November 2006 Archives

I was updating an old Fedora Core 5 image (old = 5 months without updates) and the rpm database went ka-boom when it tried to update 500+ modules! So, after Google-ing around, I found a couple of possible fixes. This is the one that worked. As root, use the following commands:

% rm /var/lib/rpm/__db*
% rpm --rebuilddb
% yum clean all

Note - the filename in the rm command is [underscore][underscore]db*. The rpm rebuild took about 20 minutes and, after running the yum clean-up, the yum update worked like a champ.

On one of the web sites that I manage, I noticed a high influx of email bounce messages. That lead me to investigate one of my email scripts which, unfortunately, was vulnerable to one of those idiot email injectors. Now that I have deleted the 20,000 or so email messages from the adminstration account, I can get back to normal operations. If anyone is interested in the relatively easy solution, please contact me.

Since I seem to have the Flickr blog poster working, here is a snapshot of my poster for GIS Day!

Busy day at school today. The picture is of Dr Gary Coutu setting up some of the posters for the West Chester University Geography Club and Department of Geography and Planning's contribution to the world-wide celebration today of GIS Day, sponsored by ESRI, the makers of the ArcGIS suite of mapping products. It is a day when Geography students and educators can show how they have applied the emerging technology of Geographic Information Systems to their research and classwork, as well as to introduce the ways that GIS can be used in any number of areas. That's my poster in the lower right=hand corner of the picture!

Also, this is my first test post using the blogging interface from Flickr!

Well, I am well underway with the design work for the rest of the web site. I just got tired of the typical MT look and feel. My next challenge over the next week or so will be to try and apply it to the MT template system. It may take longer, but I want to give it a shot so that I can beter understand how the templates really work. I have tweaked them, but nothing super critical like an entire look and feel change. Something to play with in my spare time (like I have any).

And now for a break in the revolution! The elections are over for another cycle, classwork is pretty much up to date, and the holiday season is still a few weeks off. So, it is time to shake things up here a bit. New layout? Maybe. I do have to get MT up to the current release and I want to tidy up the web site in general. I also want to include a few new features like my latest bookmarks from Blinklist and a blogroll of stuff that I read on a regular basis. So, stop back in a few hours (or days) and see what's what!

I guess I must be making progress in my re-entry into the academic world. Just moments ago, I submitted my first abstract for a poster presentation at the 2007 Annual Meeting of the Association for American Geographers. Granted, submission does not mean acceptance, but it is such a thrill just to feel that I may have the opportunity to present at a national meeting! The really super part is that it is being held this coming April in San Francisco, California, a place that I truly love. And if I am fortunate enough to be accepted, there just may be a cross-country rail trip to get there as well, something I have always wanted to do. More on that later since I have a status report due tomorrow for my Local History class.

If you are in the United States and are registered, you have one mission and one mission alone.... See you at the polls!

Ok, have I become a Blinker? Damn straight! It is now obvious with the addition of a Blink It! link at the bottom of every post. The Blinklist team has instructions for adding a Blink It! link for Blogger and WordPress, as well as generic instructions for other blogs. Well, since I use MovableType, I took a few minutes to hack into my templates and figure out how to do it. So, here's the way to do it. You have to open up to four templates, depending upon the archiving method you use: Main Index, Category Archive, Date-based Archive, and Individual Entry Archive. i placed the Blink It! link right after the Permalink in each entry. You can opt for either using the Blink graphic or a text link. I opted for the latter since it fit in better with my layout. Here is the code you need to paste into the template to generate the link with your entry's title, permalink, and tag. Note that I am terrible about tagging the category for entries so I just used the blog title entry. So here is the code required: Blink It! with the graphic: <a href="http://www.blinklist.com/index.php?Action=Blink/addblink.php&Description=&Url=<$MTEntryPermalink$>&Title=<$MTEntryTitle$>&Tag=<$MTBlogName encode_html="1"$>"><img src="http://www.blinklist.com/Theme/Graphic/Blink_Small_Button.gif" alt="Blink It" style="border-width:0px;" /></a> Blink It! with a text link: <a href="http://www.blinklist.com/index.php?Action=Blink/addblink.php&Description=&Url=<$MTEntryPermalink$>&Title=<$MTEntryTitle$>&Tag=<$MTBlogName encode_html="1"$>">Blink It!</a> Remember that when you are done modifying your templates, you must rebuild your site for the changes to take affect! So, share the love! Feel free to steal the code for your MT blog!

Blinklist gets another gold star, a big one in my book. It all has to do with backup, something that most geeky types forget about until they hit an oops. So, like a good boy, I backed up my Blinklist and what did I get but an RSS feed of all my links! No more IE/Netscape favorites, but a well thought out XML feed. Here is a sample entry:

<item>
<title>Virtual Network Computing - Wikipedia</title>
<description>VNC Wikipedia entry</description>
<link>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vnc</link>
<guid></guid>
<pubDate>1162749883</pubDate>
<private></private>
<favourite></favourite>
<category>Geekdom,Remote_Access,VNC</category>
</item>

The field names have obvious meaning and are easily parsed. The publication date is based on the standard UNIX epoch. The fields private and favourite are either blank or have a value of on and the field category is easy to parse with simple comma delimiting. Now I am off to pull together a few perl modules to play with this puppy! Kudos to the Blinklist team!

I have been using Furl with success over the past months, but have been dismayed with the bulk link spammers who seem to have invaded there as well as other places. I usually take a moment several times a day to look to see what others are linking to and have to wade through the viagra and travel spam to get to anything useful. I had read about Blinklist so I figured, what the hell, give it a shot. Importing my links from Furl (over 2100!) was a bit tedious, but I found out from one of the Blinklist founders (who left a comment on my Blinklist) that they actually compare inbound links to a blacklist! Wow! What a concept! So, I am very pleased with the results so far. For the moment, I am double-linking to both Blinklist and Furl (anyone got a tool? maybe I should write one...), but I think that Blinklist will win out and become the replacement.

Aren't we all? So, if you want to comment here, you need to have a TypeKey account - no exceptions. It is free, painless, and only takes a minute to do. It saves me a little bit more of the aggrevation caused by those who just want to spoil the party.