my web server thanks you

I have finally stopped hosting my own website. What you are viewing now is running on Google owned machines via their Blogger.com service. During my time off from work to be with the family I wrote a program to export all of my blog content from SnipSnap on my server into the Blogger system. If you are reading this post it worked! :)

You should see faster response times and less down-time on this system. But it's the same old me so the content ain't gettin' any better! :)

Well, I gotta run now... it's time for father-daughter Saturday lunch at one of our favorites... Wwwwwwwwelcome to Moes!


- Scott

Testing, 1,2,3

I'm debating between wordpress and blogger for the next generation of heabdogg.com. I like the google integration of blogger but I dig the fact that I can create & manage more content than simple blog content with wordpress. What I really want is something more like what I have now - a blog and wiki rolled into one with SnipSnap. The downside of snipsnap is that it appears to be leaning towards a dormant project - not to mention I'm having to host it myself to be able to manage it the way I want. And by hosting it myself I mean full server maintenence, etc. I'm hoping that google's acquisition of JotSpot will turn into a google-hosted wiki service that might even one day integrate with my picasa web gallery and / or blogger site.

What would really push me over the edge between wordpress and blogger would be if I could find someone who's already written an XSL transform (or a script or full program) to convert or import from a SnipSnap site export or database dump. Wishful thinking though, I'm afraid. I basically am looking at having to ditch 7 years of blog entries... something I'm not at all liking the thought of. I can't seem to find any good documentation on the wordpress XML import options... it seems like it can import from RSS feeds or at least a variation of RSS, but until I can find some good documentation I won't be able to really write my own converter program. Same goes for blogger (though I must admit I really haven't looked at its import capabilities because it seems to lack the ability to create non-blog content).

Oh well. I probably won't really make a decision until my server completely kicks the bucket.

-Scott

Missing in Action

If you noticed the website down for a few days, it's because for the first time in nearly three years, my IP address suddenly changed at some point last week. And because I forgot to install a small but significant piece of software the last time I reimaged my webserver, the world was not made aware of my ISP's decision to give me another address. Oddly enough, I seemed to have received the new address around the time I plugged in my new Vonage digital phone hardware. Coincidence? Perhaps. But anyways, the site's back up now (you're reading it, aren't you?) which means so is the photo gallery.




What threw me off for a week was the evidence I found of some hacking attempts right around the time my server went AWOL from the rest of the world. Dang 'ol Internet, man…




-Scott

Relo

In a while I'll be migrating my photo gallery over to Google's servers. The new location is here. Currently Picasaweb doesn't allow for videos so I'll have to think of some way to post my short videos of Cayleigh. You should notice that the Picasa gallery is much faster; Google has a much fatter pipe than my meager (and aging!) web server.




Don't worry though - I'll keep the old gallery up for a good while. It may take me some time to fully populate the one on Google.




-S

Mobile

For about a month now, Cayleigh's been crawling. Big time. She's also fond of standing up and dragging everything off any surface she can reach. My parents came over yesterday and noted how everything on our coffee table was stacked in a tall pile in the very center… just out of Cayleigh's suprisingly long reach. She was 30.5 inches tall at her 9 month checkup… 97th percentile in height. So all you short boys out there (and according to some online growth percentile calculators, this includes nearly 95% of you who are her age), this means she's too tall for you so don't even think about it. She's out of your league anyways :)



-S

Doh

Something happened on my server back around April Fools (no joking here) which corrupted my blog. I have managed to restore most of it for now. One noticeable thing I lost is my theme (colors, layout, etc). I'll try to get this back as soon as I can.



-Scott

Spammers Spammers Everywhere

From yesterday:





Well now. A couple more spammers reserved their class B netblocks a golden link in my iptables chain.



I also find it interesting that someone today queried Netcraft.com to see what server software I'm running.



Muhahahaha. I'll be open and tell you. It's Apache httpd 2.x and Jakarta Tomcat 5.x using SnipSnap as my blog/wiki/content-management system.



I think it's interesting to note my uptime trend… can you tell I've switched to a linux server? Sheesh, talk about some sorry 'times between reboots' - look at the red 'X's from when I was on a Windows Server 2003 host!

Eat it, Mr. Spammer

OK. As of now, Mr spammer who tries to get his porn links listed on my site got himself blacklisted from my site. Not that I really think he was interested in reading it anyways… just spamming it with forged referer headers in a lame (yet I must admit effective) effort to get free links on heabdogg.com to his porn / penis pill / breast enhancement / xenical / whatever sites.





Eat my iptables chain, you punk @#!&$% at 62.121.83.43





On another note, I am playing batchelor for the weekend. Becca has gone to Hilton Head Island with the ladies and left the house all to me.



It's off to The Arreat Summit for me!





-Scott

New Site Host

I finally bit the bullet and canceled my remote site hosting. heabdogg.com is now hosted by...intra.heabdogg.com! Or, at least that's how it appears if you're on my intranet… :)

I use no-ip for my DNS and mail services, and host everything else myself! That is, until Time Warner Cable gripes about it. Being that I have next to no site visitors, this site being on their network can't be nearly as much traffic as the thousands of unprotected customers running Windows whose machines are infected with dozens of worms.

Shoot, as of now (if my query is correct) there have been over 3,500 non-web-port attacks against my IP address in the past few months from Time Warner Cable customers alone. Of course, that number pales to the 55,263 total port connect attempts I've logged, but it's roughly 6%… and you know TWC customers don't make up 6% of all IP addresses out there.



How do I know how many connections / attacks have been directed at my IP address? Check the section soon for my little Java app that stores Linksys network appliance logging information in a JDBC-accessible (currently I use MySQL) database.





So anyways, I'm holding my breath that I don't get slashdotted (not that anything that interesting will ever make its way onto my site).

Unfortunately though, I have to admit… my new support technician stinks! He doesn't offer me any help that I couldn't just google for in the first place… oh wait, nevermind.

Welcome to the new heabdogg.com

Well, I have been slack long enough. The site rewrite is complete! I did all of this myself! Ok, so I didn't do anything but install some software and type in some content… but hey, it's more effort than I put into this site in years.

This new format is much easier for me to update, journal / blog -wise, so you won't have to wait 6+ months (or more) just to see something new. I'll be updating this blog regularly - maybe even daily, if I have something on my mind (who me? :) )

Eventually, I'll get every aspect of the old site integrated with this new version powered by open source, free software.



Happy reading,





Scott