tryingtothink http://tryingtothink.com wait for it... Mon, 16 Jun 2008 17:25:44 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 en Moving to Linode http://tryingtothink.com/2008/01/30/moving-to-linode/ http://tryingtothink.com/2008/01/30/moving-to-linode/#comments Wed, 30 Jan 2008 23:30:35 +0000 Matt http://tryingtothink.com/2008/01/30/moving-to-linode/ I’ve recently switched this site’s hosting from Dreamhost to Linode. I’ve always wanted to manage my own server, but until this point I’ve been either too lazy or too busy to learn. I looked for VPS solutions for a while, but I never found any that I liked or that I could afford; until I found Linode. My first encounter with Linode was through the Rails Rumble Competition I was in. After seeing what they had to offer, I couldn’t hold out any longer.

I’m now a server administrator of sorts.

For $20/month I have a VPS w/ 360MiB of RAM and 10 gigs of space. Not bad! Within the first hour or so, I had Debian loaded and running lighttpd with PHP. I later found out I messed everything up and that my heart longed for Apache, so I started over. Within a few days I had setup Apache2+PHP+FastCGI+SuExec, MySQL, Subversion, Postfix/Courier and FTP and found time to move all of my sites to the new server. Whew!

For those looking for help with Linode setup, here’s a list of guides I used to setup my server:

If you’re looking for a good VPS, I suggest taking a look at Linode. So far, I’m loving the move (and no, I’m not being paid to say this).

]]> http://tryingtothink.com/2008/01/30/moving-to-linode/feed/ Rails Rumble 2007 - gigasaur.us http://tryingtothink.com/2007/09/10/rails-rumble-2007-gigasaurus/ http://tryingtothink.com/2007/09/10/rails-rumble-2007-gigasaurus/#comments Mon, 10 Sep 2007 18:49:06 +0000 Matt http://tryingtothink.com/2007/09/10/rails-rumble-2007-gigasaurus/ Tristan and I competed in the Rails Rumble this past weekend (Sept. 8th - 9th). After 48 continuous hours of coding and committing, we ended up with Gigasaurus, a band and venue gig management application.

All applications from the competition will be judged by the public, and voting opens this Wednesday, Sept. 12th. We’d love for you to sign up to vote and to check out our application.

After the competition is over, we’ll be publicly releasing the application at http://gigasaur.us, and because of the nature of the competition, any profiles or data created during the voting period will be deleted before the site is officially launched.

Be sure to vote for us this week if you are able!

Our official voting site will be http://vote.railsrumble.com/teams/gigasaurus/visit. Our team profile can be viewed at http://vote.railsrumble.com/teams/112.

All entries to the competition can be found at http://vote.railsrumble.com/teams/

]]> http://tryingtothink.com/2007/09/10/rails-rumble-2007-gigasaurus/feed/ New Job http://tryingtothink.com/2007/08/07/new-job/ http://tryingtothink.com/2007/08/07/new-job/#comments Tue, 07 Aug 2007 22:39:22 +0000 Matt http://tryingtothink.com/2007/08/07/new-job/ I’ve recently accepted a position at the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality. I’ll be dealing in web development, web service development and all-around web-foolery. Hopefully, my experience with the redesign of my former employer’s, The Louisiana Department of Revenue, website will help me here at DEQ. LDR’s website was my first major site developed using ASP.net (I’m usually found in the PHP and Ruby on Rails worlds) and I’m very proud of the outcome.

Here’s to a new adventure and to not burning out within the first two weeks!

]]> http://tryingtothink.com/2007/08/07/new-job/feed/ Combining iCals http://tryingtothink.com/2007/08/02/combining-icals/ http://tryingtothink.com/2007/08/02/combining-icals/#comments Thu, 02 Aug 2007 15:41:48 +0000 Matt http://tryingtothink.com/2007/08/02/combining-icals/ I have two separate calendars within Google Calendar that I use to keep track of things. One is for the band, which is shared amongst the members, and the other is my personal calendar. I use Netvibes as my homepage and wanted to have both calendars displayed within one calendar widget.

The Netvibes calendar widget supports iCal, which is the preferred export format for Google Calendar, so I set out to make a script to combine the two (or more) iCals into one.

The script is rudimentary and no attempt at caching was made. I just needed something quick and dirty to solve the problem. This script is a modified version of the final script, which uses a made up token and public iCal links instead of my own:

Usage

  1. Download the script, saving as ical.php
  2. Change the key and/or calendar name to something meaningful
  3. Link to the file on your server appending your key: ical.php?key=[yourkey]

Download ical.php source

]]> http://tryingtothink.com/2007/08/02/combining-icals/feed/ Inaugural Post http://tryingtothink.com/2007/07/09/inaugural-post/ http://tryingtothink.com/2007/07/09/inaugural-post/#comments Mon, 09 Jul 2007 22:53:37 +0000 Matt http://tryingtothink.com/2007/07/09/inaugural-post/ I’ve finally come around to put something here other than a comment box. Go me. This will serve as my dumping ground for ideas, code, and other writing as well as links from around the web and otherwise. More to come later as I set this up.

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