Geeky Yet Waterproof

I did the Monster Cookie today. If you don’t remember from last year, it’s a 62 mile bike ride where they hand out MONSTER COOKIES at the end. (::) I finished it in 3 hours and 33 minutes, not including breaks.



I hope we don’t do kicking at swim practice tomorrow…

Last week Panic came out with a new app called Coda, a one-window web development tool. It basically eliminates the need to have seven different windows open just to build a website. It has a built-in text editor, terminal, web browser, FTP client (of course), and graphic CSS editor. It also has a complete code reference book, which is crazy.



When I first saw this, I thought “nah, ain’t nothing that can compete with Transmit, because it’s made by Panic”. Then I realized that this is also by Panic, and it’s Transmit on steroids.



I downloaded the demo and have been using for a few days, and it’s really cool. It’s so nice not having all these different windows open at the same time. Even though it costs $69, I might actually buy the full version this time, instead of reusing the demo until the end of time just trying it out.



I don’t have time to post a full review, but you can read more about it on the website.

If you haven’t heard of 1Passwd, it’s a severely cool password manager and automatic form filler for Mac. It also has the ability to generate unbreakable passwords.

And it installs a button in your browser (be it Safari, DEVONagent, or anything in between), so you can access its features in two clicks.

If you’re like me, you have an account on 20 different forums. If you use the same password for each account, then if someone guesses your password for one account, they know your password for all of them. But if you had used 1Passwd, each account would have its own 50-character password that could very well be an escapee from straight out of your worst computer nightmare.

And you’ll never need to know your passwords, because they’re all stored.



Now, let’s say you desperately need free tech support, because something horrible happened to your computer. You find a forum that looks like they just might be able to help you, but you need to register. You’re flustered, frustrated, and feeling like if you fill out one more form you just might have to kill somebody.

Ah, but you’re spared the need to fill out that blasted form. With 1Passwd at your command, you’ll have all 10 desolate fields of that form (including the password) filled out in two clicks.



Agile Web Solutions, the makers of 1Passwd, just recently introduced a new licensing system. Gone are the days of typing in a 25-digit number, realizing you typed it wrong, and retyping it (well, okay, Microsoft hasn’t yet emerged from those Dark Ages). With 1Passwd, they email you a “license card” — an image that looks like a credit card, but with your serial number encoded in it, so all you have to do is drag it into 1Passwd.







There’s even a version of 1Passwd for Palm OS, so you can access all your passwords from your PDA.



1Passwd is a very user-friendly app, worthy of a coveted spot in your dock (but it doesn’t need to be in your dock, because all its features are accessible from right inside your browser :D). The development is also very much alive; they release an update probably at least once a month. I suggest you go check it out.

I did the Albany triathlon today. It was a 750m swim, 20k bike, and 5k run. And guess what my number was?







My time was 1:13:55. I improved about five minutes from last year, even though I did an extra length in the pool. I think I took 2nd in my age group, but we don’t have the official results yet.



Here’s my finish in the running. I’m the one who wins.






And yes, I was really that dead.

After a long absence of fighting off errors, bad modems, annoying port numbers, and demonicly stupid tech support, I have returned to to the Blogosphere.



And this time, my blog is running on a Titanium PowerBook G4 upstairs.



It all started a few weeks ago when I noticed my blog was taking longer and longer to load, and sometimes not loading at all. Finally, it completely and utterly died. So I hastened over to Google, a good friend in such situations.



*pause*



If you can’t stand gory geek-speak, I’ve provided a more mild ending for you. (But the whole saga is in The Geeky Ending, if you can get through it. :D) Also notice that my blog address is now http://eamon.is-a-geek.com (the reason is explained in The Geeky Ending), but if you’re too lazy to update your bookmarks, the old address will still redirect to the new one.



The Non-Geeky Ending



After scouring Google, I found out that Typo (my blogging system) doesn’t work well on my web host. The Solution: I set up a computer in my house as a server so I could host my blog myself.



The Geeky Ending



I discovered that Typo’s dispatch.fcgi process has some kind of memory problem on shared hosting. Seeing no other options, I decided to try out Mephisto instead. Everything seemed to work fine…



Except for one (big) problem: to get all of the features that Typo has on Mephisto, I’d need to install a bunch of Mephisto plugins. However, when you install a new plugin on Mephisto, the web server needs to be restarted to activate the plugin. Impossible to do on shared hosting.



I’m hosting several different sites on my Dreamhost account, and Dreamhost is one of the few Good Web Hosts. I wasn’t about to switch to a different host because of one site. So I started looking around for free, Rails-compatible hosting. Then I found FreeOnRails (need I explain what they are?).



Things were looking good. So, I started to sign up, and was greeted with a big, friendly, fatal MySQL error. Well, there goes that… ker-plop!



I was running out of options. It was then that I had a Thought…



“Things that don’t work suck.

Hey, Macs work… Why not host it myself?!”



So, I got to work transforming an old Titanium PowerBook into a server. That is, by checking the box next to Enable Personal Web Sharing. “Yay! Now all I have to do is install my blog.”



From my days (more accurately, day) of using Mephisto, I had grown to like said blogging software. So I decided to install Mephisto instead of Typo.



But when I found myself scrolling through the Mephisto theme browser three times in a row without deciding on a theme, I started to worry. So I headed over to the Typo theme gallery to compare.



Aha! Just as I suspected. There are many more good themes for Typo than there are for Mephisto. No problem… Just delete Mephisto and install Typo.



I admit… I was completely new to web serving up until now. As it turned out, Typo would take pleasure in confusing me by insisting that it be run on port 4357. I’m sure there’s a way to change it to port 80, but I had no idea how. Back to Google!



The best way seemed to be to edit Apache’s httpd.conf file by adding a virtual host to route requests from port 80 to port 4357. That was when I learned that some files suck more than others.



I learned from some website how to add a virtual host to Apache’s configuration file. Unfortunately, it was for Apache 2 — I had Apache 1.3. Like I said, I knew nothing about web servers, so I decided to make it easy on myself by installing the same software as they were using on this site. Fortunately, Apache 2 was an easy install on Mac OS X.



*install complete*



“It works!”



Now that Typo was available on Port 80, I needed to make my server available to the world (aka WAN).



Enter DynDNS. If you haven’t heard of them, they’re a free service that assigns a domain of your semi-choice (in my case, http://eamon.is-a-geek.com) to your dynamic IP address, and updates it whenever your IP changes. It’s almost as good as having a static IP.


So after signing up for DynDNS, my server was accessible to the world. Except for one problem: I couldn’t access it from my house!



This is where Actiontec (the antagonist) comes in. If you point your browser to your external IP address from behind an Actiontec modem, it will just go to the Actiontec configuration page. I had nothing to do but to *gasp* email Actiontec support.



And when they replied, they knew, of course, nothing, except that it’s impossible (to their knowledge) to change the administrative port on the modem.



So I would have to access my blog with the server’s internal IP from home, and the DynDNS address from anywhere else. A minor problem, yet an annoying one.



But I wasn’t about to lose this Battle of the Servers to Actiontec, a mere modem. So I could deal with some stupidities, if it would allow me to bring my blog back to life.




Thus ends the saga of my exile from the Blogosphere, and my heroic return, riding on the back of an old PowerBook.

I’m taking Driver’s Ed this week from Monday to Friday, six hours a day. Just like sch**l. I’m having a hard time sitting for six hours, because I’m not used to it and because I have no swimming this week while we’re on break. I think I’m also one of the only 15 year-olds in the class; most of the people look like they’re 17, and I know two people are 18.

But at least it’s only a week. It’s going to feel good to get back in the pool on Monday and USE MY LEGS…

On Saturday I swam the 200 butterfly and 200 free. I got 2:09.73 in the 200 fly, which is a second off my best time. I also tied with a guy from Hawaii.

In the 200 free I went 1:54.91, which is… a second and a half off my best. Well, both races were still good.



When we’re in Federal Way, we usually play laser tag on Saturday night after finals. But this time it was reserved until 9:30pm, so we went bowling instead. And discovered why we swim.



On Sunday I just swam the 100 butterfly, and I got 57.83. My best time is 56.93.



We’ve been tapering for about five weeks (Districts + State + Sectionals), and I’m thinking that had something to do with it. Kate tapered me to get a Senior Sectional time at State, so I wasn’t in the best condition for AG Sectionals.



Here are my races from the last two days. In all of them, I’m the one with the full-leg blue and gray suit.





200 Butterfly





200 Free





100 Butterfly

Today is the first day of the meet, and I thought I was only swimming the 500. Until last night, when we went to check in, and found out Kate had signed me up for the 200 backstroke without telling me.
But 200 back was fun, because I hadn’t swum it in seven months so I didn’t know what I was going for. I was seeded dead last because I only had a meters time, so the heat sheet said I had a 2:28, when the next fastest time was 2:10. I ended up getting 2:10.87, and 27th out of 29. Hey, I haven’t swam any backstroke in the last three weeks, OK?



I swam the 500 three hours later, and I got 5:03.83 — a two second drop. I took 11th out of 31.



This is my 200 backstroke, if anyone wants to watch it.

On thursday we’ll be driving up to Seattle for Sectionals. This is the last meet of the season (for me)… Then we get to start LONG COURSE SEASON.