Posts
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Find consensus. Not compromise.
Find consensus. Not compromise.
—Andy Krumel, manager at Tellme/Microsoft -
Just migrated!
In case you haven’t heard, they are closing shop at Posterous at the end of the month. So, I just moved my blog to its new home at tumblr, and it couldn’t have been any simpler, thanks to this awesome service Justmigrate.com. Yes, they did mess up the migration in minor ways by trying to do too much. Like, creating a Photo post, instead of Text post, if my blog post had only one picture in it, and messing up the title and text formatting in the process. But, it was just a minor annoyance, as I only had to deal with 2 of those posts.
Anyway, now I gotta work on customizing the theme to make it look just like my website. And, while we are at it, I’m also migrating my website (and Fotoyaki.com along with a few other things I’ve been working on) over from godaddy on to AWS. Setting up hosting on S3 was a breeze. Only thing left is for me to change the CNAME entries for my domains to point to my S3 buckets.
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OS X Update Woes - Getting MAMP/MediaWiki working on Mountain Lion
I’ve been putting off upgrading the OS on my iMac at home for a while. But last night, I finally got to doing it. And, surprise surprise!!! My personal web server goes bust, and my chicken recipes posted on my private mediawiki installation become inaccessible!!! There’s my ridiculously elaborate, yet true, excuse for not cooking last night, and eating out yet again :) (I promise, I will start cooking one of these days!)
Well, I have encountered this issue a few times before in the past. (During every OS upgrade to be precise) So, I decided to document my fix this time. Apple has a habit of being overly concerned for its users’ security, and changes certain config files and permissions back to their default state, completely ignoring the time and effort the user (me) put into getting things to work just right!
Here’s my setup:
I have MySQL hosting my wiki’s database, and MediaWiki, which is built on PHP, running on Apache2 that comes pre-installed on the mac. It’s basically, mod_php on apache talking to mysql. Pretty simple… and Apple screwed up all three parts of my setup.
First, Apple reverts changes to my httpd.conf, thus disabling mod_php.
Second, a bigger change, Apple took away the System Preference checkbox for Personal Web Sharing, which was the simple way to start/stop apache.
Third, Apple reverts the permissions on the file used for Unix socket connection between PHP and MySQL. Well, technically the permissions on the tmp folder where the socket file resides.
Fixes:
1. uncomment the line that loads mod_php in httpd.conf (found under /etc/apache2). Basically find the line that says:
#LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so
and remove the # to uncomment it, so that it looks
LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so
I have all my content located at the default /Library/WebServer/Documents location, so I didn’t have to change anything else. But, if you used a different DocumentRoot in the past, you may need to reconfigure those settings as well.
2. The UI might have gone missing, but Apache2 still comes installed with your mac, so fire up your Terminal, and run.
> sudo apachectl start
or, to make sure it starts every single time, the launch control is still available as well…
> sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd.plist
The -w will make it permanent.
3. Make the MySQL socket accessible for PHP
> sudo mkdir /var/mysql
> sudo ln -s /tmp/mysql.sock /var/mysql/mysql.sock
Voila! My recipes are back online now! But, I don’t have any chicken to cook.
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DIY Standing Desk
Posted from: CA, USA
Standing desks are all the rave these days, and being a person who keeps up to date with current trends, I decided to make one for myself. Did I mention DIY projects are also considered trendy?Just kidding.
There is a lot of science to support the theory that Standing Desks can help you maintain proper back posture. Also, there are studies that suggest sitting for long periods of time can be bad for your health, which is what we software engineers do all day long in front of a computer. And being a person that can’t sit up straight, and one that slouches all the time on the chair, those studies don’t need any more validation or peer reviews to convince me to “try” standing. I say “try”, because there is also a lot of science against standing as well (vericose veins?), and as I have never done it before, I am not sure if I will actually like it.
Luckily, thanks to Colin Nederkoorn’s blog post, trying just became easy and cheap! $22 cheap to be exact. Well, I made a few minor modifications to his DIY recipe, and was able to fit in an additional side table for a mere $5 more.
Here’s what I used:
- 2 x LACK side table (Premium Color - Black/Brown): $9.99 ea. = $19.98
- 2 x EKBY STÖDIS Bracket: 50¢ ea. = $1.00
- 1 x EKBY VIKTOR Shelf: $5.99 ea. = $5.99
- Wood Screws: Extras laying around = $0.00
Total Cost: $26.97
I found the cheaper shelf brackets to work just as well as the large wooden ones Colin’s recipe recommends. They seem to be just as sturdy, and actually result in a cleaner look that’s aesthetically more pleasing, with the brackets hidden flush under the shelf. I also chose to spend 2 extra bucks per LACK table to avoid the plasticky feel the cheaper glossy ones gave. Also, our desks at work are metallic, so I decided to stick some magnetic tape to the bottom of the LACK tables’ legs, so that they don’t slide around as easily.
Anyway, here’s my build of the $22 standing desk adding character to our workplace, and it cost me just $27 with upgrades! Hopefully, others at bre.ad approve it ;)
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Getting Setup... Again!
I just wanted to revisit an earlier post I made nearly two years ago, when I started this blog. I had originally talked about the necessary tools for any software development project…
- Version Control
- Wiki
- Issue Tracker
Back then, I hadn’t had much experience using free version control software other than CVS & SVN, and of the ones I had used (Subversion, CVS, Clearcase, Perforce, VisualSourceSafe), Subversion seemed like the best option. Also, I hadn’t tried using hosted solutions or any of the open source project hosting sites like github, or sourceforge, and had everything setup in-house on my desktop machine. I had mediawiki (along with apache’s modphp & postgres), and svnd running on my iMac, and had to make sure my computer was always on and reachable from the internet. DynamicDNS helps :)
That was 2010. This is 2012, and two things have happened…
- I have a new favorite Version Control System – Git.
- I have discovered online hosting for private Git repositories.
I started using Git (on Github.com) for my work beginning in March, and fell in love with its ease right away. It is so much better than SVN. For starters, Git can work offline, as it clones a copy of the entire repository onto your local machine. This makes check-ins and merges super efficient as well, and more importantly, adds redundancy to your repository data, as you have a backup copy on each machine that clones the repo. On top of that, Github.com is pretty awesome. Their issue tracking system, and wiki are pretty slick, and they support private repositories, albeit at a cost ($7.99/mo.)
I personally use Bitbucket.org, an Atlassian service (the makers of JIRA, and Confluence). Though the web interface (or SSH/HTTPS Git access) isn’t as snappy or slick as Github, they too provide a wiki (mediawiki style), and an issue tracker (similar to JIRA) for each hosted repository. And to top it all off, they support unlimited private repositories… for FREE! As long as you don’t need to collaborate. If you do want to collaborate, their “Team” plans are relatively cheap.
Personally, I love the speed and slickness of Github.com, and using it at my work is a delight. But for hosting my personal projects, Bitbucket.org serves me well enough… and at a much appreciated cost of “free”!
So, there it is – What every project needs?… to setup a private repo on one of these services.
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