new blog software
After playing with MovableType for a week or two I was actually sort of liking it. Even though it was all PERL cgi's, I liked the fact that it would actually publish everything out out to static HTML content. Call me strange like that I guess. Well after a recent Ubuntu server upgrade the admin interface started not working. The CGI wasn't generating something in the HTML output that was causing a bunch of JavaScript to error out in a never ending loop. So, that was a fun experiment while it lasted.
I thought about going back to having Wordpress running, but I don't really update this crap all that often (although I might start, who knows) and figured I would try Roller since I wanted to try it in the past. After a slight teething issue because I pulled down the J2EE build instead of the Tomcat build it's up and running. There isn't an easy import scripts (at least not that I've found yet) to go back and pull in old blog entries. They are few and far between anyway, so if I really want to I can probably add them by hand at some point.
Posted at 11:10PM Oct 23, 2011 by Steve B. in General |
Solr on Sun One Webserver
For a project that I'm messing with here at work the request has been made to add in search capabilities (along with a few other things) to it. The first choice of course is to use Lucene and beat it with a hammer to get it to work the way you want it to. I could have done this, but the application has multiple parts to it running on different machines and some of them will need to feed data in and other will make the search queries. I didn't really want to also have to write all the interfaces for the various bits and pieces to talk to the search engine. Where is the fun in that these days. Looking around a little more I found Solr which is built on top of Lucene and seems to do exactly what I want.
Anyway, to make a long story short. I wanted to run this in the Sun One Webserver since I think it's a much better platform than Tomcat. It does have it's quirks to it, but once you get to know them it's a great webserver and Servlet Container all built into one that performs so much better. So part of the Solr config is telling it where it's home directory is to store index information and find all of the config files. This can be done with a Java environment property fed into the JVM with a -D${property}=${value}, but I wanted it to be read from the Context config itself. No need to have various cruft hanging around in the server.xml file if you don't need it. You can configure a JNDI Environment value for Solr to pick up where it's home directory is. So for those that want to know how to do that I present what I added into my web.xml for the Solr web application.
<env-entry> <description>Solr Home</description> <env-entry-name>solr/home</env-entry-name> <env-entry-value>/www/webapps/apache-solr-1.2.0</env-entry-value> <env-entry-type>java.lang.String</env-entry-type> <env-entry>
Isn't that easy? Then when Solr looks for the home directory value in it's JDNI lookup it will find it and go about it's merry way in initializing. I was doing all kinds of things with trying to setup a
Posted at 06:29PM Apr 08, 2008 by Steve B. in General |
warped people
So I ordered me some t-shirts, because you know I don't have enough of them, from tshirthell.com and they showed up the other day. So one of my cow-orkers dared me to wear the midget/porn shirt to work. So well, I did. Granted I had a button up shirt on over it that was unbuttoned so you didn't really get the whole gist of it unless you really looked. Anyway.. After work today I went to the range to put some holes in paper with the Sig and this dude read the shirt and was laughing at it. I'm thinking that people that are going to laugh at this shirt are probably a little warped anyway (since I am and I was wearing the thing), but people at a gun range that are laughing at the thing should probably scare you a little.
Posted at 10:46PM Oct 04, 2005 by Steve B. in General |
WERA National at Barber
I probably should have been doing this all year, but I'm a slacker I guess and have no real writing skills so it sort of never happens. This past weekend (9/24-25/05) was the WERA National over at Barber Motorsports Park. I race in it. Update complete. Ok, so a little more information would be nice I guess. I had done a trackday over at Barber a couple of weeks before so I didn't take off of work on Friday to go and do the practice day. We drove over on Saturday afternoon and got things ready for Sunday. First practice session of Sunday was damp and I had a front slick on so I didn't go out since we had an issue putting the DOT on. Second practice session was four laps before a red flag came out and halted the festivities. Wheeeeeeee!!!! We pull the practice tyres off and sit around for a while since the weather is looking iffy. Wait to see if we want to toss rains or DOT's on for the LWT race. The rain blows through so the DOT's go on an more waiting for the race to come around. I'm gridded 7th out of 17 riders. Get one hell of a crappy start and end up back in 14th or so. During the 10 lap race I work my way back up to 7th turning times that are about 2-2.5 seconds off what I know I should be able to run at the place. I need to get into better shape or something. Although granted the last time I was at Barber in a race I totally wadded up a bike, so I might have been a little timid too. This just means that I need to actually get on the treadmill or something before the GNF. At least at Road Atlanta there is that big backstraight that you can catch your breath on, but still.
Posted at 01:29PM Sep 29, 2005 by Steve B. in Racing |
Reality TV
Needless to say I watch a little to much TV. I am totally over the Reality TV stuff though. I was sort of hooked on Outback Jack when it was on TBS since I saw some of the early trailers and snippets from it. Some of that crap was rather funny. Now there is The Real Gilligans Island and I partially got through one episode before I shit canned it. Why in the hell is he mentioning this is probably running through your head rigth now. Well it's because someone pointed me to watching Drawn Together over on Comedy Central. Holy crap is this show funny. It's a total spoof on reality shows with Cartoon Characters living together and is so un-PC it's frelling funny. If you get a chance watch it on Wednesday at 10:30pm EST after South Park. Watch it.. WATCH IT I SAY!!!!
Posted at 12:03PM Dec 10, 2004 by Steve B. in General |
Internet Radio
So a dude that is a fellow racer from .wv.us and general cool guy that hangs out on Undernet IRC stuff pointed me to Chronix Radio. It's an Internet radio station that streams the music to your desktop and you can listen with your favorite MP3 Player (iTunes, Winamp, XMMS to name a few). It's actually Chronix Agression internet radio being listed as "commercial-free, Metal/Rock/alternative Internet only radio station". There is another Chronix station that plays some 70's and 80's stuff, but I've never listened to it. Anyway, check it out. I sit at work and listen to it all day now and just ignore all the MP3's that I have ripped sitting on a server.
Posted at 03:57PM Dec 03, 2004 by Steve B. in General |
When the Internet was Kewl!
Remember back in the day when you were sitting there on your TI-99/4A? No, well how about your Atari 400? What, still don't remember that, c'mon how about your C-64? Urgh, damn you youngsters. Don't know what the good times were before MAE-East and MAE-West back when SPAM was something that just came in a can (although there was some UUCP stuff... and don't ask what UUCP was) and other old skool crap. Well here it is back again. ASCII Hot or Not. Try it, enjoy it and revel in it's majesty.
Posted at 04:28PM Nov 30, 2004 by Steve B. in General |
Yipee, another blog
Well isn't just just exciting? It's another blog up on the internet. Holy crap I bet you've never seen one of these before have you? Unlike the last one which was a stupid homegrown bunch of Java Code that I wrote this is like a "real" blog publishing system that has some other assorted features and junk to it. It's written in PHP which is, urm, ummm... an ok thing I guess. Like I'm one to talk anyway since the last thing I wrote was a piece of crap. Maybe I'll take another shot at it or something at some point in time now that I've seen this thing. Anyway, enjoy or choke on a cookie or something.
Posted at 10:52PM Nov 29, 2004 by Steve B. in General |