This somewhat requires you’ve followed my suggestions on not committing yourself to a certain host or your own DNS or mail servers, if not the extra steps might take you 10 more minutes, maybe days.
There are plenty of ways to migrate to a new server depending on how you’ve setup the server or your host, these are just to show the simplicity of my migrations after following the post linked above.
Step 1:
Rsync your other server’s files to the new one.
SSH into your new box and run rsync to connect to the old machine through ssh. It’s going to pull over every file to the new host that you specify.
rsync -avz -e ssh root@[OLD MACHINE IP]:/home /
example
rsync -avz -e ssh root@64.13.227.XX:/home /
This is probably the most important time saver, it will help dramatically in a planned migration since you can run this multiple times after the initial sync. The purpose of rsync is that it will only pull over changed files since the initial rsync.
Step 2.
Run a mysqldump your DB and either use scp to grab the file from your old host or use wget after placing the dump in an accessible place on your webserver. Then just import it after receiving it on the new host.
Step 3.
For people running their own server you’ll now just need to reconfigure apache, which shouldn’t take long since there will only be slight changes in the new httpd.conf file.
If you ever get an error like this,
$ svn import /home/user/repos/new file:///home/svn/repos/default/ -m “initial”
svn: Unable to open an ra_local session to URL
svn: Unable to open repository ‘file:///home/svn/repos/default’
after an svn import it’s because, like me, you’re lame. The syntax is wrong and should look like this,
$ svn import /home/svn/repos/default/ file:///home/user/repos -m “initial import”
Notice the source is first then the repo you want to import to. Doh!
iWork 08
Yesterday I posted about Numbers and I shyed away from posting about the other two apps in iWork ‘08; Pages and Keynote because the only thing out of those two apps that’s worth mentioning is “action builds” for Keynote.
Action builds is a very cool feature and to have it in a presentation software makes me say “finally”. Keynote has had animations in previous versions but not like this. Instead of building the motion in another application like Flash or Final Cut you can just create simple paths for our objects and build it within Keynote. The video reminds me of the few hours I’ve spent in Flash.
iLife ‘08
I don’t have any first hand use because I’m going to wait a few months for Leopard (since it’s bundled for free). But from the demos and the Apple press conference the new features are needed and the overhaul of iMovie was necessary. iMovie (Pre-08 ) although very simple and clean was abandoned after I purchased Final Cut Pro even though I don’t like editing in Final Cut Pro for home movies or short clips iMovie was just not cutting it.
Until I get the new version I’m not going to decide whether it’s as phenomenal as the Apple’s presentation makes it out to be or the demos on their site provide. Especially since people are already revolting from the new app and going back to the old iMovie. From what I’ve seen it’s a drastic improvement. I love the exporting options including direct to YouTube.
What I’m really looking forward to in the new iMovie is how it’s an actual video library now. Before importing clips into the project prevented me from wanting to make videos at all and almost every movie production application works that way. Now I can just import all of my DV into the application, easily scan through all of that video and simply create what I’ve promised Sara for so long.
Another notable feature coming is event sorting. Found in iPhoto it’s going to make it so much easier for our family to sort through the thousands of photos and make it easier to organize. It’s an outstanding way to organization and it’s a shame we don’t see it in any other application including flickr.
I created my first Yahoo! Pipe and I’m impressed with how easy it was. My first pipe involves manipulating my Pownce feed with a few regex expressions to include the post link and the comment count in the description of the item. And most noticeably I’ve taken out the “DANCAMERON:” from the title.
The reasoning: I’m using feedwordpress to pull my pownce messages to create posts on this blog. This is so my RSS readers can go straight to a post with the ability to comment rather than force them to Pownce where they’d have to sign-up to comment. For my regular readers that don’t use RSS you can just go here.
If you check out my pipe know that I still have a lot of work left. I first want to make it work with the atom feed straight from pownce, I went the simple route and used the feed from feedburner since it was converted to RSS2 already. More important then that I want to get the link within my pownce messaged to show on the post (Pownce allows for “link” messages as well as standard messages) then I want to create a published app so anyone can use it.
Update:
I’ve gone ahead and published it and the new link is here. Now anyone can use it to sanitize the atom feed and I’ll be adding more later.
This has got to be the best review/article on the age old debate of Linux vs. Mac. The article is extensive but the conclusions on the topic mimic my sentiments exactly.
In the following pages, they lead a guided tour of the two OSes, paying particular attention to eight important areas: Installation & Migration; Hardware Support & Power Management; Networking, Web & Wireless; Productivity; Entertainment; Security; Working With Windows (because we couldn’t completely ignore Microsoft); and Stability, Backup & Disaster Recovery.
Which is the better OS? Only you can decide –but you’ll make a more informed decision after you’ve taken this tour, and you’ll discover you have some companions on your journey.
I will admit I have not completed the entire article, I have skimmed and read the beginning and end but it is something I want to go back and finish. I also don’t think anyone can conclude that either writer is biased because from what I’ve read the entire article plainly exposes the downsides of each platform in almost every major factor of any OS. It’s really apparent within the conclusions which they make the reader decide what’s best for them.
The conclusion of the review that mimics my take exactly (spoiler alert):
Conclusions: Linux
Linux gives you freedom on many levels: the freedom to tinker, the freedom to work without arbitrary constraints on your system setup, and the freedom to make decisions about nearly every aspect of your system.That freedom does come at a cost, though — the cost of a certain degree of effort. I haven’t yet dealt with a single Linux install that didn’t require me to edit some configuration file somewhere. That said, the amount of effort required to get the Linux system you want (or need) has gone down enormously with time.
If the freedom to use your PC in as unhindered a way as possible is important to you, that’s what Linux delivers — although keep in mind it comes with a learning curve, one that is still flattening out rather slowly.
– Serdar Yegulalp
Conclusions: Mac
If you believe that open source is a moral choice — and many people do — then buying Apple is making a deal with the devil. Apple is arguably the most proprietary hardware / software company in the industry, despite Mac OS X’s origins in BSD Unix, and the products’ compliance with many industry standards.You think Microsoft locks users in? At least with Microsoft you can buy a PC from a huge number of big and small vendors, or build your own from components. With the Mac, you buy your PC from Apple, you buy your operating system from Apple, and you’re also encouraged to buy your mouse, keyboard, display, audio device, and smartphone from Apple, all at an Apple Store where you can get Apple service.
But if you’re willing to live with lock-in, Apple is a great choice for computing. Installation isn’t a problem — Apple does it for you. Networking is easy. Productivity is a dream. The Mac offers a broad variety of entertainment options. It’s a secure platform. It interoperates well with Windows. It’s highly stable, and offers solid backup choices for the data losses that are inevitable on any computing platform.
Right now, Apple is smokin’, and its customers are happy. But if the Apple gets rotten and starts coming out with inferior products — as it did in the ’90s — its customers will have the choice of suffering, or making the painful switch to another platform.
Until then, I’m sticking with the Mac. It’s a great computer.
– Mitch Wagner
Well said…most of you know where I stand but no platform is perfect and it’s up to the user to decide what they value the most.
I might as well complete my planned post about Google apps since a conversation is about to start.
I’ve been in the transition of using Google Apps for the last few weeks for a trial review. Next week I’ll need to decide whether to keep my apps account or stick with the free apps that 
I’m so dependent on. Since the my reasoning for using Google apps is solely based on my use of e-mail and the guaranteed uptime and support I can’t say anything more about the additional features that I plan to never use (start page, talk, etc.).
Although I do use Google Calendar and having that provided uptime is a major plus.
The problems I have with moving to Google apps is the limitation of taking my already existing gmail account. It wasn’t a problem importing my years of email into the new account through gmails provided pop support nor is it a problem emailing in the new account as @gmail, the problem is being dependent on e-mail forwarding with my @gmail.com. I’m not positive but I’m imagining if gmail is not allowing me to login it’s not forwarding my email, then the uptime means nothing.
The only solution is to transition an email change which fully makes sense because I wont be dependent on a service long term. Of course I like having @gmail rather than dan@[anyone of my domains I decide] and not having to tell everyone to update my e-mail more than I distrust Google’s future. I’ll go on record that I still do not feel locked-in but things would be different if I wasn’t so dependent on @gmail.
So for $50 a year isn’t unreasonable to me it’s having to change my e-mail or changing my Talk account. I use Talk daily especially at work where I talk to developers continuesly and I refer to my chat history a lot. It being an excellent BlackBerry app also helps. And chat history is something I can’t forward to my new account so I would have to login to my gmail to retrieve it.
For my Calendar and docs I just exported and imported them without a problem. however I did have to setup the sharing again with Sara since we both manage each others cal.
Only if Google allowed a gmail upgrade service or the integration between a Google app and Google account because that’s really what’s making me hesitant. Its a shame for them since the money isn’t an issue. I can’t guarantee any uptime like that for $4 a month and e-mail is too critical to grovel at. My issues are e-mail forwarding dependency (or having to chang my e-mail address) and not having the gmail history integration for Talk.
If anyone wants to create an automator script, php script or anything similar that will simply take a mass amount (thousands) of scale them to a certain size and add padding so the resulting image is of a specified 1:1 size I would appreciate it.
I’ve been searching for a script for photoshop or automator that will do do just this and I can’t find it. Automator already has the function included but it creates a black background for padding and I need white. I’m at a loss becuase I know it’s out there but Google won’t help me find it.
Otherwise I’m going to build a script that will create the images in imagemajick. Which I don’t want to do since I don’t have the time to learn it and I can’t seem to find anything available one of the web to work off of. I’m almost about to install Gallery, import all the images and then take the result.
Anyways, if you know of something that you can suggest that will do this please contact me. If you want to build it for a nominal fee contact me also.
It makes me curious why Google Apps doesn’t allow for current gmail upgrades. Are the two services that different that they just couldn’t migrate my account? After my recent GMail outage I signed up for the free beta lasting until the end of this month and noticed all I could do was create an account with a domain. I used scatteredmedia.com and then added my gmail account so it will import all of the e-mails through POP, it’s still downloading them in 200 message chunks. So I could essentially still use my original gmail account by using POP and the send as function built in but I’d loose my address book, calendar and chat history. The chat history and IM change was the deal breaker, I use the chat history a lot since that’s my preferred IM.
Since I have to post about something other than Apple I thought I’d share some of my reader trends. Hopefully it’s as interesting to you as it is to me, or helpful.
One thing I wanted to bring up with all the GTD hubub going around was how I categorizing my feeds (it’s also similar to how I manage my tasks through e-mail). I forget what podcast and who I heard used this method but I’d like to thank him since it’s helped me tremenously. The simple method is to prioritize your feeds that way your not digging through a ton of categories to just get your favorite/”Important” feeds. In the past to keep up with unread feeds while I was busy I’d just clear out all them, marking me all as read . disregarding that there were some “important” things I ended up wanting to read. So missing items is not the wonderful thing about this method, the most important is to not read what you don’t care too much for.
You’ll notice below I’m sticking to my prioritization.
And no, you don’t have to make “dumb” names. I’m just using numbers so they’ll be in order.
Another interesting trend that I’d like to share is when I read. Not important at all but it’s just fun to see my peek is during TV hours and the end of my shift.
I have a lot of shared feeds on my links page.
