Category Archives: Blogs

Winter Outages

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As I host this site at home, the occasional outage is to be expected. Last year we had several days of downtimes, due to ice, brown transformers, and just slow/out internet connections.

Please be patient if this site does not load, as it may take a full day to get back running. While I value my uptime, I will shut the server down if the weather gets really bad, instead of letting it crash on a power outage. We are expecting over a foot of snow, and so I expect to have to take the server offline, sometime tonight.

If I may, I’d like to direct you over to our wordpress.com page, and my personal tumblr and twitter which provide up to date information and sometimes mirrors or blogspots for your enjoyment.

Sorry for any inconvenience and stay safe.

How to make mod_rewrite work on openSUSE 11.3

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As you may know, this blog is hosted at home, on my 5 year old computer, running openSUSE 11.3, and apache.

Just a quick how to, of what I did to make it work.

First, edit /etc/apache2/httpd.conf Change the “AllowOverride None” to “AllowOverride All” so it looks like this:

# forbid access to the entire filesystem by default
    Options None
    AllowOverride All
    Order deny,allow
    Deny from all

Then, you need to add some code to your virtual hosts. In my case, they now look like this:

DocumentRoot /srv/www/htdocs/alpha1beta/
ServerName alpha1beta.com
ServerAdmin [admin email address redacted]

Options +FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride all
Order deny,allow
Allow from all
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /alpha1beta/

I had to add the bottom section there to make it work.

After changing the httpd.conf and all vhosts connected with it, simply reboot apache, with rcapache2 restart, run as root. Then set your pretty URL in CMS.
EDIT while trying this on server #2, i had to edit /etc/sysconfig/apache2 and add ‘rewrite’ to this list

APACHE_MODULES=”authz_host actions alias auth_basic authz_groupfile authn_file authz_user autoindex cgi dir include rewrite log_config mime negotiation setenvif status userdir asis imagemap php5 authz_default”

Welcome to Tumblr

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I’ve been using tumblr for a while, but as I want this site to be more professional, I’m going to try to keep some of the ranting and griping off of here. You can follow that on twitter, and now tumblr. My wordpress.com is not completely given up on, and will mirror most posts from here, maybe some from tumblr, while this stays more code and design related. Also by mirroring all important posts to wordpress, it allows people to comment easier than signing in with their email to make a comment, so feel free to comment on both, I will be using the pingbacks for these sites.

Review: A month with my new HP Tm2

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Its been just about a month since my new tablet PC arrived, a replacement for my Tx2510, which was having a series of unrelated (Well unrelated except for the common cause of stupidity, not entirely mine) problems, and is now sitting somewhat disassembled on a self.

Ordering the custom TM2-1100 was painful. Not physically painful trying to order and navigate around the site, but rather in deciding what to buy. The TM2 was about the only tablet in my price range. Two discounts, one from HP and another my school in the way of their membership to HP academy, made it a convincing deal. I decided to max it out (well short of the ram, which is easy and cheap to upgrade if I ever needed to)

So now, the specs.

intel core i5-430UM (64bit 1.2GHZ dual core, quad thread. Powerboost up to 1.8Ghz) [Device manager shows it up as quad core]
512 ATI HD5450 Switchable Graphics*
500GB Western Digital 7200RPM
4GB DDR3
3 USB ports
1 headphone/Microphone jack (to use both, it seems as if you need the ipod touch headset)
Altec Lansing speakers
HP TrueVision webcam (1.3mp?)
Dual array mic
HDMI
Wacom Stylus and multitouch input.
SD/MMC/XD/MS Pro Card Reader.

*It has 2 graphics cards. The ATI 512 dedicated on the motherboard, and a 64MB intel HD, for power savings. Switching them out causes the screen to go black for a second while it switched. Every time the machine is unplugged or plugged in, it asks about switching the GPU (Assuming you’ve got it set up that way in power settings)

What I love about it

Its really powerful.Runs Adobe CS5, Battlefield Bad Company 2, COD MW without problems.

Great case, sturdy metal, doesn’t scratch or leave fingerprints on the outside.Hinge is seemingly strong.

Great touchscreen, little getting use to, but its awesome. Stylus works as it should, overriding the touch, so you don’t get random lines and inkings, when inking notes.

Bright screen, really sharp display. Caps lock light. Tracpad, mute, and wiki indicators and switches.

Lightweight, if a little awkward to hold, long (4 to 6 hour so far) battery life, probably about 3lbs.

What I Dislike

The Function keys. They’re set up so that without touching Fn, they operate as special keys, like Media buttons, screen brightness, mute and alike. F11 is mute. To go full screen on a web browser, I have to use Fn+F11. Refresh is even worse at Fn+F5. The F1 is a help button, and is really annoying. Haven’t found a way to toggle the usage, but it is handy to have the media buttons just a touch away.

Keyboard is a big awkward. Nothing terrible, but I’d almost prefer a chicklet. Somethings, like Page Down simply are not marked. Pause is not its own button but rather o the right shift key. No Num lock or scroll lock. Could use a right handed Fn key. The keyboard is the biggest flaw with this machine.

Tracpad is quite bad. Has multitouch, but is too sensitive or non sensitive enough. Does funky things when you rest a digit on it, since it is multitouch. But with a touchscreen, stylus and USB mouse, why would you ever need it?

Wish they could’ve spared the separate headphone/microphone jack. A 4th USB port would’ve been nice too.

I miss the remote control of my TX2510us.

Screen gets dirty very quickly but is easy to clean. Wireless buttons are kinda of in the way and have a light touch, and get switched off about once a day.

Its a nice machine, but it has some quarks. Its running well, windows 7 pro, and can handle quite a bit at a time, including lots of abuse from Adobe programs. While its not a gaming computer, it can definitely hold its own in a online match provided you’ve switched to the ATI GPU, and having an i5 under its belt, as slow as it may look at 1.2ghz, can still throw some serious power at you.

(1.2 quad thread dual core is almost like 4.8ghz? Correct me if i’m wrong in the comments)