Archives for August, 2004

I’m Home!

Posted on August 29th, 2004 @ 11:42 PM EST

Mount St. Helens

Yesterday evening I returned home from my trip to Washington State. I had a wonderful time and enjoyed spending time with my parents and sister who I only get to see a few times per year. The forecast called for rain every day we were there, but we got lucky and it only rained on two of the days.

We left Baltimore around 5:30 PM EST on Friday and arrived in Seattle at 1:00 AM EST. After a short night’s rest, we drove down to Mount St. Helens. I was amazed to see that even though the volcano had erupted over 24 years ago, it looked as though it happened just a few months ago. On the way up to the lava dome, we drove up many mountains that had nothing but trees (around two - three feet in diameter) which had been knocked over or snapped in half as a result of the 450 MPH blast. In many areas there was very little vegetation growing and the ground was extremely barren.

After visiting Mount St. Helens, we went to Mount Rainier, which is the highest mountain in the United States and is 14,410 feet in elevation. We drove up to Paradise, which is the highest point that you can drive to and is roughly 5,400 feet in elevation. Along the way we passed many waterfalls that cascade over lava flows, including one that was 168 feet high.

The following day we drove up to Port Townsend, a Victorian Seaport on the Olympic Peninsula, and went to Fort Worden. The fort was established in 1902 and served as the first line of defense to guard Puget Sound cities and the naval shipyard at Bremerton. It was also the fort that was used in the movie An Officer and a Gentleman which starred Richard Gere and Debra Winger. The navy closed down the fort in 1965 since coastal artillery forts were no longer necessary.

Later that day we went to Hurricane Ridge, which is located in the Olympic National Park, just south of Port Angeles. We parked at the Visitor Center then walked to the end of the mile long trail at the top of the mountain. Here we saw an incredible view of Port Angeles with the Strait of Juan de Fuca in the background.

The next day we took a ferry across the Strait of Juan de Fuca over to Victoria, Canada, the capital of British Columbia. After getting off the ferry, we got on a double-decker bus that took us to Butchart Gardens. The gardens were 16 miles from where our ferry docked so our driver gave us a guided tour of the city. The bus had been used in England in the 1970’s and to make the tour even better, our driver was originally from Nottingham, England so he had a strong British accent. After visiting the Butchart Gardens, we went to Crystal Gardens which had a large variety of tropical animals and plants.

The day after we got back from Victoria, we drove out to Rialto Beach, which is located on the Pacific Ocean and is one of the most popular beaches on the Olympic Peninsula. I thought the sea stacks (steep pillars of rock with trees) that were out in the ocean were interesting since I’m used to seeing nothing but flat land and sandy beaches here along the Carolina coast. We then drove down to the Hoh Rain Forest, which averages around 150 inches of rain per year and is the only temperate rain forest in the United States. It was pouring down rain when we got there, which was quite appropriate for a rain forest. We ended up taking the Hall of Mosses trail which just under a mile long. It was neat to see all of the moss that was on the trees. Many of the trees were close to 1,000 year old Sitka spruce trees and were over 200 feet high and 12 feet in diameter.

We spent the last full day of our trip in Seattle. After getting off the ferry from Bremerton, we went to the Redhook Brewing Company in Woodinville, which is about 20 miles east of Seattle. I was really excited about visiting the brewery since they make one of my favorite beers that I regularly drink, Redhook India Pale Ale. This was the largest microbrewery that I had ever visited. It was modern, beautiful, and located in a nice rural area. My Dad and I went on the hour long tour of the brewery and we tried all of their beers and saw where the beer is mixed, brewed, and bottled. After we left the brewery, we went to Pike Place Market. The variety of fish and vegetables was out of this world. Just about all of the vegetables and fruit that I saw were perfect. There were many vendors selling flowers for around $4 which would have easily been around $25 back home. We walked around the Waterfront for a while then headed to Pyramid Alehouse which is located next to where the Mariners and Seahawks play. This is another beer that I frequently drink and when I looked at their beer menu, I was surprised to see so many different beers that I thought I would like since many of them are not available where I live. I usually see three or four different beers that I like at a microbrewery, but I saw nine that I liked at Pyramid so it was tough to pick which ones to order. Their Apricot Ale, which is one that I drink a lot at home tasted much better on draft and had a much stronger apricot taste than it does when it’s from a bottle.

I ended up taking 270 digital photos and 2 rolls of film. It was cloudy the entire time we were in Washington, but we were fortunate to have sunny skies in Victoria, Canada. Because of the gray skies, it wasn’t ideal for taking pictures on most of the trip. I still have to go through the photos and resize, retouch, and crop the images, but I will post them to the site within the next few days.

One thing that I am really going to miss is Alaskan Amber, my new favorite microbrew. It’s available on tap at just about all of the restaurants or bars in Northwest Washington and I ordered whenever it was available. I could always have it shipped to me, but unfortunately their bottled beer doesn’t taste anywhere near as good as when it’s from a tap.

My favorite part of the trip was definitely Mount St. Helens. It was surreal to see the devastation of a natural phenomenon that was equivalent to 1500 atomic bombs going off simultaneously.

Link to this entry • Posted in Beer, Travel •

Off to Seattle

Posted on August 19th, 2004 @ 4:59 PM EST

In a few hours I’ll be flying up to Maryland to meet up with my parents and sister. Tomorrow, we’ll all be getting onto a plane bound for Seattle for a seven-day trip. I’ve never been to Seattle before and have been wanting to go for quite some time.

While there, we’re planning on taking a ferry across the Strait of Juan de Fuca and going to Victoria, Canada. Also planned is a trip to the Pacific Ocean, Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helens, Seattle Waterfront, Pike Place Market, and the part that I’m especially looking forward to, the microbreweries!

I am planning on taking lots of pictures and will post them to the photographs section after I return home.

Link to this entry • Posted in Travel •

iChatStatusPublisher

Posted on August 9th, 2004 @ 11:15 PM EST

Description

iChatStatusPublisher is a stay-open script application that enables you to make your site more interactive by displaying your current iChat status. When you’re available, it will display a hyperlink that your visitors can click on to send you an instant message.

Requirements

  • Mac OS X 10.1 or higher
  • iChat AV

Installation

  1. Download the script.
  2. Create a new folder named “iChat” in your user’s Library folder (/Users/USERNAME/Library/iChat).
  3. Open the Script Editor which is located in the AppleScript directory inside your system’s Applications folder (/Applications/AppleScript/Script Editor).
  4. Copy and paste AppleScript code into the top box of the Script Editor.
  5. Edit the config variables at the top of the script and enter the appropriate information. I recommend using the SCP option as it is a more secure method of transfering files. If your web host does not support connections via SSH then you’ll need to use FTP. In this case I recommend creating an additional FTP account that just has access to a sub-folder on your account to help minimize security risks.
  6. Click “File” then “Save As…” and a dialog box will appear (see below).
    Dialog Box
  7. Save the file as “iChatStatusPublisher” and save it to your system’s Applications folder.
  8. Select “Application” from the File Format drop-down menu.
  9. Check the option to “Stay Open”. This will keep the script running in the background so it can communicate with iChat.
  10. Go to your Applications folder and double click on the icon for “iChatStatusPublisher” to run the script. You may also want to create an alias to the script and save it to your Desktop.
  11. Copy the PHP code and paste it where you would like the iChat status to appear on your webpage. This file must be saved as a .php file. (If your page is currently saved as an .htm or .html file, please see the instructions below on how to get it working on your page.)
  12. Edit the config variables at the top of the script and enter the appropriate information.

You should now be up and running! If you have any questions or problems, feel free to send me an email or post a comment. Feedback is greatly appreciated!

SCP Transfers

SCP (Secure Copy) is an alternative to using FTP and is a more secure protocol. Much like SSH, it uses secure shell encryption to protect your information in transit. If you would like to transfer the data to your webserver using SCP then follow the instructions listed below. If you’re not sure if support for SCP (SSH) is available to you, you’ll need to check with your web host to see if they support this feature. In order to transfer files via SCP, you’ll need to generate an SSH public/private key pair. These instructions assume that you don’t have any other keys present on your web server.

  1. Open Terminal on your local computer and start a new shell session from the File menu.
  2. Type “ssh-keygen -d”.
  3. After entering the command, press the enter key three times.
  4. Your public and private keys are now saved to “~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub” and “~/.ssh/id_dsa”.
  5. Copy the key to your webserver by typing “scp ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub yourdomain.com:.ssh/authorized_keys2”.
  6. Enter the password for your account on the webserver when prompted then press the enter key.
  7. Test the SSH key by typing “ssh yourdomain.com”. It should log you in without a password. If not, check to make sure you typed everything in correctly.
  8. If you successfully connected to your account then you should be all ready to start uploading your iChat status file to your webserver.

If Your Pages End in .html

If your pages end in .html there are two different methods that you can follow to get iChatStatusPublisher to work on your site. I recommend the first one even though the second method is easier and doesn’t require you to rename all of your pages. The second method can slow your server down a bit because PHP will have to parse your HTML when it may not need to. These instructions will only work if your website is hosted on a UNIX server.

Rename Your Pages to .php

  1. Rename your pages from .html to .php.
  2. Upload your .php files to your server and delete the .html files which will no longer be used.
  3. Paste the PHP code below where you would like your iChat status to appear in your pages and be sure to change the config variables.
  4. Upload your pages to your web server and you should now be able to view your iChat status.
  5. Now create a new file and name it “.htaccess” without the quotes.
  6. Copy and paste the four lines of code below into the file.
  7. Upload the file to your root web directory (e.g. public_html). This will make it so any links that currently point to your .html pages will be redirected to the new .php pages.
# Redirect any links that point to .html extensions to .php
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.+).html$ $1.php [L]

Use PHP In Your .html Pages

  1. Create a new file and name it “.htaccess” without the quotes.
  2. Copy and paste the line of code below into the file.
  3. Upload the file to your root web directory (e.g. public_html).
  4. Your .html pages will now be parsed as PHP.
  5. Paste the PHP code below where you would like your iChat status to appear in your pages and be sure to change the config variables.
  6. Upload your pages to your web server and you should now be able to view iChat status.
AddType application/x-httpd-php .htm .html

Version History

v1.2 (August 11, 2004)

  • Added support for transfers via SCP.

v1.1 (August 9, 2004)

  • Initial release.

Disclaimer

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED AS-IS, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ANY DAMAGES RESULTING FROM THE USE OR MISUSE OF THIS SOFTWARE.

THIS SOFTWARE IS COPYRIGHT © 2004 JEFF MILLER. YOU MAY USE AND/OR DISTRIBUTE THE SOFTWARE WITHOUT RESTRICTION.

Download

iChatStatusPublisher_1.2.sit
File Size: 4.42 KBs
Downloads: 2389

Link to this entry • Posted in Scripts, Web Development • Comments (12)

Free iPod!

Posted on August 2nd, 2004 @ 4:33 PM EST

Get a free iPod!

Want a free iPod? All you have to do is go to freeiPods.com and enter your email address then complete one of the nine offers they have. You’ll then need to refer five friends who do the same thing and an iPod of your choice will be mailed to you within a few weeks. I first thought this was a gimmick but I’ve heard of people online who have already received theirs so it’s the real deal! If you’re feeling skeptical or think it’s just another pyramid scheme, check out Engadget, Wired News’ article Making Free iPods Pay Off, or Forever Geek.

I recommend the eBay offer which requires you to open a new account and place a bid on any item on their website. You don’t have to enter any credit card information when signing up and you also don’t have to win the auction, you just need to place a bid. If you find an item that has just been posted with a low starting price, you’ll most likely be outbid before the auction is over.

Here’s a link that contains my referral code: Free iPod!

Update (August 10th, 2004)

They are no longer offering the eBay offer and it will not return. I recommend signing up for the RealRhapsody or AOL 9.0 with MusicNet offer.

Update (August 15th, 2004)

I currently have four referrals and only have one more to go! The Ancestry.com offer is back. The good thing about this is you get instant credit.

Update (October 18th, 2004)

I received my iPod today! See this post if you’d like to see pics.

Link to this entry • Posted in Internet •