Tag Archives: PHP

Web Design

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I reminded myself yesterday and today how much I enjoy, and how much I hate webdesign.

I guess thats why all my site designs are simple as poop, make it work and then plug it with PHP, and then make it work with the PHP.

This weekend saw two new sites for the United Christian Chat network – one for unitedchristianchat.net, and one for christian-irc.com (a subsidiary).

I did one entirely on my own, and Ed helped us out by doing the C-IRC one, though it was graphiced for UCCN and I’ve updated/changed the wording on the images.

I played around with Gimp doing them, and was pleasantly surprised compared with my previous experiences with anything photoshop-like. In fact, most of my problems were CSS side rather than graphic design.

They aren’t live as yet, we still have a few minor changes to make, but here are some screenshots to wet your appetites:

uccn
circ1

UCCN on the top, obviously, and C-IRC on the bottom

3 Almost Completely Unrelated Things…

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The first two are both geeky..

Firstly I got my control panel system past the first stumbling block: user login/out. I imagine this is a hard problem for a number of programmers as it is almost always the first step in a secure system. Now that it’s in place I can build everything else around the existing security system (rather than having to build everything else with the prospect of applying security to it later and probably rewriting it all etc).

My second achievement of the day was IPv6 vhosts. I assigned 20-odd IPv6 addresses to Telly for my BNC (ZNC is good so far if anyone is looking for an IPv6/SSL aware IRC Bouncer). Over the last 24 hours or so I assigned 10 of those vHosts. The list is available here. I will be looking into IPv6 hosts for Rizzo next week (IE, seeing if it is workable), so will work on coming up with some more vHosts then.

The third accomplishment, and completely unrelated to the other two in any way, I got my VA Learners permit. If I’d been aware that Kelly’s car actually was insured I could have taken the road skills test and got a full license, but I also think I should take some time to practice first.

That is all, good readers, that is all.

thePortal

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I started work late last night on my 4th concurrent coding project, something I’ve been thinking about for a loong time and it was brought up by Ninex on chat again, confirming that it isn’t a bad idea.

It needs a lot more integration with things, ideally it’ll probably work a lot better once Anope supports real-time SQL. For now it just feeds of the statistics database.

So, check out http://chat.i-al.net/portal/. and tell me what you think!

The final product is intended to have configurable colors, background images, header images, as well as channel-owner-configured ‘about us’ information. There’ll also be a few statistics blocks available, and possibly logging on request? Unsure at this point how to make it integrate!

Should I Really Be Laughing?

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My wife showed me this today, and I thought it was hilarious. Not sure if I should be laughing or not, it’s a turtle using a shoe for pleasure, so called ‘shoe-raping.’ Check it out, and tell me what you think!

In other news, I’m still working on several PHP/MySQL projects

Firstly, there is ZcP, a module based control panel for linux (mostly debian) to handle Bind, Apache and qmail (with vpopmail) and PureFTPd (with MySQL auth). I haven’t found anything yet that meets my needs, so I’m writing it myself. It is intended to support multiple servers (IE a web server, primary and secondary mail servers, and primary and secondary DNS servers). It’s also modular based on task, it’ll just call a function and pass the relevant information so it should be pretty easy to create extra modules for postfix or djbdns, for example.

Second, I haven’t named it yet but a support/ticket management system. I have found two existing systems that I like, but none are quite good enough. SiT is good looking and works well, Eventum works well and has an IRC bot attached that sits in support channels and reports updates and new tickets etc. I may have to give up pretty or the bot, but I’d also enjoy the challenge of writing my own.

The third and final project is a database system for my old church, Life City, whose access database was lost in a hard disk crash (had been talking about a new one for a while). It’ll probably be a social-network type system, where we’ll create a house-hold, and individuals and then assign them to households and assign each other relationships (probably based on head-of-house, but not necessarily).

Give Us, This Day, Our Daily Serenity

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So, for the last month or so my most recent project has been under fairly tight wraps. Partly for fear all the related domain names would be taken, and partly because I feared someone would take the idea as a whole.

No more shall I fear, as I launch a new website: The Daily Serene Image.

To quote myself:
Daily Serenity was an idea conceived by demigail in 2008. Made into a reality by Zeke in October of 2008, the site went public in the following month.

Accepting any images from both amateur and professional photographers alike, Daily Serenity survives photographically based on its contributors.

Every day a new image is randomly selected from the list of those available (having been screened and approved by administrators). A brief description provided by the photographer is displayed with the image, along with a link to the photographers website (where applicable).

Published images are also archived indefinitely, with a static link available for each one. All published images are also available for download, both in widescreen and standard versions. These are sized appropriately for use as desktop wallpaper/backgrounds.

What Daily Images will be needing is contributors to provide photos and images for the site. Registration is free, and while no payment is provided for images supplied or used, no payment is required either. The terms and conditions of uploads are available when registering to provide photos, and all photos are checked and approved before they will appear on the site.

Are you a photographer? Consider some free publicity by contributing some of your work to Daily Images. If the Daily Serene Image takes off, it may grow into multiple sites of a similar nature, covering different themes.

Geeky zEkEy – Ticket Resolution Systems

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I just realised that I haven’t posted in a couple of days, and also that I haven’t posted anything remotely computer-geeky at all. It is time to rectify this.

As I’m not likely to have a work permit until some time in December, I’ve had a lot of free time on my hands. This has mostly been spent lazing around with little to no purpose, but I’ve also been thinking up various idea’s and projects to work on.

I’ve been able to implement a few network-changes at UCCN, including remote-includes (and a web interface for staff to make network-wide configuration changes, still in testing), and the safetyNet server (intended to allow young people to chat in a more secure environment than most IRC networks would otherwise permit).

I’ve also been doing some work on some small scripting projects, including the safetyNet bot in mIRC (still needs a lot of work, and may port to PHP at some point). The one I’m working on most is a complete rewrite of a 2-week old project, the Fault Management and Resolution System. This started as being a PHP-based IRC bot that would detect netsplits and send emails to admins, or even text messages if the servers were split for long time periods. It seemed to work in practice, and I then came up with the idea of a ticket-system, where admins would be able to put in notes and ‘close’ incidents whereby they had resolved a problem, so we could keep track of where problems were occuring.

Anyway, the number of ideas being implemented were fast making the code messier than it was ever expected to be, and I fast reached the limitations of the core of the project. With that being a fast-growing problem, I shut down the old system, copied aspects of it, and began work on the new one.

The new system allows much more flexibility with regard to monitoring things. It will allow for staff to be in groups (one or multiple), and where there is a fault or a request it can be assigned to a group (such as server admins, services staff, etc) and to individuals within the groups. It can also be reassigned between groups/individuals as required.

I hope to include some method of tracking how long issues take to be resolved, including as well as excluding how long we wait for other factors, such as an ISP responding to a question, or a user returning our email.

It’s not limited to faults either, tickets for faults or change requests can be manually created by staff, and potentially added by users themselves. The new system will also be much more flexible and hopefully more scalable, allowing for more organisations to utilise the software.

Hello world!

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Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!

Hmmmm. This will be an interesting experiment in blogging.

As a photographer, a thinker, and social nobody, this will be a very interesting time.

So, about me.

At time of writing I am aged 22, I am an immigrant from New Zealand to the United States, having moved in April 2008 to marry my wife in May.

I’ve been a Christian throughout my life, and while I’ve had to stand back and reconsider all options on several occasions, I’ve always found it to be the most fitting based on the evidence in hand.

Today, I came across several quotes by a speaker I knew and loved to hear anyway, that affirmed all the more why I like him. Tony Campolo is a man who is not afraid to speak what he believes, and to back it up with biblical evidence. Just a couple of quotes to fill in space:

  • “I have three things I’d like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don’t give a shit. What’s worse is that you’re more upset with the fact that I said shit than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night.” — Tony Campolo
  • “But I contend that if we’re providing total medical coverage for every man, woman, and child in Iraq, shouldn’t we at least be doing the same thing for every man, woman, and child in the United States?” — Tony Campolo
  • “Conservatives are people who worship at the graves of dead radicals. Stop to think about that. The people who started this country, George Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, these were not conservatives; these were the radicals of the time. In fact, conservatives always look back on people who they despised and make them into heroes. If you were to listen to the religious right today, they would make you believe that Martin Luther King was one of their flock. In reality, they hated him and did everything they could to destroy him.” — Tony Campolo

I’m also a regular reader of the webcomic XKCD, which describes itself as “A webcomic of romance,
sarcasm, math, and language.”

I enjoy coding in PHP/MySQL, IRC‘ing, photography, and miscellaneous other geek-type activities.

I expect this blog will contain snippets of all of the above, and more. As I rant about the triumphs and tribules of modern Christianity, life in rural Virginia, experiences with idiots on IRC, and miscellaneous other things that happen to find themselves here.

I trust you will enjoy reading it, at least as much as I will enjoy writing it.