Results matching “ram” from Ye Olde Rad Blog III

Feliz año nuevo. Most Content Management Systems (such as Drupal & MODx) work in conjunction with (require) a database. So do blogs (such as Movable Type) & forums (such as SMF).

MySQL is the world's most popular database software for web-based applications (.. such as CMS's & blogs & forums). It's what I use. It's the only database system I've ever used.

The Rad VPS (« physically located downtown Chicago) uses the cPanel/WHM control panel to help administer the site. cPanel makes it stupid-easy to create a new MySQL database.

You simply » enter a descriptive name for your new DATABASE (such as » rad_modx) and click the button labeled 'Create Database.' cPanel talks to MySQL and creates the database for you. Viola! Done. Too easy.

To use your new DATABASE, you'll also need to create a USER (such as » rad_modx, conveniently same as the database_name). Give this USER a password and click the button labeled » 'Create User.' Voila! Done creating new USER.

Lastly you need to assign a particular USER to a particular DATABASE. You do this by selecting both from their respective drop-down menus (one lists all available DATABASES, the other all possible USERS) and clicking the button labeled 'Add.'

Then you assign to this USER the appropriate PRIVILEDGES (normally ALL) necessary to perform the database functions. Click the button labeled 'Make Changes' and you're done. Voila! As if this weren't easy enough, cPanel even has a wizard to walk you thru these steps.

So, in order to configure a database to work with a particular web application (such as Drupal or MODx), you need 3 pieces of info:

1. database_name
2. user_name
3. user_password

Couldn't be easier. Tho I sometimes forget the final step of actually assigning the USER to the DATABASE (after creating both). Creating new DATABASES is not something I do on a regular basis.

RADIFIED currently uses 5 databases. Three for the blogs » 1-each for the 3 different versions of Movable Type I have installed .. based on v263 (installed 2003), v335 (installed 2007) & v432 (installed 2008). Another for Drupal (2008). And 1 for MODx Revolution (beta5), which I installed a few days ago.

The Rad forum, which uses YaBB, doesn't use a database. (At least not yet.) Might be worth noting here that Movable Type, Drupal, MODx & YaBB are all OPEN SOURCE (better than free) .. as is MySQL.

While installing MODx a few days ago, I noticed they include an option to test your database connection & credentials .. to see if MODx can access it okay.

Created a dedicated 'Guides' page. See here » Radified Guides. Been meaning to do that for .. eons. This will allow me to off-load the guides listed here on the home-page, so I can clean it up.

I indented & right-aligned every other link .. to make them easier to read. What do you think? When the links were all lined-up together & left-aligned, they seemed too .. similar.

Eventually I'd like to include a representative graphic for each guide/link. But for now, I just wanted to create a page that contains a repository of the links to all our guides.

On a related note, I've been looking more deeply into MODx, the Content Management System (CMS). They are fixin' to release a new version (complete-rewrite, from the ground up, based on PHP5) .. called » REVOLUTION. (Current version is called » EVOLUTION.)

Drupal would be cool, but it's way too sophisticated for what I need. I don't want/need a PhD in CMS's. Here's a MODx site, for example. (I used to live in Lancaster, PA .. the heart of Amish country. Nice people there.)

I'd like to become intimately familiar with a good CMS .. as another skill to add to my digital toolkit. Only way to do that is » use one daily.

The good people at MODx claim a 'Release Candidate' version of REVOLUTION will be coming » "Winter 2009" (.. which is now). [ Notice how the words 'Summer 2009' have been lined-out. ] UPDATE » They just changed the RC date to "Spring 2010". Hmmm.

The MODx site is running REVOLUTION. I'm in no hurry, tho. Rather make a good decision than a hasty one.

The White House re-launched its website on Drupal. Can you believe that? Not sure why this blows my mind. In searching the web however, I see many others have also sat up and taken notice.

No doubt the White House has content to manage. Sure.

But I think the reason it's so unexpected is that Drupal is simply too cool & cutting edge for the White House .. which we normally associate with stodginess and somnolent formality.

Then there's the fact that Drupal is not an American product. It was born in Belgium, at the University of Ghent (.. as a message board for fellow-students enrolled there).

And you know how RADICAL college students can be. Downright revolutionary at times.

It could also be that we associate politicians with being less-than-honest about their true intentions .. while Drupal is open source, and therefore completely transparent. (Imagine how people might feel if Hitler were caught parading around town wearing a scarf knitted by Mother Teresa.)

Dare I mention how the government TAKES your money .. without even a thank-you note, and gives it to people who have much too much already. While Drupal, released under GPL, is better than free (as in 'free beer'), cuz it's also open source (free as in 'freedom').

The whole thing feels grossly incongruent .. as tho two vastly different worlds have collided. Matter and anti-matter. Good omen, tho .. for both the White House and Drupal.

One of the most satisfying experiences a technoluster can have is becoming proficient with a new technology, especially one that's not easy to master. Geeks sometimes use the word » GROK, which basically means you 'get it'.

The term was coined by Robert Heinlein in his novel Stranger in a Strange Land (SciFi, 1961). The martian word implies you understand something (such as how a particular technology works) .. on an intuitive level, in a satorial kind of way.

The difference between possessing a working knowledge of a particular technology and 'grokking' it is difficult to describe. Grokking impies a deeper understanding .. that surpasses mere facts & figures.

It suggests you can 'see into' the inner workings and comprehend how the different elements interact.

I've been studying CSS (off-n-on) for months, applying the concepts I learned (.. cuz that's how I learn best). And today I finally 'got it'. It came in a flash .. known as the » ah-ha moment.

[ Hmmm. That's interesting » I was looking for a good article to link to the phrase » 'ah-ha moment,' when my Google search returned a page referencing CSS. Surprisingly coincidental, no? Seeing that I didn't query the term 'CSS' (only » 'ah-ha moment').

What are the odds of that occurring? Of those two concepts being found grouped together so prominently (link #2)? Of all the possible topics in the world, CSS comes up. Maybe it means something. ]

It's not like I didn't understand CSS before. I'd long been reading about and felt comfortable wielding the technology .. using it to whip up sophisticated layouts. But now it seems my insights were superficial .. that I was merely applying recipes, cookbook style, mechanically.

Today's insight came so dramatically that it felt like I'd swallowed a ball of CSS enlightenment. "I finally get it," I muttered. Incredibly satisfying experience. Accompanied by a feeling of arrival, completion, mastery.

Of course, this doesn't mean I know everything there is to know about CSS. Far from it. Gladwell says you need 10,000 hours to master a skill. But I now 'see' how it works .. on an intuitive level.

I would love to be able to plug a cable into my brain and upload a whole slew of other cool technologies (.. like they do in the Matrix). Unfortunately, that ain't how it works. Nor can you grok something by sheer force of will. (If we could, I'd be grunting loudly.) You 'get it' when you get it and not a moment before.

Tho I'm curious about what happens at that moment. I mean, I knew everything I did about CSS now in the moments before I 'got it'. I've also been studying Programming. Maybe that helped yield insight, cuz CSS in some ways resembles programming.

The experience, in retrospect, could be described as a 'breaking thru,' or a 'crashing thru,' or a 'falling thru,'. The thing you 'break thru' seems like a semi-translucent crystalline membrane .. that obscures your vision .. from seeing deeply .. into the inner-workings.

The distance traveled (knowledge-wise) was very small, yet the resulting effect was dramatic .. sort of like the view you get when cresting a big hill. The straw that broke the camel's crystalline back, you might say.

My buddy eDawg just built himself a new beast. Here's a copy-n-paste from the invoice (totaling $1325 + tax). He's using dual flat-panel monitors imported from a previous system. See here:

• Case Antec | Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Retail » $100
• PSU Corsair | CMPSU-750TX 750W SLI + CrossFire Ready Retail » $110
• Motherboard ASUS | P6T Deluxe V2 LGA 1366 X58 Intel Chipset Retail » $290
• CPU Intel | Core i7 920 Bloomfield 2.66G 45N Quad-Core - Retail » $290
• 2 x Memory | Corsair XMS3 6GB DDR3 PC3 - Retail » $320
• VGA XFX | Radeon HD 4870 1G 256-bit GDDR5 HD-487A-ZWFC PCI Express 2.0 x16 Retail » $145
• Hard Drive 250G | Western Digital Caviar Blue 7200-RPM 8MB Cache SATA2 - OEM » $45
• DVD Burner Lite-On | Black 24X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 22X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW SATA - OEM » $25
• Windows 7

This system has 12 gigs of memory (2 x 6-gig sticks). That's downright decadent. I think he could arrested for having so much memory (without a permit). We hate you, eDawg. Actually, that motherboard can handle (up to) 24 gigs .. in triple-channel mode.

I said, "Dang, you probably oughta call your local power company and let them know whenever you're fixin' to start that beast .. so they can tweak bus frequency up to 62-cycles, so you don't bring down the whole western grid."

I asked why he didn't opt for a giant 2-TB drive for storage, or a 10K-rpm Raptor to run his system & programs .. or better yet » a solid state drive (drool).

I remember back when we ordered and built his very first custom system. That wasn't long after eDawg's dad married my friend » Maria. We all lived in this big 5-level Euro-style mansion that eDawg's dad built (which later sold for several $mil) cut into the hillside high above Laguna .. with a killer 180-degree view of the Pacific. Ah, the good ol' days .. sitting out on the deck and watching the sun go down.

Have a special treat for you today » my Nuclear Grade Stew recipe (2 pages). I've made this stew at least 50 times over the years .. probably closer to a hundred. Now that autumn is here, and the nights are getting chilly, it's time to break out the crock pot.

For the pages that contain this recipe, I designed a new, single-sidebar layout .. another liquid-elastic hybrid. See what you think.

For previous web pages, I used a design that comprised dual-sidebars, one on each side, cuz I liked the balanced, symmetric look provided by that layout. So this feature took longer to complete than expected, cuz I first had to code the CSS from scratch.

I've made this stew for the Bug many times (cutting the veggies into smaller pieces so they fit easily in his little mouth). So it's made with lots of love. He digs it.

Been lagging on entries lately, as you mighta noticed. Been dabbling in Programming. Kinda got lost. Big subject.

On the personal side, I took the Bug kayaking last week .. out on the Newport Back Bay. (No waves there.) He later confided, "Dad, at first I was a little scared. But now I'm not scared." We stopped at a small island where he got out and searched for buried treasure.

Happy Halloween. I modified the method of placing the graphics in the header found at the top of the home page .. up where it says » RADIFIED | Nuclear Grade Technolust. There I implemented a technique known as » CSS Image Replacement, of which there exist many variations, each with its own set of pro's & con's.

The dividing-line among web designers seems to be whether or not to use a non-semantic span tag with CSS positioning, which involves a more complicated technique .. but leaves visible TEXT in place for visitors who surf the Web with STYLES turned off (primarily those using mobile devices).

I used a simpler IR technique, by changing the images you see displayed there .. from foreground images to background images.

This allowed me to replace the foreground images (contained in those heading elements) with TEXT .. which I then indented (way to your left), so it can't be seen. By moving the TEXT out of the way, this technique reveals the graphics (.. which look prettier than standard heading-text).

The advantage however, is » devices that don't render styles (such as screen readers and mobile devices) will now see a TEXT heading and tag-line displayed there, where before there existed only images. Search engines also gives more weight to TEXT than images.

Most Rad visitors will never notice the difference .. seeing most who frequent the site (fellow technolusters) browse with both images and CSS turned ON. But I'm gradually filling my webmaster toolkit with increasingly sophisticated techniques. (Learning by doing.)

After all the pages are styled however, and the markup is coded semantically, there's still no substitute for insightful content .. that is well written (.. and hopefully seasoned with a dash of personality).

This has always been the most difficult challenge .. because a stylish suit does not a charming pig make. And the ugliest person can say the profoundest things, and possess scintillating ideas. So it would seem that content trumps style .. no matter the venue (.. except maybe for those who focus on style).

Changed the underlying markup that controls the links in the blue-green sidebars on the home-page. They were previously coded as » paragraphs. I changed them to » list-items .. cuz that's what they are » a list of items (links) grouped according to category. Certainly not paragraphs .. not even sentences.

If I did this correctly, you shouldn't notice any difference. Cuz I applied the same styling to the list items .. tho this was trickier than it might sound. I nearly freaked when a single misplaced comma trashed my whole layout. Yikes!

This change represents a semantic improvement. Semantics (i.e. » 'meaning') is one of the buzz-words kicked around when thinkers discuss the Web's future.

Most surprising was that it took me so long to realize I had coded the home-page with semantically incorrect markup. It suddenly hit me (last night), when out of the blue (actually » blue-green), I thought » "Those links aren't paragraphs; they're a LIST."

Enrolled in Amazon's Affiliate program, something I probably shoulda done years ago. They claim it takes ~3 days to process an application, but I received my acceptance letter today. (Applied late last night.)

Being a n00b, I don't know much about their program yet, except that they pay a percentage whenever a visitor clicks a link on my site and makes a corresponding purchase. (How big of a percentage I'm not sure.)

I've long included links to books at the Amazon site [ in pages such as this one » Best Books for Learning the Basics of Web Site Design (XHTML & CSS), and this one » Andy Budd's Book: CSS Mastery ] without ever taking advantage of their program.

If I start making considerable cash, I'll be bummed that I didn't enroll sooner. And if I don't (earn cash), I'll be bummed too, for wasting my time with this program. So either way .. which might be why I hesitated so long.

What I like best about the Amazon program is that it allows me to monetize the site without including visible ads (.. unlike Google's AdSense program). All I need to do is add the following code to the end of each Amazon link » ?ie=UTF8&tag=radifiedcom-20. So it's virtually invisible to visitors. If I didn't tell you, you might never know.

I also like that it doesn't cost visitors anything extra when purchasing a book via a link from this site.

After establishing an 'Associate' account (and logging in to the Amazon site), a toolbar magically appears at the top of the browser window whenever I visit Amazon.com.

The Associate toolbar allows me to create targeted links to the particular book/page I'm at/on .. with a single click. Couldn't be easier. I simply paste the auto-generated code into my web page.

"Hey Rad Man!" began an email I received last week. "I'll pay $100 for a link on your Downloads page." Of course, there's no way of knowing if such offers are legit .. until the cash arrives.

 I've researched Search Engine Optimization (SEO) enough to know I don't much care for it.

Programming I enjoy, but SEO contains a seemingly endless amount of info to digest, some of which conflicts from site to site.

And the suggested techniques are often time-consuming, with dubious results that demand the patience of a saint before you start to see results. Rather focus my energies on generating original content.

Moreover, some of the techniques used to 'optimize' web pages (for higher search engine rankings) seem manipulative, if not downright dishonest. Many of the SEO sites I've visited have a 'slimy' feel to them » detailing how to trick search engines into ranking your pages higher.

I learned that links from 'ranked' pages will (in turn) yield greater 'importance' to the pages that those links aim at (point to). This is (I assume) what this person had in mind when she contacted me.

The email seemed both professional and specific. (Not slimy.) The girl was clear about what she wanted. And best of all, her proposal could be implemented minutes. (Simple.)

The problem was .. that the page they wanted a link on was created back when I knew squat about web standards (XHTML & CSS). The underlying mark-up (code) was a rat's nest of deprecated tags and coding no-no's.

Downright embarrassing .. from a webmaster's point-of-view. Miracle the page would render at all (.. even in 'quirks' mode).

Frontline launches its new season tonight .. with a feature titled » Obama's War. We're taken to Afghanistan, where we hear a commander begin the segment by saying, "We are experts in the application of violence." Catchy. Got my attention.

Was surprised to hear the f-word uttered so many times. Soldiers use the f-word a lot. Even more than sailors do. But then, sailors don't normally get shot at .. which can't be a very pleasant experience.

Glad to know they didn't edit-out the real-life dialogue. That's why I like Frontline .. feel like they give me the straight poop. (Much as possible.)

Great contrast showing the difference between the suit-n-tie crowd discussing policy in an air-conditioned banquet-room in Washington .. with soldiers dodging bullets in Afghanistan's withering heat (.. one of whom got shot thru the neck and died).

If nothing else, this program illustrates the gulf that exists between the Washington policy-makers and the bullet-dodging soldier.

I'm convinced that anybody who is involved in making war policy should be required spend a week (just a week) with the soldiers who are charged with executing policy.

Nothing like a little first-hand experience to inject a dose of reality into the plan. Cuz it's much easier to make policy, while sitting in an air-conditioned room (sipping a dry martini) .. than it is to execute policy .. with bullets whizzing by your head.

Made some minor style-tweaks to the home page. The text you're reading now, for example, is slightly less-bright (easier on the eyes), while the links are a little brighter .. than they were before. (Might have to refresh your browser to load the revised style sheet.)

Visited-links in the sidebars are now slightly less-bright (grayer) .. than un-visited links. Used to be no diff.

Been studying more CSS. Becoming very comfortable tweaking styles. Fine-tuning. Easier for me to determine what I don't like, than what I do.

Oh, the date is also slightly brighter (whiter) .. than the rest of the text, and has a "text-transform" property applied to make it » UPPERCASE .. via a span tag with 'date' class attribute.

Upgraded the Rad blog to the newest version (4.32), which was released a few days ago. Way easier, now that I have Linux shell skillz & a VPS. Five minutes instead of 2 hours.

Movable Type v5.0 will be coming out soon. Currently at » beta-3. I normally install NEW versions of whole-number upgrades, rather than upgrading previous installations. Keeps the number of blog-entries down for a given installation.

Currently have 167 entries on MT 4.x. Lots of entries tend to make the blog respond sluggishly (when rebuilding). That would be » Ye Olde Rad Blog IV. (Started with v2.63 .. in May 2003.)

Considering installing a wiki (software). Can't hurt. Might help. Would be a place (beside the forum) where folks could post & reference their own info/content. Might be a good learning experience, too.

I have no experience with wiki's .. other than searching Wikipedia. Not sure which one would be best. So many choices. Ideas? Saw this comparison. Nigel once recommended Dokuwiki (I think) as a well-coded (PHP-based) piece of software.

The Dokuwiki download is 1.7 MB. (Compare that with the Movable Type download, which is 4.6 MB.) An über comparison of all Wiki's and their features is posted » HERE. Meanwhile Wikipedia, the mother-of-all wiki's, uses MediaWiki, which is both free & Open Source.