That’s great

*Sigh*, again, a problem with mysql on my ubuntu eee-box server. This time, I could not update the fix package for mysql-server.

It turned out that there was a user missing – but NOT, as I initially thought, a Linux user, but a mysql user. I found an entry in the ubuntu forums that helped solving the problem.

It seems as if mysql is kind of a…. tricky platform. I seem to run into problems all the time… thank goodness everything still works flawlessly…

After an upgrade from Ubuntu Server 9.04 to 9.10, mysql stopped working.

In /var/log/messages, I got a lot of these errors:

Nov 10 22:07:50 eee-box kernel: [ 6223.686375] type=1503 audit(1257887270.326:66): operation="open" pid=3345 parent=3344 profile="/usr/sbin/mysqld" requested_mask="r::" denied_mask="r::" fsuid=0 ouid=0 name="/sys/devices/system/cpu/"

After google-ing a little bit, I stumbled upon a page that described this error quite in length; bottom line to fix this was the following:

First, I deleted the my.cnf file in /etc/mysql (i. e. I moved it to a backup folder). I also moved away all files in /etc/mysql/conf.d. Now, there was a file in /etc/mysql that was named my.cnf.dpkg-dist or something – I copied it to my.cnf

Now, mysql started again properly. Also, funnily enough, my mediawiki envirnonment works flawlessly – although I was under the impression that I had to tweak my mysql environment quite a bit (see this post).

Anyway – the only thing left to do was setting the bind_address in my.cnf to my server’s ip, because this is the way it used to be configured all the time and a lot of webapps depend on this.

Just read about an experiment of Starbuck’s – in Seattle and the Silicon Valley, you can buy with your iPhone…

This is greatly leveraged technology – same as the soda machine that was standing in Basel a couple of years ago, where you could by your coke by sending an SMS. It’s time to let go of good old money – at least, of coins and paper….

Also, this ties back neatly to the stories I have read in recent days about augmented reality (e. g. over at smashing magazine) – we are at the edge of a new time…. and it’s important to leverage these things for the better for all of humanity.

We are already seeing new media breaking down barriers; Twitter did not (yet) bring Ahmadinejad to fall – but almost so; Wikipedia has not (yet) helped to push general education to the next level – but it is in its start position; facebook might be dangerous in terms of privacy and terms of conditions, but at the same time, the social control can actually get better with these things… imagine SOMEONE would have paid attention to the announcements of the suicide killer in Winnenden…

Technology CAN actually lead to a better society – and the iPhone used to pay in Starbucks is just a simple example how we are converging… it’s time to be optimistic, go out and change the world!

My investigation and study of various photoshop blogs and tutorials ist starting to pay off; I am working on a slight make-over of the BlueMonday Coaching website. Today, I successfully incorporated the first changes (most notably the nice jQuery accordion on the blog page). Some more stuff will follow – I will tweak the menus, add some nice web2.0 buttons and reformat the searchbox. Just stay tuned and visit the site… over and over again.

SSH-Login to my server

Whenever I ssh to my server, I get this boring standard Ubuntu message…. and in addition, my prompt is not as colorful as I want it to be….

To get rid of the latter problem, I just changed a line in my ~/.bashrc file:

force_color_prompt=yes;;

(I hade to uncomment it)

To fix the first problem, I first installed fortune and cowsay (this post helped):

apt-get fortunes
apt-get fortunes-off
apt-get cowsay

And then, I added this line at the very top of my .bashrc:

cowsay -f dragon "$(fortune)"

This is more like my style…

Finally, the next episode of my WordPress webcast is up…. it’s a little shorter than usual, but we tackle the possibility on how to display a static page as frontpage, and how to create page-templates. As usual, there’s also a little CSS in it.

I think I finally fixed the audio – so I hope everybody is kind of able to understand me clearly

Links for this episode:

• WordPress codex on page templates
• WordPress codex on static front pages
• Live website with the theme we develop

Hey all, I know I am overdue with the next episode of my WordPress theme webcast – simply no time at the moment. In the meantime, you might want to head over to the WordPress resources page I just created – it’s a collection of links I gathered over time….

Here’s the challenge: My wife and myself have a lot of appointments; I am working on three different sites regularly – and we should have access to each other’s appointments in order to quickly fix dates.

I found a neat solution – it involves google calendar, lightning for Thunderbird (or Sunbird) and my iPhone.

First – I set up a shared google calendar that is accessable for both my wife and myself.

Then, I set up my iPhone to sync it. This involves two steps:

1. Follow the steps to set up Google Sync with your iPhone provided by Google. This step erases all Calendar data, so it’s a good idea to export them and re-import them to Google Cal, in case necessary.
2. The step above will only set up your PRIMARY calendar to sync with the iPhone. However, the calendar I created for shared access is my SECONDARY calendar. So – on the iPhone, launch Safari and open up m.google.com/sync. IF your iPhone is in a language other than english, you get an error saying that your device is not supported. To get around this, simply change the language to english – et voila, you will be able to select up to 5 calendars your iPhone shall sync with!

(Note that when creating a calendar entry – you can specify the calendar it shall be created in)

Now, on my desktop, I use Thunderbird. First, I installed Lightning, the calendar plug in. I also need the Google calendar provider for Thunderbird / Lightning.

To set up the google calendar in Lightning, use the steps described in the GCal Wiki. Basically, this involves copying the XML-address for the shared calendar into the address of a “new network calendar” in Lightning.

Voila – as my wife uses Thunderbird as well, we now have all access to our calendar…. and once our son gets grown up, he will get it too.

Some great stuff coming through from Apple today; with iPhone OS 3.0, we will see such exciting features as MMS and copy / paste – but also a lot of minor improvements… (isn’t it amazing how Apple creates a hype around features that all others have had for YEARS?)

Good thing is that we will also see a new iPhone, with better camera, stronger hardware and better battery life. Now – what do I do with my old one?

Snow Leopard will be out in September which, apart from new versions of existing software, will bring more speed and performance to all Apple boxes…

Finally – new MacBooks, shinier, better prices, better hardware.