Geeky Baldisms

Firefox, you've come a long way!

IE had around a 95% share when Firefox 1 was released. Now it's down to about 66%. Firefox has steadily grown in popularity, netting a 25% share according to my own sites' statistics.

Firefox shows why open source is the future. All of those add-ons make it the most customizable browser experience ever. Your customized Firefox defines who you are. Mine has Alexa so I know how popular each site that I visit is, and whether it's worth pursuing a link back. I also have Down Them All, Adblock Plus, and StumbleUpon.

Articles like this one show just how much buzz has developed around Firefox 3, due any day now. I've been running the 3.0b5 beta that comes with Hardy, and it is amazingly faster than 2.0, which was no slouch.

So here's to you, Mozilla team, for helping to dethrone the Microsoft mess that computing has become. Forget Google, Ballmer the Clown. Open source is what will do your corporation in.

One of the things that makes people nervous about switching to Linux (and justifiably so) is the prospect of doing without one's favorite programs.

That was certainly a major hurdle that I had to clear.

I did so by going with a virtual Windows machine under VMWare. Plus, I have weaned myself off of the Windows apps that I once used as far as possible. I'm still using paint Shop Pro, but I'm hoping the The Gimp version 2.6 will finally turn me into a Gimp user. Its interface rework makes it much more similar to Photoshop, which it is most often compared to.

What other Windows and/or closed source programs can be replaced with FOSS alternatives?

A site that is of great assistance in making that determination is OSALT.com, the Open Source Alternative site.

Are you a Microsoft Visio user? Give Dia a try.
Or are you dependent on Dreamweaver for web development? There are several alternatives, try Quanta Plus, for example.

OSALT is a very, very valuable resource for thjose trying to escape the clutches of Windows. For that reason, I'm giving them a permanent link right below my Ubuntu version countdown.

I just downloaded and installed the latest VMWare Server (2.0) on my Linux machine (an HP 1483w that has been blissfully freed from having to run on XP) yesterday. And I must say that I am blown away!

It's a major rework. The self-contained front end program is gone. You now manage through a web interface that connects via SSL to your own machine. The interface itself will remind you of VMWare's enterprise-class ESX Server, although not as well equipped. But you can see real-time RAM and processor usage.

The interface is much better, IMHO.

Here's another big plus: you can spawn a console session from the web interface. A window will pop up which you can resize and drag to another desktop if you like.

For me, this means no more remote desktop connections, which are plagued by sporadic sound and copy/paste functionality. The floating window has 100% of the remote desktop session's functionality, with added ease in interacting with other Linux applications.

But here's the best part: BLAZING VIRTUAL MACHINE SPEED!

One of the simple, sad facts about switching from Windows to Ubuntu is that you must give up certain Windows apps, unless you want to jump through some hoops.

One hoop is running a virtual machine under VMWare, or any of the Linux virtual environments. Downside: lots of work for a non-geek. Performance on an older machine will also likely take a hit, running multiple operating systems at the same time.

An alternate hoop is Wine. Downside: funky interface, you may need files to run Win apps that you are unaware of (meaning that they won't run).

However, for less than 75 bucks, you can buy yourself a copy of Crossover Linux Professional. And if you do, you will find yourself installing Windows apps in a heartbeat, even if you aren't very computer-literate. And you will see very fast load times of the Windows apps, and they will be well-protected within your safe, secure Linux operating system.

I downloaded the free-for-a-day install, which was a shell script. You can also download a deb file or an RPM. I ran the sh script as super user, and it installed with no hassles.

Once you access the program itself, you will see that there are a slew of supported Windows apps. That means that if you run into issues, Crossover's tech support will help you. But even if your favorite Windows app (Paint Shop Pro 7, in my case) isn't supported, you still have an excellent chance of installing and running it.

Webmasters like myself have to pay the bills. With that in mind, if you would like to allow Adsense ads through Adblock Plus, here's a graphic showing the exceptions that need to be allowed. These exceptions allow ONLY Adsense ads, nothing else, as far as I can tell.

You can do a search for google and adsense in the Adblock Preferences dialog to get most of them, a manual search for /ads*.php$subdocument and http://pagead2.$~other,~object-subrequest will get the last two.

So why would you want to do such a thing? Well, I began using Adsense on my sites three years ago because it was polite. And it hasn't gotten any less polite with the years. I decided long ago that annoying surfers with intrusive advertising was bad business, so I have always refrained from doing so.

Adsense ads load quickly and inobtrusively, IMHO. I have NEVER had an annoying experience with them. So I personally see no need to block them, a la Adblock Plus.

I let them through as a courtesy to other webmasters who use them.

If you would like to do the same thing, here's your tutorial on how to do so.

NOTE: if you trust the website to behave itself, advertising-wise, you can hit the ABP button on Firefox (upper right corner) and select "Disable on www.domain.com"

Feel free to do so on my sites. I GUARANTEE you that any advertising I have is polite. If you see popups, then you have spyware problems.

Stolen from a forum online, placed here on my blog so I can find it:

I’ve found I have to run this after connecting any usb devices:

sudo chmod -R 777 /proc/bus/usb/*

Otherwise when you goto device connect in VMWare server 2.0 remote console, it comes up with:
“Remote USB device error: Remote device disconnected: an error occured while sending data.”

Works like a charm!

I manage a handful of blogs, doing a better job of keeping everything updated with some than with others.

One of the biggest PITA's that a site owner has to deal with nowadays is comment spam.

It's not unusual for a well-trafficked domain to amass hundreds of bogus emails daily. Irememberjfk.com ranks around 365,000 with Alexa. That translates to 700-800 daily visitors. For some reason, spambots prefer better ranked domains, in my experience.

Anyhow, it's a pain to blow away all of the garbage that accumulates in the spam bin. And if I simply ignore it and let it get automatically deleted, I may well also lose legitimate comments that were flagged by the visitor not getting the CAPTCHA right the first time.

But I am happy to say that that particular problem is now a non-issue for me. That's because I have discovered Bad Behavior.

Bad Behavior (or Bad Behaviour, to you Brits) is a PHP application that screens attempts to get to your comment-posting scripts. Here's a quote from the Bad Behavior site explaining its operation:

Bad Behavior complements other link spam solutions by acting as a gatekeeper, preventing spammers from ever delivering their junk, and in many cases, from ever reading your site in the first place. This keeps your site’s load down, makes your site logs cleaner, and can help prevent denial of service conditions caused by spammers.

Cool, huh? But there's more to the story than that.

I **LOVE** VMWare. And I really love VMWare 2.0.

But, despite its blazing speed improvement and improved console experience, it had a problem on my Ubuntu 8.10 system.

Notice I said had.

My keyboard mapping was fubarred on the console window. My back arrow key didn't work, neither did my delete key. Other keys may have been affected too, but these were the two that I noticed.

Then, I found this website that provides three fixes.

In my case, the fix that worked was this one:

Edit /etc/vmware/config as root.

Add this line: xkeymap.nokeycodeMap = true

Restart your virtual machine.

That's all it took for me! There are two other fixes listed at the site if you're not as lucky as I was.

Dreamweaver, we hardly knew ye.

Yes, you can still purchase a copy of Dreamweaver, currently the appropriately named version CS4, from its new owners, Adobe.

But for all practical purposes, the web development package is dead.

Macromedia's web editors and I go back a long way. I reviewed Macromedia Studio for WorldVillage way back about 1995. I was impressed with its wysiwyg editor. The suite itself was designed to run as a backend on a Windows server, providing many built-in extras for websites. I have always hosted my sites on UNIX/Linux, so I never tried any of them.

When Dreamweaver 2 came out in 1998, I jumped at the chance to review it. It was everything that the Studio Designer was and more. I next got my hands on version 4, MX, MX 2004, and finally Version 8, which was released in 2005.

That year, Adobe bought Macromedia. At the time, I thought that it could have been worse. There had been rumblings for years that Microsoft had its eyes on the Dreamweaver product. We call know what a raging success Front Page has been since Redmond acquired it.

But remember, Adobe consists of the developers who have taken a basic pdf-reading program and turned it into a monstrosity that is now a 20 meg download in its most basic form, which expands to at least twice that size on your hard drive.

For a pdf reader!

Thus, I had low expectations for the "new" Dreamweaver. And I must say that I was not a bit disappointed.

McDonald's is #1 in the fast food industry.

They dominate, but not overwhelmingly so. Burger King made inroads several years back to knock the golden arches off of their perch at #1. During this time, they attacked McDonald's by name in their advertising.

McDonald's never, ever mentioned Burger King or any other competitor in their ads. Despite stupid hot coffee lawsuits, changing perception of good taste vs. good diet, and relentless advertising by their rivals, McDonald's simply continued to advertise their product on its merits alone, without referring to its competition.

I'm not a big fan of McDonald's, although I will treat myself to a high-fat, high-calorie helping of the most delicious french fries on the planet. But I only eat them occasionally.

The point that I'm making is that you don't mention the competition in your advertising unless (a) you're feeling like you can dethrone #1, or (b) you are #1, but a sinking ship.

The strategy sometimes works in the former case. It has for Apple, in their Mac vs. PC commercials. It NEVER works in the latter.

With that, if you've been watching the NCAA Basketball Tournament on TV, you've likely spotted the commercial where the redheaded ditz comes to the conclusion that buying a laptop computer with Windows Vista on it is a much, much better deal than purchasing a MacBook.

The Microsoft ship has begun to list.

VMWare introduced me to the concept of running machines virtually, instead of physically.

"Interesting concept" I thought in 2005, when I first learned about it. "But I'm not sure how it would benefit me."

Well, let's just say that my life has changed a lot since then, and so have my views of virtualization. I run a Linux desktop, with Windows in the virtual world for those times when I MUST use it. Example: my employer's VPN will run in Windows only. My obscure Epson all-in-one is unsupported by sane.

Thus, I became an ardent VMWare fan. However, with the release of Ubuntu 9.04, I lost the ability to hook up USB devices.

I posted this fix for 8.10, but no amount of coaxing could persuade it to work with Jaunty.

Enter Sun's VirtualBox.

I run a Windows XP virtual machine (VMWare) that was living on a three-year-old Dell 2950 server with dual Xeons, six gigs of RAM, and Windows Server 2003.

I say WAS.

That machine was a dog. It was as slow as a GX1 with a 350 MHz processor that I once had. It was driving me nuts to see its processor pegged at 100% for a full minute every time I switched websites in Dreamweaver. It has a gig of fully-VMWare-dedicated RAM, BTW.

The server, FWIW, runs ONLY VMWare. No other applications at all, except for McAfee in the background and periodically scanning.

And VMWare is running a total of TWO machines. Mine, and a utility machine running scheduled Access queries to keep databases of various flavors updated through the magic of linked tables.

So I suggested reformatting it and installing CentOS5, along with the Linux flavor of VMWare.

Good idea, said the powers that be, but we'll need to temporarily move those machines over to a new home. No prob, said I, I have a two-year old Dell GX620 with dual core Intel power and three gigs of RAM just sittin' around. I'll stick CentOS on there and make sure it and VMWare get along.

I just started a new website, I Hate the Home Team!, a forum for folks to gripe about having relocated somewhere far away from their beloved favorite teams, and who are now forced to deal with local media and fans of teams which they likely don't care about.

Anyhoo, I decided to give SMF (Simple Machines Forum) a try. The open-source product is absolutely amazing! I recommend anyone out there starting/running a forum to give them a try.

Not only does it install painlessly (with shell access, anyway, my preferred way of doing business), but the platform is absolutely loaded with add-on modules written by the community.

There are hundreds of themes to choose from. I settled on the Black Phoenix look, simply because I didn't have hours to peruse every example. I was looking for a lean, mean, clean look, and Black Phoenix worked perfectly.

It's in the modules themselves where SMF shines like a beacon.

I have just returned from a week of asp.net training, at the behest (and the kind compliments of) my employer.

First impression: I've given dot net programmers WAY too much credit. With Visual Studio, asp.net is quite simple to pick up. At least it was simple for a PHP developer. It's quite simple, IMHO, lots of dragging and dropping.

Second impression: I was helped by a year of creating Access apps in the late 90's. The experience of using Visual Studio 2008 is, to me, quite similar to using Access 97. I'm certain that the next version will sport the same bastardized Vista-type interface that some idiots at Redmond have decided that MS customers want.

Third impression: One of the biggest things that my (excellent) instructor, Brandon Ahmad, stressed, was that there was a lot of power in using caching to speed up your web apps. I found this ironic, because if the ungodly load of MS overhead wasn't present at server level, there would be no need to speed things up. Without a doubt, if you're looking to get the most out of your hardware, stick with Linux and the rest of the LAMP suite.

The official Microsoft training session was written by outsourced contractors, and I would rate it a 5 out of 10. Lots of errors, typos, and poor writing. But Brandon did a remarkable job of cutting through the poor workmanship of the course and gave me the knowledge I need to jump in and begin building effective, slick .net apps.

Unfortunately, I WILL have to create a 2008 Server VM to run them on.

Back to the crappy Vista interface...