Name: Tony
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AIM: slowbalboa
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Posts by tony:
URL Hammer
August 11th, 2010A word about URL Hammer (aka, urlhammer)
Remember back in the days of the brilliant minds of ATG? I sure do, one of the best times of my career.
They used to have this cool little tool that you could literally pass in a conf file or some command line flags and it would capacity test whatver you wanted. It was so simple.. Things are so much more complex now.
Long live those simple days, go go URL Hammer.
Here’s a link that shows it in action.
http://betweengo.com/2008/06/10/urlhammer/
tony fraser
Sync Macs to IPhones
July 16th, 2010The big question is always, how do I sync my work mac to my iphone, which is totally hooked up to my computer at home..
There’s some software for it.
Will post more as I go through this journey, but here’s the links I am starting with.
http://www.macroplant.com/index.php
http://www.fadingred.com/senuti/
http://www.tansee.com/iphonecopy.html
http://www.digidna.net/products/tuneaid
http://www.aimersoft.com/itransfer.html
https://www.regnow.com/softsell/nph-softsell.cgi?item=18286-1&affiliate=59653&ss_long_order=true&linkid=ipod2itunes
http://www.xilisoft.com/iphone-transfer-mac.html
http://www.ipod-to-mac-transfer.com-http.com/
http://www.copytrans.net/
http://amarok.kde.org/
http://www.macworld.com/article/133881/2008/07/syncitunes.html
SAP BO (Business Objects) Time Outs
June 30th, 2010What a nightmare this was.!!
To keep a connection open from browser to Business Objects (BO) , you have to review at least the following timeout settings…
1. at the load balancer level.
2. at the proxy server level (like in httpd.conf if you’re using mod_proxy)
3. in the following files..
-tomcat : web.xml
-tomcat : server.xml — set connectionTimeout set to 0 either on the 8080 or ajp port.
-infoview app web xml
-platform services webxml
4. In the application itself (CmcApp – settings)
5. In HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Business Objects\Suite 12.0\CMS\Instances\xxxx.cms
You’d think SAP in their infite technical wisdom would have a help document about all this stuff. So, here’s one from me.
tony fraser
download an entire website recursively
June 22nd, 2010So you’re putting up a new website, but you just can’t imagine life without the one you have. You think maybe you want them both, but you know the old one sucks, so you just want to stick it in the back of the internet somehow…
How can you download the entire site, recursively, and still show it on another website? You could do SFTP, but then you’d have go go in and edit code like mad to add /oldsite into all the links. ick.
What do you do? Well, you can SFTP it down, but do you really want all that hidden crap to come with it?
The easiest way is just to run the wget program, like so.
Say your web server document root is /var/www
cd /var/www mkdir v1 cd v1 wget -nH -r http://www.oldsite.com
Presto, now you can go to http://www.mysite.com/v1 and see your old site.
Fusemail.com — grrrr!
June 9th, 2010GRRR.!!
I say the industry of web hosting is changing and we all need to move mail to mail places and web to web places. Blacklists, spam, zombie farms, all that stuff, it’s becoming a full time job for small business hosting companies, and we just shouldn’t do it. Email is just too important for our clients, you can’t afford single hour of downtime anymore, much less three days on the black list because some client reset a password to ‘password’ and the mail server was exploited by the spam bots.
That being said, I decided it was time to separate all hosting from all mail services and started looking for alternatives. Gmail came up of course since they do some good corporate and small business stuff, but it really seemed like a support-less kind of thing and I didn’t want to risk it.
After a lot of searching, I found this company called Fuse Mail. I read through all the website stuff again and again, and the more I thought about it, I figured how the heck can anybody beat that? Two bucks a month, support for imap, add as many mx domains as you can, as many mail accounts as you want, tons of storage ? And on top of that, built in rudimentary campaign management tools? Holy crap I was thinking.
So, I called in and grilled this company to get the skinny. The more I talked to them, the more I was liking it. More talk. More like. And then all the sudden I kind of drank the punch and decided these guys could take care of my client mail needs better than my little company did, so I decided to help my clients migrate to them.
I should note, my clients are the kind that I’ve known for years, that trust my word explicitly because our relationships are based mostly on explicit trust relationships that span a decade or more. In this fusemail case, the trust was so deep it even implied moving money that would generally come to me over to another vendor, because the other vendor I thought could do a better job for them.
So here’s this business, kind of small maybe half a dozen accounts I suggest trying to go over to fusemail. It seemed easy, they had all these migration tools to make it easy and everything was well documented. They pretty much were able to do it by themselves, I was rather impressed.
But after they migrated, we found the hitch.
If you have an account ‘myAccount’ on fusemail with 5 email accounts under it, so person1@mydomain.com, person2@mydomain.com, person3@mydomain.com, etc, they all basically use one of a small number of inbound imap connections available to myAccount. 10 or 20 or something like that… And with Mac Mail which is known to leverage multiple connections to make everything fast, and assuming you have your iphone and two computers checking imap, basically you’ve just used up all the possible connections for myAccount, regardless of how many persons@mydomain.com accounts you have set up.
So, we quickly pulled the plug on that, moved them back to where they were, and started looking for other alternatives.
Beware of this company. They seem to have some good ideas and may eventually get it right, but the number of imap connections problem should have been handled before they came out of alpha. I mean seriously, what the hell are they thinking? SERIOUSLY?! Are they so ignorant of a simple virtual server farm that they just forgot to cluster exim? Whatever.. This is a second grade mistake and they’re trying to play in a world where the scientists roam.
I have no idea what other ridiculus things will happen with the services of this company. Consider this a big fat stay away.
Tony Fraser, 9 june 2009
keywords : fusemail, fuse mail, outsourced mail hosting
chkconfig – init.d
June 2nd, 2010In UNIX systems, there are a few different ways to get stuff to automatically come back up after a restart.
CHKCONFIG
In RHEL5, you’re probably going to start and stop programs with the syntax.
/sbin/service httpd restart
In order to do that, you need to do a few things. First, make sure there’s a shell script in /etc/init.d called httpd. And in that script there need to be two special lines, one with a run level map, and another with a description.
The first few lines of any init.d script will look something like this.
[root@hostname /etc/init.d]# head httpd #!/bin/bash # # chkconfig: 2345 55 25 # description: Apache HTTPD Server #
2345 refers to which unix run levels it should run under, and run level 3 is most likely the one you’re hoping to get the service running under.
Then you turn push out the scripts to the appropirate directories.
root@sgw1:~$ chkconfig –level 345 httpd on
Then, just make sure it’s there.
root@sgw2:~$ chkconfig –list |grep httpd
Don’t forget to bounce the box to test!
RHEL5 Packagement Management
May 27th, 2010RPM
To list all installed packages — and filter for oracle things..
rpm -qa |grep -i oracle
To remove a package..
rpm -e oracle-instantclient11.2-basic-11.2.0.1.0-1
Yum :
To search for both installed and available packages, do this.
Note the column on the right — shows which repo it is available from, or if it’s installed already.
[root@SGProdWs1v-O5208 ~]# yum list |grep php php52.x86_64 5.2.13-3.ius.el5 installed php52-cli.x86_64 5.2.13-3.ius.el5 installed php52-common.x86_64 5.2.13-3.ius.el5 installed php52-devel.x86_64 5.2.13-3.ius.el5 installed php52-soap.x86_64 5.2.13-3.ius.el5 installed php52-xml.x86_64 5.2.13-3.ius.el5 installed php-mysql.x86_64 5.1.6-27.el5 rhel-x86_64-server-5 php-ncurses.x86_64 5.1.6-27.el5 rhel-x86_64-server-5 php-nusoap.noarch 0.7.3-2.el5 epel php-odbc.x86_64 5.1.6-27.el5 rhel-x86_64-server-5 php-pdo.x86_64 5.1.6-27.el5 rhel-x86_64-server-5 php-pear.noarch 1:1.4.9-6.el5 rhel-x86_64-server-5 php-pear-Auth-RADIUS.noarch 1.0.6-1.el5 epel php-pear-Auth-SASL.noarch 1.0.4-1.el5 epel
Penne w/ Butternut Squash and Ham
May 10th, 2010
Don’t remember the exact recipe, but it involved boiling some butter nut squash like you make mashed potatoes.
There’s some parsley, garlic, scallions, and ham in there too, baked until the bread crumb topping was the way I wanted it to be.
My kids liked it too.
Ham and butternut squash — yummy.! Taste as good together as PB&J.!
Awakening Collegiate Shag
May 9th, 2010
Somebody called Collegiate Shag the “forgotten bad ass dance.” I can’t accept that, at least the part about it still being forgotten. I believe there are many things we can do, as teachers or as Collegiate Shag supporters to awaken and advance the beautiful style.
Here’s what I think we need to do.
Practice Collegiate Shag like you mean business:
We can all afford to practice our craft. The dance itself is unusual in that when people see it, they tend to pipe down and watch and just marvel at the look. If we put our best foot forward through ungodly hours worth of practice, not only will it be interesting looking, but it will come across as a refined style, and refined and well executed dancing seems to interest newcomers.
Push the limits and create your own Collegiate Shag style:
Let’s be honest, though we’ve all seen most all of it, there really isn’t much ‘vintage’ footage out there to push us. Swing dancing itself has advanced far beyond the founding dancer footage, and I believe that to be even more true with Collegiate Shag. There simply isn’t enough of it. As you are practicing, learn all the basics from the clips, then add your own style. There is PLENTY of room, and it happens to be the same way the style grew regionally back in the 30′s and 40′s.
I personally prefer technical intricacy and big aerials in my dance so I’ve modified a few tricks and aerials specifically for shag. I’ve also come up with a few things (mostly technical) along my own personal style of dance that seem to work extremely well within the shag framework. This is my style of shag, but I think we all should be doing the same thing. I’d like to see what YOU can do with the style too.! Mix as few as 50 people worldwide into a group of people who are all doing the same thing, and who knows what will happen. As long as we are committed to the framework of the style, to me, it’s all shag.
Overtly veto the ‘intro’ class mentality:
I am totally fed up with all the “one month shag courses.” You know the type. Students come in, learn the basics, the moon kick, the jig, etc., and then they are ‘done.’ What else is there really? Collegiate shag is a novelty specialty dance only done by a few. And you’re lucky to see it once a month. right?
What kind of hogwash is that? And why are we allowing it to happen. Sure, studio owners know that we can pack a room full of intro shag dancers and they’ll push for it, but is that really what we should be doing? It’s a complete paradox. There really AREN’T that many people out there willing to even step into an intermediate shag level class, and far fewer beyond that, but unless we truly focus on advancing technique for shag itself, it will always be a beginner’s dance.
Put the best you can do in front of as many new eyes as you can:
I can’t even count how many times I’ve been on either a competition or performance floor with lindy routines. So, one day I had this idea, why the hell hadn’t done the same thing for Shag? I started a performance routine the next day, lightning fast, clean/new tricks, clean air just for shag, and just overall a good all shag piece to inspire some new eyes.
After we showed it on the main stage of NYC’s famous dance parade there were plenty of calls to our studio all wanting to learn the style. Showing at the local swing venues sparked interest too, but it was all the new eyes from the non swing performances that brought in the new students.
The way I see it, if you care, put something together, get out there, and represent.
Practice and Teach Single Rhythm Collegiate Shag:
There are already many who disagree with this, but I think SR Collegiate Shag may be a better platform for modern shag to evolve from. (Double Rhythm is six count and more often practiced on social floors — single rhythm is an eight count basic).
How many dance studios succeed teaching only east coat six count basics? Those are almost intro to what’s to come, lindy, west coast, smooth, and blues. And for everybody that is taking dance classes and working on any forms of musicality, how much more difficult would it be to teach them to work six count musicality into the 8 counts of music?
This is a double edged sword in that most die hard dancers have mastered the style in six counts, but as I venture into my own style I just keep asking myself why do we continue to teach this way? I can do six count too, but to me single rhythm just seems like a better platform to grow skill from.
Goofy does not attract new students:
This style has a history of goofy moves and looks. I personally believe that may be one detrimental property of our style. Who’s going to pay money to take classes from people that are asking them to look like tools? Or who’s going to want to mimic a couple that, historic accuracy or not, does one of those goofy moves that was perfect for the camera in 1941? Those were different times. Those times had different audiences. As far as I’m concerned, goofy is a historical property of the style that we need to modify to a more modern audience.
Finally, remember to balance having fun with a strong attitude of anti-mediocrity:
All the points I made above are minor compared to two driving principles of shag — it looks great and it’s fun to do. Shag is about kicking ass. It’s high energy and mind blowing, even to the untrained eye. And to those that practice, it’s pure enjoyment mixed with some serious adrenaline. If you forget it’s about having fun like I sometimes do, it’ll drive you insane.
See you on the floor.
– tony fraser
OSX terminal — follow mouse cursor
May 6th, 2010for those old school unix people out there who are use to X and WindowMaker.. I just discovered a trick that allows you to change window focus on mouse over, just like in windowmaker. And it doesn’t bring the window fully to the foreground either.. sweet.
sudo -u root in a terminal, and then run this command.
defaults write com.apple.terminal FocusFollowsMouse -string YES
restart terminal, and it’s just like the old days.
