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MaisonBisson

a bunch of stuff I would have emailed you about

Installing PHP APC On RHEL/CentOS

  1. Yum up some packages:
    ```

    yum install php-pear php-devel httpd-devel

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  2. Install APC using pear (the pear installer is smarter than the pecl installer):
  
    When the installer asks about APXS, say ‘no’. </p> <div class="wp_syntax">
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pear install pecl/apc

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    1. Tell PHP to load APC:
      ```

      echo extension=apc.so > /etc/php.d/apc.ini

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  4. Restart Apache: <div class="wp_syntax">
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/sbin/service httpd graceful

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      CSS Transformations in Safari/WebKit (and Chrome too?)

      The cool browsers support radius corners, but Safari supports CSS transformations that allow developers to scale, skew, and rotate objects on the page like we’re used to doing in PostScript. And better than that, we can animate those transformations over time — all without any JavaScript.

      Fire up Safari or Chrome and mouse over the examples here. The screencast at the top is from the menu on that page. There are, obviously, better uses for these transforms, but it’s easy to see it at work there. Also see this screencast. It shows a rendering error, but it’s a better use of the tech.

      Now kick it up a notch with 3d transforms. They only work on the iPhone and iPod touch for now, but they’re quite nifty. See these examples: one, two. Paul Bakaus offers more detail, and Matthew Congrove offers this example of flick navigation.

      Browser-Based JSON Editors

      JSONLint, a JSON validator, was the tool I needed a while ago to be able to play with JSON as format for exchanging data in some APIs I was working on a while ago. And now I like JSON well enough that I’m thinking of using it as an internal data format in one of my applications, especially because it’s relatively easy to work with in JavaScript. Or, at least that’s the promise.

      What I’ll need is an easy way to manipulate the contents of a simple array, and these JSON editors may give me a start.

      The Braincast JSON editor was the first I found, but it doesn’t allow creation/expansion of the JSON. Katamari‘s JSON editor seems to work and has a lot of features and a post 2005-looking interface, but that doesn’t make it simple. Worse, I don’t think it’s available for me to re-use, modify, or extend in my projects. Thomas Frank‘s JSON editor, on the other hand, does have the features I need and a GPL license. That’s the place to start.

      Extra: a JSON diff.

      Michael Stephens Teaching on WordPress MU

      Michael Stephens is now using WordPress MU to host his classes online, and that opening page is really sweet. It’s hardly the first time somebody’s used a blog to host course content, but I like where he’s going with it. We’re significantly expanding our use of WordPress at Plymouth, and using it to replace WebCT/Blackboard […] » about 300 words

      Google’s Own Satellite

      It’s not truly “Google’s own,” but the internet giant will get exclusive use of the images for mapping purposes, according to Reuters: GeoEye Inc said it successfully launched into space on Saturday its new GeoEye-1 satellite, which will provide the U.S. government, Google Earth users and others the highest-resolution commercial color satellite imagery on the […] » about 100 words

      Installing memcached On CentOS/RHEL

      Using info from CentOS forums, Sunny Walia and Ryan Boren, here’s how I got memcached running on my Dotster VPS:

      Install libevent:

      ``` wget http://www.monkey.org/~provos/libevent-1.3e.tar.gz tar zxvf libevent-1.3e.tar.gz cd libevent-1.3e   ./configure make make install ```

      Install memcached

      ``` wget http://danga.com:80/memcached/dist/memcached-1.2.5.tar.gz tar zxvf memcached-1.2.5.tar.gz cd memcached-1.2.5   ./configure make make install ```

      We will start the server to use 30 megs of ram (-m 30), listen on ip 127.0.0.1 (-l 127.0.0.1) and run on port 11211 (-p 11211) as user ‘nobody’ (-u nobody):

      ``` memcached -u nobody -d -m 30 -l 127.0.0.1 -p 11211 ```

      Get an error?

      ``` memcached: error while loading shared libraries: libevent-1.3e.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory ```

      Show it the path to the library:

      ``` LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib export LD_LIBRARY_PATH ```

      Dragonflyer X6 UAV Remote Control Helicopter Is Sneaky, Awesome

      I so want one of these sweet Draganflyer X6 helicopters. The two pound powerhouse can carry up to one pound of camera equipment, carrying it smooth enough to get decent video and stills. More videos are at the Dragonfly website, including one which supposedly demonstrates that it’s quiet enough for wildlife photo work (scroll down […] » about 100 words

      WordPress CAS Integration Plugin

      CAS — Central Authentication Service — has no logo, but it’s still cool. Heterogeneous environments like mine offer hundreds of different online services or applications that each need to authenticate the user. Instead of throwing our passwords around like confetti, CAS allows those applications to identify their users based on session information managed by the […] » about 300 words

      Bush Trying To Figure Out How To Invite Volleyball Team To White House

      Sure, volleyball is the new gymnastics, so much so that the White House posted a picture of Bush with Olympians Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh in their “News & Policy” section. Chalk it up to August being a slow news month. Still, I can just imagine the old man telling Laura “I think you should […] » about 100 words

      Are Rock Operas Too Weird For Remixing?

      I love remixes, mashups, and covers. I love it when bad songs get good covers, I love it more when it’s a bad cover. I’m a fan of Coverville and I get excited every time I find yet another version of Smells Like Teen Spirit (hey, this is just a sampling: lullaby version, Patti Smith, The Bad Plus, another jazz version, and another jazz version, a string version, no, two string versions, a tango, a damn chant version, some lounge thing, and one for the opium lounge).

      But I think I have yet to hear a decent cover or remix of a track from a rock opera. Take One Night In Bangkok: sexing it up doesn’t help. You just can’t out rock a rock opera. (Really, look for yourself.) It might help that Chess featured a character loosely based on eccentric chess master Bobby Fischer, but rock operas just might be too weird for remixing.

      Though…I’d like to be surprised. Perhaps a folk version?

      I can, however, appreciate the irony in a sex-laden video for a song that had criticized moral decay. Video may be NSFW.

      2.6 Million Self-Hosted WordPress Sites And Counting

      The huge problem with open source software is that there are no sales numbers to show how many people are using it. We know that WordPress.com hosts over three million blogs. We know EduBlogs powers nearly 200,000. But how many sites are hosted using the original, downloadable, self-installed and managed version of WordPress? Now, the […] » about 100 words