Blogs

So in case you haven't noticed, I have not posted anything on here in quite a while. That is mainly because I got out of the habit once I started working, also because I bought some good video games.

Anyway, I am still working, now in Raleigh, but only part-time. I have taken a ton of pictures and had lots of stuff to write about, I just haven't actually sat down and done anything about it. Since I am just working part-time as of right now, I figured I might as well start posting on here again.

The site needs some work, so I am going to get everything setup correctly before posting more stuff. I did not do that last time and I ended up spending WAY too much time just trying to do something like post a picture. So I am going to add some helpful modules like ImageCache, attempt to organize everything, start posting some more interesting content regularly (Linux, Technology, Drupal, Blender, Photography, etc), and maybe even eventually get a decent Drupal host with a better domain.

Anyway, some of the content on here will be unavailable at times as I update everyting. Check back soon to see what is going on.

In case you don't know, I have this website hosted on a 1&1 shared hosting account.  It's not the best, but it's cheap and it works.

Anyway, one of the main problems people run into with Drupal on most shared hosting accounts is Clean URLs not working.  Why does this matter?  Without Clean URLs, there will be a ?q= in the URL for each page, which looks weird and is not quite as friendly with search engines.

Thankfully, there is usually a simple fix.  On 1&1 just two things need to change.

1 - Drupal needs to use PHP5, not PHP4.  You can rename all the PHP files, if you want, or you can just add this to you .htaccess file.

#Use PHP5. AddType x-mapp-php5 .php

You can add this on any new line in the file.

2 - Drupal needs to know how to handle URLs correctly, which means this:

# RewriteBase /

needs to be this:

RewriteBase /

Yes, so just delete the # character in front of RewriteBase /, that's all.  It is probably located towards the bottom of the file.

Like I said, a simple fix, but it stumps a lot of people.

Here is your invitation.

I recently discovered the website Tips4Linux.com.  If you are a Linux user, or are considering using Linux, it is worth bookmarking.

One of the recent tips is how to create an image of any directory, which can be used to help in backing up your files.

"If you want to make a quick backup of a certain directory, ready to be burned on a CD or DVD, you can use

mkisofs -V LABEL -r directory | gzip > cdrom.iso.gz"

In this case replace "LABEL" with whatever you want the CD label to be (what shows up when you insert the disk or mount the image).  Also, replace "directory" with the location of the data you want to make the image from.  So if you wanted to make an image of the /home/user/documents folder and give it the label "Documents," the command is

mkisofs -V Documents -r /home/user/documents | gzip > cdrom.iso.gz

This will create the gzipped file cdrom.iso.gz in the /home/user directory.  Alternatively, you can create the .iso file without being gzipped by removing the section after the |, and adding "-o filename."  So to make an image of the folder /home/user/stuff named image.iso with the label "Stuff," the command is

mkisofs -V Stuff -r -o image.iso /home/user/stuff

You can read more about this command here.

I ran across this video the other day.  It's pretty funny.

I like the ending. "Ubuntu?"

Smashing Magazine has posted some great underwater photos.  Some of them are of underwater creatures, some are of people, and they are all amazing.

Dr. Money (yes, that's his name), from Miami University, recorded some ultra high-speed video of fungi releasing their spores at ridiculous speeds.  The spores were found to accelerate at up to 180,000 gs.  You can read all the details in the paper.

Some of his students made a "Fungus Opera" using some of the footage Dr. Money recorded.

NASA commisioned a guy to make a rap video about astrobiology.  That has to be one of the strangest things I have ever heard of.  Check it out.

Also, if you haven't already, watch the LHC Rap.

Matt sent me a link to some good photos of the LHC.  They are all interesting in both an artistic and scientific point of view.  Check them out if you haven't already.

Check out The PCR Song that Katy posted.  One of only a handful of music videos for science geeks.