re: Delanotes.com

I received this warning while checking my invitations on...

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 05:21:00 -0500

I received this warning while checking my invitations on Facebook this morning.

“Warning: Suspected phishing site”

A post on the Anandtech forum is the only other reference I can find. The warning appears to be triggered by the domain static.ak.fbcdn.net which is owned by Facebook. How that domain got flagged as a potentially dangerous site has yet to be figured out.

I started watching the A-Team recently. I noticed it was on TV...

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 17:11:51 -0400

I started watching the A-Team recently. I noticed it was on TV at 3pm every day and apparently I usually get hungry around the same time so I watch it while I eat. I usually only catch the last 20 minutes or so but that’s cool by me since that’s the best part. The plots are so ridiculous that I can do just as well with imagining how they got into the situation they’re in.

Anyway, I’ve been recording the parts I watch and adding them to the audio section.

Creating a group tumbleog on Tumblr

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 19:50:53 -0400

I noticed the documentation for creating themes on Tumblr included template variables referring to group posts, but I couldn’t find any information on creating these group tumbleogs. In particular I wanted to be able to use the PostAuthorName so a post could be attributed to a specific person. I emailed Tumblr support and received the response below:

Your default tumblelog is just for you, but additional tumblelogs can have multiple authors. You can create a new tumblelog using the tabbed drop-down menu in the upper right corner of the Dashboard.

Once you create a new tumblelog, you can add Members to it by clicking the Members link on the new tumblelog’s Dashboard page. You just type in someone’s email address and click the “Invite to this group” button.

The other person will get an email with a link that lets them join your new tumblelog. (Each invite link can only be used once by one user.) If they already have Tumblr, your tumblelog will just appear in their tabbed menu. If they don’t already have Tumblr, they will need to sign up for a free account before they can join the tumblelog.

All Members can post to a tumblelog. And, Members can edit or remove their own posts.

When you create the new tumblelog, you will be the only Admin. This means only you can invite new users, remove existing users, and delete posts by any Member.

You can use the Members area to promote a Member to Admin so they have the same abilities as you do. But, be aware that once you make someone an Admin, you will never be able to take away their Admin rights and you will never be able to remove them from the tumblelog.

Now with infinitely more Audio Content

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 21:19:00 -0400

I’ve added a new section to Delanotes.com: audio content. These are audio clips of mostly conversations but also other sounds like music shows and ambient noise. I explain them a little further on the about page.

# This is a DJ

                  @=====@                                  
                #=@       @=#_                             
               # \/\/\/\/\/\ #\                            
               @@|  _   _  |@@(                            
               @@|\|_|-|_|/|@@ )                           
                @|    /\   |@ (                            
                 |  \~~~~/ |   )                           
                 |   ~~~~  |   |                           
                  \_______/    |                           
           _________|   |_______(____                      
          /         \   /      (     `\                    
         /  / |  fvk \ /      |-\---,  \                   
 _______/  /__|_______@_______|__)___\  \________          
|\      \  \___   ______________#     |  |__     \         
|\\      /\ \  ', |\ # W W W W @@ \   /ooo  `,    \        
||\\    '  ooo   \\#\ # W W W W @@ \ '        \    \       
|| \\    \       ; \#\___o_o_o_o____\ \       ;     \      
\|_|\\    `,_____/  \|______________|  `,_____/      \     
     \\                                               \    
      \\                                               \   
       \\_______________________________________________\  
        \  ___________________________________________  |  
        || |                                         || |  
        || |                                         || |  
        || |                                         || |  
        \|_|                                         \|_|

Delanotes is here

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 09:10:00 -0400

I made Delanotes.com live today along with a description of what it is.

# This is an SR-71 (Blackbird). 

                 .                             .                        
                //                             \\                       
               //                               \\                      
              //                                 \\                     
             //                _._                \\                    
          .---.              .//|\\.              .---.                 
________ / .-. \_________..-~ _.-._ ~-..________ / .-. \_________ -sr   
         \ ~-~ /   /H-     `-=.___.=-'     -H\   \ ~-~ /                
           ~~~    / H          [H]          H \    ~~~                  
                 / _H_         _H_         _H_ \                        
                   UUU         UUU         UUU

Installing Ruby Gems on DreamHost (slight return)

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 19:22:00 -0400

Installing gems on a DreamHost (“DH”) machine is not easy. It’s neither simple nor easy. After you’ve gone through the process of setting up gem to install into your home directory, you’ve probably seen this:

$ gem install warwick
Bulk updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org

Killed

or more recently, this slightly more helpful message:

$ gem install warwick
Bulk updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org

Yikes! One of your processes (gem, pid 11112) was just killed because your
processes are, as a whole, consuming too much memory. If you believe you've
received this message in error, please contact Support.  

Killed

Either way, the gem did not get installed because the process is being killed by the DreamHost Police (their words).

Why is this happening??????????

When you run gem install in verbose, you see something like this:

$ gem install -V warwick
missing 15248 gems
Bulk updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org

Killed

So for whatever reason gem wants to install a bunch of gems and to do so requires more memory and CPU time than DH will allow. (Note: I assume it wants to install these gems because we’re starting off with an empty gems directory)

Ahhhh, this sucks. I just want to use warwick!

I know, I know. I want to use warwick too. There are a few solutions.

Be nice

DH recommends on their RubyGems to be nice: alias gem="nice -n19 ~/bin/gem". When you add this to your .bash_profile, every time you run gem you’re actually running nice -n19 ~/bin/gem.

Major CON: This solves the CPU resource problem by forcing the gem process to only grab cycles when no other process wants it but it doesn’t solve the memory issue. IOW: it takes forever and then the process gets killed anyway.

Install gems manually

Download the .gem file to your DreamHost machine and run: gem install -V --local --no-rdoc --no-ri [.gem path]. You can also install a gem directly to your vendor directory:

$ cd vendor
$ gem unpack [.gem path]

Major CON: Dependencies. You have to install all dependencies manually.

Replicate your local gems repository

Follow the same setup procedure on your local machine and copy it to your DH account:

[local:~]$ gem install warwick
...
[local:~]$ rsync -a --stats --progress ~/.gems yourmachine.com:~/gems-local
[local:~]$ ssh -v yourmachine.com
[yourmachine.com:~]$ mv .gems gems-remote-1
[yourmachine.com:~]$ mv gems-local .gems

Major CON: This won’t work for gems that contains platform specific code (anything that links to C libraries for example) unless your local environment is sufficiently similar to your DH machine (i.e. 32-bit, Linux kernel version, compiled library versions, etc…)

Conclusion

Never run with scissors.

P.S. Please send all feedback to infoATdelanotesDOTcom.

Delanotes is coming

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 17:05:00 -0400

Delanotes.com will launch September 1st. What is it? Well, the explanation is coming too. The following is a sample of the content.

$ curl delanotes.com/README
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DELANOTES

what: biased summaries of all your favourite URIs. 
who: Delano Mandelbaum
when: September 1st, 2008
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------  

EXAMPLE 1 (http://delanotes.com/summary/tumblr.com/)

uri: http://tumblr.com/

date_summarized:  August 2nd, 2008

biased_summary: Tumblr is a model for what weblogging should be. I want to
post something that catches my mind's eye and move on. I'm not interested in
dinking around with settings and I'm not interested in reading or moderating moronic
comments. 


EXAMPLE 2 (http://delanotes.com/summary/texasstartupblog.com/2008/08/04/layerone/)

uri: http://www.texasstartupblog.com/2008/08/04/layerone/

date_summarized: August 4th, 2008

biased_summary: Texas freaks me out a bit and this weblog kinda of freaked
me out too when I first started reading it but the content is really good so
I'm coming around now. It's rare for someone to write about their
experience of failing at the million dollar level so how can you not dig
this shit? 


EXAMPLE 3 (http://delanotes.com/summary/murderer.ca/)

uri: http://murderer.ca/

date_summarized:  August 5th, 2008

biased_summary: This is my blog. No, I'm not a murderer it's just a
memorable domain name. In fact, you'll probably think about it later on today.