This is perhaps one of the most sweet-looking uses of Flash I’ve seen in a while. This came across my RSS feed today, an author/artist who’s put together a book called “The Art of Wooing” — but what woo’d me most was his impressive flash preview of his book. (Hint: click and drag the corner of the pages)
Filed under: Flash (Macromedia), Websites
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As mentioned in a previous post, I am taking the first steps towards becoming a member of the Orthodox Christian Church; a completely departure from my past expressions of faith which have included Lutheranism (ELCA and independent Lutheran “Renewal”), “Word Faith” brand of non-denominationalism, baptist, and your run-of-the-mill non-denominational charismatic evangelical church.
Well apparently I’m not the only one that is making this journey to the roots of our faith. My friend Jamison is going Roman Catholic, and two others that I know (through Jamison) are also exploring or becoming members of the Orthodox Church. So instead of just blogging about my Orthodox experience here, we’re going to do it in a community/forum style over at The Hitchhiker’s Guide. The Hitchhiker’s Guide used to be a webzine on life and Christian spirituality that Jamison and me used to run years ago.
So we’ve dusted off hitchhikersguide.org and it has a new purpose now. If you’re interested in Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism, I’d encourage you to check it out and follow our own respective journeys along the way.
Filed under: Orthodoxy, Spirituality, Websites
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Even after having updated all five of my blogs’ WordPress installations to version 2.3.2, I was still getting comment spam sent to me, asking me to moderate. While I’m thankful that it was held for moderation, it’s irritating to have to log into WordPress to mark the items as spam (which I’m convinced does nothing at all) and then delete them from my inbox. So I decided to add a few layers of protection to my WordPress installations, two of them being transparent, and one additional layer for proving the end-user to be a real person.
I added two behind-the-scenes layers of protection — Bad Behavior and Akismet — and have to say that they were VERY easy to install. Simply upload the files into your /wp-content/plugins/ folder and then activate them in WordPress. That’s it.
Bad Behavior analyzes the HTTP request information to determine the origin and nature of the request (and process accordingly) whereas Akismet is a web service API that tests comments, trackbacks and pingbacks against their API. Apparently it runs hundreds of tests against the post/request to test for spam. We’ll see how effective these two are.
And because three is not only a holy number, but heck it’s one extra layer of protection [mom always said dress in layers] I added a third layer. I added Pete’s Custom Anti-Spam Image plug-in, which allows me to set up a custom word image that my end-users have to type in, verifying that they are indeed a human being. Customizing the plug-in isn’t terribly difficult; simply do the following:
The first line contains: $cas_text[] = “snow”;
I might modify it to: $cas_text[] = “spamhate”;
Have fun with your words and make it custom to your site’s content, too. Makes it a bit more fun.
That’s all there really was to it. Now only time will tell how my sites stand up to the onslaught of spambots that plague my blogs on a DAILY basis. I was seriously tired of getting about a half dozen or more comment spams a day and had enough of it. Hopefully this triple protection will do the trick.
Filed under: General, Websites, Wordpress
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I’ve had to set up PHP and MySQL on two mac’s now, and found these brief set of instructions on setting up PHP and MySQL on Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) to be so helpful, that I’m going to reprint them here as a mirror to his instructions. Thanks to MyMacinations.com for providing such helpful instructions!
And now… his instructions on setting up PHP and MySQL on Apache 2 for Mac Leopard:
===========================
Leopard brings one big change to web developers working with Apache, PHP and Mysql on the Mac. Apache 2 comes with Leopard along with PHP 5.
Here is what to do to restore a test environment.
First, you need to enable PHP.
Apache’s .conf file moved from /private/etc/httpd/httpd.conf to /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf
Open this file with your favorite text editor and uncomment the line:
# LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so
You don’t need to add the mime type for php, because it’s already done for you under leopard. The last line in the .conf file is:
Include /private/etc/apache2/other/*.conf
The “other” directory contains a .conf file for php5. That takes care of the mime type and the index.php configuration for php sites.
If you develop multiple sites and you need virtual hosting functionality, scroll down to the end of the .conf file and uncomment the following:
# Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf
That’s all the modification that I had to make to to the httpd.conf file.
Next, you’ll need to setup whatever virtual hosts you have in the virtual hosts file /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf
For example, for each line that you set up in your hosts file like so:
beta-site-1.com 127.0.0.1
You need to make an entry in the httpd-vhosts.conf file like so:
ServerName beta-site-1.com
ServerAlias www.beta-site-1.com
ServerAdmin webmaster@beta-site-1.com
DocumentRoot “/Library/WebServer/beta-site-1″
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ “/Library/WebServer/beta-site-1/cgi-bin”
Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews Includes
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
One good thing is that the “upgrade” install of Leopard does not mess with your hosts file, so whatever virtual domains you may have set up won’t be affected.
If you had Mysql installed previously, good news too, Leopard’s installer won’t touch it. I found mysqld running just like before the upgrade.
One thing changed with Leopard is the socket for Mysql. It moved to /private/tmp, so you may need to configure your php.ini file to point it to the new location.
To do so, open the file “/private/etc/php.ini”, (if no such file exists, then make a copy of “/private/etc/php.ini.default” naming it “php.ini”) and edit that.
You have two lines to modify:
mysql.default_socket =
becomes:
mysql.default_socket = /private/tmp/mysql.sock
and mysqli.default_socket =
becomes:
mysqli.default_socket = /private/tmp/mysql.sock
of course, from the sharing pref pane, stop the server and restart it and voila!
===================
Filed under: All Things Apple, Development, Websites
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Careerbuilder.com has a new website out there (er, it’s probably been out for awhile) that allows you to send people “monk-e-mails” — customizing a monkey with some various audio capabilities, including text-to-speech.
Of course the messages are not private (Careerbuilder says so), so any snooping with the ID value gives you other messages people threw together.
To make my poking around a bit more productive (without having to type in ID numbers), I put together a little page that does the magic for me. Introducing: MonkeySnoop!
Filed under: General, JavaScript, Websites
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Well, back-in-the-day when I used to work at Caribou in Hastings, I had weekly conversations with a guy named, well, Guy—I enjoyed calling him “sir” because it irritated the hell out of him by not calling him buy his name… Guy. We would banter about politics and the terrible reign of Bush & Co, and he would vigilantly work to convert me over to the dark side.
I’ve since then become a moderate—some cross-over between both the democrats and republicans—but it has more to do with other events over the course of time than being beat over the head with his “Bush Sucks” 2×4. Don’t worry Guy… I agree with a lot of your political views, so you don’t need to put me on the “must berate until blue in the face” list.
Well, apparently I’ve made his list of blogs that suck…because I don’t link to him. Truth be told, all my links on my “blog roll” or whatever are out of date and I don’t follow those anyway. Instead, I’ve moved up in the world and use an RSS feed reader and don’t bother using the links on my blog anyway.
So sir, I mean Guy, I’ll give you your link if you take me off your “blogs that suck” list. Seriously. You’re so sensitive. Must be all that cream you put in your coffee. 
It’s been pretty busy around here—between all the things going down with the house, the pace at work increasing, and my quest for more photo opportunities. I would be sleeping right now had I not taken an hour and a half-long nap this evening…I was zonked out. So instead, I thought I should probably take five minutes and update “the world” on what I’m up to.
I’ve been increasingly more interested in improving my photography skills, building up my portfolio, and positioning myself to someday integrating photography into a career. Admittedly, I’ve been becoming a bit bored with web design and it doesn’t keep me engaged like it used to—but hey, it pays the bills for now. Maybe someday I can get into portraiture and photojournalism. Anyway.
For a year or so, I’ve been using a program called Plogger—it’s okay but is marginal in terms of its claims. The gallery view is alright and the importing options decent, but other features like RSS feeds (which don’t work out of the box) just don’t cut it.
For the past couple months I’ve been looking at a service called SmugMug, which provides photo hosting services on three different scales—general consumers, “prosumers”, and professionals. I’ve held back because it’s a paid membership, and if I’m going to pay for something I want to be sure that it’s going to work and work well. But I’ve looked over their features and have been very impressed. With the base level, their features include:
But what I’ve been most impressed by is just how easy it is to use. There’s a few quirks to get used to—small things like figuring out what certain customization fields actually do, or probably more difficult…how best to organize photos that fall into so many different possible categories. But regardless, it’s a great web application and is easy to use. I hope to buy some prints soon and see how well those turn out. I’ll blog about that soon.
So related to that, I have moved my photo galleries over to this new domain: groundlevelphoto.com and have also set up a blog for handling more photography-specific posts over at groundlevelphotography.com. But the cool part is, with SmugMug galleries, you are given TWO RSS FEEDS: one for your recent photos and one for recent galleries.
Anyway, I’m going to try and actually get some sleep now. But if I piqued your interest in SmugMug, consider signing up. And if use this code: Pn5t71IAO8Ts8 or my e-mail address: michael.tangen (AT) gmail.com — you’ll get five bucks off your first year’s membership. Not much I know, but it’s something.
Filed under: General, Photography, Websites
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So I’ve been scheming some ideas for a street portraiture service, and of course have been searching GoDaddy for just the right domain to use. I think I’ve been searching for nearly an hour now—many of the domains that would have been absolutely stellar to have are all gone (no surprise) and over two-thirds of them are just parked and going to waste. Of course, I should really talk. But seriously. After all this searching, I’m realizing just how much CRAP there is out on the web.
Granted, this isn’t some sort of new revelation for me, but moreso just something that really dawned on me. While the web is relatively useful in some ways and does meet general business and consumer needs, it is equally a big dumping ground for the crap [holding back on the explicative] that people feel the need to share with the world two or three people that might check in on them from time to time.
Tired of the internet? Sure I am. Perhaps a bit burnt out.
I’ve lost a lot of desire to work on some of the web application service ideas I’ve had in the past. Desire to design and build creative sites (outside of my regular employment) has waned a lot. And for the most part these days, if I want something to handle something for me (by way of workflow or business process), I generally look for something inexpensive that will meet my needs instead of building it myself or customizing an open source script that I can download for free. I just don’t have the energy for it; nor the enthusiasm.
Anyway, I’m gonna get off my computer and do something totally analog…like drink some of my home brew and eat a slice of my wife’s wonderful, homemade apple pie. She’s the best damn baker that I know. Her pies have “blue ribbon material” written all over them.
Filed under: General, Photography, Websites
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I wish I could take vacation time today and tomorrow to work on projects around the house; but I’ve got essential meetings that I have to go to at work. Meh.
Last night I started clearing out the basement and consolidating some of the various boxes of crap. I’ve discovered that I have enough computer innards (mobos, cables, cards, etc.) to fill a large storage bin. I’m not sure why I’ve held onto them (other than that I can’t just throw them away); I think in the back of my mind I thought oh, I’ll just save this mother board and build another computer with it. But how many older generation computers do I need? I think I counted five old mobos. Granted, one of them is my parents’ old one; but sheesh.
Two trips to the storage facility later, I still have a basement full of crap. It was then that I really stopped to consider just how much my life over the years has been driven by consumerism—I’ve got to have this, I’ve got to have that, or I really need this. I’ve got a Hi-8 video camera that’s just sorta sat in a box for the past two years collecting dust. I also packed up a ton of audio and video cables that I’m just not using at the moment. Lots of crap. Old video games I no longer play. Too much crap.
Anyway, I biked to work this morning—first time this year. Man it was chilly…only 56 degrees this morning, but the wind was piercing. And though it was exhausting, it did sort of feel good to bike in again. Lord knows I need the exercise and I haven’t been all that good about going to the Y. But beyond the exercise, my car is slowly making more persistent noises from the front and back end of my car, specifically from the axle areas. Not good. But then again, my car is 15 years old and over 150,000 miles. We’re due for a replacement.
Filed under: General, Photography, Websites
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If you’re all a fan of PostSecret, you ought to know about the new book that is coming out by the website’s creator, Frank Warren. He’s coming to Minnesota on January 19 at Birchbark Books.
I periodically drop in at the site to see the creative submissions—some funny, some serious, and some just down-right innovative in thought and presentation. Sometimes they can be great sources of design inspiration.
Visit postsecret.blogspot.com for more interesting submissions.
Filed under: Websites
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