...more recent posts
Well it's frustrating, but that makes any small amount of progress fun. I've spent the entire morning trying to get mod_rewrite to work correctly. That's a module for the apache web server that allows (the way I am using it) for me to send every request - regardless of path - to one central php script for execution. All my sites are built around this ploy so that I can have regular looking URLs that all call the same script which assembles the apparently static pages on the fly from the mysql database. Without mod_rewrite I'd have to have URLs like:
www.digitalmediatree.com/page.php?path=/jim/weblog/
which would call the php program page.php and pass it a variable (here $path) with the page path I want. Besides being ugly, some search engines don't like the '?' in the path and won't follow such links. With mod_rewrite I can accept URLs like:
www.digitalmediatree.com/jim/weblog or
www.digitalmediatree.com/treehouse/comment/1143 or
www.digitalmediatree.com/arboretum/archive/2001/12
and have each request actually invoke the same php script (like page.php) which can then parse the request path (/jim/weblog or /treehouse/comment/1143) and figure out what page to call from the database. These two examples produce the same result - either calling the central script in the URL like the first one and passing the page variable to it on the end of the URL, or using mod_rewirte to invisibly force the calling of the central script and having the script extract the variable from the request_uri environment - but the later way yields better looking URLs, and that turns out to be pretty important on the web.
Anyway, like most problems this one turned out to be fairly simple. But that doesn't mean the time to find a solution is short. Apple ships Apache with the 'AllowOverride' directive set to 'none'. This foils the use of .htaccess files for mod_rewrite rules. Changing the httpd.conf line to 'AllowOverride all' solves the problem.
The rest should be fairly easy but boring work of changing some file system specific paths from what they are on the linux server to what they need to be on my iMac. If I was a better programmer I would have had all of that stuff in some sort of configuration file so I didn't have to go back through all the individual php files. I'll try to implement that more tidy centralized system this afternoon.
Here's a couple of very off color balanced photos of 76 Clinton (Alias Restaurant.) These were taken on 12/27/2001, so work has progressed slightly since then. I believe 2/1/2002 is now the tentative opening day.
My local email client was not checking my digitalmediatree.com email account for the last few days (operator malfunction.) I think I'm caught up now. Sorry if you were temporarily ignored.
It's weird how Apple has root disabled by default. That threw me a little. In any case, I finally have apache, php, and mysql all running locally on my little iMac. 512 megs of additional RAM are on the way. I can't tell you how great this is. Being able to develop on my local machine - without FTPing every change to my server over a 56K dialup - is about the best thing I can think of.
Hopefully by the end of today I'll have this site replicated at home. And of course the ease of setting this up under OSX is making me think of strange distributed scenarios where every user has the full system replicated on his/her home computer, and everything is synched through a central server. That way traffic spikes (ha!) could be handled by a round robin configuration of all the users. I just wish that internet access was developing in such a way that casual serving was possible. Unfortunatley it seems like the big providers want you to consume but not serve. Still, there are always ways around.
One interesting thing I noticed is that even on my dial up (upstairs, not down in the office) my web server is accessible from the outside. Granted the IP address would change every time I got disconnected, so it's not very practicle, but I wouldn't have expected it to work at all. When I get something up here I'll post the IP address and you can try to hit my iMac from where you are. Because, you know, edge of the seat excitement is what we're all about.
I miss lemonyellow.com and sevencrabrangoon.com.
Of course what I really need is a $500 rechargable fleece jacket that heats itself.
The front page of the Apple website is counting down the days until new products are announced at MacWorld San Francisco next Monday. They started two days ago with a big headline reading: "7 days until Macworld 2002 - This One is Big. Even By Our Standards." Then the next day they changed it to "Count the days. Count the hours. Count on being blown away." And then today, with five days left, Apple really stirred things up with the headline "Beyond the rumor sites. Way beyond." The message boards are reaching critical mass as the Mac fanatics outdo each other speculating about what could be so big. I have to think the people looking for dodecahedron shaped G5 towers starting at 2 Ghz are going to be a little disappointed.
Strange. I hadn't been able to access my canon G1 digital camera since I upgraded to 10.1.2, but now I've discovered that it will recognize the camera if the AC power to the camera is not used. This doesn't make sense to me, but I'm happy to have access to my pictures again.
No, I'm not a very good dancer. That didn't stop me though. After a great night at AKA we staggered down Orchard St. to someone's loft where Nicholas - I mean, Big Jimmy Fingers - was spinning from 2:00 until ?. The whole place was covered in CDs. I mean the walls, the ceiling, the whole place. Covered in CDs. Nice.
And like I said, I'm not a good dancer. It takes a lot to get me out there. But it's fun when it happens. Full on ecstatic arm waving dancing. It's theraputic. Somehow we ended up with Bill's bottle of Hungarian Tokaji, which probably isn't the best thing to be swigging to the super heated disco beat, but that's what happened. Eventually (where eventually equals this morning) you pay for such transgressions. I was having such a good time I can honestly say I was nonplussed by the small asian girl in the front who would not stay inside her dress. Yeah, yeah. That's just what happens when it gets late. I completely forgot myself, which I guess comes to about the same thing as finding yourself. Your real self. Or one of them at least.
After that it gets a little fuzzy. Of course we wound up at Barramundi. That's where MB and I met, and in the end, that's familly. I think we were doing tequila shots with Erica, but I'll have to check with Tony to be sure. Thinking of a master plan, this ain't nothing but sweat inside my hand. Some day I'll write more about that place. It's special.
This morning seems like the best day ever. Crystal clear skys. Warm. I walked up to Russ & Daughters to buy bagels and loxs with my jacket open just basking in the bright winter sun. I've got a good feeling about this 2002 deal.
From metafilter comes my (probably) last post of the year.
Imagine that the history of the universe is compressed into one year—with the big bang occurring in the first seconds of New Year’s Day, and all our known history occurring in the final seconds before midnight on December 31. Using this scale of time, each month would equal a little over a billion years. Here’s a closer look at when important events would occur when we imagine the universe in one year.The rest of the months are condensed on the linked page, but here's the expanded December calendar for our thought experiment year:
I love that the final 10 second New Year's countdown brings us from the building of the pyramids all the way to the present. At this pace we should have the galaxy populated by the end of New Year's Day. Let's get to work.