<?xml version="1.0" encoding="us-ascii"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="./index.xsl"?>
<page title="Grand Overview" xmlns:xhtml="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
	<content>
		<entry date="2011-Nov-05">
			<xhtml:p>EditPlus touble after rebuild.</xhtml:p>
			<xhtml:p>So I rebuilt my server on friday evening, and sunday evening I went to work on some items on my laptop.  
			I have Edit+ configured with an ftp group to access my server using sftp, and using pagent for the password to login 
			with my public key.  When I went to connect this evening, I was presented with the alter that the server fingerprint had 
			changed and it asked if I wanted to accept the new one.  Then I was presented with the following error, which had me 
			stumped for a little while:
			</xhtml:p>
			<xhtml:p><xhtml:strong>Cannot change the remote directory</xhtml:strong></xhtml:p>
			<xhtml:p>I checked my settings, my home directory I had set in the Subdirectory setting was correct.  I thought myabe 
			it was trying to reference something I had previously open which was not there anymore but I didn't recall it ever 
			doing something like that in the past, and most everything got restored to the same place.
			</xhtml:p>
			<xhtml:p>Turns out the problem was I had never re-added my public key for my laptop into the .ssh/authorized_keys file 
			on the server so the login was failing.  Rather than public key failing and dropping back to entering a password, it 
			simply failed with an error about not being able to set the directory.</xhtml:p>
			<xhtml:p>Once I re-added my public key, everything worked fine again</xhtml:p>
		</entry>
		<entry date="2010-Sep-06">
			<xhtml:p>My new Macintosh.  Didn't cost an arm and a leg either.</xhtml:p>
			<xhtml:p><xhtml:a href="/images/poormac.jpg"><xhtml:img src="/images/poormac_thumb.jpg" title="New Macintosh Computer." alt="New Macintosh Computer image."/></xhtml:a></xhtml:p>
		</entry>
		<entry date="2010-Sep-06">
			<xhtml:p>Site has a new color scheme.  Horrible isn't it?  I'm not much of a designer, felt like it needed a change though.</xhtml:p>
		</entry>
		<entry date="2010-Jul-14">
			<xhtml:p>So, cleaned up my database a bit:</xhtml:p>
<consoleOutput>
98882 row(s) deleted. ( Query took 7.9524 sec )
DELETE FROM `guestbook` WHERE isPending =1
</consoleOutput>
			<xhtml:p>Guess the spammers were hitting a bit hard on my guestbook.  I had about another 9k rows deleted from my page comments table that were spam.  Never really noticed how much spam was 
			actually being posted to my site after I implemented by <xhtml:a href="/personal/2007/03/07/fighting_guestbook_spam.php">anti-spam methods</xhtml:a>.  All the spammers hitting my site I 
			believe just used simple crawaler/auto-post scripts which my method defeated.  Wouldn't do squat for a targeted attack though. </xhtml:p>
			<xhtml:p>Anyway, just a small update to the site.  I fixed my comment posting script so people can post comments to my articles again.  I thought it seemed rather quite.  
			I also added comment forms to my project pages so if anyone wants to comment on those they can.</xhtml:p>
			<xhtml:p>Speeking of my projects, I've recently managed to setup Visual C++ Express on my system, and all the stuff necessary to compile GTK+ applications.  As such, I am 
			updating some of my applications to either finally work on windows, or work a bit better.  I'm also importing them into SVN as necessary, and setting up some Visual C++ project 
			files so if anyone else wants to build them it should be easy to do on windows.</xhtml:p>
			<xhtml:p>I don't have an actual linux install anymore, so testing there is a bit more difficult.  I did setup Ubuntu in Virtual PC but it doesn't really work that great so I just do
			a build test mostly and see if the app compiles.  If so, then I call it good.</xhtml:p>
			<xhtml:p>So far I've update my <xhtml:a href="/projects/animations">Animation's</xhtml:a>, <xhtml:a href="/projects/uaccess">UAccess</xhtml:a>, and <xhtml:a href="/projects/lnote">LNote</xhtml:a> 
			programs.  I'm still working on LNote, but it does compile and run on both platforms right now.  Currently it's just rather slow with large files which is something I wish to improve.  
			In fact, as LNote was designed to be a light-weight editor without many features to hog memory, something I'd like to be able to do with it is use it for editing very large files (1gb+) as 
			most of my current editors wont open many files past that point.  I recently needed to open a 3gig file and nothing I had would do it.  I ended up editing the script I used to generate it
			to automatically rotate files after a few hundred meg.</xhtml:p>
			<xhtml:p>I'm not sure if GTK is even up for the task I may put it up to, but I figure I will try.  It'd be nice to have such a light-weight editor handy for those odd occasions where you need 
			to open a huge file.</xhtml:p>
		</entry>
		<entry date="2009-Dec-12">
			<xhtml:p>I've decided to change what I am doing with <xhtml:a href="projects/wiserjs">WiserJS</xhtml:a>.  I've shifted it from being an IRC bot to being a general purpose javascript engine.  This 
			will let me do more with it, and I can also play more with Spidermonkey's features.  Right now I've got a good start I believe.  There is a nice framework in place for the base engine and I've started 
			to create an IO module that will handle things like sockets, files, etc.  I currently only have the File class up and going (though it still needs some features) but hope to extend it to other classes soon.</xhtml:p>
		</entry>
		<entry date="2009-Apr-18">
			<xhtml:p>I put up a little info about my latest project, <xhtml:a href="projects/wiserjs">WiserJS</xhtml:a>.  It's a little IRC bot that 
			I have been making as a learning project to get myself more familar with C, as well as Spidermonkey.  Checkout the side for more details.
			</xhtml:p>
		</entry>
		<entry date="2009-Mar-27">
			<xhtml:p>So I finally fixed up a lot of the errors on my site.  The photo's section works again so you can view all the photos I have.  Also my Projects directory works 
			again so you can now access the list of all the projects I have worked on, including all my <xhtml:a href="projects/spidermonkey">Spidermonkey tutorials</xhtml:a>.  I 
			dont think there are too many other areas that need fixing up to be useable.  Work still needs done to make some of the site more functional (like I need an admin section 
			for my photo albums) but at least everything can be viewed I believe.
			</xhtml:p>
		</entry>
		<entry date="2008-Sep-09">
			<xhtml:p>Finished converting all the articles I've written to XML documents with an attached XSL style sheet.  Next up I will probably 
			work on my photo gallary, or maybe just finisht the other miscellaneous pages that are scattered around this website.</xhtml:p>

			<xhtml:p>One issue I did think of while converting all these documents is:  How will search engines such as google handle this new format?  Sure, all the content is still in the source, but there are a great deal of links that are no longer in the source as links.  For 
			instance my entire left-side nav bar is not in the source of any of the documents.  It's in the stylesheet.  Like wise most of my 
			links to mozilla's documentation for spidermonkey are created via a transformation, and the url is just an attribute of a custom 
			tag in the xml document.  Will the search engines still be able to follow this links and index the site properly? I guess I'll 
			find out based on how much traffic I get and how my indexed pages appear.</xhtml:p>
		</entry>
		<entry>
			<xhtml:p>Taking some time to learn XML+XSLT for web page generation.  I've always wanted to learn this ever since I saw what 
			<xhtml:a href="http://blizzard.com">Blizzard Entertainment</xhtml:a> was able to do with it on their 
			<xhtml:a href="http://wowarmory.com/">World of Warcraft Armory</xhtml:a> site.  It's been a rough start but I think I am starting to 
			understand this mess of tags.</xhtml:p>
			<xhtml:p>The first problem I had involved a IE/Firefox compatibility issue, which I believe may have been from IE's lacking the ability 
			to understand namespaces.  Due to the way I wanted to setup the pages, I needed the ability to simply copy elements from the base 
			xml document to the output document, but IE did not handle this well, so I had to create 
			<xhtml:a href="/personal/2008/09/07/xslt_recursive_copy.php">my own XML+XSLT function which will do a recursive copy</xhtml:a> 
			of the dom tree.  What fun that was.</xhtml:p>
			<xhtml:p>So far all I have converted is my index page.  I haven't actually replaced my old one yet though.  You can view the new 
			(still incomplete, style wise) index page at: <xhtml:a href="/index.xml">http://www.aoeex.com/index.xml</xhtml:a></xhtml:p>
		</entry>
		<entry>
			<xhtml:p>Taking a break from some programming work to bring you some physical work. I've been doing some yard work recently, trying to plant grass in an area that was nothing more than a weed bed before. If all goes well and this grass grows in nicely, I may try and do this in other area's around my house so I have some nice spots outside to sit and relax. So, take a look at <xhtml:a href="/personal/2008/05/27/yard_work.php">some pictures</xhtml:a> and read about my experience trying to get this to work.</xhtml:p>
		</entry>
		<entry>
			<xhtml:p>Inspired by an email I recently received, I have created a <xhtml:a href="/personal/2008/01/25/coding_with_spidermonkey_part_vii.php">seventh Spidermonky article</xhtml:a>.  This article covers 
			how to execute a Javascript function from your C application and get the return value for use in your application.  To demonstrate how 
			to do this I create a simple application for encrypting data which relys on Javascript functions to perform the actual encryption.
			Enjoy the new article, and as always, leave your comments :)</xhtml:p>
		
		</entry>
		<entry>
			<xhtml:p>We got some Sun Solaris Sunfire T1000's at the office, and I have more or less been tasked with managing these boxes.  
			I have never worked with Sun hardware, or software before, but because it's Linux like and I am the most experienced with 
			Linux I have been assigned the task.  That doesn't bother me, I've been having some fun with it and learning a lot.  The 
			first challange I had right away was how to reset the root password and the ALOM password because they had been lost
			between the time the boxes were originally setup and when I took over to finish preparing them.  Figuring out how to get 
			the passwords reset was about a week long venture.  I've taken the time to document what I did in an article, 
			<xhtml:a href="/personal/2007/10/08/resetting_root_password_in_solaris.php">Resetting root password in Solaris</xhtml:a>.  Hopefully 
			this will help out anyone who may be in a similar situation as me and keep them from spending a week figuring out 
			what they need to do.</xhtml:p>
		</entry>
		<entry>
			<xhtml:p>I finally got around to producing another spider-monkey tutorial.  This time I dive into creating a socket object that will allow my 
			javascript files to connect to a website and download a file.  I cover things like creating properties on a class and then using JS to 
			create a class using the socket class which deals specifically with HTTP.  I also cover how to pull properties from an object passed to a 
			function as a parameter, as that is the technique I used for the connect function.  So, check out 
			<xhtml:a href="/personal/2007/08/22/coding_with_spidermonkey_part_vi.php">Coding with Spidermonkey Part VI -  Sockets</xhtml:a> soon!</xhtml:p>
		</entry>
		<entry>
			<xhtml:p>Recently at work we have been messing with Exchange 2007 and setting up resource calendars for our conference rooms.  We got the 
			resource mailboxes fine, no problem there.  Where we did have a "problem" though was with the free busy data because it was not 
			being generated fast enough.  After much searching I finally found my way to a 
			<xhtml:a href="http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2004/08/19/217187.aspx">blog entry</xhtml:a>
			which explained how to lower the polling rate and get the information updated faster.  Basically you just need to add 
			a registry entry to <xhtml:strong>HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\MSExchangeFBPublish\Parameters\&lt;VS name&gt;</xhtml:strong> 
			where &lt;VS Name&gt; is the name of your exchange server.  Add a new DWORD value in that key named 
			<xhtml:strong>PollingInterval</xhtml:strong> and make the value the time in seconds you want the free busy data updated. There is 
			a minimum of 30 seconds.  Any value less than that causes it to use the default of 5 minutes.</xhtml:p>

			<xhtml:p>Once the change is complete you need to restart the MSExchangeSA (System Attendant) service for the change to take 
			effect.  You can accomplish that by running the following power shell command: 
			<xhtml:strong>Restart-Service MSExchangeSA</xhtml:strong>.  Now the free busy data for conference rooms is published according 
			to your schedule.</xhtml:p>
		</entry>
		<entry>
			<xhtml:p>I've added the ability to post comments on many pages on this site.  I wrote this so people can easily comment on any of the 
			articles I have written, or will write in the future.  I haven't tested each page I put the code into, but I belieive they should 
			all work fine.  So if you have some comments on one of the articles, please do write them down for me <xhtml:img src="/images/smile.gif" alt=":)"/></xhtml:p>
		</entry>
		<entry>
			<xhtml:p>Had some interesting problems crop up at the office the other day, though I would write up a little bit about what was 
			going on, what the solution ended up being, and a little about how I found that solution just so anyone else out there running 
			across the same problem has yet another resouce to find through google.  So without further delay, check out the 
			<xhtml:a href="/personal/2007/05/03/odbc_php5_and_ms-sql.php">ODBC, PHP5, and MS-SQL mess</xhtml:a>.</xhtml:p>
			
			<xhtml:p>Separatly from the work issue, I also had another personal issue the other night.  I recently put together a new 
			computer designed specifically for games.  I chose to run Windows Vista on the computer, because I wanted the pretty, and 
			I also like to run software that is new, near bleeding edge, if not the bleeding edge.  My problem had to do with enabling 
			the Administrator user account, so that I could use it as a target of the runas command.  After I enabled the account, it 
			was showing up on my welcome screen.  After a little research and playing I found how to do this.  Since I didn't find 
			any answer quick on google, I though I would write up a little article about 
			<xhtml:a href="/personal/2007/05/03/hide_account_in_vista.php">hiding a user account from the welcome screen in Vista</xhtml:a>. 
			Check it out if you are curious or want to know how to do that.</xhtml:p>
		</entry>
		<entry>
			<xhtml:p>I re-wrote the code for my guestbook about a week and a half ago, and while I was doing that implemeneted a new 
			anti-spam measure.  This method of controling spam has been working well for me since then, and because of that I have 
			decided to write up a short article about what I did to 
			<xhtml:a href="/personal/2007/03/07/fighting_guestbook_spam.php">fight my guestbook spam</xhtml:a>.  I hope this article will be of 
			some benifit to people out there and help them to learn new ways to fight the spam.</xhtml:p>
		</entry>
		<entry>
			<xhtml:p>I wrote another article on Spidermonkey.  In this article I built four custom objects:  Directory, File, FileStream, and DirectoryStream. 
			With the engine in this article it is possible to do basical file I/O operations, as demonstrated with my test javascript files.  I did not 
			extensivly cover the code in this article, instead I just went over some of the highlights of where I had problems.  I figure most people 
			reading this tutorial will be familar enough with C to understand the C operations, and all I needed to cover was the code regarding
			interacting with Spidermonkey.  So, please have a look over my fifth article, 
			<xhtml:a href="/personal/2007/02/12/coding_with_spidermonkey_part_v.php">Coding with Spidermonkey Part V - File and Directory management</xhtml:a>.</xhtml:p>
		</entry>
		<entry>
			<xhtml:p>I finally got enough interest and time to continue my experimentations with Spidermonkey.  You may read my 
			fourth part in my serise of articles now.  This article covers a few bug fixes to the old code, and new ideas 
			I gathered about the engine and how to use it.  I show how to throw Exceptions from within your function incase you 
			encounter a problem, and finally I cover the steps involved in creating a basic File object 
			which allows one to create files, check if a file exists, and touch a file to update it's access time.  My next 
			article will probably involve either extending the file object to include some I/O or creating a separate Stream 
			object to handle the I/O.  I have not decided yet which direction I wish to go.  For now, enjoy the fourth article, 
			<xhtml:a href="/personal/2006/12/28/coding_with_spidermonkey_part_iv.php">Coding with Spidermonkey Part IV - 
			Files and Exceptions</xhtml:a>.</xhtml:p>
		</entry>
		<entry>
			<xhtml:p>I've been getting hits to my site from people searching for the tribute to the nice girls.  I have the 
			<xhtml:a href="/personal/2005/07/11/tribute_to_the_nice_guys.php">tribute to the nice guys</xhtml:a> and was curious 
			to see what the girls version was so I looked it up.  I found it, and decided I would host it aswell, to 
			be fair I guess.  So, here it is, the <xhtml:a href="/personal/2006/07/17/ode_to_the_nice_girls.php">Ode 
			to the Nice Girls</xhtml:a>.</xhtml:p>

			<xhtml:blockquote cite="http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/phi/114087824.html">
				<xhtml:h1>Ode to the Nice Girls</xhtml:h1>
				<xhtml:p>This is my tribute to the nice girls. To the nice girls who are overlooked, 
				who become friends and nothing more, who spend hours fixating upon their looks 
				and their personalities and their actions because it must be they that are doing 
				something wrong. This is for the girls who don't give it up on the first date, 
				who don't want to play mind games, who provide a comforting hug and a supportive 
				audience for a story they've heard a thousand times. This is for the girls who 
				understand that they aren't perfect and that the guys they're interested in aren't 
				either, for the girls who flirt and laugh and worry and obsess over the slightest 
				glance, whisper, touch, because somehow they are able to keep alive that hope that 
				maybe... maybe this time he'll have understood. This is an homage to the girls who 
				laugh loud and often, who are comfortable in skirts and sweats and combat boots, 
				who care more than they should for guys who don't deserve their attention. This is 
				for those girls who have been in the trenches, who have watched other girls time 
				and time again fake up and make up and fuck up the guys in their lives without 
				saying a word. This is for the girls who have been there from the beginning and 
				have heard the trite words of advice, from "there are plenty of fish in the sea," 
				to "time heals all wounds." This is to honor those girls who know that guys are 
				just as scared as they are, who know that they deserve better, who are seeking to 
				find it.</xhtml:p>

				<xhtml:p style="text-align: right"><xhtml:a href="/personal/2006/07/17/ode_to_the_nice_girls.php">read more...</xhtml:a></xhtml:p>
			</xhtml:blockquote>

		</entry>
		<entry>
			<xhtml:p>I've finished the <xhtml:a href="/personal/2006/07/04/coding_with_spidermonkey_part_iii.php">third Coding with Spidermonkey</xhtml:a> 
			article.  I started this article on the 4th but am just now (the 8th) finishing it.  Didn't work on it the days in between. This 
			article covers how to make a Console object that your script can then use to read/write information from the Console on 
			stdin/stdout/stderr.  With this it's finally possible to do something with JS as now there's a basic form of input/output.  There 
			are still many features that could be added, but at least now the language is useable.</xhtml:p>
		</entry>
		<entry>
			<xhtml:p>The <xhtml:a href="/personal/2006/06/29/coding_with_spidermonkey_part_ii.php">second part of Coding for Spidermonkey</xhtml:a> 
			is out now.  Read it up and hopefully learn something.  It covers how to execute a file with Spidermonkey.  It's not much 
			compared to the orginal, but it's about the same length because there is more code examples and more code explinations 
			included.  I also got my <xhtml:a href="/pics/">photo gallery</xhtml:a> working again, but it's still plain as I haven't be able to style it 
			yet.  There are also a few things missing, but it does show the photos again at least.  I also moved the 
			<xhtml:a href="/personal/2005/07/11/tribute_to_the_nice_guys.php">Tribute to the nice guys</xhtml:a> rant to it's own page.  I'll keep an 
			excerpt on the main page for ya'll though.  Just the first paragraph.</xhtml:p>
		</entry>
		<entry>
			<xhtml:p>I've been working with spider monkey lately (and also GTK+ again, but that's minor).  I decided I will document my experiences 
			with spidermonkey as I go.  I feel that it may be useful to others in the future, and also useful to myself.  I find I often 
			lose time and/or interest on my personal projects for months at a time and when I do get back to it, I often end up needing 
			to re-learn a lot of infrormation I learned previously before I can continue.  This documentation will let me just read about 
			my past experiences and hopefully make the relearning process a lot easier and take a lot less time.  I will be documenting 
			my experiences in the form of an article or tutorial about how to interact with spidermonkey.  This way it can provide the most 
			good to everybody.  You can check out my first article, 
			<xhtml:a href="/personal/2006/06/07/coding_with_spidermonkey.php">Coding with spidermonkey</xhtml:a> if you wish.  Eventually I will try and 
			get a feeback system going for these articles, but for now if you want to get in touch with me, simply email me using the 
			address listed on the article.</xhtml:p>
		</entry>
		<entry>
			<xhtml:p>So, I'm working on my site right now.  I had a bad experience with wordpress and as a result I decided to just make my "blog"
			posts actual pages.  They were going to be pretty big and somewhat complex anyway, so this will probably work better in the long 
			run.  I decided that I should re-structure my site and re-code certain things (mostly the template system, dropping smarty) while 
			I was at it.  I'm splitting my CSS up into multiple files rather than one huge behemoth.  I'm going to be doing the same for my 
			javascript files, though they are already split up fairly well (but could be better).</xhtml:p>

			<xhtml:p>So, as these changes are taking place you will notice that some of my pages no longer work.  Just be patient and come back in 
			a day or two.  I don't think it will take me too long to implement all these changes.</xhtml:p>

			<xhtml:p>I find it funny that I type the above as if I actually had people who visited my site somewhat regularly.  Ha. Ha.</xhtml:p>
		</entry>
		<entry>
			<xhtml:p>Here's a little experiment I'm trying.  I created an <xhtml:a href="ftp://ftp.aoeex.com/">Anonymous FTP Server</xhtml:a> that is 
			writable, but not readable.  Meaning people can upload all they want, but nobody will be able to download anything.  What 
			good is this kind of service you ask?  Well, it's not worth anything, other than to test my theory.</xhtml:p>

			<xhtml:p>Now, last time I had an open FTP server, there were bots that would tag it then start uploading pirated stuff 
			(software, music, movies, etc) and use it as a distribution center for their "customers."  There are bots doing this type 
			of thing to all sorts of unprotected ftp servers out there already, so my server likely won't affect the pool much, 
			but basically what I want to see is how much stuff I manage to accumulate as bots discover this seeming paradise, 
			without realizing that once they upload their info, it can't be changed, updated, or re-downloaded.  So basically anything 
			they upload mearly becomes traped on my server.  Ocassionally I'll delete out the entries so I don't run out of diskspace, 
			but it will be intersting to see what kind of stuff the bots are willing to put on my server.</xhtml:p>
		</entry>
		<entry>
			<xhtml:p>Here's a good little tribute that was posted on devshed forums.  I dunno the orginal author, but I'll put it as a quote by the poster.</xhtml:p>
			<xhtml:blockquote cite="http://forums.devshed.com/t271169/s.html">
				<xhtml:h2>Tribute To The 'Nice Guys!</xhtml:h2>
				<xhtml:p>This is a tribute to the nice guys. The nice guys that finish last, that never become more than friends, that endure 
				hours of whining and bitching about what assholes guys are, while disproving the very point. This is dedicated to those 
				guys who always provide a shoulder to lean on but restrain themselves to tentative hugs, those guys who hold open doors 
				and give reassuring pats on the back and sit patiently outside the changing room at department stores. This is in honor 
				of the guys that obligingly reiterate how cute/beautiful/smart/funny/sexy their female friends are at the appropriate 
				moment, because they know most girls need that litany of support. This is in honor of the guys with open minds, with 
				laid-back attitudes, with honest concern. This is in honor of the guys who respect a girl.s every facet, from her 
				privacy to her theology to her clothing style.</xhtml:p>
				<xhtml:p style="text-align: right;"><xhtml:a href="/personal/2005/07/11/tribute_to_the_nice_guys.php">read more...</xhtml:a></xhtml:p>
				<xhtml:p style="text-align: right;"><xhtml:em>- illEATurHARTout</xhtml:em><xhtml:br />
				<xhtml:a href="http://forums.devshed.com/dev-shed-lounge-26/tribute-to-the-nice-guys-271169.html">http://forums.devshed.com/dev-shed-lounge-26/tribute-to-the-nice-guys-271169.html</xhtml:a></xhtml:p>
			</xhtml:blockquote>
		</entry>
	</content>
</page>

