Wanna Be Geekster http://www.wannabegeekster.com/blog Just another WordPress weblog Thu, 10 Dec 2009 20:55:15 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 en hourly 1 Some cool little utilities I found http://www.wannabegeekster.com/blog/2009/12/10/some-cool-little-utilities-i-found/ http://www.wannabegeekster.com/blog/2009/12/10/some-cool-little-utilities-i-found/#comments Thu, 10 Dec 2009 20:55:15 +0000 admin http://www.wannabegeekster.com/blog/?p=32 People keep complaining about the mail server and when I go look through the log files and do various testing procedures it seems as if nothing is wrong really.  Needless to say I was searching through Google and found a nice little script that will search through your mail logs and give you some detailed information in a human readable format.  Seems as if there are quite a few neat little scripts on this page.  Oh well, it is worth checking out if you manage any Linux mailservers.

Will’s Really Useful Engines

]]> http://www.wannabegeekster.com/blog/2009/12/10/some-cool-little-utilities-i-found/feed/ 0 Oh no! Not another Word Press Plugin Post! http://www.wannabegeekster.com/blog/2009/12/06/oh-no-not-another-word-press-plugin-post/ http://www.wannabegeekster.com/blog/2009/12/06/oh-no-not-another-word-press-plugin-post/#comments Sun, 06 Dec 2009 20:59:43 +0000 admin http://www.wannabegeekster.com/blog/?p=17 I know this has been beaten to death. But maybe at the end of my post I will give you my bash auto-install script. I can’t say that it will be perfect, but if you have SSH access to your box, it will definitely be worth checking out!

On to the list!

1. Meta Robots – This tool is great!  Who wants to create meta tags.  Such a chore.  This little gem does it for you based on the keywords in your article!  Would rather do a little editing than create it from scratch!  Here is a direct download like for this one: download

2.  Aizatto’s Related Posts – This is another lazy webmaster tool.  Will find other posts with related keywords on your blog and link them automatically.  Here is a download for the latest version as of this post: download

3.  Cross-Linker – Yet another lazy webmaster tool.  If you constantly link keywords to webpages,  Internal links or external, then this plugin is a dream come true.  Pick your keyword and the link you want it to represent and viola.  Your pages automatically have links on them.  No highlighting and creating a link everytime.  Here is a direct link to the latest and greatest version:  download

4.  WordPress Affiliate Pro – This has got to be the best plugin ever for WordPress.  Who wants to manage affiliate links on their site?  This plugin allows you to easily type in a keyword and your affiliate link and viola.  Immediately that keyword anywhere on your blog is a new affiliate link for you.  Here are a few videos for you to check out as well:

Introduction Video

Reporting Walkthru

This is not a free plugin, but it is worth every penny!

5.  Article Marketing Automation -  This is not really a plugin per se, but it is the bees knees.  If you have been looking for free human generated content that is guaranteed to be unique, then this is your solution.  You can have an unlimited number of blogs on there post as many articles as you want.  All for free.  I mean seriously, how much better does it get?

Oh well, I have a ton of other Plugins for WordPress that totally rock.  I will save them for later though.  Best of luck and feel free to hit me up if you have any questions on any of these plugins or how to effectively use them on your site!

]]> http://www.wannabegeekster.com/blog/2009/12/06/oh-no-not-another-word-press-plugin-post/feed/ 0 MySQL Dedicated Box http://www.wannabegeekster.com/blog/2009/12/05/mysql-dedicated-box/ http://www.wannabegeekster.com/blog/2009/12/05/mysql-dedicated-box/#comments Sun, 06 Dec 2009 02:50:19 +0000 admin http://www.wannabegeekster.com/blog/?p=15 I am trying to build a new dedicated MySQL box on a Sun x2200 server.  I have been going through Operating Systems like mad.  Solaris, OpenSolaris, Debian, Gentoo.  Amazingly Gentoo so far has been the easiest to get everything setup and working properly.  Even better everything is compiled and optimized for my hardware specifically.

I never thought it would be this difficult though.  I really like my Sun hardware and love ZFS and the clustering capabilities of Solaris.  Oh well, can’t win them all I guess.  I am happy with Gentoo though and the performance is more than acceptable.

]]> http://www.wannabegeekster.com/blog/2009/12/05/mysql-dedicated-box/feed/ 0 How to use authorized_keys2 with SSH for security http://www.wannabegeekster.com/blog/2009/12/02/how-to-use-authorized_keys2-with-ssh-for-security/ http://www.wannabegeekster.com/blog/2009/12/02/how-to-use-authorized_keys2-with-ssh-for-security/#comments Wed, 02 Dec 2009 04:34:19 +0000 admin http://www.wannabegeekster.com/blog/?p=16 Using authorized_keys2 file instead of passwords is a huge time saver. Also a little bit more secure. As long as you keep your key files secure on your computer.

First a few prerequisites.

1.  You need to ensure that OpenSSH is installed on your box.

2.  You need to have connected to at least one machine.  You need to make sure that your .ssh folder is in your home directory.

Now on to the good stuff.

Here is how I do it:

1.  First you need to create a private DSA key with OpenSSH.

ssh-keygen -t dsa

It will prompt you for a password.  This is your backup to a compromised system.  You can use one if you wish, you don’t have to if you don’t want to bother with a password. This creates one file in particular that is important:  ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub.   The other file it creates is just id_dsa and it is in the same location as well.  One is a private key, id_dsa, and the other is a public key, id_dsa.pub.

2.  Now you need to place your public key in the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2 file on the target computer.  Depending on your setup there are a couple of ways to make this happen.  First way is to just scp the file to the new box.

scp ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub account@my.server.com:/home/account/.ssh/authorized_keys2

Second way is to append the public key to the authorized_keys2 file on the remote machine:

cat ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub | ssh account@my.server.com -C ‘cat – >> /home/account/.ssh/authorized_keys2′

That should pretty much do it.  Pretty simple thing you can do to help secure your machine and make connecting to your remote boxes quick and painless.

]]> http://www.wannabegeekster.com/blog/2009/12/02/how-to-use-authorized_keys2-with-ssh-for-security/feed/ 0 Blog and Ping http://www.wannabegeekster.com/blog/2009/07/09/blog-and-ping/ http://www.wannabegeekster.com/blog/2009/07/09/blog-and-ping/#comments Fri, 10 Jul 2009 01:11:57 +0000 admin http://www.wannabegeekster.com/blog/2009/07/09/blog-and-ping/ I am a big fan of web marketing and making money online. I remember purchasing the work from home magazines when I was a kid and always dreamed of MLM in my spare time. Never got anywhere with any of it. But I have learned quite a bit over the years. I have learned that I am not a good sales man. I actually have a conscience. One trait a salesman cannot have is a good conscience. Oh well, one of the hallmarks of getting your blog noticed by the search engines is Ping Services. I am compiling lists from various places in this post. 1. To help others. 2. For my self when setting up new blogs for me or my clients.

Heres the list!

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php
http://www.blogsnow.com/ping
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://coreblog.org/ping/
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/
http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping
http://api.moreover.com/ping
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

http://api.feedster.com/ping
http://api.moreover.com/RPC2
http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2
http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/
http://www.mod-pubsub.org/ping.php
http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt
http://ping.blo.gs/
http://ping.feedburner.com
http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php
http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php
http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/
http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/
http://rpc.newsgator.com/
http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping
http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2
http://topicexchange.com/RPC2
http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2
http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi
http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud
http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php

]]> http://www.wannabegeekster.com/blog/2009/07/09/blog-and-ping/feed/ 1 Magento vs ZenCart — Magento FTW! http://www.wannabegeekster.com/blog/2009/07/08/magento-vs-zencart-magento-ftw/ http://www.wannabegeekster.com/blog/2009/07/08/magento-vs-zencart-magento-ftw/#comments Wed, 08 Jul 2009 23:48:40 +0000 admin http://www.wannabegeekster.com/blog/?p=10 We recently started building a shopping cart for a candy company and had initially decided to go with ZenCart.  I have used ZenCart many times, but usually just purchased a template and did a little bit of customization and hit the road running.

This time however, there was not a premade template that would even come close to what was needed for the site.  So coincidentally speaking with a friend, rechols, he mentioned Magento.  I had never heard of it before so I decided to check it out.

I was immediately impressed with the tutorials on creating templates on their site.  It is very thorough and is a great start on how to create, modify and use their templating system.  Their system is well thought out, but it is still pretty complicated.

We will see how converting my HTML template over to Magento works out.  Layout is definitely NOT my thing.  So I am not expecting it to go too well!  I have documentation to follow, so if it doesn’t turn out right it is my fault!

]]> http://www.wannabegeekster.com/blog/2009/07/08/magento-vs-zencart-magento-ftw/feed/ 1 Getting to know you… http://www.wannabegeekster.com/blog/2009/06/10/getting-to-know-you/ http://www.wannabegeekster.com/blog/2009/06/10/getting-to-know-you/#comments Wed, 10 Jun 2009 05:09:32 +0000 admin http://www.wannabegeekster.com/blog/?p=6 There are millions of blogs out there and about that many different opinions out there.  If you are going to read my writing’s it is probably a good idea for you to get to know me a little better.

My father was always very interested in computers.  It probably had something to do with the whole robot invasion that killed off all the cowboys.  My uncle, one of my fathers older brothers, worked at IBM for quite some time even as my father was pretty young.

Luckily he purchased a computer for the family in 1981.  It was some Japanese system that ran CP/M .   I remember playing cannons with him when I was six years old at the dining room table.  My mother hated that thing on her nice table.  The floppy drives perpetually went out of alignment though and sending the unit back to Japan for repair quickly became prohibitively expensive.  So in 1983, thanks to my uncle working at IBM, we got a brand new IBM PCjr.

I still miss that machine.  I remember playing Alley Cat, Math Blaster, some typing tutor game, and many many games on that thing.  It had cartridges that had the BASIC rom in there you could boot up to and program away.  I still remember and can picture my father telling me how to use the thing.

It came with PC-DOS 2.1.  He told me to take the boot disk and put it in the only drive we had, the 5.25″ floppy drive.  When the A:\> came up he told me to do the following.  Type dir.  See the files that end in .exe, .com and .bat?  If you type the name of that file in something will happen.  Try it and see.  The he told me that some files could be read as plain text.  Use type to view those.  Then he left me alone.  That was my formal computer training.

My father joined the local HAL-PC user group.  He and a friend started up the HAL-PCjr SIG.  It was the first SIG in HAL-PC.  I met so many cool people there, David and Gilbert were two very close friends of the family.  I learned about the Modem and BBS’s.  At that point forward I was totally hooked.  100% completely head over heals in love with these things.  I still haven’t stopped downloading, loading, configuring and testing software.  I have probably done that task more than any thing else that I have done in my lifetime.  Including sleeping.

I have used more operating systems than I can ever rememeber.  I have used every version of every Microsoft Operating System created since DOS 2.1.  Installing and learning Operating Systems is another hobby that has consumed a massive amount of time in my life.  Not only do I do it for fun, but I also help out quite a few friends as well.

My desire to help others understand or get through the nightmare of technology has always been one of my passions.  Hopefully I can help out a person or two along the way.

]]> http://www.wannabegeekster.com/blog/2009/06/10/getting-to-know-you/feed/ 0 Thanks for stopping by http://www.wannabegeekster.com/blog/2009/06/10/thanks-for-stopping-by/ http://www.wannabegeekster.com/blog/2009/06/10/thanks-for-stopping-by/#comments Wed, 10 Jun 2009 04:42:29 +0000 admin http://www.wannabegeekster.com/blog/?p=3 I am putting this up here for many reasons.  I stumble across many problems daily, having a place to keep the solutions to recurring problems is probably a good idea.  Not only will it help serve as my knowledge base, it can potentially help others out there trying to solve the same problem I am having.

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