James Manning

Turns out, my ordering a DVI-I cable for my new monitor was quite a bad idea. 

The connector on the monitor doesn’t accept a DVI-I cable since it has no holes above/below the flat blade (the video card connector is of the “DVI-I dual link”).  I could, most likely, just rip out those 4 pins from the connector (since they’re clearly for analog signals and my monitor won’t be using them anyway), but I’ll probably just order an actual DVI-D cable this time and see if someone else can use the DVI-I cable that I now have sitting in a box. :)

Oh, and on the single-link vs. dual-link from, since the monitor’s limited to 1280×1024 anyway (I’m no longer the 1600×1200-or-better snob I used to be), then I would be fine with a single-link cable.

Sometimes, it’s the little things.

I love that Firefox shows you the title of the last time you loaded a URL - it makes it much easier to tell which page is the one you really want.  Like the “crosscity.com” entries below - without the title, I’d have to load each before figuring out which one was the one I wanted.

No such luck in IE7, though - all you get from the completion list is the URL itself.

One other point (not a feature I miss, though) - you’ll notice that in firefox the favicon (just to the left of the address you’re typing in) immediately blanks once you start typing - IE7 doesn’t do that, so while I’m about to go to a microsoft site, the favicon is still Google’s (see above).

So, as you may remember from previous postings, I was using the integrated graphics in this Dell Dimension 4700 box, and while they passed all the non-WDDM (IOW, hardware) specs for Aero (Pixel Shader 2.0, DirectX 9.0, 128MB, 32bpp, etc. etc.), no WDDM driver existed so no Aero for me. 

I was actually fine with that up until Windows Movie Maker wouldn’t run because if it.  Now, I could have gone a different route (use XP in a VPC, use Jessica’s XP machine, use something on the linux box, use a different app on the Vista box, etc.) but since I had a long-term goal of getting dual-monitor on the dell anyway, it gave me an excuse and outlet for some christmas gift cards.

Since I’m still pretty cheap, though, I picked up the Sapphire (ATI) Radeon X1300 card for $47 (newegg) and the second monitor was a Samsung 931B 19″ LCD for $230 (bestbuy.com with free shipping… that’s where my gift card was and it’s an easier return than a web-only shop :).  Oh, and since the Samsung didn’t come with it, a $15 DVI cable from Amazon (I had a Dr. Seuss book I needed to order anyway, so it was free shipping).  Since the card does dual-monitor via 1 analog and 1 digital connection (same as my setup at work), I needed the DVI cable since the Dell E193FP I already had is analog-only.

The only downside is I didn’t expect that the on-board fan for this card would be quite as loud as it is.  It’s not horrific, but the machine’s now definitely louder than it was before this card :)

I’m moving around the web and email stuff over this weekend.  Part 1 was the blog, and it’s now on a new machine (if you’re seeing this post, you’re seeing the new machine :).  If you’re having any problems, please ping me on gmail about it.

Next up will be the gallery site.

My quickie notes from the move (in this case, both source and target machines were Ubuntu, specifically 6.06, Dapper Drake):

• http://codex.wordpress.org/Moving_WordPress
• Backed up host wordpress db
• Installing phpmyadmin - needed php4-mysql also installed (but wasn’t a pre-req) (apt-get install php4-mysql)
• Rsync’d over /etc/wordpress as well as /usr/share/wordpress
• Created wordpress db with same collation as source db, imported backup via mysql command-line (failed using phpmyadmin’s import) with \u wordpress then \. wordpress.sql
• Created wordpress user with same password as original host (otherwise, need to edit /usr/share/wordpress/wp-config.php), granted all perms on wordpress db to wordpress user
• Created “sites-available” entry for the host, symlinked to sites-enabled
  • Start out as a copy of “default” that’s already there
  • Change paths (/var/www -> /usr/share/wordpress)
  • Change logs (access.log -> blog.foo.com-access.log)
  • Add ServerName entry (ServerName blog.foo.com)
  • Remove NameVirtualHost *
  • Change AllowOverride from None to All so .htaccess in /usr/share/wordpress works
• Created symlink so rewriting would work in wordpress: ln -s /etc/apache2/mods-available/rewrite.load /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/rewrite.load

As with most questions like that, the real answer is “it depends”

Updating a Debian (sarge) box today, I was still a little surprised at the phrase “if in doubt … install it with SUID”.  Is the subset of sites running host-based auth and *not* sure about whether to install suid really worth having an insecure (at least from a defense-in-depth POV) default?  Clearly a subjective question.