Thursday, November 14, 2002

And on with the drivel... We're in the process of switching from my beloved Webstar to Apache as part of our move to Lasso 6. So, me being the only webmaster on the face of the world who's never used apache wanders our to get the designated O'Reilly book to get up to speed. Well, it turns out that the book is out of print. A new edition will be coming in December but until then, I'm pretty much hosed. I found Ralph Engelschall's excellent Apache Desktop Reference, for which he graciously makes a PDF available, but it is more of a general reference as opposed to a 'How the bleep do I make this thing do what I want!!!' book. It also seems to be out of print at the moment. The Apache list is pretty good but I like to start out with a good overview book to get my bearings on a new subject. In my desperation, I was led to look at O'Reilly's Safari service again. I've been tempted to try it out in the past, but something about it just didn't seem like a good value for reasons I could never quite quantify. Boy, was I wrong. They've got a free 14 day trial offer right now and I tell you, I was sold on the service after a couple of hours. I'll be keeping up my membership after the trial runs out for sure. There's tons of books, not just O'Reilly ones. They're well presented and, I think they've done a wonderful job of balancing between protecting their copyright and providing fair use of the books to subscribers. It's really easy to save / print / bookmark any section you want and their search engine works really well but it's not easy to save/print out the entire books. The only real disadvantage I can see is not being able to read the books offline. If you haven't already tried it out, give it a whirl. 6:19:22 AM

I've been waiting for a great idea for an overarching theme for this weblog. I don't want to be one of those bloggers that just mindlessly echos the latest items from Slashdot or Metafilter. Problem is, the more I've waited for that inspiration, the harder it's been to get off my lazy but and start blogging again. Look for more than semi-annual updates from this point forward. It may be just meaningless drivel but, damnit, it's my meaningless drivel! 5:56:04 AM

I'm back... A couple of weeks ago, I got an email from Phil Wolff of a klog apart wondering if I was still blogging. Imagine that, someone actually missed my ramblings. Who would've thunk? I've been very busy since summer with: our new office (the credit check came back good and we moved in on July 1) setting up and maintaining our data centre (We're not huge, but sometimes I begin to think that 12 computers is too much for one man to manage) Enjoying our new apartment (Right by Stanley Park, complete with a fireplace and a roof-top pool, like all good supervillains should have. I must admit though, the pool was much cooler in the summer!) Generally digging life (3+ years of working 12 and more hour days less than 20 feet from your bed can really drain a guy, I never thought I'd actually enjoy commuting to work.) 5:51:37 AM