Author Archive for Chris Meller

Open Source License Comparison

Published
by
Chris Meller
on April 28, 2008
in Incoherent Code, Legal and Links
. 1 Comment

I imagine many people have been confused with the differences between all the myriad open source licenses available. I did a quick Google, and found a very nice basic table listing some of the more popular licenses you might encounter and their key points.

Check out the comparison here, thanks to the KDE project.

The Open Source Initiative also includes a large index of licenses here, albeit comparison is left up to you.

New Kick-Ass Wallpapers

Published
by
Chris Meller
on April 21, 2008
in Cool, Coupons, Incoherent Code, Internet, Links and Plugins
. 1 Comment

I had the opportunity to do some quick WordPress plugin hacking tonight1 for Jim Whimpey. As a “payment” of sorts, he gave me a coupon code for the site he was working on: Panedia Desktop Wallpaper.

Being an Aussie company, obviously, most of their wallpapers are from Australia. Boy do they have some absolutely beautiful scenery down under. Check out the two I selected for my machines:

For my desktop, I got a huge 3200 x 1200 pixel version of Brisbane’s beautiful night skyline:

New Desktop Wallpaper

And for my MacBook Pro, I got a beautiful 1680 x 1050 pixel copy of the Robe Coastline:

New MBP Wallpaper

Stunning wallpapers. Totally worth $25/year to constantly get new beautiful scenes in this kind of quality. I also love the interface that auto-picks the best format for your OS and resolution. Very well done.

  1. I added an additional search option to the Search Everything plugin, enabling it to return all posts in a matching category. [back]

I’m Not Spamming You, I Swear!

Published
by
Chris Meller
on March 31, 2008
in Announcements, Hosting, Internet and Security
. 1 Comment

In the last couple of hours, I’ve gotten over 4,000 bounced emails where someone is apparently spamming the shit out of the internet with an @doesnthaveone.com email address that doesn’t exist.

Since doesnthaveone.com redirects here, I thought I would post a message for anyone who may angrily type in the URL… It’s not me, I swear. I get lots of emails sent to random @doesnthaveone.com addresses, it’s a random address people make up. I’m not the one sending you this apparently random spam, I swear.

It appears all this spam has originated from a single IP belonging to a Puerto Rican ISP / Hosting provider. I have notified them through their registered abuse address and hope to see the flood stop soon.

Sorry for the Updates

Published
by
Chris Meller
on March 24, 2008
in Announcements
. 0 Comments

Sorry if I SPAM anyone’s reader with updated posts. I wanted to run back through the last couple and mark them as accepting trackbacks in MarsEdit.

Now, to see if there’s an option in MarsEdit to always allow trackbacks by default…

Mail Migrations, the Final Piece

Published
by
Chris Meller
on March 24, 2008
in Gripes, Hosting and Internet
. 0 Comments

I’ve spent the past two days or so managing my email migration from DreamHost to Google Apps for Domains.

Over the weekend, DreamHost had some scheduled maintenance. Not only were their main page, panel, and all webmail down for an extended period, but they were moving the cluster I’m hosted on… for the second time. This is soon after a typo killed their entire network by firewalling out the entirety of the internet.

Of course this downtime would have to come as soon as I’m ready to send one of the half dozen emails I’ll actually send this year. All in all, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I think DreamHost offers good service, for the price they charge, but sometimes ‘good’ just isn’t ‘good’ enough.

I moved my blog to SliceHost previously, and email was the last link in the chain. While I’ll still use them for massive bandwidth and storage, there’s no chance I’ll be putting anything mission critical on their network again - it’s just not worth it.