Category: Technology

All things geeky.

Posted on by — 4 Comments

Cliff Stoll on Everything

In the movie Conspiracy Theory, Mel Gibson’s character is compelled to buy copies of The Catcher in the Rye which is a play on the fact that numerous assassins and murders have had on their possession or made reference to the book when caught. For me, the book that randomly liters the house is Clifford Stoll’s The Cuckoo’s Egg. I have a hard copy over there. There’s a paperback version on my headboard. That bookshelf has a tattered paperback and I think there are several other copies laying around. At the time Cliff Stoll tracked his spy, I was deeply ingrained in computers and learning about databases, telcom, and obsessed with assembly language. Two years later I was working on Unix machines at the same level as Cliff Stoll so each read of the book brings vivid memories. Two years later his book was released and became mandatory reading for computer science majors. Shortly after that, if my memory serves correct, he spoke at the University of Tennessee (but honestly, that could be a fabrication of my aged brain). Clifford Stoll ranks on my list of fascinating people. See if you can get through Stoll’s 18 minutes at TED. It’s worth it!

Posted on by — 2 Comments

There’s power in that command line

There is something wonderfully satisfying about using PUTTY to secure shell into a server and manipulate the server and websites at the command line. When I’m about to make major changes, this is one way I backup the site which of course is far faster than ftping a copy of the site to another machine.

PuTTY is a terminal emulator application which can act as a client for the SSH, Telnet, rlogin, and raw TCP computing protocols. The name “PuTTY” has no definitive meaning[1], though ‘tty’ is the name for a terminal in the Unix tradition, usually held to be short for teletype. [Source, Wikipedia, PuTTY]

Posted on by — Leave a comment

LHC Achieves Blackhole!

And it has formed in my house! Last night I set my glasses down and they instantly vanished. This morning the same thing happened to some ointment I pulled out for one of the children. When I say vanished, I mean blink and it is gone! I hope this hole doesn’t grow too large. So far it has only eaten objects about the size of 2 decks of cards. Now I’ll allow it to eat the cat but any larger than that the children are at risk and there will none of that!

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Undo global search and replace screwup

I made a mess. Does anyone remember how to back out of (undo) a global search and replace in CFStudio5? Should be the same process for Homesite+.

Update: Seems like I remember undoing a global search and replace in the past. Fortunately my replace string was absolutely unique and I was easily able to fix this with another global search and replace. The lesson is "don’t start a global search and replace and walk away from the computer for 15 minutes. If you did the find part wrong, you could be faced with many of changes!"

Posted on by — 4 Comments

I like my operating system slightly aged

I have a development server in the house that still runs Windows 2000 Server and has Internet Explorer 6.0.2800 on it. The machine is finally starting to show its age and could not hold up to testing my current project, a web application whose end users will primarily use Internet Explorer 6.0.2900. My server just wasn’t cutting it tonight so I bit the bullet and pulled a laptop which had Ubuntu installed. I pulled out my free copy of Windows XP I got from Microsoft for participating in the Windows XP beta program. After installing it, the network card wouldn’t work so updates were impossible. Fortunately, I used to be a Microsoft Partner and participated in the Microsoft Action Pack program so I had a disc that had XP Service Pack 2 on it. After installing that things were looking better but the NIC still wasn’t working. I dug out a USB drive and used another computer to get the network adapter driver from Dell’s website and suddenly the machine was working. After installing the updated video drivers the laptop with 256MB of ram is running almost better than my workstation I used for development! Best of all, it now has Internet Explorer 6.0.2900 and I can see the website exactly as my clients see it!

Posted on by — 1 Comment

Knoxville out of gas – Twitter for prices

Apparently Knoxville gasoline supplies have been out since Monday.

"Knoxville has been out of gas since Monday. We’ve been buying gas from Atlanta, North Carolina, Kentucky, anywhere we can get it," said Bill Weigel, head of the Weigel’s chain of convenience stores in Knox, Blount, Sevier, Loudon, Anderson and Monroe counties. [Source, Knoxnews, EPA boosts gas supply in Southeast; Knoxville running low]

When Cathy mentioned this to me yesterday, I was caught totally off guard. How could some significant news slip past the hyperconnected?! I polled Twitter:
djuggler: Hold the phone! Does anyone have a link or verification about a gas shortage in Knoxville?
I then saw that Michael Silence was causing the run on gas!
djuggler: Blog post causes run on gas in Knoxville http://twurl.nl/5lbr8z Yea, hurricane Ike might have a little something to do with it too.
Then Twitter kicked in!
@djuggler WIMZ reported a little while ago that gas prices were going up @ 6:00 pm. I don’t really believe things are that coordinated.
@djuggler My initial thought was that it was just a rumor that got out of control. I haven’t checked into any more so I could be wrong.
@djuggler goodness…it’s raining here and everyone thinks it’s ike. i’m like people! we’re in central kentucky – ike is still in the middle of the gulf of mexico! buy a couple or three clues. LOL
@djuggler I don’t know about shortages, but wholesale gas prices popped up today. http://tinyurl.com/4bb86p Coming soon to a pump near you
djuggler: @barner Didn’t they hear about OPEC? Prices are supposed to plummet! Rock beats scissors. Ike beats OPEC. http://twurl.nl/mxxsab
BrianGM: @djuggler that’s the first I heard about a gas shortage! Anybody got any connections with Pilot?
djuggler: KNOXVILLE: As you fill up, Twitter the prices please. Heading out to pickup a child. Should I participate in the gas shortage mania?
LissaKay: 3.63 – 3.65 in kodak
BrianGM: @djuggler ofcourse! Anybody that’s cool will be doing the ’08 K-Town Gas Shortage Tweetup!!
jenmcclurg: @djuggler I’m all for a good panic, so I filled up behind Kay’s Ice Cream on Chapman for $3.54
Digitarius: @djuggler This *would* break on a day that I coasted in to work on E, wouldn’t it?
djuggler: I am participating in the hysteria. Weigel’s rocky hill. 3.69 3.79 and 3.89 every pump full with cars waiting.
overtlytrite: @djuggler it was still 350ish on campbell station I tend to shut my eyes and just feed the machine my card I don’t want to see the total
Digitarius: @djuggler 3.699 at pel parkway & hardin valley
barner: @djuggler $3.69/gallon on Sutherland Ave a couple hours ago. Up $0.05 this afternoon.
LissaKay: Racetrac on Western is out of gas
LissaKay: Gas prices jumped 20 cents in 4 hours at exit 407! Still 3.63 at Food City though
vagredajr: about 2 hours ago I filled up the minivan w/$3.69 gas. It is now $3.99 EVERYWHERE in Fountain City.
bobmissy07 People, think! If you only drive to Kroger & church, there’s no need to fill up the Rambler. You’ll be fine. No evacuations here, remember?
pattib22: @bobmissy07 @wbir has reported cummins supply terminal has run out of gas and not expecting next delivery till 9/17
vagredajr: oh boy, here comes the gas run
lasthome: $4.09 at BP near Fort Sanders West and Kingston Pike
lasthome: Anyone wanna place bets whether it will come back down to $3.64 next week?

I heard one person forecasting $5 a gallon but I think they were being snarky. If the Saudis really left OPEC, then prices should come down.

Update: Knoxnews reports Knoxville gas prices push closer to $5 and Michael Silence has more.

Posted on by — 4 Comments

2/3s of the way there!

I feel like a presidential candidate asking for 20 people to donate $5 each to send Cathy and Sarah to BlogHer Nashville. Some amazingly wonderful people have contributed to sending Cathy and Sarah to BlogHer! Sarah is thrilled! Cathy is so jazzed that she wants to be a panelist at BlogHer 2009. So if you are attending a BlogHer event, be sure to whisper loudly within earshot of the organizers, "Gee, I sure wish Cathy McCaughan of Domestic Psychology were speaking." Sarah and Cathy are going to come back with their blogs on fire like never before! We are a 7 person household and 6 of those people have blogs! (that doesn’t include Facebook and MySpace etc.) We are "The Family That Blogs Together." With 5 children in 5 different schools this year, such a trip would not be feasible without your help. Thank you!

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Did Chris Brogan just steal my PULSE?!

Did Chris Brogan just steal my metaphor of Twitter to a pulse in answering his own question? No attribution!

My answer: it gives the web a pulse, a voice, and connects me to your brilliance when I need it. You are the value.
29 minutes ago from txt

I jest. You know, the great minds thing. Since I caught the Twitter bug, I have been trying to answer the question "What is it? What does it do for me?" Recently I cemented my thoughts in Can you rely on Twitter for breaking news? Ultimately, I decided to explain Twitter as a pulse. Generally speaking, the more focused the people you follow are on a subject matter coupled with a larger number of those people, the more rapidly you will know about matters concerning that subject.

For example, If you follow a whole bunch of people who are really obsessed with dry ice and that’s all they really talk about, then you will know through Twitter anything that happens in the field of dry ice as quickly as it becomes public.

If you follow random people who all talk about different things, you’ll get noise but you will still get a feeling, a sense, of the commonalities of those people, a pulse. In my case, I follow:

  1. friends and family
  2. people in Knoxville
  3. some breaking news sources
  4. the movers and shakers in the technology world
  5. ColdFusion and PHP developers (yeah yeah…some of you .NET guys too)

As Chris Brogan and I came to the same conclusion, I believe more and more people will begin explaining Twitter as a pulse on a topic even if that topic is the world.

Posted on by — Leave a comment

Coder’s High

I’ve got that coder’s high right now. I’m in the zone. Yet the clock still speeds by. I can feel the seconds tick in the pulsing throbbing of my wrists as I type at top speed.

Update: Eek! Technologies merging. I just tried to use JavaScript syntax in PHP and when I went to look it up in the PHP docs I searched for a ColdFusion function. May need to slow down just a bit!

Posted on by — 2 Comments

Send the Girls to BlogHer

Registration ends next week!

BlogHer has announced the desire to close registration next week. We’ve had our first contributor! We are a 7 person household and 6 of those people have blogs! (that doesn’t include Facebook and MySpace etc.) With BlogHer coming to Nashville I think Cathy and Sarah should go! I created a ChipIn to see if we could get them sponsored and two days ago we received our first contribution of $5! Awesome! Now if we can get 59 more people to do the same, the girls get to go! I think it will be some good bonding time for mom and daughter. I think they will have some great social networking opportunities with bloggers they only know in print. And I think they will come back excited to try new blogging tools, technologies and writing techniques they discover at BlogHer. Plus Barry will write snarky things about them!

Registration ends next week!