DSL stuff
Posted on January 28, 2002
Well, if you read the forums, you probably noticed that I signed up for Earthlink DSL based on some junk mail. I moseyed over to their website today to see what’s what. I saw they have a package where I could get a static DSL IP address for $65/mo. At first I balked at it. Now I’m… pondering it. The basic DSL rate (with dynamic IP) is $50/mo. My plan was to set this site up at some web hosting place, which could cost anywhere from $10/mo to over $50/mo just for the hosting. However, with the static IP, I could get a domain name to point to my computer, and host it from home. Pretty cool, but also a little daunting.
First, I would have to find out just how secure my computer really is. Then I would have to get patches for Apache, MySQL, etc… I would also have to leave my computer on all of the time, which would wear down on the computer and increase the cost of electricity. On the upside, I could (in theory) set up as many e-mail addresses as I wanted, and as many subdomains as I wanted as well. Not to forget the fact that I could devote as much storage space to the website as I wanted.
There is a lot to ponder here. I will probably decide on this sometime in mid-February, after I get the DSL hooked up.
DSL Woes
Posted on January 22, 2002
I am pondering changing my DSL provider. When Ameritech/SBC first offered DSL in my area (Spring/summer 2001), I signed up right away. After a couple of problems that were easily solved by a phone call to Ameritech tech support and exchanging the USB DSL modem for one that works with my ethernet card, I was set. Then in October/November, I was late paying my phone bill (oops, my bad) and it got disconnected. I was actually amazed that the DSL still worked. At least it did for a few weeks. The end of November I got the phone reconnected, but since my computer was dead at the time, I didn’t worry about the DSL.
When I finally got the computer working again around Christmas, I was having trouble getting with the DSL. At first, I thought maybe it wasn’t reconnected. I called Ameritech, and was assured that it got reconnected. I thought the problem was on my end. My new computer system was bound to have some bugs, and this was just one more. No biggie. I halfheartedly tried to get it working again, but was having some still running into the same problems.
Today, I called Ameritech again. This time, I am told that, no, my DSL isn’t hooked up, and won’t be hooked up again until I “establish credit for six months,” which means I won’t be able to get it hooked back up until April. That’s a long time.
So, okay, I realize that it was my fault for not paying my phone bill. However, my DSL was setup to automatically deduct from my bank account, so it was always paid on time (unlike the phone bill, which was paid by check). Personally, I could care less if I had a phone, as long as the internet works (spoken like a true geek :-))
Now I am pondering my internet alternatives. I still have the ethernet card and a DSL modem. I have an EISA 56.6K fax/modem with no EISA slots to put it in, and I have a 56.6K PCI WinModem which doesn’t work with Linux (for better or worse). I have beaucoup AOL CD’s (and a Compuserve CD) that don’t work with Linux. I don’t even need any software (in theory, at least). All I need, I think, is a place to point my computer.
One thing I haven’t quite figured out is how the whole DSL thing works. I know that with dial-up all I have to do is plug in the number for the phone to call, but I assumed that with DSL I was pretty much stuck with the phone company. However, I look in the phone book and I see a bunch of local ISP’s that offer DSL service, which is perplexing to say the least. I mean doesn’t Ameritech have to have DSL turned on on my phone line in order for it to work? I still need a phone line for dialup. Perplexing.
Baby Steps…
Posted on January 17, 2002
I took another step today towards getting this site online. I took all of the files and stuff off of my Geocities site. Now I just have to decide whether to cancel the “membership” or upgrade to one of their better hosting packages. While it might be nice to do one of the upgrades at Geocities (don’t have to worry about cancelling the account, or signing up with a new hosting service), on the face, their packages don’t seem all that good. They offer a domain name, 5 email addresses, and 50 megs of storage for $8.95/mo. There are other places offering more or less the same thing, with over 100 megs of storage for between $10 – $35/mo. There are even places out there that specialize in hosting Nuke and Slash sites. Most of them offer Apache, PHP, and MySQL, which would be nice, so I don’t have to take up the space supplying them myself.
Another thing about Geocities, that I noticed today is that they don’t allow scripts. They had a list of “acceptable” file formats, (including a few I had never heard of) but PHP wasn’t among them…of course, neither was ASP. Perl was, however. Interesting. I figured they didn’t want somebody running a business from one of the lower hosting levels. Comments, anyone?
gottahavacuppamocha 0.5
Posted on January 14, 2002
Well, I did it. I ended up going with PHP-Nuke, becasue I used it before, and because I figured I could get it installed…and I did.
The site is still not fancy. The logo is PHP-Nuke. the colors are way off from what I want (at least in the theme I’m using, but it’s better than nothing, which is what I seemed to have working with Geeklog. I may try it again, but maybe not.
It’s also different from the 0.1 version of the site. Essentially, that was nothing more than a few links and a list of things I had done to the site, which wasn’t much. If you want to read morew about it, feel free to browse the previous message.
gottahavacuppamocha 0.1
Posted on January 14, 2002
11 Jan 2002 19:41 – Geeklog is still bugging the hell out of me at the moment. I’ve tried index.php, success.php, and a few others, but I still keep ending up with a blank web page. Bug hunting sucks. All of the pages I tried call on lib-common.php, which calls config.php (no surprise) and a bunch of other lib-*.php files. I’m guessing that somewhere, probably in lib-common, is a typo, or an incorrect function call. Not enough to throw up an error message, but enough for it not to connect to any image files, or templates, or css, or whatever. PHP itself won’t do these things. You have to use it to do certain things, which generally manipulates HTML content on a web page. Piss me off:-( At the moment, I’ve been trying to take lib-common and some of the other php files and work forward to see what they are doing, with the ultimate goal being that I find something wrong and getting the correct links or functions going. Maybe I should try to work backwards from some of the .thtml files and see how they are working.
11 Jan 2002 17:16 – Last night I came soooo close to getting Geeklog working. There is an install script that doesn’t work, and the people who wrote it freely admit it in the documentation. They recommend setting some the stuff up yourself, which I did, but I have still been having problems. The install.html consists of three main pages in two separate directories. The first page starts out getting the path to where the config.php script is, and then calls it is supposed to go to the second page of the install, which is serversettings.tpl. This is in another directory. I found that if I copied install.html to the directory where serversettings,tpl is located, I could get the installation to go further. Before, I would get “error selecting database” after the first page. Now I don’t get it until the last page, when it’s supposed to go to the welcome.html or something like that. Actually, that’s not 100% true. I don’t get the error message, but I don’t get anything else either…just a blank white page. Oh well. It’s now the weekend, so I can stay up late and work on it some more. When I get that squared away, I will christen it gottahavacuppamocha 0.5.
10 Jan 2002 18:56 – I don’t know what the hell I did, by MySQL is now up and running…after giving me a hard time again. Bewilderment. Anyway, now I’m going to try once again to get GeekLog going. phpMyAdmin is now working.
10 Jan 2002 17:48 – Just reinstalled MySQL, but haven’t tried to set it up yet. I’ll be doing that shortly. I also installed Postgresql and another one or two sql programs, just in case.
9 Jan 2002 19:28 – Oops. I guess I spoke to soon about MySQL. I keep running into two errors. I uninstalled MySQL and I’m going to reinstall it later tonight or tomorrow.
8 Jan 2002 20:29 – Well I’m getting there. Now MySQL seems to be running well. If you ever get to play with Linux – especially setting it up, remember this: “The .conf file is my friend.” And learn to love the text editor.
8 Jan 2002 19:45 – Okay, was reading the past few days and didn’t get much of a chance to fool around on the computer. If I had, I probably would have noticed earlier that Zope was interfering with Apache. Zope, I guess, does many things. In addition to having a ton of Python scripts and being able to get into MySQL, it also comes with its own webserver. The PDF manuals that came with Zope said it was possible to set it up on Apache and Microsoft’s IIS, but what they neglected to do was tell how to go about that…at least to the extent I needed. Anyway, I just finished uninstalling Zope and Apache seems to be working fine, which is good, because now I’ve found another Slashdot/Nuke type of thing – GeekCode, or something like that. (BTW, I’ve learned they are called Content Managment Systems, Weblogs, or Blogs – though I think Slashdot/Nuke type thingy is perfectly acceptable as well :-) )I also found something that is supposed to stream OGG’s and MP3′s, but I’ll wait on that for the time being. Now, off I go to install GeekCode!(Ooops – Geeklog!)
6 Jan 2002 02:18 – Wow. I got the new Blender 2.0 manual today and I’ve been doing some of the tutorials in it. The proportional editing tool is where you can select and grab one vertex and all of the nearby vertices will move with it “proportionally”. Essentially it’s like a magnet. The example they use in the book is to create a landscape, but I think it might be good to create people, and such. We’ll see.
5 Jan 2002 19:51 – After looking at some books on Zope in some local bookstores, I’ve come to the conclusion that it isn’t that Zope:Python what PHPNuke:PHP, but more like phpMyAdmin:PHP. It’s mainly an administrative interface like phpMyAdmin. Actually, that may not be 100% true, but it isn’t anything like Slashcode or PHPNuke. Anyway, I added a links to “What I like about…” and “What I hate about…”. They are mainly geared towards software/linux and even though there is nothing in either of them yet, they will be the place for my rants and raves.
4 Jan 2002 23:50 – Right now I’m fooling around with Zope, which I think is a PHPNuke or Slashcode type thing, but I may be wrong about that. First, I have to figure out how to use it. I got the python module installed for Apache, so that’s a start in the right direction, I think. BTW, this is the analogy I’m using PHPNuke:PHP as Slashcode:Perl as Zope:Python. All of those languages are scripting languages, and the programs are all run through a webserver (Apache in this case), and operated through a web browser. Also, I added some more “function” to the site, mainly by linking to the other directories in localhost. There are also some potentially interesting functions that came bundled with SuSE/Apache (such as searching), but I haven’t figured out how to get them going yet.
29 Dec 2001 15:22 – I’m also fooling around with gdam and Terminator X, both of which are DJing programs, but which have different capabilities. Although, neither of which reads .ogg files.
29 Dec 2001 03:30 – I haven’t figured out how to make Icecast work yet, but that’s a minor thing at the moment because A) the site isn’t live so it doesn’t matter, and B) I started to RTFM that came with SuSE and came up with a possible alternative. SuSE is a nice Linux distribution because it actually tells how to use some of the programs that come with it. In the Applications book, there is a section on sound. It doesn’t go over all of the programs by any means. I know there are some programs that I have no idea what the hell they do…but I digress. I started reading up on Broadcast 2000, which I knew I had. After tinkering with it a bit, I actually got the darn thing to work. Now I have to write it down or else I will forget it. Essentially, now I can use the microphone on my computer. I don’t think I’ve ever been able to do that, even when I was using Windows. Granted, it was never a priority, and I guess it’s priority is still sort of dubious now. However, I’m pleased to no end that I got it to work *grin*. Plus, I also figured out how to have my headphones and computers speakers working at the same time. I figured that with all of the prots on the back of my soundcard, it was only a matter of time til I figured out how to get them to work. I’m still not there *sigh*, but I guess it’s still a matter of time. The only one I want to make work now is the MIDI port so I can get my synthesizer to work (that’s a long story in itself).
26 Dec 2001 15:33 – I’ve been playing around with Icecast trying to get it to work, but it appears Icecast is really only an intermediate step. First I have to have a “source” that will stream my media files, then I have to direct Icecast to that source. Icecast will then stream it out to the client computers. I’ve been through my SuSE directories and such, but I can’t find any of the programs they recommended (Shout, LiveIce, or iceplay). My only other alternative at the moment is maybe using Wine to run WinAmp, which can also be used as an “source.” We’ll see if that works.
26 Dec 2001 14:55 – It doesn’t have a logo, or any flashy graphics. It just has a few hyperlinks and is really more of a testbed than anything like I actually want it to be. I’ll be tinkering with this over the next few hours, hopefully, adding some actual functions, like icecast :-)
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