Turducken: Slaughter with Laughter

It's been a while. I switched from public education to a private company back in March and haven't had the time to write. I've gone through some life changes recently, and in short I will have more time to write for Free Software Magazine, compose technical articles on PHP development, and much more. I will back-date some content, mostly photography related. Thank you for sticking around, I appreciate it.

Turducken

I made a short, twisted video about what, why and how my family made a Turducken, a turkey stuffed with duck stuffed with chicken. A veritable avian Matryoshka tsunami of culinary urban legend, few have attempted to create this carnage loaf.

Syracuse St. Patrick's Day Photos

Photography

On Saturday, March 17th, Marci and I attended the St. Patrick's Day Parade in Syracuse. I was experimenting with the Nikon N70, and I did my best to put it to good use.

You can also view the set of 60 photos as a slideshow.

Consolidation

My apologies for my SAMPP entry; it was way, way too long. I've consolidated it on my web host using the dojo toolkit to make tabs. You can view the amended version at theconfluence.org/projects/sampp .

Compiled SAMPP build instructions

I was recently asked to do create and document a containerless configuration of a Solaris 10 web server with Apache 2.2.4, MySQL 5.0.33, PHP 5.2.1, and Perl 5.8.7. Apache, MySQL, and PHP have complete compilation instructions. I will include the necessary configuration files (Apache in particular; built from scratch) or modification instructions.

Notes:

1. This instructions assume that Solaris 10 is already installed and configured.
2. These instructions assume you're root.
3. Apache includes a self-signed SSL certificate, user directories, mod_perl, authnz-ldap, server-status and daily log rotation.
4. I was requested to consolidate everything web related into /web for ease of administration and backup.
5. This is not a fully optimized build, as there is no universal configuration that will work equally well for everyone. Therefore, read the manual and tweak where necessary (especially Apache).
6. Additional Applications
   1. AWStats 6.6 with automatic log analysis
   2. phpMyAdmin 2.9.2 for MySQL administration

These instructions are culled and edited from my notes. Please let me know if I got something out of order or left something out.

Notes

LDAP .htaccess files (you'll have to tweak the LDAP URL for your environment)

AuthName "Password"
AuthType Basic
AuthBasicProvider ldap
AuthLDAPURL ldap://ldap:389/ou=people?uid
AuthzLDAPAuthoritative off 
require ldap-user "username"

Link

theconfluence.org - Compiled SAMPP build instructions

Jon's best practices for servers

This is a consolidation of general best practices for servers I've learned and developed over the years. Feel free to share some of your own as well!

1. Never use telnet or ftp - use ssh or sftp instead.
2. Never use HTTP with anything that could compromise the integrity of your system.
3. Never login as root.
4. If you install it, keep it up to date.
5. If you don't use it, remove it.
6. Always check the changelog before updating.

Host Naming Conventions

There are different philosophies for hostname conventions. In my experience, using a common theme and context adds logic to a potentially complicated network.

At home, I use spells from old Infocom interactive fiction games as my naming convention. While it may seem silly, my home network is small enough that I can remember the purpose of machines, and I've got a large corpus of potential names. I've also seen others use names of characters from television, movies or books. Use your imagination!

At work or in a shared environment, I use more descriptive names, such as web-dev-01 for a development web server. Security through obscurity causes more headaches than it's worth as it makes it more difficult for others to understand the layout, and the illusion of security that comes from giving a machine a wacky name will not protect you from malicious users.

Either way, once you've developed a schema, stick with it; mixing naming conventions just makes things more difficult.

Crazy Costume Race 2007 Video

On Saturday, February 3rd, YP Voice of Oswego hosted its second annual Crazy Costume Race, part of the Warm Up Oswego Festival. I filmed the event and edited the video. Three teams, three sleds, one block. Who will win?

Making PDFs with free software and Wii are on the way

Making PDFs with free software

Recently, Adobe announced that it intends to release the Portable Document Format (PDF) 1.7 specification for publication by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Also, the editorial in Issue 16 of Free Software Magazine Paper is dead - has PDF followed suit? makes a case about the perceived decline of the PDF format. In my opinion, PDF isn't dead, so this week I've compiled several techniques for making PDF files with free software.

My intention for the postscript was to emphasize content and not the delivery mechanism, and is in subtle defense of FSM dropping their PDF version of their issues. I feel that the medium doesn't matter as much as the message, but one still should take care in selecting the proper delivery method. The Making PDF files entry has done well on digg.com - 851 diggs so far, which I appreciate.

Wii are on the way

My brother, who lives on the west coast, has sent a belated Christmas present after insisting that I shouldn't give him anything this year... a check for a Nintendo Wii. I'm floored; it's an incredible gift, and I really, really appreciate it. So far, no store has any Wiis in stock (but they do have several PS3s collecting dust), but I'll keep trying. Alex, thank you! This really means a lot to me. I will be driving out sometime this summer to visit.

HDR Chernobyl Photos

I highly recommend reading Trey Ratcliff's entry Nuclear Winter in Chernobyl, a description and HDR photo tour of the reactor and Pripyat. It features beautiful, high resolution and haunting imagery of the abandoned power plant, ferris wheel, apartment buildings and playgrounds. If you just want to see the slideshow, they're hosted on flickr.