Zero / Love

 

I've been using Twitter for a while now, and I know when it is something that I believe is going to be useful when I tell my wife about it and sign her up. So if you are not using Twitter yet, let me tell you what it is.

Well it isn't IM, and yet it is. It isn't a blog and yet it is. And it isn't a way to keep up with someone and find friends, and yet it is.

It is a way to chat with friends, meet new friends, keep up with people and read about what others are doing.

You can use Twitter via their web site, its real easy to sign up and get an account. I'm not going to go into that part of it here. Trust me it is simple. Once you have it then you can just use it to post your messages on the website. Then there is chat, using your favorite IM client (Pidgin) and your Google Talk account you can add a friend, twitter@twitter.com. Once you have done this, then you can chat your status/messages directly to Twitter. This doesn't stop here either. I can only speak as to what I have, but I have an T-Mobile Wing. Using it I can also SMS to Twitter, and I run ceTwit on the phone so when I have a network connection I can also send and receive twits. Twits are by the way messages from other people. We'll get into that in a minute. So I can send my updates and messages from web, chat, and phone while mobile.

Now when you add a friend, you can easily choose how you want to get updates. You can get them to any of the ways you can send, same as above web, chat, or phone. Just because you have a friend added you do not have to receive their chats via your phone for instance. You can set where you want to receive updates.  I have several people I follow, and some are really chatty or I just really don't want to know what they are talking about all the time. So I make sure not to follow them on chat and my phone. You can always check your Twitter site to see what people you are following have been saying.

A Blog you say? Yes it is a social blog. Remember what ever you chat on Twitter others will see. If you have clicked any of the Twitter links in this post you will see mine. It is NOT private, but then neither is IM unless you use a private server with encryption and we won't get into that.

It ends up being either a I love it! or an I don't get it? You will have to check it out for yourself to make that call. I also hear people saying it is a fad. I agree with that, but I see it leveling off in growth. I think it will stay around for a while. I can see a large company "Google" buying them. We will just have to wait and see.

Links for more information:

If you are a Birmingham Alabama Twitter user you can Follow Bhampulse (http://bhampulse.zerosource.org).

Twitters website is at http://www.twitter.com

Twitter Fan Wiki is at http://twitter.pbwiki.com/

 

Upcoming:

 Brightkite review, so far not looking good!

AndLinux nice... run Linux (Ubuntu) in windows

Sun VirtualBox good... acquired VM system

 

So today we completed the March for Babies. It was very interesting mix of people. I was surprised on the number of people that showed up. You would have thought it would be more "organized" but it really wasn't. There was some items they took care of "Who raised the most money", "Who designed the best shirts", etc.. but other then that it was a free for all 5 mile walk. Some people cheated and cut across streets to get done faster and others just quit and had to be picked up by the bus. I am proud to say our whole team kids, wife, and friend all made it the whole way.  Here is a shot of the start.

 

 

It was fun, but will we do it again. I'm not sure got some things to think about before we do.

 

Today was also my beautiful wife's birthday! She is great, seriously not just posting it here for point. She really is a great woman. I couldn't have asked for better.

 

Tomorrow Art Fest!

 

To all those that donated, Thanks. I appreciate it much. I hope the March of Dimes does great things with the money. We raised a good amount for a "Family Team".

So if you run ClamAV (and you should) to scan incoming email, the current release had some issue or did on several of my servers. The errors put out where:

cdiff.o(.text+0x190a): In function `cdiff_apply':
 ../shared/cdiff.c:984: undefined reference to `gzdopen'

cdiff.o(.text+0x1950):../shared/cdiff.c:994: undefined reference to `gzgets'

cdiff.o(.text+0x19a5):../shared/cdiff.c:1016: undefined reference to `gzclose'

cdiff.o(.text+0x19f5):../shared/cdiff.c:1010: undefined reference to `gzclose'

tar.o(.text+0xd4): In function `tar_addfile':
../shared/tar.c:82: undefined reference to `gzwrite'

tar.o(.text+0x109):../shared/tar.c:95: undefined reference to `gzwrite'

tar.o(.text+0x1a3):../shared/tar.c:111: undefined reference to `gzwrite'

etc..... then   

collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make[2]: *** [freshclam] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/src/clamav0.93/freshclam'
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/src/clamav-0.93'
make: *** [all] Error 2

To fix recompile Zlib with --shared 

Don't forget to sponsor me for March of Babies use the Badge at the right to sponsor me. The walk is this weekend. 

The Birmingham Pulse is available and kicking online http://bhampulse.zerosource.org check it out!

 

BBC NEWS | Technology | Paypal to block 'unsafe browsers'

 

When I first read this headline, I'm thinking finally IE is going to be blocked by a major web site since it is unsafe.  Then I read further.

 

Paypal said it supported the use of Extended Validation SSL Certificates. Browsers which support the technology highlight the address bar in green when users are on a site that has been deemed legitimate

So now we are calling a green highlighted address bar secure? I mean come on how long till someone writes a simple virus that infects a browser to make key words in a url light up the address bar. How many people are going to say "Well the address bar is highlighted green, guess it safe to put in my personal information".

 

After thinking about it do people actually care if the site has a secure certificate that is valid? I know I've gone to many sites that the certificate was expired or invalid and I still went to the site.  Different browsers let you know different ways if the site is secure or not. Most of the time if I see the https I feel pretty safe. Guess that is dumb too. So how do you think we should verify or know that a web site is trully safe and secure? What standard would you use to determine a web site is safe?

 

So I am not going to keep saying, oh I should have posted. I'm going to write about this and that. I keep doing it and I keep having issues come up. Two weeks ago I worked 80+ hours at work. Then last week I was home sick with pneumonia with the doctor threatening to put me in the hospital. I slept alot and when I wasn't sleeping I just didn't feel like doing anything. Much less look at a computer. 

This week i'm programing. Let me just state "I am NOT a programmer". We have programmers we just don't have enough. Now don't get me wrong I'm not a moron. I know enough about PHP/Perl/Shell Scripting. I just don't claim it as my job. So I am writing some PHP stuff to pull from a database, give logins, and give some users the ability to edit the database. I am having fun with it, writing the main page to display the table in a nice straight table. Then all the things you can do from searching, editing, to just viewing in a modalbox. So you have a single page with a table and modalboxes popping up all over the place when you click to do a function. 

Last week I installed a ProFTPD Server. I know I said I was sick, but that don't stop work. So this server is run over SSL and has a web interface to control it. So I found a ProFTP Admin and modified it a ton to get the function out of it I need for a client. I added the ability to create the home dir and directories under it automatic. I made the group settings more of "group" setting by making it actually give the groups something, a shared directory.

Well thats it for now, I will try to post aga... never mind.

Testing new phone, got a new T-Mobile Wing and I love it. Thats my cat there... one of the two that is.

 

I seem to never have time to post. Let me see at work I've been working on Xen cluster, openfiler iscsi setup. I've now got 10 Spam/Virus servers running. I've got one running with postfix and  Maia Mail Guard.

At home we had a large branch fall from a tree. I rented a chain saw from Home Depot and was able to cut it up. Then the whole tree fell a week later.

I've got an idea on how to speed up spam scanning among 10 servers using a internal DNS Black list. I will write up a post on this soon.

Oh yea and my wife has got me walking for the March of Dimes.

Well I've gone and done it. I have registered a domain for my blog. It is now http://www.zerosource.org you can still reach it from the old http://zerosource.blogspot.com. I was registering a domain for my wife and GoDaddy gave me the option to get two for the price of one. I couldn't pass it up.