar. Will Apple ever allow clones…
I'm converting the Green Computing wiki to Ikiwiki. UPDATE: This ended up working out OK. I based my efforts off the tips at the ikiwiki…
I haven't seen this one before... If I remove: it works OK.
Its been almost two months since the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, and I'm only now learning about a new micro server they…
I recently setup a Squid proxy to provide me with convenient access to my intranet behind a firewall while I'm travelling. It works really…
I'm trying to understand why the European Union, or more specifically, the European Commission is blocking Oracle's acquisition of Sun…
The latest version of Google Chrome for linux breaks an important component on my machine: drop-down select menus appear blank. The top…
I wanted to do some surface research about the business of open source software. In my experience, RedHat was the first public company I…
I'm a big fan of NGINX. I've racked up some serious notes on my experience with it on the NGINX pages of the Docunext wiki, but just…
I thought this fix suggesting the problem was caused by a missing symlink in /etc/rcS.d but unfortunately that didn't fix the problem. I…
My Comcast network went offline last night around 2AM and is still offline. I called Comcast Business Support again this morning and they…
Chrome, the browser from Google, continues to rock my world. Its insanely fast and "just works". Kudos to the entire development team. Two…
I've grappled with running public and private network services on public and private networks for many years. While my setup remains far…
I've got some new plans for hosting email services: Use Dovecot instead of Courier Use Dovecot instead of Perdition Only allow SMTP SASL…
When I recently setup some new Docunext network tools, I figured it would be nice to store some of the queries in a hash database and create…
I'm trying out memcachedb and since it uses the same protocol as memcached, I figured I'd use Ruby's memcached library to access it. Works…
I'm a big fan of markdown syntax. I'm using it right now as I write this post via Movable Type Open Source, I use it with ikiwiki, and…
Mnot created the cacheability engine moons ago and I've always appreciated the functionality it offers. However, whenever I got the…
Responding to a comment on the Docunext blog about pfSense and its FTP helper, I mentioned FTP Proxy. I hadn't visited the website for…
CDROM Problems? http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/debian-linux-help/61930-weird-kernel-behavior.html /boot/grub/menu.list http://www…
I'm very interested in trying out Google Wave, but I'm a little late in requesting an invitation! I finally did so and gave the Google Wave…
I just learned that Mac OS X has dropped support for ZFS, the file system from OpenSolaris. That is surprising, and slightly disappointing…
I just tried updating to udev 146-5. The post-installation script failed with: I tried rebooting, but the error persisted, and what's worse…
I have recently experienced a renewed interest in mathematics. I loved it as a young child and throughout the start of high school, but lost…
I'm a big fan of Varnish. It makes HTTP redundancy a lot easier, even for small networks like mine. I've previously felt that 256MB or more…
Thanks to Planet Debian and Jan Wagner's post about dkms I learned about the HP DL160 G6. This 1U server can support up to 192 GB of RAM…
I'm reviewing some of the ways we publish HTML to the internet. Here's some of the ways we currently publish documents: static html files…
I've sent in a support request for my APCC Smart-UPS 1000VA: Hello, My Smart-UPS 1000VA no longer works, and I tried to diagnose the problem…
Looks like Github.com has switched from using EngineYard to Cloudspace by Rackspace. At first I thought Rackspace might have bought…
Could it be that I'm not able to edit /etc/rc.local?? No, seems to be working OK.... I just tested it by adding: to the end of it and…
It got me at the first line: "iDon't allow open development." This is a commercial for a new phone called the Droid. UPDATE: Apparently the…
As far as I'm concerned, single opt-in isn't even an opt-in at all. Its like RAID0 which stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks…
Pre-installed Software I'm exploring a freshly install Ubuntu 8.04 server image and I noticed that Dell OpenManage software is installed…
Tippit has been sending me several technology related marketing emails per day the past several days. I never signed up for any newsletters…
I recently canceled additional bandwidth as an extra with linode, and found what I would consider to be a flaw in their pro-rating system…
I had to work with strings in Lua today, and found that there was some significant differences between 5.0 and 5.1. The Lua Wiki was quite…
I just found out about NewServers.com thanks to Russell Coker's blog post about non-virtual cloud computing via Planet Debian. Looks very…
I've learned a bunch lately wrestling with display managers, pam, ssh-agent, gnome-keyring-daemon, and X11 in my efforts to get them all to…
I've been using a new ImageMagick script I wrote to make repetitive patterns. I use the resulting patterns to create backgrounds for…
As far as I'm concerned, virtualization is the next quantum leap for computing. It will likely consume much of the remaining blocks of ipv…
Static File HTML HTTP Hosts http://www.e-rice.net/index.php?signup - strange, offering page says $5 for smallest static package, but signup…
The m0n0wall mailing list has had a lot of talk about web filtering lately and I just had this to contribute: "I love Squid for stuff like…
I'm looking at some options to order a xen vps in Europe. These are some of the options I'm reviewing: Xencon RapidXen in Frankfurt…
Its been such a long time since I've used Squid that I didn't even know that there was a version 3 out! I decided to try squid3 and then…
This is an interesting one... no clue how to fix it, but I should be able to track it down. I'm using stunnel to proxy via a two link chain…
A question was posted on the m0n0wall mailing list recently about using it to block LAN access to certain websites. M0n0wall isn't designed…
An acquaintance of mine recently asked me if I knew of any web design software or services which might be appropriate for a teenager who…
I've been hot on the trail of getting my login and authentication worked out since I switched to awesomewm (awesome window manager) a few…
I have to admit that Catalyst, the Perl MVC (model view controller) web application framework, is growing on me. I especially like that it…
I had previously setup rEFIt on my Mac mini and set it up to dual-boot Mac OS X and Debian. Recently a dist-upgrade broke X11 beyond repair…
Its hilarious to me that the iPhone doesn't have Flash on it. Many rumors abound as to why, but do I care? Nope - I don't have an iPhone and…
The Washington Post ran an article on October 1, 2009 by Brian Kerbs about how the Department of Homeland Security is planning to hire geeks…
Just links at the moment: http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-770953.html http://live.gnome.org/GnomeKeyring/Ssh Very good page on…
I recently blogged about home folder configuration settings storage, and now I'm thinking about how data could be stored. Thinking about…
I compiled my first linux kernel a few years back using Gentoo, and then thanks to Debian I learned that linux is the kernel itself and that…
Rejoice! I learned that it is possible to use jQuery's metadata plugin within XSL today. I had previously been stymied because the metadata…
I've finally come up with my guidelines for XSL based XHTML template that I'm very pleased with: Keep everything within 80 characters wide…
I finally got my first NetBSD system setup right - meaning that it can use pkgsrc. :-) The main problem was that I didn't install the comp…
I have used jEdit before. For those unfamiliar with jEdit it is a a text editor for programmers, available under the GNU General Public…
I've added some details to the Varnish wiki about how I'd like to see CDB file access implemented: If the host header, concatenated with…
As I've embraced the use of proxies to aid in content distribution, I've created a little bit of a "rat's nest", meaning that there is room…
I am starting to learn more about CSS and its various functions, in the past I've used css strictly for style formatting such as color, font…
I'm dying to get started with NetBSD beyond a virtual machine. I just happen to have an extra ALIX 1D handy which is perfect for this…
I'm following Lucas Nussbaum's notes on bootstrapping a CentOS system on Debian. I am using /var/tmp instead of /tmp, and I'm planning on…
This board looks absolutely awesome. Finally a quality follow-up to the amazing Little Falls board! Unfortunately, it costs (around $120USD…
I got this error when trying to use NGINX as a proxy, setting the http_host header like this: Everything worked fine except when clients…
Debian Ports Debian rocks, OK? Fair enough. What about kernels? Linux is amazing, but so is FreeBSD's kernel, and I'm totally thrilled that…
Code: Output: Pretty boring, huh? Well one of the nice things about Ruby is that you can do stuff like this: Yes, very cool. What happened…
The one thing I miss in the awesomewm is convenient volume control. I've tried a few widgets for volume control, but none have worked for me…
I'm surprised that FreeBSD doesn't have more VPS hosting solutions available, but there are definitely some options. Here's a few that…
Well that's annoying , apparently my yahoo account got hacked. I only found out when one of my friends informed me that I was sending them…
Note: I'm not trying to evaluate linux versus FreeBSD at all, just thinking about some of the benefits of the FreeBSD and CentOS…
Nice! I've been meaning to try out the NGINX Passenger module, as well as NGINX on FreeBSD. Well, tonight I finally got around to trying out…
I'm surprised to admin it, but in my book, e-mail has gotten good again. After spammers caused me way to many headaches for a few years, the…
This is example on how to use the ruby LDAP library:
What is Middleware? Middleware, in the context of web frameworks, refers to processing components which reside between the end user and the…
My kind sister lent me her iTouch now that she has an iPhone. In exchange, I let her borrow my extra digital camera. The itouch is great. I…
I wish that there were some IMAP command or sieve based method of managing custom user spamassassin files. In lieu of that, I'm reviewing…
I'm trying out CentOS and so far I'm finding it quite nice and simple. It has many fewer packages than Debian, but in some ways that's a…
I don't use Outlook Express, but some of my customers do. In my experience it has displayed unpredictable IMAP support. I just read this in…
Awhile back I pondered the idea of having multiple distributed, replicated, isolated outgoing smtp servers. My idea was to use the following…
Two of my email hosting customers have experienced errors from their anti-virus software running on Windows machines when trying to send…
Finally figured this out! I used certutil to add my own certificate authority to my database of trusted certificates: Several pages helped:
I'm working on LDAP now, and just realized some of the changes I made yesterday made my primary LDAP server too tight. To be able to login…
I use Vista as my entertainment center for two reasons: One continuous annoyance remains, however. Whenever I run media player or Internet…
I just setup a test saslauthd server which authenticates against an LDAP server. It works wonderfully! Now I'm wondering about where to go…
I wanted a regular expression to parse an (x)HTML snibbet and escape the contents of pre tags, non-greedily. Its most likely a multi-line…
Today I'm trying out fwbuilder again, a graphical user interface for creating and managing firewall rulesets. I love the idea, but…
After trying out Heroku, I was impressed, and read up on their architecture. Lots of good decisions were made, though I was a little…
Remember Helmet? I certainly do. They were originally active from 1989-1998; sometime in that period was when I first listened to them. I…
Heroku is a new Ruby application hosting platform. I signed up for their free service - looks really nice. They support Rails, Merb, Sinatra…
Last night I finally took the time to learn what the "advanced" options are in the pfsense firewall rule form. You know the ones, these guys…
This is what firewall rules from pfSense look like: I'm working on a new project which will work with this type of data.
As much as it wasn't designed as one, the convenience of email has led to its widespread use as a file transfer protocol. I'm currently…
I'm so pleased to report that setting up OpenID is way easier than I thought it would be. I used the excellent "getting started with OpenID…
I'm trying to setup a feedback loop with the Yahoo.com email network, but it appears that it requires a DKIM signature. This is something I…
Too bad its not a little easier to get full "From" headers with mailx. Two possibilities: Postfix canonical header rewrites to include full…
My company runs our own mail servers, and recently one of our IP addresses was blocked by AOL. Because I've always found AOL to be for the…
I find these shell commands quite helpful for managing email lists: Nice, huh?
I'm starting up a kQEMU powered Debian/kFreeBSD virtual machine, and I'm really looking forward to running apt-get update and apt-get…
Dreamweaver is a great way of designing websites, it basically takes all of the guess work out of writing code. I am still fairly green…
For some time I've manually converted some existing (x)HTML I'd previously generated to an XSL stylesheet. Its a laborious and frankly an…
Here's a few items on my to-do list: One idea would be to use XSLT to convert an XML source document to a language specific data file. This…
I'm so pleased with my brief experience with Ruby that I've decided to make it my primary language of choice. I've taken my time getting…
I'm trying out DataMapper, one of the Ruby ORM's which can be used with Merb. I like it so far, its very straightforward, here's an example…
As I make my way with Ruby, I'm finding that I really like it. There are many out there who feel similarly - cool! So I'm revisiting the…
Gmail with IMAP sounds like a terrific idea, but when I realized that for me there was the possibility of duplicate emails, I was not too…
One of my clients recently requested a bulk mailing to their opted-in fan email list. I timed one of the mailings, and it came to almost…
I've spent the last few hours doing some general scripting with Ruby and I have to say I am very feeling very good about this language. Its…
I've setup an RBLDNS lookup at Docunext, here are some examples: 78.88.191.111 87.117.8.182 91.124.17.189 189.18.215.72 200.100.159.80 20…
I'm finding that developing Ruby FastCGI applications is a very smooth and rapid process. Maybe its this way for all ruby development, but…
My last post was growing out of control, so I decided to ask for help. EscapeGoat.org came to the rescue. I'm still trying to find my own…
With computers getting smaller and smaller and more and more efficient, its only a matter of time before they get small enough inside a USB…
I'm once again going to give Ruby a go - I've had many fits and spurts with Ruby, but thanks to a random encounter with a serious Ruby…
Prgmr.com has a saying: "We don't assume you are stupid." Its a good statement, because I believe that there are many systems administrators…
I added a feature request to the Varnish Trac site recently: the ability to look up values in a cdb file. That would really be awesome as it…
Its been over a week since I ordered and paid a first month's fee for a virtual xen server from prgmr.com and haven't heard anything since…
I'm evaluating some more Xen VPS hosts. FsckVPS looked promising because they offer a discount for open source developers. I liked that and…
Hosting is one of those services where the competition keeps on piling feature after feature and before long the service is so overloaded…
Recycling remains a topic of debate for many. Is it worth the extra effort and cost? Does it hurt the environment more than disposal? With…
I always wrestle with annoyances. One annoyance I especially like to wrestle with is the choice between hyphens and underscores. Let me cut…
There have been quite a lot of posts on Planet Debian lately about the Debian port to GNU/kFreeBSD, mostly from slackydeb. This is a project…
For many years I've been an avid user of Adobe software, primarily Photoshop and Illustrator. Recently, however, I've become more of an avid…
I've been working on trying to get an Illustrator file converted to SVG (scalable vector graphics) format, and in my research I've learned…
For my notebook, I'm using the following partition / fstab / filesystems layout: It results in something like this: I may setup autofs for…
This is by far one of my favorite features of Apache. I use it for a variety of tasks, but mainly for managing url redirection. As my sites…
Just canceled my VPS Link Account. I just wasn't using it because the latency was not very low and even though the machine supposedly had…
I'm once again on the hunt for low power computing. After running powertop on "smurfbot" - an old headless Toshiba laptop, use of HPET was…
Not sure why, but the 2.6.28 kernel does not get along well with my Everex Stepnote Via C7 laptop. When booting, it freezes when it starts…
My home folder is littered with hidden files and folders. Its not usually an annoyance, but lately the number of files has grown out of…
Just keeping this for reference:
This is a big step for me - I finally figured out how to do something useful in the awesomewm (Awesome window manager) configuration file…
This took way longer to figure out that I would have liked, but oh well. The Goal Setting certain client windows to appear in all tag…
Wow! The Network Manager software package got way better recently! A little background - Network Manager is an graphical user interface open…
I've only used the Mutt email reader a little bit in the past, but I'm having a bit of a console renaissance - and Mutt is one of the…
One thing I really like about Courier is the fact that I can filter messages with Spamassassin from a maildroprc file, essentially as an…
I've been thinking about how to write logical statements in XML. Apparently there are two (or more?) existing XML subset for rules: There is…
I'm planning to migrate away from Courier to Dovecot - not set in stone, but I'm 99% there. Why? The following reasons: Sieve support Really…
At the moment, I'm using these web browsers on my debian GNU/linux notebook: UPDATE: HA! I'm not the only one who is annoyed that Chromium…
OpenLDAP is a popular open source LDAP server. It is available on Debian and I use it for storing and distributing user information. I've…
After reading up on Apple's Snow Leopard, I remembered ZFS - the really nice file system from Solaris which is available to FreeBSD kernels…
Forum spam with the PhunkyBB forums system hasn't been much of a problem due to the involved registration system, as well as the fact that I…
Wow - I just came across "My Little Forum" and I'm totally impressed! I just downloaded the source and can't wait to dig into it. In a…
I've hit a snag with varnish restarts that I need to fix but keep putting off. Under certain circumstances, my varnish servers get chained…
Doh! I'm really starting to like using the Awesome window manager, but I've just now realized that jEdit doesn't work with it. I read some…
I'm enjoying the learning process involved with setting up Awesome. Its working for me, though I did encounter quite a few gotchas: Here's…
I have no idea why this is happening on my laptop, but I found a lame-o workaround. When I would try and run ocsinventory-agent on my laptop…
Thanks to the advent of virtualization, more specifically Xen and OpenVZ, it is now possible for hosting companies to offer root access…
In my efforts to run my servers as efficiently as possible, I started using twelve volt power supplies with some smaller machines which…
Wow that's a mouthful! The cookie widget for the awesome jQuery tablesorter pager extension wouldn't go back to page 1 for me. I debugged it…
After a few weeks of using OpenID, I've come to the conclusion that it is awesome. I guess all I needed for some convincing was a few good…
DSpam I've wanted to try DSpam for a long time. Well today I finally installed it. I still have to actually use it, but I'm taking one step…
Google has finally released a linux version of their chromium browser! The first version didn't work for me at all, but the second version…
I'm very pleased with my current spam filtering setup. Its taken a long time to get working but it was totally worth it. Thank goodness for…
I've always felt that CEOs of large corporations get paid the big bucks not only for the amount and quality of the work that they perform on…
I found this mod_rewrite configuration at Perishable Press: Then I added this: at the beginning. I might remove that as the post another…
Do you use spreadsheets? How about a word processor? Do you make presentations? If you answered "yes" to any of the above questions, you…
I finally got to use the png fix which I've heard about for Internet Explorer. I usually don't bother trying to support MSIE as I'd rather…
Lua I'm having a little bit of trouble getting some traction with Lua. Its a relatively new language and doesn't have too many libraries or…
A good friend of mine also happens to be my accountant. When I talk to him about the open source accounting and bookkeeping software I've…
When I first tried puppet, I was really impressed. Then time went on and I got sidetracked and reverted to manually administering my systems…
Whoops! After cleaning up some virtual machines, I went too aggressive on some normal machines and removed some necessary stuff. I think I…
Varnish is a great example of modern software programming techniques. It is a caching reverse proxy designed for high-traffic sites to…
I'm happy to say that I signed up for a RapidXen account and I'm very pleased. I think its one of the best deals out there. My only…
Lately I've increasingly been using Varnish and NGINX as reverse proxies, and if you have too, you've probably noticed that the log files at…
I always marvel how different life is compare to the days before the internet. In the "old" days if you had a random factoid or question you…
I've updated the iptables script that I use, although it varies from machine to machine, here's the basic outline: Not all the servers I use…
Ikiwiki blogs / wikis support OpenID identity logins out-of-the-box, so I've decided to sign up for one. I had previously setup an OpenID…
Looks like the new version of sitecopy in Squeeze is having problems. I get this error: I did a quick search and someone else is having the…
For all the years I've been using the internet, I've never really taken cookies seriously. Recently however, they have become both a…
As much as I've complained about email and how its services are structured, when I think about the idea of replacing it, I can't imagine why…
I'm again evaluating the use of Amazon S3 for storing backups of images. I've dabbled with it before and liked it quite a bit, but never got…
This was unfortunately much more difficult than I had hoped. What I wanted to do was supply an absolute path for the asset upload, and have…
There are some very nice new NGINX features now available - and the 0.7.x branch has been marked stable! Here's the scoop on the new…
I'm using this template to add the javascript required to call out to Google Analytics:
I setup a cronjob for: /usr/share/movabletype/tools/run-periodic-tasks to be run as www-data. I also symlinked /etc/movabletype-opensource…
I love workarounds. This problem about javascript same domain rules conflicting with MT's static web path configuration option had me…
Yesterday one of my clients had a major spike in traffic to their site. They usually have a steady flow of substantial traffic, but…
Today the hay that my camel was carrying had one straw too many - the camel's back broke, and so I had to muster up the gusto to automate…
I've been hard at work lately - just finished up some cool tasks though, including some work with a Perl MVC framework called Catalyst. I…
I just setup a new Debian OpenVZ container on a commercial VPS. It was installed as Lenny, but since I want to install a newer version of…
I've heard many people complain about how hard it is to write XML. I agree, and that's why I don't write it. I generate it. My tool for…
I just had a nice conversation which included the topic of Ming: a C++ library which can generate SWF movies. It has bindings for many…
The latest and greatest version of Varnish, the reverse proxy cache from LinPro, is absolutely awesome. The documentation still leaves a…
The Roadsend PHP Compiler is a tool to parse PHP files and convert them into C code for compilation into standalone binaries. Its a pretty…
Catalyst is a perl powered MVC web application framework, sort of similar to Ruby on Rails (RoR) or Sympfony. How had I not heard of this…
Its true - cookies are cache crashers. I learned about this from my favorite reverse proxy cache: varnish. The varnish docs speak about how…
The David to the Apple Goliath is apparently falling: news agencies are reporting that Pystar has filed for bankruptcy. Like Chrysler, they…
How's this for a green computer? The Gyy is a low-power machine, made from biodegradable components, that also comes with the option to put…
Lately a lot of my friends' Facebook accounts have been hacked and I've been getting stupid emails from whoever has hacked their account…
Rumors of an Apple Mac tablet are circling the news media again. Its a little annoying because I think this would be a great product. Apple…
I'm planning some social networking type functionality for PhunkyBB. What that specifically entails remains to be seen, but its annoyed me…
Apps are the applications that developers create for the iPhone and iPod touch. Anyone can make an app all they have to do is download the…
I didn't even know they had come out with these until about a week ago. My clinical partner was using hers to search reference material…
I run a small, referrals based, web and email hosting company. I started the service reluctantly, but because I felt I could help some of my…
I've got a few hours to work on something good... should it be WebDAV + SVN integration with Ikiwiki, or upgrading my Varnish installs…
Since I started to use a Windows Vista laptop as my "set top box" to watch Netflix movies, the Mac mini I used to connect to my television…
I wish I knew what this intel storefront was all about. I saw in during a recent visit to Los Angeles, California. I'm surprised that the EU…
The jQuery document ready function is very nice, but for some applications it takes to long to trigger. On those occasions, I've started…
I've setup a new plugin on some of the Wordpress blogs we publish which sends an email to those who have commented on a post when a new…
My protocol of choice when it comes to e-mail is IMAP. Its reliable, fast, and well tested. Unfortunately, Microsoft's Outlook products have…
I've completed updating all of our sites which run PhunkyBB, so I'm going to go ahead with releasing 0.3 when I find a little more time. I…
I'm really looking forward to when I get to use Epiphany webkit all the time. The older version I'm using (2.22.3) is super fast, but is…
Anyone else getting this? It happened to me once before when I was trying some gtk libs from sid, so I back-graded to lenny and it worked…
I rarely use Microsoft Internet Explorer, but I realize that lots of other people do, so I usually try to support it as much as is practical…
Varnish 2.x is now is Debian Squeeze, and it includes some cool failover functionality I want to give a whirl. The 2.x branch has actually…
The pending release of PhunkyBB 0.3 alpha is alive and well on three websites! This has been an enjoyable release process to work on, and…
I am running into an error with Perl on Debian, more specifically a conflict with libxml-sax-perl. I was able to work around this using: ¥
This code is a reduced version of something Joey Hess from Debian wrote for ikiwiki and released to the public domain: I reduced it so that…
GeoCities offered free hosting which was supported by advertisements. In my experience, the service was pretty dismal as well. Also, it…
Its true, my Macbook has finally kicked the bucket. It started with the optical drive, then it started to have issues booting, and now all I…
One thing that really amazed me about PunBB was how fast it is. It is also one of the reasons why I chose it as a conceptual starting point…
I've finally canceled the accounts I had previously registered with MySpace and Friendster. Why? Actually for many reasons. I also contacted…
One thing I don't like about XSL is the complexity of some simple tasks, so I'm thinking of ways to use Javascript instead. For example this…
As a follow-up to this post from two years ago (!!) How I use Apache behind pfSense, I think I may have solved a similar problem with HTTP…
As a follow-up to my last post, I just happened to be doing a little testing on the following proxies: I'm pleased to say that having both…
I try to take Google's advice to focus on users instead of search engines, but without traffic, there are no users. Given that Google can…
What is up with people cutting network cables? AT&T had major communications problems due to two of their fiber optics cables being cut…
Its been over a year since I first signed on with Linode, and I figure its time for a quick review. My overall experience has been very…
I finally got around to creating some privacy policies for the websites my company publishes. Here's an example: Docunext Tech Stuff Privacy…
So I'm not going to backport the cool new changes and improvements in 0.3 to 0.2 because 0.3 is much closer than I thought. I've been making…
This is wonderful news: the Debian GNU/kFreeBSD distribution is now official. I've been very impressed with this port for quite some time…
Markdown is a very simple syntax for stylizing documents. I really like it because it works for both plain text ASCII documents and when its…
I'm trying to get my laptop to be cooler. I've just run powertop and identified some processes which are keeping the CPU in an active state…
A recent run of powertop discovered that the webcam in my Acer Extensa 5620Z was causing a significant amount of wakeups. I never use it, in…
I was reading up on Webkit optimizations and one of the suggestions was to use hardware acceleration on the video card. I've experimented…
I've been using http proxies a lot lately, combining various functionality from different web servers to create some great solutions. As my…
I just found the solution to an annoying bug: "[Exception... "'Syntax error, unrecognized expression: [@rel*=lightbox]' when calling method…
I'm experimenting with PHP, CSS, and XML, trying to come up with some sort of css2xml script, while considering the idea of mangling classes…
Tidy is a nice little library which is used to to clean up HTML. Its been around for awhile, and from what I understand, it has been…
I kept on getting: on a debian machine whenever I tried using gem. I ended up commenting out a few lines, then installing the latest version…
After briefly thinking about Javascript parsers, I did a quick search for CSS parsers, and found, as El Guapo might say, a plethora of…
I've been evaluating different strategies for caching parts of an XHTML page, like a header, footer, or sidebar. I've come to the conclusion…
I was surprised to find that Ubuntu has a package for Chromium - the open source browser from Google. It uses the WebKit HTML engine, and a…
The pfSense hackathon is over, and I'm skimming through the change logs. Looks like most of the changes were to the 2.0 branch, which I've…
This is similar to the defensible module I tried out last year, but it appears to work really well. Its available in debian, which is…
I'm sticking with XSL, XML and DOM, so I'm trying to free myself of strings. I had a tough time dropping disable-output-escaping, as I first…
Hooray! The MySQL DBD driver is finally (probably for some time now) included in the debian distribution of Apache2. :-) I've been waiting…
I can't believe this isn't easier to find. Probably an easier way: ¥
I'm realizing that by using web server proxies to servers which run inside virtual machines, its much safer to hack up code and libraries…
I dusted off my Everex laptop to try building SquirrelFish in WebKit since its a 32-bit operating system (the VIA C7 is not 64-bit, but the…
I've been embedded a lot of images into javascript blocks lately using Base64 encoding and I'm quite pleased with the results. What does…
Internet Explorer doesn't support XHTML strict? What a surprise. SARCASM! I've given up! After getting very annoyed with document.write and…
With the warmer seasons approaching here in North America, I'm starting to think about trying to lower the temperature on my laptop…
My new favorite browsers: Midori and Arora. They use Webkit and scream along. Seriously, they are fast. Problem is that its alpha and…
After reading up on Ragel, I came across Hpricot, "a fast, flexible HTML parser written in C". I read a little bit more, and it sounds like…
I've been playing with Ragel all day - its so interesting, and actually not that difficult to get started, even though the concepts are…
I use wp-syntax for syntax highlighting on Wordpress, but I changed the code to use: instead of: I did this for future xhtml compliance. I…
Here are some notes I'm taking about the cool Bespin editor from Mozilla labs: Questions: Database Tables: I'm working on a page in the wiki…
I'm always trying to look ahead when it comes to technology - things move so fast, I feel like I have to. So what do I see on the horizon as…
ZFS continues to get so much attention, its really bewildering to me that Sun doesn't release it under a GPL compatible license. I mean, why…
With XHTML, mime type really makes a difference, especially 1.1. At least in my experience it does. I'm finding that pages will render…
I tried out two fast and simple xml parsers today: asm-xml Now this is super cool, an xml parser written in assembly! I have only tried the…
Ncache is a caching module for nginx, similar to varnish. I just installed it using my modified nginx debian build script, and it was a…
Marvell Semiconductors is releasing a nice little device - the SheevaPlug. Its supposed to retail around $100 and from what I can tell, it…
I've decided to try puredarwin on my mac mini, and since I have a few preliminary questions, I decided to try irc. I installed ircii and…
Well I finally got around to reading up on the file system hierarchy standard (FHS) today. Specifically I was looking for a good place to…
Just noticed that my dhclient was running about once every 10 seconds. Not good: I restarted it, but it was still happening, so I stopped it…
Mentioned in the last post about Bespin, the PUT and DELETE methods actually do work with the DAV modules for Apache and Nginx! This is a…
I finally got around to trying out the tesseract optical character recognition software. It works way better than any other OCR software I…
I'm trying to setup the new Bespin file editor on linux: Actually looks like they take care of some stuff in a script: OK, that was really…
Git keeps catching my attention, and I found cgit today. I was surprised to find that it isn't (as far as I can tell) fastcgi compatible…
I'm trying to fix this bug: Assertion `*path != '/'' failed. I was able to fix some stuff, and now I'm trying to use Alien::SVN. Awesome! It…
I've started working on a new web server plan. Its based on the fact that I've relied upon PHP for way too long and come to realize that…
Though a little hard to find, there are some nice xml projects in lua. Here are two that caught my attention: http://etree.luaforge.net…
I like Markdown because it allows text files to look normal, and then makes nice HTML out of them. Discount is a fast Markdown translator…
I've used OCF linux before and it is very cool, however its BSD license taints the linux kernel. http://www.logix.cz/michal/devel/cryptodev…
I'm working on exporting multi-worksheet documents from PBooks. The Open Document Spreadsheet format is based in XML (which is awesome) so…
I had spent some serious time trying to get qemu-img to convert a parallels image to a more open standard, and thankfully, qemu-img now…
I just installed Debian on an Asus eee PC, and I have to say that the Debian eee team has done a terrific job with this piece of equipment…
This is good - the openbsd driver for hardware accelerated aes encryption and the hardware random number generator has been ported to…
DBSlayer What is dbslayer? Its a specialized web server that receives urlencoded JSON formatted SQL queries, parses and executes them, and…
NGINX recently added support for XSL transformations, and it is AWESOME! In fact, its one of the coolest pieces of software I've used in a…
ath5k I'm trying to install debian on my eeepc, actually I've got it installed on an SD card, its booting, but I'm not able to network. I've…
Is this possible? Probably, either either with an -m32 wrapper script or with a 32-bit chroot environment. Here's my first try:/usr/local…
I have a couple of Mac Minis, one is already running Debian Lenny, and the other one is running an old, getting older version of Mac OS X…
Mounting NFS Shares from within OpenVZ Containers Some of Debian's kernels with OpenVZ patches do not support NFS mounts within containers…
Hmmmm. I read up on "do_nmi" and it appeared to have to do with multiple cpus, so I enabled Symmetric multi-processing support, tried again…
Mindeb is now using a totally custom kernel, with the following patches: OpenVZ Aufs Squashfs Entropy Patch It is also setup with fewer…
This looks like a major step forward for linux file systems: BTRFS. Its not ready yet, but I'm going to try it out. Here's what I'm doing…
I keep getting lockups and hanging delays with my NFS setup, so I continue to experiment. Server /etc/exports: Client /etc/fstab: ¥
As docunext readers know, I'm a fan of debian and distcc. I've used distcc to aid with building debian kernels, and now I'm using it with…
I hate it when this happens. I'm not sure why it does, but when I try to connect to an ssh server, I get this response: What's up with that…
I'm building a more recent version of NGINX to take advantage of its xsl module, and while I'm at it I'm customizing the gcc flags, since…
For some reason, this site doesn't seem indexed by popular search engines: Minixwall This is a cool idea - its a port of the linux netfilter…
55MB Mindeb Beta Root password is nodows, can run with this command: (The archive is bzip2 compressed, and cannot run prior to being…
I've finally got an image I'm quite happy with, so I'll be uploading it soon. Its for use with QEMU and can be started with something along…
I just read over at the Squashfs-lzma site that squashfs has been included in the 2.6.29 linux kernel. Awesome. Morton's tree includes…
I changed this in /etc/init.d/nfs-user-server: Specifically the "-- -r" text at the end of the start-stop-daemon lines. Debian should…
I've been having a great time working with PXE booting machines lately. First I got debian to boot off of a PXE server for an install, then…
Planning is an important part of software development, but it can also hinder valuable progress. Most of my software development is done…
I was trying to pxe boot kvm. Actually I was trying to boot qemu but the debian qemu package doesn't include the boot roms for some reason…
It actually goes to JSON and then to XML, but here's an adaption of json2xml.js specifically for use with jQuery's serializeArray function…
I tried csync2 again tonight for simpler stuff than what I would use puppet for. Seems like there is a big bug with csync2 and ssl: http…
I've just updated the linux kernel on my Macbook running Debian, and unfortunately the keyboard and mouse no longer work. :-( I had to jump…
Nexenta was the first OpenSolaris that caught my eye, and since then I've tried a few others. There continue to be some annoying driver…
The problem with "cloud computing", as I see it, is slow network speeds. I've been running on Verizon FIOS now for a few months, and I have…
Just found some helpful utilities for monitoring computer temperatures:sensorshddtemp I install them on my debian machines like this: And on…
Finally! I've taken the plunge with a configuration management system. I chose Puppet after taking a looong time to mill over the choices…
Sing along... mail gateways have been good to me so far... Seriously though - I'm really liking email gateways. Just a postfix setup to…
I've had my eye on the Horde Application Framework for quite awhile, but for a long time, it was stuck using PHP4, and I couldn't find it in…
I'm trying out isakmpd on a xen box at slicehost, its amd64, and I'm getting this error: Not sure what's up. Found this. ¥
Duh, I hope that the ease of Google doesn't make me too lazy! I should have figured this out on my own, but a two second search found this…
I used to thing a single filesystem was better than several, but now I use multiple filesystems. What changed? LVM2!! Its the magic key I…
I think I've finally figured it out! These notes may not make sense to others, but I'm just jotting them down anyway. It always confused me…
I'll admit, it took me awhile to use linux as my "desktop" computer, but I've been proudly been using linux for well over 5 years. That's…
I'm not a big fan of the FTP helper, but in some cases it works. One problem I have with it is that proftpd ends up only having connections…
Debian follows the standard directory layout for figuring out where to put files, and as I'm starting to package some of the open source…
A couple of ideas regarding server event management: monit inotify / incrond libpam-script cron logcheck Other file scanning - fail2ban…
I had problems with Nexenta2 beta with QEMU and KVM, but then I tried VirtualBox, and it worked! For me, Nexenta2 works with VirtualBox…
This is not a new discovery to me, I've known that pfSense is an amazing resource. I'm posting this to make sure that other people know this…