AdamH.us

Beginning Friday, July 2nd, I will be away from the computer for 9-10 days. I may occasionally check email, but don’t expect much. I’ll be back the night of the 10th, but may not be online until the 12th. So leaving Friday morning, coming back the night of the next Saturday, and may not be on much that Sunday. Look for me on Monday. I’ll definitely be posting pictures when I get back. We’re heading to Nauvoo, IL! Gonna spend a week in that area before coming back.

Update: I got a new UPS this last week so both computers are now backed up on battery. I’ve also been able to upgrade my new machine to a full 4 GB of RAM…

At the end of my next class (begins on the 5th of July) I will be considered a sophomore! Yay! And I think it’ll start going faster now that I can take more classes at a time.

I’ve also upgraded WordPress to the new 3.0. And so far I have to say – it’s nice.

For Entropia Universe players in the US, TheScripters.com is building systems that match Entropia’s system requirements. Contact us if you need a new computer.

© 2010, AdamH.us. All rights reserved. Please link back if you use it!

Summary: A web host had a crappy server configuration that allowed people on the same box to read each others’ configuration files, and some members of the “security” press have tried to turn this into a “WordPress vulnerability” story.

WordPress, like all other web applications, must store database connection info in clear text. Encrypting credentials doesn’t matter because the keys have to be stored where the web server can read them in order to decrypt the data. If a malicious user has access to the file system — like they appeared to have in this case — it is trivial to obtain the keys and decrypt the information. When you leave the keys to the door in the lock, does it help to lock the door?

WordPress › Blog » Secure File Permissions Matter.

I saw this today and just had to laugh… I mean, how dumb can people be? Wait. No need to answer that. Einstein said it well enough — human stupidity is infinite. Why do we have Darwin awards?

Anyway,  I’m posting this up here just to clear up — TheScripters web hosting does not have this problem. It would seem to have been limited to Network Solutions. No need to worry. If you have a hosting account with us, all files are private.

© 2010, AdamH.us. All rights reserved. Please link back if you use it!

The local.thescripters.net server is now up and running! It’s taken some time because of some of my own configuration blunders, but it’s up. Most everything appears to be operational. If you find otherwise, let me know, either here or by email: contact@thescripters.com.

My new workstation is also now running. Has a couple issues with XP that need to be worked out. I do have Linux installed as a third OS, so I have two 64-bit systems with one 32-bit system.

Here’s what I’ve got:

• Windows XP Professional (Service Pack 3)
• Windows 7 Professional (64-bit)
• Slackware64 13.0 (64-bit)

The triple-boot was working perfectly until I messed with folder ownership on the XP partition… So I’ll be fixing that this week, as well.

© 2010, AdamH.us. All rights reserved. Please link back if you use it!

Over the next couple of days, The Scripters local servers (where client websites are posted for testing) is going to be up and down as I am changing computers.  The way it is right now is that my personal computer is also the server. That is going to change by the end of next week. I have finally built my new machine enough to start running it. and so the server will become more of "pure server" and will only be running one operating system. Right now it semi-triple-boots. "Semi" because I don’t actually go into the third OS very often.

The server will be running Slackware Linux 13.0 with Apache 2, MySQL 5, and PHP 5. The system is an AMD Athlon XP 2400+ with 1 GB RAM. It has one 80 GB HDD and one 160 GB HDD.

My new system is an AMD Athlon II X4 630 2.8 GHz. I’ll put in the new 320 GB SATA HDD today and then install Windows XP on there. I’ll also be moving the video capture card to the new one.

Point is, there are a few changes coming and servers are going to be a little back and forth for a few days while I get everything set up.

The main website (www.thescripters.com) will remain unaffected, but local.thescripters.net will be offline off and on. I will try to upload client websites to clients.thescripters.com before anything goes down so that are available.

Side note: Congratulations to me. AdamH.us has its 100th post and 100th tag now!

© 2010, AdamH.us. All rights reserved. Please link back if you use it!

I’ve been toying with the idea of creating a blog for The Scripters where we can post updates and news more than just major news on the main page. It’s a possibility. I don’t know yet. If I do, the first thing I need to do is create a skin for WordPress that would match the design of the website.

There’s a lot of logistics to consider. Don’t know if it’ll get done or not. But it’s in consideration. I guess we’ll see.

Any thoughts from the readers? Probably not. I’ll probably just get a bunch of spammers trying to sound legitimate. But they don’t always make their comments match the topic of the post.

Anyway, I’ll post up any updates if we decide to go forward with it. I think it’d be a great way to increase traffic, but I’m not sure yet if it’s a good idea or not.

© 2010, AdamH.us. All rights reserved. Please link back if you use it!

WordPress Blog — BuddyPress for One (and All!).

Many people were excited about the idea, but were unable to experiment with BuddyPress because they ran single installations of WordPress rather than the multi-site WordPress MU. To those people, good news! A little over a week ago Andy Peatling, founder and lead developer of BuddyPress, announced the release of BuddyPress 1.2, which can be used on single installations of WordPress. Congratulations, BuddyPress! And congratulations to all the people who’ve been waiting with bated breath for this to happen.

Check the link for further information. I’ve considered having WordPress hosting on TheScripters, but haven’t really figured out all of the logistics as yet.

If any readers have any ideas, post them in the comments area or otherwise let me know. If we do set it up, I would probably install this for it.

© 2010, AdamH.us. All rights reserved. Please link back if you use it!

Due to the fact that Google and YouTube (among others) are beginning to phase out Internet Explorer 6, I think it’s time the web begin upgrading. So, beginning in the next month or two, websites designed or maintained by us will no longer offer support for IE6. TheScripters.com already incorporates a warning to those using IE6 on XP or later. These users will be unable to view thescripters.com, and are provided a message to either upgrade to 7/8 or move to a "better" browser like Firefox, Chrome, or Safari. Moving to browsers such as Avant or Maxthon isn’t really an option unless you’re willing to upgrade to IE 7 or 8 because they use the base IE that’s already installed on your computer. You will get the exact same results on those browsers as on Internet Explorer itself.

Microsoft has ceased support for IE6 and soon will be for 7. New computers are coming with Windows 7, which has IE8 incorporated into it. XP is being phased out, which is the last OS to default to IE6. Vista ships with 7.

There are simply too many new technologies we use that IE6 just won’t support. Some of our PNG-heavy sites (like thescripters.com) will provide this same warning, but may incorporate a way to view the page anyway. If you have questions, you can contact us.

This move is simple logic from a design standpoint. Internet Explorer has always tried to change the rules and still doesn’t display certain pages quite right. It has issues matching image colors and background colors. So from our vantage point as designers, we can no longer support those who choose to stay behind with an ancient browser.

I may personally include such a message here on AdamH.us as a warning, but probably not to the same extent as on thescripters.com. I don’t know yet.

© 2010, AdamH.us. All rights reserved. Please link back if you use it!

Okay, it didn’t really take a whole lot of thought… Just a matter of finding enough open source software to do everything we need to do. Here’s how it’s going to break down:

1. Slackware Linux on our test server (our production server already runs Linux)
2. Filezilla FTP client for FTP access (Filezilla server for Windows FTP)
3. GIMP/Paint.NET for graphics
4. OpenOffice.org for documents (uploaded to site as PDF)
5. Firefox Web Browser — that’s what we’ll be designing for
6. PHP programming — no ASP or other commercial language
7. SciTE for script editing (at least in Linux — in Windows I have a freeware)

Note: This is only what we’ll use for production of websites. This is what we’ll use as The Scripters. As web applications (such as blog or forum software) we’ll use open source applications for those applications that we don’t create ourselves (such as WordPress, phpBB, or osCommerce).

Much of this software will also be available on systems we build for clients. It’s going to be quite a process to complete this haul-over, but we’ve got to start somewhere.

Comments are welcome. If you have other suggestions, we’re fully open to them.

© 2009, AdamH.us. All rights reserved. Please link back if you use it!

In the next few weeks, I hope to finish building my new computer to run Windows 7 Professional 64-bit, at which point I’ll be able to post a new page about getting a multi-boot system with Windows 7. At this point, however, all I can say is that the process is enough different that the exact procedure I used for XP won’t work. Windows 7 has too many differences in its boot sequence.

First of all, it doesn’t use the old boot.ini that NT/2000/XP used.

For now, I’m simply going to refer you to this site: http://www.multibooters.co.uk/ where you can get more information in more detail. They explain pretty well about multi-booting, the hazards, some of the benefits, and even some boot managers that work with Vista (and thus potentially with Windows 7, since they’re basically identical in boot sequence).

Of course, the easiest way for an end-user to get a multi-boot system is to take their computer to a local guru who knows how and can do it in a flash. I dual-booted Windows 7 RC with XP Pro for a client. If you ever call on TheScripters to build you a computer, you might as well ask us to dual-boot with Linux.. The best of both worlds, yo!

Enjoy!

© 2009, AdamH.us. All rights reserved. Please link back if you use it!

Update: It’s coming up on 2010 really fast… Almost time to figure out my yearly outlook! Weird…

Anyway, still going through school… Introduction to Business and Technology is the class I’m in right now. Just finished the midterm… Halfway through the 8-week session. *Yay!*

Current projects I’ve found myself with, some website maintenance/updating, then a computer for a family friend, then a laptop for another family friend… Then if I can remember to go over to the Galloping Goose I’d have another potential web job. Good things come to those who wait!

The Scripters is really starting to get a little bit popular. Oh and we’re officially a distributor for OpenOffice.org… I just need to sit down and make a page for it on the site… Not sure when I’ll get to that, though… Hopefully before too long… Maybe during my break from school next month…

Oh yeah… Online at DeVry University, for those who aren’t aware… I should put that on my new main page… I’ll get right on that, too…

© 2009, AdamH.us. All rights reserved. Please link back if you use it!