I just discovered Ubuntu Dapper has CD printing support built-in for my printers! This makes me happy, as I’m no longer stuck with the amazingly crappy CD printing software which came with my printers (WTF is there no UNDO option), and I can use some great apps like Inkscape and GIMP. This also means my small business will be running on 100% open source software. My Mac Mini will probably move to the living room, and be one sweet Video/Audio/Picture machine.
Postfix for the Server
I moved back to Postfix for my server’s SMTP option. Gmail’s SMTP server overwrote the ‘from’ address for every email that went out, which was annoying.
update
Bought clothes today. Lots of shirts. I should be good for a while.
Email Move Complete
I finally finished moving my email server from a self hosted setup to Gmail for Domains. There were three main parts of the move: configuring inbound email to end up on the Gmail servers, copying all my current email to Gmail, and then setting up local mail to be sent using Google’s SMTP server. The most time consuming part of the move was copying all my current mail over using a nice utility someone had written. Configing the DNS services and watching the changes propigate was the most interesting part of the move.
Postfix has been replaced with ssmtp on my server, and I now have a few extra CPU cycles and MB’s of memory to dedicate to Apache, Lighty, and MySQL.
LiveCD News CSS
Spent more time fixing the CSS on livecdnews.com and I think I’m finally done. I aligned the content of the entries, made quotes stand out, and added navigation buttons at the bottom of the site (I can’t believe they were missing).
Also, last week LiveCD News had its first day of over 1,000 unique vists. That was good motivation to put some more time into the layout. And I’m glad I did, I had forgotten how much fun CSS can be.
Gmail for your domain!
Just got the coolest email ever:
—
Welcome to our beta test!
Thanks for helping us test Gmail for your domain! We’re excited to help you offer Gmail accounts with your domain.
Here’s how to get started:
—
While I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to give up controlling my own mail server, I’m actually excited about it now. I’ll no longer need to keep updating my postfix+cyrus+mysql setup, which will allow me more time with Apache, Lighttpd, and MySQL. Plus the constant struggle of slowing down spam is something I’d be happy of offload. The more I think about it, the less reasons I have for not moving. Space? 2 GB is more than enough. Ads? I’ll get less spam with Gmail, at least the ads will be targeted and not stupid, if they exist at all. IMAP access? The GMail web interface is just as effienct to work with, if not more, than Thunderbird. Plus standard Gmail has at least POP access, this may even offer IMAP, I guess we’ll see.
And then there are thing which are just better all around, such as the Gmail web interface vs Squirrelmail and the spam filter which just works vs. manual tuning of spam assassin. Time to go sign up.
More Memory
Received my shiny new 1 GB stick of memory for my Mac Mini today. Installing it probably took the longest of any memory install I’ve ever done, but only because I wasn’t able to get the damn case open. The problem was tools, I didn’t have the required sharpened putty knife, but in the end, a regular knife allowed me to get a regular metal spatula in the case and pop it open. In the range of computers which suck to work on, old HP cases still win, because they take longer to open, and the design has no redeeming qualities.
The original 512 stick from the Mini moves to my old Shuttle SN45G, and my 1 GB memory purchase just got me another operational computer.
New Color Scheme for LiveCD News
I spent a little time last night to update the color scheme of LiveCD News. My goal was to make the content stand out better. I liked my attempt well enough to set it as the default theme, and now LiveCD News is no longer covered with many different shades of blue.
New MySQL, new FrozenTech
I felt good about my current state of the RoR FrozenTech Store so I decided to roll it out tonight. I quickly realized I would have to upgrade my MySQL from 4.0 to 4.1, something I had been putting off for a while. I followed the Gentoo upgrade docs, and they worked perfectly, but it did take over an hour to compile the new version plus all the other stuff which depened on it. That was fine though, as Christina and I watched some episodes of Battlestar from season one which we had not seen.
After everything was done compiling, I restored all the databases, checked existing sites, uploaded new files, edited apache and lighttpd config files, and restarted every service a few times. The good news is that everything looks like it’s working the way it should. There’s still a lot of tweaking that need to be done to the store and the surrounding site, but I’m looking forward to it. The Ruby on Rails environment has been fun to work with.
XGL Source is Out!
The source code to XGL is out, and people in the Gentoo forums are already compiling it. This may push me back to Gentoo on the desktop, or at least get me to dual boot again. The RR4 Gentoo installer could lead to a system that can do this somewhat quickly.
I’ll be crossing my fingers for an XGL LiveCD in the meantime.