Category: Just Saying …

Had a few problems with some of the web sites over the weekend. So did a bit of hardening of the hosting accounts, and the web sites. Took a bit of time, but there should now be less of a vulnerability profile. There will be some more hardening happening over the next few days, but nothing the casual visitor will notice. The ‘un-casual’ visitor won’t notice either, since they won’t be visiting soon.

But that brings to mind some things that need to be done by all. You’ve heard it all before: regular changing of passwords, updating applications, etc. One thing you might try is Secunia’s Personal Software Inspector (see http://secunia.com/vulnerability_scanning/personal/ ). A free program, a quick download, and it checks to make sure that all the programs on your computer are current. It has the capability to do automatic updates of most programs, and helps with the non-automatic updates. It’s very non-intrusive on your system resources. Highly recommended.

If you have that program, Windows Updates set for automatic, and Microsoft’s Security Essentials, you will be well-protected against attacks. You still need to be aware, and do the basics (it’s time to change those passwords), but those three things will help.

Go change your passwords now. I’ll wait.

Good job!

And speaking of earthquakes, as a former Californian, I’m not impressed by the little 5.9 one today on the ‘right coast’. As my good friend said: “Come on East Coast it was only 5.9, In California we fart harder than that!” 

Heh.

The weekend arrives!  As usual, the laptop in the lap, working on some code for Dr. Jerry Pournelle’s web site (www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor ). Some good commentary there on current events and more, so all ten of you should visit (although most of you already do). Dr. Pournelle gets a few more visitors/day than I do (about 9000 more at last count), but he has better content (and posts daily).

The current project is a randomized display of his new ebooks. A database will hold all the information about each book, and some clever PHP programming will display two book covers and links, similar to what is there now on the right side. If you enjoy science fiction, then you should take a look at his books. The new ebooks are in Kindle format, but we’re also adding EPUB-format for you Nook and other EPUB fans. Reasonably priced.

Other than that, the normal weekend projects. Lawn mowing, some minor house maintenance, etc. And some web site work for Dr. Pournelle and others. That should keep me busy enough. Although there is probably some scheduled nap time also.

I have been so busy on other sites that this one is looking a bit unprofessional. Long list of things that need to be fixed to improve the presentation of this site. Probably should spend  a bit of time on visual changes for the hordes (read 10, and that includes family) of visitors here. And just noticed that many of my plugins are borked.

…which is the reason for the title of this post.

This place has got no shoes.

I’ve been spending a lot of time doing things other than updating things here. Most of my time lately has been working on hosting changes for various domains, including this one. For years, this site has been hosted by Brian and Greg, who operated a small hosting company. Their client included several of the original “Daynoters” group, who I became involved with at least 10 years ago. This was a group that created their own web sites where they write mostly daily notes on their activities. They were at the vanguard of the millions of bloggers that write today. This was all pre-Blogger and pre-Wordpress, which make it much easier for non-technical types to create a blog.

I decided to get in on that, mostly as a way to get the “DigitalChoke” short story on the Interwebs. So I started by creating all of the web pages to make “DigitalChoke” story readable on the Interwebs, plus a mostly daily blog of what I was doing. I eventually got inducted into the “Daynotes Gang”, and used Brian and Greg’s hosting services.

After many years of being excellent site hosts, Brian and Greg decided to move on to other areas of interest, so their clients needed to find a new host. I’ve been using JustHost and Bluehost for several years. The JustHost folks have been the hosts of this site (and all of the others that I have created over the years. But I also worked with Bluehost for several of the other sites I maintain.

Among Brian/Greg’s clients was Dr. Jerry Pournelle, science fiction writer, and long-time columnist for the late Byte magazine (print version; they are starting up an ‘e-magazine’ soon). I’ve been reading his Byte columns since the 1970’s, and have followed his web site (www.jerrypournelle.com ) almost since it’s inception. And I have been on his small board of advisors for many years.

So when the notice came that he needed to move his domains to a new host, there was a discussion by his advisor’s group on what to do. And I volunteered to do the work of setting up and moving his domains to a new host (we chose Bluehost). He wrote his site using FrontPage 2003, which is no longer a supported product by Microsoft. And although he has probably one of the original ‘blogs’, this process was getting a bit cumbersome – there was a bit of back-end work that had to be done to keep his content visible.

His advisors group had been discussing moving his blog to a new platform, so I created a test WordPress area that would show how WordPress would work as a new blogging platform. And then the need for the hosting move came up, and we decided (with Dr. Pournelle being somewhat reluctant) to move to the WordPress platform with the hosting move. So I have been spending a lot of time fine-tuning the new site, modifying the theme (Atahualpa; excellent WordPress theme with full customization ability), plus the actual moving of the almost 1GB of content on his sites. And some custom programming of the backend programs that are used by WordPress to display the content. And setting up his mail accounts, spam filtering, subscriber databases, etc.  Along with some new training in the processes of creating the content for the WordPress-based blog, setting up accounts, making DNS changes, and all of that. All stuff that I have done before for the 30-odd domains/sites that I own or maintain.

And during that time, working on several e-books for Dr. Pournelle’s republishing of his science fiction books.

So a lot of night and weekend work to get things moved and ready for the hosting move. Plus a lot of work tweaking things. But the hosting move for Dr. Pournelle’s sites is done; you can see the new WordPress-based blog at www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor .I think it looks pretty good. We’re still tweaking his writing/publishing process. He’s using (mostly) Microsoft’s LiveWriter to create and publish his WordPress entries. It’s a pretty nice but basic program that lets you create and publish with a Word-like interface, plus the benefit of seeing the content as it will look ‘live’. (In fact, I’m using LiveWriter to create this entry.)

All of that, plus the usual house and family stuff. Pam’s got a new giant scraproom in the basement, I have a small garden (strawberries, peas, and tomatos) after the late spring around here, plus the weekly meetings with the 11-year-old Scouts. And the visits from the grandchildren and children for Sunday dinner (tri-tip today). And there is the full-time day job to take care of.

Been a bit busy.

  for Dr. Jerry Pournelle. His main site (www.jerrypournelle.com ) required moving to

The “Digital Choke” book is now available on Lulu.com in e-pub format! Here’s a nice little button I got from Lulu. Just click and buy!

That took a bit of work; formatting a book in e-pub format is a bit more tricky than formatting it for the Kindle. But it was a learning process, so the next one will be a bit easier. All I have to do now is think up a story.

Some minor changes to the blog area of this place. Additions to the menu, and a few new places of mine over in the Blogroll area – little projects that turned into web sites. Although you really ought to visit “the BBQ Grail” site….outdoor grilling season is coming up, and Larry Gaian’s site is a great place to learn about that. The pictures there will get you drooling.

A few nice comments about the Digital Choke book in the last post. I need to work on getting it in some other formats. That might be a weekend project. Although I need to do some beginning work on the outside: lawn to fertilize, and getting the little garden ready. Even though planting season around here doesn’t start until the middle of next month, it is time to plant some peas for the grandkids to pick.

But the big news: Stacy (youngest daughter) and Justin McEwan had their first child: Dominic Junius McEwan. Born 3/23/2011, 3:05am (notice all of the prime numbers?); 8 lbs 13 oz, 22 inches, very cute according to all the reports. We haven’t met yet, as I am recovering from a mild case of shingles. Congrats to them!

So the latest project is an update of a more than 8-year-old project. That was when I thought I could write a short story.

I had gotten interested in computer security (still am), and thought of a story line that was related to that. It turns out that writing a story takes a lot of time, at least for me. But my idea was to ‘publish’ it on a web site, which was the start of this “Digital Choke” place. This is the first domain name I purchased; over the years I have had about 20 domain names that were related to ideas I had. Some went away for lack of interest, but others are still around.

So the 8 year old story was first published in about 2001. I guess that makes me an e-book pioneer. Although not successful, since it’s not really clear that more than a dozen people actually read the story.

Now that e-books are getting more popular, I decided I would continue the trend I started, and e-publish my story. Which is why you’ll find a new graphic and link over there on the right side that will allow you to purchase a Kindle e-book of the “Digital Choke” story. And it’s priced so that you can easily justify spending a grand total of 99 cents. How can you afford not to buy it? You can be the first to own the first ebook written by me, the “Arthur”.

As for the process of creating the “Digital Choke” e-book, stay tuned. In the meantime, just click over there to purchase your very own copy of “Digital Choke”.