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frugal technology, simple living and guerrilla large-appliance repair

Regular blog here, 'microblog' there

Many of my traditional blog post live on this site, but a great majority of my social-style posts can be found on my much-busier microbloging site at updates.passthejoe.net. It's busier because my BlogPoster "microblogging" script generates short, Twitter-style posts from the Linux or Windows (or anywhere you can run Ruby with too many Gems) command line, uploads them to the web server and send them out on my Twitter and Mastodon feeds.

I used to post to this blog via scripts and Unix/Linux utilities (curl and Unison) that helped me mirror the files locally and on the server. Since this site recently moved hosts, none of that is set up. I'm just using SFTP and SSH to write posts and manage the site.

Disqus comments are not live just yet because I'm not sure about what I'm going to do for the domain on this site. I'll probably restore the old domain at first just to have some continuity, but for now I like using the "free" domain from this site's new host, NearlyFreeSpeech.net.

Wed, 12 Jun 2013

Solution: My host changed its ssh key, and Thunar and Nautilus won't let me connect with sftp

My shared-hosting provider moved my account to a new machine, and along with all that newness came a new ssh key.

FileZilla figured it out right away and asked me if I wanted to accept the new key. (I did.)

But when trying to open an sftp connection in Thunar or Nautilus, I got a "Host key verification failed" error.

The solution was easy to find.

All I had to do was go to the .ssh folder in my home directory (/home/steven/.ssh for me; /home/your_account/.ssh for you) and get rid of the "old" ssh key from the old server.

I tried to re-connect to my shared-hosting account via sftp, the system asked me to accept the new ssh key, I did so, and now I'm back in sftp with this account via the Thunar file manager in Xfce.

Tue, 11 Jun 2013

Slight tweak in my Ode site's Logic theme for 'standard' links in post titles

One of the features of the Ode blogging system's links in post titles in the default Logic theme is that they lead not to the individual entry page but to the portion of the page including all of the relevant day's posts that includes the entry whose link is being clicked.

That's a complicated way of saying that the title links look like this:

http://stevenrosenberg.net/blog/2013/06/11/#2013_0611_hostgator

I wanted to see how the blog would work when clicking on the title of a post leads to a page that just includes that individual post itself.

By that, I mean this:

http://stevenrosenberg.net/blog/web_hosting/2013_0611_hostgator

That is the same result you'd get by clicking the Permalink tag at the bottom of each entry.

It was as easy as copying the permalink tag and replacing the original title tag in the page.html file in my current version of Ode's Logic theme.

It's a small change. Not a big deal at all. But it's so easy to do in Ode. Just about every part of the system is a text file that most users can understand and modify. So I figured I'd do it and see how it worked.

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HostGator moved me to a new server, and everything's working

HostGator emailed me recently about moving my shared-hosting account to a new server and a new version of the CentOS Linux distribution.

The move happened. Everything seems to be working. There were some changes in my DNS servers, but nothing broke. I had to change the URL I use to access my webmail over ssl.

I do have a new ssh key, which my FTP client prompted me to accept. And so I did.

Since everything is working, I haven't checked the DNS servers on my domains.

I give HostGator a whole lot of credit here because the only thing I had to change was my browser bookmark for accessing my secure webmail.

I don't remember which version of CentOS I was using before, but now it's 6.4. The version of Perl (5.8.8) didn't seem to change. PHP is up to 5.3.24. My OwnCloud test site works.

So I guess it was just the matter of retiring old hardware and bringing up new on the part of HostGator. They kept me informed, and all is well.

Mon, 10 Jun 2013

Configuring Fedora 18 to print to HP LaserJet 1020 is a pain in the ass

It didn't take me days to figure it out, but getting this Fedora 18 system to recognize and actually print on my el-cheapo HP LaserJet 1020 should have been a whole lot easier than it turned out to be.

The system "recognized" the printer as soon as I plugged it in. I already had the hplip package installed, which I thought would help. Drivers were installed for me.

But as soon as I tried to print, nothing happened.

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Mon, 03 Jun 2013

My kernel bug report in Fedora is getting results

I raised a bug in Fedora over 3.9.x kernels that won't boot under EFI on my HP Pavilion g6-2210us laptop.

The latest patched kernel works for me. Thanks, Fedora users and developers!

Fri, 31 May 2013

Mark Shuttleworth closes Ubuntu's Bug No. 1 now that Microsoft's hold on computing is declining

Ubuntu's SABDFL ("self-appointed benevolent dictator for life," as he's known) Mark Shuttleworth just added comment No. 1834 to Ubuntu's Bug No. 1 -- "Microsoft Has a Majority Market Share" -- and closed the bug.

Sure, Ubuntu might have played a small part in knocking off Microsoft Windows as the dominant operating system for computing devices, but as Shuttleworth admits -- and I give him a whole lot of credit for doing so, it's more the move (especially in the consumer space) away from desktop/laptops to mobile and tablet devices running iOS and Android that has pushed Microsoft to the sidelines.

Coincidentally, I've also been thinking about Ubuntu's Bug No. 1 myself lately, and like SABDFL figuring that it should be closed.

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Fri, 24 May 2013

Joe Pass: 'Summertime' (1992)

Here's a Joe Pass solo performance from late in his life. He's playing a custom ES-175 guitar that Gibson made for him and delivered to him in 1992, according to longtime friend and fellow guitarist John Pisano.

The guitar differs from stock ES-175 models in a few ways. It has a slightly thinner body, a single pickup in the neck position (which is like ES-175s with a single pickup, though "modern" ES175s usually are equipped with two pickups), an ebony fingerboard (instead of rosewood) and gold hardware instead of nickel (or chrome).

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Thu, 23 May 2013

Posting with Ode is so easy

I create a text file. Then I push it to the server with FTP.

Without the Indexette addin, that would be it. But since I do use Indexette (which time/date-stamps entries indepenently of the file's own timestamp), I re-index the site via the browser, and the post appears.

Joe Pass: 'All the Things You Are'

This is the video I use when I'm testing systems to see how they deal with YouTube. The video is HTML5-ready, so it'll display in browsers on systems that don't have Flash installed or enabled.

It's a performance from late in Joe Pass' life, and it shows his way with a standard.

Joe Pass: 'You Are the Sunshine of My Life,' live at Montreaux 1975

I had the vinyl of this record, and I probably listened to this track a thousand times. I never knew it was available on video.