WordPress, CDNs, and the Cloud.

I tried…for about 16 hours to get WordPress, S3, CloudFront, Rackspace Cloud Files, SimpleCDN, and MyCDN to play nicely and serve content from a CDN, it didn’t work, at all. (I tried multiple plugins from multiple vendors and shell scripts, to no avail.)

Queue W3TC upgrade!

WTF? It all works now? Just like that? No fucking way.

So now all of static content for this blog is being served from the cloud…just that easy.

Mashed Potatoes, the right way.

I tweeted on Thanskgiving “If your potatoes need gravy UR DOIN IT WRONG” so I wanted to follow it up with how to DO IT RIGHT.

The recipe, serves about 5 people:

  • 7 – 10 washed potatoes, skin on or peeled
  • 1 saucepan for the cream mix
  • 1 large pot  for boiling the potatoes
  • 1 pint of heavy whipping cream
  • 1 stick of butter (1/4 pound)
  • Salt
  • White Pepper
  • 1 pinch of Nutmeg

Boil the potatoes until a fork can go almost through a potato and come out cleanly (if you cut the potatoes before boiling use the largest piece). Before the potatoes are able to pass the fork test, approximately 5 minutes before they are ready, combine the heavy whipping cream and the cube of butter in the sauce pan. Heat until the butter is melted. Drain the potatoes making sure to get all of the water out.

Begin to mash the potatoes (keep in mind mashing for too long or using an egg beater will break down the starches resulting in runny potatoes), once the potatoes are broken up, most of the potatoes still retain shape, pour about half of the melted butter, cream mixture into the potatoes. Mash until your potatoes reach the desired consistency resist the urge to use anything but a hand masher…in fact, I use a fork to better control the consistency of the mashed potatoes. If all of the mixture is not completely used, add to taste or put it to the side to add before refrigerating leftovers (make sure to mix thoroughly, the cold will make the starches contract absorbing lots of the moisture).

Add about 1 tsp of salt and 1/2 tsp of the white pepper, stir to distribute. Finally add a pinch of nutmeg, stir and serve.

Your potatoes should not need any gravy since you DID IT RIGHT.

Testing WordPress out.

It has been fun testing WordPress out the last few days. I have learned a lot of things about this, fairly minimal CMS. Basically, I learned that not all PHP is the devil (no actual religious connotation, other than the implied meaning; bad or unclean), just most of it. I don’t ever want to touch anything under the hood and luckily I don’t have to since under the hood is so well built.

Freelance Time Tracking

I just found the best client/invoice/time tracking application ever. The rundown:

  • 3 free users
  • 3 invoices per month
  • $9.99 per month to get unlimited invoices
  • more users? $3.99 per user from there
  • your own subdomain
  • open name spaces on your subdomain
  • your logo on the invoice
  • unlimited clients and projects
  • mac widget
  • browser based tracking tool
I cannot find anything that beats it. No iPhone application support which sucks but I am hopeful they will fix that soon. Check them out!
free time tracking

***Update*** The reports are a little bit odd but it works.

God I love this command.

sudo chmod 755 /opt/subversion/bin/svn* | sudo ln -s /opt/subversion/bin/svn*

Especially since for some reason installing the new version of Subversion on a mack puts it in the /opt/subversion/bin folder.
REGEX FTW!
***Update***
I completely dumped SVN after this. I switched to Mercurial and I am loving it. No looking back, SVN who?

New IRC Client.

I found, from one of those Mac freelancer pages, a new IRC client. OMG is it nice. If you have a Mac or iPhone and want IRC to be…useable. Check out Colloquy.

  • Tabbed interface
  • AppleScript
  • Plugins
  • File transfers
  • Mobile
  • FREE!!!

WTF is with "developers" using Windows to write code? *updated*

Seriously, WTF? Demo? Check out this moron.

I read the #django-users’ list and it seems that, almost daily, there is someone that has a problem installing django on Vista or XP. Who would host a server running Vista or XP? I hope, NO ONE. What kind of moron would trust Microsoft with his/her data? Also, seriously, who runs server farm hosting businesses on Windows? I know people do, but, self flagellation would be a little less painful, really.
I read the mod_wsgi users’ list and it seems that, almost daily, someone has a problem installing mod_wsgi on Windows. (I have had my fair share of mod_wsgi problems (see below)) but a local Apache server on Windows, c’mon people.
Most of the screencasts I have seen about anything django or Python related has been done on Windows as well. Save us FSM (flying spaghetti monster).
I guess I have to applaud their efforts, these lost intellects, I got off the Windows juice many years ago. I have been consistently Windows free for the better part of 6 years. What should they use? Unix, almost any flavor. I was never much for the distros that had BSD in the name, my hardware was too advanced to install it (god I miss those days). Nowadays, I run OS X on my MBP and OpenSolaris on my in home staging server. Both Unix, both very powerful and all that. Both > Windows.
Seriously “developers” get an operating system that will allow you to actually have a key to the hood so you can fix your own itches.
(This kind of ended up as an opensource parade but it is still true; friends don’t let friends use Windows.)

Installing mod_wsgi on OpenSolaris.

*Not for the faint of heart. (See below)*

This is the process I followed to install mod_wsgi on OpenSolaris 2008.11.
First I would like to thank Graham Dumpleton and Thurner Rupert from the mod_wsgi mailing list and @yksingisyyteni from #opensolaris.
The way to do it:
When trying to install mod_wsgi with a fresh install of OpenSolaris and the amp-dev, gcc-dev, Sun Studio Express, and all other relevant packages; I kept ending up with an error saying, “/opt/SUNWspro/bin/cc not found”. WTF is SUNWspro? Let me tell you: SUNWspro is a piece of the Sun Studio 12 program used to compile C for the Solaris platform. It is the same thing that compiled the version of Apache you installed through PKG. Which means that that GNU cc program that you chose to download is not going to work to compile it. What you need to do is get Sun Studio 12. Once you have it you can follow the instructions on the Sun website for how to install it (which I could never get to work) or you could do this:
  • bunzip2 -vv SunStudio…tar.bz2 (this will take some time; let it run)
  • tar xvf SunStudio…tar (this will also take some time)
  • ./installer & (now wait)
  • Follow the GUI tools to finish the install.

Once you have Sun Studio installed you can compile like the Installation Instructions say. Just a quick make, make install, edit your apache conf file and you are done.

*Not the way to do it:
This is what I had to do to get to the final, finished product you see above.
  • Realize I don’t know what SUNWspro is.
  • Think, “Fuck, I will just reinstall.”
  • mailing list, irc
  • Reinstall, damn it still doesn’t work.
  • I know, I will try to install Sun Studio.
  • I am running bzcat SunStudio…tar.bz2 | tar xvf – and it is not working.
  • I waited…
  • and waited…
  • OK, scratch that. I will compile my own versions of Apache, MySQL, and any other thing that I would need to run a server.
  • That was fun. Apache is a blast to compile.
  • MySQL…pkg, WTF? I can’t just double click?
  • I will install the tar MySQL.
  • Fuck, this takes a long time and is kind of hard.
  • Pkgadd -d, wait that’s how I can add the MySQL.pkg file?
  • rm -rf mysql
  • pkgadd -d mysql.pkg
  • mysqld
  • ERRORS!!!1!111!!
  • Much “googling”
  • Damn. I got mod_wsgi to work I don’t want to reinstall again.
  • mysql ERRORS!!1!!1!!
  • Reinstall
  • Now I know the drill
  • Install amp-dev and all other relevant packages
  • Install SunStudio
  • Compile mod_wsgi
  • HOORAY!!!