Blind Lemon Davis
Blind Lemon Davis
1
Personal Update
Hello All!
It’s been a long time!
I’ve been off this blog for quite some time because I’ve been SUPER busy with so many little projects / getting married.
But hopefully I can post updates more often now.
So what has happened to me in the past while?
First of all I have gotten married to my lovely wife Erin (soon to be Shelby) Hess. She told me the other day that we’ve been married for 3 months already. How time flies! November 5th seems like it happened yesterday!
Erin and I just got back from our lovely honeymoon in lovely Montego Bay Jamacia. We both had a blast! I’ll take the Jamacian sun over the Ontario winter blahs any time.
I won a programming contest for the City of London (Ontario) and a group called Unlondon. The contest paid $2000 which I just received so I’m starting a freelance business. I was even in the local free paper. Here is the link: App man crunches London city budget
Nerd Alert!
A link to my submission is here. I ran out of time before submitting it so there are some UI improvements that could be done but it’s not too bad. Also, there is an admin page which you won’t be able to see that tallies up the form submissions and tabulates some data.
I already have an internet business that deals with Google Adsense but this will deal more with programming and possibly branch out into programming apps for tablets and phones.
Right now I’m currently developing the site and contemplating writing a new blogging platform to use for my “corporate” blog. I really like wordpress but we’ll see if I need all of the bells and whistles. As a bonus for you non-techies, all of my Linux / Programming articles will be posted there so you won’t have to read them here any more. I’ll update the status of my business shortly.
Also, my hosting with Bluehost expires soon so I’m going to be migrating this blog over to my Linode VPS. Even though I’m happy with Bluehost for hosting my blog, I already have an active account at Linode and no use paying twice for my service. Also, I hate that Bluehost just automatically renewed my account for two years a while back. That has never sit right with me and I’m really liking Linode. If you know what you are doing and don’t mind spending the extra money, check Linode out.
OpenSSL Error With Postfix and Actionmailer 3.1
While trying to get my rails app to send emails via Actionmailer I was getting the following error message.
OpenSSL::SSL::SSLError (hostname was not match with the server certificate):
The error actually was with my postfix configuration on my Ubuntu Server.
Type the following from the command line to edit your postfix configuration and you should be good to go. It worked like a charm for me!
sudo postconf -e “smtpd_use_tls”=no
Let’s Track My Wasted Time
I’ve been keeping a list of the new movies that I have watched this year. Some I am not too proud of but some have been super amazing!
Check out my list of newly watched movies this year at my google docs page here.
If the year ended today I would say that “Drive Angry” would be my movie of the year. Good this the apocalypse never happened or Nick Cage might of had some bragging rights other than the huge amounts of tax debt he has.
Rails 3 Cheat Sheet!
For you budding Ruby on Rails Programmers out there, go over to the EnvyLabs blog and download the cheat sheet! This is VERY helpful (especially if you are just starting out).
Get the cheat sheet here.
Snow Day Today…Still Made it to Work
There is more than twice as much snow today 
This pic was taken yesterday before shoveling the driveway TWICE!
If I can make it into work today what is your excuse?
On a side note, they are thinking of sending people home because we are expected to get 60 more centimeters of snow in the next few hours in lovely London, Ontario. Crossing my fingers!
Ps. I just wrote this post with the android wordpress app. It’s pretty slick.
This Is How I Know I’m A Geek #gdldn
I know I’m a geek because I watched this movie (it’s just over an hour long) on my Sunday morning. If you are watching tech talks about programming languages on the weekend then you are probably a geek.
I’ve been a big Ruby on Rails fan for quite a while and will probably have my first RoR website released early in the new year.
Secondly, I had to search how to post the video to a WordPress blog. I found an inelegant solution but it’s quick and dirty and for those that end up watching the movie…you’re welcome.
“Why Ruby?” – RubyConf X Keynote from David Heinemeier Hansson on Vimeo.
PS. I can also have in depth discussions about the Star Trek….
Doh: First HTML Blunder
Photo: crackercountrylivinghistory
Since DNS takes a while to propogate, I didn’t catch this error.
I had no navigation bars on my page for a couple hours so I don’t forget my mistake, I’m posting it here.
Note to self: for server side includes to work with a nginx server you need to modify your location in the configuration file.
location / {
ssi on;
}
Migration to my Linode.com Server Complete
Photo: jamisonjudd
As of about 5 minutes ago I have migrated my sites (except for this one) to my Linode VPS (Virtual Private Server). Don’t know what a VPS is? Google might be your friend in the case but the Coles Notes version is that it is a slice of a server that you have 100% control over. You don’t have to worry about which version of PHP or Ruby on Rails is installed on your server because you are the one that controls what gets put on your machine.
Was the transition from “dumb” hosts to my own server been as smooth as I thought? Heck no!
Linode touts their StackScripts as a simple way to set up your server quickly and easily, and no doubt it is. But what I couldn’t figure out is how to stack the scripts so I could have a running php, ruby on rails, configured web server, sftp, etc. all in one go. If you want a single node that just does one this (ie. a web server) then StackScripts are the way to go.
After a few failed attempts with StackScripts, I opted to create a server from scratch. Let me tell you, it takes a little longer but it is definitely worth it. I had almost forgotten how much I like tinkering with linux. Since I am more of a programmer than a designer, I have developed some simple bash scripts to help me out on repetitive tasks and I couldn’t be happier with the results.
What Other Hosts Have I Used?
I have used Globat.com, Bluehost.com, Sitesell.com and now Linode.com.
I will maybe do a writeup comparing all four but by far, Linode has been the most rewarding and most fun to work with.
If you have any questions or need some help setting up a Linode server, let me know!
Cool Article: How to Write 3 Blog Posts a Day
On my Twitter feed I noticed a great link to an article from @Ed_Dale who is known for his writings online.
Thought I would share it with you. How to Write Three Blog Posts a Day is a well written article which gives a little insight into the mind of a professional blogger.
I would be happy with 3 articles a week but my damn basement construction project is taking up a lot of my time.