Something I've had on my todo list for a very long time now was to get my notes from School published automatically on my website. They are already stored in ReStructured Text, and they are already stored in git repositories, so my use of smug already had me 95% of the way there. (I have a write-up about my note taking method: here)

I spent my day off, and finally found some better approaches to the problems I had, and I now have automatic sharing of my notes on my website.

The thing that was holding me back was the fact that smug couldn't do everything I wanted it to. I also store other things, such as homework, papers, and other assignments in the same git repository. Also, the way that I would organize a website is different than I would organize my personal files.

Here is an ...

So, I want to move away from mod_php for the obvious security reasons.

FastCGI is a good alternative. I want to make the transition as easy as possible for my users. The transition on my Bluehost account from the regular PHP handler to the fastcgi handler is quite easy. All I do is add AddHandler fcgid-script .php to my .htaccess. Here are the requirements that I am looking for in transitioning to fastcgi for php:

1) Easy Transition - little or no user intervention required. I'd prefer that no intervention is required. 2) fastcgi scripts should be run using suexec for security and potential tracking purposes. 3) No scripts should be run when adding/removing users from the system. I want this to "just work" with the mod_userdir setup that we have.

Ideally, this change could be made during scheduled maintenance, and everyone could be automatically using the new fastcgi ...

So I've had a slice with slicehost for about a year and a half now. I love all the things I can do with my very own relatively cheap server on the Internet. I started out with a 256 slice, and then I talked my wife into upgrading to a 512. I kept putting more things on my server because it was so convenient, and fun to have a 100% static IP on the internet. I've started running my own mail server, and slowly I've been moving all my personal sites to Django. I even host a website on my slice for a small fee.

After a little while, I was curious as to why all my Django apps seemed to run so slowly. I don't use my own website very often, so I didn't notice the slowness creeping in. Running top revealed that I ...

So, I was talking with a friend. Using a storage unit as a workbench is something common. A climate-controlled storage unit with electricity can be had for quite cheap. Many people use storage units as a place to work on their cars, trucks, projects, and much more. I've even heard of garage bands practicing in their very own storage unit.

We got on the idea of making a storage unit into a mini datacenter. If one limits the number of servers that are in a normal climate-controlled room, chillers are not even necessary. There are a few questions that need to be answered before I will go out and rent any old storage unit.

Connectivity

The idea of a mini datacenter is completely pointless if you can't get an Internet connection to a storage unit. Since we're talking about a mini storage unit, we'll say that ...

Turning off the annoying spamassassin message encapsulation on BlueHost's servers.

Spamassassin is a great spam killing tool. BlueHost offers it as one of the spam protection options on their e-mail accounts. The cPanel configuration interface for spamassassin is a bit lacking. It only has some common, bare minimum options available.

One thing that spamassassin does that is a bit annoying is it encapsulates all suspected spam messages in a new message, and attaches the original message. This is nice for some things, but can be quite annoying when a legitimate message is crippled in this way.

Spamassassin is highly configurable, and you can do this easily. You just have to do it "manually" and not use the cPanel interface.

If you have SSH enabled, the SSH way is probably the easiest.

$ ssh username@example.com
username@example.com's password:
Last login: Wed Feb 11 11:10:07 2009 ...