February 2010
1 post
8 tags
Continuous Integration Matters
Recently I’ve been spending quite a bit of time trying to work out the best way to enable my team at work to be able to rapidly meet several impending deadlines for new projects. In this I have once again started looking at some agile practices that have been largely tossed to the sidelines. Some of the more important practices that I am currently trying to preach again are the old of code...
January 2010
3 posts
8 tags
Zend Server CE and Framework, VHost OS X Dev
So lately I’ve thought about switching my PHP development over to Zend Framework. The main reason for this is that I am just tired of rewriting the wheel. Most of the common problems with developing a PHP application have been solved and for once it would be nice to just build an application, instead of building a framework.
To get started in my efforts, I needed to set myself up with a...
8 tags
BoxeeBox hardware announced and the Boxee beta!
Amidst all of the CES buzz, there was an announcement about my most recent obsession, Boxee and the Boxee Box. It seems that not only is the Boxee beta open to everyone now, but that the BoxeeBox itself is to have quite abit of power under the hood. Those who know me have had the unfortunate luck of having to hear me droll on and on about how much I love the up coming BoxeeBox.
Until today, all I...
3 tags
Bring in the spam!
Over the last several months, since I started writing this blog I’ve noticed a tiny trickle of visitors. Most seem interested in the Acer H340 that a blogged about in my first post. I felt bad for many of them, seeing their search keywords, knowing my little bit of writing wouldn’t help their plights. The only consolation to this has been that I knew adding the link to whsplus.com at...
December 2009
3 posts
2 tags
Merry Christmas to All
I know it is politically correct to say, “Happy Holidays,” however I stand by the fact that Christmas is a government holiday and is mostly a commercial holiday to me anyway. So with that, I hope everyone properly stimulated the economy today and got all sorts of fun toys.
I wish your holiday season to be a happy and safe one. Full of good food and fun times.
3 tags
New Domain and Updated Theme
When I decided to try blogging again, it started as mostly an experiment in getting to know WordPress. To that end, I did not put alot of time or effort into thing like picking a domain name or styling the site. Mostly it just seemed a good use for the .name domain I had been holding onto for a couple years. Over the last few months, while I haven’t blogged a whole bunch, I do feel as if I would...
15 tags
Creating A Dynamic DNS Script With Slicehost
Note: The script used here is written in Python. I did not write this script. However, in the time honored tradition of the Internet I am going to reiterate it here, as it was a little hard to find a solution via Google. The original script came from a Slicehost forum poster. I just want to make clear that I am not the author, just a fan of his work.
In all of my new server craze, I’ve come...
November 2009
3 posts
8 tags
An Easier Way To Keep WordPress Up To Date
Lately there has been quite a stir at my job regarding WordPress. In this we have played alot with deployment methods, including proxying it through another application to add an extra layer of features. Because of all of this I have had quite a few conversations with teammates about the easiest way to set up a new blog. As I feel I have a very quick and easy way to not only install a new...
7 tags
Google Chrome OS: Is Not Enough, Enough?
No one can deny the effect that Google has had over how we use computers in the last decade. In the beginning it started with a simpler home page, one less burdened by the clutter that other search engine’s provided. From search it moved to dominate the web advertising with it’s Adsense program that provides relevant marketing to web pages and the ever-changing content of the web. They sought to...
5 tags
New Gentoo Media Server Nears Completion
A little while back I discussed my (at the time) recent purchase of an Acer H340 Windows Home Server. At that time I was just getting into ripping my DVDs into x264 / DIVX formatted video files. At about 1.5-gigabyte per movie, it seemed like it would take me forever to fill up the 4-terabytes of space the server afforded me. I figured by the time that happened storage would be more dense and a...
October 2009
1 post
5 tags
Google Wave: Why I care.
The Internet has been buzzing lately about Google’s new application, Wave. Though it is still under a limited preview, everyone seems to be talking about it. I have heard everything from the evangelicals touting this as a sign of the coming singularity, to people just not getting it or thinking it too complicated to understand.
For most people, Google Wave indeed will not make much sense. At...
July 2009
2 posts
10 tags
Error handling in PHP, or how we won the war.
One of my biggest gripes about PHP in comparison to other modern object-oriented languages is the relatively poor state of error handling. The mix and match style of triggered errors and exceptions is unbefitting of a modern language, especially one that is ready for the enterprise. Most modern languages deal with errors strictly through the throwing of exceptions, because it allows for a more...
8 tags
Media Server, meet the Acer easyStore H340
When I first started thinking about building a server to house my growing collection of digital videos, my needs seemed simple enough. I needed a low-power computer to house a few tera-byte drives in. The computer needed to be able to run as a DLNA server, so as to stream video to my Playstation 3. On top of that, I wanted something relatively low maintenance. I love to play with new toys as...