Gill turns 27 today and as I’m not your usual birthday cake kind of guy, we had profiteroles for breakfast at 6.30 this morning.
auto rewrite rules and google sitemap generation
Although we’re very busy in work at the moment, the last few evenings I have been pythoning myself up and have come up with 3 nifty little scripts.
- Automatically generate a google sitemap for any given url – createSiteMap.py .
- Automatically generate rewrite rules for any given url – createRewriteRules.py .
- View a list of all unique urls for any given url – crawlsite.py (this script was originally based on Peter Krantz)
Usage of all three is quite simple –
python scriptName.py http://www.karova.com
There is also a zip archive for download. As you can see I have started using Google Code project hosting. It suits my needs perfectly as it’s simple to use and the SVN server they are using is hellish quick. I’ve named the project acr (Auto Create RewriteRules). For a sample of output see http://www.karova.com/sitemap.xml . The rewrite rules was written as a personal project but also for KarovaStore – So expect release 2.1 to have clean urls and auto google sitemaps.
Update:
Yes I know Google have their own sitemap generator but mine is alot easier to use.
Krugle Audit
I’ve been harping on about Krugle for a while now and rightly so. I was on their beta testers list and as such was also on their mailing list. Last week I got a mail asking me to part-take in an audit with a third party company to gauge my views on the web app so far. Sure I thought (plus there was a chance of getting a $50 Amazon voucher if I was in the first few to reply).
The audit only took a few minutes with simple questions:
- What do I do?
Senior software developer for Karova. - How did I find out about Krugle?
On some blog – I’m not sure which one - How often do I use it?
About 4 times a day - Will I continue to use it?
Hell yes - Describe it to a friend
Google for code (but not google cod search of course) - Example of when I use it and why do I not choose a competitor
To quickly find out how to use a specific class
Low and behold I did get a $50 amazon voucher. Thanks guys – it doesn’t seem fair really.
The krugle blog have also given me credit for the Firefox search plugin I wrote 🙂
Krugle Firefox search plugin
I was cursing krugle.com and it’s bastard (yet brilliant) ajax as I could’t write a Firefox search plugin. Then today I saw on their blog that they have the “Krugle Search Environment” which allows you to bookmark searches and thus create a firefox search plugin.
- Download KrugleSearchPlugins.zip
- Or install it (versions less than Firefox 2.0)
In the archive which you need to save to “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins”. I have included a Firefox 1.5 version krugle.src and krugle.png for a C# search and also a Firefox 2.0 Opensearch krugle.xml which also searches C#. The language is quite easy to change or remove if you open the src or xml files.
Autotrader remake
It seems that Autotrader has gone standards compliant. I’ve not tested the markup for compliance but it’s great to see the giant dinasaurs like autotrader and rightmove going this way.
Sunny Spain
I’m off for a week in Spain to play “The Hoff”, get pissed and pinkify my belly.
Server tears
Well, I received my server today. Quite surprisingly the packaging was a bit poor, with only bubble wrap wrapped around it. The RAID controller and PCI adaptor were loose inside. After some fretting I eventually got it running and booting into the installed Mandriva. I then started to install Ubuntu which would but install due to an apic problem.
4294669.209000] ..MP-BIOS bug: 8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC
I managed to disable this on boot (with help) to install which all went fine, then on reboot, after disabling apic again, there was a new error.
isapnp: No Plug & Play device found
And after disabling PnP (Plug and Play) in the Bios and rebooting I get yet another error –
BUG: soft lockup detected on CPU#0!
Which I cannot get around but a thread on Launchpad suggests trying Edgy Eft Knot-3 which is downloading at the moment, so I’ll give it a try in the morning.
Update
Edgy Eft was superb and installed first time (after I removed the faulty RAID controller). All is good, loud but good.
Investing in a server
I’m not big into hardware and only really know what I need to. I’m not a gamer and have no need for any fancy graphics cards. I do however spend hours trawling ebay for servers. I am dying to buy one and I think the time has come. I had been looking at the Sun Cobalt RAQs as they are slick but it ties me to RAQ software or installing Strongbolt or similar. I have therefore changed my mind and have decided to go for a decent spec 1u server that has vga out and I can install Ubuntu Server. I reckon for under £300 I can get a dual PIII with over a gig of RAM and a couple of SCSI drives (RAID).
I can justify the cost of this as I already pay about $150 a year to dreamhost so after a couple of years it will have paid for itself. Karova will be getting some major server space soon and I hope to sneak the 1u server in there. If that doesn’t work out, I’ll have a awesome dev server I can screw into the bottom of my desk.
I’m aiming to have one by the end of the month so if you have any tips or pointers for purchasing a server, let me know in the comments.
Steve’s gone dude, Steve’s gone
It’s a sad day when an Ausie icon like Steve Irwin passes away. He was an ace presenter and his Australia zoo is awesome (I’ve been there, check my gallery). I’ve jumped with the guy and he’s had me in a head lock. An great guy and he will be missed.
Graduate c# devleopers x2 wanted
As part of Karova‘s expansion, we are looking at taking on 2 more graduate developers. If you want to apply, you’ll need at least a 2:1 in a technical degree, knowledge of object oriented programming techniques, XML and XSLT, web standards and CSS. C# would be benifical, as would a good grasp of IIS. If you want good pay and a chance to be part of a growing and exciting company – please see http://www.karova.com/jobs for more detail. We are after a sales manager too for you sales guys.