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Wednesday, February 12, 2003 |
Web-based calendarsMy boss wanted to put his association's calendar on their website, so I've been evaluating the numerous PHP/MySQL-based solutions available. The problem I'm having with all of them is that you have to get MySQL running properly :)
As I was tinkering with another PHP package, it occured to me that I should just use our existing FileMaker/Lasso setup. The admin responsible for maintaining the calendar is already using FileMaker, and there are some ready-made calendar solutions available for Lasso. Problem solved!
One of the PHP apps I came across is PHP-iCalendar. It's very nice, and easy to configure. The user simply needs to export an .ics file from iCal and upload to the web server running PHP-iCalendar. Unfortunately, my boss can't use this because iCal is MacOS X-only.
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Saturday, February 8, 2003 |
Don't do this on a serverI tried out a big monitor on my Jaguar server, then returned it, leaving the server headless. I figured I'd just put the old one back when I upgraded over the weekend.
Not so fast! If you plug in a monitor that doesn't support the current resolution setting, it won't monitor anything - it's like, totally black. You need to reboot in this case to reset the video card. I should have set the resolution lower before removing the big monitor.
Fortunately there's only one person working today, so rebooting our primary file server isn't a big deal. I'll also need to zap the pram (command+option+p+r while booting) to flush the previous setting.
If I had done this during the week, it would have really sucked :)
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Saturday, January 25, 2003 |
Make sure you have DNS configured properlyI got bitten by this one a while ago, when an important client said they couldn't send us e-mail because their mail server was now doing reverse DNS lookups. A call to our ISP quickly resolved the matter (pun intended).
Reverse DNS lookups are not actually required in the RFCs for SMTP servers, but more and more people are using it. Unfortunately, as illustrated by AT&T's example, many domains are not set up to resolve reverse DNS lookups.
AT&T WorldNet has to defuse a risky spam-filtering technique introduced only a day ago after subscribers discover they are losing legitimate e-mail. [CNET News.com]
You can check your DNS settings at DNS Stuff.
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Monday, January 20, 2003 |
Jaguars don't like to be Lasso'dFigured out what was wrong with Lasso -
I took the opportunity when upgrading WebSTAR (fixing expiration bug) to update the system software, only to discover that Lasso V doesn't play well with MacOS 10.2 (Jaguar). Apple replaced SH with BASH, rendering Lasso's various shell scripts inoperable (isn't that nice!). After wrestling with reinstalling Lasso from the original download (DON'T LOSE IT - you can't get old installers from Blueworld) and setting up Lasso Security all over again, it finally worked.
The alternative was $199 for 2 tech support incidents, or upgrade to Lasso 6 ($400!). Since my company has absolutely no use for anything in Lasso 6, I'm glad I found the old installer :)
This whole exercise has made me think even more seriously about learning PHP/MySQL or Cold Fusion, since there doesn't seem to be much point in putting in the time, effort or cash to learn Lasso 6.
Why? I did a search on dice.com for the different languages and came up with the following number of current job openings:
PHP = 46
Pretty much sums up what I've been reading on Usenet. I already have PHP and MySQL running on my PowerBook, and Macromedia has just made a free Cold Fusion developer version available for J2EE on OSX. Time to hit the books!
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Sunday, January 19, 2003 |
[Update] WebSTAR V expiration bugI upgraded WebSTAR to the latest version (5.2.3), and the expiration bug is gone. I was able to set the system clock to the correct time, and it's not running in "stop every 2 hours" demo mode any more. BTW, 4D's phone support is excellent. It's really worth the $179/year support fee.
Naturally, the upgrade had to break something :) Lasso V is not working any more (grr!) Lasso has been a pain in the neck for me to install under OS X; permissions are usually the culprit. I'll work on it tomorrow and post the results.
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Monday, January 6, 2003 |
Spam, spam and more spamInternet Week reports that dealing with spam is costing about $12 billion per year.
I'm running an ORDB filter on my EIMS mail server, which helps quite a bit. I've tried Spamcop as well, but many people began to complain about blocked messages. EIMS has a DNS whitelist feature, but it's too hard to keep up with this manually, and Simple Text Filter has reports of instability, making it unwise for me to install at this point.
EIMS for MacOS X (currently in beta) is supposed to have better mail management, but I can't run prerelease software on something as critical as a mail server.
On the client side, POP Monitor is very good not just for spam management, but also for checking user accounts remotely to delete stuck messages, prune large inboxes, etc. And Entourage's built-in Junk Mail Filter is good, especially when supplemented with SpamSieve. It's as good as Apple Mail's spam management, and Entourage is a better app (IMHO). However, I'm still deleting a few hundred spams per day.
I'll get more into the client side of things when I post my experience with various e-mail clients later.
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