Sean's Blog – Page 8

Sister 25 Years Cancer Free – Touching Story by Doctor

My younger sister often complained of bruises without reason and a descended abdomen. My mom took her to a doctor to get it checked out. That same day, I was a freshmen at Deerfield High School, I was called to the office where the admin said my mom was on the phone. She was very upset, trying to keep her composure, and broke the news to me that my sister has leukemia. She told me I could go home for the day. I don’t remember taking anything with me. I do remember walking home, upset, not knowing exactly what to think except that my sister faced possible death.

Putting aside many details, months later we found out we were a perfect match for a bone marrow transplant, and my sister has led a good life ever since. That was 25 years ago.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago. My sister had been contacted by someone, not sure of the exact details, who was associated with the Univ Wisconsin Children’s Hospital. They wanted to do a PR piece about her surviving cancer. It would include the nurse and doctor she had during the trying time in her life. Heather was always good to include me on these events. I guess you could say that she went through the battle, I just supplied her with the juice to survive. Whether I’d be included in the piece wasn’t a concern. I think we thought it was going to be a brother and sister piece, but it didn’t end up that way. No big deal. I was just blessed by the most touching story told to me by the doctor she had 25 years ago. Continue reading Sister 25 Years Cancer Free – Touching Story by Doctor

DB Rake:Fail

So I come to the part where I do

ruby script/generate model Page

part of the book. I realize that much has changed in 3 years in the Ruby on Rails world. I do what any newb does when they’re stuck, I turn to search. The command is

rails generate model Page

and whah-lah. Output appears on the terminal screen that something has automagically taken place. It can make you giddy. I have to laugh at this stuff, pros will look at this reaction and laugh. I think it’s simply awesome.

I move on and update the project/db/migrate/version_create_pages.rb file so that it has some info to insert as a record into my newly created table.

Page.create(:title => "Find A Gamer Home",
:permalink => "welcome-page",
:body => "Welcome to Find A Gamer")

in the self.up method. Save.

Shoot over to command line…

rake db:migrate

Thinks for a second and nothing seems to happen. The command line has let me down. I try again. Same result. Huh. You’d think it would change right? Just typing in the same command nothing happens, same result, strange.

Turn to search. Find some info on version numbers. Check database table, nothing new. I use

rails generate migration

don’t do that. It creates a blank migration.rb type file. Database does nothing. I end up deleting file.

I then try

rake db:migrate VERSION=<insert version number>

from <version number>_create_pages.rb file. and….BAM! some promising output appears on screen saying

create_table (:pages)

and

CreatePages:migrated

The above syntax is not verbatim, but you get the idea. Oh, the create_table part, yeah, I ended up dropping my database table with a command I shouldn’t have used. Good times.

Now, I thought rails db:migrate would do the trick without a version number, but I’ll go this route for now. Go with what works, right?

Newb Tales with Rails – Using a Book

Ok, beside the Pick Axe book or The Rails Way, I’m using Apresses Practical Rails:Social Networking Sites to start my project. It’s a bit dated, but should do the trick. It gives me, like they say, a practical application way to learn Rails. The Agile Web Development with Rails published by the folks at Pragmatic Programmers: http://pragprog.com/ is also a good book, but I’m not overly concerned with doing an ecommerce site right now, though I’ll probably tackle that was well just to do some more coding.

Having said all this, the project I’m tackling in the aforementioned book is going to be tweaked a bit to do something I’d like to actually launch into production. The gist of the project will be to learn rails AND do an application that will help the tabletop gaming community. I’ll elaborate more on the tabletop gaming project as I proceed.

Wish me luck!

Newb Tales with Ruby on Rails – Set Up Woes

I’m using Ubuntu 10.4 and have managed to get a rails environment up and running. It took some Googling and messing around, but it’s working now!

So I started a new application:

rails new <project name> -d=mysql

That managed to setup my project files.

Then I thought I’d get my webrick web server up and running

rails server

That didn’t work. Try running bundle install says the terminal.

bundle install

This could take a while...

That failed. So I found a spot where I had to do the following. Though I though I did this, I did it again. What’s the harm right?

sudo apt-get install libmysql-ruby libmysqlclient-dev

The I did

gem install rails

bundle install

gem install mysql

With all this, I then did

rails server

and whalah, I go to localhost:3000 and it works. Finally. Though I may have performed some redundant steps, I’m ready to go now. Live and learn.

Howto Use Tweetdeck Effectively

I do think that social media can be used by companies and organizations to help them monitor communications. I do want to make it clear that I don’t drink from the social media kool aid and think that if you’re not on social mediums that your company will fail. Some social media ‘experts’ have such strong convictions that they often tout the millions of dollars corporate America is saving or profiting from their social media initiatives. Just have an open mind and don’t be sold on it. Learn about it. See how your company can profit from social media and then use it constructively. Don’t do it because some guy shows you tons of links and forces the social media kool aid down your throat. The March 16th, 2010 Wall Street Journal article: Entrepreneurs Question Value of Social Media, quotes the following

“…survey of 500 U.S. small-business owners from the same sponsors found that just 22% made a profit last year from promoting their firms on social media, while 53% said they broke even. What’s more, 19% said they actually lost money due to their social-media initiatives.”

It’s most important to know how to use social media in order to net a profit and not a loss. One tool that can help you is TweetDeck. TweetDeck is a 3rd party application that can run on your desktop pc – Windows, Mac, or Linux, iphone, and iPad. It is an awesome tool that also facilitates updating your Twitter, Facebook, Google Buzz, MySpace, FourSquare and Linkedin all at once, OR you can choose which account to update with a specific post. You can also set it up to monitor your channels like direct messages, mentions of your @handle, and search terms that are crucial to your organization. This last part, search terms, will allow you to do a search, enter your company’s name, and then any time that term is used, you will be alerted and the tweet will show up in that column of TweetDeck. That is key to monitoring who is talking about your industry or your organization. It allows you to thank clients that praise and do damage control for those that are disgruntled. So what does all this mean? Let’s walk through a basic setup, it’s very easy. Continue reading Howto Use Tweetdeck Effectively

Howto Setup VPS Web Server I

Continuing from my previous post.

This is part 1 of the series.

Giving credit where credit is due, much of the info was found using Linode’s knowledge base. We are assuming you have set up an account with your VPS, we’ll be using Linode info as a reference since that’s what I’m using. The next step is to deploy your linux distribution.

1. Choose & Deploy Your Linux Distribution – see figure 6.3.1

Pick a distribution from the ‘Distribution’ drop down menu – A – We initially chose Ubuntu 8.04 LTS but later updated to 10.04 LTS
Enter ‘Deployment Disk Size’ – B – This is the amount of hard disk space you want to allocate to your virtual server. Looking back, I’d use it all. However, I chose to use half the space ( 8064)for a live server and hoped to use the other half for back up/redundancy.
Choose ‘Swap Disk’ – C – I used 256, middle of the road.
Enter your root password and confirm it.
Hit ‘Deploy’ – D – to make it happen.

2. Boot

The next step is to boot your machine. Ah, the excitement, right? You will see a que that refreshes every few seconds informing you the status progress of the boot up process. Figure 6.3.2 is a screen shot of the area this would be depicted.

The above screen shot, fig. 6.3.2, shows success after your VPS has successfully booted. Rock on!

This is a short article. You now have Linux running on your VPS. The next step will be to login via SSH, secure SSH, fetch and apply updates to the operating system, and set the host name.

How to Set Up Your Own Website Using VPS-Initial

As I mentioned in a previous article, I recently ditched shared web hosting and secured a virtual private server (VPS) account. I shopped around, as I encourage you to do, and chose Linode. The reason? They were reasonably cost, my co-worker recommended them and has been impressed with their service, and they have a very good knowledge base. I have yet to use their support, but I have heard their support is good as well. With setting up a VPS, support may be key. Whether it’s good documentation, a great user base, or tech support, being on your own can be a little scary, so make sure you get some feedback from trusted resources.

Logistics

Setting up an account with Linode was easy. I didn’t have huge needs so I went with their base package. At the time of this writing it consisted of paying $19.99 with a 10% discount per month for signing up for a year. My package has the following specs:

360 MB RAM
16 GB Storage
200 GB transfer

I am going to set up sites for blogging and a low volume forum. So I’m not doing anything overly intensive. I can always upgrade if that’s the case. Right now I have used 1GB of the 200.

After setting up my account with Linode, I had to choose a datacenter where my VPS would be located. I chose Dallas. Literally, New Jersey and Dallas locations were within a hundred miles difference to me, and Dallas is in the same time zone. I went with Dallas. You have to make sure there is one available in your location preference. Apparently some locations may fill up and hosting in that datacenter may not be an option.

After giving them your credit card info and choosing a location for your servers home base, it’s time to consider your future set up. I got a site up and running only to start over again. Not a big deal unless you have a site that you’ve been updating for a couple weeks. What I’m saying is, if you’re not overly invested in time, you can always nuke the server and start over no problem.

In this series of articles it’s important to know my specific situation because I am merely relaying my experiences to you; therefore, your situation and setup may be different and I can’t guarantee that all this will be as easy as it was for me. Continue reading How to Set Up Your Own Website Using VPS-Initial

Saying Good Bye to Shared Web Hosting

I first worked with websites and web hosting back in 2003, so it hasn’t been all that long in the grand scheme of things. I started out hosting an IIS server in my home to host forums for our roleplaying game group. I later bought my first domain grumblingdwarf.com and set up hosting through an online web hosting provider. I wanted the site to be more accessible to other people on the interwebs. Since my first site, sitting on a server in my basement, was ASP; I had to round up a web hosting company that offered IIS. It took me years to realize that shared hosting would be the bane of my webmaster existence. Looking back now, I can’t even recall the first hosting company I used. They are no longer around.

I heard about LAMP stacks and the plethora of online forums, and CMSs, that were available to anyone and came with what I needed for my site. I’m not a programmer so working with Joomla, phpbb, xoops, and eventually drupal, seemed like a good format for the sites I wanted. Eventually I secured hosting at Dreamhost. I couldn’t even tell you how I found them. The performance was erratic. Downtime became a problem. I think they even had a fire in one of their datacenters. Though their approach was charming with their ability to make light of situations, I had to move.

Finding a good web hosting provider online can be daunting. Anyone can be a provider. Set up a linux box and some specs with a website and you soon realize that the picture of the big corporate building is just a facade for some guy’s company that is really being run out of a basement. I haven’t even mentioned the shills that can manipulate reviews and comments about services that aren’t all that great. So finding a reputable host can be a challenge. Continue reading Saying Good Bye to Shared Web Hosting

GrumblingDwarf Status

I am having major issues with my hosting company, Dreamhost. There are plenty of things that have been going on in the last few days. The plain and simple truth is that the site has been down for quite some time and I have been informed that there are issues that Dreamhost is dealing with. Though I appreciate their efforts, 3-4 days of down time is unacceptable. If there were an issue with the coding behind the site, or a vulnerability that has been exposed, then I take full responsibility. It has not been confirmed that this is the case.

We will be securing other hosting as soon as we can. We are sure we’ve lost visitors. We hope they come back.

We appreciate your patience in all this.

Regards,
Sean
aka Master Dwarf

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Chapter of an IT Staffing Guy Closes

The blog had been a bit uneventful. I hoped to talk about tech and IT staffing from the perspective of an active IT staffer. I have since resigned from that role and I feel that it is inappropriate to portray an expert in that field due to the circumstances. Yes, I have made certain accomplishments in that specific profession, but things will change with time and talking about a topic that really is not a part of me would be misleading.

The future is exciting and I hope to contribute my knowledge and experience in other ways.