Category: Personal

Details of my Windows/LAMP Environment

I posted something recently talking about how I am using my laptop as a test bed for various Web 2.0 ideas ( Experimenting with Web 2.0 on my laptop ). Several people have asked for more details on that environment.

Here is what I am running today:

Hardware: IBM T41 with 1GB of memory and a 30 GB harddrive

Software:

  • Windows XP Pro (SP1 plus selected elements of SP2 as determined by our IS
    shop)
  • Apache 2.0.53
  • MySQL 4.0.24
  • PHP 4.3.11
  • Active Perl 5.6.1.638
  • Python 2.3.5
    • mod_python 3.1.3
    • pywin32-204

I also have a variety of other libraries and utilities installed as part of larger applications I am using or experimenting with. Installing these in a Windows environment such as that above is generally pretty straightforward and well-described in the installation documentation I have used so far.

I configure my various Web 2.0 applications to use localhost as their host. Apache is configured to listen only to requests that are local. Recently I have begun to set up virtual hosts using Apache and entries in my hosts file (in windows\system32\drivers\etc) to map the virtual hosts to localhost.

I have had to learn a bit about how to configure Apache and tweak the configurations of the packages above. Most of that has involved backups that you trust and a willingness to read through installation documents and notes that

Experimenting with Web 2.0 on my laptop

Who knew I was so avant garde? As I understand Kottke's proposal, the
next step on the way to the WebOS is to run a web server on your
desktop so that you can get access to data on your local machine by way
of your browser and effectively erase the distinction between data out
on the web and data locally.

Back in 2001about when I started this blog, Scoble helped
me become a beta user of what shortly morphed into “Radio”. One thing
that attracted me to the product was that was precisely its
architecture. Browser access to an app that was a web server and data
store running locally. I'm writing this post in that environment right
now as I ride the train home from work. Since I've been living and
working off laptops and in various modes of mass transit since the
early 1990s this is an essential requirement. Think clients work. So
did Lotus Notes. But the architecture Dave Winer
dreamed up did too, although it's not always intuitively obvious,
especially to non-technical users. Watching the problems that many
users encountered (and still encounter) with Radio should be
instructive to anyone who wants to follow this path. At least in
today's environment, it pays to understand where your data is and how
it flows from place to place. Maybe someday it won't, but we aren't
there yet.

Since then, I've pursued a strategy of using open source tools to
replicate Winer's architecture for much of my routine knowledge work
efforts. I've put together a LAMP environment on my laptop running
Apache, MySQL, PHP, and Python. I can, and do, run a variety of open
source applications on top of this environment. I run WordPress,
several wikis, dotProject, trac, textpattern,
and others all locally.
Some of these are tools and products I am evaluating. More importantly
they host the primary tools I use for much of my knowledge work and
form the nucleus of my effort to explore and understand personal knowledge management.

For now, this is a mix of learning experiment and developing new
habits. One thing that it gives me is a degree of platform independence
coupled with an ability to work both connected and disconnected. For
now, the technology is a bit of a lash-up, but it allows me to explore
the behavioral issues. And those are what will ultimately drive
adoption of the technologies as they mature.

Jason Kottke has a lengthy and detailed proposal
for the platform builders to realize that the Web is the ultimate
platform, and to get on with building for that, rather than just for
their own private silos. When that's done, he says we'll have Web 3.0

Hurricane Katrina: Blog for Relief Day – September 1

We're sending donations to the Red Cross as we did earlier this year
for the tsunami in Asia. Courtesy of Rex's suggestion, I am also
putting a banner link to the Red Cross over to the right for those who
would like to contribute that way.

Instapundit has an excellent list of places you can contribute. If you've got a roof over your head, open your wallet.

Where to get Red Cross donation banners. Where to get Red Cross donation banners:here. The Red Cross is in need of folks like you who can provide space on your weblog.
You can find them

(via: PaidContent.org) [rexblog: Rex Hammock's Weblog]

[Technorati flood aid and hurricane katrina ]

From July 4, 1776 to Governmentium

A treat from Betsy Devine – somehow an appropriate counterbalance to today’s celebrations. Makes you wonder what the Founding Fathers (and Mothers for that matter) would make of what has transpired over the last 229 years.

Science ha-ha from my mailbox: Governmentium (Gv). Berkeley just announced the discovery of the heaviest element yet known to science. The new element has been named “Governmentium”.

Governmentium has one neutron, 12 assistant neutrons, 75 deputy neutrons, and 224 assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons, which are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.

When catalyzed with money, Governmentium becomes Administratium, an element which radiates just as much energy, since it has half as many peons, but twice as many morons.

Since Governmentium has no electrons, it is inert. It can be detected, however, as it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A reaction that normally takes one minute or less will require a week or more if contaminated by any Governmentium.

The half-life of Governmentium is 4 years. It does not, however, decay, but instead undergoes a reorganization in which a portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutron exchange places. In fact, Governmentium’s mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganization will cause more morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes. The characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists to believe that Governmentium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration.

This hypothetical quantity is called “Critical Morass”.

Thanks for the funny email to Damian!

[Betsy Devine: Funny Ha-Ha or Funny Peculiar?]

BBC Gives Away Beethoven

What a wonderful gift from the BBC. I listened to the 3rd and 4th symphonies this afternoon on my flight to San Francisco. Looking forward to downloading the remaining symphonies when they are available.

BBC Gives Away Beethoven. The BBC rocks. Here they are giving away MP3s of all nine of Beethoven’s symphonies here for the week after they are broadcast. All the symphonies are performed by BBC Philharmonic, conducted by Gianandrea Noseda. Amazing stuff. Talk about public… [loose wire]

Thanks Dave!

thanksdave4.jpg

I’ll get this moved over to the margin shortly, but I wanted to make sure it got up here quickly. I’ve been depending on Dave’s innovations since the first version of ThinkTank shipped in the early 1980s. From outlining to blogs to RSS, the central concepts and tools in my day-to-day knowledge work all flow from the software innovations he has made happen.

I haven’t made a scientiifc study of the problem, but I’m pretty sure that few, if any, of the tools I use on a daily basis were developed and fielded by his critics.

Thanks Dave, thanks Richard.

Thanks Dave! and also thanks Richard:

Thanks-Richard.jpg

From Leave It Behind > Brian Bailey: Thanks Dave!.:

QUOTE

You’ll find a new addition to my site today – this simple, little badge:

thanksdave4.jpg

The badge is a link to Scripting News, the weblog home of Dave Winer. If you hover over the image on the site, you should see the following text:

My thanks to Dave Winer for his visionary role in the development of weblogs, RSS, podcasting, SOAP, XML-RPC, OPML, and outliners.

UNQUOTE

[Roland Tanglao’s Weblog]