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  • That’s one way to fix a housing chrisis.

    written by

    james

    So if you’ve been paying any attention to the news in certain parts of Canada, at least, you’ve become aware the price of your average decent-sized house has rather, well, exploded. In Nova Scotia, they’ve discovered a solution. If you can prove there are aboriginal artifacts on your property, and that there’s the potential for an aboriginal group to make a land claim against your house (they do that up here every so often, apparently), you can convince the Nova Scotia government that your property is worth a whole dollar.

    Normally, a brand-new seaside home on the outskirts of Antigonish, N.S. could easily fetch as much as $400,000.

    But after homeowner Mike MacDonald stumbled upon a Mi’kmaq axe on the two-acre property, he was quickly able to convince the Province of Nova Scotia that his new home was now effectively worthless.

    “Such a property would be considered very valuable under normal circumstances,” reads a decision by a Nova Scotia appeal tribunal.

    But with the artifacts throwing the property’s future into limbo, “the value will be set at $1 until the future use of the Mi’kmaq artifacts is determined,” it read.

    The rock-bottom assessment — which MacDonald only obtained after several appeals — frees him from paying any property taxes on the beachfront land.

    Well now. That’s the housing crisis solved–at least in Nova Scotia. Who says the aboriginal people don’t do us any favours?

  • Support for windows 8 ended on Tuesday. downgrade to Windows 7 now.

    written by

    james

    Microsoft does this far too often to be healthy. They’ll release a halfway decent version of Windows, give it a year or several to run its course, then push out a flopper as a replacement. The flopper goes flop, Microsoft realizes perhaps they might not oughta have done that, so they come back with a slightly less floppy version. Meanwhile, they’ve pulled support for the not-so bright idea, while the version of Windows it was supposed to replace… goes on relatively untouched for a while yet. It happened with that thing that came out before Windows XP–yeah, you know the one. It happened with Vista. And now, it would appear, it’s happening with Windows 8. Effective this past Tuesday, Microsoft killed it. So if you were running that in the hopes of holding out until windows 10 fixed its multiple issues, you’re out of luck. Bright side: they’ll still support Windows 7 for the time being–and that, at least, lacks some of the things Windows 10 needs fixing. Not-so-bright side: you didn’t have plans for this weekend, did you?

    Looks like Microsoft pulled support for Internet Explorer 8, 9 and 10 at the same time, but you weren’t running that anyway, right? Right. Carry on. Now if you don’t mind, I’ll be over here not upgrading my OS.

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  • For $294 million, ODSP gives us… business as usual.

    written by

    james

    The Ontario Disability Support Program ((ODSP) and I haven’t been on friendly terms for as long as I’ve been barely living independently on what they toss me. The reasons are plenty and exceedingly detailed, but can probably very easily be boiled down to a few somewhat key factors. And those can be summarized approximately this way. The Ontario disability Support Program has itself a disability.

    When you approach any government at all with the expectation that they might actually be able to do something semi-useful to help you, it’s almost a necessity that you make ready with a plan B, C, D and E just in case–because assuming that help actually comes in the form of something you can do decent things with, getting it to you is going to take far too long, be far too complicated, be far too little and come attached to far too many restrictions to end up doing you or them any amount of actual good in the long run. Unless they decided instead that nope, at which point it gets even more fun if you’re you.

    ODSP finally has madness like this down to a science. And it’s all brought to you by the brand spanking new case management system that does pretty well nothing you expect it to do and not very well while it’s at it. For the $294 million price-tag their new system comes with, we have a front row seat to all manner of disfunction from all manner of levels. This new case management system, the money for which could have probably gone and done some good in just about any number of far more productive ways, now makes it possible for the fine folks over at ODSP to do the following things even better than they have in years previous.

    • Babysit an entirely dependent woman’s bank account while communicating as little as possible with her caretakers, then cut her off completely when they think she’s socked away too much money
    • Knock a significantly less dependent woman off ODSP for daring to do a little work for herself
    • Force recipients to repeatedly prove, by way of medical documentation–even for conditions that won’t be changing any time soon, that yes, they’re still broken and yes, they still qualify for support and yes, you should still pay them–and then manage to screw up the review process
    • That is, when the system–or the staff who run it–isn’t accidentally making the payments you keep having to requalify for disappear for reasons no one seems capable of knowing

    And all it cost the province–translation: people who actually work for a living–for the pleasure was over a quarter billion. Not bad, if the government says so itself–which it does, as often as it can get away with. But on the bright side, we now know why people on ODSP don’t get to afford pithy little things like, you know, paying the rent. I wonder where a disabled program that could really use a little extra money could pull it from. For that kind of cash, we could use something a little bit better than business as usual.

  • Geek training, now with actual geek tools.

    written by

    james

    College is awesome, if for no other reason than while I’m not being paid, I’ve still got plenty to keep me occupied during a day. And now, the stuff I have to keep me occupied just became a whole lot more relevant. I’ve been taking this program for pretty much exactly a year, now, but the thing about this program is it’s taken that long just to get to the parts most people who go through it are more likely to use once they’ve found someone who’ll pay them. Not necessarily by choice, but definitely by design–there’s just that much actual background material that needs covered before you get there. You can’t, for example, throw up a web server on a Linux machine if you don’t know how to make Linux do your tellings. Well, you can, but I’m not supporting you. So the first year and change was pretty much this is how you make the things go. Now comes what I like to think of as play time.

    The entire reason for me taking this course is to put the skills I already have on paper. I’ve done the Linux administration thing. I’ve done the website maintenance thing. I’ve done the hosting thing. But that’s been a thing I do when I can find both the free time and the spare money–both of which have rather recently come into some shortish supply. So the first half of the program was spent largely covering ground I’ve already covered on my own time and fighting with the occasional professor for reasons far too well known to anyone who’s done the college thing from the perspective of someone with a disability. It’s been fun, but not quite what I signed up for. From this semester onward, though, it gets interesting–and, very likely, significantly easier if you’re me, considering the difference between me and a certified geek is, well, not much.

    For instance, one of the courses I’m taking this year is rather self-explanatorily called PC Troubleshooting. Essentially, while there’s a relatively small theory component to the course (there’s only one two-hour lecture a week), the entire point of that course is you walk into the lab, the professor hands you a computer, and your task is to 1: find out what’s wrong with it and 2: fix the damn thing. While all the while being very thankful your professor isn’t quite mean enough to make you nearly relive one of the stereotypical tech support experiences in the process. If you’ve been reading for half as long as the site’s been online, 1: congratulations–I’m impressed, and 2: you probably know on some level this used to be that thing I’d get paid to do, only not in the hands-on sense quite so much–I’d do the finding out what was broken, but then I’d usually be sending someone else with the parts to fix the broken (call center work has its advantages). So this has the potential to be very similar, minus the paycheck.

    In another instance, this semester’s Linux course has a component that will involve you setting up and configuring web and email services. Now, I wouldn’t call myself an expert in the area, but I’ve rolled my own in both cases. I’ve also handed a large portion of that rolling to legitimate hosting software when I’ve needed to–see also: 4:00 AM phone calls because person A needs a new email address. I’ll probably learn something, but I’m expecting this to largely just be that thing I’ll do while half awake and walk off with a decent enough grade to matter. Which means I can give just a little more attention to that component of the program that requires I be able to do the same thing on a Windows server. Because, you know, Windows is precisely what I’d want running my business resources.

    We’ve sat through the geek training. And while I’ve discovered not for the first time I suck at the theory portion (this is why me and school weren’t on speaking terms for several years), it’s the practical aspect that will probably concern an employer more than anything else–and I’ve got that covered. Now, we get the actual geek tools. And this, right here, is exactly what I came for. Now, about plans for summer…

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  • Dear CBS. Don’t you dare break my Trek.

    written by

    james

    I’ve been a Star Trek fan since I have no idea when. Too young to have seen the original series on its first run, I could never get into it on any of the other times I saw it–dear lord but I tried. But since the launch of “The Next Generation”, I was kind of a little bit all over it. I think that got me interested in the kinds of things that now interest me–technology, space travel, that kind of thing.

    some of the later series started to lose me, mind–I couldn’t get into “Voyager” until nearly halfway through, and let’s not even discuss “Enterprize”. The more recent movies, though, didn’t even warrant more than one viewing–I’ll rant about that when I’m feeling more ranty and have the brainpower to go with it. Still, every new series or movie gets at least a quick look from me, because–hey, that’s my thing. Which is why CBS saying they’re starting up a series of their own caught my attention.

    Of course they won’t release any actual info on that series yet beyond who might be involved (Can we get a hint, guys?), but a guy can hope, right? And what I’m seriously hoping for is they don’t break the series in the same ways they broke the newer movies. There are way too many things I really hope they don’t go overboard on in this new series (hint: special effects should be the background, not the entire point of the show), and there’s a metric ton of potential for the whole thing to implode on itself, but like any good Trek fan, I’ll probably watch the thing anyway. At least until it threatens to cost me sanity points. In the meantime, CBS, don’t even think about breaking the series. It may be 50 years old this year, but you don’t water down a good thing. No matter what the movie producers tell you.

    And speaking of movies, I think I may consider giving this one a pass. If only because again with the special effects before the plot. I keep saying it wasn’t broken, guys…

  • In which education kills brain cells and eats sleep schedules for lunch.

    written by

    james

    So. I might have mentioned it’s been wicked crazy if you’re me. I might have also mentioned that I rather love that it’s been wicked crazy. The problem with education getting wicked crazy, though, is it tends to pretty much force everything else to the back burner. If you’re me and it’s getting pretty near the end of the semester and you’ve still got a nifty little stack of things that need sorted through, doing or just handing in because you’re an idiot and neglected to do so, that kind of eventually starts to include things you’ve been relatively good at holding together–or, at least, faking it ’til you make it in any event. Which, conveniently enough, is how I ended up turning in a paper I’d written in 3 hours… at 6:30 this morning. It’s a hell of a ride, and I’m definitely going to need the 3 weeks I’ve got coming to me after tomorrow’s exam, but this course is exactly where I need to be. I’ve always considered myself mostly a geek in training, though not in any real way that would have ended up with getting me paid–not for lack of my grasping at any straw going. But these classes are a halfway decent excuse to put that training into something that vaguely resembles real practice while adding to it with a logical end goal of an actual paycheck. Even if that process accepts payment in student loans, brain cells and what’s left of my already not quite together sleep schedule. Still, the only loose thread I have to tie up on this semester is tomorrow’s exam, so that’s a thing. I’ll take it. Now about that vacation…

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  • So what’d you do over the summer? Oh, you know. Relaxed, took it easy, discovered a planet…

    written by

    james

    For about 5 minutes, I would sincerely love to trade all kinds of places with this kid.

    Tom Wagg was 15 when he spotted a tiny dip in the light of a distant star during his week-long placement at Keele University. After two years of further research, astronomers have confirmed that he witnessed a mystery planet passing in front of the star.

    Follow the site for long enough, and you’ll pick up on the extreme geek factor. This includes a huge interest in science fiction, but also in both present-day and futuristic space discoveries. So I was a little tiny bit jealous, perhaps, when I read this. I always wondered if we’d actually see something akin to realistic space travel in my lifetime, and they sure as hell are trying to answer that question with a definitive hell yes. But in the meantime, you go, Tom. And if you ever want to trade places with a college geek, let me know. Now, about those theoretical real-life impulse engines…

  • The easy as pie CPanel WebFaction migration guide.

    written by

    james

    for reasons of plenty, I’ve had to end up switching hosting away from the server I won’t be running for much longer. The host I picked, I did largely based on the fact they advertise themselves as being a host for developers–which, for me, translates as a host for geeks. And so far, it looks that way.

    I’m coming from a vantagepoint of having full access to my server, so that was something to get used to. But WebFaction, my new host, pretty much lets me do most of what I could do on my own server with a minimal amount of problem–at least so far. The getting set up was a lot easier than I expected, and I expected it to be fairly simple to begin with.

    A little background. My server runs cPanel, largely because some of the folks I host aren’t as technically minded as I am, so if they want to make themselves a brand new email address at 4:00 AM, I want to let them. The down side of that, of course, is CPanel likes to get in the way of most skilled sysadmins. I’ve learned to work around it for the most part, and push it out of my way where I can’t, but generally speaking I always hear of it being a fight to accomplish some complex task mostly because the folks at CPanel have a different idea of how things ought to be laid out than, well, most normal people. That said, it’s mostly working around CPanel’s general assumptions that makes migrating to any host in general, and WebFaction in particular, a little bit of a trick. If you’re used to it, then it’s a non-issue in about 5 seconds. If you’re not a sysadmin, then it gets even more fun–but I can probably help you work around that if you’re reading this.

    The bulk of the steps will be carried out in your new host’s control panel of choice–WebFaction has a very nice one that takes a bit of getting used to largely on account of they have a different concept of how websites come together than most people are used to, but the basic principles should be relatively translateable. And if you’re considering WebFaction, their support times are trying very hard to compete with mine when I’m awake–no support request I’ve put in has been left longer than an hour.

    When I moved May and I over, the steps were almost entirely the same–except, of course, that mine were a bit more involved on account of I’m also running the DNS infrastructure for the server I’m soon to be shutting down. Moving us over went largely like this:

    • Create the necessary platforms on the new host:
      • For May, that’s a couple domain names, a database, a couple email addresses.
      • Me was a couple domain names, a few databases, a few legacy subdomains, and all the necessary pointers to the old server so other people I’m hosting over there don’t break–and also because I haven’t yet migrated my mailing list over yet. Oops.
      • So the new host knows of canadianlynx.ca, the-jdh.com and related infrastructure before it even needs to be forced to use it.
    • Back up the necessary databases from the CPanel server
      • Log in to the CPanel box with SSH, if you have SSH access, and: mysqldump -u username -p database > database.sql
      • Where username is the login name you use to access the database (hint: check the relevant config files for, for example, WordPress to find it), and database is the MySQL DB you’re wanting to back up (again, check the relevant configuration files). This puts a copy of the database as it is right now in the root of your home directory–or in whichever directory you’re sitting in, if not that. It will ask you for your database password, at which point again, check your configuration files if you don’t know it.
    • FTP (or, preferably, SFTP) the .sql file from old host to new–for this, I use WinSCP, simply because I can connect to both old and new at once and tell the thing to pull from one and push to the other. And, well, since I’m lazy, that’s exactly what I do.
    • Depending on the size of your database(s), you’ll have time while they move to go back to your new host’s control panel and create the new databases if you didn’t already do that. You can create the user(s) for them as well, which helps. WebFaction is pretty flexible with DB names, which also means you can probably have the same database name, username and password you had on CPanel, which ought to prevent breakage. I didn’t take that route, but that was for largely OCD reasons.
    • Your database transfer should be done now. Taking the info you used to create your databases on your new host, SSH into your server (WebFaction provides you SSH access by default) and then:
      • mysql -u username -p database < database.sql
      • where username is the username you picked for your new database, and database is of course the new database name. Again, it will ask you for your password–give it the one you set for the new database, not the one from your old host, unless of course they’re exactly the same, or things will break. It’ll take a second or two, but then the contents of database.sql will appear in your new database.
        • Note: WebFaction runs its database server on the same server as your web stuff, which is defined by localhost. MySQL uses this by default, so this command will work. If you’re on another host, like for example DreamHost, they let you create a database hostname to reach a separate, shared MySQL server. To import your database into that, you’ll want: mysql -h database.host.name -u username -p database
    • We’re at a pause point here, as we can’t migrate any farther until we finish setting our infrastructure up on the new host. Right now, your new host knows your domain name exists, but doesn’t know what you’re planning to do with it.
    • On WebFaction, they divide the concept of web hosting into 3 categories–domains, such as the-jdh.com, which let you host your email and generally just point to the server, applications, which are what actually serves up your web content (think WordPress, or your forum software of choice), and websites, which essentially connect applications to domain names–so you can tell, for example, myblog.com to pull its content from the myblog application.
    • On other hosts, generally speaking as soon as you create a “website account”, or “web hosting account”, it gives you space on a server and doesn’t much care what you put in that space. WF tries to customize its environment for the application you’re running, if it can get away with it.
    • Either way, you’ll want to create that space now. On WF, create a static/CGI/PHP application if you’re running, say, WordPress. You could, if you felt like being creative, just create their standard WordPress application, but WF automaticly hands you a database with it then and generally makes more work for you in the long run, but that’s an option.
    • Connect the newly created application to your previously migrated domain name using a website record.
    • Now, return to your FTP client. Connect to your old host and download everything in the public_html folder of your account–that’s where CPanel stores pretty much all website data. Optionally, if your client supports it, tell it to upload it to webapps/appname on your new host, where appname is the name of the application you created above–you did create one, didn’t you?
    • Depending on how much you have up there, it could take a while–mine took a couple hours overall. Now is a perfect time to double check things, then do some preliminary testing. Some web hosts give you a subdomain you can use to test things before they go live. In WebFaction’s case, you get a subdomain in the form of panelusername.webfactional.com, where panelusername is the username you use to log in to your control panel. Configure the website you created above to accept connections from both your domain name and panelusername.webfactional.com, or your new host’s equivalent if not WebFaction. That way, you can access your web content before you actually switch your domain over.
    • Tripple check you’ve created all the email addresses you need while you’re in the panel. Once you change over your name servers, which is the second last step–and last step you’ll actually be able to perform by yourself, any email addresses you’ve neglected to create will stop working on account of they don’t exist on the new server, and you’ve told everyone to forget about the old one.
    • Now is the waiting game. depending on how long it takes for your content to be transferred, I’d advise you grab a coffee or several.
    • When that’s done, and before doing anything else, pull up your webfactional subdomain in a web browser. Make sure there are no errors or anything of the sort–if there, you’ll need to edit configuration files. Most commonly, the error you’ll see is related to databases. Replace all the database info in the affected configuration files with the info from the database you just created, and those problems should solve themselves.
    • Once you have everything working on the webfactional domain name, and are sure everything is set up for when you bring your actual domain name over, it’s time to make the switch. Contact your domain registrar, provided it’s not the same as your old host, and change your nameservers to be the following:

      • <

      • ns1.webfaction.com
      • ns2.webfaction.com
      • ns3.webfaction.com
      • ns4.webfaction.com
    • If your domain registrar is your old host, I’d recommend you transfer it first–I’ve had very good luck with Misk for all things domain. Then make the changes listed above.
    • And that’s all you can do on your end. Now, everyone else needs to catch up with you. It should take about 24 hours or so for everyone to realize you’ve moved–so don’t go cancelling anything on your old host just yet. Once the nameserver changes have updated globally, then you’re safe to cancel things. And at that point, you’re hopefully successfully migrated away from CPanel to wherever your new host is hanging.

    I had a few more specialised tasks running, such as a Cron job for scraping the various RSS feeds I read, but those I pretty much scattered in amongst the larger tasks that required waiting for. And now, this site and everything that goes with it lives on a shiny new web server I’m not directly maintaining. If you’re hosted on the server I do maintain, you shouldn’t feel a thing.

    Switching out really is that simple if you know exactly where to look. And if you’re lost at any point, Google is your friend–and so are the comments. Now, let’s go see if I need to finish breaking anything else on my new host before I get too comfortable.

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  • There’s always next year, Toronto. And this time, saying it doesn’t feel forced.

    written by

    james

    I’m a Toronto sports fan if I’m a sports fan at all. It’s how I grew up and I haven’t evolved much since then. For hockey, it’s always been the Leafs–yes, even though the last time they won it all my parents were in grade school. For baseball, it’s been the Jays–even though the last time they won it all I was in grade school. It’s meant I’ve gotten to see some really good years. And, uh, some incredibly bad ones. This year was the best by far–I don’t actually remember much about 92-93. But from the beginning of the baseball season, something about this Bluejays team felt different. I made a point to catch as many games as I could get away with–which wasn’t usually something I did for baseball–this time around simply because the whole thing felt different. Then the July trade deadline happened, followed closely by league domination. Then the postseason happened, and anyone with a pulse lost their collective everything. They packed the Sky Dome, which didn’t used to happen for a baseball game. They got musical, albeit now a lot of those names aren’t exactly front and center, which used to be that thing they only did if they were mocking something. And for the first time in 22 years, Toronto’s favourite sports cliché might actually have some meaning behind it. There’s always next year. And this time, saying it doesn’t feel like just the routine. If they don’t break the team over the winter, we might actually do it next time around. And that, just for the record, is nearly as awesome a thought as if we’d done it this year. Suddenly, being a Toronto sports fan sucks a little bit less now. thanks, Jays.

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  • Marriage: Not just for people in love anymore.

    written by

    james

    Depending on who you ask, marriage hasn’t meant what it used to for years already. In Austrailia, if you’re one couple in particular, it means even less now.

    You may or may not be aware that same-sex marriage is a thing. In Austrailia they’re becoming aware of that. And as a result, at least one “traditional” couple has decided if same-sex marriage becomes legal, they will become divorced. Because nothing quite defines your own marriage like someone else’s definition.

    I’m hardly one to compare opinions on marriage of any kind–I’ve always seen it as just a piece of paper, really, entitling you to no more benefit than if you’d spent the rest of your lives living together without the whole deal–the difference between a legal marriage and not, in most cases, is the ability for one of you (usually the one who earns more) to claim the other on your taxes. I don’t need that piece of paper to prove I plan on sticking around a while any more than I expect that piece of paper to be a reason to stick around longer than I would otherwise. But if you’re going to go through the whole deal, it might not be the worst idea in the world if you meant it. I’m pretty sure whatever the traditional meaning of marriage–between either sex (or sexes) was, it did not include phrasing to the effect of “unless political expediency requires otherwise”.

    I’m not saying marriage–of either kind–is wrong. I wouldn’t necessarily do it, but that’s either personal preference or a fantastic misunderstanding of the legal definition of marriage (I’m pointedly ignoring the religious one). But if you’re going to go through it, mean it. And if you’re going to mean it, keep it away from politics–especially that politics. Doing otherwise guarantees whatever value marriage–either the “traditional” or “modern” type–had is lost in the argument. As for this couple, whether or not the divorce actually happens, they’ve just proved the point to those of us who don’t see the idea of going through with it–it’s not just for people in love anymore. But then, perhaps legally, it never really was.

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