Leaving blogger behind
Thursday, March 06, 2008

I've decided to leave blogger behind and set up a Wordpress blog on my own webspace.

If you are not redirected automatically the please click: skinofstars.com/blog

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posted by SkinOfStars @ 11:34 pm, ,


Lovely Margate
Friday, February 08, 2008

Hey, just wanted to highlight an article in Kent Online that my friend Jay linked me to. Its about a pair of local artists who are trying to bring a little love to Margate this Valentines Day. The main reason I'm bringing this up is that I know the work of one of them, Selina Tolfree, and I very much like what she does. Because of that I'm urging you all to hunt out her work where you can (I'll try to update with links at some point) and have a look for yourselves.

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posted by SkinOfStars @ 1:17 am, ,


The machine is us/ing us
Saturday, February 02, 2008

Very interesting and well made video about (cue buzzword) web 2.0


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posted by SkinOfStars @ 10:11 pm, ,


SimCity for all
Saturday, January 19, 2008

Those lovely guys at EA have open-sourced the SimCity code for use on OLPC, except the actual name SimCity, which we must now call Micropolis. I'm afraid to say that it's only available for Linux at the moment but I'm sure its only a matter of time till someone ports it to Windows.

For the time being the .deb can be found here:
http://www.getdeb.net/app.php?name=Micropolis

Or you could build it from source for your own nix system from here:
http://www.donhopkins.com/home/micropolis/

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posted by SkinOfStars @ 8:16 pm, ,


Making your own webdev environment on Ubuntu desktop
Tuesday, January 01, 2008

These machines aren't all fun fun fun, sometimes you have to use them for some more serious work. In this post I'm going to tell you how to make your own php/mysql web development environment on your own Ubuntu desktop. Once you've done this you won't need to keep uploading files to your server just to check if something works.

Firstly I'd like to point to the post that originally helped me do this at webmasterview.com.

Now, time to open up our trusty terminal. It is possible to do this through synaptics, but its quicker to do it like this:

First thing is to install mysql for databases on our machine. Copy this bit of code into your terminal:
sudo apt-get install mysql-server
Next we need apache2 as our webserver. Here is the code:
sudo apt-get install apache2
Then we need to get php:
sudo apt-get install php5
There are our three basic components. Now we need to hook them together:
sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-php5
and
sudo apt-get install php5-mysql
Now that's just grand. We've now got all the elements that we need to serve files to the net. The thing is, we're only doing this so we can work on stuff at home, in which case what we're really looking for is an easier way to do so. What we need to do is have a public_html folder in our user directory. Perhaps now would be a good time to do that. The next step is making that work on the webserver we've just installed. Run this snip of code:
sudo a2enmod userdir
Then restart apache:
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 force-reload
You should now be able to reach your home folder via http://localhost/~yourusername/

Finally we want to be able to administer our mysql databases. Though there are many good tools for doing this I still go back to the web based phpMyAdmin. Apart from the fact that it's highly automated (which suits me just fine) it's also a very common program to find on your paid hosting, so would also be very familiar when you go live. For the quick and dirty way of getting it up and running, download phpMyAdmin and extract to your public_html folder. Personally I rename it to something a little easier. Then rename the file within from config.example.inc.php to config.inc.php and within that file put something in the blowfish_secret field. Then all you have to do is navigate your browser to something like http://localhost/~yourusername/phpMyAdmin

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posted by SkinOfStars @ 11:36 pm, ,


os freefall

Its got to that time of the month where I have to reinstall my operating system. I can't blame the system, it is each and every time, without fail, my fault. I can't help but keep tinkering and playing with them till they fail on me. I remember when I first started playing with the things I would have to reinstall before I'd even finished the first install! At least now here are often months between.

I thought this time I might get out of my comfort zone for a bit. I decided to install the new fedora 8. I will be totally honest now and admit that it lasted on my machine for two days before I switched back to ubuntu. The problem wasn't with fedora per say, I could see almost immediately that this was a far more stable operating system with many of the features I like built in straight out the box. It clearly benefits from the good breeding of Red Hat. The problem I have is that I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination and fedora is clearly built for people who have some idea what they are doing. From what I found there seemed to be very little documentation for novices and to be honest I don't have the time for that sort of learning curve.

So here is what seems to have happened. I have acquired the same disinterest in learning a new operating system that my Windows using counterparts have always had. I hope this doesn't stick.

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posted by SkinOfStars @ 11:23 pm, ,


End of semester 2.1
Thursday, December 20, 2007

Just finished my final exam (computer networks) for this semester of my second year. That should mean I'm exactly half way through, not sure I am though. Unfortunately I feel that I did terribly this semester, including this exam, and I'm kinda woried that it will mean I'm going to have to add an extra semester onto my course. Still, we'll see, I may yet be able to pull it back. Otherwise, I'm pretty glad this bit is over. The last few months have been a real struggle and I'm looking forward to coming home for an all be it brief period of time.

So now it is time to go have a few ales. I'm gonna try to hold back tonight as tomorrow is my birthday and we're planning a raucous affair. I'm in Wales for Christmas but will be spending NYE in Thanet, most probably at the Lido, where I hope to catch up with some old friends. I'm a little sad to say this may be one of my last trips back since the family home is now up for sale with the intention of leaving the area. One can't help but feel a little loss at the thought of not returning to an area where I spent so many of my formative years but its difficult to imagine that I would return without a family home there. I guess some people flee from the nest, others are pushed and some just have the nest taken away while they're not looking.

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posted by SkinOfStars @ 4:27 pm, ,


The ongoing saga of the iPlayer
Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Oh, what a treat... and just in time for Christmas! I am very pleased to find that the BBC has finally indulged my fetish for organic software by releasing a flash streaming version of their iPlayer.

Though of course flash isn't homespun in itself, it is cross platform compatible and so both myself and all those other 'nix and Mac users out there can watch the last seven days of BBC content without the need for any of that Windows tosh! Not a Vista in sight! I need never miss another episode of Cash In The Attic again. Hurrah!

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posted by SkinOfStars @ 11:09 pm, ,