Category: Technology

NFSN PHP file write permissions in safe_mode

I've been causing some (security) concerns for myself by thoughtlessly using the dreaded 777 permissions for upload directories to allow the various PHP-based websites that I host at nearlyfreespeech.net to write files there. What this drastic anti-security measure didn't allow me to is to manage these uploaded files through SSH (and SCP/Rsync). In the chroot jail which I'm allowed to enter through SSH, I am ‘me’, while the files created from PHP end up being owned by user ‘web’. However, for some reason these files didn't get owned by group ‘web’ of which the ‘me’ user is a member. Also, I got into trouble with new directories that were being created by the upload scripts. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 8 years ago, on February 08, 2013, at 17:02 | 3 comments

WordPress admin bar and absolute CSS positioning

WordPress 3.2 introduced an admin bar, which is fixed at the top of the window when you're logged in. An annoying side-effect that has been bugging me for some time is that, although this pushed down most of my content, HTML elements that used absolute positioning stayed in there old place. This didn't look particularly good, but I left it hanging for a long time because it only affected logged in users (that is: either me or Halfgaar). Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 8 years ago, on February 02, 2013, at 21:02 | 3 comments

Thinkpad T61 Hardware Maintenance Manual

I thought I'd upload the hardware maintenance manual [PDF] for my Lenovo Thinkpad T61… Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 8 years ago, on January 31, 2013, at 14:01 | Comments closed

Refresher on basic relational database entity terminology

Here's a couple of basic relational database concepts and their commonly used synonyms.
table=relation=class
row=record=tuple
column=field=attribute
Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 8 years ago, on January 25, 2013, at 19:01 | Comments closed

Anatomy of a Mashup: Definitive Daft Punk visualised

The Man in Blue created a HTML5/CSS3 visualization of his own mashup of Definite Daft Punk, a Daft Punk discography. Besides being an interesting showcase for various pieces of HTML5, it is also a pleasing way of visualizing the anatomy of his mashup. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 8 years ago, on January 25, 2013, at 17:01 | 4 comments

Hobo Lobo of Hamelin

Hobo Lobo of Hamelin is worth looking at even if just for the novelty of how the story and artwork are digitally presented (something to do with a ‘parallaxer’). But, I'd much rather let the creator do the talking: Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 8 years ago, on January 25, 2013, at 17:01 | Comments closed

Making a bash script terminate when a command returns an error

#!/bin/bash -e trap "echo ERROR HANDLING HERE." ERR echo "Starting" asdfasdf echo "End" Read More »
By halfgaar, 9 years ago, on January 21, 2013, at 14:01 | Comments closed

Chemical tin for circuit boards

For the record, about chemical tin PCB treatment: Seno Glans Tin Read More »
By halfgaar, 9 years ago, on January 20, 2013, at 16:01 | 2 comments

I need a Nanny for Google Chrome

I just installed Nanny for Google Chrome, which, like LeechBlock for Firefox, should help me to recoup some of the time that is now actively being stolen by YouLube and FaceLook. If I'm too weak on my own to push back technology to its proper servile place, then I might as well use technology to do some of the pushing for me. You're a tool, you damn computer, nothing more than that! Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 9 years ago, on January 17, 2013, at 12:01 | 1 comment

Making Linux less dumb about failed DNS servers

Whenever one of the servers in /etc/resolv.conf is unreachable, Linux/glibc/whatever isn't smart enough not to retry it for a while. This results in a lot of services becoming unavailable, because a lot of them do reverse lookups on all incoming connections (like SSH), which will hang for the time-out of the first DNS server query. Read More »
By halfgaar, 9 years ago, on December 28, 2012, at 18:12 | Comments closed