technology

Housekeeping

I’ve completed some general housekeeping here at Take the First Step. If I’ve done it correctly, then there will be fewer 404 - Not Found errors around here.

The first step for the budding webmaster is to register your site at Google Webmaster Tools. That will give you a window into how Google sees your site. I like to check once a week to make sure that the Googlebot can find everything that it is looking for.

The next step is to learn how to interpret your web server log files. Your mileage may vary, but here’s how I look for 404 errors:

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$ zgrep -w 404 access_log.20080512.gz | cut -d ' ' -f7,11 | uniq -c
 1 /blog/2004/09/27.html "-"
 2 /blog/topic/software/2003/08/18.html "-"
 1 /id/1319/jms-providers/ "-"
 1 /id/1318/leopard-part-4/ "-"
 1 /id/1317/brief-history/ "-"
 1 /id/1316/march-drabness/ "-"
 1 /id/1315/march-madness-08/ "-"

where:

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"zgrep -w 404" retrieves lines with the word 404 from my compressed access logs
"cut -d ' ' -f7,11" defines a space as field delimiter and retrieves the 7th and 11th fields from those lines
"uniq -c" shows the unique lines preceded by the instance count

Here we see some failing radio userland links and a mis-behaving client that is adding a trailing ‘/‘ to my page links. A little htaccess magic and the 404’s are cured.

Terroir Coffee

terroir: the “sense of place” that geography bestows on the wine, coffee, or tea grown in that place.

My formative years as a coffee drinker were spent at the Coffee Connection in Harvard Square. George Howell, the founder of the Coffee Connection, advocated a lighter roast to bring out the flavor of high quality beans.

When I graduated and moved out to Northern California, I fell under the spell of the darker roasts favored by Alfred Peet. Driven by availability more than choice. And dark roasts were all I drank for the following 20+ years.

So I was thrilled to learn that George Howell was back in business at Terroir Coffee. I ordered a couple of bags and I was very pleased to see that they were roasted only 2 days before they arrived via UPS - apparently roasted the day they were shipped.

The taste - well, I’d have to say that my taste buds are seriously confused. I’ve been drinking dark roasts so long that my decaf La Lapa didn’t really taste like coffee. That being said, I find that I’m actually finishing my coffee rather than dumping out the last third. And I found this morning’s decaf Pike Place espresso quite bitter.

I’m plan to give my taste buds a month to relearn the taste of coffee. I’ll let you know how things turn out.

sports

March Drabness

That was a disappointment. I was expecting great things from the 4-13, 5-12 match-ups in the East and South regions. But it didn’t work out that way. All the favorites won handily on Thursday. And the “close” game on Saturday was the 65-54 “upset” of MSU over Pitt. A game that wasn’t as close as the score.

The NCAA men’s basketball tournament is one of the great events in sports. And if Denver 2008 was a bit of a disappointment, then it’s only because I was fortunate enough to attend Denver 2004 and Oakland 1990.

sports

March Madness

The bracket is set. And I’ll be watching at the Pepsi Center in Denver thanks to my brother. Looks like I’ve got some pretty good games ahead of me:

#5 Notre Dame vs. #12 George Mason
#4 Washington State vs. #13 Winthrop

#5 Michigan State vs. #12 Temple
#4 Pitt vs. #13 Oral Roberts

Drop me a line if you’ll be at the Pepsi Center.

technology

Leopard Configuration III

  1. Configure Apple Mail to properly share folders with FastMail
    1. Start Mail
    2. Select the appropriate IMAP folder
    3. From the Mail menu, select Mailbox → Use This Mailbox For →
  2. Clean some of the unused cruft from my Finder Sidebar. Select the Sidebar in the Finder Preferences and clear:
    1. Devices → iDisk
    2. Shared → Connected Servers
    3. Places → Documents
  3. Set the display to a 2.2 gamma
  4. Change my default shell to /bin/zsh:

    chsh -s /bin/zsh

  5. To be continued …

The full configuration list may be viewed at my MacBook Configuration Log

26 Apr: Leopard Configuration part IV

technology

Little Things

Jack of all trades. Master of none.

I’d venture to say that many consider that a compliment. But even if you take a more flattering definition of jack than any common fellow, it is pretty clear that “master of none” rules out superiority at any one skill.

So you really need to read between the lines when Fred Wilson advises that you need utility infielders. No one views a utility infielder on par with their starting shortstop or center fielder. But players who do the little things and get things done are as valuable as anyone else on your team.