Alan Gutierrez

Test Pattern by Jen.

About two months ago, my funding for a dedicated Think New Orleans server came to an end. Think New Orleans had been running well for a while, so I thought it wouldn’t matter much to consolidate it with the server that hosts this blog, ljubljana.blogometer.com.

Neither website gets large amounts of traffic. Think New Orleans receives 500 unique visitors a day on a good day. I can’t imagine that all the neighborhood blogs, the New Orleans Wiki, and my personal/professional blog together attract more than 2000 unique visitors a day. Even a modest dedicated server should be able to handle that much traffic, unless something is terribly wrong.

The server also runs postfix and dovecot (IMAP). It serves up the bloggers listserv using GNU Mailmain. It acts as a Subversion repository through Apache. None of these applications concern me. They are all very well written applications. The mail and Subversion services serve only a single user, me.

The Think New Orleans web menagerie includes WordPress, MediaWiki and Instiki. WordPress and Mediawiki are PHP applications running from Apache. Instiki is in a Ruby Webrick web server which is accessed via Apache mod_proxy.

Neighborhood blogs such as Northwest Carrollton and Think New Orleans itself are run in WordPress. There are two flavors of New Orleans Wiki. The Mediawiki version and the Instiki version. The latter is getting more use these days. It contains the definitive List of New Orleans Bloggers and the resources created by CHAT.

There is an instance of Jetty that is rarely visited that runs a few simple servlets that is also accessed via Apache mod_proxy. This is very low traffic and the Servlets are my own. The unconference signup servlet is an example. It writes a web form to file.

I run a script from cron that requests http://blogometer.com/. If it takes more than three seconds to serve, I kill all httpd processes and restart Apache.

Please have a look at the crash reports and tell me what you think.

Morphing Grid by Dan Allison.

Ever find yourself with a data collection, and you can see the steps in your head, create a form, create a table? It’s a dry task that gets dryer by the minute once you find yourself once again creating that paged results table for the contact us or event registration form you’ve created a thousand times before.

I can’t tell you how much slicker it is to send that data directly to an EditGrid workbook. It is a quick and easy database that is intuitive for your users. Instead of a paged html table, their information is available as rich full-featured spreadsheet.

My Tchotchke Boxes by 1213 1982.

I created a series of online spreadsheets of every building, construction and demolition permit issuesd in Orleans Parish since January 2005. These spreadsheets are available at Think New Orleans.

The EditGrid API can automate the creation of reports and act as an easy use and share database for light data collection applications. I’ll write about my experience with EditGrid and why you should consider EditGrid at the back end for your next data collection task.

This is my programmer notebook on my getting to know you time with EditGrid.

I wrote my program in Java. Here are the three gotchas that I encountered.

Every time I create a new listserv, I need to remember how to do it. I’m going to write about it in Blogometer so I don’t have to think so hard next time.

Adding a new GNU Mailman listserv.

[alan@~]$ cd /usr/lib/mailman
[alan@ljubljana mailman]$ sudo ./bin/newlist barcampnola@thinknola.com
Enter the email of the person running the list: alan@thinknola.com
Initial barcampnola password:
To finish creating your mailing list, you must edit your /etc/aliases (or
equivalent) file by adding the following lines, and possibly running the
`newaliases’ program:
## barcampnola mailing listbarcampnola:              “|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman post barcampnola”
barcampnola-admin:        “|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman admin barcampnola”
barcampnola-bounces:      “|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman bounces barcampnola”
barcampnola-confirm:      “|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman confirm barcampnola”
barcampnola-join:         “|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman join barcampnola”
barcampnola-leave:        “|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman leave barcampnola”
barcampnola-owner:        “|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman owner barcampnola”
barcampnola-request:      “|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman request barcampnola”
barcampnola-subscribe:    “|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman subscribe barcampnola”
barcampnola-unsubscribe:  “|/usr/lib/mailman/mail/mailman unsubscribe barcampnola”

Hit enter to notify barcampnola owner…

[alan@ljubljana mailman]$

Then you cut and paste the aliases into /etc/mailman/aliases

[alan@ljubljana mailman]$ sudo /usr/bin/newaliases
[alan@ljubljana mailman]$ sudo ./bin/withlist -l -r fix_url barcampnola

My server, ljubljana.blogometer.com, will sometimes hang after receiving too many requests. I don’t want it to keep me from getting in via ssh, so I’ve written a rather drastic shell program to monitor the server. It fetches the blogometer.com home page using curl. If it takes longer than three seconds, it blocks port 80. This is run by cron every minute. The script will write out the output of the programs ps ax and free. I’ve not been able to figure out what’s really causing the server to choke with that output so I’ve added top -n 5 -b and tail -n 500 /var/log/httpd/access_log. I’m open to any suggestions of commands to add to this snapshot.

Looking at Ed Trelinski’s blog I see that FeedBurner is now offering email subscriptions. I’m going to stick with FeedBlitz for the email of my feeds for the time being.

Photogamer: In your pockets by Kenn Christ.

He is at Fair Grinds. He wants a Times-Picayune. There is fifty cents in his jacket pocket for a Times-Picayune. He knows this. He recalls putting the two quarters into his jacket pocket for the purpose of purchasing a Times-Picayune from the paper box in front of Fair Grinds. His jacket is draped over the chair that sits across from him at the table where he has set himself up with his laptop to write. He gets up to fetch the two quarters. He looks in one pocket and does not find them. He looks in the second pocket and doesn’t find them. He looks in his pants pockets, but he knows the quarters are not there. He looks in the inner pocket in the jacket, but there is none. He looks in one jacket pocket a second time and does not find them. He looks in the second jacket pocket a second time and does not find them.

He then picks the jacket up off the back of the chair, swings it over his shoulders. As his hands exit the tunnel of the sleeves and just as the jacket comes to rest on his shoulders, he reaches into his right jacket pocket and grabs both quarters between his thumb and two foremost fingers. He folds his shoulders and doffs his jacket and returns it to the back of the chair, cradling the quarters in his palm.

He looks at the quarters and it occurs to him that logically, he could have just scavenged his jacket pockets a third time as the jacket hung from the back of the chair.

At that point he understood something about doing without thinking, but he soon forgot it.

This had me laughing out loud. A great sense of humor bas Barack Obama. From Why Republicans Fear Obama by Byron York at the National Review Online.

“You notice that people who’ve been in Washington too long, they don’t talk like ordinary folks,” Obama began. “We had this debate in Las Vegas, and somebody asked me, ‘What are your weaknesses?” So I said, ‘Well, you know, I don’t keep track of paper that well, I’m always losing paper, my desk is a mess.’ And then they asked the next two candidates. And one candidate says, ‘Well, my biggest weakness is I’m just so passionate about helping poor people.’ And then the other one says, ‘I’m just so impatient to help the American people solve their problems.’ So then I realize well, I wish I’d gone last and then I would have known.”