..mindless rantings of a lunatic

Manage Virtual Hosts on A Mac

2011-09-15T00:00:00Z

One of the coolest tricks that you can do with Apache (ok, so not the coolest but certainly one of the most useful!!) is setting up VirtualHost. VirtualHost allows you to host many different domains on a single IP address. As complicated as it is to setup on a real web server, it is even more so on a development machine that doesn't have an IP address or domain registered to a DNS.

In order to set VHosts up on a server, you must:

Activate Virtual Hosts
Add your Virtual Hosts File
Reboot Apache

Steps 1 and 2 require some editing of the httpd.conf file and a vhosts file. With that being said, if you want to do this on your local dev machine, you need to add another step: Add the VirtualHost to the hosts file. Once you make sure that VirtualHosts are activated the rest of the code involved is something like this:
httpd_vhost.conf:


NameVirtualHost *:80



<Directory "/path/to/site/">

Allow From All

AllowOverride All

</Directory>


<VirtualHost *:80> 

    ServerName "sitename"

    DocumentRoot "/path/to/site"

</VirtualHost>

hosts


127.0.0.1  sitename

And you will have to do these two things for each and every site that you want to use with VirtualHost. Fear not, there is another way! I found an app called VirtualHostX that takes care of everything for you. It costs. It costs a little bit more than I would want to spend for taking care of these two tasks for me. But it is a helpful app none-the-less. Get it here
In addition to this, if you also install PassengerPhusion, your rails apps will also run without you having to use web-brick!

With all of this talk, I have made the decision that the very first cross-platform app that I intend to build for my new software house will be one that does just this. I will write it first in Objective C and then port it to Linux and then in C# for Windows. (I hope that I can port the objective c code straight into Linux...but if not I can use C# for both Linux and Windows) So stay tuned for the free beta application!!

Vanishing Source Code

2011-09-12T00:00:00Z

Not sure if you've noticed it or not, but a lot of my tutorials are missing source code. Not sure why this happened, but the process to convert from Posterous to Toto seems to have lead to a loss of the snippets that include the code stuff. I use a mix of GitHub gists and jsfiddle to list my code so I will be working on getting this fixed as time goes by. It didn't seem to effect new posts, as my last post has the code in it!

My How Time Flies

2011-09-01T00:00:00Z

Boy time sure flies fast! Here I am just getting around to tweaking the blog. Let me share this little bit of code with you. I found it to convert my WordPress xml export into Toto. It is supposed to convert everything into seperate files, keeping the proper toto syntax. It didn't work. So, using it as my base, I re-wrote it to work.

Here you go script kiddies! Enjoy!

New Blog

2011-05-08T00:00:00Z

So here it is folks!! My new blog. I am now using toto as my main blogging engine. It’s pretty neat. I can blog in emacs and push with git! There are still a few bugs that I am working out, like perm-links aren’t working and I need to rearrange the layout…but all in all I like. I'l talk more about toto later.

POSSCON Day 1

2011-03-24T00:00:00Z

Well, the first day at POSSCON is over. Man what a great time!! For me the highlight was listening to Bdale Garbee speak. He has been with Debian forever (as well as the driving force behind HP's Linux useage) and he gave a really great talk. Of course the first have of the day seemed to be "Let's Bash Oracle, screw the fact (or maybe because of the fact) that they are the #1 sponsor of this years event." The worst part though was that Oracle was there, and they have yet to truly defend themselves. Oh well! So we had a great track on the new Apache 2.3 and alot of the stuff they are doing to adjust for cloud computing needs. The MySQL talk seemed to be a geared towards "What Oracles has done with MySQL since we got it" and painted a very biased (and I felt slightly skewed) view on the positive movements. After the days session was over, we had a little networking event with beer (what can I say, we open source folk love free beer!) and during the course of the evening I got a chance to talk a bit with the MySQL community rep and he really seems like a nice guy, so I hope that Oracle will take a more positive stance in the Open Source communities in the future. Also talked with the Sugar CRM rep, which was cool since my session tomorrow and my workshop will have me talking just a little bit about SugarCRM. Also meet and spent some time talking to a great rep for Source Forge. All in all, I think it was great day. Good times with old friends and great opportunities to network and make new ones in the industry!

A breather and a Blog post

2011-03-15T00:00:00Z

Lately I have been working like I don't know what! It's been crazy. But, I have a few minutes to spare and thought that I'd write another post.

Komodo crashed on my so much that I have deemed it a lost cause. I have had similar luck on the post Oracle Netbeans builds.. so I have switched to Eclipse for my IDE needs. Emacs still rocks, but if I need a little bit more power, I have Eclipse. I use it with the Aptana and RadRails plugins. So, it makes a great html editor....but I still prefer emacs for rails work.

Over the weekend I installed Debian Squeeze. It is the first totally free kernel. No non-free drivers or modules. I like.

Here is a cool screenshot:

Uploaded with ImageShack.us
By Shutter

Anyway. Good times. What else is going on right now? Finishing up one hell of a project. Not hard my nature...hard by the folks I have to deal with. I have another major contract coming up (but can't say too much about it yet) and I am preparing for my session and workshop at POSSCON. It's getting closer! If you are not signed up yet, you should! I'll be giving a talk on using OSS to help run your business on the cheap. My workshop will be a great time where we go over how to use most of the software that I talk about in my session. This is my first time talking a major conference and I am excited about it!

Well, that's all for right now. I'll try and have some cool stuff for you all soon!

Developing on Dropbox , Cloude9IDE and Komodo Edit 6

2011-02-24T00:00:00Z

Recently, I've been working on a project remotly that needs me to keep the rest of the team up to date. So we started by using a shared Dropbox folder. When you don't need serious versioning, this is the way to go! I use the Dropbox Shared Folder for developing and whatever I do is automatically synced. And the rest of the team knows. To take this a step higher, use the Public folder. As long as you are only messing with HTML and JavaScript, you can get real live previews of what you are working on, on a real server ('cause some stuffin js dosen't work properly simply out of the Dropbox folder). Of course, if you need serious versioning control, you can use github and Cloud9ide. Cloud9ide is essentially what happen to Mozilla's Bespin project. It's a great way to code and collaborate in the cloud.

Recently, I've been giving Komodo Edit and Komodo IDE a run. Honestly, the full IDE is so NOT worth the$300+ price tag they put on it. At least not on a Linux/Unix environment where we have so many great command line tools...:)

But honestly, I really like Komodo Edit. It reminds me a lot of Coda for the Mac (albeit not as pretty!) Plus, they have a Open Source project now with the base Source of Komodo Edit. It looks like a promising project for a much needed area of Development in Linux. (At least imho). I can't stand running shit on the JVM! Netbeans (which I didn't mind using) seems to have gone to hell since Oracle took over. Once I've used it a little bit longer, I'll give it a good one over review. For now, I gotta go. Deadlines, deadlines and more deadline!

My new Nokia N900

2011-02-15T00:00:00Z

Well folks, last night I managed to get my hands on a (slightly) used Nokia N900. I am very excited about this. I have wanted one since they first came out! Compared to the iPhone or the Xperia that I had most recently, it is a brick of a phone...but I like that. The keyboard is a lot easier to type on than I thought it would be...(much easier than the god awful touch screen on the Xperia!) Expect more updates as I learn more about it. In a side note, we got rid of both my Xperia and Arina's at the same time. She is using my old 1st gen iPhone until we can get our hands on something newer. If anyone reading this has a 3gs for sale, let us know!

Factory Design Pattern in Ruby

2011-01-30T00:00:00Z

Ok, so here is a return to my absolutly favorite language...ruby. This is a modification of my js Factory Method. It's a good little bit of code. I decided to make it a bit of useful code. I am waiting for keyboard input. A B and C will create pizzas and Q will end the program

The first part of this code is actually identical to the implementation of a Strategy Method. It is the addition of the case statement that helps turn it into a Factory Method

New Site Design Coming Soon!

2011-01-26T00:00:00Z

I am redesigning my site now. It's gonna have a brand new look as well as be rewritten in Rails 3. The blog will still be posted through Posterous. But I'm working to make it even more transparent than it is now. Also, I am working on a slightly more professional look for it all. Not so much black! Also working on a Rails Picasa Web plugin. Keep your eyes peeled for updates!

In other news, I am waiting on a Thinkpad t60 to arrive..my hackintosh! Also, getting ready to get back into iPhone development. Trying to find someone to buy or trade my Sony Ericson Xperia x10a so I can get at least a 3GS. I really am not all that fond of Android. I have already reverted back to my old iPhone whilst I wait for a new one. But, more on that later. Needs an entire post on that and I really need to sit down and articulate my dislike before I do that. :)