My site (elainemiller.com) got hacked, so there’s been all sorts of crazy geeky running around to get everything back up. If something’s missing, well, that’s because I didn’t put that particular thing back yet, as I have to go all slow and careful (one carefully vetted bit of software at a time) since we can’t tell what caused the initial security breach. Phishing bastards. Gad.

Anyhoo, if I was supposed to get back to you since I got back in town, and haven’t yet, that’s why. Sorry. Soon!

If you’re a hosted client of mine, contact me (elaine (at) techdonkey (dot) com) please. I want to check in with you.

- Elaine

I’m being joe-jobbed, otherwise known as “sporgery”, wherein some bastard has filled my email address in as a reply-to on about a godzillion spam messages that have gone out.

To be clear, I’m not sending any of these messages, and they’re not coming from my server, and I have no control over these spam messages.

(In a real-world analogy, it’s like a guy in Milwaukee is writing my Vancouver return address on a postcard and then mailing it. The returned mail comes to me because that’s the way the system is set up, not because it came from my city.)

Sorry to all the folks who are getting sporged on. And no, I can’t make it stop.

Here’s more on Joe Jobs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_job

I hear a rumour that certain big social network blogging company is having flotation difficulties. Should it sink, O fellow bloggers, I offer a lifeboat for your wordliness.

For $5 a month (or $50 per year), I can host your domain for you, in a yourdomainname.com kind of way. That’ll include Wordpress software, and you’ll be able to continue to blog to your heart’s content.

(Domain name registration not included, but it can cost you anything from $2 – $20 bucks a year)

Contact me at elaine-at-elainemiller-dot-com to chat about it.

Here’s where I blog from:  http://elainemiller.com/blog

I like self-hosting because I have lots of control over what/how/who, and what everything looks like. I also have it set up to propagate to other various sites, like, um, Livejournal — but if Livejournal were to go under, the original blog will still be intact.

Here’s my work site:   http://techdonkey.com (Don’t mind the gallery/portfolio — I’m swapping it over to a different system, and it’s wonky for the next couple of days while I tinker.)

Backing Up Your Current Blog

Livejournal (um, just for instance) can export posts to an XML file, which can then be imported into Wordpress.  http://www.livejournal.com/export.bml

Some third party sites that offer more full-on Livejournal backup solutions are as follows (if you can’t get on because they’re so busy right now, try at a different time of day.):

http://fawx.com/software/ljarchive/

http://www.ljbook.com/frontpage.php

Lots of other blog formats out there. Must be a reason I’m picking on Livejournal. Hmm.

not quite like this

I seek a glorious alignment between an super-duper lovely ancient Macintosh monitor, and my modern PC. The stars tell me this can be done, with a weeny little adapter that looks almost entirely like this, but not quite. (I snarfed the pic off the internets, but it’s not quite the right one.)

Here’s a pic of my monitor’s cable. This is the end that plugs into one side of the mystical adapter that I can’t find to show you. (The other end of the adapter would plug into a standard vga monitor pluggy thing on the back of a PC onboard or PCI video card.)

I hear that quite a few years ago, the little adapters came with Mac G4s as a matter of course. I hear there somewhere, there are geeks who have drawerfuls of them. I seek the unicorn. Do you have one? Can trade, purchase, or simply go into transports of joy at the receipt of such a thing.

elaine-at-elainemiller-dot-com

I was rummaging in archives for a client, and came upon this test I’d made for a new script I’d installed for ‘em in 2002. I post it here as a kind of warning: Beware the Whimsical Geek.

This is a test of the Non-Emergency Broadcast System
October 28, 2002 7:50 pm PT

Does the script work? Like Schroedinger, when I press the button, and the waveform collapses, I know only that it worked or did not work, and the universe that contained the alternative path is closed to me. If it’s all the same to the Universe, I’d like to take the path where it works, please.
-the techdonkey

I had a look at my site the other day, and thought… well, now, *that’s* out of date!

In a fit of electronic housekeeping, I’m in the process of swapping everything over to a Wordpress backend. Things may very well be all fuckered in places. Sorry, eh?

http://elainemiller.com

Here for the skinny:

http://techdonkey.com/sections/server-status-and-news/

I geek, therefore I am. Low-tech, easy to use. You gotta do some editing to make it match your own database on your own domain.

Use if database backup convenience is more important to you than rock-hard security.

I stuck it up over here:

http://techdonkey.com/techy-tidbits/do-it-yourself-mysql-database-backup-upper

In correcting a server problem, my upstream providers hosed our email capabilities. No sending, no recieving. It’s still not resolved, and I’m still working on it with them. If you emailed me today, I didn’t get it. If you email me right now, I won’t get it. If you’re a client of mine, you share my troubles.

This address works: elaine *at* techdonkey *dot* com.
Please send everything there until we can figure it. If you’re having SMTP troubles, there’s a webform at the site below.

If you’re a client, reach me through the support site, http://techdonkey.com

More as it happens.

-Elaine

My puter went to the big scrap heap in the sky this morning, after a goodly number of false alarms as I frantically tried to complete my backups. (sigh)

After a day of pulling out every old box and bit of hardware in my house, I was able to get a slightly antiquated laptop running with a copy of Ubuntu Linux (thanks, Ubuntu folks, you’ve saved my bacon many times.) So here I am on the internet, and communicating happily.

I need a new desktop machine for my win-doze business applications! Anyone got any leads to a good, cheap 3 Ghz+ puter? I have all the bits, just need motherboard and box, I suspect.

RIP, old faithful, over-worked, overclocked computer….

So, I have this livejournal account that I don’t do anything with. (With which I do nothing?) And I’m a Wordpress fanatic. And this gent created a nifty plugin that teaches wordpress how to post into a livejournal account. So I added the plugin, and it didn’t work. And it didn’t work. And it didn’t work. But I’ve kicked it enough times that it now works. And lo, it is now crossposting merrily.

This is the most perfectly redundant link, since everything here (on my elainemiller.com blog) is there (at livejournal), and vice versa. (Except for the “friends only” posts. They are only here, and only if you log in.) http://elainemiller.livejournal.com/

Geek. Yes.

I have a couple of production boards running phpBB2, which is a lovely set of software.

But now the geniuses behind that app have come up with phpBB3, and it’s making me all tingly.

This is an alpha version, which means — it’s not for the fainthearted, because it could get into a pitbull-like scrap with my database at any time. But the user interface is beeyootiful and the options are all a grrl could ask. Well, at least, mostly all a grrl could ask.

Drop in and register and post something so I can have some troubles to shoot? I gotta make sure this is viable software before I inflict it upon my paying customers.

http://www.elainemiller.com/phpBB3/

Last year I put up a mailman discussion list and page for the folks who were trying to get the 25th anniversary Dykes on Bikes Pride Parade thing going, and it seemed to help folks get together and gather for the festivities.

It’s motorcycle weather again!

I went back, updated the page, added a gallery of all last year’s hot dykes on bykes… and now all youse local-to-Vancouver dykes might wanna hop on the list, and trade ridin’ invites, or flirts… or y’all might wanna just look at pictures.

http://bykedykes.vancouverleather.com/

-Elaine

NOTE:
If You were once on the list, it got hosed in the recent crash, please re-join!

Well, it’s old blogging software. I mean, familiar software. I mean, it’s the latest version of WordPress. Heh.

Lemme explain. Once upon a million years ago, I blogged with Blogger. Quickly, I swapped to using server-side includes and blogging in a text file. Then I swapped to Greymatter, which was nice but which dead-ended in early development, then I swapped to Movable Type. I still use an old version of MT for back-end content-management on various parts of my site, like the writing archives — but it just wasn’t as cool as WordPress.

Now, after several years of installing WordPress for my clients, and recommending WordPress left and right, I’ve finally replaced my MT blog with a WordPress one, imported all the old stuff, and turned comments on after they’d been off for so long.

So go comment on some stuff, why don’t ya?

At time of writing, I’m not quite done fixing it up, so please forgive the bobbles.

Everything crashed at once, making me the Least Happy Camper.

First my personal hard drive developed the Click of Death, and expired on the spot, hosing 21 days of work (Yes, I know. I generally back up much more often but I was so dang busy doing custom webwork and graphics for people. Yes, I see the irony too, thanks.)

I got my home computer running with a new HD and re-installed OS and applications (now where did I put that driver disk?) … and was breathing a sigh of relief that a great deal of my work was safe on my server…

I was just about to start downloading my (now sole copies of) files from the various websites I’d been working on, when my remotely hosted server crashed in a spectacular fashion, hosing not just itself, but also its supposedly “secure” “redundant” backups.

See here:
http://techdonkey.com/sections/server-status-and-news/
Yes, my crazy life. Gad.