How to: Retreive Custom Field Data in a Wordpress Post

Purpose: use Wordpress’s “Custom Field” key/data pairs to store and retrieve specific post information and display it in your own custom templates.

Continue reading ‘How to: Retreive Custom Field Data in a Wordpress Post’

How To: Install MacPorts on OS X Leopard (10.5)

Purpose: install MacPorts on OS X Leopard (10.5) to gain access to a host of open source applications and tools that make working on the Mac as cool as can be. Using MacPorts makes it easy to install applications you would otherwise have to build from source — which can be difficult for folks like me, who don’t understand what the hell they are doing in the first place.

Continue reading ‘How To: Install MacPorts on OS X Leopard (10.5)’

How To: Network Trash on Ubuntu File Server (NAS) with SFTP (SSH + Fuse) and AFP (netatalk)

Purpose: create a Network Trash System for a Ubuntu Linux file server (NAS). Reason being: by default, files deleted on file server go away permanently (as they do when you run rm from the command line). On my Mac (OS 10.4) and on Ubuntu (7.04) if I connect either via AFP (through netatalk) or SSH (SFTP through Fuse) and delete a file, that file is gone forever! This is a problem, because often I find I want them back. Enter: libtrash!

Continue reading ‘How To: Network Trash on Ubuntu File Server (NAS) with SFTP (SSH + Fuse) and AFP (netatalk)’

How to: Install Netatalk (AFP) on Ubuntu with Encrypted Authentication

Purpose: Install Netatalk (AFP) on Ubuntu with encrypted authentication (using OpenSSL), which is not enabled by default with the Ubuntu netatalk package. By default, the package installed from the Ubuntu universal repositories will transmit your password via clear text (you’ll know this because Mac OS X Tiger will throw a warning and Leopard won’t do anything useful at all).

Continue reading ‘How to: Install Netatalk (AFP) on Ubuntu with Encrypted Authentication’

How to: Mount a SFTP Folder (SSH + FTP) on Ubuntu Linux using SSHFS & Fuse

Purpose: to mount a remote directory on my local Ubuntu Linux Desktop system using SFTP (which is SSH in an FTP-like fashion). The goal is to easily gain access to a remote system’s files through another folder on my desktop. I used sshfs to accomplish this.

Continue reading ‘How to: Mount a SFTP Folder (SSH + FTP) on Ubuntu Linux using SSHFS & Fuse’

How to: Redirect Apache’s Default www or public_html Folder to a Directory in Your Home Folder

Purpose: The default installation of Apache (from a Ubuntu-Server installation) sets the base directory for the web documents as /var/www (on Ubuntu’s installation — this may be different if you are running Apache on another machine); this may not be where you want it, in the end, and certainly isn’t as easily accessible from a remote machine. One option is to change where it is Apache searches for its web documents folder in Apache’s configuration file; another way, which I chose, is to create a symbolic link in the default location’s place and have it point to a directory in my user’s home folder.

Continue reading ‘How to: Redirect Apache’s Default www or public_html Folder to a Directory in Your Home Folder’

How To: Install a LAMP Server (Linux, Apache, Mysql, PHP) on Older Laptop with Ubuntu

The Purpose: Install a LAMP server (Linux, Apache, Mysql, PHP) on an older laptop to be accessed and maintained remotely (becasue the laptop has a broken monitor and unreliable video-output connections). Then, transfer web projects from the server on my PowerMac to the new linux server and free up my beast!

Continue reading ‘How To: Install a LAMP Server (Linux, Apache, Mysql, PHP) on Older Laptop with Ubuntu’

Welcome to the blog

Hello and welcome to the blog at damontimm.com.

If you have been paying close attention, you will surely have noticed that this is my second blog (in celebration of my two readers). Though much has changed in the year since I first stepped off the boat with damonjustisntfunny.com, one matter has not: I still fear for my first post — such that it is — and what it all will represent many years from now and how it will, certainly, be a poor attempt at anything.

What to say? How to say it? How to explain in so few words what fewer people will ever read?

This blog serves a distinct purpose (unlike the witticisms and clever prose from my first one): a place for me to document all the little things I learn in front of the computer and then immediately forget and have to re-learn again. Posting my wanderings here, I hope, will shorten the re-learning process.

Enjoy.