Mostly about my amusement
I just completed Crysis 3 (a $5 purchase that got me to buy a new NVidia graphic card…) and was looking for a new game to play. Since I’ve owned every Wolfenstein game that was ever produced this seemed like an easy choice to make.
It’s a 40+ GB download from Steam. Wow.
My son is a fan of all things remote controlled and his latest thing is R/C airplanes. After indulging him with R/C cars Lily and I told him that he could get one under 2 conditions: he had to earn it and he had to pay for it out of his own pocket.
Note to aspiring parents: watch out for setting well defined conditions. After weeks for trying to behave well and saving up we went to the hobby store and picked up a HobbyZone Duet. He paid cash and got a receipt.
This is a starter plane and like most of them is built using light weight foam. Last week it took a nose dive and I had to use white glue and clear tape to put the nose back on. He did everything right but it took a dive onto some pavement and neatly broke the nose off.
Yesterday we went to his school and he gave it a good run but within 2 minutes he wanted to stop.
“Dad? I’m going to land it now.
Me: You could but why not keep it in the air for a while? Notice how there’s nothing you can crash into up there?”
That convinced him and he built up his confidence and nearly ran the battery down. He landed perfectly in the grass (we took the landing wheels off).
The second run was more fun. The plane weighs next to nothing and a light wind pushed it slowly across the school fields. Slowly as in we didn’t notice how far it really was until we saw the tree line. Fortunately he landed it without crashing and we had a great time.
It’s a fun hobby but this plane really needs a calm day to fly.
Some work stories you can share. Years ago I had a production change and I didn’t quite implement it correctly. It was fixed quickly but the user wanted what happened.
User: “In the least technical language possible can you explain what happened?”
We were on speaker phone in the support center. My pal thought for a second, looked at me and with all the seriousness he could muster replied like so.
Pal: “The Monkey pushed the wrong button!”
He emphasized “The Monkey” and “wrong button”. Fortunately she had a great sense of humor and we all laughed. Most people do enjoy a little levity in the work place.
Yesterday I moved my WordPress network from one VPS in Chicago to Atlanta (different VPS hosting company). I like using a VPS because it maintains my illusion of being in control of my server.
*Drinks more coffee*
Surprisingly it went well. Except for missing a couple of PHP modules I had no problems and the site has been stable overnight.
If you plan to do this then give this Codex article a read. Of course I didn’t read it myself, it’s much more fun for me just winging it.
I installed an image of Ubuntu 13.04 and made sure SMTP was configured to work. Apache2, PHP, mysql and mod_ssl were added and activated as well.
That was a surprise for me. The default image installs a ton of stuff that I don’t think I’ll ever need or want. I would have preferred to use a 14.04 LTS image (not available, too new) but that one is still maintained so it’s all good.
Creating the new empty database was straight forward. I used the same database name and user from the original VPS setup. Configuring the vhosts was just a matter of copying the old config files and making sure the certs and directories are all preserved.
My default DNS TTL (time-to-live) is 1800 seconds. I wasn’t sure if this would go well or not so I made the TTL 300 seconds (5 minutes). I didn’t change any IP addresses but if I broke something and couldn’t fix it then I was looking at only 5 minutes for it to come back to life.
My WordPress network has around 1.4 GB of file data from the last 7 years or so and the mysqldump was about 70MB . The file copy was just scp -r and the mysqldump command was just for that one network database.
Importing the database was just
zcat dumpfile.sql.gz | mysql -u name -p databasename
Once that was all done I updated my DNS IP and waited.
Why didn't my DNS cache flush?
— Jan Dembowski (@jan_dembowski) April 26, 2014
I could see in my access log that my new site was getting hits but I was still hitting my old web server (I was tailing the old logs in another windows) well after 5 minutes.
What the heck? It’s DNS. Setting the TTL just works. Except when it doesn’t.
I was using Google Chrome and that has it’s own application level DNS cache. It has a DNS cache that apparently doesn’t honor the TTL on the record.
Dear web browsers: Application level DNS caching is STUPID. Thanks for playing.
— Jan Dembowski (@jan_dembowski) April 26, 2014
Once I cleared that cache then I could see myself hitting the new IP address.
Nothing broke! Fantastic.
Once I’ve confirmed that I have moved everything off the old VPS and onto the new then I’ll rebuild the old one and might re-do this whole exercise in the other direction. I’m sure the unstable nature of the old one is due to some dumb thing I did code I installed that’s running amok.
In the meanwhile I’m going to enjoy some nice stability and uptime for my site.
Note: The CC image above was a result of my typing “controlled implosion” into the WP Inject WordPress plugin. It’s a very cool plugin for finding CC images and I plan on leaving a review on WordPress.org sometime.
Featured image photo by Savannah River Site 
Renewing my SSL certificates was on my to do list for months and today I’m at home recuperating from a fever that kept me up all night. Since my web server is now patched it is a good time to get new SSL certificates. So I contacted StartSSL and did the deed.
WordPress and SSL has always irked me because just putting a certificate on the web server and using the https URL would still give you elements that are loaded via http (not SSL) and your browser’s address bar would look like this.
See that yellow warning triangle over the lock? It irks me. It does. It’s a personality flaw, a blemish, an imperfection. It loudly announces to the world that I’m Doing It All Wrong™. I see that on my site and I hang my head in shame.
OK it’s not really that big a deal. I could play with WordPress SSL plugins but part of my background is configuring applications on servers and Apache2 has a useful module called mod_substitute.
I have two configuration files for my site. One is for the http version and the other is for SSL. It’s like two separate virtual hosts with the same directories.
After I enabled mod_substitute I added these lines to my SSL config.
<Location /> AddOutputFilterByType SUBSTITUTE text/html Substitute "s|href="http://blog.dembowski.net/|href="https://blog.dembowski.net/|" Substitute "s|href='http://blog.dembowski.net/|href='https://blog.dembowski.net/|" Substitute "s|src=' http:|src='|" Substitute "s|src="http:|src="|" </Location> # NOTE: Remove the space before the http above
I’m using the alternate delimiter “|” because I don’t want to escape out the URL slashes.
That’s probably too many lines. The first two Substitute lines replaces any URLs of mine from http:// to https://. The next two are for any reference that load elements using plain “http:”. I don’t substitute those with “https:” but instead make those URLs “//” without an explicit protocol.
Doing that gets this image in my browser’s address bar.
Green is good. Order is restored.
Because I’m lazy and not feeling well. Also using mod_substitute lets me filter the HTML output after WordPress has generated it but before it is sent to the web browser. That gives me more confidence that I’ll get all of the URLs that I want to change.
I’m only using this trick on the SSL version of my site. It’s not a perfect solution and I’m curious to find what this breaks. I had to disable Jetpack’s Photon option because some of my images were not being sent to that CDN properly and there may be other thing as well.
This is not something for everyone (if you’re on a shared host for example) but if you can load Apache2 modules and restart your web server then this may work for you too.
Update: Using (.*) instead of “blog” works for my other vhosts as well. Nope, that breaks LOTS. reverting back.
So it began innocently with this Tweet/Foursquare check in.
I checked in with Foursquare which is something I do on a regular basis. I do this every time I visit the store. It’s a form of advertising in my not so humble opinion.
The store then got a call from someone named “James” asking for me. When I picked up the phone I was asked if I’d locked my key in the car. Naturally I asked who is this and a short game of “Don’t you know?” which ended with Lily saying “That’s nice, everything is fine now, goodbye.” and hanging up.
I thought the call was from a customer so I gave the phone to Lily. “James” claimed to have met her yesterday.
Here’s what happened: either the Tweet or the Foursquare check in matched a search. Somone saw that the store has a web site, the phone number is there and the rest is history. Or it could have been one of my followers (I’d like to think that’s not the case) or I’m on a Twitter list.
Now as stories go this is creepy and definitely stalkerish but it could have gone much worse. There was no swearing, no shouting and we didn’t get a call back (the number was marked private of course). But that really was my own personalized PSA about casually posting some details online.
I’ve been using social media (that’s a great term isn’t it? It beats “online extrovert”) and I am always aware of the risks. We’ve all read about or even know someone who has been harassed and stalked. I’ll try and be more circumspect about details like that in the future. It’s unfortunate but it’s the reality of this media. The world is more connected and that fellow could have been calling from anywhere.
If someone’s reading this and getting a chuckle then thanks for the wake up call. I’ll adjust accordingly.
What really irks me is that I’ve been trying to get Lily to use Twitter. This little episode really cements her opposition to that. It’s not that she has anything against Twitter it’s just that that medium doesn’t interest her. This small event pretty much means her social interactions will remain squarely in the real world.
Photo by Mr.TinDC
You think of a lot of things during a 15 minute drive to the train station. I will never be mistaken for a native Long Islander.
I grew up in Queens, attended high school in Brooklyn, went to City College on 136 street in Manhattan and eventually Queens College (very long story). I didn’t get my first car until I was 24 or so. I lived in the 5 boroughs and I liked taking the subway and trains to anywhere I wanted in NYC.
We moved to Long Island because we needed a bigger house and wanted to send our kids to a better school district than the one in our Queens neighborhood. It’s a great house in a good neighborhood.
That said, I will never get used to Long Island.
Part of my weekend routine was having breakfast at the Dunkin’ Donuts near St. John’s University. We lived just a few blocks from there and we were just a little more than across the street from the school. I like being able to walk to shopping for groceries and things.
There’s not anywhere I can walk to. Everything is at least a 10 minute drive. If I was feeling brave I might use my bicycle but less than mile away a cyclist was left as the victim of a hit and run. That pretty much rules that idea out.
Not all of them of course but a lot of them. My biggest pet peeve is the yellow line is perceived as a suggestion. I always drive on my side as I don’t think getting in to a car wreck is a good way to meet new people.
A fun example: I come out of my side street and head to the light. Another driver rounds the corner and is almost half his car width into my lane. I stop my car and put on my least offending “What are you doing?” face and the other driver swerves out of my lane. Usually I get the “What? I didn’t do nothing wrong!” look but on one occasion I got flipped the bird. Maybe he was from NYC too?
People who drive by their own rules irk me too. I’m at a light, it turns green and I advance into the intersection signaling a left turn. I’m waiting in the intersection* for the opposite car to either turn or go straight. That gets me a blank stare and the other driver eventually makes hand motions indicating I should turn in front of him. I usually make my own hand motions right after that.
I do like the privacy and it’s a great house on a great property. Also I’ve met some amazing Long Islanders and our friends are the best. Lily and I do like living here.
But I’m typing this on a LIRR train. This leg of the commute is long enough that I can draft up a 600 word blog post from scratch. It’s an adjustment and after almost 10 years I’m pretty sure I’ll continue to do this commute. But I’ll still miss some of the convenience of living in Queens.
*NOTE: Yes, I invented my own intersection driving rules. In NY you are not supposed to enter the intersection until you can successfully make the left turn. It’s my blog and I can complain about what I want. 😉
I blame Kailey Lampert for this tweet. 😉
@bluelimemedia @jan_dembowski This is also in line for experimenting http://t.co/y0ifMqkisX
— kailey lampert (@trepmal) March 26, 2014
Which lead The Girl and I to this link where we learned how to make these. Quick to make and they’re good too.
Note to self: Using “Inspect Element” in Firefox and looking at the selector you can avoid styling everything except what’s broken specifically. (It was “.entry-format-badge.genericon” in case I forget.)
Copying and pasting from Microsoft Word directly into the Visual Editor is my new favorite thing in 3.9 beta. I just tried it on Lily’s store WordPress site and it worked alright. This is a fortunate side effect of 3.9 getting a new version of TinyMCE.
I know, that sounds anti-climatic even a little mundane given the great enhancements that 3.9 will be delivering. But I occasionally (once a month) have this conversation.
Them: How can I copy this Word document into WordPress?
Me: First select the text and paste that into notepad. I like notepad++ myself.
Me: Then you take the text you just copied into notepad select and copy it into the Visual Editor. Again.
Me: Make sure you copy from notepad. Bad things will happen if you paste that into the Visual Editor directly from Word.
Me: Then you apply the styling such as bold, underline, etc. To that text. For titles I like to use the <h3> tag myself.
Me: No, that layout thing you did in Word won’t work.
Me: Images? If you use the Snipping Tool then you can save that image to your hard disk.
Me: Once you’ve done that, upload that into the media library.
Me: Then you can insert it into the WordPress post. The image I mean, I usually go with centered and no link.
Them: Zzzzzz Wha-? What we’re we talking about??
I myself don’t like the idea of users creating content for WordPress outside of WordPress but I’m told I’m special. Apparently “regular” users (yes I’m doing the “air quotes”) such as my wife and some siblings use Word that way.
Lily creates flyers for wine tastings once a week. Right now she has to wait for me to create the event on the WordPress site (thank you Modern Tribe! that’s a great plugin) then cross post it to the company Facebook page. If I can show her how to just paste the content into WordPress to create the event then she can deliver the post sooner.
Also that means I’ll have one less thing to do each week.
Next I have got to test out dragging images into the Visual Editor to upload them that way. That’s got to improve “regular” users workflow too.
