Michael Henley

October 6, 2009

Depressingly True

Filed under: thoughts — michael @ 8:15 am

Found via syntheticpubes

yesand:

The second class, the vast majority of Americans, are people who cannot think for themselves. I call these people “idea consumers” — metaphorically speaking, they wander around in a gigantic open-air mall of facts and ideas. The content of their experience is provided by television, the Internet and other shallow data pools. These people believe collecting images and facts makes them educated and competent, and all their experiences reinforce this belief. The central, organizing principle of this class is that ideas come from somewhere else, from magical persons, geniuses, “them.”

Aren’t we all at least part-time members of this Second Class? I know I am guilty, and as much as it stings to admit it, I think I’d blush harder if I tried to absolve myself of such. In fact, what happened to the cynical conclusion that originality is dead, that it is impossible to have a purely original thought? I think that those magical persons described above are simply the ones who combine or rehash the most esoteric material. Perhaps geniuses are simply those who excel at recalling ideas that have briefly slipped away from the collective consciousness.

ps: Of course, yesand is first to admit it, but what are most tumblogs beyond blatant collections of external images and facts?

I’m back at Magdalen now and I definitely feel this applies to me a fair amount of the time and that is depressing. Although there is something of an irony in perpetuating the idea that all most of us do is perpetuate ideas.

September 30, 2009

Updating MovableType to send email via sendmail on NFS

Filed under: blogging,general tech,internet — michael @ 11:07 am

When initially setting up MovableType on my NearlyFreeSpeech-hosted site, I couldn’t find a way to get around the need for Authentication with Google Apps for email. Commenter Kevin Doyon informed me how to make this work, but as I had already finished the MT set up wizard I had to make the changes manually. I must begin by saying that I am no expert at this and am learning as I go. This is what has worked for me and might not work for you. You undertake this at your own risk, and as with any changes I advise you to make backups of everything before you start making changes.

Using your favourite FTP client (Transmit in my case), connect to the site for your MT installation. Navigate to /public/cgi-bin/mt, and find the mt-config.cgi file. Make a copy and rename it something like mt-config-old.cgi, and then open up mt-config.cgi in a text editor. At the bottom, add the following lines:

#========== EMAIL SETTINGS ===========

MailTransfer sendmail
SendMailPath /usr/bin/sendmail

Save the file back to the server, and then open up your web browser and navigate to http://domainname/cgi-bin/mt.cgi to access your installation’s control panel.

Select ‘System Overview’, and then settings:

From here you will immediately see the General Settings pane where we need to make changes. In the ‘System Email’ box, enter the email address you want to be displayed in the From: line of any emails sent by MovableType and click Save Changes.

Once it refreshes, enter an email address you have access to into the Send Email To: field and send the test. If all goes well then you will see a test email arrive in your account sent from MovableType, and the dashboard will report success:

That is it. Your MovableType installation will now be able to send emails as and when you have configured it to.

September 20, 2009

Burning Issues with the MacBook Pro

Filed under: Apple,Mac,general tech — michael @ 10:23 pm

This likely only applies to the ~2008 MacBook Pro:

Recently my MacBook Pro has been rejecting burnable media. When I put those discs into the drive, it would make some noises a few times but never even spin up, and the after a little while would just eject the disc. The computer would simply state that it was waiting for the SuperDrive. While considering booking in (yet again!) to the Genius Bar at Regent St, I read somewhere that the suggestion was the try blowing some air into drive. I can only recommend using canned air for this, but after a few blasts the drive has started recognising the discs and is burning again.

September 17, 2009

Is Capitalism Liberty?

Filed under: oxford — michael @ 7:08 pm

Was back in Oxford today and in keeping with my habit of noting interesting bits of graffiti. Saw this in the Caffè Nero on the High St:

Is Capitalism Liberty?
No, but freedom!
And development
And growth
And self-fulfilment
And prosperity

…if only

I’m always astounded at how profound people can be while tending the call of nature.

September 7, 2009

Using Google Analytics with MovableType 4.31

Filed under: blogging,general tech,internet — michael @ 10:39 pm

This is based heavily on Daniel Sirz’s useful piece for using Analytics with MT which can be found here. I found that it was missing one or two little bits which had me scratching my head for a while and so have rewritten it for the most current version of MT. This will include the Analytics code into the header template, so that it is included in every page of the blog.

Ensure that you are managing the blog, and not the global MT install. From the Dashboard, navigate to the Templates section:

Scroll down to the Template Modules section, and select Create Template Module:

Copy your Analytics tracking code from their website, and then create a new module called ‘Google Analytics’:

Save your changes, and then navigate back to the templates by clicking ‘List all templates’

Click the HTML Head Template to edit it:

Click the line below the last one currently present, and enter:

<$mt:Include module="Google Analytics"$>

Once you save, you should see this:

Head back to the main screen by again clicking ‘List all templates’. The final step is to rebuild your blog to include the new code. To do this, click the ‘Publish Blog’ button in the cross bar:

Tell it to Publish all files, and then wait while it rebuilds. When it is done you will see a box telling you that it is complete and how long it has taken. If you now go to any page on your blog and check its source, you will see that the analytics code is being included in the header and so will report back the stats.

Installing MovableType on NearlyFreeSpeech Part 2: Set-Up and Config

Filed under: Uncategorized,blogging,general tech,internet — michael @ 9:24 pm

This guide continues from a previous post which can be found here, which details the steps required to download, arrange, and set the permissions required to install MovableType onto a NFS-hosted site. The same disclaimers as posted there apply to this post.

In a web browser navigate to http://domainname/cgi-bin/mt/mt.cgi , where domainname is the domain name of your blog.

Here you will be presented with a box where you will configure the static path of the MT installation:

As with the page URL, replace domainname with the domain name of your blog, then click ‘Begin’.

If everything is as it should be you should see the following screen:

Continue to the Database config page.

Here, select MySQL Database:

Once you have selected the Database type, the window will expand to give you more options. At this point we must set a few things up on the NearlyFreeSpeech end. Don’t navigate away from the MT set up page, but in a new tab log into your NFS member area, and then click the ‘mysql’ tab. If you already have a MySQL process set up then we can just use that. If you do not, then click ‘Create a new MySQL Process’ and follow the on screen instructions.

Once created, click ‘open phpMyAdmin’ and log in with the details emailed to you by NFS when you created the process.

I like to create a new user for each database I create. This helps to keep it more secure. From the main page, click the Priviledges tab:

Then click ‘Create a New User’, and you will be presented with the new user window:

I am going to give my MT installation the username ‘moveabletype’ and have generated a secure password for it. Take note of the username and password you create as you will need to enter these into MovableType later. Select the ‘Create Database with same name’ radio button below the user credentials, and then click ‘Go’ at the bottom right. The page should refresh showing you a colourful box at the top informing you that the new user has been created. If you were to go into the databases tab of  phpMyAdmin you should also see that a new database has been created called, in my case, ‘moveabletype’. You can now log out of phpMyAdmin and head back to the MovableType installation page.

Once you clicked MySQL Database some new options will have appeared. You must fill them in as follows:

For Database Server, you must enter the process name you created at NFS. If you did not take note of this, it can be found on your NFS mysql page, and is listed as DSN. Fill in the other fields with the info you entered in phpMyAdmin when you created the new user and database. The click ‘Test Connection’. If everything goes as planned you should see the following window:

After clicking Continue, you are presented with the Mail configuration page. At this time I have not figured out how to make this work with Google Apps where I host my email on michaelhenley.co.uk, and so have chosen to skip this step simply by clicking continue. My issue is that Google Apps requires me to authenticate before they will pass on email, but the MT installation does not present me with a way to enter user details. I will update with a plugin later if I find one to make it work.

Simply clicking Continue allows you to skip this step.

[Update]: Thanks to commenter Kevin Doyon for informing me on how to make this work. Select the option to send email via sendmail, and set the path to

/usr/bin/sendmail

The test email will now send correctly even from a GoogleApps Address. If, like me, you had already skipped over this step then follow the instructions here to configure sendmail from outside the wizard.

If you have done everything correctly your MovableType installation should now be set up and you will be presented with the following window:

Once you click Continue you must set up a user for yourself:

Click Continue, and then enter your blog title, and change the paths so they point to the ‘blog’ directory:

Once you click ‘Finish install’ you will see the system initialise the database, and then you will see the Installation Complete! Screen:

Congratulations! You have now successfully installed MovableType onto your NFS-hosted site. I hope these two guides have been useful.

A few credits:

I have put this guide together based on information found at the following sites:

  1. http://blog.nearlyfreespeech.net/2007/01/28/writing-files-in-php/
  2. http://wiki.movabletype.org/Main_Page
  3. http://www.movabletype.org/documentation/installation/quick-start.html

Installing MovableType on NearlyFreeSpeech Part 1: Downloading and Permissions

Filed under: blogging,general tech,internet — michael @ 9:19 pm

I host this blog and the rest of the michaelhenley.co.uk domain on NearlyFreeSpeech and have yet to have a problem with them. However, while in California @alexmuller and @zethraeus were trying to set up the back end for MiscellanousGeekery, the tech blog which they are running, and at first decided to try to use MovableType instead of WordPress. After they spent a day getting nowhere at it they decided to go with WordPress instead and that was that. I had attempted to offer a helping hand while there, but being completely unfamiliar with MovableType and no sort of expert at configuring these things anyway I was about as much use as a chocolate teapot. This afternoon however, resolving not to be beaten by a piece of CMS Software, I decided to have a bash at it myself and see if I could make it work. After a few hours poking, proding, shouting and screaming, I finally managed to make it work.

Below is a step-by-step guide to how I made it install and run. I must preface this with saying that I am no sort of expert, nor do I claim to be. This is simply how it has worked for me and how it will hopefully work for you. Some things to note:

  1. I use a Mac and as such my main tools for interfacing with NFS are terminal SSH and Transmit. I will keep Transmit to a minimum to try to make this as universal as possible.
  2. The only configuring I will do is to install the blog.
  3. I found things a lot harder to approach than WordPress. While this is not surprising as WordPress is a little more dumbed down, this guide is the product of much Googling and I owe pretty much all of this to various guides, manuals, wikis and blogs. I will try to give credit where I can
  4. I am trying to make this as comprehensive as possible. Skip over any explanation you don’t need.
  5. Only enter commands in black. I am including the prompt in grey for clarity. The idea is that before you hit return to execute the command you should see exactly what is written on each line of the guide.
  6. This shouldn’t break anything, but if it does, please don’t sue me :) You are undertaking this at your own risk.

In your NearlyFreeSpeech control panel, create the site where you are going to install MovableType, and take note of the credentials you will require to connect to this site over SSH. If you are simply adding to an existing site then ignore this step.

Head over to movabletype.org and copy the URL to the latest distribution of MT (4.31 at time of writing). Open up the terminal and SSH into your site, and enter your NFS password when prompted:

ssh nfsusername_sitename@ssh.phx.nearlyfreespeech.net

You should then be presented with a prompt similar to this:

[sitename /home/public]$

From here you can download MT directly to the site using wget. Replace the URL with that obtained from the MT website for the latest release:

[sitename /home/public]$ wget http://www.movabletype.org/downloads/stable/MTOS-4.31-en.zip

You can follow the progress of the download on screen, and after a short while it will have downloaded. Next unzip it:

[sitename /home/public]$ unzip MTOS-4.31-en.zip

Once this is completed, if you enter the ls command at the prompt you should see that the public folder contains one file and one folder. The file is MTOS-4.31.en.zip, and the folder is simply MTOS-4.31-en. The folder contains the unzipped contents of file downloaded from MovableType.

Create a folder in public called cgi-bin, and then a folder called mt inside of it:

[sitename /home/public]$ mkdir cgi-bin

[sitename /home/public]$ cd cgi-bin

[sitename /home/public/cgi-bin]$ mkdir mt

[sitename /home/public/cgi-bin]$ cd ..

The contents of the MT download have to be split between the cgi-bin/mt folder and the public folder. At the prompt enter the following:

[sitename /home/public]$ cd MTOS-4.31-en

[sitename /home/public/MTOS-4.31-en]$ cp -rf mt-static ../

[sitename /home/public/MTOS-4.31-en]$ rm -r mt-static

[sitename /home/public/MTOS-4.31-en]$ cd ..

[sitename /home/public]$ cp -rf MTOS-4.31-en/* cgi-bin/mt

[sitename /home/public]$ rm -r MTO*

To summarise, these commands have copied the mt-static folder into the public directory of this site, and have copied the rest of the contents into the mt directory we created inside of cgi-bin. The final command is simply housekeeping to remove the downloaded zip file and the folder to which its contents were extracted.

One of the differences between MT and WordPress is that it requires the server to have the ability to write to certain folders. NearlyFreeSpeech limits how this can happen and so the permissions for the folders and files to be written must show the group as ‘web’ and allow the group to write. It also requires the blog to have its own subdirectory within the domain. I am going to assume that this directory will be ‘blog’, but if it is not then simply substitute ‘blog’ for your chosen name in any commands. Finally the world must also be able to execute files within cgi-bin/mt.

[sitename /home/public]$ mkdir blog

[sitename /home/public]$ chmod -R 775 blog

[sitename /home/public]$ chgrp -R web blog

[sitename /home/public]$ cd mt-static

[sitename /home/public/mt-static]$ chmod -R 775 support

[sitename /home/public/mt-static]$ chgrp -R web support

[sitename /home/public/mt-static]$ cd ..

[sitename /home/public]$ cd cgi-bin

[sitename /home/public/cgi-bin]$ chmod -R 775 mt

[sitename /home/public/cgi-bin]$ chgrp -R web mt

[sitename /home/public/cgi-bin]$ cd ..

At this point we should have completed pretty much everything which needs to be done in the terminal and via SSH. To disconnect from the server simply enter

[sitename /home/public]$ exit

This completes part 1. In the next part I will walk through how to configure your MovableType installation and set up MySQL database which it will use through phpMyAdmin. This can be found here.

September 5, 2009

Rustle something up!

Filed under: food — michael @ 1:05 am

Ciao! Yep, you guessed it. This is another of my blog posts which likely will begin with that stalwart boilerplate about how I regret not blogging more frequently, listing one or two decent(ish) reasons why I have not blogged very much recently and then gets on with it all. Instead of doing that, I have written the above sentence. With that out of the way I can get on with the post:

I have always had an interest in cooking, and from quite early on I have been involved in cooking by my parents. You will have to forgive me for not mentioning the exact particulars of this early culinary fore but suffice it to say that there are photos of my in a nappy with wooden spoon in hand masterfully crafting a Chile con carne. Prodigy, I know…. Towards the end of Trinity however I decided to indulge in this latent desire to craft something tasty and began to cook at college. This was met with mixed success, but I only managed to set the house fire alarm off once so I am treating it as a success.

After term had finished, my cousin suggested that I get hold of a copy of ‘Nigella Express’, as she thought that Nigella Lawson and I shared a food philosophy or two; that food should taste great, but also that it shouldn’t have to be massive amounts of hassle and effort. Having been drawn to the food goddess before through her TV shows, and of course through the wonderful Dead Ringers sketches about her, I picked up a copy. Diving in head-first, with my family as fairly willing guinea pigs, I have since picked out a few recipes from the book and put them together. I have to say that on the whole they have (mostly) been a success. There have been a few disasters and the one which springs to mind is the ‘Mirin-glazed Salmon’. The term epic fail does not do that one justice: burnt on the outside, raw on the inside, and pretty dismal all over.

I have also picked up a copy of The Frugal Cookbook by Fiona Beckett after a recipe from it was mentioned on Helen Graves’s fantastic Food Stories blog. I have only made the Welsh Stew from this, and despite being rather more work than any of the Nigella recipes, turned out amazingly well and went down rather well with the guinea pigs too.

Having done this I mentioned to a few friends that I had been cooking and the overwhelming response was one of awe. It seems that to many of my peers from SPS cooking is something which should be restricted to a bag of pasta and a pot of Lloyd Grossman’s finest. This seems like such a shame. If my experimenting in the kitchen, limited though it may be, has taught me anything it is that the best thing to do is to just give it a go. Try it. Have a fire extinguisher on hand if you feel it is appropriate, but don’t be put off by the hob and the cooker. While at Magdalen I had a wander around the covered market and saw that the butcher had pigeons on sale for a few quid each. I had never cooked anything as ‘exotic’ as a pigeon before, but bought it anyway and did some Googling, found a decent set of instructions and put a meal together. It surprisingly turned out pretty well.

So what is the point of this post? I suppose it is meant to be some form of feeble inspiration. As the title says: ‘Rustle something up!’. Go out of your culinary comfort zone. Get away from the pasta or the microwavable rice and just have some fun. There will be some disasters but there will also be some great triumphs. I would never presume to call myself any sort of expert, quite the opposite in fact, but it does sadden me when I see that many don’t even give it a go. Of course please let me know how it goes.

August 3, 2009

New York

Filed under: Uncategorized — michael @ 11:40 pm

I have just headed down to San Diego from New York after spending a few days there. It was my first time in New York and I had a lot of fun there. Not quite as I expected, but that is hardly surprising considering it is one of those cities that is a little different to everyone who goes there, and considering that my preconceptions were borne out of Will & Grace, Friends, and the countless movies and other TV shows set in New York.

My first impression of New York was that it was amazing, awe-inspiring, but lacked the character that a city like London has. I feel that as efficient and easy as the grid system is as a method of city planning, it makes the whole place feel a lot more sterile, at least for an outsider. One street truly does look like all the rest, at least once you get uptown of 14th street. Even after spending a few days there I stand by that initial impression. It was an amazing place to visit, and I reckon that if you lived there and began to understand the dynamics of how it all worked that this would change, but from my very superficial visit I left feeling impressed, but not gob-smacked.

I cannot recommend the Pod Hotel on E51st St, between 2nd and 3rd Avenue, enough. Amazing location in Midtown Manhattan, with pretty reasonably priced rooms; @alexmuller and I shared a bunk room and the final bill was $660 for the two of us for four nights. The rooms have no en suite, and are fairly basic, but they are clean have a sink, and there is free wifi provided too. All in all it did exactly what we expected, and was exactly what we needed.

Following the advice of @therealdvorak, via No Agenda, we took the AirTrain to Jamaica Station, and then caught the E train subway to 53rd & Lexington. We bought an unlimited subway MetroCard on the first day and although a little pricey at $27, I felt it was well worth it. We walked a lot considering how close the Hotel was to most of the places we wanted to visit, but the luxury of being able to escape the downpours into the subway to get back to the hotel without worrying was very nice. This method of getting from the airport into the city was a lot quicker than a yellow cab, and was a lot cheaper too.

The subway was a mixed bag. The trains themselves are air-conditioned, which coming from London was a lovely change and considering that their lines are about as deep as the cut-and-cover lines in London really did make me wonder about why we haven’t seen that yet, at least on those lines. I was really quite shocked at how poorly the infrastructure was maintained. Every station we went into had rusted steel, a leaking roof, and looked so blackened as to suggest that there had been a recent fire. Also, in stark contrast to the trains, the stations were baking hot at this time of year. My only real complaint about the subway was the inability to change platform directions once within the barriers at a lot of stations. Many times we would dash into the nearest entrance without reading to avoid the rain, and only realise once we were on the train side of the barriers that we were in fact facing the wrong direction meaning we needed to go out and back onto the street. While for us with our unlimited tickets this wasn’t a major issue and only a minor inconvenience, but it is worth thinking about if you only have a normal ticket.

As well as the standard touristy attractions, I would highly recommend taking a tour bus, at least around Downtown Manhattan. While a little expensive you see an awful lot, learn a lot, and if the weather is nice then it is just a genuinely pleasant way to see the city. As I say, highly recommended.

New York was, for us at least, a very expensive place to visit and I have some major grievances about the american service charge and donations culture. While in the UK a tip is for service, and averages at around 10%, there it seemed to be more a fee for them serving the table, and expected regardless of the quality of service. The percentage was also double which meant some pretty outrageous charges for service. While they are still technically optional, we felt fairly unsure about how to act and pretty rude if we didn’t tip to the expected level. One other thing to be aware of is that in those states like New York which charge sales tax, often the menu prices are shown without this and so the bill ends up being a fair bit more than you expect. Coupled with tipping this can make meals pretty expensive. We did find an amazing little sushi restaurant – Matsu Sushi – a few blocks away on 52nd st and 1st avenue, which served very generous amounts of fish on their nigiri, offer a $23 all-you-can-eat sushi option, and a highly recommended $17 dinner bento box. Our best meal of the trip was undoubtedly a steak at Houstons on 3rd Avenue. While more expensive at around $32 each without drinks, the quality was second to none and even despite the lack of a bottle of red – the higher drinking age here saw to that – it was really very excellent.

All our flights this trip are with Delta, and they have been ok so far. The London flight was fine, but cramped, while the check in at JFK was absolute madness. @alexmuller was stood at the front of the queue for over 40 minutes without having his bag checked. Once we finally did clear the security we would have been almost too late for the flight, had it not been delayed for 40 minutes. That being said, the flight was fine, we had more room and everything arrived. Plus there was wifi on board, and those who follow me on twitter would have seen a few bursts of tweets going on about this. A great novelty, and at $8 for the flight it was pretty over-priced, but it is certainly the way of the future. I was getting a better bandwidth at 37,000 feet than I do in Oxshott, and at one point I had a skype conversation with @alexmuller. While admittedly he was in the next seat it was impressive that it would sustain the connection and it worked really very well.

Now I am chilling at a friend’s place in Coronado, California enjoying the beautiful weather. So far the USA has been really good fun so heres hoping it lasts!

July 1, 2009

Unexpected Entertainment

Filed under: Uncategorized — michael @ 4:19 pm

Was riding the tube up to High St Ken on Monday to meet @alexmuller and having forgotten my headphones was staring blankly into space. We were joined by a really very impressive busker who hopped on and for two or three stops played some very entertaining and impressive Irish/Scottish jiggy-sort music. Seeing as I often can’t stand easily on the moving train his feat of playing (well!) while it was on the move was all the more impressive. Big thanks to the random busker for brightening up our day. Check out a short clip.

The District Line Player from Michael Henley on Vimeo.

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