Notes on the 2009 Macbook Pro

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qpxab2osjKo

(Video above is Macbook Air boot comparision between SSD and HDD drives)

I’ve spent way too much time comparing the different Mac computers with PC’s. At home I have 8 PC’s. two PC laptops and one Mac G4. I use the G4 to run the Digidesign ProTools TDM MixPlus music recording system. I use the PC’s for everything from light video editing and music to installing internet software and even playing World of Warcraft ((I’m a level 53 Orc Hunter. YEAH!)

My main objections to buying the MacBook Pro were these (read on to see how these objections were overcome and incorrect):

  • Not able to play high end games on Mac computers.
  • When I upgrade to the new ProTools HD system I’ll need a Mac Pro (the Mac tower).
  • I still have a lot of PC software that I need to run.
  • The price: Around $5,000 fully loaded at 2.93Ghz with 8mb Ram, Final Cut Express, Aperture, Iwork, Aperture and Logic Express installed.

Continue reading “Notes on the 2009 Macbook Pro” →

Fantastico 2009 Stock Software

Here is a list of software I fetched from a stock install of Fantastico. I feel like a kid in a candy store. Even if you’ve only worked on websites a short time you’ll probably recognize several softwares on this list. I see eleven on the list that I’ve already worked with extensively. Now I’m drooling to try the rest!

Continue reading “Fantastico 2009 Stock Software” →

Fantastico Won’t Install on WHM Cpanel

The error is when trying to install Fantastico on WHM Accelerated (Cpanel). From Cpanel when you click to install fantastico “You haven’t installed Fantastico yet. CLICK HERE to start the installation process” it just opens with the same window.

I tried complex fixes including using control panel for php compiling and even looked at changing the folder on the root server for Fantastico. But here’s the simpler solution that worked for me:

Continue reading “Fantastico Won’t Install on WHM Cpanel” →

What’s Up with “this site may harm your computer”?

Is Google messed up? Every website result I see has a link above it that says “This site may harm your computer”. It will not let you go to the page. Another option is to see “detailed informatin about the problems we found” – but when I click on that it says the server is busy and to try again in 30 seconds (which hasn’t worked so far).

EVERY page I see has this warning – including www.Google.com and Wikipedia.

Anyone know what’s going on with Google?

UPDATE: Yes, it was real. Answer follows:

Continue reading “What’s Up with “this site may harm your computer”?” →

Home Page Usability Tactics

In preparing for updates to many websites I’ve been reading “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug. It’s a book on “A common sense approach to web usability.” The purpose of the book is to get out of the mode of thinking about what a website owner wants for a website; and to get into thinking about what USERS want from a website. The main elements of this are making key elements insanely easy for new users to access (hence “don’t make me think) and to employ usability testing.

Continue reading “Home Page Usability Tactics” →

Individual Hosting Accounts Limited to 50 Connections

Did you know that most individual  hosting accounts are limited to fifty concurrent connections? I didn’t. All these years of building hundreds of websites and running dozens and dozens of servers; well, that’s why I didn’t know it – I usually use dedicated servers for my websites.

Except my personal blog here – I have this one site on an individual hosting account so just in case everything blows up customers can still get a hold of me. But all this time my blog has been limited to fifty concurrent connections (let’s say 40 normal people a couple search engines and some spam bots).

Continue reading “Individual Hosting Accounts Limited to 50 Connections” →

ShiverSail.com and RiderBark.com Facebook Spam

Reports in the last couple days of Facebook accounts being compromised and messages left on friends profile pages referring to the websites ShiverSail.com and RiderBark.com

The message on your Facebook wall may say “I saw a site displaying your pictures on shiversail-com-check it.”

Haven’t found the purpose of the spam yet, but I’m sure that information will follow shortly.

How to set crontab to permission 4755

Well this burned several hours of my time to get cronjobs running on a new server. I was manually setting crontab permissions to 4755 as CPanel requested before inputing a cronjob – but the permissions kept resetting themselves so my cronjob wouldn’t save. Do it from your ssh console as root instead; here is the fix:

If you are receiving the error “/usr/bin/crontab permissions are wrong. Please set to 4755” when in the cron section of cPanel, the commands below may correct the error for Redhat/CentOS/Fedora servers.

Log into the server via ssh or the console as root and run:
chmod 4755 /usr/bin/crontab

Drupal Wins 2008 Overall CMS Award

Drupal has won the 2008 Overall CMS Award (Content Management System) from Packt Publishing. It has also won best CMS based on a PHP/MySQL platform. Joomla wins 2nd place (Joomla was the 2006 winner) for overall CMS, and Joomla also ties for second in a PHP/MySQL platform CMS.

Reference: http://www.packtpub.com/award

Continue reading “Drupal Wins 2008 Overall CMS Award” →