Archive for the 'Work' Category

Problems with .htaccess and AFP over Netatalk

After yesterdays triumph of establishing contact with my virtual server over AFP, using Netatalk, I was perplexed today to find that my .htaccess files weren’t having any effect. Listing the files on the shared volume on my Mac seemed to show that they were there:

~$ ls -Al /Volumes/Home Directory/www/sites/jackspeak/site/
total 736
-rwxr-xr-x   1 simon  simon    401  6 Apr 18:08 .htaccess
drwxr-xr-x@ 10 simon  simon    296  5 Apr 11:30 .svn
-rwxr-xr-x@  1 simon  simon   2941  5 Apr 11:30 500.html

But running the same command on the Linux virtual server showed very different results:

~$ ls -Al /www/sites/jackspeak/site/
total 736
-rwxr-xr-x   1 simon  simon    401  6 Apr 18:08 :2ehtaccess
drwxr-xr-x@ 10 simon  simon    296  5 Apr 11:30 :2esvn
-rwxr-xr-x@  1 simon  simon   2941  5 Apr 11:30 500.html

Apache wasn’t seeing any .htaccess files because there wasn’t any there… something had translated the “.” into “:2e”. What was this strange set of characters “:2e” which was screwing with my files? Continue reading ‘Problems with .htaccess and AFP over Netatalk’

Specify the Finder icon with Avahi

Finder shared area icons Yesterday, I blogged about my various issues setting up Apple Filesharing on the Debian virtual server I’ve got running in Parallels. As of OS X 10.5, Leopard, the Finder has a shared area which shows the machines it’s discovered via Bonjour so you can easily connect to them. Today I got bored of having the default icon for my server, bizarrely Apple have set the default icon as a Cinema Display (what?), I wanted something more visually informative. After some Googling around and a bit of configuration on the Debian side, the server is now using an XServe icon. Continue reading ‘Specify the Finder icon with Avahi’

Problems mounting a Debian drive over AFP

It took me ages to find the answer to this, so I figured I’d post the answer for posterity; hopefully between us, Google and I can help the next person avoid that hassle.

I’ve created a Debian virtual server in Parallels for some development work. To ease the pain of mounting drives, I’ve configured AFP (Apple File Protocol) on the server. (As a sidenote: there’s some issues with Debian’s AFP package, netatalk, and OS X Leopard which mean you have to recompile netatalk, for which you can find instructions here. You probably also want to have your server auto-discovered and appearing in the “Shared” areas of the finder, for which you can find instructions there. Some Debian chutzpah will be required to follow both these sets of instructions.)

All was running well, and I was happy, until one day the drives stopped mounting… Continue reading ‘Problems mounting a Debian drive over AFP’

Interspersing your post listing with date headers in WordPress

Update: OK, so at least one person wanted it as a plugin, so feel free to download Intermittent Date Headers.

Here’s a code snippet that’s not really worth making into a plugin. It’s designed to put date headers into your main post listing page. As an example, you could end up with:

Heading: March, 2008
Post: dated 15th March
Post: dated 28th March
Post: dated 29th March
Heading: April, 2008
Post: dated 1st April
Post: dated 4th April

Continue reading ‘Interspersing your post listing with date headers in WordPress’

Some good ideas from the government

Via Simon Dickson, I’ve come across Tom Watson’s1 post on Power of Information: New taskforce and speech. Some things quotes sprang out at me: Continue reading ‘Some good ideas from the government’

Simple Apache redirects

If you look around the web, you’ll see endless tutorials on how to configure Apache to do redirects using mod_rewrite. Undoubtedly mod_rewrite is a powerful way to control access and redirects on your Apache server, and it is enabled on many web hosts, but before you dive into the complexity and regular expressions of mod_rewrite, why don’t you give mod_alias a chance - you don’t have the power that you’ve got with mod_rewrite, but it is a lot simpler. Shall we take a look? Continue reading ‘Simple Apache redirects’

How about calling a spade a spade, eh, HMRC?

Rather shamefully for a web professional, January was the first time I used the online tax return provided by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. It’s great, a massive improvement on the pencil and eraser, abacus calculator and calculation sheet, of old.

Today I went back into the My Account area, to check that some payments had got through. Unfortunately this side of the process is not up to the same standard as the tax form, and after becoming confused for a while, I hit “help”… and got this in a pop up:

Continue reading ‘How about calling a spade a spade, eh, HMRC?’

Great day at Barcamp Manchester

Barcamp Manchester, held yesterday at the MEN Media HQ, was great and made it clear to me once again that there’s a great web community up here in the North. A very exciting place to be at the moment, and I’m convinced things here will only get better. Barcamps are always an opportunity to meet new people, catch up with existing friends, and recharge your mind with some fresh ideas; this one was no exception. Interesting talks on Microformats, accessibility, PR, interactive narratives, developing for teenagers and NorthCrew.

Continue reading ‘Great day at Barcamp Manchester’

Daniel Morris: UK Teens & the Web at Barcamp Manchester

Dan Morris’ session on UK Teens & the Web was one of my favourites of the day, which you can see from my frantically scribbled notes (below). Dan’s working for a semi-autonomous BBC unit which produces online content for teenagers, and had some really interesting insights to share from his experience and some research they’d commissioned recently. The insights from their mainly subjective survey (in that the methodology was to meet with teenagers and talk with them, rather than quantative research) painted a picture which differed from the one which, I think, many of us assume is correct.

UK Teens & the Web - some of my notes

Continue reading ‘Daniel Morris: UK Teens & the Web at Barcamp Manchester’