I learned a very cool tip this evening I thought I would share.  You can make hard-boiled eggs while camping by filling a styrofoam cup with water and placing on the coals or in your campfire.  One would think that it would burn but instead, the cup will burn down only to the level of the water.  You can boil eggs and then use tongs to remove it.  - Happy Camping!

It took some searching but I learned that the Apache config file with the update was modified and turned off PHP. The fix is to do the following:

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Ever since the last couple updates of the Mac OSX software, I’ve been upset with things breaking.  Two months ago it killed the PHP server running on my machine and I’ve been too busy to find out how to get it running again.  This past month I cannot automatically connect to the wireless networks in my offices even though they are in the preferred network list and used to work.

I searched Apple’s support forum and found everyone else is having the same issues (with Airport wi-fi auto connect).  For the past month I’ve settled with having to open Network Preferences every morning and night and switching the priority of the network name or to “Automatic” mode and “praying”.

Well the forums suggested a fix and that was to delete the networks listed in the preferred network list and insert them from scratch.  It worked for my home network and I’ll try it at the office in the morning.  I still haven’t found a fix to get PHP running again which is very annoying.

Here’s the thread about the Airport wi-fi auto connection issue:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1884221�

In 2005, I learned how to make Almond Roca, which is essentially toffee candy with chocolate and almonds within and dusted on top. After sharing my treats with friends and family, many have expressed interest in how to make it. Tonight I made my first holiday batch and took photos throughout the process. Here is a step-by-step tutorial on how to make Almond Roca.

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The answer is likely both, but I see Verisign as a larger threat in the commerce space. For a while now, I’ve been noticing some of the aquisitions Verisign has been making and I think they are slipping in “under the radar” while so much focus is on Google. I think EBay should pay close attention to Verisign who has a very deadly set of tools and the money to go after the commerce and marketplace space. They are emerging as a leader in security, commerce, mobile and RFID which will be huge players in commerce in the future.

Notable Assets:

• Network Solutions (domain registrar and web hosting)
• Payflow Pro (payment processing and connectivity to banks)
• Verisign Security Services (SSL certs and more - trusted, secure brand)
• MonsterCommerce (hosted online storefronts w/ over 6000 stores)
• MQube (SMS aggregator and solution provider - mobile solutions)
• Jamster (mobile marketing solutions)

See the following recent press releases:

• Verisign enables mobile purchase of Coca Cola
• Verisign Mobile Services Launches College Sports Updates Via Mobile
• Verisign Aquires inCode Wireless
• Verisign’s Jamster Provides Mobile Content For Walt Disney North America
• … 2006 Press Release Archive

How can EBay compete?

I think larger companies like EBay and Yahoo! should be looking for small alliance partners (hint-hint) who can sidestep the beauracracies they have become to allow a more nimble and targeted response to competition. The M&A strategy simply adds more complexity and yet even more hoops to go through but if they co-fund R&D with smaller firms and share in service royalties, leverage their strength (brand, money and huge customer base) and the smaller firm’s strength (speed and a strong pulse on ‘happenings’), I think they would have a deadly combination.

http://www.goomzee.com

As a customer of both AT&T CallVantage (over a year) and recently Vonage, I thought I would write a brief comparison based on my experiences thus far. Both boast the same features except for a few exceptions. I’ll also look at sound quality, availability and service.

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Normally my sysadmins install and upgrade software on my servers but as I grew impatient last weekend for one request, I decided to upgrade our support system myself. One feature was not working, however, which was the email parsing and auto ticket generation from incoming emails. I found that it worked slightly different with version 3 compared with version 2.

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Here’s a one-question IQ Test to help you decide how you should Spend the rest of your day…

There is a mute who wants to buy a toothbrush. By imitating the Action of brushing one’s teeth, he successfully expresses himself to the shopkeeper and the purchase is done.

Now, if there is a blind man who wishes to buy a pair of Sunglasses, how should he express himself?

Think about it first Before scrolling down for the answer…

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How many times have you been away from your computer and wanted access to a copy of your resume? Montana Worker allows users to post their resume and profiles anonymously, meaning employers cannot view your profile unless you apply for a position. You can use this free service to store and keep an up-to-date resume that will be accessible from any computer connected to the Internet.

Create A Free Account And Optional Private Profile Today!

Business Owners - post your jobs for FREE on MontanaWorker.com. You receive automatic alerts of applicant inquiries, browse all public resumes and can outsource your online recruiting function to MontanaWorker for free. Start posting job positions on the site and simply refer your other ads to the site for applicants to apply. To help cover costs of providing this free service, we have an optional premium listing for $10, however that is purely optional.

Google search for Montana Jobs - see the add

I often refer customers and potential customers alike to this article. I thought I would post a link to it so others can learn more about the strategy to online marketing leveraging Google’s Adwords program.

Google Adwords Strategy/Tips Article

For $5 to start and as little as $15 (realistically) per month, you can significantly increase your website traffic. If you read and apply the concepts in this article, you will hopefully generate qualified leads that turn into sales or inquiries instead of just “traffic”. - Enjoy!

My friend Josh Wagner, network admin for CTG and famed author of the Periphery Stowe series, recently inquired about RSS feeds. I thought I would take a moment to publish an article on RSS and how to create your own. In my example, I wrote the syntax in PHP but you could easily translate this logic to any programming or scripting language.

RSS feeds are rather simple and standardized format for listing articles.

CREATING YOUR OWN RSS FEED:

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Well I lost a day of my life getting this all to work so I thought I would save others their precious time. I recently embarked on interacting with a web service I built for a new service I’m launching. I decided to make the web client user-friendly and leverage AJAX to interact with the web service. There are hundreds of articles out there on the topics and some tools from IBM and others, but most were overkill or forced the result data to be converted into <div> or <table> elements.

When I had mastered the XMLHttpRequest object I ran into an issue, I wanted to test out my app by loading an xml document containing a SOAP request envelope and send it to my web service as a POST. I also wanted to reuse my xmlHttp object. It sounds simple but I ran into the following issues:

1. Mozilla errors when trying xmlHttp.open a second time
2. Security errors when trying to access an outside URL
3. cURL issues sending text/xml Content-Type as POST
4. XML declaration issues where PHP added underscore (xml_version)
5. Likely others, but I got them to work

Here’s how I solved them:

1. Adding a check for readyState == 4 and adding xmlHttp.abort()
2. Adding a proxy script for passing on HTTP POST and returning response
3. Overriding cURL defaults using setopt
4. Using str_replace(’xml_version’, ‘xml version’, $postvars)
5. Lots of searching and trial/error

Below I have posted the contents of my PHP proxy script. My web service was built using PEAR SOAP library which required content to be sent as text/xml. I ran into an issue that took hours to finally “see” and for some reason PHP was adding an underscore between the first XML element name and attribute? I used an ugly workaround until I figure out why it did it (php 4.3.9 on macbook pro - intel).

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This is a very simple example of how to connect to a remote address and retrieve text. AJAX allows you to build user-friendly web applications that do not require a browser refresh to retrieve and display dynamic data.

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I found a great article about maintenance for Mac OS X. Since I recently made the switch for all my personal computers, I wanted to learn what maintenance, if any, I had to do similar to routinely clearing caches and running disk defragmenter with Windows. I thought this link might be helpful to others as well:

http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html

There are many ways to “skin a cat” but this worked for me. I needed a script that would append Apache web server’s configuration file, adding some url re-write parameters for projects, etc.

Problem:
- how to append parameters with illegal characters (< or >) to the end of an Apache configuration file while evaluating passed parameters as part of the path

Solution:
- add echo statements within the bash script and output to the file

Example:

#!/bin/bash

#append text to Apache httpd.conf file
echo "<library /var/svn/$1>" >> /path/to/httpd.conf
echo "DAV svn" >> /path/to/httpd.conf
echo "" >> /path/to/httpd.conf

I learned that if the script leverages variables, in this case the $1 for first argument passed, then you use double quotes instead of single quotes. This will escape the naughty characters but still evaluate the variables.

Also, I learned that by the double >> will output to the end of the file, writing each to a new line. If you have text that requires double quotes, simply encapsulate it within single quotes (provided no variables) and you should be fine.

Enjoy! Mike

Below is some information that I found about Montana that I thought might be useful. It includes census data, useful contact information and more.

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A lot of folks in the US take the Interstate System for granted, not knowing some of the smart features. I know for a fact that a lot of foreign visitors, first confused, think that our mile marker system tied to Interstate Exit numbers is brilliant (a lot more intuitive than other countries’).

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Simply put, open your System Preferences, click on Sharing and click the checkbox next to SSH to enable it.

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I spent a lot of time downloading SSH from Gnu and other sites and tried to figure out how to get it installed on a Mac Mini box to enable remote managment and then found out it, FTP and a variety of other services come pre-installed.

I’m liking Mac OSX more and more each day. Hopefully this tip helps.

It’s been a while since I had to do this, but recently I had to look up how to remove those carat M (^M) characters from files I uploaded to a server. Here is a great article on exactly how below. In short, using VI or VIM editor type the following:

:%s/^M//g

* NOTE: to make the carat M, use CTRL+V CTRL+M not carat M.

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Here’s that article: VIM removing ^M characters

As I recently made the switch from my PC notebook to my new MacBook Pro, I had to install the proper software to replace those tools which I was proficient with on the PC in order to become productive. Tools I use include:

- Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, now Entourage)
- Adobe Photoshop w/ ImageReady
- Macromedia Flash
- BBEdit (Text Editor)
- Fire (multi-platform chat client)
- Skype
- Transmit FTP tool
- Apache Web Server
- PHP / MySQL
- Java / Tomcat

I have found some great resources online that help with setting up your Mac. Marc Liyange’s site, entropy.ch, is a great resource. In addition, I found mamamusing, a nice blog with some how-tos.

Installing Tomcat 5 on Mac OS X Tiger:
http://mamamusings.net/mt/mt-tb.cgi/758

I have one update to her tutorial, the chmod 755 command specifically. I believe that the chmod command should be /Library/Tomcat/bin/*.sh instead of /Library/Tomcat/*.sh and the startup script is also located in the bin directory.