I don't know how many people here use a service that is, or is simlar to, delicious.com, but I have been using delicious for a very long time. Long enough that I have about 4700 bookmarks on the site.
With the recent turmoil this year surrounding delicious, specifically Yahoo! doing their a-typical "we don't need this anymore routine", put the delicious site up on the chopping block and looked for a buyer or threatened its shutdown. Users like myself, who have been using it religiously and love it, were a little taken aback by the possibility of impending doom for our beloved bookmarking site.
After following the issue for a couple of days I decided to check the net and see what similar sites existed out there. I found a list of similar sites (or what was said to be similar), but was not really impressed with most of them. My issue with most of the sites I found was that all I was really looking for was a bookmarking site. I wanted something that operated like delicious, but wasn't delicious. The sites that I stumbled upon ended up being what is affectionately referred to as social bookmarking sites that actually allowed you to bookmark a site, but then took it to other levels of sharing by integrating with your other social networks and getting you involved in other ways of sharing your bookmarks. I was not looking for all that though.
Sure, I don't care who sees my bookmarks, that isn't the problem. My problem is that those sites had an excessive amount of features and some were even cumbersome and confusing to look at the demos of. Call me simplistic, but that's kind of what I was looking for.
Now, before you go asking me "Why didn't you look into the firefox bookmarks as they sync online", I did. I tried them briefly, but I found that the syncing was not automatic and it took an excessive amount of time for what I bookmarked to show up. Why? Who wants to wait? Not me and not many in this day and age.
Well, needless to say I found a site that was very up and coming and still in its early infancy. The site is called Grazely. At first glance it seemed new and inviting, and was. I created an account and imported my bookmarks into it, all 4700 of them (approximately). After doing so I took a look at the toutal count of bookmarks on the site and it was just under 20K. So essentially, about 1/4 of the sites bookmarks came from me. I was on the site for about a month and a half when the developers announced that they would be shutting down for about 5 days to do some major maintenance. The maintenance lasted about 2 weeks and ended up being a total site overhaul, redesign and recoding.
I got back in yesterday with a fresh invite (having already had an account previousl) into the Beta launch. They completely changed it, yes and so far, I have not put together an opinion of the site as of yet. The developers apparently changed it to be a secure bookmarking site, where you bookmarks are encrypted. Personally I am not sure how I feel about this yet. I don't see the need right off for my bookmarks to be encrypted. The bookmarks I have are saved because I found the link useful or plan to revisit it and I would love for someone else to find them useful as well. I have a very open source mindset and that comes from me developing with open source, so I do not yet understand their need for security of bookmarks. If I want to have a bookmark that I don't want anyone else to see but me, I just need to be able to mark it private and its hidden. 'Nuff said.
With that, if you use any other bookmarking site and are curious about Grazely, hit me up. I have an invitation to the site to give away and yes, its first come first serve. I don't know how popular bookmarking sites are with everyone, but hey, you never know so I figured I would offer it up.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Thoughts on HTML5
Let me preface this post by stating that I am one of those coders that believes in doing things the right way. It is absolutely appalling to come across messy, uncommented code that leaves you scratching your head trying to figure out exactly what it does. Its just as appalling to come across a website, look at the code and discover that they used tables for the layout of the site. To top it off, none of their tags are closed making people with my coding beliefs shudder.
I know there are people out there reading this who say "So what? What's the big deal?". There are standards out there for a reason. Granted they are a bit more enforced in HTML when you use the XHTML standard as you are forced to close your tags, but that still doesn't stop people from using tables for the layout of their site.
I have been looking at HTML5 as a means for creating my new website and am finding that there are things I do and don't like about it currently. One of the things that I am non-plused by, but am going to have to live with is that the people responsible for HTML5 regressed and decided not to enforce the need to close all of your tags, as XHTML required.
I found this to be a good thing, forcing coders to make their code a bit nicer and actually pay attention to the details. By opening this up and allowing people to use thier own styling choice, this is going to make supporting someone elses HTML5 code a bit of a headache.
That point aside, I am finding that to code in HTML5, you have to add a lot of checks into your code to see if certain new add-ons are supported in the browser that is accessing your site. For instance, with forms, they have added a lot of new types which make browsers that support them have a bit more intuitive reactions to those fields (like date pickers or color pickers for dates, or even the email type that tells a mobile browser to configure it keyboard to support email addresses specifically). Unfortunately, at this time, the only browser out there that has support for all the forms additions in Opera. While Opera supports a lot of HTML5, not a lot of people use Opera. Its use is dwarfed by that of Firefox and Chrome.
I have been really thinking about whether I want to use HTML5 and write the code to do the tests, but that really isn't going to be an option going forward. HTML5 is out there and is here to stay. The support in browsers will only continue to increase but the concern is going to be users. There are too many people out there using older versions of browsers. Listen people (you know who you are), just because its working for you doesn't mean its right. You are not only forcing a lot of developers to code for the fact that you are refusing to update, you are actually not getting the proper experience out of a lot of websites that the rest of us are.
I guess I will just have to suck it up, code it once and reuse it.
I know there are people out there reading this who say "So what? What's the big deal?". There are standards out there for a reason. Granted they are a bit more enforced in HTML when you use the XHTML standard as you are forced to close your tags, but that still doesn't stop people from using tables for the layout of their site.
I have been looking at HTML5 as a means for creating my new website and am finding that there are things I do and don't like about it currently. One of the things that I am non-plused by, but am going to have to live with is that the people responsible for HTML5 regressed and decided not to enforce the need to close all of your tags, as XHTML required.
I found this to be a good thing, forcing coders to make their code a bit nicer and actually pay attention to the details. By opening this up and allowing people to use thier own styling choice, this is going to make supporting someone elses HTML5 code a bit of a headache.
That point aside, I am finding that to code in HTML5, you have to add a lot of checks into your code to see if certain new add-ons are supported in the browser that is accessing your site. For instance, with forms, they have added a lot of new types which make browsers that support them have a bit more intuitive reactions to those fields (like date pickers or color pickers for dates, or even the email type that tells a mobile browser to configure it keyboard to support email addresses specifically). Unfortunately, at this time, the only browser out there that has support for all the forms additions in Opera. While Opera supports a lot of HTML5, not a lot of people use Opera. Its use is dwarfed by that of Firefox and Chrome.
I have been really thinking about whether I want to use HTML5 and write the code to do the tests, but that really isn't going to be an option going forward. HTML5 is out there and is here to stay. The support in browsers will only continue to increase but the concern is going to be users. There are too many people out there using older versions of browsers. Listen people (you know who you are), just because its working for you doesn't mean its right. You are not only forcing a lot of developers to code for the fact that you are refusing to update, you are actually not getting the proper experience out of a lot of websites that the rest of us are.
I guess I will just have to suck it up, code it once and reuse it.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Why Plaxo....Why?
I have been using Plaxo for some time (a few years now) and the whole time I have had their free account (now referred to as a Basic membership). When I started using the service it was just that, an address book and that was all I really wanted.
Over time, they have advanced and upgraded their system, providing further integration into the world of social networking. With that foray, they have also added different levels of membership. That is fine, and I expected that as such, I would lose certain functionality from the Basic membership, and have. But, there is one feature that I have lost and must say that it is a bit disturbing. With the Basic membership, you are no longer allowed to export your contacts from your address book without paying for their Premium Sync service (even though all you want to do is export and not actually sync with another device or service). I just want to back up my contacts now and again, keeping a copy in case anything ever happened to the Plaxo servers or Plaxo itself.
So, after steaming a bit and having a bit of a livid rant with a friend over the whole situation, I did some investigation into who I could get my contacts out without forking over $$ for the "privilage" of backing up my data myself.
It took me about 20 minutes of looking around but if you go to your main address book page, you will see that there is a complete list of all of your contacts. There is a top line right above the first contact that has a blank check box on the left and a few buttons (email, merge, print, delete and Add to group).
If you click the empty check box on the left of that row, it will select ALL of your contacts in your list. Then, simply click on the "Print" buton. This did two things for me: first, it opened a window relatively quickly that showed the output. This window is HTML based and if you look at the URL bar has a wicked long URL. Second, it opens up another window that has print options. Simply select the option to Print to PDF (if you system offers that) and you can then print them to pdf so you have a copy.
My interest though was in the first option, the HTML output. I right clicked on the HTML and version and selected "Save as", saving the html output to a file. When I examined that file, it was quickly apparent to me that the output was pretty nice and the way they formatted things, it would not be that bad to parse and output to a CSV file. Once I have it in that format, I can then use it to import into other services or even a database of my own.
Either way, I will be working on a script to parse the HTML file and extract all of my information. If I get something relatively usable, I will share it hear for others to use as I am sure that I am not the only one that has been in this predicament.
Over time, they have advanced and upgraded their system, providing further integration into the world of social networking. With that foray, they have also added different levels of membership. That is fine, and I expected that as such, I would lose certain functionality from the Basic membership, and have. But, there is one feature that I have lost and must say that it is a bit disturbing. With the Basic membership, you are no longer allowed to export your contacts from your address book without paying for their Premium Sync service (even though all you want to do is export and not actually sync with another device or service). I just want to back up my contacts now and again, keeping a copy in case anything ever happened to the Plaxo servers or Plaxo itself.
So, after steaming a bit and having a bit of a livid rant with a friend over the whole situation, I did some investigation into who I could get my contacts out without forking over $$ for the "privilage" of backing up my data myself.
It took me about 20 minutes of looking around but if you go to your main address book page, you will see that there is a complete list of all of your contacts. There is a top line right above the first contact that has a blank check box on the left and a few buttons (email, merge, print, delete and Add to group).
If you click the empty check box on the left of that row, it will select ALL of your contacts in your list. Then, simply click on the "Print" buton. This did two things for me: first, it opened a window relatively quickly that showed the output. This window is HTML based and if you look at the URL bar has a wicked long URL. Second, it opens up another window that has print options. Simply select the option to Print to PDF (if you system offers that) and you can then print them to pdf so you have a copy.
My interest though was in the first option, the HTML output. I right clicked on the HTML and version and selected "Save as", saving the html output to a file. When I examined that file, it was quickly apparent to me that the output was pretty nice and the way they formatted things, it would not be that bad to parse and output to a CSV file. Once I have it in that format, I can then use it to import into other services or even a database of my own.
Either way, I will be working on a script to parse the HTML file and extract all of my information. If I get something relatively usable, I will share it hear for others to use as I am sure that I am not the only one that has been in this predicament.
Tuesday, May 03, 2011
To Setup Or Not To Setup?
I know, that is a pretty vague question I pose as the subject of this post. To clarify, I am talking about a mail server. On my new server, I have been setting up a lot of things, but one thing I have yet to setup was a mail server.
I was torn because I really wanted to have mail from my new domain and without a mail server, that just isn't possible. First and foremost is that I have absolutely no experience setting up a mail server. You have to think about things like:
- the installation of the software for mail delivery (ie: Postfix, Sendmail),
- the managing of spam with software like SpamAssassin.
- the increase in traffic on your site due to email
As you can see, there are a lot of things to think about, and this short list is just that, short. So, in speaking with a friend today led to a suggestion which, in a matter of only a couple of hours work, I have implemented.
I have Ben Howarth of CodeGecko to thank, not only for the suggestion that follows, but also for his guidance in setting it up. I also want to thank him for being so infinitely patient with me as I can ask a lot of questions when I am learning something new. You rock, Ben!!!
The suggestion that Ben made was to use Google Apps Standard (Free) Edition. He quickly enlightened me as to the fact that it would use my domain and that all the emails would be for my domain. The sweet part is that Google handled all the email server end of it, which means you get Google's absolutely incredible spam filtering capabilities and scanning for attachments. It also comes with a bunch of free apps such as Google Docs, Google Chat and much more.
A quick search of the internet on setup guides for Google Apps landed me here, which proved to be a good "get you going in the right direction" guide. It at least got me to the sign up site, which it what I needed.
The sign up process was pretty painless and even the verification was cake (upload an html file to your site, visit it and then tell the setup you did it). When it came to the DNS setup on GoDaddy (where I bought my domain), that is where Ben really shined. He gave me a really good set of explanations into the inner workings of CNAME's, MX records and DNS as a whole, helping me to get a better grasp on it than I previously had.
Its hard when you are a geek and all of a sudden have to work with technologies that you have never messed with before, but its wonderful when there are friends who are willing to help.
After all was setup, Ben dropped another Easter Egg in my lap, telling me that instead of the nice long URL that Google gives you to access your email accounts, you can set it up for your domain. I really do owe him about a case of beer now. I have, with his guidance, set it up as a sub domain of my site. Once again, Ben ROCKS!
Once I get it all written up, I will have to post some details on the setup of MX records for Google Apps in GoDaddy as well as CNAME's. I am just having so much fun with all of this. Now off to the next setup and configuration task.
I was torn because I really wanted to have mail from my new domain and without a mail server, that just isn't possible. First and foremost is that I have absolutely no experience setting up a mail server. You have to think about things like:
- the installation of the software for mail delivery (ie: Postfix, Sendmail),
- the managing of spam with software like SpamAssassin.
- the increase in traffic on your site due to email
As you can see, there are a lot of things to think about, and this short list is just that, short. So, in speaking with a friend today led to a suggestion which, in a matter of only a couple of hours work, I have implemented.
I have Ben Howarth of CodeGecko to thank, not only for the suggestion that follows, but also for his guidance in setting it up. I also want to thank him for being so infinitely patient with me as I can ask a lot of questions when I am learning something new. You rock, Ben!!!
The suggestion that Ben made was to use Google Apps Standard (Free) Edition. He quickly enlightened me as to the fact that it would use my domain and that all the emails would be for my domain. The sweet part is that Google handled all the email server end of it, which means you get Google's absolutely incredible spam filtering capabilities and scanning for attachments. It also comes with a bunch of free apps such as Google Docs, Google Chat and much more.
A quick search of the internet on setup guides for Google Apps landed me here, which proved to be a good "get you going in the right direction" guide. It at least got me to the sign up site, which it what I needed.
The sign up process was pretty painless and even the verification was cake (upload an html file to your site, visit it and then tell the setup you did it). When it came to the DNS setup on GoDaddy (where I bought my domain), that is where Ben really shined. He gave me a really good set of explanations into the inner workings of CNAME's, MX records and DNS as a whole, helping me to get a better grasp on it than I previously had.
Its hard when you are a geek and all of a sudden have to work with technologies that you have never messed with before, but its wonderful when there are friends who are willing to help.
After all was setup, Ben dropped another Easter Egg in my lap, telling me that instead of the nice long URL that Google gives you to access your email accounts, you can set it up for your domain. I really do owe him about a case of beer now. I have, with his guidance, set it up as a sub domain of my site. Once again, Ben ROCKS!
Once I get it all written up, I will have to post some details on the setup of MX records for Google Apps in GoDaddy as well as CNAME's. I am just having so much fun with all of this. Now off to the next setup and configuration task.
Monday, May 02, 2011
Disabling Account Creation In BugZilla
I don't know about anyone else, but I am one of those guys who likes to implement what security I can on the server(s) that I have. Recently I have been doing setup on a new machine and have setup BugZilla as my issue tracking software.
I know that plenty of people have plenty of suggestions as far as the different software's that are available for different tasks. I have gotten some earfuls from some of them asking "why the heck would you choose that?". Please know ahead of time that the software I am using, I have chosen because:
#1: It meets my needs
#2: I have either used it or played with it before and am comfortable with it.
I have nothing against other software's, I just have the stuff I like and I use it.
Ok, that said, I have installed Bugzilla on my new server and have it setup with an account for myself. Upon getting it to that point, I quickly decided that I did not want anyone just creating an account, so I looked into how to disable account creation by anyone and here is how to do it.
1. Log in as an Administrator
2. Go to: Administration->Parameters->User Authentication
3. Scan down to the bottom of the screen till you find 'createemailregexp'.
4. Clear out the value in the box
5. Client "Save Changes"
AFter that, log out and ensure that the button says "Login" in stead of "Create Account" and your all set. After that, in order to create an account, you will need to log in as the administrator.
I know that plenty of people have plenty of suggestions as far as the different software's that are available for different tasks. I have gotten some earfuls from some of them asking "why the heck would you choose that?". Please know ahead of time that the software I am using, I have chosen because:
#1: It meets my needs
#2: I have either used it or played with it before and am comfortable with it.
I have nothing against other software's, I just have the stuff I like and I use it.
Ok, that said, I have installed Bugzilla on my new server and have it setup with an account for myself. Upon getting it to that point, I quickly decided that I did not want anyone just creating an account, so I looked into how to disable account creation by anyone and here is how to do it.
1. Log in as an Administrator
2. Go to: Administration->Parameters->User Authentication
3. Scan down to the bottom of the screen till you find 'createemailregexp'.
4. Clear out the value in the box
5. Client "Save Changes"
AFter that, log out and ensure that the button says "Login" in stead of "Create Account" and your all set. After that, in order to create an account, you will need to log in as the administrator.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Odd PHP error
On my new VPS server, I am working on getting a lot of things I need installed and configured. Well, one of the tools I need has minimum requirements. I was checking the PHP version information with the following command:
$ php --version
Here is what it spit out at me:
PHP Deprecated: Comments starting with '#' are deprecated in /etc/php5/cli/conf.d/mcrypt.ini on line 1 in Unknown on line 0
PHP 5.3.2-1ubuntu4.7 with Suhosin-Patch (cli) (built: Jan 12 2011 18:36:08)
Copyright (c) 1997-2009 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.3.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2010 Zend Technologies
That line in bold is what bothers me. So, I did some quick Googling and voila!!!
It looks like its a simple bug, but even trying to update the php5-mcrypt module was no help as it tells me its at the current version. So, per the bug page, I edited the mcrypt.ini file (as root of course) and changed the '#' to a ';', as was suggested. After doing that, it just worked, and perfectly, without the error.
$ php --version
Here is what it spit out at me:
PHP Deprecated: Comments starting with '#' are deprecated in /etc/php5/cli/conf.d/mcrypt.ini on line 1 in Unknown on line 0
PHP 5.3.2-1ubuntu4.7 with Suhosin-Patch (cli) (built: Jan 12 2011 18:36:08)
Copyright (c) 1997-2009 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.3.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2010 Zend Technologies
That line in bold is what bothers me. So, I did some quick Googling and voila!!!
It looks like its a simple bug, but even trying to update the php5-mcrypt module was no help as it tells me its at the current version. So, per the bug page, I edited the mcrypt.ini file (as root of course) and changed the '#' to a ';', as was suggested. After doing that, it just worked, and perfectly, without the error.
The Wonderful World of Setting Up Your Own VPS
There is nothing like the learning curve that comes with setting up your own VPS. Sure, there are plenty of things that I have had experience in setting up, but there are things that I have never had the opportunity to dabble in. Its actually quite fun, albeit frustrating at times.
For instance, Apache is an amazing web server, but trying to configure it to support a subdomain is a pain in the @$$! I have followed a number of forum posts and tutorials and done a lot of what was mentioned, but still, no joy. Unreal! When it works, its amazing, but when you are trying to do something specific, its a picky pain.
For anyone who is curious, here are the stats on the server that I got:
Hard Disk: 100 gig
Memory: 512 mb (with a burst to 1024 mb)
CPUs: 4
Bandwidth: 1.5 Tb per month.
Here is the page describing the different configurations. To tell you the truth, I looks at a lot of different providers and Semoweb provided the most disk space and bandwidth combination for the price.
Plus, their customer service has been top notch so far, both through chat and on the phone. No real issues, more questions from me. If your looking for a provider, I recommend them. So far I haven't had any issues.
For instance, Apache is an amazing web server, but trying to configure it to support a subdomain is a pain in the @$$! I have followed a number of forum posts and tutorials and done a lot of what was mentioned, but still, no joy. Unreal! When it works, its amazing, but when you are trying to do something specific, its a picky pain.
For anyone who is curious, here are the stats on the server that I got:
Hard Disk: 100 gig
Memory: 512 mb (with a burst to 1024 mb)
CPUs: 4
Bandwidth: 1.5 Tb per month.
Here is the page describing the different configurations. To tell you the truth, I looks at a lot of different providers and Semoweb provided the most disk space and bandwidth combination for the price.
Plus, their customer service has been top notch so far, both through chat and on the phone. No real issues, more questions from me. If your looking for a provider, I recommend them. So far I haven't had any issues.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Converting jpg files to svg
I am by no means a graphic designer. In fact, I am quite far from it. I do however have a need at times to work with images to get the results that I need, and like a lot of developers out there, I don't exactly have the funds to just hire one, nor do I know any (which would be incredibly handy sometimes, gotta say).
Today I was looking at some images online and found one that really liked, but was only able to get it in .jpg format. So, I did some digging and found handy instructions over here that guided me to converting the jpg to an svg (Scalable Vector Graphics) file. Once converted I was able to re-size the image without pixelation or blurring.
The instructions, as were provided, are for doing this under Ubuntu Linux, which I run. If you are on another OS, sorry, you will have to either see if this application is available for your system or find a similar application that will do the job.
To Convert .jpg files to .svg format:
1. Install Inkscape, if not already installed: sudo apt-get install inkscape
2. Start Inkscape after it is installed and then import the image under File->Import
3. Using the arrows on the image, re-size it to the size you wish, then hover your cursor over the image and hit Ctrl-Shift-D. That will bring up the Document Properties box.
4. Click on the Shrink To Fit button to re-size the image desktop to your images size.
5. Client File->Save As to save your image. It will default to a .svg file.
That is it. That's all there is to it. Hope this helps you in your quest, if you had one.
Today I was looking at some images online and found one that really liked, but was only able to get it in .jpg format. So, I did some digging and found handy instructions over here that guided me to converting the jpg to an svg (Scalable Vector Graphics) file. Once converted I was able to re-size the image without pixelation or blurring.
The instructions, as were provided, are for doing this under Ubuntu Linux, which I run. If you are on another OS, sorry, you will have to either see if this application is available for your system or find a similar application that will do the job.
To Convert .jpg files to .svg format:
1. Install Inkscape, if not already installed: sudo apt-get install inkscape
2. Start Inkscape after it is installed and then import the image under File->Import
3. Using the arrows on the image, re-size it to the size you wish, then hover your cursor over the image and hit Ctrl-Shift-D. That will bring up the Document Properties box.
4. Click on the Shrink To Fit button to re-size the image desktop to your images size.
5. Client File->Save As to save your image. It will default to a .svg file.
That is it. That's all there is to it. Hope this helps you in your quest, if you had one.
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