• The Weekend Past and Next

    Posted on by suguay

    This weekend that just passed turned out to be pretty successful. Coming off a week of a relentless tropical storm meant that the weekend could have been pretty much a waste.

    I expected to spend my weekend ‘recovering’ from the stress of the week. I even came home Friday and tried to take a nap. Try as I might, I couldn’t get good and asleep. I finally gave up. I got up and paid some bills and then headed out to the computer store. My plan was to go to the computer store then to the pizza place and then the grocery store and home for pizza and an adult beverage.

    The trip to the computer store was to see about getting

    a graphics card that would enable me to get back onto an online game I had played. It’s really silly. I have been quite happy not playing in the game. I get a lot more done when I don’t, and I find that my capacity for thought and creativity are more readily available. Still, it’s a game that I had put some money into and I had resources that I wanted to at least play out. I didn’t want to loose them. So off to the computer store I went. Sure enough for $65 I was able to get a graphics card that I was assured should be powerful enough to get me back in the game. Success.

    Armed with my card I got pizza and drinks and home to eat first and install. I was able to get the card installed and my computer agreed to play nice with it. This is important because I had a card that I tried and my computer would not play nice with it at all. Once I got the card installed and the drivers I tried the game, even before securing the card and closing up the case. I tried the game. It still says the card isn’t right. I tried it anyway. I was able to log in and go about using up my resources. Yippy! Success!

    So Saturday I decided it was time to try to put XAMPP for Linux on my Ubuntu machine and also Joomla. So after updating Ubuntu, I downloaded both sets of software and set about figuring out how to get them installed. Just a bit of information for you on this. I’m not a Linux pro. I’m new to the software. I have a book, I have just barely cracked. So I get to learn a few things about Linux and Unbuntu. I had to figure out how to use a terminal window. I had to figure out how to copy things into a folder that root was the owner of, I had to figure out how to delete some things as well, using terminal. What I learned about Ubuntu that was and is the most impactful is that the root account is locked and though I installed the software, I don’t have the ability to log in as root. So I get to learn the way around it.

    After some typing and not getting anywhere I decided I’d use the websites for the products and hope that theses open source programs were going to be as user friendly for support as many of us like to believe they are. They were. I was able to find the information I needed so that I could do what I wanted to do. I got both programs installed and running and could log into each. Success.

    I still need to figure out one thing on the Ubuntu machine with regards to permissions and such. I decided that that could wait for another weekend.

    In the mean time, my Mother had called regarding trouble with her wireless access. While she would have been willing for me to walk her through trying to fix the problem, for me it was just easier to go over and fix it for her if I could. Basically, she wasn’t able to get on. She was seeing a generic network that was really strong. So it turned out that with the power spikes and failures from the storm the router reset itself. I was able to get it set back up for her and now she’s able to get back online. Success.

    With a long weekend coming up I’m hoping to have a few more successes. I might tackle that permissions problem. Or maybe I’ll finish a book or two. After two trips to the bookstore in the last two weeks, I have a few books for reading. I’m reading science stuff right now and about Sweden. I’m hoping I am not spending the weekend preparing for a hurricane. Yep. We got another one out there. According to Jimmy Buffett there’s just not ‘reasonin with hurricane season’. I’m tending to agree with him on that one.

    Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.


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  • Bookstores are great places

    Posted on by suguay

    I love bookstores. I love libraries. I love them both because they have books with so much information and interesting stuff and possibilities. The additional cool thing about libraries is that you can borrow the book to read usually for free. The cool thing about bookstores is that you can own the book and then it doesn’t matter how long it takes you to read it.

    I spend a lot of money in bookstores. For that matter so do my parents. My sister I think spends a lot of time at the library. She had two kids. It’s easier and less expensive to go to a library than to a bookstore.

    It’s interesting, as a kid I remember spending

    a lot of time in libraries. We went regularly to the city library. We went for movie night and we went just because it was the night to go to the library. I remember checking out books to read. I read short stories. I liked the mythology type stories and Encyclopedia Brown. I read most of those. I even read a large number of Nancy Drew.

     When I was a kid my parents went to college in the evening. Instead of leaving us at home with a sitter they took us a long and we spent their class time in the library. I’m certain I read books there, or at least looked through them. I think we usually took our own books and homework.

    For as much time as I remember spending in the library as a kid, I don’t remember much time spent in bookstores. I’m not sure we had the type of mega-bookstores then that we have now. I don’t remember the first book I purchased. I remember buying books at garage sales. I had cheap paperbacks from the Pick-n-Save. I even remember going to used bookstores.

    When I was a teenager we had a friend that owned a bookstore and then she was closing or selling and in all that we ended up with a lot of books. At that point is when I really remember my family’s collection of books starting to grow. It’s gotten worse. We’ve all moved since then. My parents, well, my father mitigates his collection by periodically culling and taking them to a paperback book exchange and then getting more there. My mother, periodically goes through what she has and gets rid of stuff. My sister and I get the phone call from my mother that is…”I’m getting rid of…Do you want it? If not it’s going out the door.” Sometimes it’s something I want sometimes it’s something my sister wants. A lot of times it’s something we neither one want.

    If I want to read sci-fi, I can pretty much go and browse my father’s shelves for something interesting to read. I’ve read a lot of them though. If I want pot-luck, well mother’s good for that.

    My collection continues to grow. I have sci-fi and a lot of computer books, there’s some physics mixed in there and stuff on ancient civilizations. Not a lot of what my boss at work calls pleasure reading. Then again, I find reading physics, and Shakespeare, computer books and such pleasurable. I check my bubblegum reading out from the library. I’ve read almost all of the ‘Cat Who…’ series. I like it. I can sit down and read one in an afternoon.

    I just got back from the bookstore today. I walked out with 7 books. And I need one more, they just didn’t have it. In the past week to two weeks I’ve purchased 10 books. I still have a few to read from previous purchases.

    I don’t have room on my bookshelves right now to add books. I’ve even got some shelve stacked double. I’m going to have to get another bookshelf soon. I was contemplating this problem recently, trying to figure out where I’m going to put it. I finally decided it can go in front of the bathroom. There’s a wall there facing the door. It should be perfect. It’s also right next to the office so it’s still easy access.

    Books are such great things. They teach you stuff, they take you places, they sometimes just entertain. You can read about so many things.

     

    Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.


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  • A Little Update on Fay

    Posted on by suguay

    Here’s a little update on Fay, the tropical storm.

    After she crossed the peninsula of Florida at about her mid section cutting the state in half from south west to north east, she got just off shore and sat

    for hours and didn’t move. It must have been more than 12 hours she sat there. When she finally started moving it was at 2 miles an hour. Ugh! She moved for about 2 hours and STOPPED! again. At that point I was thinking that someone should get out and give her a push.

    The reason it was so important to get this storm going had to do with her direction. After she crossed the state once, she decided she was going to come back across. Yeah. She went north of where she had been though not by much which meant those of us that got rain and wind with the first pass got it again as she went back across. The trip back seemed worse too.

    So she finally picked up speed and little more and got far enough away that my area is seeing some sunshine and the winds have died down. The catch to this all is that it is Florida and it is August all that water has brought plenty of steam to go with our sea breezes and we still have these massive afternoon thunder storms. It may be a while before we dry out.

    I guess the up side to it is that I think it took care of our drought situation. Not that we needed that resolved all at once. Then again, be careful what you ask for. Sometime Mother Nature is inclined to give it to you.

    Cheers

    Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.


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  • My Adventure Installing Joomla! on Ubuntu

    Posted on by Somebody

    I finally took the time to download and install Joomla! 1.5.6 on my Linux machine. It turned out to be something of an adventure though not that tough. My challenges had more to do with the fact that I am running Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) and the way it handles the root account and the access my account doesn’t have to certain folders.

    With regards to Joomla! it was very easy to download and small by comparison to many other software products. Those of you accustomed to the commercial products will understand. Joomla! downloads as a zip file and thus needs unzipping. This was easy.

    It has an installation folder and in the root of the Joomla folder is an installation or install .php file. To get that to run you will need a webhost running on your system. I chose xampp for linux which was known as lampp. I’ll get to that in another article. I’ve used xampp on a pc and so am familiar with it that’s why I chose it. Once the webhost is running and you have Joomla unzipped it becomes a bit of a challenge to get the installation php file to run. This seems to be a little quirk of xampp. So you put it in the right place open your web browser and go to the joomla folder on the localhost and there you are ready to follow the installation prompts.

    Before you do that, you might want to create a database in MySQL and an account for Joomla! to use. It’s going to need it as part of the install. Make sure to have the name of the database and the username and all handy as you go through the Joomla! install. You will need it. So then you just follow the prompts. Fill in the info it needs and you are all set.

    Now to a little issue that came up as a result of the way Ubuntu handles the root account and my account’s permissions. At the end of the install the installation process creates a configuration.php file well because my account doesn’t have permissions to do anything other than view and navigate the folders where xampp and Joomla! are installed, the installation was unable to write the file.

    Fortunately the nice development people with Joomla! anticipated something like this and the provide the information in a window that you can copy and past into a text document and place it where it needs to go. All the instructions are there. If you have managed to get this far in the process you already know how to work around the root issue and so it won’t be a challenge.

    I was successful in getting the site up and running and was able to log in as the admin and even create a user. This tells me that I got the database info right. I tried to install a different template and ran into the same problem regarding the root account and my account on Ubuntu. 

    Even with the need to learn how to use the terminal and the commands for copying and learning the pathing for Ubuntu and dealing with the root issue, even with all that the install turned out to be fairly easy. My issue were not Joomla! related they were OS related. This is such a cool app. My next step is to fix my write issues with the particular folder and add templates and modules and extensions and the like and just see what all I can do with it.

    Happy Joomla!ing

     

    Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.


    📂This entry was posted in Software Used - Joomla!

  • The Joys of Weather Events

    Posted on by suguay

    Yes today I would like to discuss the joys of weather events. Let’s face it I’m being sarcastic. I live in the subtropics, we are subject to tornadoes, hurricanes, heat waves, straight line winds, and the occasional cold front.

    I spent just enough time during my impressionable years living in

    tornado alley in the United States. I remember being told to grab the bag and get in the car, find Mom’s keys and ask later and off we would go to the basement of the school. I think it was the middle school, it could have been a high school. I remember maps of the states with the counties marked out so I would know where the warnings and watches were and if they were going to be close by. I remembers standing on the front porch watching the weather roll in. Later when for some reason I moved back to the area after living with earthquakes, I remember standing at the end of the driveway and looking out on the horizon at not one, or two, but three funnels coming down out of the sky and yet back behind me there was hardly a cloud. I don’t really like tornadoes.

    Because of this discomfort, dislike, and basic dread of tornadoes, I developed the ability, to wake up when it got just a bit odd outside. I couldn’t sleep. I would get up and go turn on the tv and see if there were weather notices. If someone else was up watching I could go back to bed and I would be fine. If I was the only one awake I would stay up. Usually, it wouldn’t be long before a parent or grandparent was up checking on things.

    I’ve discussed this with my Grandfather in recent years. He’s never been able to sleep through those types of storms either. He’s lived most his life in tornado alley.

    For a while I lived in Southern California. Tornadoes are rare there. Oddly enough though, my family was living there when they had one of those rare tornadoes up near L.A.. I don’t remember there being tornadoes in the Seattle area. That was a nice break. Then we moved to Florida. Hurricanes, Tornadoes, Alligators and Palmetto Bugs.

    I was living in Florida when Andrew came through. I got chased out of the Keys by it. A friend and I had a trip planned and when we left the Central Florida area Andrew was projected to hit the east coast about even with where we were. Going south seemed like a good option. We went down on Friday and then went site seeing on Saturday. By the time we were heading back to our hotel it had changed course and they were evacuating us. We left. The adventure of evacuating the Keys is a whole other story.

    It was years before I had to face another hurricane. It was Mitch. I was working at a theme park, it was going to be big and ugly when it got to us. Fortunately it changed direction at the last minute and stayed off shore. And so I blissfully wandered on through life until 2004.

    That summer pretty much sealed it for me. I don’t like hurricanes, or strong tropical storms for that matter. I had really been through a hurricane, if you think about it. I was enthusiastic about it. Ok, I admit, it was kind of odd to be excited about a hurricane. Never again. June 1 only brings me dread, and many sleepless nights until December 1.

    Yes, Charley was one for the history books. That think came a shore with a vengeance. It was also interesting in that it changed course right around the lunch hour. This hurricane that looked like it was going to miss us was suddenly coming right at us. Through a series of circumstances, I was still working at that theme park by the way, I ended up riding it out alone, well with my birds. I lived about 6 minutes from the airport, drive to pick up. I have heard that they clocked 110 mile and hour winds at the airport. I know what that’s like.

    I got really lucky with Charley. The damage to the house was minimal, there was just the fence that was bad and the poor lime tree. Truthfully, I got really lucky that whole summer.

     And just a couple weeks later we turn around and have to face Francis. That one was moving so slow that it took 4 days to cross the state. Jigsaw puzzles are great things to have during those sort of times. We worked a couple. I didn’t have to ride this out alone fortunately. Though I do remember sitting working one of those puzzles and every time we would get a big gust I would think “make it stop!”. It was nerve racking.

    So after Francis came Ivan. It didn’t hit our area as a hurricane. First it beat the devil out of the Cayman Islands then it hit the panhandle hard. Knocked out part of a highway bridge. Ivan ran up the west coast hit the panhandle went across the south and back out into the Atlantic and turned around and hit us again as a tropical storm. Now someone has a sick sense of humor if you ask me.

    Ivan wasn’t the last one. We still had Jeanne to get through. She did some odd things. She came up the east coast and then sat out in the Atlantic just south east of the space coast and did loop-de-loops for a while before she decided to come ashore about where Francis did. At least she was fairly quick about it.

    I will admit, after that, I found a dislike for wind. Even when we were living in Nevada for a short time. That wind would come down across the mountains and  blow into the valley and I would just cringe.

    So now I’m back in Florida. My circumstances have changed quite a bit, and Mother Nature hasn’t. Fortunately we’ve got a great meteorologist at one of the tv stations and since he’s the one who first called Charley’s track, well, he’s my hero.

    The years since then haven’t been entirely storm free in this area. There was Ophelia and Wilma to be dealt with. I don’t remember what year that was.

    As I write this up, I sit and listen to the remnants of yet another storm. This one is Fay. She was just a tropical storm and yet, she’s done some odd things too. She actually got stronger while over land. Yep. They are already saying they will be studying this one a while in the off season. Not only that. She’s gone across the state from west to east and then she’s going to turn around and come back across again. The last picture I saw looked like it was going to be more north of us. Thankfully. I’ve had enough for this week.

    We have this idea here that we’re supposed to get 2 weeks in between storms. One week for clean up and then a week to prep for the next one. I really hope I don’t have to prep for another one. While I’ve made it through this one much better than some of the other ones I am at my limit. I know others have been through much worse with these things. They have lost it all and sometimes more. We all have our achilles heal of a sort. For now the weather is mine. It’s not that I’m really afraid of it, it’s more that I have a more than healthy respect for what Mother Nature can do and I just don’t think it’s a good idea to mess with Mother Nature. She usually wins.

    Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.


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