Check out Shak’s latest experiment: The Liberty Village Cam! Just launched Sunday, June 2nd, 2013. If you check it out soon, you’ll see that it was built in one day 😉 The Liberty Village Cam was only announced on Facebook & Twitter, until this post, so the social media engagement has been good, resulting in over 130 unique visitors within less than one day of operation.
We have an important custom WordPress website implementation to do for early January 2013, so what better time than the holidays to catch up on Shak’s own WordPress deployment!
Shak.Biz is now running the slightly significant new release of WordPress, which was published earlier this month – version 3.5, up from 3.4.x – read about it on WordPress News: http://wordpress.org/news/2012/12/elvin/
Along with the latest version of WordPress, the default Twenty Eleven theme had an update – version 1.5 – http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/twentyeleven. It’s supposed to be more mobile-friendly…
The previously used Facebook plugins & widgets seem to be misbehaving if not broken, so they’re removed for now… An overhaul of the social media is long overdue, but clients take priority 🙂
The hacker Group Lulzsec Security hacked into 62,000 private Internet accounts including Facebook, PayPal, dating sites, Xbox Live and Twitter.
There is a link to a Dazzlepod page referenced in the above article, which lists email addresses of hacked accounts; check to see if your accounts are on the list!
Thanks to Twitter Counter, it’s easy to display my Twitter statistics. Here’s the last week, as of whenever you happen to be viewing this page:
We haven’t written any new Posts in almost five months. There have been too many updates, both personal and software. Today, Shak is beyond sick of seeing the “Facebook Is Down Today” Post, so here is some new content.
Even though we updated everything WordPress related a month or two ago, just signing into the WordPress Admin/Dashboard triggered update notices. WordPress version 3.0.5 is out. Of course, the WordPress anti-spam plug-in Akismet has been updated, now on version 2.5.3. Even the WordPress theme named Pixel, used here, has also been updated to version 2.0.2. Well, Shak upgraded everything using the automated facilities, and everything looks to be working well (as accustomed & expected).
Aside from all that website related stuff, we use the free virtualization software VirtualBox in daily business activity. It too has a new version released, 4.0.4, just four days ago. On top of an openSUSE 11.1 Linux host (KDE for Desktop/GUI), we run our accounting system (QuickBooks on Windows XP) in a virtual machine, and also an openSUSE 11.3 workstation environment (GNOME) communications (GNOME/Novell Evolution), web development (Quanta Plus), and other web-administrative activities (Firefox). Everything is up-to-date, of course 🙂
I hope everyone has had a great Family Day! Shak’s now going to go enjoy what’s left of his…
People are freaking out over Facebook being inaccessible. At this moment, there are thousands of Tweets on Twitter posted every minute, remarking upon the failure!
Shak’s Twitter use has been reluctant and moderate. However, it’s convenient to connect it to Facebook and automate the updating of a status & tweet, simultaneously with a single effort. Today seemed ripe for integration with Daniel.Shakhmundes.Net / Shak.Be / Shak.WS / Shak.TV / Shak.Biz (in order of acquisition), now that some time is being spent on Shak’s own web-presence.
From some brief Googling of WordPress Twitter Widget, we opted to read a couple best/top lists:
From there and some further research of compatibility and rating on the WordPress Plugin Directory the following two plugins have been selected and implemented into the right sidebar:
Sign into my TwitterRemote on http://twittercounter.com/DaShak?t=t so I know when you check my stats!
In all the commotion, we put up a rather default WordPress website for Shak.TV, but little customization was done. Practically the only work put into this website has been content and functionality through plug-ins. It was a good demonstration of what you can get out-of-the-box with WordPress, while showcasing implementation of some key functionality that every website should have.
This year it’s time to move forward! Daniel Shakhmundes actually wants to hear from you now, and this fact is exemplified in the return of a contact page! While we’ve routinely implemented such things on clients’ websites, it’s been years since one was available here. We used the cformsII plug-in by delicious:days, which provides anti-spam verification, robust field checking, and many more features that no form (contact or otherwise) should be without.
We’ve also fixed & improved the Photos page, which bears content from Daniel Shakhmundes’ Facebook profile. Like the web in general, the Facebook system is changing & updating periodically. A new Fotobook plug-in for WordPress was finally released, accounting for the functional/API changes while also providing new functionality itself.
In keeping up with WordPress updates, we also upgraded to the latest stable version (2.9.1), which was a breeze as always. It’s a great feeling to know you have the cutting-edge functionality expected in a website, while having no known security vulnerabilities, and a world-wide community keeping things that way!
Cheers,
D.Shak & associates
Along with today’s post, we upgraded to WordPress 2.9 – so far so good!
One of our clients raised concern with their WordPress version recently, so we are recommending to everyone (especially my clients) that they upgrade their WordPress websites, because there are some vulnerabilities that are becoming well known.
We have upgraded clients’ sites without issues. Now is a good time to do so, because the WordPress hardening release is for securing and stabilizing their version 2.8 branch. We strongly recommend doing so ASAP – it should be a smooth experience – contact us and we can take care of it if you wish.
More information on the latest stable version and why you should upgrade were posted on October 20, 2009 on WordPress’ own website under WordPress 2.8.5: Hardening Release.
Regards,
Daniel Shakhmundes, B.Sc.
Technology & Business Consultant
+ Phone: 1-905-321-9898
+ Email: d@shak.tv
+ HTTP://Shak.TV
Google‘s YouTube integrated with Google’s AdSense are together called [Google/YouTube] AdSense Player. Non-intrusive advertising should be displayed. The content (videos and advertising) are automatically selected by Google’s system, but there are some means of influencing the process in your own custom/tailored implementation.
Alongside some upgrades to Daniel Shakhmundes’ website (i.e. now running the latest stable versions of WordPress, Akismet, and Google Analytics for WordPress), we’re most excited to write about what we consider to be an upgrade to life.
Google now has a new product named Latitude. Straight from their introductory page, it states:
Check out the official Google Latitude page for more information, including a video.
There can be a lot of benefits and convenience in having the ability to know where your friends/contacts/associates/whoever are, especially considering that many of us already use Google Maps on our computers & smart-phones. Apparently integration for Facebook and Twitter is already available. We’ll be looking into those before too long. For now, D.Shak is going to enable Google Latitude and see who’s willing to experiment with him… Now is a good time to figure out the privacy settings for Google Latitude, before many other people are using it.
Daniel Shakhmundes‘ Remote Backup service uses one of two methods for backup system implementations:
The thing is, we want to provide the benefits of incremental mirroring/backup to the first scenario without the restrictive licensing and extortive costs of proprietary software. The good news is that rdiff-backup is almost ready for doing so, and some already say it is. Here’s a pseudo-log of D.Shak’s research & experiment this weekend:
Now available on rdiff-backup’s home page is a native Windows executable/binary as of version 1.2.2, released October 19th 2008 (currently the new stable version). So, we now have Windows support for rdiff-backup by the developers! All of the required libraries and modules are built-in, so there is no longer a need for Cygwin or other 3rd party software on Windows – these issues prevented D.Shak from providing clients a stable and well-supported solution using rdiff-backup.
Reading further, the rdiff-backup wiki (RdiffBackupWiki) seems up-to-date and is loaded with valuable information, including a BackupFromWindowsToLinux page that D.Shak reviewed and followed for experimentation. We backuped up a Windows XP Professional workstation named Used on the home-office network. Having already used PuTTY abundantly, the advice & directions provided in a How-To style were well suited to our usual ways. Using Simon Tatham‘s putty.exe, puttygen.exe, and plink.exe, a secure/encrypted network connection/tunnel for rdiff-backup was established to a Linux-based server in the home-office named Sonic.
While the experiment was successful for the most-part, there were errors/warnings that we feel are not acceptable in the level of quality we deliver to our clients. While some of the issues may be relatively easily or quickly resolvable, we don’t want to bleed on cutting-edge technology unless there is a lot of support available, either through a vibrant community of developers & users or funding (by client or stakeholder) to spend time and/or engage specialists. The Daniel Shakhmundes business balances these considerations based on customers’ desires, delivering the best possible solutions according to each clients’ circumstances.
For the rdiff-backup developers, one of D.Shak’s concerns is the issues relating to hard-links and inodes. Contemporary Microsoft Windows systems normally use the NTFS file-system, which is significantly different on a technical-level from the the open source ones that rdiff-backup is most attuned to. rdiff-backup version 1.2.2 was supposed to automatically detect when it was backing up from a Windows file-system, which does not use inodes, but we found that symptoms/issues manifested when we did not use the –no-hard-links option. This circumstance did not inspire confidence.
Another considerable deficiency is the inability to read files in certain circumstances, particularly
1) open or “locked” in-use files, and/or
2) those with permissions restricting read-access.
These are old and typical challenges for backup systems, and in the Windows/NTFS world they have Microsoft’s Volume Shadow Service (VSS) to surmount them. However, rdiff-backup is not programmed to use VSS, and provides no alternative methods or means of its own.
D.Shak assembled a trail of web-pages that offer a solution to making use of the Volume Shadowing service at your own discretion, which reportedly works:
There is a lot of other work to do before D.Shak has the time to further experiment. Hopefully the rdiff-backup developers and the open source community appreciate this blog/post in the meanwhile. Some people will inevitably polish the functionality & usability of rdiff-backup on Windows, and we will be there to help and benefit too!
D.Shak observes the term “social media” a lot these days…
It is a new buzzword, but not a new concept, considering that an environment where people may interact/socialize is the general implication – the web and new systems of communications technology allow people to browse & exchange text, images/photos, video, audio/sound/music, and other sorts of information – there is nothing new about “social media” aside from the fact that the popular adoption of the term indicates the increasing societal permeation of more evolved, refined, and sophisticated methods for people to interact.
In riding the waves of new technological trends, D.Shak pursues those that have the most benefit & relevance to making a living! With that in mind, two of the internet’s most popular & professional social networking/utility/media websites – LinkedIn & Facebook – have been integrated with the Shak.WebSite. Regardless of anyones membership or familiarity with these things, all can enjoy the additional content now made available (photos in particular), including Daniel Shakhmundes for whom sharing/syndication of content is now easier than ever!