tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12304769372103866362025-06-03T07:03:07.844-04:00Web Design, Graphic Design, and open source software! I love GIMP, Blender and InkScape (as well as a few others). I hope to make tutorials and show you the ropes so you can make beautiful web pages.Christopher Hillmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06541965767356620060noreply@blogger.comBlogger48125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1230476937210386636.post-62651937396510092912014-09-09T11:51:00.000-04:002014-09-09T11:51:04.971-04:00

On August 1st there was an article on ReadWrite.com that urged users to install AdBlock on their web browsers.  I think that is horrible. It is an unspoken agreement between content provider and content consumer that the provider can attempt to make money from the consumer as long as it is not too obvious or painful for the consumer.  This balance between income for the

Christopher Hillmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06541965767356620060noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1230476937210386636.post-24484077194696751582014-07-30T17:47:00.000-04:002014-07-30T17:47:09.850-04:00

I will have a longer post soon on this (I hope). If you are installing a new copy of Railo on a Windows server with Apache (not IIS) using the Railo installer which comes with tomcat, and at the end of the installation your web browser only comes up with a "not found" 404 error, then you might be having the same problem I was having.  The Railo service starts, but then stops (like the

Christopher Hillmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06541965767356620060noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1230476937210386636.post-62593078772664926502014-04-27T21:20:00.002-04:002014-04-27T21:20:48.057-04:00

Well, there were additional issues when connecting a new system.  Somehow the new system lacked permission to the .ssh folder in the user profile.  When "rhc setup" ran, it created the .ssh folder under root with no permission for the user.  After a quick "chown" so that the user had the proper permission, all was well. For all to consider, the error was as follows: Cloning into

Christopher Hillmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06541965767356620060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1230476937210386636.post-18675798841290715252014-04-25T10:44:00.004-04:002014-04-25T10:44:56.354-04:00

OpenShift is a Platform as a Service (PaaS) provided by the Linux gurus at Red Hat.  It is like Amazon Web Services (AWS) but not as confusing for a newbie.  For free (truly free, no CC required or worries about utilization based billing) they give you three "small gears", or three servers with 512 MB of RAM and 1 GB of hard drive space each.  After you sign up for a free account,

Christopher Hillmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06541965767356620060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1230476937210386636.post-59971441581122230512014-03-18T17:16:00.001-04:002014-03-18T17:17:05.216-04:00

Recently, I tweeted some stuff that got the goat of some prominent ColdFusion gurus.  I am not normally in a mood to attack the things that I love (and I love ColdFusion) but Adobe has been kicking that baby and stuff must be said.  ColdFusion is not secure by default, you should not just install it and hook that server to the Internet.  We, web developers/sysadmins/security

Christopher Hillmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06541965767356620060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1230476937210386636.post-75210485066662366612014-03-18T13:45:00.001-04:002014-03-18T13:45:40.391-04:00

It has been a long time since I have posted to this blog.  There are so many things I want to say and share but have not had the time to discuss them properly.  I guess I have been too busy.  While that is a good thing, it limits my ability to contribute in the only way I can, share what I have learned the hard way.  Since I rely upon people doing the same, sharing is

Christopher Hillmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06541965767356620060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1230476937210386636.post-15846507764007940122012-08-16T10:01:00.001-04:002012-08-16T10:01:07.425-04:00

I have been using Centos Minimal as a basis for a project for a while now. I like it because it is small and light and very basic. There is a small attack surface to it as the only thing it does by default is allow SSH connections to it. If you are a total Centos Minimal newbie, it will throw you for a loop. The problem is that the network is not configured by default and the tools to

Christopher Hillmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06541965767356620060noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1230476937210386636.post-57865123824853143512012-06-29T11:58:00.001-04:002012-06-29T11:58:06.907-04:00

A while ago I blogged about Adobe's decision to "Open Source" Flex ( http://simple-webdesign.blogspot.com/2011/11/thanks-for-nothing-adobe.html ). The feeling at the time was that Adobe was teetering on the edge of killing Flash. The adoption of other standards by Apple, Google and even Microsoft served to shrink Adobe Flash's market. Then we hear that Adobe is getting rid of

Christopher Hillmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06541965767356620060noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1230476937210386636.post-15507364927882495832012-06-27T17:05:00.001-04:002012-06-27T17:05:29.101-04:00

So 2 years ago this happened ( http://simple-webdesign.blogspot.com/2010/11/xbox-live-anguish.html ). We had a big problem with XBox Live where Microsoft tried to charge the automatic subscription fee to an expired card, when we bought a gift card for our son to renew his subscription he couldn't because the account was locked because they billed an expired card. Two years ago, I sat on a

Christopher Hillmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06541965767356620060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1230476937210386636.post-82136030650472180982012-06-22T13:12:00.001-04:002012-06-22T13:12:54.386-04:00

This applies, in my case, to a Virtualbox VM running Backtrack 5r2. I have a network I inherited. It has been a source of pain that few could describe. Recent events had me curious, "How to I find out if I have dumb SNMP configurations on my network?" Often devices come with bad SNMP and other times people do dumb things, and sometimes there is a calamitous combination of the two.

Christopher Hillmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06541965767356620060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1230476937210386636.post-84196888056916405852012-04-13T11:56:00.001-04:002012-04-13T11:56:13.529-04:00

So, these days almost everyone has Active Directory (AD) implemented.I even know a few people who run it at their homes (nothing I woulddo). If you have AD and you are not using Group Policy Objects (GPOs)to manage things then you are wasting your time. GPOs are the mainreason to put up with a Microsoft AD network. Since I am a designer,who seems to have little time for design these days, I am

Christopher Hillmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06541965767356620060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1230476937210386636.post-33926639885254870382011-12-25T01:19:00.001-05:002011-12-25T01:19:12.320-05:00

WOW, reason 9,746 to move to Linux. My parents have a laptop withVista on it. Not a big deal, should do normal stuff and not requiremuch attention. I set them up with anti-virus and the UAC preventsthem from doing anything too silly without seeing the "oh noes!"pop-up. I figured they were all set.Well, come to find out, a well-intentioned person "helped" them withtheir

Christopher Hillmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06541965767356620060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1230476937210386636.post-54354279253812025932011-12-19T16:56:00.003-05:002011-12-19T17:06:09.728-05:00

So in a previous post (Linux bootable USB Drives )I discussed making USB drives that booted directly from a ISO. I first wanted to mention that I find this very useful when I want to install a new distro of Linux and do not want to fight my way through burning a CD or solving the mystery as to why uNetBootIn does not work for me in Linux. In theory, all I have to do is drop a new ISO in the

Christopher Hillmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06541965767356620060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1230476937210386636.post-40981017094927246722011-12-16T14:18:00.001-05:002011-12-16T14:18:57.379-05:00

So, you are a hard working nerd and have a windows computer to managerouters with. You also have a lot to do and would rather automatesome stuff with scripts. I can help you learn to use Plink to makesimple batch files to automate work!*(unlike most of my other posts, this one is for the Windows universeand does not cover use of plink or scripting in Linux)Plink basics:Plink is part of Putty

Christopher Hillmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06541965767356620060noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1230476937210386636.post-61325517148790904942011-11-28T17:08:00.003-05:002011-12-19T17:06:46.495-05:00

I have a problem, I am not the proper combination of crazy/sexy/coolto get the common tools for making bootable USB drives to work. I canget uNetBootin ( http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net ) to work fromWindows, but not from Linux. As I have ditched Windows, having to usewindows to get the latest Linux distro CD image to boot from a USBdrive is... dumb.I tried a bunch of tools and only succeeded

Christopher Hillmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06541965767356620060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1230476937210386636.post-73461628968182520202011-11-25T13:27:00.001-05:002011-11-25T13:27:42.591-05:00

So I re-installed my computer over a week ago. I had been runningUbuntu for a month and then thanks to the frustrations with Ubuntu11.10 I went to Mint Linux (yeah, I used Linux full time for a monthand became a distribution snob in that amount of time.) The installof Mint 12 went well and I really liked the layout and features (toobad I really liked Ubuntu 11.04 more but I guess there is no

Christopher Hillmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06541965767356620060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1230476937210386636.post-56152048879130861712011-11-16T10:27:00.001-05:002011-11-16T10:27:14.970-05:00

So Adobe is offering Flex to become open source (http://developers.slashdot.org/story/11/11/15/1538209/adobe-to-donate-flex-sdk-to-open-source-community) when they themselves admit that HTML5 is a better option.  So, Adobeis basically abandoning Flash just after they added a 3d graphics gameengine and a bunch of zero-day vulnerabilities.  In looking back, thelack of Flash was supposed

Christopher Hillmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06541965767356620060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1230476937210386636.post-24917000179096792702011-08-15T13:12:00.001-04:002011-08-15T13:12:52.534-04:00

The Huffington Post has a logo contest. They are "crowdsourcing"their logo design ( http://huff.to/p2cYht ). This is wrong! (http://bit.ly/p8FEqy )This is called speculative work, and it is wrong ( not just me sayingit, http://bit.ly/ocT9KO ). This adds to the mindset present in mostbusiness students that creative people are a dime a dozen and need tohave business type people "

Christopher Hillmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06541965767356620060noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1230476937210386636.post-90858256364557362822011-08-15T10:34:00.001-04:002011-08-15T10:34:39.001-04:00

I use Google for everything -- almost a literal statement.Prior to Google I used to have to write things down, remember thingsbut typically would forget things. Now we have Google. If you havean inscrutable error message when you use Railo to call a Pythonscript calling a Mappoint COM object, you can Google it (rather thanpaying for incident support from Railo and Microsoft and then have

Christopher Hillmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06541965767356620060noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1230476937210386636.post-52962850831812075682011-04-22T09:16:00.001-04:002011-04-22T09:16:24.955-04:00

Flock ( http://www.flock.com/ ) was a web browser ahead of its time.  It sought to be social before Twitter, Facebook and even MySpace.  In the age of blogs Flock was able to make posts from within the browser as easily as one might click "like" or "share" on a modern web page.  There was a time before "like" and I think Flock was a big reason why we have things like

Christopher Hillmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06541965767356620060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1230476937210386636.post-64888722581218379612011-03-09T13:58:00.001-05:002011-03-09T13:58:59.576-05:00

So, recently I heard of plans for Guillermo del Toro to make a movie of HP Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness".  This news took me to google to find any Public Domain HP Lovecraft stories.  Specifically, HP Lovecraft stories published before 1923 are public domain.  The others might have to wait to be in the public domain in the United States thanks to the US Copyright acts of

Christopher Hillmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06541965767356620060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1230476937210386636.post-16136093129478547222010-12-14T14:25:00.001-05:002010-12-14T14:25:08.351-05:00

Recent coverage of the Google ChromeOS CR-48 makes me think that the tech media is missing the point.For example, PC Magazine recently posted an article "Six Things Chrome OS needs to go to work" ( http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2374294,00.asp ).  The writer feels that there are only 6 things that the CR-48 will need to be used in an office environment.  It needs: - To join a

Christopher Hillmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06541965767356620060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1230476937210386636.post-67613575728877370362010-11-15T10:43:00.001-05:002010-11-15T10:43:04.892-05:00

I want Microsoft to be successful.  While they are not the best corporate citizen, they are less draconian than Apple.  Should Apple's business model be repeated as a success story, it would mean the demise of most Open Source software I have come to cherish.  After all, which apps in the Apple App store are Open Source? I had felt that Microsoft's dominance in the game console market

Christopher Hillmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06541965767356620060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1230476937210386636.post-91685842993706260842010-11-05T10:39:00.001-04:002010-11-05T10:39:03.096-04:00

In light of recent news about the declining market share of Internet Explorer, corporate dependence on Internet Explorer 6 and reviews of Internet Explorer 9: I think Microsoft should licence Firefox.Children, I will tell you of days when computer technology companies envied IBM, Digital Equipment Corp and Sun Microsystems.  Each had their own version of Unix and massive hardware to run it.  IBM

Christopher Hillmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06541965767356620060noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1230476937210386636.post-5831135741143929112010-10-08T13:53:00.001-04:002010-10-08T13:53:37.483-04:00

I am a big fan of Adobe.  I am less of a fan of Microsoft.I can go on and on about why I like Adobe.  I like Photoshop and Flash.  I like Coldfusion and Flex.I can go on and on about why I am less of a Microsoft fan, but the root of my distaste for Microsoft is actually the root of my love for Adobe.  Adobe has flagship products and tries to improve them in ways the users want and attempt to keep

Christopher Hillmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06541965767356620060noreply@blogger.com0