Author: Jesse

Today is Dream Theater Day!

So, at work, I went on a HUGE Dream Theater binge while working. Can’t say how much stress it has saved me, and it’s really cool to rediscover a band that I enjoyed in college. Since college was a bit of a soul-searching, formative time for me, it’s important stuff.

Anyway, most all of their music is awesome, but I’m going to post what fans call the Meta-Album. These albums, starting with the first one, begin with how the previous one ended. It’s really cool, very good music, and to me represents their most creative soul searching music.

Enjoy!

 

Metropolis Part II: Scenes From a Memory

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_6KkRgQyos

 

Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-QTi8u2juI

 

Train of Thought

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90WFqH08UpQ

 

Octavarium

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OuMqZ08kHA

IRC?

So, I had a run at installing an IRC server to the box tonight, and that seemed to go pretty well. It was reasonably well documented, and the set up process wasn’t too difficult. It seems that a lot of systems that you have to compile from source are set up with some sort of configuration script that does most of the decision making for you.

Anyway, it’s up and running and listening, and I got the proper DMZ set up on the router, but for whatever reason I can’t seem to connect. I did a port scan on the server and found that the IRC port was being blocked still, so I’m unsure what the deal is. It’s a bit frustrating, because I feel like I should be able to resolve this on my own, but at the same time I feel like there is something else going on with the ISP.

As my roommate said, "He likes to come home and do WORK THINGS for FUN."
As my roommate said, “He likes to come home and do WORK THINGS for FUN.”

Meh. The good news is that I can connect to the IRC server when I try to do so locally on the network. So it’s working that far, I think. Oh well! When I have a chance I may give support a call and see what they think.

AwStats

So, something that had kinda been sitting on my mind for a little bit was installing a statistics program to the server to properly parse the access logs. Of course AwStats comes to mind, since that’s the most prominent statistics program at work.

I was able to download and install the package using YUM, and thankfully AwStats came with a configuration script that did most of the difficult stuff for me. After that, it was reading the documentation to figure out how to make the script visible on a web browser. It was a bit difficult to figure out how to do it right, but I eventually opted for having the program build an HTML file, which I symlink’d to the web root.

I figured out the appropriate sequence of commands, and then compiled it all into a simple alias that updates the AwStats database, builds the HTML file, and symlinks it to the webroot. This way, I can just type one word, view my stats, and then type my second alias that removes the symlink and the HTML file when I’m done. It works perfectly!

I’m thoroughly enjoying my new serverbox and all that I’m able to do with it. Given patience, I’m really getting the feeling that there’s very little that I can’t do with it. :3

First?

So… yeah? This is a first for me. A first blog post that is.

I guess I’ll start with a progress report for the server. I didn’t do much server side configuration tonight, aside from a very minor security change for the WordPress script. Mostly, I’ve been tinkering with WordPress itself to get things differentiated into different pages, getting this blog page up and working properly, and so forth. Compared to the past few nights, you could even say that this is a bit boring.

But nah, I’m sure that things will pick up in time! Just need to figure out some more things to do with the server. Perhaps I’ll install some other CMS scripts and play with them? Or perhaps I’ll opt for something more practical and install chat software, since I love to do that so much.

Decisions….

Oh! I did buy a new domain name tonight, and I got all of the stuff server side configured to work with the new domain. Previously, this site was online as home.prannonsbilliardhall.com, but I decided that prannon.net was much easier to remember and type. XD Go practicality!