Monthly Archives: September 2006

Hpy

I’m still running Hpy, a place to list things that make you happy. I still think the idea is simple and neat, though it has yet to reach critical mass. Go see my list here and think about adding your own.

Server Migration

I host a few low-traffic websites out of my house. One of them is actually a paying customer! The last few days, I’ve been working on migrating all my web apps/sites to a new server (still at my house). This time, though, I spent some time on the infrastructure to make things more reliable. I set up RAID 1 mirroring on my hard drives. I also utilized VMWare Server (free) and built a virtual server image. I can’t feel a speed hit by doing this, and the benefits are definitely worth the extra layer of complexity:

  • I now back up a 1.6GB 2.3GB image and know that I have the whole server backed up. No more hoping that I have all the files backed up I will need in the case of a disaster.
  • Snapshots let me roll the server back in case I install something that screws it up.
  • I can create new servers willy-nilly on the same hardware if I want to do other stuff (run XLink Kai for instance).
  • If my hardware dies, I can fire up my laptop with VMWare Player and run the server while I get stuff back online.
  • Next time I move to other hardware, I need only install VMWare Server and copy over my image. Sweet!

My Rails apps are still offline at the moment. I’m having a bit of trouble getting FastCGI to work again. Maybe it’s time to look into Mongrel…

Update: I installed Mongrel and cooked up a startup script. Works great! Good-bye FastCGI!

Ruby Website Redesign

My favorite programming language had a bit of a facelift. Now the homepage is as beautiful and elegant as the language itself.

ZiddlyWiki Lives On!

Jeremy Ruston and Bob McElrath have taken over development of ZiddlyWiki. This is amazing — to see the community value something I worked on for a big chunk of my life and desire that it continue on without me. It’s humbling and edifying at the same time! I wish them the best and hope they can take ZW places I never dreamed of.