For one of my projects I need to generate thumbnails for a page. And lots and lots and lots of them. Even though I can generate them via a python script and a very light “gtk browser”, I would prefer to mitigate the server load. To do this I’ve decided to tap into the Alexa Thumbnail Service. They allow two methods: REST and SOAP. After several hours of testing things out, I’ve decided to toss in the towel and settle on REST. If you can spot the error with my SOAP setup, I owe you a beer. I’m using the ZSI module for python.

As some of you may know, I have some projects cooked up. I don’t expect to make a million bucks (wish me luck!), but a few extra bills in the pocket wouldn’t hurt. Plus, I’m seriously considering further education, which will set me back a few-thirty grand. That said, one of my projects will rely heavily on Amazon Web Services. Amazon has, for quite some time now, opened up their information via REST and SOAP. I’ve been trying (virtually the entire day) to get SOAP to work, but seem to get snagged on a few issues. Stay tuned.

I’ve been playing around more with Hamachi, and have decided that it officially rules. Since I’m a big Linux guy I don’t have access to some features, but the program seems to be a gem. It is brainlessly easy to install (even when doing 20 things at once), and works quite well. Thanks to Ben and Sean for helping me test it out.

You know you are too nerd like when your conversations are like this. Preface: I posted some packages I needed to upgrade into a Skype window (much better than a clipboard)…. [11:56:03] Kelvin Nicholson: sorry, needed to post that somewhere [11:56:04] Ian FItzpatrick: i am not apt! [11:56:15] … you can’t pass packages to me ;) [11:56:34] Kelvin Nicholson: blah blah blah [11:56:43] … apt-get upgrade ian [11:57:02] Ian FItzpatrick: apt-get error: unmet dependency, “beer 1.0-4 not found”

Well, I’m basically all done upgrading to Version 3.0, I deserve a cake or something. Here’s the 411: For the past few years I have been using Mambo, then Joomla, to manage the content on my site. It worked quite well, and was in PHP, so I could add or remove any code. Indeed, I’ve written a decent amount of PHP apps. In early 2004 I wrote a PHP platform to track adventures people had gone on, and networked people seeking to go on adventures with each other. I never marketed it, and mainly created it to learn PHP, but it was a CMS (Content Management System), and a little more. Late in 2004 I wrote another blog-esque platform for my second trip to Europe. It was pretty cool, I’ll admit: …

To all my loyal (but most likely few, and mainly with the same last name as me): I think I’m going to redo the structure of my site, yes, it is about time. I’ve been using a CMS (Content Management System) to categorize everything, but it is time to ditch that and write something. Time to stop being lazy. Time to stop procrastinating. Time to learn something new. Let me make this clear: version 3.0 surely won’t be based off PHP.

As you may know by now, I’m in Taiwan. Live is pretty good here, especially the internet – I’m sitting on a pretty decent 12M/1M connection. But the company I have my internet through seems pretty laid back about network usage -- which for me isn’t good. Their entire IP subnet appears banned from IRC, which means I have to be a little sneaky when I want to talk to my I.T. friends in New Zealand. Worse, some websites even banned the entire subnet:

I love my Snort, I really do. But sometimes, I just don’t need all the extra overhead – sometimes the resources on a server are somewhat, limited. Looking for a solution I stumbled upon PSAD , a way to detect port scans. Since port scans are often one of the first tactics used to find vulnerabilities on a server, it is a pretty good idea to detect them. Depending on the attack, I receive a nice little email telling me what is going on. To test it out I first fired up nmap, and received a few emails. Next I fired up nessus with updated plugins – you can be the judge. I now have 50 emails from myself telling me somebody is doing something naughty:

Historically I’ve used the ever-so-popular AutoMySQLBackup script. While it seems to work just fine, I’ve decided to give another solution a whirl. This solution, provided through Zmanda, seems to be less hackery and more enterprise. The instructions are very clear, and the backup test went as planned. Looks like this is another gem for the toolchest.

My buddy Ian mentioned Amazon’s S3 service, and the potential for using it for fun webapps. While utilizing it for webapps will have to wait a few months, I was able to use it as a cheap backup for my home server (pictures, documents, etc,.) – and my server that houses my email and websites. The setup is pretty quick, and most of it can be detailed in this S3 backup walkthrough. The ruby package is available at s3sync.net I’ll toss in my recommendation to use the jets3t Cockpit application for viewing the buckets, especially considering the Firefox extension didn’t work as advertised. My only two comments will be this: