techniQal support

That’s right. This is now the fastest blog in the entire world. Maybe…

Regardless, this is the new and improved techniQal support . I have finally made the giant leap from hosting my blog on an old webserver in the guest bedroom, which was served by my residential dsl, to an actual external VPS host.

After months of looking, and deciding what I really wanted out of a host, I decided on Linode .

The price point for what you get is really pretty good, and I get to have the flexibility of having my own server, with the performance that I can’t get by having my own server(at home).

Thus far, everything about their product is easy to use, and you can even choose to be part of their Xen beta when signing up.

So if you are looking for flexibility for your hosting, I highly recommend them.

ps.

checkout the list of distro’s they support out of the box:

Arch Linux
Centos 5.0
Debian 4.0
Fedora Core 8
Gentoo 2007.0
OpenSUSE 10.3
Slackware 12.0
Ubuntu 7.10
CentOS 4.0 (RHEL)
Fedora Core 6
Mandrake 9.1
Slackware 10
Ubuntu 6.06
Ubuntu 7.04

I hope everyone saw that we released two new wijits at lijit that I think are really cool.
Look to your right, then down a bit, and you should see our new map and list statistics widgets.

The map highlights the global locations of all of my recent page views, direct searches, and external search engine searches.
(Hover over the dots on the map to see the data related to that visit).

The list does the same thing, but displays in a more readable format.

Due to this new knowledge, I can happily say:
“Hey” to my reader from Pennsauken, New Jersey
“Willkommen und Hallo” to my reader from Bremen, Germany
“Willkumm” to my reader from Zurich, Switzerland
“Hola” to my reader from Buenos Aires, Argentina

To install this on your blog, follow the succinct and accurate instructions at my co-worker Tara’s blog.

I recently added a new use for my awesome Colorado Ski Report rss feed.
I am parsing the data, trimming it down, and posting it on twitter . You can receive ski and weather info via twitter every day, just by following http://twitter.com/snowing .
Be aware, that you will be getting ~17 updates a day around 6 am MT.
If that doesn’t scare you off, follow this twitter user for your daily dose of ski conditions and weather.
Each tweet features the resort name, snow in the last 24 hrs, mid-mountain depth, current weather, and the forecast for the next day.

Feel free to email with suggestions for how to make this better at techniblog at gmail dot com .

Todo:
Setup web interface to allow you to subscribe to “my” ski resorts,and just get DM’s for those results.

Just having some fun with the iSight, iStopMotion, and iMovie.

Here at Lijit we spend plenty of time testing stuff for new software releases . As anyone who has to test software knows, the monotony sets in, and you need to find novel ways to make the work fun. My favorite option involves using Lijit to search for ridiculous search terms, and then being amazed at what I find in my extended network. Example : “Monkey Pants”

Today, the search term was “beer”, and the end result is the awesome tool Kegulator.
It helps you by calculating your beer/ice/cups needs based on the number of people attending your “kegger”, and evaluating the drinking habits of those guests.
This may be an invaluable tool for those spring skiing expeditions, and summer barbecues.
I just think it’s a cool idea.

As I noted in my last post, I recently took the hard and dirty path of trying to upgrade php and mysql on my web server.
This was driven by my need to have PHP 5.13 and support for SimpleXMLElement->addChild() .
Unfortunately, support ended on the standard repo’s for FC4 some time ago. This meant that I would have to download and recompile if I wanted to have an upgrade path for php. I don’t have that kind of energy.
Luckily I was able to use some google-fu, and find a solution.
This site Les RPM de Remi, albeit in french, provides an awesome repo, and compatibility updates for RHEL 4 and 5, FC 3,4,5,6 and more.
This means I had a nice easy path to upgrading php and mysql.
See the details below to see how easy it was to update mysql 4 to mysql 5, and php 5.04 to php 5.25 .

To utilize for FC 4, follow these instructions:

1 . Install the remi rpm .
wget http://remi.collet.free.fr/rpms/remi-release-4.rpm

rpm -Uvh remi-release-4.rpm

2. Install the remi yum repository.
cd /etc/yum.repos.d
wget http://remi.collet.free.fr/rpms/remi-fedora.repo

3. Update - Update - Update
This should find all dependencies and include them.
I suggest doing mysql first, as php update may fail if you don’t.

yum --enablerepo=remi update mysql
yum --enablerepo=remi update php


So far everything worked flawlessly for me.
But YMMV. Backup your databases.
Be prepared to re-install your OS, or be smart enough to undo what you are doing.
Use caution, and enjoy.

I recently spent a fair amount of time at home as a result of the birth of my son Lucas.
Between naps and feedings and diaper changes, I had a bit of free time available. I used this time trying to find a suitable method of sharing baby photos online.
Flickr was an option, but there is no way my parents or relatives would have been into signing up, and the embedding options weren’t great.
I thought about just hosting on my web site, but iPhoto created some pretty crappy html when you exported for the web. And I couldn’t very easily add new stuff without re-exporting, and then re-uploading to the web server.
I didn’t have the energy or focus to “write my own”, so I searched the Interweb for an answer.
I think I found a reasonable solution. I implemented a cool Flex/php solution called Fotoviewer from FOTOCRIB . It provides a nice little flash photo browsing interface that automatically shows thumbnails in a list view, a carousel browsing view, and very nice and flexible slide show option. Demo HERE
If you know of any better options, or have found something that you like, let me know.

Adding photos is as easy as creating a directory and naming it the way you want the “album” to be named. Photo captions then depend on the file name of the photo. iPhoto makes this easy if you are used to changing image titles and make it a habit. You can simply export the images from iPhoto, and tell it to export using the title as the file name.

The downside to this solution is that it appears to load all the images in the browser at once. If the album is large, and the images haven’t been cached in your browser , or are not “web safe” sizes, it can take a while for all of them to load.

A word of warning. You need php 5.1.3 or better to use this. Fotoviewer stores meta-data in xml files,and implements SimpleXml methods that aren’t available if you are on an older version of php. Specifically SimpleXMLElement->addChild(). This caused me a a whole host of problems that lead me on a fun path to upgrade my webserver.

Overall, not sure this is the best method, but it currently allows me to avoid too much work with the photos themselves, and uploading an image is all it takes to add it to an album.

munch a bunch?

Originally uploaded by Tarable1

Tara, my coworker at Lijit, took this hilarious picture at her house this morning. Just had to share the humor.

I had to add my own interpretation.

This is just a quick update on a new feature added to my Google Maps Snow Report .
If you select a resort, and take a look at the “Cam/Map” tab, you will see links to a cool 3D trail map for that ski area.
These maps are hosted on ski.com , and require a java enabled browser to view (when is the last time you used an applet??) .
Most of the major Colorado resorts are represented.
Enjoy!

Mark this day. HD video in the browser is more ubiquitous. It will either represent the day content providers started providing more HD content to their users, or the day that it was easier to view high quality pirated video content on the web.
This truly is one of those hurdles that needed to be jumped to get HD video on the web.

The cool thing about this release will be the effect it has in driving popular video sites(youtube, google video,dailymotion) to support higher quality video.
Youtube already has plans to try not to down-convert uploaded user videos, and the h.264 codec support gives them that option.

This ends up being disruptive in the way it gives a wide range of content providers a large distribution channel.
Joost and other high quality video providers rely on dedicated software clients and bitorrent/distributed data delivery methods to push the content.
But the install base was still pretty small due to the technical adoption issues you get with mainstream computer users, and the demand may not be there yet.
In contrast, the install base for the flash player is huge, and everyone has a browser. This may act as driver to push HD content adoption on the web, and change the general consumers perception of online video quality.

Of course you need to install the latest version of the Flash Player to be able to take advantage of the new options. There is almost no content out there yet, but I am sure it will be coming soon. Hulu has a blog post up about their HD gallery that is available to private beta testers.

Official details from the Adobe Feature List:

New H.264/HE-AAC options

Flash Player 9 includes H.264 video and High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio codec support that opens up a broad ecosystem and selection of standards-based video — up to HD quality — that developers can leverage in their applications. Supporting a subset of MPEG-4 Part 12 (container) and Part 14 (H.264), including baseline, main and high profiles, Flash Player can play back existing MP4, M4A, MOV, MP4V, 3GP and 3G2 content.