California to allow same sex marriage
Yesterday California Supreme Court struck down the ban on gay marriage, making it only the second state to allow/acknowledge same sex marriage. Here’s hoping this will be the trend, or at least a precident, for the future. Which will be the next state to grant the basic right of marriage to everyone? Human rights, what a concept! The court’s comment is very powerful, “Our state now recognises that an individual’s capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person, and responsibly to care for and raise children, does not depend upon the individual’s sexual orientation, and more generally that an individual’s sexual orientation — like a person’s race or gender — does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights.“
Radiohead was freaking fantastic
We saw Radiohead last night, and they did not disappoint. My wife and I weren’t looking forward to the venue, a big shed and lawn ‘pavilion’ that everyone has now, but in the end it turned out to be a great night, with the location not being bad at all. We last saw Radiohead at the same venue twelve years ago during their tour for The Bends, but it wasn’t until just after that with the release of OK Computer that I went completely ga-ga for them for life. They had a huge chunk of material to choose from, and the show was amazing. After two nice numbers from their recent release, they broke out Airbag and the place went nuts. All the energy seemingly projected via the light show, which was really cool (don’t think I’ve ever said that). And look, I have to say this again and again, but dammit, Johnny Greenwood is so amazing, his composition, the sounds he gets from his guitar, and that shredding sound that he rips from it…outstanding-freaking-standing. Of course he saved the best for last with Paranoid Android coming alive to close the show. I was happy to see the variety of concert goers, considering most were likely getting out of diapers when OK computer came out! The fact that this band has that much pull across a a swath of fans like that without radio play gives me hope for the future. A great writeup of the show on RFT, be sure to follow their link to their well done slideshow of pictures (it’s where I got the one above). Now to find a soundboard or matrix sourced recording somewhere and we’ll be all set. Full set list after the jump.
Chat on Skype via Pidgin on Linux (or Adium on Mac)
This is a big deal for me, I played with Skype back in the day, but never really used it much since it required a second client, and I have always used Gaim (which is now Pidgin) to consolidate all of my accounts into one client and didn’t want to break out of that mold, but now I don’t have to. Using the Skype API, Eion Robb has created a Pidgin plugin called Skype API plugin for Pidgin/libpurple/Adium. Now I just add my user to the Pidgin accounts tab and I can now chat via Skype in Pidgin just like I chat with all my other contacts. Note that you can’t do the video of Skype on Pidgin. Mac users note that you can use this on Adium (my fav OS X chat client), which uses libpurple, which is the backend for Pidgin, on Mac. So now I’m using Skype again, which is a propreitary app, thanks to them providing an API for the Open Source community to latch on to. Ah, the circle of life…
HOWTO: Configure nginx for Debian / Ubuntu
UPDATE: I’m reworking my config blending in the security ideas found on camomel.org they’re really thought things through on this, this should make for a very secure environment.
I’m always trying new software, and with the webserver I’ve moved from Apache 1.3 to 2.0 to 2.2, and then later I moved everything over to Lighttpd, which I’ve liked, save for some memory issues that popped up. Now, enter a web server named nginx (engine x), written by a Russian hacker. It’s already proved it’s meddle by running some of the largest Russian sites for years now. It has the speed of Lighttpd, but with none of that memory weirdness, plus it uses a fraction of the CPU, so scaling should be smooth for highly visited sites. It also does cool things like load balancing, reverse proxy, IMAP and POP proxy, etc, so I can see it being used in a variety of ways on a network. It took me some time to understand how to configure it, which was a case of me just making it harder than it really is, so I wanted to post it here. Look for updates as we go along, but this is currently backing a Production site I manage.
user www-data www-data;
worker_processes 5;
pid /var/run/nginx.pid;
events {
worker_connections 1024;
}
http {
include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
default_type application/octet-stream;
log_format main '$remote_addr $host $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
'$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" "$http_user_agent" '
'"$request_time" "$gzip_ratio"';
access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log main;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;
sendfile on;
tcp_nopush on;
tcp_nodelay off;
keepalive_timeout 65;
gzip on;
gzip_http_version 1.1;
gzip_vary on;
gzip_comp_level 6;
gzip_buffers 16 8k;
#gzip_proxied expired no-cache no-store private auth;
gzip_proxied any;
gzip_min_length 1000;
gzip_types text/plain text/html text/css application/json application/x-javascript
text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript;
server {
listen 80;
client_max_body_size 50M;
server_name server.domain.com;
root /var/www;
index index.html index.php;
access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log main;
error_page 500 502 503 504 /500.html;
location = /500.html {
root /var/www;
}
location ~* ^.+.(jpg|jpeg|gif)$ {
root /var/www;
expires 30d;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /var/www$fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING $query_string;
fastcgi_param REQUEST_METHOD $request_method;
fastcgi_param CONTENT_TYPE $content_type;
fastcgi_param CONTENT_LENGTH $content_length;
}
}
}
4 reasons why Macs are moving into the enterprise
With the barriers lowering, and other market factors creeping in, Macs are slowly making a move into the enterprise. While this may/may not solely be Apple driven, the fact is that people like choices, and the Macs are now far more compatible with other systems than they once were, so finally folks have options. In […]
Nomina meeting in Woods Hole
Last week I traveled to Woods Hole, MA to attend Nomina 2. Woods Hole is the home of the Marine Biology Lab, and it’s where Encylopedia of Life is based. EoL played the host, and did a wonderful job at making us confortable in a very quaint, peaceful town. The meeting was organized by TDWG […]
First ever Record Store Day rocked!
So, as I mentioned earlier, last Saturday was the first ever Record Store Day, and yeah, it rocked. I took the whole family down the street to our local Euclid Records, where tables outside the store hawked BBQ and cheap cds, with a crowd inside buying records, cds and enjoying local bands rock out. […]
Off we go…
Image via Wikipedia
Heading out today for Woods Hole, MA - it’s supposed to be beautiful (expect pictures on my grossly underused flickr account). I’m representing the Biodiversity Heritage Library in a meeting with the Encyclopedia of Life folks as we discuss standardizing data streams for upcoming sharing of data. It may not sound […]
Back up
Our DSL went out last Friday, and didn’t come back up until yesterday…frak. I’ve hosted all of my websites on homebuilt servers for over 7 years now, and I love doing it, but when the temps change or some phone repair guy plugs something in wrong, we’re down. It’s never the internal wiring, it’s never […]
Early Morning, April 4
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