Poojan (Wagh) Blog

For me, the problem isn’t so much attention, it’s SNR (signal-to-noise ratio). There’s just too much noise in Twitter to make out any signal. And that’s why it’s not worth following while you work.

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I got a laconica install going on DreamHost. I’ve been able to post from the web, but I’ve found that posting from email won’t work with DreamHost. The jury is still out on posting from Jabber, but I’m optimistic. I’ll update this post when I know more.

I was able to get notifications of new posts via email. I’m not sure if that’s useful. In my opinion, notifying from email is equivalent to a discussion group or mailing list.

Gimmesoda automatic script

I created a new domain and MySQL database/user using dreamhost panel.

Then, ran http://www.gimmesoda.com/2008/07/18/another-laconica-easy-install-script-update/ to install into ~/laconica.domain.tld

This actually worked! Except, its seems to be an older version of laconica. At minimum, it was useful for getting custom pear (right?).

Following Laconica README

Decided to download latest darcs copy. Moved the gimmesoda-install from ~/laconica.domain.tld to a laconica.domain.tld.bak directory and then downloaded the darcs copy using:

darcs get --partial http://laconi.ca/darcs/ laconica.domain.tld

Then, deleted database and re-created database called la_db (& MySQL user la_sqluser) using DreamHost control panel. Now, following README:

mysql -u la_sqluser -p -h mysql.domain.tld la_db < domain.tld/db/laconica.sql

Check to make sure:

[gorgon]$  mysql -u la_sqluser -p -h mysql.domain.tld la_db
Enter password:
Reading table information for completion of table and column names
You can turn off this feature to get a quicker startup with -A
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 3326653
Server version: 5.0.67-log MySQL Community Server (GPL)
Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.
mysql> SHOW TABLES;
+----------------------+
| Tables_in_la_db      |
+----------------------+
| avatar               |
| confirm_address      |
| consumer             |
| fave                 |
| foreign_link         |
| foreign_service      |
| foreign_subscription |
| foreign_user         |
| invitation           |
| message              |
| nonce                |
| notice               |
| notice_source        |
| notice_tag           |
| oid_associations     |
| oid_nonces           |
| profile              |
| queue_item           |
| remember_me          |
| remote_profile       |
| reply                |
| sms_carrier          |
| subscription         |
| token                |
| user                 |
| user_openid          |
+----------------------+
26 rows in set (0.00 sec)

Skipped user access, since mysql user should already have access. Found one more thing to do:

cd domain.tld/classes
cp laconica.ini la_db.ini

The .ini file needs to be the same name as the MySQL database name.

The above gave me basic functionality. I then tackled the following:

Pretty URL

Changed the config[‘fancy’] option to true. I then copied htaccess.sample to .htaccess (within ~/laconica.domain.tld). I then edited .htaccess and changed the line:

RewriteBase /mublog/

to be

RewriteBase /

I have to do this because .htaccess sits in the same directory in which I installed laconica.

Email

I set up a new email address at laconica@laconica.domain.tld. I specified the following in the config.php file:

#Email info, used for all outbound email
$config['mail']['notifyfrom'] = 'laconica@laconica.domain.tld';
$config['mail']['domain'] = 'laconica.domain.tld';
# See http://pear.php.net/manual/en/package.mail.mail.factory.php for options
$config['mail']['backend'] = 'smtp';
$config['mail']['params'] = array(
                                                        'host' => 'mail.laconica.domain.tld',
                                                        'port' => 25,
                                                        'auth' => true,
                                                        'username' => 'laconica@laconica.domain.tld',
                                                        'password' => 'xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'
                                                        );
#For incoming email, if enabled. Defaults to site server name.
#$config['mail']['domain'] = 'incoming.example.net';

Note that that last (commented) line is redundant. Unfortunately, posting by email won’t work. What needs to happen is a php script needs to get executed upon receipt of an email. This can’t happen, because DreamHost doesn’t support email addresses being tied to UNIX accounts. I’d like to disable the laconica “Post by email” feature altogether, but I’m not sure how.

Jabber/XMPP

One nice feature with DreamHost is that you can host your own Jabber accounts. I set up a custom-hosted Jabber account laconica@laconica.domain.tld for a post/notify bot. It hasn’t activated yet, so I have no confirmation on whether it works. Anyway, here are the changes to config.php:

# xmpp
$config[‘xmpp’][‘enabled’] = true;
$config[‘xmpp’][‘server’] = ‘laconica.domain.tld’;
#$config[‘xmpp’][‘host’] = NULL;        # Only set if different from server
$config[‘xmpp’][‘port’] = 5222;
$config[‘xmpp’][‘user’] = ‘laconica’;
$config[‘xmpp’][‘encryption’] = false;
$config[‘xmpp’][‘resource’] = ‘zzzzzzz’;
$config[‘xmpp’][‘password’] = ‘xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx’;
$config[‘xmpp’][‘public’][] = ‘laconica@laconica.domain.tld’;
#$config[‘xmpp’][‘debug’] = false;

2008-10-01 Update
I’ve been informed by Verisign that you can only have one FOB attached to your PIP account. This is no big deal for me, since my FOB is on my keychain and you can always have a one-time password emailed or SMS’ed to you as a backup.

Personal Identity Portal (PIP) is an OpenID provider. This means that you:

1. Register an account with PIP. You’ll get a URL (i.e. example.pip.verisignalbs.com); that is your OpenID URL.
2. Go to other web sites–called OpenID clients–for example, My Yahoo, most blogs, identi.ca, army.twit.tv, etc. Instead of registering a username and password, tell them to consult your OpenID URL. Instead of giving them a username:password combination, you just tell them your OpenID URL (example.pip.verisignlabs.com).
3. The web site then consults with PIP to see if you are authenticated. This authentication is done in a very secure manner, using cryptography, so that no one can impersonate you. To do this, you are temporarily transferred to PIP’s web site.
4. You select what information (name, location, DOB) that PIP should share with the OpenID client.
5. You are now logged into the OpenID client and can go about your business. The whole time, you only had to remember one password: your PIP password.

OK: big deal. So, I don’t have to remember more than one password. Here’s the cool part: PIP can be set up so that you get a neat FOB (a keychain doohiky). Here’s a picture of mine:

When I hit they grey button, I get a John Nash-like one-time code (only I’m pretty sure I’m not imagining it). This way, no one can log into my account unless they have my key FOB. I can have only one key FOB, and they come in different form factors (including a credit-card size one that fits in your wallet). You have the option of buying them from Paypal for $5 or the cooler looking ones (credit-card size and waterproof FOB) from Verisign for $30-$40.

If you don’t like carrying it around, you can also have PIP SMS or email you a one-time password.

Here’s another cool feature: PIP also has a little javascript bookmarklet that will save passwords for other sites that don’t support OpenID (linkedin, facebook, etc). Now, I don’t use this capability because I have a pretty good solution already (KeePass), but I might someday.

A list of web sites that support OpenID is at http://openid.net/where/.

Finally, a runner-up that I’d use is Yubikey. However, being an OpenID provider isn’t their main thing right now (although they do provide it sort of as a demo/utility), and I already bought the PIP/Paypal FOB. Alternative providers (including one that works with Yubikey) are at http://openid.net/get/.

Steve Gibson and Leo LaPorte’s SecurityNow podcasts have in-depth discussions of all these technologies.

From Four Years | 43 Folders.

One particularly gifted arrival on the productivity and self-help scene authored some of the most profoundly useful advice I’d ever heard about attention management — but, then followed it up by showing how those extra cycles could be used to game the system so efficiently that you can sit in a hammock for 164 hours a week while people in India write birthday cards to your friends. That one became a runaway bestseller and, perhaps unintentionally, formed the new template for how to market productivity as an extreme lifestyle. I also have to imagine that it singlehandedly revived our nation’s sagging hammock industry.

I’m rather illiterate in this field, so if there’s someone else this describes, I wouldn’t know. My apologies ahead of time to both Merlin Mann and Tim Ferris if I’ve got this all wrong.

P.S. I did enjoy Tim Ferris’ book, which details several techniques of productivity–even if the whole month-long getaway isn’t my bag.

I’ve been listening to Manager Tools Podcast for a couple years now. I really enjoy it, because the direction is specific, yet one can generalize the specifics to form concrete principles.

The podcast presents everything in very basic steps. If the topic is hosting a meeting, they tell you (in a dozen or so steps) exactly what to do. I mean exactly.

It occurred to me a week or so ago that I’m an unlikely fan since I’m not in a role to execute any of their detailed steps.

I realized early this week why I like it so much: by being presented with these basic steps so often, one can generalize on them and gain very insightful principles.

For example, while detailing a discussion about feedback, they tell the story of Shamu–and how Shamu only gets positive feedback yet learns to jump over a rope suspended above the water.

I realized immediately that I don’t give enough positive feedback to my peers nor my children (nor do I receive enough from my bosses). After realizing this deficiency, it became very easy to compensate for it–both at home and at work.

I stumbled on this great tool this morning:
Website Grader checks your web site for keywords, Google Pagerank, Yahoo directory, Alexa. and gives you a score for SEO.

The neat thing about the tool is that it gives you all this information in one place, which lets you verify and debug if Google and Yahoo are crawling your web site.

Update 2008-09-21

I just realized that Amazon S3 is 15 cents/GB/month, not 10 cents/GB/month. So, Dreamhost (which charges 10 cents/GB/month only for space above 50 GB) is even more attractive!

In the latest DreamHost newsletter (Newsletter v10.8 August 2008):

Now, you know how we give out a LOT of disk space with our hosting? Well
technically that space is only supposed to be used for your _actual_ web
site (and email / database stuff) .. not as an online backup for your
music, pictures, videos, other servers, etc!

Well, just like every other web host does, we’ve been sort of cracking
down on that some lately, and it seems to catch some people by surprise!
Nobody likes being surprised, especially in the shower, which is where
we typically brought it up, and so now we offer a solution:

You CAN use 50GB of your disk space for backups now! The only caveat is,
it’s a separate ftp (or sftp) user on a separate server and it can’t
serve any web pages. There are also NO BACKUPS kept of THESE backups
(they should already BE your backups, not your only copy), and if you go
over 50GB, extra space is only 10 cents a GB a month (a.k.a. cheap)!

I’ve been thinking about this for months: I pay about $10/month and get 250 GB of storage (or maybe it’s double that). At the same time, I’m paying Amazon S3 (& Jugledisk Plus) to backup my files. Why can’t I use my DH space for that?

I realized the reason is that if DH allocated 250 GB per user and kept it available, they couldn’t support the $10/month price. It’s basically the law of averages. Not everyone is going to use the 250 GB, but the few that will are covered. As stated, they’ve had to crack down on people getting a little nuts and using it for personal backup.

However, it is great that they realize that there’s some leeway here. I figure that at 10 cents/GB from Amazon S3, I am saving $5/month through amazon. Plus they don’t talk about charging per GB for bandwidth (which S3 does). In addition, if I go over the 50 GB, I pay 10 cents per GB/month–which is exactly what S3 charges. (Maybe they’re using S3 for storage?).

Anyway, awesome job, Dreamhost. I clearly made the right choice in hosting provider.

P.S. Anyone know of good incremental backup software that supports FTP/SFTP?

Don’t see anything here about it: ScribeFire: Fire up your blogging, but looks like there’s a new version of ScribeFire out. Can’t find a changelog nor any blog entries.

I actually liked the Gates/Seinfeld (Windows?) Churro Ad. Not too many people did. The thing I liked about it was that it didn’t try to attack Apple. It didn’t even try to sell windows (at least not that hard). It basically presented Bill Gates in a conversational style.

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Part of the reason I used Thematic at CircuitDesign.info was because of its ability to do a child theme (See: How I used a WordPress Child Theme To Redesign My Blog The Smart Way).

Recently, I upgraded Thematic, and some of my custom RSS feeds disappeared. (I have 3 different RSS feeds at circuitdesign.info depending on the clientele.) Unfortunately, I didn’t take advantage of this function, so I lost the two custom feeds.

This time, I finally made a custom child theme to support these RSS feeds. The important thing I needed to do was add a couple RSS link to the wp_head function. Read the rest of this entry »