So this morning and early afternoon I switched from running Apache 2.2.x to NGiNX. In the past, I've operated this site on Apache, then LigHTTPd, then returned to Apache. Prompted to check out NGiNX again (I've looked at it before, but chose not to use it) by the news that NGiNX overtook Microsoft IIS as the #2 web server I took another serious look and liked what I saw.

This did mean some work, converting the quite large number of rewrite rules that maintain my site's backwards compatibility (so links to pages that were created ages ago still work) from Apache's to NGiNX's configuration format (encountering several interesting issues along the way, learning how to pass the rewritten URL to PHP scripts running via FastCGI), and updating a few PHP scripts that had some Apache-isms and broke under FastCGI.

I look forward to integrating some Ruby stuff with this NGiNX server. (All the PHP on my site makes me sad, as I much prefer Ruby these days. PHP is so... limited in expressiveness.)

If anyone encounters any pages that don't work right, please alert me and include the page URL.

Thanks!

Aaron out.

Over the weekend, I rewrote a bunch of old, ugly PHP code (in preparation to migrate more of this site's code to Ruby). Unfortunately I did it in a way that breaks my site pages until I update them. So currently there are a lot of broken (blank) pages on the site. This will change slowly as I update them. Sorry.

Also, I discovered that my "Contact Me" and article comment submission system was broken. So if you sent me a message or commented on an article, I did NOT receive your message/comment. I apologize. Feel free to resubmit if you read this.

Aaron out.

After having removed my old email address off this web site to slow the flow of unsolicited, unwanted messages from spammers whose robot crawlers periodically visit my site searching new addresses to spam, I intended to add a web form for visitors to use if they needed to contact me. Unfortunately, I've been a slacker

I hereby repent! You can now click the Contact Me button on the left side-panel menu to send me a message if so needed.

Fun, huh!

Oh, and since commenting on articles and posts doesn't work on my site, if you have something impressive to say about an article, feel free to use the Contact Me function to send the comment to me. If you do, please, please, please include the full web address (URL) of the article so I know what you're commenting about.

Maybe someday I'll get comments working...

Yeah, that'll happen soon... *laugh*

Update (27 January 2006): Thanks go to my sister for using the new contact form to alert me of an unfortunate typo. Unfortunately somehow lost an e. It has been remedied. The missing e has been found.

No, this isn't about an insecticide spray, but about a Redundant Array of Independent Disks. This web site is hosted on a FreeBSD server that has four 120 gigabyte hard drives in it. The data is stored in a RAID 5 array, which means that if...

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Beware! A new site design is cominghere! You can preview the newThe new look débuted first at: http://www.adg.us/test.html
Subsequently, it has infiltrated the front welcome page and the news page.

So far, there are some problems with the new CSS-based design under Microsoft Internet Explorer. I've searched to see what could be causing the rendering problems, and the conclusion I reached is that MSIE is buggy. It stinks. Even with the very latest version installed.

My recommendation if the page looks odd (with huge gaps or spaces, or borders that don't quite line up) is that you switch browsers to something less buggy, more secure, and totally free: Mozilla Firefox

Not only is it a superior browser, it supports public, open standards far better. It also doesn't have the pop-up problem MS Explorer has had for years—and Microsoft claims will be fixed under Windows XP Service Pack 2. I'm sorry, Microsoft, but it's too little, too late. I'm fed up trying to tweak and change my web designs to work around your buggy web browser.

I sincerely feel bad for those of you who can't install Mozilla and are forced to use Explorer. I hope someday you will be able to join the modern world, that whoever manages and administers your computer will be able to modernize to Mozilla someday soon. Good luck!

If anyone (Anyone? Anyone?) is a repeat visitor to my site, in particular, either my Yakkity Yak or Caching Adventures sections, you will have noticed the pages slowly growing longer, and longer, as new posts were added. They had become so large and cumbersome that folks using dial-up Internet connections probably gave up loading the pages long before they ever finished.

Necessity finally drove me to add pagination to my home-grown 'blog system. Some infrastructure was there, but unused. Now it's been completed. And in the process, I decided that rather than displaying 'blog posts in full within the page, I'd follow in the footsteps of most other 'blogs on the web, and just display article excerpts.

So check it out, and let me know of any glitches.

Monday night, I shut down my personal web site and other services running on my server at my house in preparation to upgrade to from FreeBSD 5.1 to FreeBSD 5.2. On Tuesday my server spent it's CPU cycles building version 5.2.

Sometime later, I rebooted to 5.2 and things looked good, or nearly so.

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After just over a week of web site downtime, my site is at last back up, all data restored! All this due to some corruption of the RAID-5 array when I moved the four drives from the Athlon 700MHz machine to a new Athlon 2600+ machine. For a bit, I was worried that I'd lost some of my data, including some of these web site postings. Fortune has smiled on me, and so far, all my data appears intact, though it has been a rough week trying to figure out ways to recover it.

Next, I need to get my mail server running again. Once that's done, I then need to figure out where I'm gonna stash the new server box. Right now it's sitting out in the middle of my living room amidst the clutter of torn-apart-computers (yes, I've had several open, guts strewn across the room) and shipping packaging. I wish I had a good server closet.

Yesterday evening, I added a new site section:I've been a GPS stash hunter (or geocacher) since July 2001. I had a separate web page for my caching adventures, but yesterday moved it to this web site, and made it a new, separate section. Be sure to visit my Astounding Adventures subsection, where I intend to log my caching adventures.

After work this evening, I decided to do some web site clean-up and reorganization. Browse around a bit and you'll notice the changes. There aren't many. My main page is now just a welcome screen, and web site news items are on a separate page. I've still got more to do, but I expect it will always be thus.