Mijndert Stuij

Hosting your Jekyll website on GitHub pages

2012-04-12T00:00:00-07:00

GitHub has a lot of great but rather hidden features. Features not everyone is aware of and maybe don’t get used as often. Features like Gists, The Octodex and most notably GitHub Pages.

With GitHub Pages it’s super easy to host your Jekyll based, or otherwise static, website on GitHub so you don’t need to setup a server yourself. Here’s how to do it.

First we need to create a branch called gh-pages. One way to do it is with the GitHub for Mac application which you can download for free. Or use your own favourite way of branching Git repositories.

From now on it’s easy to just work on your website in the gh-pages branch, or do some changes in master and merge when you’re done.

Now you need to add a file called ‘CNAME’ to your website’s root directory. The CNAME file should include the address of your website, so mine would include ‘mijndertstuij.nl’. Commit the CNAME file and change your A-record in DNS settings to 204.232.175.78.

When your GitHub page is generated you will get a notification. It may also take up to 24 hours for your DNS change to be fully propagated. If you want to check out my Jekyll project head over to my GitHub page. And as always, if you see room for improvement you can fork the entire repository and send me a pull request.

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How to reset iCloud bookmark sync

2012-03-16T00:00:00-07:00

Some people get into a huge bookmark mess when they want to merge and sync their bookmarks via iCloud. This is how I finally fixed my issue.

1. Turn off iCloud bookmark sync on all of your devices except the Mac, choose to delete all previously synced bookmarks
2. Create a backup of your current bookmarks on your Mac, they are located in:

~/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist

3. Correct your bookmarks in Safari on your Mac, make sure everything is the way you want it to be
4. Create another backup of your Safari bookmarks
5. Delete all bookmarks in Safari on your Mac and wait for iCloud to catch up
6. Move your bookmarks backup back into the Library folder and wait for iCloud to catch up again
7. Turn on iCloud bookmarks sync on your other devices

Monitor Amazon Web Services RDS instances with Nagios

2012-03-12T00:00:00-07:00

RDS or Relational Database Service allows you to run on-demand servers with full access to MySQL and Oracle databases. When you’re using Nagios it’s nice to have an alert for when your RDS instance becomes unresponsive. Nagios Exchange provides a small Perl script that can do exactly that.

You need to download and copy this Perl script to /usr/local/nagios/libexec, or wherever your Nagios install is on your system.

Now we can define a service command.

define command{
command_name check_mysqld
command_line /usr/bin/perl $USER1$/check_mysqld.pl -H your-rds-hostname -u $ARG1$ -p $ARG2$
}

And we need a service check within the server config.

define service
use generic-service
host your-host
service_description MySQLd check
check_command check_mysqld!username!password
}

Now all we need to do is restart the Nagios daemon and wait for the new command to initialize. The service check will try to do a ‘mysql status’ command every once in a while.

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High scalability with Route53 and Amazon Elastic Load Balancer

2012-03-08T00:00:00-08:00

By using Route53 as your DNS service, you now have the option to create an Alias record set. This allows you to point your Zone Apex, or A record, to an Elastic Load Balancer. Assuming you already have your domain parked at GoDaddy or whatever your preferred provider is, you first have to change your DNS settings to include Amazon’s delegation set by creating a new Hosted Zone in Route53’s web interface.

The only thing you have to do next is create an Alias record to connect your Zone Apex to the load balancer you have created. And, of course, a CNAME to the www sub-domain.

A faster WordPress with Lighttpd

2011-09-18T00:00:00-07:00

For the sake of this tutorial and my own comfort I’m going to assume you’re using some sort of Debian based Linux distribution.

First we’ll install Lighttpd and get PHP working.

$ apt-get install lighttpd php5-cgi lighttpd-mod-magnet

Configuration files for Lighttpd go into /etc/lighttpd/conf-enabled. We need the following.

10-fastcgi.conf

server.modules   += ( "mod_fastcgi" )
 
fastcgi.server    = ( ".php" =>
        ((
                "bin-path" => "/usr/bin/php-cgi",
                "socket" => "/tmp/php.socket",
                "max-procs" => 2,
                "idle-timeout" => 20,
                "bin-environment" => (
                        "broken-scriptfilename" => "enable",
                        "PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN" => "8",
                        "PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS" => "10000"
                ),
                "bin-copy-environment" => (
                        "PATH", "SHELL", "USER"
                ),
                "broken-scriptfilename" => "enable",
                "allow-x-send-file" => "enable"
        ))
)

10-magnet.conf

server.modules += ( "mod_magnet" )

your-vhost.conf

$HTTP["host"] =~ "^(www\.)?yourhost\.tld" {
  var.servername = "yourhost"
 
  # Set basedir for our domains
  var.basedir = "/var/www/"
 
  # Documentroot = basedir + servername
  server.document-root = basedir + servername
 
  # Attach the mod_magnet URL
  magnet.attract-physical-path-to = ( "/etc/lighttpd/wordpress.lua" )
}

lighttpd.conf

server.modules = (
        "mod_access",
        "mod_expire",
        "mod_alias",
        "mod_compress",
        "mod_redirect",
#       "mod_rewrite",
)

server.document-root        = "/var/www"
server.upload-dirs          = ( "/var/cache/lighttpd/uploads" )
server.errorlog             = "/var/log/lighttpd/error.log"
server.pid-file             = "/var/run/lighttpd.pid"
server.username             = "www-data"
server.groupname            = "www-data"
index-file.names            = ( "index.php", "index.html",
                                "index.htm", "default.htm",
                               " index.lighttpd.html" )
url.access-deny             = ( "~", ".inc" )
static-file.exclude-extensions = ( ".php", ".pl", ".fcgi" )
dir-listing.encoding        = "utf-8"
server.dir-listing          = "enable"

$HTTP["url"] =~ "\.(png|js|jpg|gif|ico|css)$" {
        expire.url = ( "" => "access 40 days" )
}

$HTTP["url"] =~ "\.(html|htm)$" {
        expire.url = ( "" => "access 1 seconds" )
}

compress.cache-dir          = "/var/cache/lighttpd/compress/"
compress.filetype           = ( "application/x-javascript", "text/css", "text/html", "text/plain" )
include_shell "/usr/share/lighttpd/create-mime.assign.pl"
include_shell "/usr/share/lighttpd/include-conf-enabled.pl"

MySQL and PHPMyAdmin

$ apt-get install mysql-server-5.1

$ mkdir /var/www/phpmyadmin
$ cd /var/www/phpmyadmin
$ svn co https://phpmyadmin.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/phpmyadmin/tags/STABLE/phpMyAdmin .

WordPress

Now you can download WordPress and create a database. You will also need to place wordpress.lua in the configured directory. The LUA file needs to look like this.

attr = lighty.stat(lighty.env["physical.path"])
if (not attr) then
  lighty.env["uri.path"] = "/index.php"
  lighty.env["physical.rel-path"] = lighty.env["uri.path"]
  lighty.env["physical.path"] = lighty.env["physical.doc-root"] .. lighty.env["physical.rel-path"]
end

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6 apps I use daily

2011-08-04T00:00:00-07:00

Safari

I’ve been a Google Chrome user since the very first version but when Safari 5 was released I went back to Apple. I love native Mac OS X apps and Safari is definitely one of them. Safari 5.1 even has a nifty ‘read it later’ kind of feature that I use frequently. The memory usage of the Safari Renderer process sometimes catches fire and makes my browser a bit slow, but I’m sure Apple will fix that in Mac OS 10.7.1.

iTunes

Another native Mac OS X app. When I bought my first iPod I immediately gave control to iTunes to arrange my music in folders. I don’t ever have to worry about that anymore. iTunes is fast and has a nice UI that fits perfectly with the rest of the OS. It holds all of my music and podcasts and it can also sync my iPhone over wifi.

TextMate

If there’s text involved, TextMate probably has a bundle for it to show pretty colors and help you type code faster. TextMate has an amazing ecosystem of plugins and bundles that still make it the best code editor out there. I even use it for writing blog posts in textile. I would love to see TextMate 2 being released but does it matter? To me, nothing can beat TextMate right now.

iTerm

I’ve always been a fan of the standard Terminal app that comes with Mac OS (have I said I like native apps?). When Lion was released I gave my MacBook Pro a clean install and decided to give iTerm a try. I was blown away by the configurability and I don’t think I can go back to Terminal.app.

Adium

Adium is an instant messaging, IRC and Twitter client all in one. It runs on the excellent open source Libpurple library which allows it to support a vast range of networks to connect to. There’s also a lot of plugins, themes and icons available to customize your experience.

GitHub for Mac

I’m fairly new to Git(Hub) and, coming from Subversion, a few things seem a little abstract at first. GitHub for Mac is a native client to GitHub which allows you to easily create repositories, commit, pull and diff files. GitHub for Mac features some of the best User Interface designs I’ve ever seen and makes Git available to the masses.

Vagrant is cruise control for awesome

2011-07-30T00:00:00-07:00

Virtual environments are changing my workflow and those of millions around the world. One day, everything will be virtualized. Okay, maybe not. Anyway, we all think of VMware when we hear about virtual machines (or Xen if you’re a sysadmin). VMware has very good software on the Mac called Fusion. It’s really fast but it also takes up a lot of pixels on the screen. Pixels I could use for, I don’t know, web development? On top of that I always have a Terminal session or two running so I went looking for a way to create and destroy virtual machines ON THE COMMAND LINE. For added geek credits.

That’s where Vagrant comes in. Just look at how easy it is.

1 $ gem install vagrant
2 $ vagrant box add base http://files.vagrantup.com/lucid32.box
3 $ vagrant init
4 $ vagrant up
5 $ vagrant ssh

Vagrant requires you to install VirtualBox which is a completely free alternative to VMware. Every VirtualBox VM you might have works with Vagrant. Let’s go through the steps a little bit.

First off we’re installing a gem for Vagrant which is basically a bunch of scripts that calls VirtualBox to do awesome stuff.

1 $ gem install vagrant

Now we you can download an image file and initiate the directory in which your VM will run.

1 $ vagrant box add base http://files.vagrantup.com/lucid32.box
2 $ vagrant init

To bring the new virtual machine up and running you execute the following command. After that you can SSH into your box just like you would with any server.

1 $ vagrant up
2 $ vagrant ssh

The coolest bit of this geekery is the fact that you can use Chef or Puppet to do unattended software installs and other common tasks whenever your VM boots. So, I recommend you give it a try. You just might get hooked and never look at a GUI again.

The iPad never got out of the way

2011-07-09T00:00:00-07:00

When the iPad came out I was a huge critic. Why would anyone want a big iPod touch with a relatively low screen resolution? But when I saw friends using it as a gaming and reading device I shelled out the money and got one myself. The 16GB wifi only version. I never regretted not getting the 3G version as I’m almost always near a wifi hotspot. And when I’m not, I probably don’t want to bring my iPad.

I’ve been using my iPad for over a year now. The first apps I bought were Reeder and Read it Later. The iPad is a brilliant for quickly scanning RSS feeds and reading the interesting articles in the Read it later app. And let’s just cut to the chase here, that’s all I really did with my iPad. Sure, I played some games, tweeted some tweets and browsed the web a few times. Hell, I even wrote a blogpost or two on the iPad. I’ve been thinking why I don’t use my iPad that much, though. And I think I figured it out.

The iPad never really got out of the way as Apple promised it would. The iPad is an always present device because of the weight, the huge bezel around the screen and, most importantly, the fact that you have to connect your iPad to iTunes to sync anything. And you know what? That low resolution screen, it’s brilliant for short form reading but I found myself in a few situations where I would want some more pixels when using Safari for example. The iPad never became the device that I could pick up without thinking about it. It never became my go-to device for content consumption because it’s “yet another device”. Why pick up my iPad when I have my much more powerful, better screen MacBook Pro right in front of me? I’m sure a lot of my readers can name a few reasons, but they don’t matter to me because I’m not the kind of person that thinks tablets are awesome. Yet. I’m sure Apple will make the iPad better in the coming years and we’ll see, I might even buy one some day. For now, I’m selling my iPad and who knows what might replace it.

Tumblr: get your shit together or goodbye

2011-06-30T00:00:00-07:00

I’ve been using Tumblr since the very start. I still think Tumblr is pretty much WordPress for dummies. You get presented with a very simple interface and you get to ‘follow’ people like on Twitter. It’s a great way for people to get a blog up and running within a few minutes and actually maintain it by posting new stuff every day. So, that’s all great. Tumblr is a good idea which is fairly well executed. There are huge problems arising, though.

Now that Tumblr is one of the biggest websites on the planet, a lot of problems with stability and customer support are driving users insane. I know some users have very high expectations by wanting Tumblr to host their 50.000 visitors a month website for free. But at least Tumblr should come up with a solution for these users, too. Albeit a paid model so Tumblr can upgrade their servers or hire better engineers to optimize stability.

I wanted to write an entire piece about the customer support of Tumblr but I think this Tweet speaks for itself.

Tumblr has gone so far as hiring people who don’t give a shit about Tumblr outside of their 9 to 5 window where they do ‘work’. Tumblr has built a following on the fact that their customer support rocks (and many more things of course). Buzz is a perfect example of how customer support has degraded over the past few months.

You know, I really want to continue to love Tumblr as a place to discover new content, meet people and share the things I like. Unfortunately it’s increasingly hard due to stupid interface changes which no one gets, the frequent downtime and the atrocious customer support. Did Tumblr grew too big for their own good? There’s only one way to fix a company like this: they need to turn a profit soon and I think the only solution is to introduce ads and/or offer a Tumblr Pro account for the people who do want to host their 50k/month website. I even think people with smaller blogs would like to pay a little fee if that fixes at least the stability problems.

As for me, I’m making a list of the blogs still on Tumblr I really want to follow. I’ll grab their RSS feeds and put them in Google Reader. I liked the Tumblr dashboard way better but I’m growing tired of the Tumblbeasts.

My current favorite podcasts

2011-06-16T00:00:00-07:00

Podcasts are a great way to stay up-to-date on subjects you would like to know more about. They are bite-sized pieces of information that come in either a audio or a video format. Most of them are published on a weekly basis. You can find a lot of them in the iTunes Podcast Directory. I decided it’s time to share the podcasts I listen to the most.

Build & Analyze is a weekly show on iOS and mobile web development.
Enough is a podcast on minimalism and focusses on Apple devices and services.
Founders Talk is an interview podcast profiling the founders of startups.
The Talk Show is a general podcast on just about anything geeks care about.

As you can see, 75% of my favorite shows are from the 5by5 network. 5by5 offers some of the best in-depth discussions on topics I personally care about. Dan Benjamin, John Siracusa and John Gruber are basically my heroes. Then there’s the Enough podcast which really augments the excellent Minimal Mac website.