By Dale M on 02/22/2012
I’ve been spending to much time with computers today but just can’t seem to stop. So anyway I’ll give up a brief description of the links in the the side bar. The section Helpful Sites is about the amount of information sources one might encounter say if they wanted to get a server, website, and database backend up and running more or less from scratch. There is ton more information on the subject these are just a sampling.
Favorite Tech News are personal favorites of mine and this goes back quite a few years. These sites basically tell where the tech industry is at in terms of hardware, software, gadgets, as well they also test quite a bit of this stuff. There are even some how to type pieces. I personally regard this group to be very high quality sources of information.
Last I have group is Somewhat Local. These represent some local views and opinions from around here if anyone is curious about my roots this group gives up some insights I am sure.
Posted in Conectivity, Techish |
By Dale M on 02/22/2012
Sort of a junk post here to test a plugin! I think we have it now! Thing about some plugins the instructions seem vague just trying them out is what usually works best.
Posted in Techish |
By Dale M on 02/21/2012
I spend a lot of time time just bouncing around on the internet reading, listening to music , and just generally wasting time. Having websites just intrigues me seems neat to make a computer do something for me besides just waste time. As such I accept that I won’t make money with this and would like to state that this site will never annoy anyone with adwords, obtrusive hard to close affiliate link windows, or whatever the latest craze to annoy is. I might however link to a site that does these things but really that is 99% of the internet now anyway. I don’t think that generating money from the web is a bad thing but in regards to some sites content I do not always think that it is appropriate or even effective. Just my opinion. I guess the statement I am trying to make is everything here is free or borrowed and always will be!
Posted in Conectivity, Rants, Raves |
By Dale M on 02/12/2012
Using WordPress on this site is interesting to say the least other than Moveable Type I’ve never used anything so developed. I am more used to the completely community driven loosely knit kinds of software projects. Now for the plugin/enhancement features there are to quote them “18,270 PLUGINS”. This really just begs the question how many of these actually work well. From my own experience there are some that just work and others that cause a noticeable decrease in speed of execution. Then some have free and paid versions! I am trying one now called add link to Facebook. Using some developer tools from Facebook this thing is supposed to export posts to Facebook and export comments back to the blog allowing users to post comments either place and that are viewable from either place. The only catch being that the person have a Facebook account. I guess some people don’t who knows. When I hit publish here this thing goes on its maiden journey.
Posted in Conectivity, Rants, Techish |
By Dale M on 02/11/2012
Some have noticed the keyboard in the header image is a Mac keyboard which brings up the question why do I use a Mac or to be more exact an iMac. for me it was mostly because of Windows saturation. I spend a large amount of time at work and that is really a Windows world. I am not going to make any trite comments about the platform though because in my experience it has shown itself to pretty damned reliable and robust! It was just that when I sit down to surf the web, blog, listen to music, and watch videos at home I really don’t want to use anything that resembles the job. This all started one day when I was replacing an old PC and just happened to stumble into an Apple Store. I noticed rather quickly that their computers were in fact not under spec units and if one liked the concept of an all in one model these folks had that down pat! Apple at least as far as computers go are very good at connecting with their customers in terms of needs and ease of use. I for one understand why they are so successful. Since that day I use it, it works and the whole product/consumer relationship thing has been fulfilled very nicely.
Posted in Conectivity, Entertainment, Raves, Techish | Tagged Apple, iMac |
By Dale M on 02/11/2012
Who would have ever thought that ones whole entertainment/communication setup would somehow be network dependent and computer powered perhaps even operated by a device called a cell phone. That the real money would be in the distribution and control of content rather than the hardware itself and the most valuable commodity in the world would be the money generated from distribution of data and advertising across the devices we use to interact with the world each day. Something like Facebook would move from social network status to something more akin to social appliance status. That trends would take us increasingly toward an own nothing but stream (borrow, rent, whatever) everything mentality. Don’t get me wrong I personally love the convenience of a connected world but I guess to some degree it is also something I fear. Yep fear is the operative word some places restrict free thought and the Internet is really just a vehicle to identify free thinkers. Then there is always the possibility of natural disasters. Now there is all this talk about the cloud. Really isn’t this just us giving away more of ourselves so that we can be monitored more closely so the separation of us from our cash is easier or to see if our thinking processes are properly aligned with society. The more freedom we get the more dependent we become… whew I I’ve got to let this go think I’ll go see whats on demand on TV or stream some music that will calm me down. It’s the way of future anyhow! Nothing I can do about it? Besides paranoia is ugly and not a socially acceptable mindset especially this time of year.
Posted in Conectivity, Entertainment, Rants |
By Dale M on 02/05/2012
I think this will be the format the site is delivered in for the foreseeable future. Just another WordPress run thing with minor customizations. Running on a roll-your-own server with a commercial style internet connection to get a static IP and to open ports. I’ve got it set up to open offsite links in a new tab/window as that is how I prefer sites to behave. I didn’t realize how many people don’t like that though until I did a search to find the script to make it happen. Oh well can’t please everyone and this is a relative amateur production anyway. I have tried to validate the code on this site but it doesn’t as of this moment validate instead it has 8 Errors, 4 warning(s). I may try to sort all that out at some point in the future.
Posted in Conectivity, Rants, Techish |
By Dale M on 02/03/2012
The PC I upgraded to this task wasn’t a resource challenged machine it was actually a fairly capable unit and it consisted of:
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T7700 @ 2.40GHz
200GB notebook 7200 rpm hard drive
3GB DDR2 PC-5300 RAM
It is one of those small solutions, laptop like, but without the battery and screen Some people (me included) like this form factor because it doesn’t take up a lot of space. I used it for a long time as a Windows driven server solution and am using it now as an Linux driven server solution. Hows that for an upgrade path! The pictures below are of the desktop environment on the server and the actual server unit check out the compactness perfect for a crowded desk.
Ubuntu server w/fluxbox on top and a few selected apps.
Aopen mini PC form factor
Posted in Conectivity, Techish |
By Dale M on 02/02/2012
Originally the idea was going to be take my older pc and just install a conventional version of linux and then install a lamp-server on top. I hadn’t downloaded and installed a version of linux in a pretty long time so I really had no idea which distribution would be best suited for the task I had in mind. My last experiences with linux had been of the Ubuntu variety and had also been generally favorable so I downloaded and installed their latest offering. I picked the Xubuntu flavor because for some reason I thought it would be lighter more basic than their other offerings. I guess I have been out the alternative OS loop for a long time as I was more than slightly overwhelmed with the finished system. It had way to much stuff for what I was trying to accomplish. Not to say it was a bad system actually it could er.. does compete very well with any standard commercial offering but light and basic no it wasn’t.Luckily there are apparently lots of people who felt the same as I did as the web is full of idea about this. Going into this I had not ever really stopped and considered what I needed rather instead had just taken a guess at what would work. So what I came up with was 3 paths I could take.
- Install lamp-server on top of desktop oriented environment based version.
- Do a resource challenged install and build up to a light gui based environment. For this method there are actually two paths that can be used provided that interent access is available. The other route is instead of any alternative install CD use the smaller minmal CD. They recommend using tasksel to pick additional packages and one can but that severely limits choices available and really is a long drawn out process that essentially completes item 1. To keep the OS really basic the apt-get install method is better.
- Install Ubuntu-Server and build up to a light gui based environment. I linked the FAQs because items 2 and 3 seem really similar the major differences being the size of the install media(s) and the kernel used to drive the thing once it is installed.
What Did I want? More importantly what would work?
- GUI but not automatic. I wanted it to be turned on after logon. I wanted it (GUI) to have the ability to be turned off and logged out of after using it.
- rudimentary tools (screenshot utility) (java and https capable web browser) (working lamp-server) (graphical and command line capable package management tools) (a file manager that could be launched using the sudo command) (some sort of web based server-management tool) …etc.
I wanted all this and probably more but I did not want to end up with a full fledged desktop environment once I had it all installed so package selection was what I figured the key to the process was. Usually I would
Posted in Conectivity, Techish | Tagged apache, firefox, fluxbox, gdebi, lamp-server, mysql, openjdk, php, scrot, server, synaptic, Ubuntu, webmin, xfe, xorg |
By Dale M on 01/26/2012
I had the site up and running but I didn’t like the configuration as it was very heavy on limited resources. Anyway I got it going again and this is going to be one of those “roll your own kind of stories“. Great thing about the web… full of information. Bad thing… a lot of it is under explained or even gasp wrong. Since I have managed to get everything going again in coming posts I will attempt to document how it happened. OF COURSE I have to give the standard disclaimer. I do not know exactly what I am doing so anyone else who tries this based on my experience is responsible for whatever might happen to them.
The gist of this story is how I needed a free OS to run on a spare PC that I wanted to use as a server but felt that at least a some level I wanted this machine to also provide some rudimentary GUI functions (a weakness of mine as I have learned from much research through web forums and various other resources on the web). I might be one of those people who got enslaved by those point and click systems. I will get to all of this in subsequent posts. Oh yeah I am throwing the word free in there because I really didn’t want to pay for anything but use the free tools that exist already.
Posted in Techish |
