Life

The WordPress and Debian Experiment

Prior to moving, my wife expressed an interest in having her blog on a simpler platform. I previously had it on a Drupal 6 installation which she often found the admin panel to be over whelming. I was self hosting my blog, her blog and a few other sites on an Ubuntu 10.04 LTS machine prior to the move. The server was in a 12 bay server case with and AMD Processor. I felt the hardware was a little larger and more power hungry than I needed for a home web and file server. Taking that all into account I decided to reinstall on an old Aspire One Netbook that I had.  

I decided this time around that I would use Debian as the Operating System. While Ubuntu LTS had been good to me, I run Ubuntu on my desktop and I wanted to diversify slightly. For the blogging platform I decided to go with WordPress as it has a reputation of meeting my Wife’s requirement of simple. I decided to “eat my own dog food” and I migrated my blog over to WordPress also.  Since WordPress is FLOSS software it also still makes me happy on that end of things.

The move hasn’t been all that simple. First was the hurdle of migrating blog content. Then there were the hurdles of setting up Plugins. I recently had a Google+ Plugin go haywire and repost a bunch of old content to my Google+ stream which I had to clean up. So far my wife seems to like having an Android app she can post from and I think she is happier with her blog.

If you know of any must have WordPress Plugins, please let me know about them in the comments. I would love trying a few things out.

The WordPress and Debian Experiment Read Post »

New Book Shelves

I just got the book shelves up in our new house and we pretty much have them filled already. So I pulled out the D&D book and cast Tenser’s Floating Disc to get the result’s on the left. I am pretty happy with the results. It’s nice that it’s all out of Hands McGrab’ems (my sons) reach. His books are also on floating shelves in his room and the top of his book case.

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Like stealing an iPhone from a baby…

A man casually walks up to a child and takes the iPhone out of it’s hands.

While a mother in Ormskirk, northern England was shopping she allowed her child to watch “Barney The Dinosaur” on her iPhone. While the mother was distracted, the predator looked around and then performed the theft. Were are glad to see the child was unharmed but I imagine the experience must have been very disturbing for the mother.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57525705-71/watch-an-iphone-being-stolen-from-a-baby/

Like stealing an iPhone from a baby… Read Post »

End Piracy, Not Liberty

Two bills before Congress, known as the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House, would censor the Web and impose harmful regulations on American business. The intent of the bills is to stop the illegal downloading of copyrighted material… the outcome will be far different.

SOPA and PIPA would allow the U.S. government to order the blocking of sites using methods similar to those employed by China and Egypt. Do we want to model our country after totalitarian regimes?

SOPA and PIPA would kill jobs by legislation and litigation. U.S. Internet companies would have to monitor everything users upload or link to or risk expensive litigation. It’s also why 55 of America’s most successful venture capitalists expressed concern that PIPA “would stifle investment in Internet services, throttle innovation, and hurt American competitiveness”. More than 204 entrepreneurs told Congress that PIPA and SOPA would “hurt economic growth and chill innovation”.

While SOPA and PIPA claim they will stop piracy, they won’t even accomplish that. Nefarious sites will just change their names while law abiding companies will suffer with constantly attempting to stay in compliance with mandates given them.

When you add it all up these proposed laws will censor, stifle the American economy and fail to achieve the claimed outcome. How could anyone support these pieces of legislation?

Contact your representative now! [Link courtesy of Wikipedia]

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