Wave applicaton

I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait for Google Wave to go public… I just hope I get an invite in the first wave, but I didn’t hear about it until just a short time ago. Google is supposed to open it to the public (limited invites, though) a week from tomorrow.

Open-sourcing it and allowing federation will be what makes it big… Honestly, how long do you think it will be before Microsoft takes it and tries to one-up Google? I was wondering how it was going to work with Internet Explorer, as IE doesn’t support HTML 5, but it seems Google has built a Chrome Frame plugin for IE.

I first read about this on Erictric, who argues that Wave is starting to fizzle even before it’s open to the public. I must say, I disagree. I think, come next week, it’s going to be all over the blogosphere and twitter… and then, yea, wave.

Not Found

Error 404

http://www.google.com/chrome

Update: Woohoo, it’s released, and so far, so good. I like it.

UGH!?! Give me Chrome… I need Chrome… If you haven’t heard already (Lord knows how you got here), Google is releasing a browser tomorrow (Tuesday). Google Chrome is set to be a major improvement over current browsers (even Firefox, although it likely won’t take Firefox long to build in the best features).

This is huge, why else would Arrington talk about it not once or even twice, but three times in less than four hours… did I mention it hasn’t even been made available, yet. It’s on just about every other tech blog I read, as well. Anyway, here’s the comic book Google released about it, if you’re interested (it’s kind of long, but a great read if you’re like me). You can also read about it on The Official Google Blog or on Google Blogoscoped.

I remember, just 3 years ago, some of my coworkers were making fun of me because I said that, given the opportunity, I would have a home network. Heh, you don’t see too many houses that don’t have some sort of computer network, now. Needless to say, I’ve got my home network and love being able to hack from my living room, the kitchen, and even the kids bedroom. Just today, I setup a new Linksys WRT54G on my network. It’s replacing the router / wireless access point functionality of the my SBG900. The default firmware was sort of limited, it didn’t even include WDS. That happened to be my main reason for purchasing the router. We recently got a computer desk for the playroom and stuck a computer in there for the kids (kids need the Internet, too). I didn’t want to run a cable from the router in the computer room to the computer in the playroom (Summer wouldn’t have liked an ethernet cable running across her kitchen, either). I happened to have a spare Speedstream 6520 (which has WDS if you have the right firmware), so instead of buying a wireless nic for the computer, I decided a router would give me more options (not to mention extending my wireless range to the bedroom and the backyard). However, my new router didn’t have WDS.

In walks DD-WRT… To be completely honest, I’ve been looking at DD-WRT for a while now, and wanted a router to put it on. I was really just watching ebay, but ended up charging a new one to our Dell account. I wasn’t completely surprised that WDS wasn’t on my WRT when it got here, it wasn’t in the feature list, but the latest version of the WRT54G will take the DD-WRT custom firmware, and WDS is on DD-WRT’s feature list. Anyway, I setup a NAT pass-through for my router, got all of my port-forwards, and reserved addresses configured, and even got the built in Dynamic DNS client configured to update my domain names. Unfortunately, the Speedstream only supports WEP when you are using WDS, so I MAC locked the wireless as a second layer of protection.

I just came across Psi today while trying to find a way to sign out a session of Google Talk running on my home computer (I was at work). My wife was sending me messages and I was only getting some of them, it was really getting annoying. Anyway, it turns out the feature is not yet available in the Google Talk client, but I saw Psi in the available clients on the Google Talk page… and I hadn’t seen it before.

Psi is a free instant messaging application designed for the Jabber IM network including Google Talk. Fast and lightweight, Psi is fully open-source and compatible with Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

I was browsing the site and noticed a lot of features that looked great to me (I’m sort of a feature hound… even for features I’ll never use). Encryption, multi-user chats, and remote client control… could it really be, the exact feature I’m looking for?

Always-on security

Using the same SSL technology that makes it possible for you to safely shop on the web, Psi automatically encrypts its communication with compatible IM servers to provide a secure connection over untrusted networks like public WiFi access points. For advanced security needs, Psi can also encrypt messages end-to-end with OpenPGP.

Leading the way

Psi’s developers are actively involved in the Jabber community, working hard to ensure that Psi fully supports the standards for features like avatars, multi-user chats (with full admin control), remote client control, and more. It’s standards like these that allow people to communicate smoothly with each other on the Jabber network, and Psi ensures that you’ll never miss a beat.

There’s a couple of things I miss from Google Talk, I like the chat display more, being able to search contacts, and having the email button right in the chat window. However, the remote client control makes it worth the switch by itself, not to mention all of the other features built into Psi (adjustable auto away, auto offline, and connect through proxy). To enable remote client control, you’ll need to check the little box in the advanced page of the options.

You can also make it portable (not a huge deal, since all you need to do is log into your inbox in GTalk to do the same thing, but it will give you remote client control).

When searching for the remote sign out for the Google Talk client, I saw quite a few forum posts from people who wanted this feature and were switching to other messaging platforms because of the missed messages and such. I wanted to let everybody know about this great product.

Way to go Psi Team.

Sphere piqued my interest two days ago, when I saw that someone had been referred to my blog from there. I immediately recognized the site… I had seen it on TechCrunch and GigaOm. When I had seen it on those sites, I thought it was just another social bookmarking or “Digg” like site. I soon found out it was a great tool for helping navigate the blogosphere.

Naturally, I went to get the code to put on my site, finding only a link to contact Sphere for more information. Sphere looked cool enough to forgo my usual distaste for a ‘contact me’ where a download link should be. I filled the requested information and hit send. Within a few minutes I had received an automatic response… great, I’m at the back of a long line. I archived the email and went about my business. Checking my email, I found, quite unexpectedly, that Tony Conrad, founder and CEO of Sphere had sent an email asking me to download and implement the new plugin for WordPress. About 5 minutes after reading the email… Sphere was running on my blog. I still had to make a small tweak to disable Snap Preview Anywhere, by adding a class, “snap_nopreview” to the link in the plugin file. So, now after each of my posts you will see a ‘Sphere it’ link. If you would like more about some topic I have written about, just click Sphere it, and you’ll be presented with a list of related blog posts. Now, if I could just get some comments… Oh well.

I just noticed the release of “Ella,” the new version of WordPress yesterday. Usually I don’t upgrade my site stuff the first week of a release, and sometimes I never upgrade it, it’s just too much of a hassle in most cases. However, after looking at the list of new features included in WordPress 2.1, I knew I had to have it.

• Autosave makes sure you never lose a post again.
• Our new tabbed editor allows you to switch between WYSIWYG and code editing instantly while writing a post.
• The lossless XML import and export makes it easy for you to move your content between WordPress blogs.
• Our completely redone visual editor also now includes spell checking.
• New search engine privacy option allows you take you to indicate your blog shouldn’t ping or be indexed by search engines like Google.
• You can set any “page” to be the front page of your site, and put the latest posts somewhere else, making it much easier to use WordPress as a content management system.
• Much more efficient database code, faster than previous versions. Domas Mituzas from MySQL went over all our queries with a fine-toothed comb.
• Links in your blogroll now support sub-categories and you can add categories on the fly.
• Redesigned login screen from the Shuttle project.
• More AJAX to make custom fields, moderation, deletions, and more all faster. My favorite is the comments page, which new lets you approve or unapprove things instantly.

Wow, I don’t know if this was available on WordPress 2.0 or not, but I was just able to drag the “Custom Fields” box out of my way, which is great, because it didn’t move enough when I tried to expand the “Trackbacks” box (probably an IE7 bug). Anyway, my favorite feature has to be the Autosave followed closely by the tabbed entry interface, making it easier to see the code view of your post.

This is really getting annoying. The computer was still on when I woke up, there are no traces in the Windows system log or the Virtual Server log. Hmm, I wonder if the beta service pack will help. I don’t want to try it except as a last result, as my experience with service packs has usually been if it was broken when the service pack was applied, the service pack usually just complicates things.

Oh well, I guess I’ll just limp along until I have an evening to apply the service pack. Maybe I’ll be able to find me a separate server, sometime.

No worries, it’s back up now. Weird, though. I don’t remember shutting down the computer last night, yet it was off when I got out of the shower. After reviewing the event log after work, I found that it was shutdown gracefully around the time I went to bed.

That’s not the weirdest part, not by far. After getting the computer back up, I was looking through the feeds I subscribe to on NetVibes and saw that my blog wasn’t sending a feed. After trying (unsuccessfully) to ping the virtual server, I go to the trusty start menu and find my Virtual Server Administration links. However, when I open it, “Page not found.” Hmm, IIS isn’t running, after a quick stop at the services console, the WWW Publishing service is running and I’m able to access the Virtual Server console, at which point I’m greeted with a nasty error message… the virtual server service wasn’t running either, that’s odd. Once again I punch the ever faithful “services.msc” in the run dialog and start the Virtual Server service. Only it doesn’t start. Well, well, well, file not found. “Huh? What file?” After a little investigation, I found that the file that is the service isn’t where it should be. “Where is it?” you say… Only my master file table knows.

Naturally, I did what anybody would do in my situation, I reinstalled Virtual Server (I guess not anybody, but I like to think I’m normal sometimes). Anyway, the service was able to start afterwards, but the virtual machine wouldn’t turn on… something about a bad login. Hmm, that’s an odd error for something like this. After beating around the proverbial bush some I figured I’d remove the server and add it again. The processor monitor started moving… it was beautiful.

Naturally, I start a continuous ping to the server so that I will know when the network is available on it, only it never becomes available. Alright, can nothing work today? Well, it turns out Suse saw the network adapter that Virtual Server setup as a whole new adapter. I guess, even though it was the same Mac, Linux knew that something had changed, oh well. A little configuration in Yast and it was responding to my continuous ping. Wondrously, my blog was still returning a page not found, DOH! Back in Yast, I look through the runlevel services and find that lsws is disabled (LiteSpeed Web Server, duh). I start it (and check MySQL, of course). Voila! It’s alive!

The weirdest part… you thought that was it? No, not quite. Actually, I find it freakishly weird that when I found out my Web site was down all night, I got this sick feeling in my stomach. When I had trouble getting back up, I think I actually started to panic. Whew. Good thing I was able to contain my emotions well enough to think this problem through. You would have missed out on this and many more posts only available on Got Wills. Heh, probably not. I would probably just put it back on my Windows PC, you know, the physical (as opposed to virtual) one. I do still feel a strange longing for the 1 or 2 hits that I may have gotten over what I like to call “The Night the Server Went Down in Holbrook.”

Well, I got it all working, well mostly. The blog is now hosted on my virtual Suse 10.2 server. The only issue that I’m still having is getting the colors of my header correct, it doesn’t seem to take any adjustments I make. I probably just need ImageMajik or something like it. I’ll check it when I get a few minutes.

I only dedicated 128 MB RAM to the server and it seems to be doing fine (thank you textmode). Instead of Apache, I’m now using LiteSpeed as my Web server. It’s supposed to work a lot better with Ruby on Rails. While there were a few stumbling blocks along the way, it was a lot easier than I thought it would be and as I suspected I would, I’ve learned a lot since I started this little project two five days ago (I actually finished 3 days ago and have been trying to write this post since then).

Server Installation

I made it through the Virtual Server 2005 R2 installation without incident, and was soon able to boot to a virtual system that wanted a system boot disk. Next I downloaded the Internet installation of Suse 10.2, afterall, I was only installing textmode and didn’t think I would need the whole installation DVD for that. Later I found out that I could have downloaded CD 1 and it would have been a lot easier… furthermore, I would have completely avoided my first pitfall, no swap partition, which resulted in an impass. After googling it a few times, I decided to use Partition Magic to setup a swap partition for the installation to use. Finally, it was installed successfully, on to the software installs.

Software Installation

I found a nice tutorial on howto forge for setting up The Perfect OpenSuse 10.2. This tutorial was invaluable in getting my virtual system ready to host. I had already installed the OS so I skipped ahead to page 5. Now, this tutorial uses Apache and I wanted to use LiteSpeed for my Web server, so that’s one step I skipped. I also didn’t want ISPConfig as I’m only setting up this host for my own personal use… for now. Also, my ISP blocks traffic on port 25, and I like my Google Apps for your Domain, so I didn’t bother with setting up Postfix or POP3/Imap related material. I also skipped the BIND9 install since I don’t have a static public IP address. Besides, I’m happy with EveryDNS.net.

I used wget to download LiteSpeed and the included installer worked very well. I found later, when trying to make my blog work that the included build of PHP wouldn’t work for me. A forum post led me to a howto that detailed building and installing a custom built PHP for LiteSpeed. A couple of things to note:

Be sure to install libxml2-devel:

yast2 -i libxml2-devel

Be sure to include the mySQL client library that came with mySQL (my mySQL base install was in /var/lib/mysql):

./configure '--prefix=/php5' '--with-litespeed' '--with-config-file-path=../conf' '--with-mysql=path_to_mysql_base_install'

Transferring the Blog

I ran into yet another speed bump when trying to access my database from the Windows machine. I remembered to open the port on the firewall and could access it from the server, but I couldn’t get into it from the host system using the root login and the password I had set. After a bit of googling, I found that mySQL is setup to only allow local access to root, so I proceded to allow access from my host machine using the instructions I found on Hard Hat Hosting. It worked perfectly, I now had access to my mySQL installation and was able to use SQLyog to synchronize my database on the Windows system with the database on the Linux system. I made the name and everything else the same so that I wouldn’t have to tweak my config files.

I uploaded the blog files using sftp to a subdirectory of the LiteSpeed server install and used chmod to set them all to read/execute for everyone except me, well actually root.

Setting Up the Virtual Host

I used the nifty LiteSpeed configuration page to add a virtual host. I ended up using the PHP_SuEXEC template and instantiating the member virtual host. I was then able to setup a new listener to direct requests to the correct virtual host. I simply restarted the service by clicking the “Apply Changes” link in the top left corner and voila. My blog is up and running.

Let me just say, WOW. I am impressed with the web interface and complete web control of Virtual Server 2005. It’s not at all what I was expecting (something like Virtual PC). I’m installing SUSE 10.2 on it right now. I plan to setup my Web server on the virtual server and get my blog and any Rails apps I would like to host, like SimpleTicket (which I will be blogging as soon as I get a working copy going).

Virtualization is the way the IT industry is moving and I can see why. It’s not only cheaper to upgrade a system and install another (Virtual) OS on it, but it’s not any harder either… I might go so far as to say it was easier. I didn’t even need to burn my ISO file to a disc. Just load the ISO into Virtual Server and your ready to boot to it.

Link to Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2