• Active Directory,  Articles and Books,  Business,  Consulting,  Network Infrastructure,  SQL,  Ubuntu,  Unix,  VMware,  Windows Server

    Getting Started with Amazon's EC2 Cloud

    May 1, 2009

    Yesterday I did a quick review of the various cloud offerings from Amazon. Previous to that I had done a review of using S3, the Amazon storage service, with Mac OS X, primarily through the lens of using S3 as a destination for Final Cut Server archives. Today I’m going to go ahead and look at using EC2 from Mac OS X. To get started, first download the EC2 tools from Amazon. Next, log into Amazon Web Services. If you don’t yet have a login you will obviously need to create one to proceed. Additionally, if you don’t yet have a private key you’ll need one of those too –…

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  • Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  SQL

    Moodle Security

    February 9, 2009

    Moodle is a popular Course Management Solution (CMS) that is typically deployed in a less-than-secure manner. This is an issue with any system, but in a number of schools it can cause some pretty serious problems given the penchant that students have to muck with things. In the broader technology certification world it can be an even bigger issue in that, well, we’re geeks… So a few tips on securing Moodle: Tie Moodle into Active Directory (from the Admin console, Users->Authentication->LDAP) or some other Directory Service. From the Admin console, go to Administration->Security and make sure all of these settings match your security plan. Automate security scanning.  For example, check…

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  • SQL,  Unix

    Viral Marketing

    June 10, 2008

    Is it possible that a client can build a Facebook app, deploy it and not tell anyone, yet get so much traffic on the app that we have to add a second server within 6 hours?  Yes.  Is it then possible to quickly prop up an Apache cluster, forklift the data in there, throw together a quick MySQL cluster and be off to the races within 4 more hours while the end users of the app are complaining?  Yes.  Why, because there’s money in it.  And where there’s money there’s will.  And where there’s will there’s a way!

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  • SQL

    Other Uses for Boolean

    October 18, 2007

    So there are actually 3 possible uses for Boolean variables in many cases.  The first two are the traditional True/False aspects.  The third though is null.  So for example, rock paper and scissors.  Rock can be true, paper can be false and scissors can be null.  Could help to cut way down on lookup times in SQL…

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  • SQL

    MySQL: Allow Incoming Access

    July 23, 2007

    Edit the user record in the mysql.user table, giving it access to connect to the mysql server from an external host by running the following command at the MySQL interface grant all privileges on *.* to ‘user’@’IPADDRESS’ identified by ‘password’ with GRANT OPTION; specify the user, IPADDRESS and password you’d like to use in that command and you’re good to go.

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  • sites,  Social Networking,  SQL,  WordPress

    Defining Web 2.0

    February 28, 2006

    I originally posted this at http://www.318.com/TechJournal Chances are, with all of the hubbub surrounding overnight success giants MySpace.com and Flickr, you’ve undoubtedly heard about the second coming of the internet, commonly referred to as “Web 2.0” . Bloggers are frequently commenting on “Wiki” this and “tagging” that. But what is this Web 2.0 phenomenon and how can it improve how we manage our lives and businesses in a digital world? While there may not be a simple answer to these questions, there are a few suppositions that can be made as to what Web 2.0 is shaping up to look like and how its changing the way we exchange information.…

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