SuperSatellite ||

Hey look, the theme is done! At least, done enough that I’m ready to start taking feedback. Use the comment form below for that. Even if it’s just to say “neat colors” or “I h8 u kthxdie.” But really, feel free to let me know what does and doesn’t work for you. I’ve tried keeping things simple, but engaging enough to make it worth looking at. I’ll also consider making it into a downloadable theme, if people are interested anyway. But I am very interested in what you think of it. I’m not really a designer at heart, but I do think this is a big improvement over the last layout.  I have one more change slated for the main frontpage, but I’m battling a vicious, nasty little bug, and I’m not gonna hold up the theme because of it, so that part’ll get done when it gets done.

I have not yet upgraded my blog to the famed Wordpress 2.5. No, instead, I am taking the cautious route for a change, which is a little unusual for me since I normally am not afraid of being bleeding edge. The thing is, I am dependent on a couple plugins I’d rather not lose. And having just finished this theme, I want to make sure all the hooks and functions I call aren’t being deprecated. I did help a buddy get going in 2.5 last week though, and it looks okay.  I just wish they’d done more with care towards backwards compatibility.  In the end, once I upgrade, you actually shouldn’t notice. So, you probably don’t really care. Sorry to waste your time on this paragraph. I love you for it though.

On that note, am I the only one that doesn’t like the WordPress site?  It always feels like content is out of date/sync with other parts, and the support areas are painful to navigate and find what you need.  I feel like I get led in circles a lot.  And the forums always come across very hostile, even those users marked as “moderators.”  That might just be me, but it always seems like for every question with a good answer, there is one with a snarky one and one with no anwsers.  But, at least the wiki has good information, which is all I normally need.  But if you want my advice, avoid their forums like the plague, and if you can’t, don’t even dare asking a remotely vague-ish question.

I am continuing to try to stick with an active social web presence. My attempt to live mostly through my NetVibes page didn’t go so great though, but I can say it’s sped things up in a couple places at least. It’s just that there’s too frequently not enough info in the feeds I’m reading, so I find myself visiting the sites about as much as always. I did do a new thing in the sidebar for my blog though, with the integration of Profilactic. Which is nothing like what you might think. It has nothing to do with sex that I have discovered (so far), and trust me, I’m looking. It’s a site designed for lifestreaming. That is, coordinating feeds from all your various social web stomping grounds. You can also use it like I did at the right to make a nice link list that can be styled up so people can see you in other areas. Then it adds pretty icons and all that jazz without you needing to screw with it (well, technically you do have to screw with it if you don’t like their default styling, which I didn’t, but it’s classed well and can be changed with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) easily). At the site, it then creates a mash up of all the sites’ RSS feeds that you can send to people who want to keep with you on various fronts, but at one source. One feed to rule them all, one feed to bind them. Stupid hobbitses.

Generally speaking, I am a big fan of Joss Whedon. Ever since I was introduced to Buffy the Vampire Slayer on TV, I was hooked. He just knows his schtick very well, and he’s good at crafting new world’s and groups of people. Compare Firefly to Buffy. Both ensemble casts, but the similarity stops there. He’s very good and careful about trying to have some originality to his work. He’s also one of the few people that I’d consider a real, staple name of television. Though he only has a few credits there, how many other director/producer/creators can you name in televisiondom that you get excited over when they announce a new project? Heck, how many of the leading names in television do you even really know?

New project you say? Yes, I do. Turns out the chatter from before the writers strike has continued ahead nicely on the new show he’s pitching to Fox (collective groan) called Dollhouse. As of now, production should be starting on April 23rd, or so I am reading, and the internet never lies to me. Though the writer’s strike set things back some (production would have started in February), it doesn’t appear that it pushed things back too far. He’s developed it with the help of his lead, Buffy alum Eliza Dushku (Echo). The first seven episodes have been ordered by Fox, and though not necessarily written, they have been pitched, which means the ideas are already spinning into stories. And here’s where the interest builds:

In Dollhouse, Dushku plays a young woman named Echo, a member of a group of people known as “Actives” or “Dolls” who have had their personalities wiped clean so they can be imprinted with any number of new personas, including memory, muscle memory, skills, and language, for different assignments. They’re then hired out for particular jobs, crimes, fantasies, and occasional good deeds. In between tasks, they are mind-wiped into a child-like state and live in a futuristic dormitory/laboratory, a hidden facility nicknamed “The Dollhouse”. The story follows Echo, who begins, in her mind-wiped state, to become self-aware.

I watch very little TV, but what I stick to, I enjoy. Jericho, House… Well, that’s really about it anymore. What is getting more exciting is that new noise on the line indicates some other Buffy alums might be getting involved. Whedon has mentioned that he’d generally like the idea of a whole new cast, to avoid looking like he plays favorites or sticks to a core group. He called it “lazy” casting. Let me be one to join in by saying I have no problem with bringing back people. Grab some of the poor folks from Firefly while you’re at it, they all deserve a second chance too. Now that Joss has established himself, I don’t mind seeing chemistry reused that I am familiar with and know works well.

As it stands, here’s some information on the characters you can expect to see (minus Echo):

• ADELLE DEWITT: The fortyish iceberg who runs the Dollhouse where the human Etch-a-Sketches reside.
• PAUL BALLARD: The thirtysomething G-man who is slated to become an offbeat love interest for Dushku’s “impressionableâ€? Echo.
• BOYD LANGTON: Echo’s handler and father figure.
• TOPHER BRINK: The technogeek who enjoys his job as a Doll programmer maybe a little too much.
• SIERRA: The knockout Doll who is as close to a friend as Echo has.
• VICTOR: The distractingly handsome Doll who is called upon to play everyone from Errol Flynn to Robert DeNiro.
• NOVEMBER: The Tracy Turnblad of the Dolls.
• DR. CLAIRE SANDERS: The beautiful older woman with whom Topher is smitten.

So, are you with me on this? Really, I’m just interested in something new from Joss. I can honestly say that I doubt I’d even care what it was about. Yes, I am that biased. You are too, and you know it.

What is it about holidays that seems to bring the stupid out in people?  Explain it to me.  Or is it just that people have no concept of how to drive anymore?  Michaele and I left Friday morning to go be with family over the weekend and look at places for the wedding.  On the way down, we got trapped in behind an oversized semi that slowed us way down.  The problem with that is that Michaele’s little Sentra has no balls.  No balls.  That makes it terribly difficult to pass.  But, to all those drivers that felt it necessary to pass both us and the semi at once, you win a gold star for being brilliant.  That’s me being sarcastic, in case you couldn’t tell.

I seem to recall that passing two vehicles at once is illegal.  Though, now, I can’t find evidence to support that actually.  If it’s not, it should be.  Regardless, that doesn’t make it any less stupid.  Especially when one of the two cars you are passing is an oversized semi, which may or may not have a vehicle in front of it you have no way of seeing.  Eventually, we did get around them, by being patient and finding a proper opportunity.

Coming back was even worse.  I recently convinced Michaele that it is perfectly safe and reasonable to do 5 MPH over the speed limit (she tends to err on the side of caution a bit too much while driving, even for me).  You’d be hard pressed to find a cop anywhere, outside maybe a school zone, that would actually pull you over for that (violations under 10MPH don’t actually count as moving violations anyway).  If the limit is 65, I usually do 69, if it’s 70, I’ll do 74.  I’m comfortable with that, and I’ve never been stopped for speeding because of it.  But, I lost count of the number of people that passed us while we were doing 70.  Technically, it is illegal to speed while passing someone (though blah, blah, blah, we all do it).  But, to do so blatantly, when we are already going over the speed limit…  Again, I defer to my earlier comment re: stupid.  There isn’t anywhere you need to get that you need to get there that fast.  If so, leave earlier.  We got passed by people that continued on down the road doing easily 75 and 80 MPH.  Out of sight within minutes.  And what really set me off, was the number of people that did it.  I’m not sure I’ve ever been passed quite so many times on that stretch of highway.  Keeping in mind that we were already going over the speed limit.

My main reason for ranting about this is one - you make my travel more unsafe, you farking idiots.  Plus, it pisses me the hell off when I go to pass someone, and a person takes it upon themselves to pass me and the person in front of me at that same moment.  You’re just asking to cause an accident.  Two, I seriously worry about where we will be in a generation or two.  I know that in the grand scheme, this is a dumb one to worry about.  But, it is symptomatic of all the other crap we’re dealing with these days.  If you drive like an idiot, how does that reflect to your kids?  What lesson do they learn?  That it’s okay to drive how you want and tell the ones that are trying to be remotely safe to fark off?  Keep riding my ass on the highway, and one day I might just snap and slam on my brakes.  That’d suck for Mr. Idiot Driver Behind Me Who Needs a Crash Course In Traffic Protocols.  And if you need evidence, stop and really watch how kids drive these days.  I never even had a driver’s ed course, and I knew better than these kids do how to act in a car.

And now, for no reason, a video of my parents’ idiot dog attacking light:

UPDATE: Sorry if you tried to sign up on the forums overnight on 08.03.19.  Turns out there was a bug in the registration system.  I fixed it first thing this morning (08.03.20), and it should work fine now.  Please contact me if you experience any further problems.

I remember a time, many moons ago, when SuperSatellite.com had forums. Back then, I did band and event promotions for the area. phpBB was version….2…point…something. It wasn’t new, I’ll tell you that. Like 2.0.2 or something. But, the forums had a modest, bustling following, and it was well liked. Until we stopped doing that sort of thing. Those forums vanished long ago (well, technically they broke down, sat broken and unused for months, then went away, but you get the idea), and will never be back.

But, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for forums around here. As a matter of fact, I’ve been looking for an excuse to play around with the new phpBB3, which came out recently. Given these issues, I set up http://dotcms.supersatellite.com/ (you’ll also note the new link in my header nav for dotCMS, which can take you there) as a sort of test. One, to test the new forum software. But two, to provide some support and community forums for those people wishing to work with others on things related to dotCMS. As of now, nothing like that exists besides their mailing list. The friendly folks at dotMarketing are planning some new community sites and tools this year, but those are still a ways out. Besides, that’s really the glory of open source, isn’t it? Communities coming up on their own and doing their own thing. I’ve got it up and running, and started several forums to see how things work from their. I’m totally open to suggestions for improving the forums as a tool for the dotCMS community.

So, that’s what I got. I’ve been digging around the backside of phpBB3, and I will tell you, it is a totally different beast from 2. They’ve added quite a bit to it, and have tried to bring it up to snuff against the commercial alternatives. For free, they have done well. For now, I’ll keep it there on that subdomain, but if it gets enough traffic, I’ll probably migrate it all over to its own domain name. I’m interested in what kind of conversation this is able to drum up.

Today was a day of days for dotCMS and me. A couple weeks ago I started working on integrating a servlet into dotCMS to handle PHP code. This in part to learn if I could, and also because I know PHP way better than Java. It would also help to keep me from needing to rewrite chunks of code that I might want to keep using or from having to maintain a second server and connect it to Tomcat using mod_jk for the purpose of running PHP. Ideally, I wanted it all wrapped up in one, nice package.

Enter the Tomcat Wiki. That’s where I started out at, specifically this entry about using PHP. It definitely got me started. The only thing that was sorta sucky was that the method did not work with PHP5+. Only PHP4. But I figured I could live with that. Better than nothing, right? After spending two days hammering away at it, I gave up. I was able to eventually get rid of all the errors, but the end result was a big goose egg on code execution. I also wasn’t sure if it’d even work with the 4.4.8 codebase I grabbed from PHP. All around, I just decided this wasn’t a worthwhile course to follow.

Enter IRC, JT, and Quercus two weeks later. Jason got to talking with Chris and I about it yesterday in the IRC channel (#dotcms on Freenode), and pointed out Quercus. Quercus is a PHP servlet designed by Caucho for their Resin Java application server. Released under the GPL, no less. Unfortunately, at this time, their site sucks, the mailing list bounces, and the forums error out when trying to make a new account. So, I started sniffing around. Rob Sinner’s blog turned out to be a great starting place, and has the bulk of the information you will need. Quercus was also picked up and integrated into the Liferay project, which was where dotCMS started. I figured if they got it working, there’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to.

Here’s how it went down. Go get the current .war file from Caucho (3.1.5 as of right now). Extract it using 7-Zip, or some equally useful unzipping program. First off, copy the three .jar file (quercus.jar, script-10.jar, and resin-util.jar) into /common/lib or /common/lib/ext in your dotCMS root directory. Then, go into /liferay/WEB-INF (dotcms/WEB-INF in version 1.6 and up) and open the web.xml file. Add to it:

That sets up the servlet to handle files that it is told to handle that end in .php. There is a sample web.xml folder in the files you extracted from the .war file that has other stuff like datasource and php.ini designations if you want to connect to a database or use custom PHP settings.

Now, shutdown the dotCMS server if you haven’t already. Do an ant clean and ant deploy. Copy a test php file (I used a basic HTML page with <?php phpinfo(); ?> in it) into /liferay/html on the server’s file structure, and start the server back up. Now, you should be able to open the page http://www.yourdomain.com/html/test.php and see the result page above. dotCMS is set to refer to the real file structure when it sees the folder /html in a URI (Uniform Resource Identifier), rather than its internal virtual file structure.

The kicker that fouled us up originally is that you can’t execute PHP pages from within the dotCMS file structure, since it is a virtual file structure and all the files actually exist in /liferay/assets rather than where they appear in dotCMS’s file browser. If you upload a PHP file to a directory in the back end, it will just come out as a 404, because when the Quercus Servlet tries to call the file by dotCMS’s file structure, it can’t find it’s equivalent in the real server file structure. Get it?

The solution is to this is more complicated than simply making it so there’s a way to run PHP code, and I’m working on it with some help and might get it in to 1.6 if we get it figured out fast enough. We’re trying to modify the CMSFilter.java file and extending the QuercusServlet.java file with code from the SpeedyAssetServlet.java file to make it so that when a PHP file within the dotCMS file structure is dropped to the Quercus servlet, it has the ability to ask dotCMS where in the assets folder it is to execute it. In the mean time, the PHP works with the above solution so long as you store the file in the right place.