Category: Technology

Categories
Burningbird Technology

Server is moved

Moving to a new VPN (Virtual Private Network) was as simple as signing up for a second Linode instance, and then building it to my specs. Eliminating half the cruft I had on my old system saved about 40GB of space. Now I have room for all new cruft.

I decided to stay with Drupal for this site. Frankly, I just don’t want to muck with content systems anymore. I have a couple of new sites on WordPress, this on Drupal, and that gives me a foot in two worlds. I was reading that the Drupal 8 upgrade should be button-press easy, especially if you haven’t customized your site. Sure sounds simpler than fighting to get it into WordPress.

Linode’s new billing system made the move a whole lot easier, and cheaper. I was only charged for the double VPN until I dropped the original once the move was finished. I think I’ll take this approach the next time there’s a major Ubuntu upgrade. Not only can I cleanly upgrade, this approach gives me a chance to clean my system.

Categories
Burningbird Technology

Mind the scaffolding

image of destroyed front porch

I have attempted to upgrade to Ubuntu 14.04 from 12.04.5 three times, failing each time. The points of failure are complex and seemingly many. I can ignore the necessary upgrade until 12.04.5 hits end of life in 2017, but whatever cruft is preventing a clean upgrade may be allowing all sorts of bad things. I also use my server as testing environment for all of my books, which means I’m constantly installing and uninstalling a host of software. When I ran

ubuntu-support-status

I was surprised at how many packages I have installed that are no longer supported.

No matter how much I want to avoid it, It’s time to clean up my system.

Not just clean up. I want to move my site to HTTPS/SSL. The new Let’s Encrypt Certificate Authority should be in business in September, simplifying the process for obtaining an SSL certificate, and removing a major obstacle for making this move.

I’m also looking at migrating my site(s) back to WordPress from Drupal. Drupal is a marvelous CMS when you like to tinker under the hood, or you have a business site that needs extensive customization and complexity. But it’s not a good CMS when you don’t have the time to tinker, and you just want a place to write. With the upcoming changes for Drupal 8, I realized that I could either migrate to the new version, or I could migrate to WordPress: the work would be the same.

The advantages to WordPress is it is geared more towards just having a place to write. There is also more updated support for social networking, commentary, mobile devices, and a larger pool of weblog themes. Drupal is powerful, but I’m finding many of the modules I’m interested in have erratic support, at best. The Drupal environment is set up in such a way as to channel all interest in a certain functionality into one module. This is fine, except when the module developer tires of it, and no one picks it up. WordPress fosters a more competitive environment for functional extensions, so you’re almost always going to be able to find a supported plugin for what you need.

Moving from WordPress to Drupal is a snap, but the reverse isn’t true. In fact, it’s been downright ugly in the past, requiring either a great deal of hacking, or an expensive migration service. Thankfully, this has changed with a new PHP script and associated tutorial, both of which help remove most of the pain. I hope.

I expect, though, that my site will end up even more fractured than it is now, with my many moves between domains, weblogs, and software—not to mention removing dated content, and merging and splitting weblogs. Such is life. One of the advantages of today’s web environment is it’s adaptable to change. A broken link is no longer the anathema it once was, and 404 errors are like gray hair and bad knees: a sign of increasing maturity.

All of this is my way of saying that things are going to be erratic around here for the next couple of months. Of course, I’ve been so quiet in my space for so long that folks might not even notice the erratic nature of my web site. I’m hoping to get better about this, too.

Categories
Social Media Technology

Facebook’s astonishing fail

update

I did find a reference to this type of behavior…from 2010.

What I suspect happened is some very old security code accidentally got compiled into the Facebook server app, in relation to the company’s new security feature, and I just happened along when it was exposed.

Either that, or I stumbled into a time vortex.

earlier

I treated myself to a new smartphone today. Among the apps I loaded was Facebook. I had copied my password from Dashlane and was ready to go, when I ran into something new:

Facebook’s new security system.

To prove I am who I am, Facebook displayed a set of images, each with a set of names, and asked me to pick the person who matched the image. OK, this ought to be good.

The first was an obviously 30+ year old photo of a chubby baby. So who is it?

I’d have a hard time recognizing one of my own baby pictures, much less the folks on Facebook. Especially considering many people, such as myself, don’t even use photos of themselves as their Facebook profile pictures. So, next image, please.

The next showed a cartoon strip, with a square around one of the panels. The security question then asked who the image was. I can tell you that it isn’t Barbara Schmitz or Nanny Baker.

The third showed an image I did recognize: Mr. Presidential Candidate Rand Paul. Which means it wasn’t Kevin Stamps or John Doppler.

The thing that saved me was when another photo of a woman looked like Sarah Barnett. Thankfully, Sarah also had a conference pass around her neck with “Sarah Barnett” printed on it. But by that time, I’d taken too long or missed too many images, or some such thing, so I had to start over.

Facebook…you’ve taken “being completely unaware of how people use your web site” to a level never before heard of, or seen. And then you exceeded it by using your complete lack of understanding to form the platform for your new security system.

Categories
JavaScript Writing

JavaScript Cookbook 2nd Edition: Live and Personal

JavaScript Cookbook cover

The second edition of the JavaScript Cookbook just went live at O’Reilly. If you’re wondering why I haven’t been writing about technology as much lately, it’s because I was saving all my tech writing mojo for the book.

We went a somewhat different path with the second edition. I spent a lot less time on syntax, and a lot more on JavaScript in use. When I wrote my first book on JavaScript, in the dark ages that was the mid-1990s, syntax was about all you had with JavaScript. Now, JavaScript is everywhere. It’s the programming language that ate the world.

Well, nibbled the world. JavaScript is still that friendly, approachable language, even with the new ECMAScript additions. JavaScript has never roared; it’s meowed and purred its way into our lives. Good kitty. Nice kitty. Here, have a closure.

In the new edition of JavaScript Cookbook, I covered JavaScript in the browser, and re-visited our old friends (Ajax and the JS objects), yes. But I also spent a considerable time covering JavaScript in the server, in the cloud, and in our mobile devices. The only environment I didn’t cover is the open source hardware, DIY, wearable world, and that’s because I feel these need more preliminary introductions to the environment, so you don’t do something like fry your new Raspberry Pi. Or Computer. Or shirt.

I will never join with those who are critical of JavaScript. I have always had fun with this language. There’s just so much you can do with it.

Categories
Browsers

It’s just a tool

I gather that Mozilla has named some marketing person as interim CEO as they search for a replacement who would be acceptableeffective.

I don’t care, really. Mozilla is an organization that provides support for Firefox, a tool I use. I’m using Firefox because it is the browser that irritates me the least at this time. I used Chrome previously, but stopped when yet another unexpected-and-suddenly-appearing design change made it marginally unusable.

I appreciate the hard working souls who work on the browsers and the specifications that form the basis for the technology implemented in the browsers—most of whom don’t work for Mozilla, or Google for that matter. Most of them don’t get paid for their work, either.

If anyone deserves passionate support, it’s the people who labor on the technology that goes into my browser. Anything else is just organizational politics benefiting some corporate entity.

In the meantime, I use Firefox. I don’t do so because of loyalty or because of some cause. It’s just a tool.