Testing MovableType 4 Beta

Posted on June 18, 2007 | 1 comment

Seemed pretty straight forward to install. Since I have it in a new directory structure with a different Database, It seems harmless enough to test.

A few initial notes:

  1. Category list seems to be broken. I need to investigate that a bit
  2. I broke the comment too (might be the SCODE)
  3. Do NOT use Bigpapi.pl as it REALLY doesn't like it,
  4. Several "Internal Server Error" too.

Remember, this is BETA software and is sure to have lots of initial kinks. To make life more amusing: My server has several odd things about it too.

You can see my MT 4 Beta BLOG here. Copying the DB to a new DB and pointing the new instalation to it was fairly painless and the upgrade script worked fine.

Music I'm listening to right Now:
"Give Me Novacaine" by Green Day from "American Idiot"

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Greasemonkey!

Posted on June 15, 2007 | 2 comments

GreasemonkeyAnyone who knows me, knows I use Flickr a lot. I'm also lazy, a programmer and constantly looking for ways to execute repetitive tasks easier. 

Lately, I've taken to replying to comments on Flickr with an 24×24 image of that persons Flickr Icon. Easy enough view the HTML source, find the link and cut and paste it into the comment. 

OR I could have just installed Greasemonkey and install GM Script: Flickr Buddy Icon Reply v2_2 written by Doc18. Finding that INCREDIBLY convenient, I checked out GM Script: Smilies and other tools by Jessica Shannon.  

Greasemonkey is an Interesting idea. I think I'll look into it an start writing my own Greasemonkey scripts.

Music I'm listening to right Now:
"You're Amazing" by Robert Palmer from "Don't Explain".

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Posted in Cool Stuff

My interest in photography

Posted on June 8, 2007 | Comments Off on My interest in photography

IntamaticIt all goes back to when I was a child. When I was in 5th Grade I took black and white photo with an Kodak Instamatic using 126 Cartridge film.

I took photos of our house, family, my cat, anything that caught my attention. It was great fun carefully composing the shot and taking the photo. I took photos, my Father would develop them and print them with his Leitz Focomat enlarger. We had a small darkroom under the porch of our house that was really an old store room, but worked perfectly to develop film.

Let me tell you for a 5th grader, developing film in a tank, hanging the film to dry, developing and printing the image it, is Magical. I’m forever grateful for my Father taking the time to introduce photography to me and my brothers. Time went on and my Father had less time for photography, but I kept at it.

Now years later, It’s my turn to return the favor. My Father asked if he could use my old Nikon D70s while he considers getting a DSLR of his own. To help, I got a Nikon SB-600 flash for him to use with the camera. He’s free to use is as long as he wants, but he insists that he’s buying one of his own.

I can’t wait to see the photos he takes.

Music I’m listening to right Now:
“World” by Five for Fighting from “Two Lights “. Five for Fighting is John Ondrasik.

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Posted in Cool Stuff

End User Agreements

Posted on June 2, 2007 | Comments Off on End User Agreements

LegalRecently, I was connecting to an online service and an "updated" End user agreement popped up in a Tiny window. Now, I always read these things so I Cut and Pasted the text into Notepad and carefully check it out prior to hitting the "Accept" button.

I wonder, How many people do that? IMO, These online services use a small window with a scroll bar in the hope that people will just hit "Accept" button without realizing that they may have just agreed to something contrary to thier best wishes. There are plenty of sweepstakes that, when you sign up, you agree to allow telemarketers to call you.

That's just one example. On a more serious note, some banks give out your personal information based on your accepting that agreement to "affiliates" (i.e. Anyone who pays for it…). I've annoyed people at Cell phone stores by taking my sweet time reading the service agreement prior to signing.   

I know not everyone does it, but people really should read everything they agree too. 

Music I'm listening to right Now:
"Who Knew" by Pink from "I'm Not Dead".

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MTGoogleMaps Test..

Posted on June 1, 2007 | Comments Off on MTGoogleMaps Test..

Hmmm, the New MT may break my version of MTGoogleMaps. Let’s See.

Update: Nope, I missed some PERL libraries.

Music I'm listening to right Now:
"Makes Me Wonder" by Maroon 5 from the "It Won’t Be Soon Before Long" Album. Just heard it on Z100. You can see the video here on Z100. As soon as you begin to hear it, you know it’s Maroon 5.

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PERL Programing

Posted on May 25, 2007 | 1 comment

PERLBy training, I am a programmer. Its something I enjoy and use to my advantage whenever possible. In this case, I had a repetitious task to perform and so I made a PERL program to solve it. 

This past Monday, while working from home, my DSL went out for several hours. Since I was stuck on site fielding questions from the Support team, I started tinkering with a program I use to copy Nikon NEF files from a flashcard reader. 

Basically, I like to sort my files in directories by camera model and date. That is, if I take a photo with my Nikon D80 on May 20th, 2007, I'd copy them into:

C:StuffStefanNikonD802007-05-20

Sounds simple, but suppose I put two weeks of photos on a 2 GB memory card? Doing it manually is a pain and I'm lazy. So I wrote a PERL program to do it.  

Here's How it works:

  1. Get a directory of the memory card (G:DCIM100ND80)
  2. Load the EXIF info from each file, one at a time
  3. From the file, determine the Camera Model and  Date it was taken.
  4. Get some stats from the EXIF Info.
  5. If the destination directory does not exist, create it (c:StuffStefanNikonD802007-05-20)
  6. Copy the file
  7. Go to the next file.

A colleague asked for a copy, so I niced it up, commented it, added command line parameters and I'm releasing it into the wild.

Prerequisites: PERL, of course and  ExifTool by Phil Harvey. Frankly,  Phil Harvey did all the heavy lifting here. He wrote a great PERL module and I'm only using a little bit of it. The rest is just simple file manipulation.

From a command line:
c:> perl copyNEFJPEG.pl -?
USAGE: copyNEFJPEG.pl
 [–from X:] (e.g. –from i:) Default = i:
 [–to X:somedirectory] (e.g. –to X:somedirectory)
                             Default = d:StuffStefan
 [–writecfg] Write config file to "copyNEFJPEG.cfg".
 [–nothing] Do Nothing, just show me.
 [–usage|help|?] This message.

Example:
c:> perl copyNEFJPEG.pl –from g: –to c:stuffStefan –writecfg –nothing

In this case, it will write a file called  copyNEFJPEG.cfg to the same location as copyNEFJPEG.pl and set the defaults to the command line (Assuming "c:stuffStefan" exists in advance). The "–nothing" parameter  shows what it would do without doing any copying (other then the config file that is) . Next time, you would simply use:

c:> perl copyNEFJPEG.pl

and it will just copy the files (Did I mention I'm lazy??). Once the config is done, you could just set it up as a shortcut. This program won't overwrite anything or delete the source files. It's fairly harmless, but if you use it, do so at your own risk. I've used this on Nikon NEF files and JPEG files. Likely it would work on CANON RAW files, but I don't have any to test. If anyine wants me to test with CANON RAW files, leave me a comment.

You can download it in a zip here. 

Music I'm listening to right Now:
"The Taste" by Five for Fighting from "The Battle for Everything". Five for Fighting is John Ondrasik.

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A Really Rotten Situation…

Posted on May 18, 2007 | Comments Off on A Really Rotten Situation…

JPG LogoAn Odd title, but the best way to describe it, IMO.

Fairly recently Derek Powazek and Heather Powazek Champ association with JPG Magazine came to an end (read response here, here , and here).

I'm not going into details about what happened because, among other things, I wasn't there. If I had to take a Really Wild Assed Guess: People made assumptions and/or were really unhappy with one thing or another.

I do think that Paul Cloutier (the CEO, publisher and now editor) really screwed up how he handled the aftermath. When the founder of a company is no longer with said company, at the
least, some announcement needs to be put out. Other than pulling ALL
reference of Derek and maintaining that this is a "New" JPG Magazine (I disagree, I thought it was a growing endeavor),
there was no information other than what Derek and Heather put out. Some of the staff of JPG have expressed their consternation at Derek and Heather going public with what they consider an internal problem. I think that's wrong as JPG Magazine is a community based business. IMO, that means the community are like shareholders that need to know what's going on. 

Paul's
initial lack of any damage control was a big mistake. To make life more entertaining, when he finally did say something, it was, IMO, lacking to say the least.

As of this writing, I don't think I have answers to questions I posed:

  • Did Paul force Derek out? If so, Why??
  • Did Paul invent a new story about how JPG came to be that was all about 8020?
  • Did Paul tell people not to speak of that walk in Buena Vista, Heather, or anything that came before 8020?

I'm not the only one that wants to know. Part of the appeal of JPG Magazine was this it is a startup by two interesting people. I was pleased to see it grow and evolve into a mature company with a great submission system and a great staff of people working there. Knowing that the creator of such an endeavor was forced out without any explanation put forth by Paul leaves a bad taste in my mouth. That's why I deleted my JPG account.

As I said on a flickr discussion, Regardless of whatever happened that led to Derek's departure, JPG was originally Derek's and Heather's creation. I may be naive, but I'm still really hoping for a resolution that include Paul and Derek working it out.

I'm not marginalizing the Staff. As a programmer, I can say the site is a great work, as an amateur photographer, I certainly appreciate the behind the scenes work of all the staff.

I just think they (Paul and Derek both) need to work it out where Derek can have a role in JPG Magazine especially since Derek owns a part of it.

Update: I will say this: I'm very close to re-creating my JPG Magazine account. Rather than deleting them, I've struck out the questions above (IMO, It's part of the record and I think it would be wrong to just delete them). I don't have them directly answered, but I feel they are no longer relevant to the issue. 

Music I'm listening to right Now:
"New Thing" by Fuel from "Sunburn"

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Met Samantha Bee Tuesday night

Posted on May 9, 2007 | Comments Off on Met Samantha Bee Tuesday night

Samantha BeeWhile on a photo walk with Jerry Tuesday night, we ran into The Daily Show's Samantha Bee. She was with her child and I certainly didn't want to harass her so I just said "Excuse me, aren't you Samantha Bee from The Daily Show?"

She said yes and I mentioned I watch that show regularly. She was nice and friendly. 

"The Daily Show" is one of my favorite shows, but I think It's sad state of the News industry that the most intelligent conversations on TV are on "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central. If you have any doubt, See the recent interview of Sen. John McCain or Former Iraq Minister Ali Allawi or Andy Card just to name a few. 

Music I'm listening to right Now:
"The Taste" by Five For Fighting from the "The Battle For Everything"

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SELinux and Type Enforcement

Posted on May 6, 2007 | Comments Off on SELinux and Type Enforcement

FedoraAs some people know, one of the many hats I wear on the job is security. That being the case, I figured I should learn SELinux.

Turns out, Easier said than done. If your doing anything unusual (What are the odds in my case?) you need to make Policies and ensure that the programs are the proper file context with the proper access. Think of a default deny firewall and you'll see the issue. Nothing is allowed unless permission is explicitly given. Fedora comes with a lot of default policies, but for unusual web server CGI scripts, chances are you need to write a policy for it. 

1st problem: I don't have the proper package to create policies and install them. A little research and I find I need "selinux-policy-devel". 


$ yum install selinux-policy-devel

2nd Problem: While I'm familiar with Type Enforcement, I have no idea what rights to give each application. The only way I know of finding out what rights each app needs is to run it, and see what audit errors pop up in the log.

3rd problem: I'm not used to the syntax of the policy files, or the various types and classes that I need to use to grant the exact access I need. 

After a few hours work: I mostly configured ONE application. This is going to be a long project…

Music I'm listening to right Now:
"Midnight Show" by The Killers from the "Hot Fuss"

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Yard Work

Posted on April 28, 2007 | Comments Off on Yard Work

YardIt’s that time of year again to do yard work. This year, I’m trying something a little different. The photo to the right show blue green stuff all over my yard. That’s “Scotts® PatchMaster® Sun & Shade Mix” which is Grass seed with fertilizer and recycled paper as a mulch. It’s a simple idea: Any places that need patching, rake the dirt, put this down on it and watter for a few weeks.

In actuality, It’s a lot of work. My backyard lawn is better than last year, but that’s not saying too much. Since the Mrs. and I like to occasionally entertain with a BBQ, I figured I better do something about it. The Patch mix has to be watered every day for at least a couple of weeks in order to get it to take. When the grass is thick enough, the paper should be absorbed into the ground.

In the mean time. it looks really weird…


I’ve also planted vegetables again. This year:

  • 9 broccoli plants
  • 2 sweet basil plants
  • 2 Greek oregano plants
  • 1 cherry tomato plant
  • 2 rows of Mesclun mixed salad
  • 1 row of regular lettuce
  • 1 Strawberry plant

Should be good when done. This photo is just opposite the one above.

Music I’m listening to right Now:
“Counting The Days” by Collective Soul from the “Youth” Album.

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