What Mike Does All Day

XMLHttpRequest

This may be OLD NEWZ, but I just found it last week, so here is what I learned.

When you want to make things change on a web page, based on something the user selects or does, you used to have to do it with pure javascript. Say, if you wanted the user to select an item in one option menu, and see a second option menu change based on that selection. Javascript was always the answer. The reason it was the answer, was because it would do the DOC manipulations within the current browser session, and not make calls back to the server, provided you had all the data in javascript arrays and such.

Later, you could do the same thing in PHP (or cgi, or whatever), but you would have to use a combination of javascript and server processing (a PHP example), with a browser refresh in the middle.

NOW, thank yoda, you can begin doing such things with the badass XMLHttpRequest Object (which, apparently, is supported in all current browsers), AND, you can transfer XML data, URLS, files, images, whatever. The only hitch is it has javascript security, meaning all calls and data must come from the current domain. This is no big deal, because you can make a XMLRPC/SOAP/URL/Whatever proxy function that retrieves any data you need remotely, and spits it back to XMLHttpRequest from your domain.

These examples all worked in Firefox/Mozilla/IE6.

Read this first:

yeah yeah yeah
with associated example:
yes yes yes

then this one:
no no no *finger wagging* no no no

then, this killer one:

hold on to your butts!

it's a UNIX system!

technology is finally becoming less of a pain in the ass!

Server Hosting

I have a server at server beach, which, I believe, is a AMD 2200 with 1 G Ram and an 80G (might be 60) Drive, plus 900 G of bandwidth per month. A nice deal. NOW, however, you can get a AMD 2600, 1 G RAM, and 2x80 G drives, with 2000 G of bandwidth per month, for the same price I'm paying for the older server. You can also get fedora as the OS, which I like. If I had the money, I would order 5 of these right now. That is a sweet deal, man.

I've also been ch-czeching out 1and1. You can get a Pentium 4 3.06 GHz, with 1 G RAM and 120 G drive, with 500G of transfer/month, and $0.99/GB over the 500...for $99/month. This is a pretty good deal. You get Plesk, php 4.2.2 and apache 2.0.40 with full root access.

Seems like the best thing would be to have the main servers at server beach, and redundant backup servers at 1and1. Serve Path is also a nice place, but only for colocation of your machines, as the dedicated server prices are too high, and the monthly bandwidth allotment too low.

Just some pondermints to go with your wintermints.

Trustix

Installed Trustix 2.1 on one of my laptops. I'm using this as a MySQL db server at my house, which I connect to from a Fedora core 1 laptop, which itself is running apache 2.0.49, php 4.x, SQLite, and Berkeley db for development. The fedora laptop is exposed to the internet on two ports, passing through a Dell broadband/wifi router.

Trustix is basically "OpenLinuxD," or an Openbsd concept applied to a linux distribution. Everything is turned off by default; you can't ssh as root, a minimal install, no X, etc. ( Read here for more detailed info). So far, this seems like a great distro for pure servers...small, fast, and secure out-of-the-box.

On another note, we have fedora core 2 (linux kernel 2.6) running at work, on an Aberdeen. This machine is acting as a Nagios and development server, and it has been running perfectly. If this build continues to operate nicely, I plan to use fedora core 2 on all subsequent installs. Totally Bitchin'.

Subversion

I installed Subversion, along with Apache 2.0.49 (needed for browser access to the repo) and TortoiseSVN, on my XP Box. Turns out it was all very easy. You can create repositories wherever you want, import your code, then check it out to your working folder with ease. As advertised, subversion is a modern, easier-to-deal-with CVS. I'll be installing the subversion server on Linux sometime this coming week. All I know is, if it's easier than setting up a cvs pserver (which is a mild pain-in-the-ass), I'll be sold.

I tried messing around with subversion a couple of years ago, but the software was too young and I didn't feel like dealing with the bugs and asspain Linux install. I'm sure it's very straight forward these days.

I imported all my current web dev code, ch-checked it out, made a bunch of revisions, czech-ins, updates, ch-check-outs, etc. Not one problem encountered. Made me a snappy camper.

The browser interface to subversion is basically just a jacked apache file view. It pretty much sucks. I looked around and found an article showing how to hack viewcvs to work with subversion, but it described lots of 'do this, and then do this, and then this, and oh yeah, this too, oh and don't forget to install all this other junk', which raised by laziness hackles. I'm sure it's pretty easy, but I'll save that for another day. Besides, subversion is engineered to work best with DAV, command line, or Tortoise. I may just forgo the whole viewcvs business (unless I really miss all the information supplied by viewcvs/cvsweb...which, realistically, I will) --- I'll post about it whenever I finish.

Meanwhile, I have php5 and php 4.x for windows, plus Mysql. I'd really like to get Apache 2, PHP5, and MySQL all running on XP, then mirror the same setup on my Linux servers. I tend to enjoy coding locally, and then just deploying to the Linux servers. No specific reason, I just like doing it that way. I think the doctors call it "Chumpitis."

Emacs

So, yes...today, I decided to go through the Emacs tutorials (I learned emacs pretty well in 1996-97 as the first unix editor I could do anything with, then started using pico, and promptly forgot everything about emacs). Gaza has been on my ass for years -- "dooode, you must start using emacs for coding." I have resisted. I'm not sure why I have been resisting; laziness, I suppose. I just got used to vi (because I HAD to get used to it real quick when I got dumped into a sucklaris-only job). Before my crash course in vi, pico was nice and friendly and did all the junk I wanted.

So, ALAS, I have come FULL CIRCLE, like a Skywalker. I'm back to learning Emacs.

PS- I originally was drawn to Emacs because I'd read that you could code macros for it in the A.I. Language Lisp!!! PLUS, I could look at the Mayan Calendar right inside the editor. I thought these were the KOOLEST features ever.