Listening Trends:

Tylerdave’s Listening Trends PDF

Music Universe:

Tylerdave’s Music Universe PDF

I absolutely love being able to get a visual representation of data in this way and it makes me glad I decided to scrobble my listening over the last year or so in the first place.

At first I thought that they may be in alphabetical order, but that didn’t make sense as all of my file names are already prefixed with the track number. After a little research I found that the built-in MP3 player plays the files in the order in which they are actually stored on the drive (in the FAT)! I then thought there must be some option to change the sort order but I was sorely disappointed. This was the behavior of some of the first (cheap) MP3 players in the early ’00s — it is inexcusable in late 2009.

I found a forum thread discussing the problem where it was suggested that you could use a utility called FATSort to reorder the FAT to be in alphabetical order. This seemed like a viable work-around but the utility didn’t recognize my FAT32-formatted drive. I then tried another Linux utility also called FATSort but it reported errors on the drive and couldn’t continue.

Finally a solution:

I was finally able to find another utility that serves the same purpose: DriveSort. I verified that it works on Windows 7 so it should work with Vista and XP as well and it supports both FAT16 and FAT32 formatted drives.

Before following these instructions make sure to make a complete backup of any drives with which you’re going to be working.

Download and run the program and then do the following:

• Click “Disk” -> “Open” and select the proper disk
• Click the arrow on the “Sort current folder” button and check “Long name sort” and “Subdirectories”
• Click the arrow on the “Save current folder” button and check “Subdirectories”
• Click “Folder” -> “Sort”
• Click “Folder” -> “Save”
• Click “Disk” -> “Close”

Now the files should be stored in alphabetical order within the FAT so the Insight’s MP3 player should play them in the proper order.

I still think it’s ridiculous that you have to use this hack to get the player to work as expected but at least there’s this work-around.

#!/bin/bash
# per http://kb.parallels.com/en/5550

# make sure to enter the actual domain name on the next line:
export vhost_name=ENTER-REAL-DOMAIN-NAME-HERE

export AWSTATS_BIN_D=`grep ^AWSTATS_BIN_D /etc/psa/psa.conf | awk '{print $2}'`
export HTTPD_VHOSTS_D=`grep ^HTTPD_VHOSTS_D /etc/psa/psa.conf | awk '{print $2}'`
export PRODUCT_ROOT_D=`grep ^PRODUCT_ROOT_D /etc/psa/psa.conf | awk '{print $2}'`
export awstats=${AWSTATS_BIN_D}/awstats.pl
export awstats_gen_opts="-staticlinks -configdir=${PRODUCT_ROOT_D}/etc/awstats -config=${vhost_name}-http"

find $HTTPD_VHOSTS_D/$vhost_name/statistics/webstat -name '*.txt' -exec rm -f '{}' \;

$awstats $awstats_gen_opts -LogFile=$HTTPD_VHOSTS_D/${vhost_name}/statistics/logs/access_log.processed

# for both of these loops, change the year range to match those that need to be regenerated:

for y in 2007 2008 2009; do for m in `seq 1 12` ; do mkdir ${HTTPD_VHOSTS_D}/${vhost_name}/statistics/webstat/$y-$(printf "%.2d" $m) ; done ; done

for y in 2007 2008 2009; do \
 for m in `seq -w 1 12` ; do \
     dest_dir=$HTTPD_VHOSTS_D/$vhost_name/statistics/webstat/$y-$m ; \
     $awstats $awstats_gen_opts -month=$m -year=$y -output > $dest_dir/awstats.${vhost_name}-http.html ; \
     ln -s $dest_dir/awstats.${vhost_name}-http.html $dest_dir/index.html ; \
     for output in alldomains allhosts lasthosts unknownip allrobots lastrobots session urldetail urlentry urlexit osdetail unknownos refererse refererpages keyphrases keywords errors404 ; do \
         $awstats $awstats_gen_opts -month=$m -year=$y -output=$output > $dest_dir/awstats.${vhost_name}-http.$output.html ; \
     done ; \
 done ; \
done

$PRODUCT_ROOT_D/admin/sbin/statistics --calculate-one --domain-name=$vhost_name

This is based on the information in this Parallels KB: http://kb.parallels.com/en/5550

All of the following commands need to be run as root or with the use of sudo:

First, make sure Ruby is installed:

root@host:[~]$ /scripts/installruby

Next, install Passenger:

root@host:[~]$ gem install passenger

Then set the paths to Apache and the Apache dev headers and run the installer:

root@host:[~]$ APXS2=/usr/local/apache/bin/apxs PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/apache/bin passenger-install-apache2-module
Welcome to the Phusion Passenger Apache 2 module installer, v2.2.5.

This installer will guide you through the entire installation process. It
shouldn't take more than 3 minutes in total.

Here's what you can expect from the installation process:

1. The Apache 2 module will be installed for you.
2. You'll learn how to configure Apache.
3. You'll learn how to deploy a Ruby on Rails application.

Don't worry if anything goes wrong. This installer will advise you on how to
solve any problems.

Press Enter to continue, or Ctrl-C to abort.

Hit enter and the installer will compile the Apache 2 module. If this is successful you will get a message with directions for modifying the Apache conf:

The Apache 2 module was successfully installed.

Please edit your Apache configuration file, and add these lines:

LoadModule passenger_module /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.5/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
PassengerRoot /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.5
PassengerRuby /usr/bin/ruby

After you restart Apache, you are ready to deploy any number of Ruby on Rails
applications on Apache, without any further Ruby on Rails-specific
configuration!

Press ENTER to continue.

Copy the configuration directives and place them in /usr/local/apache/conf/includes/pre_main_global.conf. Do not directly edit the httpd.conf!

These are the lines that should be added (with server-specific version numbers):

LoadModule passenger_module /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.5/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
PassengerRoot /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.5
PassengerRuby /usr/bin/ruby

Add the following to the httpd.conf (passenger docs):

PassengerResolveSymlinksInDocumentRoot on

Run the httpd.conf config distiller to save these changes:

root@host:[~]$ /usr/local/cpanel/bin/apache_conf_distiller --update
Distilled successfully

Then rebuild the httpd.conf using the cPanel rebuild script. Stop and correct any errors before restarting Apache:

root@host:[~]$ /scripts/rebuildhttpdconf
Built /usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf OK

Restart Apache and verify Passenger is installed by running this command:

root@host:[~]$ apachectl -t -D DUMP_MODULES

Check for ‘passenger_module (shared)’.

By default, RailsAutoDetect is on so it will detect a directory that is a Rails application. If this is off, you will need to add a custom vhost configuration to let Apache know to load Passenger for a particular site. To do this add the following to the site’s vhost container:

RailsBaseURI /

(or whatever URI is the base of the application)

Directions for adding custom directives to a vhost in cPanel: Add Custom Apache Directives to a vhost in cPanel

If the Rails application will be the root of the site, you will need to create a symlink from the Rails application’s public directory to /home/[username]/public_html.

The music helps convey the message as well, but it is the excellent use of size, spacing, timing, and color that really get the point across. I especially like the “(dramatic pause)”. Watch it without the sound to see what I mean.

http://www.girleffect.org/

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
    # Redirects individual posts:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/weblog/archives/[0-9]{6}\.html.*$
RewriteRule ^weblog/archives/([0-9]+)\.html.*$ http://archive.tylerdave.com/$1/ [R=301,L]
    # Redirects monthly archives:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/weblog/archives/20[0-9]{2}\_[0-9]{2}\.html.*$
RewriteRule ^weblog/archives/20([0-9]{2})\_([0-9]{2})\.html.*$ http://archive.tylerdave.com/date/20$1/$2/ [R=301,L]
    # Redirects individual posts:
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^entry_id=([0-9]{1})$
RewriteRule ^mt/mt-comments\.cgi http://archive.tylerdave.com/00000%1/? [R=301,L]

    # Redirects old comments URLs to the posts:
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^entry_id=([0-9]{2})$
RewriteRule ^mt/mt-comments\.cgi http://archive.tylerdave.com/0000%1/? [R=301,L]

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^entry_id=([0-9]{3})$
RewriteRule ^mt/mt-comments\.cgi http://archive.tylerdave.com/000%1/? [R=301,L]

    # Redirects other requests to me-comments.cgi to the archive's home page:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/mt/mt-comments\.cgi.*$
RewriteRule . http://archive.tylerdave.com/ [R=301,L]

    # Redirects the index page::
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/weblog/archives/index.html$
RewriteRule . http://archive.tylerdave.com/ [R=301,L]

    # Redirects RDF feed:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^.*index.rdf$
RewriteRule . http://archive.tylerdave.com/feed/rdf/

These rules account for more than 95% of the traffic to the old site. I will continue to monitor the logs and update the rules as necessary.

From 2002 to 2004 I kept friends up-to-date with my mundane goings-on using Movable Type.  When I originally decided to revive my blog I was going to just scrap the old content.  However after finding a number of my old posts still getting a decent amount of traffic I decided to archive the content in another installation of WordPress: archive.tylerdave.com

Thanks to Joshua Zader for his excellent instructions for importing form MovableType to WordPress while preserving the post IDs.   This will allow me to 301-redirect all of the old URLs to their new location.

All that’s left to do is some mod_rewrite trickeration so the old URLs map to the new locations and we’re all set!

Update: mod_rewrite rules for redirecting old ULRs

Check Politifact for the truth:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/