Ever since the panda update came out for Google I noticed my page was not ranking as well as it used to so I got to work improving my SEO. So after doing some work and waiting a few days I wanted to see if it was working. In order to check it I was doing searches manually in google until I came across this handy gem.
http://whatpageofsearchamion.com/
Simply enter in your search keywords and url then click the search.
This handy tool will check the first 10 pages of results for your url.
I recently purchased a Mazda Miata to turn into a weekend track and auto cross car. In the process of doing some maintenance on the manual shifter I removed the factory center console and found it very comfortable without it. So I decided to try to make a custom fiberglass shorty center console since buying an aftermarket console could cost over $200 and not be exactly what I was looking for.
First I removed the center console so I could get an idea of the layout.
Got some supplies from the local fiberglass shop.
Then I created a form to lay the fiberglass in.
Here is the fiberglass and resin in the mold hardening.
Picture of console, not finished yet still missing a spot for the power window switches.
Next I took the first half and added a space for the power window switches.
Here are pictures of the raw shorty center console.
Next update will be a test fit in the car.
I use SIP clients on my iPhone to make phone calls so I don’t have to use my mobile phone plan minutes. I reviewed a few free clients to see which worked the best.
1. Media5-fone
This is the best free phone I used with my Asterisk PBX, it has all the features a normal hard phone would have such as transfer, conference, and hold. The free version uses ad’s to support it but has most of the features the pro version has, without the g729 codec.
It works great over wifi I did not test it using 3G since it uses the ulaw codec in the free version I don’t imagine the call audio would be good over the phone data connection.
The soft phone software is very easy to use and allows access to the iPhone contact list to place calls. Transfer, conference and hold are also very easy to use as they are almost identical to the iPhone interface, but some of these features are only available on the paid version.
I am still using this phone on my iPhone since it works so well and I might pay for the pro version to make 3G calls with the g729 codec.
http://www.media5corp.com/en/softphones/media5-fone-iphone/
2. Fring
The Fring SIP client is pretty good because it offers all the premium features on the free version of the app. The app is able to connect to many VOIP providers but also works as a generic SIP client to register with an Asterisk or FreeSWITCH server.
The app is a little clunky and slow but since it has a lot of features and is free it’s hard to complain too much. This app also has access to the iPhone phonebook which makes it easy to call your friends without memorizing their phone numbers.
I tried this phone for a while but didn’t like it enough to continue using it but if you need some features that are not available on the free version of Media5-fone this is a good alternative.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fring/id290948830?mt=8
3. 3CXPhone
This free SIP iPhone client is also not very smooth, there are some rough edges and it runs a little slow. I found this phone was a little more difficult to use compared to the others. This sip client uses a custom interface that is not like the iPhone dialing interface.
I had some technical issues with the phone which included codec negotiation and dtmf tones. I was trying to get the GSM codec to work on this client but it didn’t cooperate so I just used ulaw. Then I tried testing the dtmf digits and found the other end did not respond after entering a digit into the keypad.
I also tested making a transfer with this phone since it is an included feature but due to the custom interface it was confusing and made it a challenge to get a successful transfer. After many tries I was able to get it working but if the gui was more intuitive it would be a lot easier.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/3cxphone-for-iphone/id392927995?mt=8
My recommendation for a free iPhone SIP client is Media5-fone, even despite some of its short comings with the free version it was far easier to use and much more reliable than the other phones tested.
If you have audiobook CD’s with mp3′s on them you know it is difficult to listen to them on your iPhone since there are so many tracks. Wouldn’t it be nice to have all the tracks merged into a single mp3 to store on your ipod? This is a quick and easy way to do it with ubuntu.
First install mp3wrap
sudo apt-get install mp3wrap
Then copy all the mp3 files into a folder, I created a folder named mp3folder. Once that is done do the following command to merge the first 2 audio files.
mp3wrap fullbook.mp3 mp3folder/01.mp3 mp3folder/02.mp3
This will create the file fullbook_MP3WRAP.mp3
Now create a script file to do the rest of the files, be sure to delete the first 2 files so those are not added again. Copy and paste the following script.
rm mp3folder/01.mp3 rm mp3folder/02.mp3
Script:
#!/bin/bash FILES=mp3folder/*.mp3 for f in $FILES do mp3wrap -a fullbook_MP3WARP.mp3 $f done echo -en "\n\b" echo "DONE!"
Run the script and have a single mp3 file for your iphone. See the screenshot below.
I am trying out the new version of Ubuntu desktop on my workstation and during the install process I had a problem with the installer not able to create any partitions. It turns out the hard drive I was using came from a Dell server that was in a hardware RAID which caused the issue. If you are having the same problem try doing what I did to remove the RAID information.
To fix the problem with a hard drive with RAID information on it boot into the live cd and open up a terminal window from the dash.
Once you have a terminal window use the following commands to remove all evidence of a raid from the hard drive.
sudo dmraid -E -r /dev/sda sudo wipefs /dev/sda -a
These 2 commands will remove any trace of a hardware or software raid on the hard drive. Below are screenshots of the issue I was having.
When I was doing the install I got to this screen and could not proceed any further. The installer simply would not see any of the partitions on the hard drive.
I even started the live OS and used GParted to manually create the partitions, still I would get stuck at the same screen above. Also if you are looking for how to manually partition your hard drive for linux below is a good templet to follow.
Pretty often it is useful to download a file on a Mac from the terminal and since wget is not part of the default OS X packages it does not work. There are some third-party wget packages for OS X but there is an alternative included by default. Curl is part of all Mac OS X versions and with a simple switch downloading a file is easy as wget.
Here is a sample of how to download a file from the Mac OS X terminal using curl.
curl -O http://colloquy.info/downloads/colloquy-2.3.zip
Due to a recent idea I had for a new iPhone/iPad app it gave me the interest in learning how to write apps. So after a bit of research I found Stanford University has a free lecture series on IOS 4 and 5 development. I figured this would be a good starting point to understand IOS application development and since it was free I had nothing to lose. I am starting with IOS 4 using the following video series, http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/developing-apps-for-ios-hd/id395605774 which starts out with the basics by creating a calculator.
The video lectures are very good to start with since it takes the step by step approach to writing an application, explaining what everything is along the way. These videos are available for your iphone/ipad or computer so you can take them with you wherever you are.
Redhat/CentOS 4.x End of Life Yum Repository Stops Working: Cannot find a valid baseurl for repo
The Redhat/CentOS version 4.x recently hit its end of life for software updates and support. Below is the error you are likely to see if the repository has not been updated.
[root@localhost ~]# yum update Setting up Update Process Setting up repositories not using ftp, http[s], or file for repos, skipping - 4 is not a valid release or hasnt been released yet Cannot find a valid baseurl for repo: update Error: Cannot find a valid baseurl for repo: update
If you still have servers out there and don’t want to upgrade to CentOS 5 or 6 then the repository file will need updating for yum to continue working.
Just copy and paste the following commands into the terminal.
mv /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo /tmp yum clean all wget http://jonathanmanning.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/CentOSVault.repo_.txt mv CentOSVault.repo_.txt /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOSVault.repo
Now try using the yum update command.
Having someone install a linux operating system for you is pretty tough if you try to walk them through it. Lucky there is an easy way so you can do the install from anywhere, you just need a person at one end to do a couple of steps. Here is a quick guide on how to get the remote install over vnc working.
1. First you will need a CentOS ISO to boot the computer, I was using CentOS 5.
2. Once the computer has booted to the install start-up screen you will type in what you would like to do instead of just pressing enter. This is the key part to telling the system to boot to a vnc install. Type in the following command.
linux vnc vncconnect=192.168.1.100
Where the ip address is a machine you are running a VNC listening server. I used a rackspace cloud Windows server and installed RealVNC to control the install. If you are going to do that just make sure to disable the firewall of the cloud server.
3. The next step is selecting the network configuration for the computer being installed, once it has network connectivity it will establish the VNC connection so the remote user will be able to install the OS.
4. On the other end where the VNC listening server is, the screen will pop up with the remote install screen.
5. Now the rest is easy, just click through the install just like you were sitting in front of the computer. See the screenshots below.
The install is now complete, just select reboot and the newly installed linux computer will have SSH access.
I was pretty surprised how easy it was to make a DVD movie on my Mac with iDVD. It only takes downloading and installing Perian which will give Quicktime the ability to render different video codecs. Here is a quick step by step guide on how I created a DVD.
First thing you will want to do is download Perian and install it. Click this link and then download the dmg. This will install extra codecs for Quicktime to play DIVX movies and other high compression codecs.
The Perian control panel is found in the Apple System Preferences menu. See the red arrow in the image to the left.
Once the Perian installation is complete, restart the computer and then open up iDVD from the applications menu.
When iDVD opens up select the Magic iDVD option highlighted by the red arrow.
Next select the movie, or movies, you would like to add to this dvd. The movies added will show up under the drop moves here section in the project. Once all your movies are in the project click the create project button as highlighted by the red arrow.
Once the project goes to the preview screen, all that is left is to insert a blank dvd and click burn dvd button as shown. I would recommend using the preview button to make sure the audio and video playback before burning the project. There is also an option to save the project as an image. In the file menu of iDVD there is an option Save as Disc Image. This creates a disc image which you can test on the computer before burning to DVD using the Disc Utility application from the Utilities folder.