Author Archives: TC

Setting up a Debian 3.1 Sarge LAMP Box – Part 1

This is my own personal notes on how I set up my new server box. It started out as my notes on how to turn a debian 3.1 Sarge installation into a LAMP box. At the moment it’s a rather detailed dummy’s and/or beginners step-by-step guide to making a LAMP box.

Preface

More on what LAMP is at wikepedia

Now Sarge 3.1 is a bit old at the this time, and a new version is just around the corner, but then I’ll learn how to upgrade a debian box when that happens.

I’ll try and be as detailed as possible. I really hate those how-to’s that go “they you press Y,, then N, and then… [do something that might as well be magic, unless you are a guru]”. I’ll try and link to the place where I picked up a bit of knowledge or the idea for doing something.

I’m not a linux wizard. I’ve been running a FreeBSD for a long time, as my webserver, but I can barely keep that alive and malware free. I’ll be trying to set up this box, so that it keep it self up to date and as secure as possible.

Now be aware that this is not the most clever, fast or secure way of doing this – this is just the way that I did it using the bit information that I could find on how to do what I wanted. Some of the stuff that I do is redundant and is redone later. Sometimes several times.

If somebody feels like added comments that tells how things can be done faster, better, more secure I’ll appriciate it and probably incorporate it into the doc.

(feel free to make comments on gramma and spelling – I’ll fix it and then delete your comment. I do appriciate it, it’s just kind of off-topic for the blog)

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What I want in a photo workflow application

I never go far without my Pentax *ist DS camera. I take a lot of pictures.

Normally when I move pictures from my camera to my computer and do the first raw sorting, it’s a fairly manual process, involving things like the windows explorer (copy), a small file renaming tool (to rename to the exif date/time), IrfanView (browsing) and The Gimp (for crop and levelling).

I want to try and automate this process a bit, make it work better with raw files and add delta edition (the original picture is left untouched, changes applied is saved to a seperate file).
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Hippie Jokes – Google Search

I don’t like hippies. Truely I don’t.

I found this crude and yet somehow funny joke:

Q: What has long hair and looks good in red?
A: A hippie on fire!

So, I decide to try for a few more and go to my favorite search engine:

Hippie Jokes – Google Search

And what do I find? The same two jokes on a bazillion different pages. The one about the Nun, Hippie and Busdriver and the one about George Bush (or who-ever it is that we do not like) mistaking a hippies backpack for a parachute. Again and again. And those joke are not really about hippies. You could easily replace the hippie in the first one with say a shoe-salesman, and the second one only features a hippie because the joke is so old, that it’s from a time backpacks where associated with hippies.

Even browsing around on some of the larger joke sites, I find no hippie jokes. I find the sentence “enough with the hippie jokes” a couple of times on message boards, but no jokes…

Either my google-fu is really bad today, or something strange is going on…

How the New Star Wars movies Suck

I finally go around to seeing Revenge Of the Sith. My expectations for this movie was very mixed. Phantom and Clone War both sucked, but where watchable on a pure action level. You probably already know all the standard complaints about them; stiff dialog and acting, Jar-Jar and outright stupidity aplenty. But then, I started to hear good stuff about Revenge. A bit better acting, emotional justification for the Anakin to Vader transformation, positive stuff like that.

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Destroying the Earth

Found this interesting article at Sam’s Archive, where Sam works through a set of methods for destroying Earth:

Destroying the Earth is harder than you may have been led to believe.

You’ve seen the action movies where the bad guy threatens to destroy
the Earth. You’ve heard people on the news claiming that the next
nuclear war or
cutting down rainforests or persisting in releasing hideous quantities
of pollution into the atmosphere threatens to end the world.

Fools.

The Earth was built to last.

He then goes on to describe a series of possible solutions to the
problem, giving a feasibility rating and time estimates on
implementation. Rather silly but also rather fun.

Ties in rather well on my small article on Impact Calculation.

Pentax *ist DS: First impression

I never became really happy with my Nikon 8800 (loved the zoom and the Vibration Reduction, but it was also slow and had to much noise in the images), so I sold it and got a Pentax *ist DS D-SLR instead. My first impression is very positive.

I got the camera Friday evening and I had to use it Saturday for a wedding. That didn’t really leave me any time to get to know it, so I mostly let it do it’s own thing in auto mode, occasionally turning of the flash.

I took around 600 pictures and a no time did it handle unfavorably.
Always ready to take another picture and fast autofocus being the two high point. The final results where stunning. I’ll add some test pictures to this entry later.
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OpenOffice.org 2.0 beta logo

The OpenOffice.org page has gone to a new design and while the main product is the 2.0 beta, they are using Seagull Egg logo…. guess who took that picture, yes! I did! Just move your mouse cursor over the image and it will popup a small message saying this! I’m especially proud about this as I’ve been using OpenOffice.org for a long time (it’s a replacement for Office) and it feels good to be able to give something back.

PocketPC – Newsreaders

Usenet is kind of under appriciated these days, but it’s usenet that’s hidden behind Google Groups and it’s a world of information if you find the right group to read. A good news reader is important to the usenet reading experience. Nice clear text, easy navigation is the thing that makes or break a news reader as reading news should be the place you spend the most time, but things like ease of usage in setting it up and downloading is also important. If you’re in groups with a lot of noise, things like filters and killfiles are important. I’ve searched for all the newsreaders I could find for the PocketPC and this is what I found. Alternatives that I haven’t tested: Kawara (can’t post and has no thread view) and the old freeware version of Qusnetsofts reader.
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