Justin Hamade's Blog

Quicksynergy autostart Ubuntu

2011-07-04T11:15:00.000-07:00

Starting quicksynergy in Ubuntu is actually really easy. If you do a "ps aux" after you have quicksynergy configured and running you will see something like

/usr/bin/synergys -f --config .quicksynergy/synergy.conf

All you need to do is add this to your "Startup Applications"
System Settings -> Startup Applications -> Add
Name: Synergy
Command: /usr/bin/synergys -f --config .quicksynergy/synergy.conf
Add->Close->Log out and log back in.

Done!

Screen VT100/ANSI Terminal Emulator Cheat Sheet - good coders code, great reuse

2011-03-16T13:31:00.000-07:00

I love using screen I just wish I knew more of the shortcuts. This cheat sheet has everything. Screen VT100/ANSI Terminal Emulator Cheat Sheet - good coders code, great reuse

Python Uniquify a List

2011-01-29T16:38:00.001-08:00

Using sets it is actually pretty trivial to do

import sets
my_list = [1, 2, 2, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6, 7, 7]
unique_set = sets.Set(my_list)

What is DevOps and why is it important

2010-12-12T18:23:00.000-08:00

With the recent purchase of Heroku by salesforce made me think about the future of the "SysAdmin".

As I was writing this I saw a recent talk given by Jacob Kaplan-Moss at Django Boston Meetup titled DevOps.

The job of a SysAdmin is changing, frameworks like Django and Ruby on Rails along with services providers like Google Apps, Heroku, VMForce, and Djangy give developers everything they need. The role of a SysAdmin is going to become very specialized, unless your talking about Windows systems ;)

Gitorious install on Debian Squeeze with stompserver

2010-11-25T19:19:00.000-08:00

I have modified this install tutorial from Christian Johansen found here http://cjohansen.no/en/ruby/setting_up_gitorious_on_your_own_server

Some info from here as well http://www.bluequartz.net/projects/ElectronicImaging/SCMService/html/index.html

There is also source for a debian package by Marius Mårnes Mathiesen here http://gitorious.org/gitorious-for-debian/gitorious the most recent commits are forked here http://gitorious.org/~brodock/gitorious-for-debian/brodocks-gitorious

Squeeze is needed for the new magickwand stuff

Had issues with activemq so using stompserver instead

apt-get install -y sudo git-core git-svn apg build-essential libpcre3 libpcre3-dev sendmail \
make zlib1g zlib1g-dev ssh memcached apache2 \
libonig-dev libyaml-dev geoip-bin libgeoip-dev libgeoip1 \
uuid uuid-dev openjdk-6-jre apache2-prefork-dev curl openssl libcurl4-gnutls-dev

apt-get install -y imagemagick libmagickwand-dev && \
gem install --no-ri --no-rdoc rmagick

apt-get install -y mysql-client mysql-server libmysqlclient15-dev && \
gem install --no-ri --no-rdoc mysql

wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/71099/ruby-enterprise_1.8.7-2010.02_i386_ubuntu8.04.deb
sudo dpkg -i ruby-enterprise*

echo 'export PATH=/opt/ruby-enterprise/bin:$PATH
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/local/lib"
export LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/lib -Wl,-rpath,/usr/local/lib"' >> /etc/profile

echo '/usr/local/lib
include ld.so.conf.d/*.conf' >> /etc/ld.so.conf

ldconfig

cd /usr/src
wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/70696/rubygems-1.3.7.tgz
tar xvzf rubygems*
cd rubygems*
ruby setup.rb

cd /usr/src
wget http://www.sphinxsearch.com/downloads/sphinx-0.9.9.tar.gz
tar xvfz sphinx-*
cd sphinx-*
./configure
make && sudo make install
gem install --no-ri --no-rdoc ultrasphinx

gem install stompserver
echo '#!/bin/sh
# Start/stop the stompserver
# WATCH THE LINE WRAPPING BELOW
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: stomp
# Required-Start: $local_fs $remote_fs $network $syslog
# Required-Stop:
# Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop: 1
# Short-Description: Stomp
# Description: Stomp
### END INIT INFO
$DAEMON=/usr/local/bin/stompserver
test -f $DAEMON || exit 0
. /lib/lsb/init-functions
case $1 in
start) log_daemon_msg Starting stompserver stompserver
     start-stop-daemon --start --name stompserver --startas $DAEMON \
                                      --background --user git
     log_end_msg $?
    ;;
stop) log_daemon_msg Stopping stompserver stompserver
     start-stop-daemon --stop --name stompserver
     log_end_msg $?
     ;;
restart) log_daemon_msg Restarting stompserver stompserver
    start-stop-daemon --stop --retry 5 --name stompserver
    start-stop-daemon --start --name stompserver --startas $DAEMON \
                                       --background --user git
    log_end_msg $?
    ;;
status)
    status_of_proc $DAEMON stompserver && exit 0 || exit $?
    ;;
*) log_action_msg Usage: /etc/init.d/stomp {start|stop|restart|status}
    exit 2
    ;;
esac
exit 0' > /etc/init.d/stompserver
chmod +x /etc/init.d/stompserver
update-rc.d stompserver defaults

echo '#!/bin/sh
# Start/stop the git poller
#
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: git-poller
# Required-Start: stomp
# Required-Stop:
# Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop: 1
# Short-Description: Gitorious poller
# Description: Gitorious poller
### END INIT INFO

GITORIOUS_ROOT=/var/www/gitorious
echo  `date` " Starting git-poller" >> "$GITORIOUS_ROOT/log/git-poller.log"
/bin/su -- git -c " cd $GITORIOUS_ROOT; RAILS_ENV=production script/poller $@"' > /etc/init.d/poller
chmod +x /etc/init.d/poller
update-rc.d poller defaults


git clone git://gitorious.org/gitorious/mainline.git gitorious
chmod -R g+sw /var/www/gitorious
ln -s /var/www/gitorious/script/gitorious /usr/local/bin/gitorious
cd gitorious/
rm public/.htaccess
mkdir -p tmp/pids
chmod ug+x script/*
chmod -R g+w config/ log/ public/ tmp/

which ruby
vi doc/templates/ubuntu/git-daemon

Gitorious ships with ready to use git-ultrasphinx and git-daemon scripts. Be aware that the git-daemon script has hardcoded paths to both Ruby Enterprise Edition and Gitorious. Pop open git-daemon and set correct paths to the Ruby you want to use (stick with REE if you installed it earlier) and your Gitorious installation. These are the lines you need to see (lines 16 and 18 at the time of writing):

GIT_DAEMON="/opt/ruby-enterprise/bin/ruby \
    /var/www/gitorious/script/git-daemon -d"

ln -s /var/www/gitorious/doc/templates/ubuntu/git-ultrasphinx /etc/init.d/.
ln -s /var/www/gitorious/doc/templates/ubuntu/git-daemon /etc/init.d/.

chmod +x /etc/init.d/git-ultrasphinx
chmod +x /etc/init.d/git-daemon
update-rc.d -f git-daemon start 99 2 3 4 5 .
update-rc.d -f git-ultrasphinx start 99 2 3 4 5 .

gem install --no-ri --no-rdoc rails mongrel mime-types textpow chronic \
    ruby-hmac daemons mime-types oniguruma textpow chronic BlueCloth \
    ruby-yadis ruby-openid geoip rspec rspec-rails RedCloth echoe
gem install --no-ri --no-rdoc --version="1.0.1" rack

adduser git
usermod -a -G gitorious git
mkdir /var/git
mkdir /var/git/repositories
mkdir /var/git/tarballs
mkdir /var/git/tarball-work
chown -R git:git /var/git

su git
mkdir ~/.ssh
chmod 700 ~/.ssh
touch ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
vi ~/.bashrc

Append the following to /home/git/.bashrc

# User specific aliases and functions
export RUBY_HOME=/opt/ruby-enterprise
export GEM_HOME=$RUBY_HOME/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems
export PATH=$RUBY_HOME/bin:$PATH

exit
cd /var/www/gitorious
cp config/database.sample.yml config/database.yml
cp config/gitorious.sample.yml config/gitorious.yml
cp config/broker.yml.example config/broker.yml
apg -m 64
config/gitorious.yml

See original doc for details on this config file

rake db:migrate RAILS_ENV=production
mysql -uroot -p
create database gitorious;
create database gitorious_test;
create database gitorious_dev;
grant all privileges on gitorious.* to YOURUSER@localhost \
    identified by 'YOURPASSWORD';
grant all privileges on gitorious_test.* to YOURUSER@localhost;
grant all privileges on gitorious_dev.* to YOURUSER@localhost;
sudo rake gems:install
vi config/database.yml

Make your config match your mysql db setup

rake db:migrate RAILS_ENV=production
cd /var/www/gitorious
env RAILS_ENV=production ruby script/create_admin
script/console
> user = User.first
> user.login = "yourname" # Change to your desired username
> user.activate
> user.accept_terms
> user.save
rake ultrasphinx:bootstrap RAILS_ENV=production
chown -R git:gitorious config/environment.rb script/poller log tmp
chmod -R g+w config/environment.rb script/poller log tmp
chmod ug+x script/poller
/etc/init.d/activemq start
env RAILS_ENV=production /etc/init.d/git-daemon start
su git -c \
  "cd /var/www/gitorious && \
    env RAILS_ENV=production script/poller run"

su git -c \
  "cd /var/www/gitorious && script/server -e production"

echo '* */1 * * * root cd /var/www/gitorious && rake ultrasphinx:index RAILS_ENV=production' >> /etc/crontab
cp doc/templates/ubuntu/gitorious-logrotate /etc/logrotate.d/gitorious
sudo chmod +x /etc/logrotate.d/gitorious
gem install passenger
passenger-install-apache2-module

a2enmod rewrite
a2enmod deflate
a2enmod passenger
a2enmod expires
a2enmod rewrite

vi conf/vhost.conf

Update config

ln -s /var/www/gitorious/conf/vhost.conf /etc/apache2/sites-available/gitorious
a2ensite gitorious

Nagios3 on Debian external commands

2010-08-11T13:59:00.000-07:00

Enabling external commands in nagios on a Debian deb install of nagios is a bit of a pain.

First in /etc/nagios3/nagios.cfg change

check_external_commands=1

Then you will get errors about

Error: Could not stat() command file '/var/lib/nagios3/rw/nagios.cmd'!

If you

rm /var/lib/nagios3/rw/nagios.cmd
chmod a+x /var/lib/nagios3
chmod g+s /var/lib/nagios3/rw
/etc/init.d/nagios restart

That error should go away and www-data should have read access to that file. You may need to

chgrp www-data /var/lib/nagios3/rw

But that was already there for me.

Django by Example: Django Tutorials - Django by Example

2010-07-21T08:46:00.000-07:00

Django by Example: Django Tutorials - Django by Example

A great list of Django tutorials. I have also started reading Foundation of Agile Python Development by Jeff Younker and will have a book review as soon as I am done.

Aastra disappoints again

2010-07-18T23:07:00.000-07:00

I have been doing VoIP work with Asterisk since pre 1.0 days, which is about 6-7 years. The very first phones we choose were the Aastra/Sayason 480i which were very feature rich and pretty good hardware. The software quality is what seemed to be lacking, it was a while ago so I can't remember specific examples. We decided, back at that time, to switch to Polycom 501s. The 501s were not much more in price, had the same features, maybe even more at that time, and just felt like a much better product.

After a few years Aastra came out with the 57i. The popular Nerd Vittles Blog run by Ward Mundy called this phone the best asterisk phone back in 2008 http://nerdvittles.com/?p=207. I was still hesitant to use it due to my poor experience that I had with Aastra phones previously.

We decided to try them again about 6 months ago, and with the new XML scripts that Aastra has made for Trixbox/Elastix/PIF these phones work great with Asterisk and I have not had one issue with the phones firmware.

Now due to my renewed faith in Aastra we decided to try the Aastralink Pro 160 bundle, which comes with a few phones. Our customer also needed wireless as well so we thought we would try the MBU400 which the ALP 160 fully supports. This is where the fun started.

First the Aastralink Pro 160. It has decent hardware, 2 FXS ports and 6 FXO ports, and it a pretty reasonable price compared to building your own system with Sangoma or Digium PCI cards. For the software that is a different story. As an Asterisk hacker I have been spoiled by flexibility. Even with Elastix (my choice of FreePBX distro) I can always throw something in extensions_custom.conf and change the dial plan to suite any customer's needs. Now I knew the ALP 160 didn't give me root access so I figured the basic stuff would be supported by the web based GUI, I guessed wrong.

You are forced to dial 9 (PSTN) or 8 (SIP) to dial out, you can't change this and my customers hate dialing prefixes
Not only do you have to dial a 8 prefix for SIP but if you have multiple SIP trunks you have to dial another prefix for the trunk number, ie 80 or 81 or 82
Inbound SIP calls all go to the same place, you cannot control calls based on SIP trunk or DID, you can control where the calls from the FXO ports go.
Each extension must have a Aastra hardware phone and must be online. You can have any SIP device as a mirrored extension but if the phone that it's mirrored to goes offline so does it.
I am guessing that timing is not sync'd between the FXO and FXS because I could not get faxing to work for the life of me.

So what other options are there for a small PBX? Xorcom makes one that is decent, this is what we switched our customer to. Building your own out of a Atom based barebones kit is a good option too. Or Ward calls his choice the Orgasmatron http://nerdvittles.com/?tag=orgasmatron but they don't have any FXS or FXO.

Second the MBU 400. Now this is a nice looking unit. It actually is identical hardware to the SNOM m3. It integrates pretty easy with the Aastralink Pro 160 (except it can't be a mirrored extension it has to be its own extension). But for some reason the unit we had would not connect back to the access point after being out of range, unless there was some sort of manual intervention. So I spent hours going back and forth with Aastra tech support. Now you figure people calling reseller tech support would be fairly technical, so the support people should be just as technical or even more. This is not the case for Aastra. The most common response I get from them for a few different issues that I had called about was "I don't know." If it is a tough problem that is fine, but at least offer a next step or some sort of escalation.

So what did we do? We switched to Polycom, again. This time to the Polycom Kirk 5040 handsets with the 600 access point, and a couple repeaters. These were a bit tough to dig through the manual and figure out how to get it setup, I did need help from our distributor on setting up the repeaters, but other than that these things have been rock solid for our customer.

The point of me writing this, other than to bash on Aastra, is to plead for them to stop trying to be a software company. I have heard of and experienced many show stopping issues in their firmware. Every time I upgrade an Aastra device I am not sure what I am going to get. It has been like this since the 480i days 7 years ago. I don't know what their development and testing process is, but I doubt that it is good. On the flip side, the hardware they make seems to be great, the problem is it takes them years to release firmware for it that is as good as the hardware is.

Rails on Debian

2010-07-15T09:51:00.000-07:00

Ran into a strange issue while debugging a Rails app that I am working on. I finally found the exact problem and issue here http://wiki.github.com/radiant/radiant/undefined-method-for-enumerable

Turns out that

the error comes from an incompatibility between Ruby 1.8.7 and Rails 2.0.2. Ruby 1.8.7 has String#chars and returns an Enumerator object, but Rails 2.0.2 expects an ActiveSupport::Multibyte::Chars object.

Which is pointed out here http://www.mail-archive.com/debian-bugs-dist@lists.debian.org/msg528878.html

Putting this in your environment.rb fixes the issue

unless '1.9'.respond_to?(:force_encoding)
  String.class_eval do
    begin
      remove_method :chars
    rescue NameError
      # OK
    end
  end
end

Fixing Python indentations in VIM

2010-07-14T11:49:00.000-07:00

Had this problem today where I created a file with eclipse then edited it with vim and that made the tabs inconsistent. Found this post on stackoverflow that had a couple of suggestions

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1024435/howto-fix-python-indentation

1. Use reindent.py - this requires apt-get install python-examples on debian/ubuntu
2. :%s/\t/ /g - this is what I used and it worked great

Other vim tricks I have used lately:
- Remove empty lines :%s/^[\ \t]*\n//g
- Re-indent entire file gg=G
- Remove lines with comments g/^#/d

Modular Django Admin Part 3

2010-06-01T20:35:00.000-07:00

Django Auth has a lot of stuff built in http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/auth/

A list of all the default templates and urls you need for login password reset and password change. Most of these templates are in django/contrib/admin/templates/registration

url(r'^accounts/login/$', 'django.contrib.auth.views.login',name='login'),
url(r'^accounts/$', 'django.contrib.auth.views.login',name='login'),
url(r'^accounts/logout/$', 'django.contrib.auth.views.logout',{'next_page': '/'},name='logout'),
url(r'^accounts/password_change/$', 'django.contrib.auth.views.password_change',name='password_change'),
url(r'^accounts/password_change_done/$', 'django.contrib.auth.views.password_change_done',name='password_change_done'),
url(r'^accounts/password_reset/$', 'django.contrib.auth.views.password_reset',name='password_reset'),
url(r'^accounts/accounts/password_reset/done/$', 'django.contrib.auth.views.password_reset_done',name='password_reset_done'),
url(r'^accounts/reset/(?P[0-9A-Za-z]+)-(?P.+)/$', 'django.contrib.auth.views.password_reset_confirm',name='password_reset_confirm'),
url(r'^accounts/reset/done/$', 'django.contrib.auth.views.password_reset_complete',name='password_reset_complete'),

template/registration/login.html (django/contrib/admin/templates/admin/login.html)
template/registration/logged_out.html
template/registration/password_change_form.html
template/registration/password_change_done.html
template/registration/password_reset_email.html
template/registration/password_reset_done.html
template/registration/password_reset_confirm.html
template/registration/password_reset_complete.html

So now we can login see generic view lists of our models, not we need to edit them.

Django Modular Admin Part 2

2010-05-16T12:01:00.000-07:00

I just realized that alot of the functionality that the admin login has is not part of django.contrib.auth but is only in the admin.

A couple of things I have figure out as a result with form validation errors in the template.
{{ form.non_field_errors }} is for a ValidationError that is for the whole form.

A snippet of my login.html template

<div id="welcome_login" title="Welcome To My Site"> 
  <p><b>Admin Login</b></p>
  <form action="." method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data" class="forms" name="form" >{% csrf_token %}
   {% if form.non_field_errors %}
   <div class="response-msg error ui-corner-all">
    <span>Error message</span>
    {{ form.non_field_errors }}
   </div>
   {% endif %}
     <ul> 
    <li> 
     <label for="id_username" class="desc">{% trans 'Username:' %}</label> 
     <div>
      {% if form.username.errors %}
      <div class="response-msg error ui-corner-all">
       <span>Error message</span>
       {{ form.username.errors }}
      </div>
      {% endif %}
      <input type="text" tabindex="1" maxlength="255" value="" class="field text full" name="username" id="email" />

     </div> 
    </li> 
    <li> 
     <label for="id_password" class="desc">{% trans 'Password:' %}</label>
     <div> 
      {% if form.password.errors %}
      <div class="response-msg error ui-corner-all">
       <span>Error message</span>
       {{ form.password.errors }}
      </div>
      {% endif %}
      <input type="password" tabindex="1" maxlength="255" value="" class="field text full" name="password" id="password" />
      <input type="hidden" name="this_is_the_login_form" value="1" />
     </div> 
    </li> 
   </ul> 
  </form> 
 </div>

More to come on django auth

Modular Django Admin Part 1

2010-05-13T21:12:00.000-07:00

The django admin is awesome, we all know that, but there is always the debate to role your own or to customize the admin. Make the admin more modular would be ideal and that is what we will be trying to do.

In part one we will just start with the basics and setup a tabular list using the object_list generic view with gives you pagination for free.

One trick to get the key/value pairs into the template of the model is using a function to return self.__dict__.iteritems()

The Model (myapp/models.py)

class MyObject(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=75)
    slug = models.SlugField(unique=True)
    
    def __unicode__(self):
        return self.name

    def attrs(self):
        for attr, value in self.__dict__.iteritems():
            yield attr, value

The View (myapp/views.py)

from django.views.generic.list_detail import object_list
def applicant_list_jobs(request):
    return object_list(request, queryset=Job.objects.all(), paginate_by=5)

The Template (templates/myapp/myobject_list.html)

{% extends "admin/change_list.html" %}
{% block content %}
 <table>
  {% for object in object_list %}
  
  <tr class="{% cycle 'row1' 'row2' %}">
   {% for key,value in object.attrs %}
   <td>{{ value }}</td>
   {% endfor %}
  </tr>
  {% endfor %}
 </table>
 <p class="paginator">
 {% if page_obj.has_previous %}
  <a href="?page={{ page_obj.previous_page_number }}"><</a>
 {% endif %}
  Page {{ page_obj.number }} of {{ page_obj.paginator.num_pages }}
 {% if page_obj.has_next %}
  <a href="?page={{ page_obj.next_page_number }}">></a>
 {% endif %}
</p>
{% endblock content %}

Next up will be where the templates and urls go for login and the built in authentication tools.

Revisited: Asterisk and FreePBX under Ubuntu 9.10 and Lighttpd on a Linode VPS

2010-03-31T23:39:00.000-07:00

Revisited: Asterisk and FreePBX under Ubuntu 9.10 and Lighttpd on a Linode VPS

Re: [Asterisk-Users] how to keep Asterisk up to date on many servers

2010-03-31T22:10:00.000-07:00

Re: [Asterisk-Users] how to keep Asterisk up to date on many servers

A fax server with IAXmodem and Hylafax

2010-03-31T19:46:00.000-07:00

A fax server with IAXmodem and Hylafax

Martin W Smith � Blog Archive � SVN Checksum Problem

2010-03-20T00:22:00.000-07:00

Martin W Smith � Blog Archive � SVN Checksum Problem

Django Model Values as Dict

2010-03-13T21:37:00.000-08:00

This is pretty easy to do but I always forget

obj_dict = MyModel.Objects.filter(id__gt=0).values()

And you can also add MyModel.objects.filter(id__gt=0).values_list('COLUMN',flat=True)

Hylafax 6.0 Debian Lenny T38modem 1.2.0 Asterisk 1.6

2010-02-26T00:35:00.000-08:00

After fighting with t38modem for a week I finally found versions of opal and ptlib that work with t38modem 1.2 for sending faxes (have not tested receiving yet). ptlib-2.6.6 opal-3.6.7 t38modem-1.2.0 I am using most of the other instructions from this how to below. Hylafax 6.0 Debian (or Ubuntu) T38modem 1.0 Asterisk 1.6

Debian Backports copy paste

2010-02-25T19:33:00.000-08:00

echo 'deb http://www.backports.org/debian lenny-backports main contrib non-free' >> /etc/apt/sources.list
apt-get update && apt-get install debian-backports-keyring --force-yes && apt-get update

instructions [Debian Backports]: "deb http://www.backports.org/debian lenny-backports main contrib non-free"

Django | User authentication in Django | Django documentation

2010-02-15T15:16:00.000-08:00

Django auth doesn't have all the urls listed anywhere so here they are:

    (r'^accounts/login/$', 'django.contrib.auth.views.login'),
    (r'^accounts/logout/$', 'django.contrib.auth.views.logout'),
    (r'^accounts/password_change/$', 'django.contrib.auth.views.password_change'),
    (r'^accounts/password_change_done/$', 'django.contrib.auth.views.password_change_done'),
    (r'^accounts/password_reset/$', 'django.contrib.auth.views.password_reset'),
    (r'^accounts/accounts/password_reset/done/$', 'django.contrib.auth.views.password_reset_done'),
    (r'^accounts/reset/(?P[0-9A-Za-z]+)-(?P.+)/$', 'django.contrib.auth.views.password_reset_confirm'),
    (r'^accounts/reset/done/$', 'django.contrib.auth.views.password_reset_complete'),

Django | User authentication in Django | Django documentation

Django | Generic views | Django documentation

2010-01-29T15:22:00.000-08:00

Took me forever to figure this out with generi views, but the I just don't read well. Here is an example template:

<p class=\"paginator\">
 <span class=\"step-links\">
  {% if page_obj.has_previous %}
   <a href=\"?page={{ page_obj.previous_page_number }}\"><</a>
  {% endif %}

  <span class=\"current\">
   Page <span class=\"this-page\">{{ page }}</span> of {{ paginator.num_pages }}
  </span>

  {% if page_obj.has_next %}
   <a href=\"?page={{ page_obj.next_page_number }}\">></a>
  {% endif %}
 </span>
</p>

"If the results are paginated, the context will contain these extra variables: paginator: An instance of django.core.paginator.Paginator. page_obj: An instance of django.core.paginator.Page." Django Generic views object_list:

Dynamic Inlines Built into Django Admin in 1.2

2010-01-28T09:04:00.000-08:00

So I was talking at a Django round table last night and talking about the fixes I did to the dynamic inlines for the admin. And someone mentioned that a)jquery is now included in Django 1.2 and b) dynmaic inlines are built in as well. /django/trunk/django/contrib/admin/media/js/inlines.js

Django CMS Photologue plugin with Gallerific

2010-01-24T18:28:00.000-08:00

I just made a fork of the django cms photologue plugin with gallerific jquery gallery Django CMS Photologue plugin with Gallerific

Django snippets: jQuery Double Click Edit ManyToMany in Admin

2010-01-22T15:13:00.000-08:00

Take a look at my code on django snippets. Just drop this into your templates/admin/change_form.html and any select for a foreign key or many to many will allow a double click to pop up and edit

Django snippets: jQuery Double Click Edit ManyToMany in Admin

Fabric, Django, Git, Apache, mod_wsgi, virtualenv and pip deployment | Morethanseven

2010-01-14T11:46:00.000-08:00

Another good example of django deployments with fabric

Fabric, Django, Git, Apache, mod_wsgi, virtualenv and pip deployment | Morethanseven

Web Form Design Patterns: Sign-Up Forms - Smashing Magazine

2010-01-09T14:55:00.000-08:00

Web Form Design Patterns: Sign-Up Forms - Smashing Magazine

How the Washington Post creates and deploys sites fast with virtualenv and Django

2010-01-08T16:42:00.000-08:00

Great tutorial for creating and easy process to deploy Django projects.

How we create and deploy sites fast with virtualenv and Django | Open Source at The Washington Times

washingtontimes's django-repositories at master - GitHub

2010-01-08T16:38:00.000-08:00

Django App to battle trac ... finally, now if some one can incorporate time tracking and other PM into it that would be sweet, maybe I'll do that in my abundance of spare time.

washingtontimes's django-repositories at master - GitHub

pyDanny: Picking a Django powered CMS

2010-01-08T08:52:00.000-08:00

I picked django-cms but now im second guessing myself :(

pyDanny: Picking a Django powered CMS: "http://code.google.com/p/django-page-cms/"

Ninja - A Nagios GUI Project

2010-01-07T08:55:00.000-08:00

Ninja - A Nagios GUI Project

Quick tip: how to convert tables to InnoDB

2010-01-07T08:45:00.000-08:00

apt-get install maatkit

mk-find --engine MyISAM --exec "ALTER TABLE %D.%N ENGINE=INNODB" --print

Quick tip: how to convert tables to InnoDB | MySQL Performance Blog:

Multiple Inserts with a Subquery | Code Spatter

2010-01-06T13:52:00.000-08:00

Multiple Inserts with a Subquery | Code Spatter

Django Dynamic Formset

2010-01-06T13:12:00.000-08:00

I posted Previously about this jquery plugin. I have just figured out a very plugable way to get this working in the admin with adding just one form.

Add the following to templates/admin/APP/MODEL/change_form.html and also update the MODEL in the prefix setting.

{% extends "admin/change_form.html" %}
{% load i18n admin_modify adminmedia %}
{% block extrahead %}
{{ block.super }}

  // Define this so we don't have to bother with the admin jsi18n stuff:
  function gettext(msgid) { return msgid; }

  $(function() {
      $('.inline-related tbody tr').formset({
   prefix: 'MODEL_set',
   addText: 'Add',
   deleteText: 'Delete',
  });
  });

  .add-row {
      padding-left:18px;
      background:url({% admin_media_prefix %}img/admin/icon_addlink.gif) no-repeat left center;
  }
  .delete-row {
      float:right;
      display:block;
      padding-left:18px;
      background:url({% admin_media_prefix %}img/admin/icon_deletelink.gif) no-repeat left center;
  }

{% endblock %}

Thanks Stanislaus

Django Dynamic Formset

philomat's django-form-designer at master - GitHub

2010-01-05T02:36:00.000-08:00

philomat's django-form-designer at master - GitHub

Download SpeedFan - Access temperature sensor in your computer

2010-01-01T20:18:00.000-08:00

Download SpeedFan - Access temperature sensor in your computer

howto:chroot_debian - DNS323Wiki

2010-01-01T14:10:00.000-08:00

Installing debian on the DLink DNS323 NAS is really easy, just download and extact the files to the root directory and restart it.

Default password is 12345678 make sure you reset it.

Also update your /etc/apt/source.list to lenny and apt-get update (don't forget to apt-get install debian-archive-keyring)

Files

http://mesh.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/debnas/debnas-0.5.tar.bz2

Instructions

howto:chroot_debian - DNS323Wiki

XMBC and PowerDVD HTPC

2009-12-31T18:46:00.000-08:00

Power DVD shortcut keys
PowerDVD Ultra Keyboard Shortcuts

XBMC Launcher
http://code.google.com/p/xbmc-launcher/wiki/Main

Intel Board
http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=32612&vpn=BOXDG45FC&manufacture=Intel

Howto: Make RML templates from Openoffice.org ODT files | SOASI

2009-12-30T08:11:00.000-08:00

Howto: Make RML templates from Openoffice.org ODT files | SOASI

Django Cheat Sheet

2009-12-24T11:07:00.000-08:00

A very good cheat sheet include Time and Date info

django-dynamic-formset

2009-12-22T15:48:00.000-08:00

A nice simple jquery plugin to make dynameic formsets django-dynamic-formset

Source interface with Python and urllib2 - Stack Overflow

2009-12-21T15:57:00.000-08:00

A monkey patch to change your source interface with python Source interface with Python and urllib2

import socket
true_socket = socket.socket
def bound_socket(*a, **k):
    sock = true_socket(*a, **k)
    sock.bind((sourceIP, 0))
    return sock
socket.socket = bound_socket

SplitSettings - Django

2009-12-15T08:28:00.000-08:00

No sure why they don't set this up by default but the best way to setup your media and template paths is:

DIRNAME = os.path.abspath(os.path.dirname(__file__))
DATABASE_NAME = os.path.join(DIRNAME, 'project.db')
MEDIA_ROOT = os.path.join(DIRNAME,'media')
TEMPLATE_DIRS = (
    os.path.join(DIRNAME,'templates'),
)

SplitSettings - Django - Trac

Inlines support for Django generic views

2009-12-15T07:28:00.000-08:00

Django generic views are missing one major feature, inline forms. This class is a drop in that adds the functionality. Wad of Stuff: Inlines support for Django generic views

How to use *args and **kwargs in Python

2009-12-13T07:58:00.000-08:00

A good example of kwargs and args How to use *args and **kwargs in Python

Lazy choices in Django form

2009-12-12T16:19:00.000-08:00

A cool library that django has the doesn't seem to be documented very well

from django.utils.functional import lazy

class CarSearchForm(forms.Form):  
    # lots of fields like this
    bodystyle = forms.ChoiceField(choices=lazy(bodystyle_choices, tuple)())

Lazy choices in Django form - Stack Overflow

Python get IP of interface

2009-12-10T09:50:00.000-08:00

Recipe 439094: get the IP address associated with a network interface (linux only)

Simple Python ping method

2009-12-10T09:37:00.000-08:00

def ping(host):
    result = subprocess.call(["ping","-c","1",host],stdout=subprocess.PIPE,stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
    if result == 0:
        return True
    elif result == 1:
        raise Exception('Host not found')
    elif result == 2:
        raise Exception('Ping timed out')

useage:

try:
    ping('192.168.100.100')
except Exception:
    print "Ping error"
    raise

Django/Eclipse Debug

2009-12-09T12:42:00.000-08:00

This is a sweet setup for Django development with eclipse to use debug to run manage.py runserver YouTube - Django/Eclipse Debug

search and replace with regular expressions in eclipse

2009-12-09T12:40:00.000-08:00

Found a great way to do dynamic search and replace in eclipse. search and replace with regular expressions in eclipse

Foreign Key in Hidden Field

2009-07-17T08:49:00.000-07:00

In order to have a hidden foreign key your in your form class you need to specify:

class PlanForm(forms.ModelForm):    
    owner = forms.ModelChoiceField(label="",queryset=Profile.objects.all(),widget=forms.HiddenInput())

Class definition order between two related classes

2009-07-17T08:05:00.000-07:00

I ran into an issue where I wanted to have a foreign key to one class then over ride the save in the other class to update the current class. It would through and error because one of the classes was not defined. I finally found this post Class definition order between two related classes and see that you can but the models name in quotes in the foreign key. example:

class Foo(models.Model):
    bar = models.ForeignKey("Bar")
    name = models.CharField(max_length=100)

class Bar(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    def save(self):
        foos = Foo.objects.filter(item=self)         
        foos.update(name=self.name)
        super(Bar, self).save()

Django Custom Permissions ... sorta

2009-04-23T11:25:00.000-07:00

There is no built in way to do row level permissions in Django, yet (see here) I have found a few hacks to get around this in the admin section. This is using 1.0.2 First add a Foreign key to the model this is an example models.py

from django.contrib.auth.models import User, Group
from django.db import models

class MyModel(models.Model):
   name = models.CharField(max_lenght=100)
   group = models.ForeignKey(Group)

Then in admin.py we need to override the queryset so that the user can only see objects that are part of his group and that he can only add objects that belong to his group

from django.contrib.auth.models import Group
from django.contrib import admin
from myproject.myapp.models import MyModel

class MyModelAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
   def __call__(self,request,url):
       self.request = request
       return super(DeviceAdmin, self).__call__(request,url)
   def formfield_for_dbfield(self, db_field, **kwargs):
       field = super(DeviceAdmin, self).formfield_for_dbfield(db_field, **kwargs)
       if not self.request.user.is_superuser and db_field.name == 'group':
           my_choices = [('', '---------')]
           my_choices.extend(
               Group.objects.filter(
                   name__in=self.request.user.groups.all()
               ).values_list('id','name')
           ) # This can be one line it just doesn't fit
           print my_choices
           field.choices = my_choices
       return field
    def queryset(self, request):
        qs = super(MyModelAdmin, self).queryset(request)
        if request.user.is_superuser:
            return qs
        else:
            group_qs = Group.objects.filter(name__in=request.user.groups.all())
            return qs.filter(group__in=group_qs)

admin.site.register(MyModel,MyModelAdmin)

Now if you setup the admin in your settings and urls the groups for MyModel will only show up if the user belongs to that group. If the user is a super user they will see all the groups. If they user does not belong to any groups then they will not see any groups. Note: You can probably submit a post with the ID of a group that you do not belong to and it will work, I have not figured out how to add custom validation based on the request object yet. Here are some links that I used as a reference: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/430592/djang-admin-charfield-as-textarea http://www.djangosnippets.org/snippets/414/ http://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/3987#comment:32

Installing MySQL and PHP4 with apache1.3

2008-03-11T11:27:00.000-07:00

Continued from previous post


#!/bin/bash
cd /usr/src

wget  http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/MySQL-5.0/mysql-5.0.51a.tar.gz/from/http://mysql.mirror.rafal.ca/
tar xzvf mysql-5.0.51a.tar.gz
cd mysql-5.0.51a
groupadd mysql
useradd -g mysql mysql
./configure
make
make install
cp support-files/my-small.cnf /etc/my.cnf
cd /usr/local/mysql
chown -R mysql .
chgrp -R mysql .
bin/mysql_install_db --user=mysql
chown -R root .
chown -R mysql var
bin/mysqld_safe --user=mysql &

wget http://ca3.php.net/get/php-4.4.8.tar.gz/from/ca.php.net/mirror
tar zxvf php-4.4.8.tar.gz
cd php-4.4.8
#assumes apache was configure as DSO
./configure --with-apxs=/usr/local/apache/bin/apxs
make
make install

Review /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf LoadModule php4_module libexec/libphp4.so should already be in the config file Add or verify Addtype application/x-httpd-php .php Addtype application/x-httpd-php-source .phps

Install Apache with modssl from source

2008-03-11T11:15:00.000-07:00

copy and paste the following into a new file then chmod it to 755

#!/bin/bash

cd /usr/src
wget http://www.openssl.org/source/openssl-0.9.8g.tar.gz
tar xzvf openssl-0.9.8g.tar.gz
cd openssl-0.9.8g
./config
read -p "If ./config finished press enter to make"
make
read -p "If make finished press enter to make install"
make install
read -p "If make install finished press enter to install apache and modssl "

wget http://archive.apache.org/dist/httpd/apache_1.3.41.tar.gz
tar zxvf apache_1.3.41.tar.gz
wget http://www.modssl.org/source/mod_ssl-2.8.31-1.3.41.tar.gz
tar xzvf mod_ssl-2.8.31-1.3.41.tar.gz
cd mod_ssl-2.8.31-1.3.41
./configure --with-apache=../apache_1.3.41 \
 --with-ssl=../openssl-0.9.8g \
 --prefix=/usr/local/apache \
 --enable-shared=max
read -p "If ./configure finished press enter to make"
cd ../apache_1.3.41
make
read -p "If make finished press enter to make install"
make certificate
make install

Asterisk Install Script for Debian

2008-01-03T08:58:00.001-08:00

#!/bin/bash

# Script to download and untar lastest asterisk build
# Justin Hamade v1 - March 24, 2007
# Justin Hamade v1.1 - May 28, 2007 - Added:
# 1. ability to install 1.2 or 1.4
# 2. dep check for wget, make, and gcc
# 3. install asterisk-gui option for 1.4


# ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Pause.
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
pause()
{

        if test $NONINTERACTIVE; then
                return 0
        fi

        [ $# -ne 0 ] && echo -e $* >&2
        echo -e "Press [Enter] to continue...\c" >&2
        read tmp
        return 0
}
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Prompt user for input.
# Usage:
# prompt "Prompt"
# $CMD
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
prompt()
{
        if test $NONINTERACTIVE; then
                return 0
        fi

        echo -ne "$*" >&2
        read CMD rest
        return 0
}

# ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Get Yes/No
# Usage:
# getyn "\nWould you like to continue?" || return 1
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
getyn()
{
        if test $NONINTERACTIVE; then
                return 0
        fi

        while prompt "$* (y/n) "
        do      case $CMD in
                        [yY])   return 0
                                ;;
                        [nN])   return 1
                                ;;
                        *)      echo -e "\nPlease answer y or n" >&2
                                ;;
                esac
        done
}
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
# Get Version
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
getversion()
{
        if test $NONINTERACTIVE; then
                return 0
        fi

        while prompt "Enter $* minor version number (for 1.$BRANCH.0 enter 0 for 1.$BRANCH.1.1 enter 1.1): "
        do      case $CMD in
                        [0-9]|[1-2][0-9]|[0-9].[0-9]|[1-2][0-9].[0-9])
                                return 0
                                ;;
                        *)      echo -e "Please answer a number from 0 to 29" >&2
                                ;;
                esac
        done
}

getbranch()
{
        if test $NONINTERACTIVE; then
                return 0
        fi

        while prompt "Enter asterisk branch number (for 1.2 enter 2 for 1.4 enter 4): "
        do      case $CMD in
                        [2]|[4])
                                return 0
                                ;;
                        *)      echo -e "Please enter 2 or 4" >&2
                                ;;
                esac
        done
}

install_libpri ()
{
        getyn "Install libpri?" || return 1
        LIBPRIVERSION=0
        getversion "libpri"
        LIBPRIVERSION=$CMD
        cd $SRCDIR
        wget ftp://ftp.digium.com/pub/libpri/libpri-1.$BRANCH.$LIBPRIVERSION.tar.gz
        tar zxvf libpri-1.$BRANCH.$LIBPRIVERSION.tar.gz
        rm libpri-1.$BRANCH.$LIBPRIVERSION.tar.gz
        cd $SRCDIR/libpri-1.$BRANCH.$LIBPRIVERSION
        make && make install
        cd $SRCDIR
}

install_zaptel ()
{
        getyn "Install zaptel?" || return 1
        ZAPTELVERSION=1
        getversion "zaptel"
        ZAPTELVERSION=$CMD
        cd $SRCDIR
        wget ftp://ftp.digium.com/pub/zaptel/zaptel-1.$BRANCH.$ZAPTELVERSION.tar.gz
        tar zxvf zaptel-1.$BRANCH.$ZAPTELVERSION.tar.gz
        rm zaptel-1.$BRANCH.$ZAPTELVERSION.tar.gz
        ln -s $SRCDIR/zaptel-1.$BRANCH.$ZAPTELVERSION /usr/src/zaptel
        cd $SRCDIR/zaptel-1.$BRANCH.$ZAPTELVERSION
        if [ "$BRANCH" = "4" ]; then
                ./configure && make menuselect
        fi
        make && make install
        cd $SRCDIR
}

install_asterisk ()
{
        getyn "Install asterisk?" || return 1
        ASTERISKVERSION=2
        getversion "asterisk"
        ASTERISKVERSION=$CMD
        cd $SRCDIR
        wget ftp://ftp.digium.com/pub/asterisk/asterisk-1.$BRANCH.$ASTERISKVERSION.tar.gz
        tar zxvf asterisk-1.$BRANCH.$ASTERISKVERSION.tar.gz
        rm asterisk-1.$BRANCH.$ASTERISKVERSION.tar.gz
        cd $SRCDIR/asterisk-1.$BRANCH.$ASTERISKVERSION
        if [ "$BRANCH" = "4" ]; then
                ./configure && make menuselect
        fi
        make && make install
        cd $SRCDIR
}

install_addons ()
{
        getyn "Install asterisk-addons?" || return 1
        ADDONSVERSION=0
        getversion "addons"
        ADDONSVERSION=$CMD
        cd $SRCDIR
        wget ftp://ftp.digium.com/pub/asterisk/asterisk-addons-1.$BRANCH.$ADDONSVERSION.tar.gz
        tar zxvf asterisk-addons-1.$BRANCH.$ADDONSVERSION.tar.gz
        rm asterisk-addons-1.$BRANCH.$ADDONSVERSION.tar.gz
        cd $SRCDIR/asterisk-addons-1.$BRANCH.$ADDONSVERSION
        if [ "$BRANCH" = "4" ]; then
                ./configure && make menuselect
        fi
        make && make install
        cd $SRCDIR
}
install_gui ()
{
        getyn "Install asterisk-gui?" || return 1
        cd $SRCDIR
        svn checkout http://svn.digium.com/svn/asterisk-gui/trunk asterisk-gui
        cd $SRCDIR/asterisk-gui
        ./configure && make && make install && make samples
        cd $SRCDIR
}
install_sounds ()
{
        getyn "Install asterisk-sounds?" || return 1
        SOUNDSVERSION=0
        getversion "sounds"
        SOUNDSVERSION=$CMD
        cd $SRCDIR
        wget ftp://ftp.digium.com/pub/asterisk/asterisk-sounds-1.$BRANCH.$ADDONSVERSION.tar.gz
        tar zxvf asterisk-sounds-1.$BRANCH.$SOUNDSVERSION.tar.gz
        rm asterisk-sounds-1.$BRANCH.$SOUNDSVERSION.tar.gz
        cd $SRCDIR/asterisk-sounds-1.$BRANCH.$SOUNDSVERSION
        make install
        cd $SRCDIR
}
install_wanpipe ()
{
        getyn "Install sangoma wanpipe?" || return 1
        prompt "Enter wanpipe version (ie 2.3.4-9 or 3.1.0)"
        WANPIPEVERSION=$CMD
        cd $SRCDIR
        wget ftp://ftp.sangoma.com/linux/current_wanpipe/wanpipe-$WANPIPEVERSION.tgz
        tar zxvf wanpipe-$WANPIPEVERSION.tgz
        rm wanpipe-$WANPIPEVERSION.tgz
        cd $SRCDIR/wanpipe-$WANPIPEVERSION
        ./Setup install
        cd $SRCDIR
}

banner ()
{
        cat << ENDOFTEXT
This script will download and install Asterisk 1.2 or 1.4 and its required packages including Sangoma drivers.
ENDOFTEXT
pause
}

checkwget ()
{
        echo "Checking wget ...";
        if [ ! -x $WGET ]; then
                getyn "wget not installed run, apt-get install wget?" || return 1
                apt-get install wget
        fi
        echo "success"
}
checkmake ()
{
        echo "Checking make ...";
        if [ ! -x $MAKE ]; then
                getyn "make not installed, run apt-get install make?" || return 1
                apt-get install make
        fi
        echo "success"
}
checkgcc ()
{
        echo "Checking gcc ...";
        if [ ! -x $GCC ]; then
                getyn "gcc not installed, run apt-get install gcc?" || return 1
                apt-get install gcc
        fi
        echo "success"
}


banner
WGET=/usr/bin/wget
checkwget
MAKE=/usr/bin/make
checkmake
GCC=/usr/bin/gcc
checkgcc
getbranch
BRANCH=$CMD

SRCDIR="/usr/src/asterisk-1.$BRANCH"
if [ -d $SRCDIR ]; then
        echo "directory exsists"
else
        mkdir $SRCDIR
fi
cd $SRCDIR

install_libpri
install_zaptel
install_asterisk
install_addons
if [ "$BRANCH" = "2" ]; then
        install_sounds
fi
if [ "$BRANCH" = "4" ]; then
        install_gui
fi
install_wanpipe

My stdexten macro

2007-12-07T09:38:00.001-08:00

I always forget this so I figure I will post it and update it when I improve it.

[macro-stdexten]
;ARG1 = Device(s) to ring (Default SIP/${MACRO_EXTEN}
;ARG2 = Voicemail Box to go to (Default ${MACRO_EXTEN}
;ARG3 = Timeout in seconds (divide be 5 for number of rings) default 20

exten => s,1,NoOp
exten => s,n,Set(DIALSTRING=${IF($[ "${ARG1}" = "" ]?SIP/${MACRO_EXTEN}:${ARG1})})
exten => s,n,Set(VMAILBOX=${IF($[ "${ARG2}" = "" ]?${MACRO_EXTEN}:${ARG2})})
exten => s,n,Set(TIMEOUT=${IF($[ "${ARG3}" = "" ]?20:${ARG3})})
exten => s,n,Dial(${DIALSTRING},${TIMEOUT},twk)
exten => s,n,Goto(s-${DIALSTATUS},1)

exten => s-,1,Goto(s-BUSY,1)
exten => _s-.,1,Goto(s-BUSY,1)
exten => s-CONGESTION,1,Goto(s-BUSY,1)

exten => s-BUSY,1,Voicemail(${VMAILBOX}@default,b)
exten => s-BUSY,n,Hangup()

exten => s-CHANUNAVAIL,1,Goto(s-NOANSWER,1)

exten => s-NOANSWER,1,Voicemail(${VMAILBOX}@default,u)
exten => s-NOANSWER,n,Hangup

Document Design for Search Engine Optimization

2007-11-28T19:38:00.000-08:00

Digital document design has become much more then just aesthetics and it is now important that a document can be read by "robots" as well a people. Robots, or crawlers or spiders, are another name for indexing services that search engines use such as google. As you are well aware, search engines are the way people find most things on the web today. Most people assume that search engines use hidden meta tags to index web pages for searching. This may have been the case in the early days of the web, and is only partially true for a few search engines today. Search engines are now programmed to look at the text inside html tags that are used to design a web page. Weight is given to the words depending on which tag they are in. This is how Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, relates to document design. I will discuss the tags that are important to making your site search engine friendly, and some ways to keep the design you want. First off is the title tag, this should be descriptive as to who you are and what information you are presenting in your page. The title tag should also stay short and not be greater the 60 - 70 characters. Keep in mind that the title tag is not only something that search engines use to find keywords to your site, but it is also what the user will see in their search results. Heading tags are also regarded as important content, as they are meant to be headings on your tags. Designers often use images as headings, but these will not only require descriptive alt attributes, but also are weighted very low by search engine crawlers. Cascading style sheets (CSS) can also be used to design headings, but be when using CSS make sure to apply your CSS to the heading tag and not to another block element tag, like span or div. Make sure to use descriptive keywords in your ALT attribute for your image tags. This will help search engines that index images as the image file name is not always relative to the picture. The alt tag is included as body text by most search engines, but as mentioned previously is weighted low. Meta tags are still used by some search engines but are weighted very low due to over use. For the Meat Description tag, it is best to keep it under 100 characters. The meta tag is also important because it is displayed in the search results. For the Meta Keyword tag, it should be kept under 250 keywords, and should not contain any words that are not in the document. As mentioned previously search engine crawlers can not index images, this is something that many designers have problems with for a few reasons. First text is difficult to control, even when using CSS to format it. The user must have that font installed, and the user can increase and decrease the font size in their browser easily. Images solve these problems for a designer because they can not be changed, but images will hinder its search engine optimization. The last and probably most important part of search engine optimization are links. I will referrer to two different types of links, internal and external. Internal links are things like menus and site maps. It is important to have at least one static link to every page on your site that you want indexed. This is so the search engines know how to get to every page when they spider or crawl your site. External links referrer to other sites that link back to yours. This is another way that search engines rank your site. This is unrelated to design so there is no need to go into any more detail about it. As with everything, there are people out there that abuse the system, so search engines have put measures into place to not rank these types of sites highly. Some things I have already mentioned like number of characters in title and meta tags. One additional thing to be careful of is to keep the number of links on one page to under 100, more than 100 links we be thought of as spam. For a large site map it would be a good idea to split it up into multiple pages. Another thing to be careful of is using the same words an excessive amount on a single page. This is a common practice for people trying to trick search engines. Currently there is a battle between designers and search engine optimization people. Both are important elements of marketing your site and your business on the web, but they have contradicting requirements. As discussed many design needs are not SEO friendly, and many SEO needs are not design friendly. Make sure you find a good middle ground when designing your site. References: How can I create a Google-friendly site? Webmaster Guidelines Search Engine Optimization Standards and Spam Discussion Google SEO Basics for Beginners Media College.com SEO Basics Google Rankings Basic SEO advice SEO 101 - Basic Optimization Techniques

Mythtv Distro Evaluations

2007-10-20T09:32:00.001-07:00

It is a tough time for Mythtv distros right now with Zap2it cancelling their services is August. There are 4 major mythtv distro communities right now, knoppmyth, mythdora, mythbuntn and linuxmce. Today I tried all but knoppmyth and here is what I have found. LinuxMCE I first tried LinuxMCE as the demo video they have on their site shows some amazing features. They do have an update for the new Schedules direct service but the link to the script was down. The thing that I found about LinuxMCE was that because it is a bunch of custom changes on top of Kubuntu Feisty, updating myth from the Kubuntu repository would break it. This is a cool system but is a bit behind when on changes. Mythdora Mythdora acutally looked good, they have some myth specific questions at install. The downside I found was the myth version was still the older one and there was no Schedules direct support, also the links for the update at the atrpms site was down as well. Mythbuntu Mythbuntu is a supported ubuntu distro and is kept almost as up to date as ubuntu is. Right now they have a 7.10 release candidate and the 7.10 version has only been released for a few days at this point. The good thing is it has the newest version of myth and the Schedules Direct is supported right out of the box, no updates needs. Ubuntu again comes through leading the pack with the most up to date distro in mythbuntu. If anyone has comments on these distros or any other I would love to hear them.

Polycom Presence and SIP 500 errors

2007-04-19T10:14:00.000-07:00

I finally got someone at Polycom support that knew what they were talking about and were very helpful. I have been getting a lot of these errors from the Polycoms on my asterisk servers Incoming call: Got SIP response 500 "Internal Server Error" back from 192.168.0.100 The problem was the transport was set to "DNSnaptr" by default. So if you set it to "TCPpreferred" it should fix any issues you are having with presence and also any sip 500 errors. EDIT* I am still getting sip 500 errors if I restart asterisk and not the polycom phones. On a side note for asterisk 1.4 make sure call-limit is set to something. I set it to 8.

Provisioning Polycom phones

2007-03-22T22:10:00.000-07:00

Provisioning Polycom SIP phones can be a pain. There are some good examples on www.voip-info.org but I think a explanation would be a good idea. For an internal LAN setup TFTP is easiest, so I have everything setup as so: /tftpboot /tftpboot/contacts /tftpboot/logs /tftpboot/overrides The important thing is DO NOT touch sip.cfg, phone1.cfg and 000000000000.cfg, use it as reference only. Why you ask, so when new firmware comes out you just drop in the new file. So where do you make your changes then????

MAC.cfg
EXTEN.cfg
00000000000-directory.cfg
contacts/MAC-directory.cfg

Here are some examples: MAC.cfg: <?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes"?>    <APPLICATION APP_FILE_PATH="sip.ld" CONFIG_FILES="300.cfg, site.cfg, phone1.cfg, sip.cfg" MISC_FILES="" LOG_FILE_DIRECTORY="/log" OVERRIDES_DIRECTORY="/overrides" CONTACTS_DIRECTORY="/contacts"/> EXTEN.cfg (300.cfg) <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>  <reginfo> <reg reg.1.displayName="First Last" reg.1.address="300" reg.1.label="300" reg.1.auth.userId="300" reg.1.auth.password="PASSWORD"/> </reginfo> <msg> <mwi msg.mwi.1.subscribe="300@default"/> </msg> site.cfg <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>  <localcfg> <server voIpProt.server.1.address="192.168.0.1"/> <SIP> <outboundProxy voIpProt.SIP.outboundProxy.address="192.168.0.1"/> </SIP> <TCP_IP> <SNTP tcpIpApp.sntp.daylightSavings.enable="1" tcpIpApp.sntp.resyncPeriod="86400" tcpIpApp.sntp.address="192.168.0.1" tcpIpApp.sntp.address.overrideDHCP="1" tcpIpApp.sntp.gmtOffset="-28800" tcpIpApp.sntp.gmtOffset.overrideDHCP="1" tcpIpApp.sntp.daylightSavings.enable="1" tcpIpApp.sntp.daylightSavings.fixedDayEnable="1" tcpIpApp.sntp.daylightSavings.start.month="3" tcpIpApp.sntp.daylightSavings.start.date="8" tcpIpApp.sntp.daylightSavings.start.time="2" tcpIpApp.sntp.daylightSavings.start.dayOfWeek="1" tcpIpApp.sntp.daylightSavings.start.dayOfWeek.lastInMonth="0" tcpIpApp.sntp.daylightSavings.stop.month="11" tcpIpApp.sntp.daylightSavings.stop.date="1" tcpIpApp.sntp.daylightSavings.stop.time="2" tcpIpApp.sntp.daylightSavings.stop.dayOfWeek="1" tcpIpApp.sntp.daylightSavings.stop.dayOfWeek.lastInMonth="0" /> </TCP_IP> <reg> <reg.1.callsPerLineKey="8"> </reg> <msg> <mwi msg.mwi.1.callBackMode="contact" msg.mwi.1.callBack="8500" /> </msg> <user_preferences up.oneTouchVoiceMail="1" /> <feature feature.1.enabled="1" feature.9.enabled="0" feature.10.enabled="1" feature.11.enabled="1" feature.12.enabled="1" /> <bitmap> <IP_400 bitmap.IP_400.61.name="Idle400.bmp"/> <IP_600 bitmap.IP_600.61.name="Idle600.bmp"/> </bitmap> <sound_effects se.stutterOnVoiceMail="0" /> <localcfg> contacts/MAC-directory.xml: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>  <directory> <item_list> <item><fn>First</fn><ln>Last</ln><ct>301</ct><sd>1</sd><bw>1</bw></item> Some gotchas that I have run into:

/tftpboot/contacts/00000000000-directory.xml does not get used it gets pulled from the /tftpboot/000000000000-directory.xml file (as of bootrom v3.2.2)
The dhcp option to set the tftp server is option tftp-sever-name "tftp://192.168.41.1"

Take a look here if you need more info or more examples or email me. http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-Polycom+Phones#PolycomConfigFiles

Linux still not a good desktop

2007-02-05T13:55:00.000-08:00

So I figured I would bite the bullet and give Kubuntu another go as my desktop. The install was easy, it supported all my hardware out of the box and I was happy. I even spent a bunch of time getting Beryl to work and that was sweet, but then the bugs started. A list of tasks I needed to be able to accoplish

I wanted to connect to Exchange and Evolution is pretty good at that now.
I can get to the file server at work fine, but I can't open anything in openoffice directly, ouch.
Firefox locked up and crashed many times.
Wireless configuration is painful for a roaming laptop.
Dual monitors are a must but getting xorg to work with both, good luck.

The more I tried to do the harder it got and the more buggy. Will Linux ever be stable enough or be able to exist in a Windows network, not for a while. *UPDATE: I have switched to Ubuntu and gnome, much better experience, I don't care what Linus says LOL. Anyway, there are still a lot of bugs. What will make it better: -Better and faster drivers from hardware vendors -More OSS developers to help with apps so they are tested and stable before release -Corporate support, money talks.

Asterisk 1.4

2007-01-12T22:48:00.000-08:00

With asterisk 1.4 finally out of beta I figured I would give it a whirl. They have now stepped up to the "distro" market to compete with trixbox and probably do a better job. You do have to register on the asterisk site to download it but oh well. The wizard is easy to use and the asterisk web GUI is very very nice. Things that are missing is voicemail, call recording, a reception module and phone provisioning. Hopefully I can get that intergrated sooner rather then later. Trixbox is still using an old version of asterisk 1.2.13 I think. That is not going to work with the amount of changes that have been done for 1.4.0. Trixbox just doesn't make things much easier if you know what you are doing.

Windows Home Server will live in your closet, simplify your life | Jesse D. Lewin | Microsoft 10

2007-01-09T07:07:00.000-08:00

Check out the new windows home server. This will finally will make having multiple computers at home convenient. Check out the backup feature, that alone makes it worth it. M$ is doing things right for once. Link

Video Editing and Jump Cut

2006-12-24T10:55:00.000-08:00

I saw this new site/service on techtv looks pretty sweet, it is called Jumpcut. I will be trying it out over the next while and post how it is. Over the years I have made a few highlight tapes for people I play football with and have coached. This on is of my brother from 2002. I usually use Ulead Media Studio pro, it makes it really easy.

Terrible Terry Tate

2006-12-22T06:45:00.000-08:00

What every company needs as their COO. Some quotes:

You can't come into my kitchen, kick my do, and take a box full of ballpoints. Your ass must be crazy.
You can't come tippy toe'n up in this hump bumpy
The only pain I got time for is the pain I inflict on fools that don't know what time it is
Check Razer, check razer, its the pain train, the pain train is coming WOOO WOOO, WOOO WOOO

Adding digg to blogger

2006-12-22T05:10:00.000-08:00

So I wanted to add the dig buttons you see around to my blog, not that anyone is going to even read mine but I though I would add it anyway. I found this post which pretty much says to make an html file with only this javascript and add it as an iframe. I looked at the source of the javascript and all it does is add and iframe so why would you add and iframe of an iframe? The other stupid thing is digg requires you to input the url of the digg story not the url of what you are digging. This makes it a pain in the ass and requires you to digg the story or the button wont even show up, you just get an error. The reddit button is makes much more sense and the url is the url of the story so you can easily add it to your blogger template like so.

<script>reddit_url='<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>'</script>
<script language="javascript" src="http://reddit.com/button.js?t=1"></script>

The digg buttons I add to the blog post not the template like this:

<iframe src="http://digg.com/api/diggthis.php?u=[digurl]"
 frameborder="0" height="82" scrolling="no" width="55"></iframe>

Ever need a math tutor

2006-12-20T08:06:00.000-08:00

This was just on reddit nothing new but remeber Winnie from the Wonder years. Check out her July 2005 photos from stuff http://thegrumpiest.com/?p=2215. But take a look at here wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danica_McKellar she published a paper on "Percolation and Gibbs states multiplicity for ferromagnetic Ashkin–Teller models on Z2" and offers free math tutoring to her fans. The other cool thing is her and Natalie Portman are the only two real actors with an Erdős–Bacon number

Asterisk Developers Kit

2006-12-20T07:57:00.000-08:00

I received a marketing email from Digium yesterday found here. For anyone that does asterisk hacking, or uses it as a product, the asterisk developers kit looks like a very worth while investment. To summarize it:

An Asterisk Appliance with 64MB RAM, 8MB on board flash, 5 Ethernet ports (4 LAN, WAN), Craft (serial) port, support for 8 analog (FXS/FXO) ports, Universal power supply.
Quad FXS analog card and Quad FXO analog card
Multi-media add-on flash cards
Cables for all supported port types
Polycom (TM) IP-430 SIP Phone
CD with software
Documentation and specifications
How to manuals
Access to the Digium AADK Wiki

And there are 3 packages:

AADK Professional Bundle - for the asterisk hackers
AADK Administrator Bundle - if you want some support and trainning
AADK Standard - if you are cheap

Wengo Phone

2006-12-16T23:55:00.000-08:00

Wengo phone releases a flash based SIP phone. Being the voip guy that I am figured I would try it out and see if there is any possiblity of intergrating it into asterisk or the project that I am helping out with Web MeetMe. *Edit: Wengo phone requires you to be logged in on you blog with the flash app. Logging in to the chat software does not work, booo. Kinda cool but useless, waiting for a sip flash phone. Did a quick google search for one but couldn't find anything.