Scott Elkin

Almost 10 months ago, I purchased my first Mac. Because a lot more of my website work was less Microsoft and more Open Source, it made more sense. I also wanted to learn iPhone / iPad development which is impossible without a Mac.

For an employed Windows developer, it was scary, confusing and exhilarating. There were so many questions swimming in my head:

Was I going to be able to perform my normal job?
Would it take long to learn OS X?
Would I have to purchase a lot of software?
Would I like it?
Am I throwing my money away?

There are three viable options if you want to leverage WordPress as your Content Management System, yet want to offer your users a way to interact in a forum.

• bbPress
• phpbb
• vBulletin

bbPress

bbPress is a very lean forum solution for WordPress written by Automatic.  It is a great idea for a quick and dirty forum that works.  Theming works similarly to WordPress – so if you enjoy writing themes in WordPress, this will be easy.

I had to install it in a subdirectory. Trying to install it in the same directory as WordPress causes a battle over index.php since they both need it.

If you buy domains through Godaddy, but host the website and mail somewhere else, chances are you had to edit your DNS settings.

Up until a few weeks ago I had been doing it wrong.  It was working, for the most part, but some things like reverse dns lookups would fail, and strange errors would sometimes crop up.

When you buy your domain through Godaddy, find your way into Total DNS Control.  You will see a page similar to this:

Scary, that’s for sure.

I just stumbled on a nasty, nasty ASP bug that took about 7 years for me to see.

The problem happens when using cookies and querystrings with the same name. A page on the site reads in a variable from the querystring and sets a cookie with the same name to its value, e.g.:

strSrc = Request.QueryString(“A”)
Response.Cookies(“A”) = strSource
Response.Cookies(“A”).Expires = Now + (2 * 30)

However, if the variable name in the query string is different from the capitalization of the cookie name (e.g page.asp?a=xxx) then a new cookie gets set with the name matching the captialization of the
QueryString variable.

Sometime last week, I stopped being able to get access to the internet while at work.  I could get an IP address from DHCP, but couldn’t get any traffic past our firewall/gateway.

I thought it was DHCP server, and was ready to buy a new one as it is 5 years old.  But then I noticed in my ipconfig /all that I had two gateways:  0.0.0.0, and then on the second line, my correct gateway, 192.168.1.1.  I had never seen two gateways listed, and almost scanned right over it.

I am watching a programming presentation from the Myspace tech team right now. They are going over their stats and was blown away by the numbers (as of April 2007):

This problem has nagged at me for years.  Here is a batch command to delete files on a Windows 2003 machine.

Forfiles -pC:\backup -s -m*.* -d-5 -c "cmd /c del /q @path"

This will delete all files in my backup directory older than 5 days. To test it first, use this:

Forfiles -pC:\backup -s -m*.* -d-5 -c "cmd /C Echo 0x22@Path\@File0x22"

This will print out each file that you will be deleting.

Now playing: Lamb Of God – Terror And Hubris In The House Of Frank Pollard

uhhh…where do I login?

I just read a great article on OEM software, called Buying OEM versions of Windows Vista: the facts.  I am sure the data here could be extrapolated to any OEM software.

The basics with OEM versions of Vista are:

1. You absolutely can buy OEM versions lawfully.
2. There is no difference between OEM and non-OEM versions (EXCEPT):
3. It is tied to your motherboard: You cannot move it to a new computer 3 years from now or upgrade your motherboard.
4. Once you open the OEM package, you can no longer return it.