Blag-o-matic

I ran into a minor issue today while trying to install Phusion Passenger on a web server I’m setting up; I don’t install development tools on my web servers. I have a whole mess of reasons for why I do this, the primary being that it makes keeping several different servers (ie, production and development) in sync a lot easier.

The problem with Passenger is that the gem assumes you have g++ installed so it can build the apache extension. Fortunately, for me, I keep a separate server that is identically configured, except it has build tools installed. My solution was to install passenger on that box, configure it, and then copy the directory over to my production box.

Short version:

gem install passenger
passenger-install-apache2-module
cd /usr && tar -zvcf ~/passenger-2.0.2.tgz `find ./ -name “*passenger*” -print`

Now just copy ~/passenger-2.0.2.tgz over to the production box and untar it into /usr. Normal Passenger setup applies from this point forward.

19th & South to Falls Bridge and back. Just over 12 miles, just under 1 hour. Not bad.

I’ve decided I’m sick of sending e-mails from dirtymatt@gmail.com. Over the weekend I migrated all of my old e-mail to matt@mattstocum.com (some jerk already owns stocum.com). My old addresses still work, they just forward to matt@mattstocum.com. That’s all.

Okay, doing a bit of house-keeping on the ol’ blag. For those of you who read my blag, but aren’t interested in the various nerdy things I talk about, I have a new feed that is just stuff about me. I’m going to get it in the lil’ RSS thing at the top at some point, but that should work for now.

ETA: I’ve added the feeds to the lil’ RSS icon in the tool bar.

What’s new? Tina finally had her baby, girl you gotta get back to drinking. Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is great, total man-crush on NPH. Beril has a show at Johhny Brenda’s tomorrow, I’m going, you should too.

On the nerd front, I finally got the latest CVS of mpeg4ip patched with all of HandBrake’s improvements. Working on fleshing out the AC-3 support a bit more, still a lot of magic though. I think I’m going to publish it on github when I’m done, just not sure what the etiquette is for posting abandoned projects.

Still haven’t found any good blog software for my new project, I should just start publishing and upgrade later. Really my big thing right now is I want support for user-defined RSS feeds based on tags or categories or something along those lines. Good things will be happening. Also, domain squatters can go fuck their face.

Anyway, congrats on squeezing the kid out Tina, tell him I said “hi”.

Thursday: drive to Toronto.  It takes forever, traffic, border guards, they all suck. Roll in a bit before midnight. Saw Nicole briefly before passing out on her futon.

Friday: Nancy and I walked around Toronto. Saw quite a bit, hung out down by the beaches, got a nice sunburn.

Friday night: Went to dinner on some street which I can’t remember with Mat’s cousin Katie. Ate some pretty awesome Mexican food, not so hot nachos though. Later RubyFringe opening party at this crazy brewery, in what essentially was a warehouse. Pretty fun, drank my fair share of some local brew. Met a few of the RubyFringe companions. Went home kinda early due to a bad case of being tired as fuck.

Saturday: Met up with the rest of the “companions”, me and 13 ladies, not too shabby I must say. They took us to St. Lawrence Market, where I bought some fancy mustard, then to Kensington Market, where Nancy bought a dress. More sunburn.

Saturday night: Really nice dinner at the Drake Hotel, followed by open bar and art exhibition at Camera. Drank my fair share of open bar goodery.

Sunday way early AM: Nicole and some other peeps rolled in around 2am, there was more drinking, an incident with a toilet, and sleeping.

Sunday: Rained like the freaking end of time. Nancy and I went to get breakfast with Katie. We never quite made it to hang out with the companion crew. We did go to the beaches and then got completely drenched walking to a Jazz festival. I saw a Canadian fall backwards in his chair but manage to keep his beer upright. Way to go my good man.

Sunday night: RubyFringe closing party at Unspace. It was a complete blast. More drinking (I’m noticing a theme) more hanging with a bunch of awesome people.

All in all the weekend was a blast. I wish I’d had more time to hang out with everyone (especially Nicole as I barely saw her all weekend). Toronto, watch out, I will be back.

The season 4 finale of Doctor Who was really really really good.  It made me want to cry.  It’s a shame the season took 8 freaking episodes before it got going.  Here’s hoping for next season…in a freaking year.

So Jozette found a great idea and borrowed it for her own.  I love it.

To double quote:

{The following excerpt is taking directly from the mouth of the I *Heart* You blog.}

Sometimes I will read a news story (okay gossip blog) and think, “Oh my god, if I have to read about or see one more picture of insertnamehere I am going to vomit!!” And then I think about if I had a rocket ship with 5 seats on it and I could put whoever I wanted on it and blast that f*cker into outer space, who would I choose to fill the 5 seats.

So I have an idea. I really wish that there was a single good blog about fun things going on in Philly. I know about Philebrity and uwishunu, but Philebrity is too damn hard to read, and uwishunu doesn’t have an RSS feed. I think there’s a big blog shaped hole out there.

I want to fill that hole, the problem is, I don’t know about 99% of the crap that goes on in this city. I’d like something well-written that would cover events of all types. So really, this is a call to action. Who wants to help me?