Author: Steve Novoselac

Director of Digital Technology @TrekBikes, Father, Musician, Cyclist

Categories
Geeky/Programming

Updated to Leopard

Yesterday I picked up Apple’s latest OS, Leopard OS X 10.5. What is really cool is the boot camp feature. I am now dual booting Windows Vista and OSX on my little 13 inch MacBook. If I had the cash I would have gotten a MacBook pro, but it is just so expensive. I have 37 GB partitions for each OS, so not huge, but it works.

I do have a USB hard drive (250) that I use for OSX, and then I have one for Windows, so it is all good. Installing OSX was easy, few clicks, done. Did the updates, etc. Then ran Boot Camp assistant, rebooted, installed Vista, put in OSX DVD, installed the rest of the drivers needed, and then did the Windows updates.

Pretty slick setup. I might get some more RAM for this laptop, since it only has 1 GB, but it is performing OK.

I don’t think I will ever buy any new laptop that isn’t a MacBook (preferably a MacBook Pro). There just isn’t any other way to go IMHO.

Categories
Uncategorized

links for 2008-03-29

Categories
Geeky/Programming

Google Maps Street View comes to Madison!

image

Although, not as exciting as my street view in Portland, I live way back in the apartments in the back. No street passes by it. Although this is pretty cool. Good way to find your way around, or at least not get lost. But remember, Google Maps gets you lost!

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Uncategorized

Amazon S3 and WordPress Video Site – 2 Hour Project – What A Debacle

About a month ago, I wanted to test using Amazon’s S3 service, for storage. I couldn’t think of any quick, easy projects to use it for, then it hit me, how about video/photos?

I decided to see how long it would take for me to make a video site, with comments, views, etc, on a small budget.

My first thought was maybe to use a hosted WordPress.com blog, and just redirect the domain, which is about 10 dollars a year, and then use S3 for the video/photo hosting. That idea was nixed because hosted WordPress.com blogs can’t embed flash, javascript, or iFrames, etc.

My next idea was just getting a WordPress hosted blog at HostMySite, which is what I went with (which eventually I will move to my own server). This was 45$, and the domain was roughly 10$, so 55$ so far.

Now, to get videos working, and a cool theme. First the theme. I just searched free WordPress theme sites, and found one that looked cool. I set it up, slapped up some Google AdSense and Google Analytics, and changed the logo, rearranged a few things.

As for getting video to work. I was having issues embedding jscript (for the flash video embeds) in WordPress. It would work, but then screw up the formatting of the rest of the page, etc. I knew iFrame would work, so I went that route. Since I am a .NET dev at heart, I made a page where it will take some params on my www.stevienova.com site, and grab the file from S3 and play it. So on WordPress, I just iFrame that site with the right params. I suppose later I could make a PHP page to do the same thing and keep it all self enclosed. Probably will do that once I move it to my server.

For video I found a nice little flv embed, which has a ton of options, even can do pre and post roll ads if I want. What is nice with the setup I have is that there really isn’t and bandwidth being eaten by my webhost. Just the theme images. Everything else is on S3. The videos, thumbnails, etc.

Pricing for Amazon S3 is pretty good.

  • Storage Used: $0.15 per GB-Month of storage. This fee applies to all object data and metadata stored in buckets that you created under your account.

    It does not matter who created the objects in your buckets, so think twice before you give somebody the right to write objects to your bucket!

  • Network Data Transferred: $0.20 per GB of data transferred. This fee applies anytime data is read from or written to one of your buckets. It does not matter who is reading or writing the data, so consider this when you give public access to one of your objects that may become popular.

With the site just starting, the storage and transfer is really low. Less than a dollar.

So, in about 2 hours and less than 60 dollars later, I created a self managed Funny Video site, from the ground up. I can now use Windows Live Writer to post to it, and I use a S3 tool to upload files to S3.

I also have other people putting videos on it, so that is cool as well. I am not sure where it will, because it really was just an experiment to see how fast I could get a video site up, and for how cheap.

Not sure how funny the videos are or will be, but if you want something up, I will put it up. Once nice thing, is that I can just iFrame YouTube as well, so if there is something there that might be Copyrighted by a YouTube uploader, I don’t have to worry about that, since its just the YouTube player which you can embed legally.

Fun stuff 🙂

Check out the site.

whatadebacle

http://www.whatadebacle.com

 

Categories
Geeky/Programming Ramblings

Windows Live Writer – API Open (not really) – I Want To Download Existing Posts

So, I am sitting here scratching my head again. I use Windows Live Writer (WLW) to post to my blog. I like it, it rocks. There is a plugin architecture, which is cool, and some other API’s for doing things.

WLW saves drafts and posted posts as .wpost files to a directory in your My Documents. The files are in a proprietary binary format. It is cool though as all your posts are saved and you can open existing ones, edit, and republish easily.

I want to go through my posts and add WordPress tags. Not technorati tags, but WordPress tags, so I can have a cool little tag cloud. WP 2.5 support WLW tags by default, WP 2.3 (which I am running) can get tags from WLW through a little REG hack which I have applied and it works for new posts.

What I want to do, is update all my historical posts through WLW instead of WordPress web interface.

Since I have reformatted, changed computers, started blogging before WLW came about, of course I don’t have all my posts on this machine. So I thought, why not download them from my blog and create .wpost files so I have them?

First I looked for a plugin, no dice, doesn’t even seem that anyone has wanted to do this. I searched forums, blogs, Google, whatever. Found little info.

Next I dug into the API, nothing there that would really help me. What I would do is just access my posts through the XML-RPC interface WordPress has and create new .wpost files in my directory, you wouldn’t think it would be that tough..but it is.

It would be nice if the .wpost file was open and had a documented spec, that way I could do it easy as 1,2,3. Even if there was some API with WLW to create new posts and save them (you can create new posts, but only by programmatically opening WLW).

Well, I guess I will keep my eyes open for anything that comes along that will make this possible, until then, it is using the WP web interface. I suppose I could write an app to just directly edit the post tags through the XML-RPC API, and save them, but I want them on my machine as well. Just another good backup I suppose.

Categories
Geeky/Programming

Salon Transcripts (STX) – Using Remotely – Opening Ports, Port Forwarding

A little background: Salon Transcripts (STX) is a Salon Management program for Mac’s. It is used by salon’s all over the country, small and large shops. The site they have is basically for sales. Tech support is 18 dollars per call/email, etc. They don’t have much for documentation, much less connecting remotely. I was tasked with getting it working remotely.

My first step was get remote access to a machine inside the network. For this I did 4 things.

1) Install DynDNS client for Mac

DynDNS (Dynamic DNS) allows you to create a faux domain name for an IP behind a NAT, and the little client will update DynDNS service so it is always up to date. Basically make a dynamic IP static. I installed this on a computer at the salon that is always on.

2) Install Vine VNC Server for Mac

Vine is a VNC server, I installed this on the same computer as the DynDNS client on the internal network

3) Install Chicken of the VNC for Mac

On the client computer (laptop) I installed Chicken of the VNC (love the name). Read somewhere this was the best VNC client for Mac, so I went with it.

4) Port Forward Port 5900 on the AirPort Express to the Machine Internally

Using the app in the Utilities folder on the Mac internally, AirPort Utility, I forwarded port 5900 (vnc port) to the computer with Vine and DynDNS

So far so good. I could then connect to the server on the internal network, change any settings, open more ports, etc. I could just use STX on the server machine, but it was really slow over VNC. Initially I was going to just have them use VNC and then FolderShare or email PDF reports back to the laptop so they could print them remotely, but just to slow.

I decided to get STX on the laptop to connect remotely over the Internet to the server on the internal network. Since there is NO documentation on this, I had to do some digging. First, what ports does STX use, and what is the STX server IP internally? Getting the IP is trivial, there is a setting in STX->Preferences->System where you can set the IP, so I had that. Finding out the ports, I fired up Terminal on the server, and ran

netstat -na | grep ESTA

To see what connections were established

stx_netstat

As you can see there are 3 ports that were going the server (the server was 10.0.1.100) – 9090, 4000 and 20260. These are the 3 ports you need to open up on a router and use port forwarding to the server to connect STX remotely.

Once again, the ports to use Salon Transcripts (STX) remotely are:

Port 9090
Port 4000
Port 20260

Those 3 tidbits would have saved me some time 🙂

After port forwarding those to the server, I tried connecting the laptop client over the net to my DynDNS host and it worked!

One thing I noticed though is running reports is VERY SLOW over the Internet, almost locks up STX.

Categories
Random

Repressed Memory from High School: Wearing Baseball Stirrups Playing Basketball

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In high school, playing basketball for Chisholm High, we had to wear baseball stirrups (leggings). See the above picture. As you can see, these are listed on amazon as “Baseball Stirrups”

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See you might be fooled when looking at the first picture that these are socks, but alas, they are stirrups. What a PITA. Uncomfortable, pulled up to the knee, just bad all around. You can see the picture above the player has spandex below his shorts. Why? Because Chisholm Basketball shorts are still 80’s style. Look at the player behind him, they are below the knee!

Anyway’s, this is a post about Chisholm Basketball, since they made it to state this year, first time since 95, when I was on the team, wearing baseball stirrups on the court. Good Luck Bluestreaks.. 🙂

Categories
Blogging Geeky/Programming

WordPress on IIS 6.0, Windows 2003 – Some Tweaks (URL Rewrite and SMTP)

OK so I lied. Everything wasn’t working after I set up my WordPress blog on IIS 6.0 on Windows 2003. Two things were broke: SMTP (email from the blog) and URL Rewrites/Permalinks.

SMTP worked through IIS just fine, I could telnet and send email out, but from WordPress, it was getting a 501 error. From what I could tell, it was the way that WordPress was formatting the outgoing “mail from” with <From Name>from@address.com . IIS was bombing on the <> in the string (I am pretty sure). I tried some tweaking on WordPress, some plugins for SMTP, couldn’t get them to work. I tried MailEnable, I couldn’t get that to work either. I did fine hMailServer and that does work after configuring it. Like IIS, I have it just set to local, and port 25 is blocked anyway so outside relays won’t work.

The other thing that wasn’t working was my permalinks. By default WordPress doesn’t use permalinks with a rewrite, it just uses ?p=<post id>, but I have mine changed to year/month/day/title. In Linux/Apache, there is mod_rewrite for rewriting URLs, but in IIS 6.0 there isn’t anything (IIS 7 has more functionality). I could have gotten a rewrite DLL and wrote rules, but I found a sweet plugin that does it for me, especially for WordPress permalinks – http://www.binaryfortress.com/wordpress-url-rewrite/

Other than that, everything seems to be working fine. On other news, I have been looking into other blogging engines, comparing/contrasting, etc. Not sure where I will go with that though.

Categories
Uncategorized

links for 2008-03-21

Categories
Life Ramblings Random

Minnesota Smoking Ban Loophole: Theatrical Performances

Last weekend, I was up in Chisholm, Minnesota for my Grandfather’s 80th birthday. After the party, we headed downtown Chisholm to check out my step sisters boyfriend play in his band, at Sabin’s bar.

Now, Minnesota passed a smoking ban (Freedom to Breathe Act) in bars and restaurants in October 2007. This means NO SMOKING. Well, they have found some loopholes in the law, that says to some effect “actors and actresses are allowed to smoke while performing, like in a play”. Well, bars are starting to take this loophole and use it, as Sabin’s did that night, and there were many people smoking in the bar.

I happen to see the “Playbill” on the bar, and snapped a photo (which I retyped below as it might be hard to read)

Smoking Ban Loophole

*****PLAYBILL*****

The Tobacco Monologues

Live at Sabin’s Bar!

TODAY

A Theatrical Performance and Satire Regarding the Minnesota Legislature and the Freedom to Breathe Act

Note: There will be some smoking during the performance.

Friends, tonight YOU get to participate in the first of many amateur theater nights at Sabin’s bar. You will get a chance to perform in our play. The bar is the stage. If you want to be a part of the play tonight see one of the bartenders. They are in charge of the casting call. If you make the cut you will be given a sticker to wear which identifies you as one of the performers. As a performer you will be allowed to smoke. That’s right smoke indoors! You are already on state, and in the play. Have fun!!!

Special thanks to our friends Mark Benjamin & Sheila Kromer

***************************

What a joke. First off, I was pissed because there was smoking. I hate smoking, I hate smoking in the bar. I hate coming home smelling like smoke, my clothes, hair and whatever. I hate having to breathe it, and feel like I am about to gag. It is good there is a smoking ban, there is no reason smokers should be able to smoke indoors and pollute the air everyone has to breathe. They can go outside. Plain and simple.

The next day in the Duluth News Tribune, I read a bar in Babbitt MN got cited for doing a Theater Night. Good! But they got fined $300. WTF? They could just collect 2 dollars from every smoker and pay the fine every night. They need to get fined $10,000, or be shut down for a night, to feel the pain.

I am not sure, but I hope Sabin’s gets busted too. Loophole or not. It looks like they are going to start busting more bars for this. Leave your opinions in the comments.