Shane's blog

New blog

2005-11-28T20:31:00.000+08:00

I have set up a new blog over at node.mu. I will no longer post entries here.

#efnet.org

2005-10-22T10:12:00.000+08:00

On #efnet.org right now I count 81 oped, 1 voiced and 33 opered clients. The channel has grown tremendously since lucy, Auriga, phillie, n909 and I created it 4 years or so ago. It all started as a forum conversation on the old efnet.org bulletin board. We were talking about IRC on a bulletin board, hitting the browser refresh every minute or so. It was blindingly obvious that we needed a channel and so #efnet.org was born.

Pills, Hardy, qurve and oz were some of the first oppers to join us. Of the early folks to join, lucy, Auriga and n909 are now opers. phillie seems to have stopped chatting. I also stopped chatting for a couple of years.

I think that the name of the channel, and the fact that the channel has so many opers as regular chatters, has helped it grow at such a fast rate. Power attracts hangers-on. Being oped in #efnet.org somehow makes one leet. The fact that the early chatters are now opers probably encourages the hangers-on too, which is pretty sad.

Bought some books

2005-09-29T23:37:00.000+08:00

I've bought 2 PHP books from amazon.com today:

Items shipping soon:
Delivery estimate: October 27, 2005 
1 of: PHP 5 Objects, Patterns, and Practice
1 of: PHP 5 Power Programming (Bruce Perens Open Source)

I've been looking for books on PHP patterns for ages. I can't wait to get my hands on them.

Windows XP setup and SATA

2005-07-31T01:15:00.000+08:00

I'm helping to build a computer for my frien's niece. It's now time to install the OS (Windows XP). Unfortunately, Windows XP, being a several years old now, does not come with drivers for SATA. We need to to load these drivers through a floppy disk at the start of the installation. This is a major inconvenience. We didn't buy a floppy drive for the new computer. Who does these days?

Permanent Residency

2005-07-27T21:38:00.000+08:00

I recently got granted my permanent resident Australian visa. Am I happy about it? Of course. But to be honest, I was not really worried that it might not be granted. For skilled applications, if you meet all the criteria and your degree is assessed positively, it should be fairly straight forward.

In other news, I've finally replaced my dead hard disk. The new one is double in capacity and cost less that my old one when I bought it a year or so ago. I've been slowly installing my applications back. Right now I'm dual booting Windows XP and FreeBSD 6.0 Beta 1. I kicked ubuntu out.

FreeBSD 6.0 Beta 1 runs smoothly so far. It does not feel like beta software. I usually track the stable branches only, but 6.0 RELEASE is due soon and it will be easier to update the system from beta to RELEASE than from 5.4 to 6.0 RELEASE. I'm building world right now and a custom kernel will follow soon. I'm building a custom kernel to get rid of the debugging stuff that have been turned on for the beta release. This should give us a performance boost.

Long time

2005-04-27T22:51:00.000+08:00

So, what's happened these past few months?

Bought a new car.

Anne, my sister came over to Perth for about a month.

Parents came over too.

Graduated.

This girl crashed into my car, giving me a slight neck injury, and giving my car a $5,600 injury. Her insurance's paying for it.

Learnt that the strategy that I've been using for developing PHP/MySQL applications has a name - ORM - for Object Relational Mapping.

Got into the Smarty templating engine.

Got lazy, and wrote a script to write my PHP classes for me - a class for each table in the database so that I can instantiate objects and deal with stuff on a higher level.

Then we discovered phpCodeGenie, which does the same thing and more. The best part is that phpCodeGenie was written by fellow Mauritian Nilesh Dosooye. I've only looked at it briefly at this stage. Most of the form generation stuff I don't need, especially since the generated code mixes PHP code with html markup.

Got rid of Arch Linux because packages were breaking way too often for my liking.

Considering installing the newly released ubuntu hoary.

Looking forward to FreeBSD 5.4 and Open Solaris

Aquarians

2004-12-10T17:21:00.000+08:00

I just found out that at Bam, Adam was born on the 9th of Febuary, Kristy was born on the 10th and I was born on the 11th of the same month. That's freaky!

Someone burned down my car last night

2004-11-19T21:28:00.000+08:00

A couple of cops gave me the good news at 5:30 AM this morning. Then I was late for work because the 3 cabs that I called didn't turn up. Pretty rotten start of the day.

All work and no play makes Shane a dull boy

2004-11-16T21:28:00.000+08:00

I'm so tired today. I took some work to do at home, but I know that in the state that I'm in right now, coding will be an exercise in frustration. So I've been reading some essays about software on the web. It occurred to me that I shouldn't be doing that.

I shouldn't be in front of my computer. Why can't I just tune out, veg out in front of the TV? Why do I get fidgety if I am not doing work? Why can't I relax completely even when I'm with friends for a night out? Why am I not satisfied with my last uni group project, even if we scored 94%? When did I become so obsessed with perfection? Why do I read and reread what I just wrote? Why can't I just bang out something and post it? Why am I more irritable these days? Why do I need my concentration? Why am I holding my breath?

I've been reflecting on the past, thinking useless thoughts. I have changed. Shane, meet the new Shane. Shane, say hi to the old Shane. Which one do I prefer? I've exorcized some of my old demons. I'm keeping them in check. Am I grinding myself to oblivion at the same time? When was the last time I felt truly relaxed? When was the last time I thought of anything else but work? Can I live with the new Shane? Can others? Has my quest for improvement been taken too far?

Things have been adding up. I've been getting good grades, will be graduating soon, got a job, applying for Permanent Residency. All the while losing something that I am not willing to contemplate losing.

Ironic

2004-11-05T14:06:00.000+08:00

Is that ironic or what? My chipset supports sideband addressing, but not fast writes while my graphics card supports fast writes but not sideband addressing. Oh well, it's time for an upgrade anyway. Maybe in a few months when I can afford it.

My first full time job

2004-11-05T11:28:00.000+08:00

Yesterday was a significant day - I got my first full time job, and I feel so lucky. I will be working full time as a web developer at bam creative as soon as my exams are over. This there will be no holidays for me when I finish my degree, but hey, I don't care! I drove straight to subway after I signed the employment contract, to let them know that I won't be coming back to work after my exams. They were happy for me, even if this means that they will have to find and train someone else to replace me.

Everything seems to be falling into place. I'm applying for my premanent residency in Australia, graduating and I got a job where I get to do what I love doing. The people at bam creative are great. The atmosphere is informal and everybody get along very well. I have been made very welcome for the few times I've been there. I'm sure I'll learn lots from the team. Hopefully I'll be able to get up to speed pretty fast. I will probably have to put in extra hours getting familiar with the projects that I will be taking on, but I won't be the only one doing that. Most of the staff seem to stay over after hours. I guess that's what you get when people are doing something they are passionate about.

But I'm getting ahead of myself... There's this small event called exams that I've got to take care of first.

Kernel vs USB, USB wins.

2004-10-31T01:20:00.000+08:00

An update of the nvidia driver was made available through pacman today that works with the latest kernel. However, the latest kernel also breaks USB. So I can't use my keyboard nor use my mouse. I don't have time to arse about with this issue, so I just rolled back my kernel to get my USB to work again. I'll deal with this later.

I've installed ubuntu on Mel's laptop. First impression is good. For a new distro it's looking great. It has lots of potential. Mel is happily chatting away on gaim and checking her email with evolution while I'm typing this :)

Kernel vs. nvidia. Kernel wins.

2004-10-29T22:51:00.000+08:00

Updated my Arch box today. pacman -Syu, new kernel and hey, what do you know, the new kernel breaks the nvidia driver. While Microsoft bends over backwards and resorts to ugly hacks to maintain compatibility, arguably at the expense of stability, the Linux community is hell-bent on writing beautiful code even if it means breaking compatibility, hence, also at the expense of stability.

Before any smarty-pants point out that I shouldn't have updated my kernel (if it ain't broke, don't fix it), let me mention the recent kernel vulnerability. So, yeah, please update your kernels if you are affected.

Some days Linux is just too much of a hassle. Since I have to do real work like right now, I'll be using Windows. It's a pity that Windows has lost the ability to wow the geek in me. Longhorn is already looking long overdue. OS X is looking like a good choice right now. Maybe my next box will be a mac.

Whiteness

2004-10-22T22:35:00.000+08:00

A white desktop to brighten my mood. Click image for full version.

Dreamweaver Templates

2004-10-18T14:24:00.000+08:00

I’ve been doing a fair bit of PHP hacking lately, and I’ve been thinking about workflow and methodology. How do I make something reusable and maintainable? Putting my coder’s hat on, I am tempted to break everything down into small components, and code them as such. I took my design, then started breaking the html down into chunks to be printed by functions like printHtmlHeader(), printNavBar(), etc. After everything has been made modular, printing out a page is easy. The code is elegant – reusable and maintainable. Any given page is just a series of calls to html-printing functions But is it the right way?

No it’s not. I’m the only one working on the project, so I’m both designer and coder. However, in most projects, the designer is not also the coder. The designer may not even know PHP. If the background colour needs to be changed, will you want the designer to have to hack your printHtmlHeader() function? No you don’t. Using functions to print out static bits on the page is not a good idea, because these static bits are typically maintained by a designer.

Enter Dreamweaver templates. Dreamweaver templates are to designers what classes are to the coders. You create a template, then ‘instantiate’ pages from them. If you change something in the template, the change also affects all the pages that use the template. You can also define editable regions in your template. Think of them as object attributes – these editable regions hold different things depending on the page. The best thing is that you are able, to a large extent, to separate design from business process. The PHP bits fit into the editable regions of the template, and the static bits remain as part of the template, to be maintained by the designer. It is much better to tweak the design from the WYSIWYG Dreamweaver environment than having to pore over html-printing PHP code. With Dreamweaver templates we achieve reusability and maintainability for the design while keeping the design environment designer-friendly.

Two Years

2004-09-30T11:57:00.000+08:00

Today it's been two years since Melissa and I have been together. It's amazing how time flies. I believe that I've become a better person since knowing Mel. My life has certainly taken a turn for the better. I'm happier, more confident, and I grew up a lot as a person.

Desktop Screenie

2004-09-23T09:53:00.000+08:00

Click on the image to see the full version.

Arch Linux

2004-09-22T02:29:00.000+08:00

I've been thinking about my re-entry into the GNU/Linux world recently. I've been yearning for a *nix workstation, and I've been debating whether to go for Linux or FreeBSD. It's been a year and a half since I last used Linux. In the mean time, I've grown more comfortable with FreeBSD.

I love the FreeBSD system. However, I decided to go for Linux on my workstation because:

1) FreeBSD is moving to version 5.3, and the ports tree has been frozen. That means that there is no xorg 6.8 and no Gnome 2.8 in the ports tree yet. And I've been meaning to try these. I could wait for a few weeks till this happens, but then there's also issue number 2.

2) Even though FreeBSD also has binary package management, it is really more source-based. For servers, source-based package management is great: you need a lot of flexibility and you often need to define compile time arguments. However, for a workstation, binaries are fine. And I'm sick of waiting for hours while my software compiles. For what? A 2% performance gain? Not worth the agravation.

So I decided to go with Arch Linux. I briefly considered gentoo. But like I said, I'm getting sick of waiting for my software to compile. But I still wanted to be able to install bleeding edge packages, and Arch seems flexible enough for that. Plus I've heard good things about it.

So I installed Arch today. There's not much hand-holding during the installation and initial system configuration, but it's pretty straight forward. The manual is light years behind FreeBSD's, but it gets the job done. The installation is ncurses-based, like FreeBSD's. However, it's not as polished as the latter (which isn't that polished either, with x-server configuration issues). But then you only install an OS once in a blue moon anyway. My initial encounter with pacman (the package management system) was positive. It seems to work as advertised. And it's definitely much faster to install binaries than to compile from source.

However, I've hit a snag with Gnome. There seems to be a problem with libcroco. This isn't too encouraging. Gnome is partially fubar as a result. Don't these people test packages before making them available to pacman? It seems that Arch's QA isn't up to par with FreeBSD. Very disapointing. I guess I've been spoiled by FreeBSD's stability and maturity.

My initial impression of Arch is mixed. It's austere, a bit like FreeBSD, and I like it that way. I like pacman in principle. However, I'm not convinced that updating will be painless if Arch's QA let's it down. I'll give it a few weeks, then decide whether Arch is worth my time or not. I'm keeping an open mind.

FAMP (FreeBSD, Apache, MySQL, PHP)

2004-09-13T13:18:00.000+08:00

[Edit]I have an updated version of this article here[/Edit]

It's extremely easy to set up a PHP-aware web server in FreeBSD. Here's a quick how-to using the FreeBSD's ports system. The advantage of using the ports system is that updating the server is painless when new versions of the software come out. We'll install the latest version of Apache 1.3, the latest version of MySQL 4.0 and the latest version of PHP 5.

MySQL
Install MySQL first:

cd /usr/ports/databases/mysql40-server
make install clean

Apache
Install Apache with SSL support:

cd /usr/ports/www/apache13-modssl
make
make certificate

Follow the prompts to create the certificate. When you’re done, continue with the installation:

make install
make clean

PHP5
To install mod_php5:

cd /usr/ports/www/mod_php5
make install clean

Install PHP extensions (e.g MySQL support):

cd /usr/ports/lang/php5-extensions
make install clean

A ncurses menu will appear. Select whatever you need from the options.

Post-Installation Configuration
Edit the Apache configuration file /usr/local/etc/apache/httpd.conf and add these lines in the file:

AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps

Look through the file and edit the configuration to suit your needs. Next create a php.ini configuration file from the php.ini-recommended example configuration:

cd /usr/local/etc
cp php.ini-recommended php.ini

Again, look through the configuration file and see if you want to change anything. Next, configure your MySQL server. By default, no password is set for the MySQL root user. You should set a password for that user at this point:

mysqladmin -u root password "newpassword"

Replace "newpassword" with your own. MySQL comes with two anonymous accounts set up. These accounts don't have any passwords assigned by default. It is a good idea to just delete them. At the MySQL prompt, issue the following command:

delete from mysql.user where user = '';
flush privileges;

You may want to use a tool such as MySQL Administrator from a workstation on your network. In order to connect to the MySQL server from your network, you need to give the user whom you want to connect as the required priviledges. For example:

GRANT ALL ON *.* TO root@'192.168.0.%' IDENTIFIED BY 'yourPass';

To exit from the MySQL prompt, just type "exit".

Controlling your servers
You can start, stop or restart Apache by issuing the following commands:

/usr/local/etc/rc.d/apache.sh start
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/apache.sh stop
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/apache.sh restart

You can start or stop the MySQL server by doing:

/usr/local/etc/rc.d/mysql-server.sh start
/usr/local/etc/rc.d/mysql-server.sh stop

The system will use the apache.sh and mysql-server.sh scripts to start Apache and MySQL the next time you reboot as well.

References
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/mysql/en/Default_privileges.html

Installing FreeBSD – Some Pointers

2004-09-12T04:04:00.000+08:00

This is an introduction to FreeBSD that I’ve posted to the discuss@linux.mu mailing list. It may be helpful to somebody, so I’ll post it here too. It’s not very structured (it can be downright random even) and is not meant to be a tutorial. It’s only meant to give the reader a general feel for FreeBSD, give some pointers for a first installation, and highlight some gotchas.

One gotcha that you should be aware of is the fact that the xfree configuration from the installer (sysinstall) may be broken - it's never worked properly for me. So, just skip xfree configuration during the install. Do it after (easier anyway). I will be a waste of time installing the xfree that comes with the CD anyway, since it is outdated by now. You may also want to install xorg rather than xfree, and xorg is not on the FreeBSD release CD.

The best way to set up FreeBSD is to do a minimal install (plus cvsup and the ports system), update the OS, then start installing applications. However, be aware that updating the OS with the latest sources involves downloading the new sources - a pain on dialup. Re-compiling the world may take a few hours on old hardware. Note the distinction here. FreeBSD is an OS, Linux is a kernel. Updating the core of your FreeBSD system involves building a new kernel plus also building all the userspace utilities from updated sources.

Once you've updated the core of the OS, you can install other applications by compiling from source or by getting the binaries. At this point you'd probably want to install bash, xorg (or xfree), a desktop environment / window manager, and whatever else you need. Be prepared to spend a lot of time downloading stuff.

Some miscellaneous points:

1) /etc/rc.conf is the main configuration file for the system.

2) /etc/inetd.conf is where you can configure some internet services such as ftp, identd etc. Just look through the file and uncomment whatever you need.

3) To get you started, you will find it useful to read up on the following: cvsup (understand the different development branches that you can track, and decide which one is best for you), the ports system, portupgrade, how to build a new kernel (easy), how to build the world (easy). Look for Dru Lavigne's articles on the ports system and portupgrade on http://www.onlamp.com/bsd/. These are very helpful and well-written.

4) Firewalling in FreeBSD 5.x is done using either: ipfilter, ipfw, ipfw2, or pf. I recommend pf. It's in very active development, and has all sorts of goodies like bandwidth shaping, failover firewalling, OS fingerprinting (who's connecting to your box) through network stack identification, etc. It's also been ported from OpenBSD to FreeBSD and NetBSD - an indication that developers hold it in high regard. If you use iptables on linux, you'll find pf pretty easy to learn. pf is not installed by default. It is easy to install it though:

Install the /usr/ports/security/pf port:

cd /usr/ports/security/pf; make install clean

Then edit rc.conf and add the lines:

pf_enable="YES"
pf_logd="YES"
pf_conf="/usr/local/etc/pf.conf"

These lines will cause the system to load the pf kernel modules when you reboot. Write your firewall rules in /usr/local/etc/pf.conf. As a rule, configuration files for software that you install will go into /usr/local/etc. Configuration files for the base system live in /etc. Startup scripts (read on a reboot) for daemons that you install will go into /usr/local/etc/rc.d. To manually start pf, do ”/usr/local/etc/rc.d/pf.sh start". You can control pf from the command line by using pfctl (man pfctl for more details). Use tcpdump if you want to monitor the log in real time. You may also be interested in pftop (/usr/ports/security/pftop).

5) Whenever you cvsup, read /usr/ports/UPDATING. From time to time there may be some issues that you need to be aware of, and these will be written in the file. Definitely read the file after the first time you update your sources with cvsup. There are some gotchas that you will want to be aware of. It will save you a lot of grief.

6) FreeBSD has a Linux binary compatibility layer that enables you to run linux binaries. It is very fast, so don't worry about performance hits. It's very helpful for things like the macromedia flash plugin. Macromedia doesn't release one for FreeBSD, but FreeBSD can use the Linux version.

7) Take your time, read the FreeBSD handbook. It's good that you will have access to your desktop system while setting up FreeBSD on the laptop. It's a good idea to subscribe to the different mailing lists. If you have any questions, you can ask the folks in the FreeBSD-questions mailing list. Please don't post questions to FreeBSD-newbies.

The big difference that you will notice between FreeBSD and mainstream Linux distros (like mandrake, fedora, suse) is the fact that with FreeBSD you usually end up installing a minimal system, updating it with the latest sources, then "growing" the system by installing an x-server and other applications. You can maintain an up to date system - latest x-server, latest desktop environment, applications very easily (portupgrade -arR). That's why gentoo users love gentoo as well.

Virtual Comminity Design Update

2004-09-06T13:10:00.000+08:00

The latest design for the virtual community project that I'm doing. I've tried to make the design appeal more to the younger crowd.

Online Portfolio

2004-09-01T06:13:00.000+08:00

I've whipped up a temporary online portfolio to show some of my work. It's available at http://members.iinet.net.au/~zhane

Telemarketing. Ugh.

2004-08-30T19:11:00.000+08:00

I just got a phone call. It went something like this:

*Dring dring*
Me: “Hello?”
Some guy: “Hi. Mr. Sin. Please?”
Me: “Who are you after?”
The guy, heavy Indian accent: “Mr. Sin.”
Me: “Would that be Mr. Sin Fat maybe?”
The guy, sounding as if he’s reading from a script: “Yes. I. Would. Like. To. Tell. You. About. The. Fantastic. Offers. For. Cell. Phones. That. Cellplus. Has. In. Your. Region?”
Me, thinking that I could not have heard right. Cellplus? I’m in Perth, Australia. “From whom?”
The guy: “Cellplus. Are. You. Satisfied. With. Your. Current. Mobile. Phone. Plan?”
Me: “Where are you from?”
The guy: “Call. Center. In. India.”
Me: “No thanks, I’m not interested.”
The guy: “Okay.”
*Click*

What the hell? I can’t have heard right. Cellplus? I’m in Perth, Australia. With all the hype about call centers in Mauritius, maybe someday I’ll get a spam-call from our beloved island. That’d be the day! I pity the poor sods who work in the call centers, having to do telemarketing and getting abused by irate people at the other end of the line.

A Good Friday

2004-08-27T23:40:00.000+08:00

Today I got my ADSL working. At last! My ISP didn't even email me to let me know that it was set up and ready to go. I was just playing with my router and decided to test whether I could connect to the service. And it worked! That was good timing, since I'd just come back from the computer shop with a new network card for my FreeBSD box.

Unfortunately I had to leave for work, so I had to wait until now to play with my increased bandwidth. I'm now redoing the FreeBSD box. I just did a minimal install and initial configuration (15 minutes or so) and I'm now in the process of pulling down all the updated sources with cvsup. This is going MUCH faster than it used to on a dialup connection. Next step is to compile a custom kernel and rebuild the world (userspace). At the end of it I'll have an up to date, optimized, lean and mean minimal install.

I've decided to redo the FreeBSD box because I get nervous when it accumulates cruft. I've been installing so much stuff on it that I eventually used it as a desktop too. I've decided that from now on it will stick to its duties as a server and no more. I'll dual boot with Windows XP on my workstation if I want to play with FreeBSD as a desktop system.

I've also received a letter from my university today. I get nervous when I receive mail from them. A letter from uni usually means that something has gone amok or they want more money out of me. It turns out that it was a letter from the Vice-Chancellor (yeah, right, as if he would personally write to lowly me. It's probably a mass mail). I'm being invited to join the Golden Key Society (yeah, I know, it sounds pompous and all). Aparently I'm in the top 15% in my year, and am considered to be leet enough to grace the society. I wasn't sure about joining - it costs AU$93.50 to join, and I'm graduating at the end of the year anyway. But it may look good in my resumé (I get a certificate when I join). And the careers people have been chanting away to us "Networking, networking, networking" (nothing to do with TCP/IP).

I sound a tad cynical. But I realize that it's a fact that doors can open if you know the right people. So yeah, I'll probably sign up. I'll want to get a job (well, a "proper" one) as soon as I can when I graduate. Anything that helps is a plus.

Brown Nose

2004-08-26T22:45:00.000+08:00

Here's a picture of my doggie. Her name is Pepper and she thinks she's the boss in our house.

Home Network

2004-08-26T13:13:00.000+08:00

I’m supposed to get ADSL today (512kbps). I’m still waiting for my ISP to email me with the good news. But ISPs being ISPs, I’m not holding my breath. I don’t trust the ADSL router that I have. So I’m going to set up my network like this:

The bastion host will be my FreeBSD box running the ipfw firewall for now, and pf eventually. The bastion host also runs my web server. I plan to run squid proxy on it as a transparent proxy, as well as an Intrusion Detection System.

Design and Coding

2004-08-25T14:08:00.000+08:00

I'm sitting in the multimedia lab in uni, cursing Macromedia Flash MX 2004. I just had to force quit it. I was copying over some frames of animation when it locked up, giving me the twirling rainbow of death (I'm on an OS X box). I've just totally lost taste for animation work. I'll get back to it at home.

I've decided that it's sometimes a curse, being in the multimedia field. It's extremely hard to be good at something. It takes dedication and practice. In multimedia, one is exposed to both design (as in how things look) and coding (programming). How does one become a top designer and a top programmer as well? Can one become a better designer than someone who only does design for a living, while at the same time become a better coder than someone who only codes for a living? And we're not even talking about film and animation.

Most people tend to specialise. Most of my peers are probably better at design than at coding. Some even regard coding as a painful exercise. For example, a web designer is not really expected to know how to code. That's the web developer's job. I tend to prefer coding to design. However, I know enough about design that it prevents me from being satisfied with a so-so design. I want my code to be beautiful, and I also want my designs to be beautiful. There aren't enough hours in the day to achieve perfection. I think I should learn to be less anal and enjoy life more.

Virtual Community Site Project

2004-08-24T13:02:00.000+08:00

This is the latest mock up of the virtual community web site that I am currently developing. The design has not been finalized yet. But from the 22 different ideas that I produced so far, this is the one that I prefer.

I'm doing the project for Dr. Leisa Armstrong at uni. Initially she was thinking of using existing ColdFusion code from another project that uni did, an eco portal. However, I had a look at the code and I believe that it would be more productive for me to start over in PHP. I have some code from previous projects that I could use. I already have a basic content management system and a bulletin board that I coded in PHP. These could be adapted to the virtual community site.

I am also looking for a hosting solution for the site. I plan to do most of the development work on my development server at home. However, the project will need a permanent home eventually. My upload speed at home will be limited to 128kbps (512 ADSL). The best solution would be to obtain permission from uni to run our own server off the uni's network. We plan to run a chat server for the virtual community. So we need our own server where we have admin access. There's no way the school of communications or the school of computing would give me access to their projects servers to run a chat server! If we do get the permission to run our own server, I am willing to set it up and demonstrate that it is secure. I'll probably use FreeBSD, because that's what I know best.

Temporary Home

2004-08-23T22:53:00.000+08:00

After much procrastination, I decided to make my first meaningful post here. I’ve been thinking about setting up my own blog for a while now. I’d rather code it myself - I actually have a lot of php code from previous projects that I can (re)use for what I have in mind. But I don’t really have time to take on a pet project right now, and I’ll be busy for the next few months at least. So I’ll use to blogspot for now.

So what can you expect to see on this blog?

My rants (I’m sometimes very opinionated. And stubborn.)
Stuff about technology, computing, coding, design and photography (My interests).
Images from my projects, past and current.
Screen grabs from whatever operating system I happen to use (FreeBSD and Windows XP right now).
Snippets of interesting reading that I encounter.

Stay tuned :)

Got blog?

2004-05-11T16:27:00.000+08:00

I'm considering using Google's blogger. Going to play around with the CSS templates and see if I get inspired :)