The concept of PIE or proactive information exchange is relatively simple. As I recently put it on a twitter status update:

... #PIE AKA #ProactiveInformationExchange to share knowledge to prevent #ShitHittingFans

So when you are working consider practicing the concept of PIE it really helps foster effective, and most importantly, early communication. Share your knowledge early in the hope that it can prevent someone running into issues you have faced in the past.

OOH and a massive thanks also go to @Rubenerd and his recent blog post for putting the word out.

/grabs a slice of PIE
Stuart

Recently I decided to take the plunge into taking this script where I had always wanted it to go and that is to provide a front end for various revision control systems to the end user in their cPanel interface so that they could create repositories on the fly.

However after beginning research prior to the design phase I unfortunately found out that an API to the particular configuration files was not available and in order to actually complete the integration I says going to have to in fact write an entire API to the config files for the user specific Apache includes.

So lol that about doubles the work as far as I can see haha but I did begin this wanting to take on a challenge. I do wonder how often this sort of thing happens though, I have seen it at work all the time. Someone has a great idea but the execution suddenly blows out stupendously.

Has anyone else had this experience while working on one of their own pet projects?
Stuart

This includes up to $100 cash back for any new Dedicated Server, Cloud Server, CoLocation or VPS and up to $25 back for reseller and other hosting. They are also offering:

• 75% off on several of their dedicated servers
• 75% off their Software-As-A-Service offerings
• 75% off their Virtual Private Servers
• and 75% off their standard shared hosting and reseller hosting.

This is just a few of their offers, you can see my video review of TurnkeyInternet on YouTube if you are curious as to my experiences, or if you want a longer read there is an older review that I did on WebHostingTalk here.

These deals are on for this month only so hop on over and check them out, have a chat to Nick he is a great bloke and will help you get the right solution for you. If you have ever wanted to upgrade your hosting LOL do it this month .

Most importantly if you have any questions let me know. All the coupons are listed on TurnkeyInternet’s special page and you can see all the details about their new datacentre on the site also.

Stuart

So, if you would like to have a custom temp directory for Crashplan on OSX perform the following steps:

1. Back up your system… back up early back up often (I always like to throw this in).
2. Do this ONLY if you know what you are doing, when you follow the next step if you don’t know what you are doing you can do permanent damage to your installation that may require a complete re-install to get around.
3. Open a terminal and run ‘sudo bash’
4. Backup /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.crashplan.engine.plist
5. Edit /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.crashplan.engine.plist and add the following lines after the line which specifies DCP_USER_HOME.
   <string>-Djava.io.tmpdir=INSERTTEMPDIRHERE</string>
6. Stop the CrashPlan service
   launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.crashplan.engine.plist
7. Start the CrashPlan service
   launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.crashplan.engine.plist

Please note, if/when an update is pushed out by CrashPlan this may get overwritten so you may need to apply the fix at such a time.

Hope this helps someone else out at some point.

Stuart

Therefore I have brought cPanelSVNManager right back into 2012 with a complete update and overhaul. It can now build the 1.7 branch and 1.6 branch of Subversion on cPanel servers. It also now correctly checks for the latest recommended version and if you are game enough can support automagical updates of the Subversion installation on your cPanel Server.

The benefits include a very simple way to install and update Subversion as well as mechanisms to stop Easyapache recompiles breaking after mod_dav_svn has been installed.

You can see all the details on the Technical Notebook Wiki including the outstanding feature requests, bugs and tasks (of which at time of writing there are none). If you would like to request a new feature or encounter a bug you can do so on the cPanelSVNManager project on TechnicalNotebook JIRA to get support.

I have to say, all around with the last few days development not a bad effort.

I look forward to doing more as this semester progresses.

Stuart

Firstly for you bloggers, if you have heard of bit.ly and other such URL shortening services, you might be curious to check out YOURLS, which is essentially a self hosted URL shortener. I will leave it to your own decision as to why that might tickle your fancy but I have written a plugin for YOURLS which provides a social toolbar on shortened URLS.

You can check out the YOURLS Social Bar page on my Technical Wiki for all the details, if you have any feature requests please let me know so that I can start working towards the next major release.

The second item I have been working on is how to get the Atlassian Crowd Authentication connector for Apache compiled on a CentOS System running cPanel. To be honest unless you use the Atlassian suite of products AND run a cPanel server this second one probably won’t interest any of you that much but hey, it is definitely an achievement that I am proud of. You can check the how-to out on my wiki –>  Compile Atlassian’s Crowd authenticator on CentOS server with cPanel.

So that has been my few days relaxation and enjoyment . Geeks and Open Source software FOR THE WIN .

Stuart

This is still a work in process at the moment and I am only 60% happy with it but I have to start somewhere so it will evolve over time. I certainly welcome any feedback at all that anyone has be it positive or negative.

Elevator Pitch for TechnicalNotebook.com:
“Working in today’s industry as an IT Professional I often come across tips, tricks, creative and thought provoking work-arounds and tidbits that may be useful to both myself and others at some point in time. After working on a personal knowledgebase of this information for some time I wished document and share my experiences. Therefore Technical Notebook is where I share scripts, how-tos, reviews, tidbits, professional learning and experiences.”

If you have a blog and are interested check out the 31DBBB eBook that Darren sells which is the one I am following.
Stuart

I thought however, that this time I would do something slightly different. This time around entrants will need to tweet their entry to the competition, each person is allowed to enter up to five times maximum and all you have to do is answer the following question in a single tweet (for example less than 140 chars).

How would blogging enable you to share what you have with the world?

Entries must end with “@StuartCRyan #BlogHostingComp” so this gives you ~110 characters remaining for your entry. If you also wish to tweet this page to help spread the word please do (however it will have no impact on your entry to the competition).

Rules of the competition:

• Entry will be open until 11:59pm 31st December 2011 and the winner will be drawn on the 3rd of Jan 2012 at 9:00am and the winner(s) notified on Twitter.
• This is a competition of skill and merit and is in no way random. If I see two entrants equally deserving I will award them both a prize.
• I will be reading every tweet and will be making the selection of the winner and my decision is final.
• Entrants must have a twitter account to participate
• Entries must end with “@StuartCRyan #BlogHostingComp” to be considered valid
• If the hosting is misused in any way shape or form, I reserve the right to withdraw the service
• Free hosting will be for 12 months minimum, possibly longer at my discretion
• The winner will have to supply their own domain name
• Entrants do not have to follow @StuartCRyan however I certainly welcome it if they wish to do so

So get the message out and get your entries coming in I look forward to helping out a fellow blogger soon.

The document was written with my experiences from vWorker in mind however the same processes and ideas could be applied to any such project site including sites such as Freelancer.com.

I look forward to feedback, if you have any other experiences, hints or tips please let me know and I will incorporate them into the document.

Guide to putting projects onto vWorker/RentACoder/Freelancer.com

Stuart

So read below about the five companies and one individual that really are doing things right and one company that I am going to shame by doing things WRONG!

@RescueTime – RescueTime is a service that I have only been using for less than a month (for productivity tracking if you aren’t using it you should be but will do a post on that another time) however their Twitter customer service has been exemplary so far, quick to respond and always friendly I really can’t complain.

@CrashPlan – I use CrashPlan Plus for backups of all my data into the cloud and highly recommend them, the times that I have Tweeted them with feedback or requesting assistance they have always got back to me with help or thanks so good on them.

@LogMeIn – LogMeIn provides free and/or paid remote access to your computers from anywhere in the world (I just use the freebie). I have only ever Tweeted these guys once but they took my feedback on board and got back to me so I am happy to say that these guys also get a shiny gold star (especially for a free service).

@CloudFlare – For the last few months I have been using CloudFlare to speed up my blogs, they do a reverse proxy mix with a content delivery network (CDN), great service and VERY responsive on Twitter, I had an issue and they were on to it and helping out in record time.

@1Password – Honestly can’t remember why I had to tweet these guys but what I do remember is they were so exceptional I tweeted a massive thanks to them for their assistance and support. If you need password management software I highly recommend 1Password too.

@GilesHardie – Giles is actually a reporter/editor with the Sydney Morning Herald, after recently reading one of his articles about Masterchef and almost literally pissing myself laughing I had to shout out and say thanks for the laugh. Little did I know that Giles read my tweet and replied back to me a couple of times. It was certainly refreshing for the little guy to get to talk directly to the author of an article.

Finally I have to give three thumbs down to @Evernote on twitter – I love Evernote’s services please don’t get me wrong and I would be lost without them and in fact give their services a three thumbs UP. As a paying customer I expect however if you have a twitter account AND you promote it, if I message you saying I can’t renew my services and would like to let them know that they are giving me free premium services that I might in fact get a response. I have tweeted @Evernote on several occasions and never heard a boo back from them.

If you aren’t already following me on twitter shout out to me right now on @StuartCRyan I always welcome feedback about what I write or even just a friendly hello.

Stuart

Please note that some of the links in this post may contain affiliate links. I use the services I might as well get a little kudos for promoting them #JustBeingHonest