Using CoreImage to Resize and Change Formats on the Fly

New Site and Blog

richard@deadmarshes.com (Richard York) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:56:37 UTC

So I've finally gotten around to refreshing my website, and putting up a proper blog. Stay tuned.

Linux Active Directory Integration

richard@deadmarshes.com (Richard York) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:54:34 UTC

Recently I undertook the very daunting task of integrating a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 server in a Windows Server 2003 RC2 Active Directory environment.

As enterprise networks go, single sign-on between operating systems from all walks of life is sort-of a holy grail of achievement, and with good reason, it was by no means obvious or easy to make it happen! But with some determination, lots of Google searching, trial and error, and a desk to bang your head against, it is ultimately possible.

Active Directory Authentication from PHP on Linux via Winbind

richard@deadmarshes.com (Richard York) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:38:12 UTC

Now that you have Active Directory integration on Linux, you can authenticate against Active Directory from any application via a simple shell script. One I'm working on intergrates Active Directory authentication from PHP, without all the hassle of installing and using PHP's LDAP extension. Since I'm already configured to authenticate with winbind, I use a command that winbind provides to authenticate AD users, which makes the code required to do an authentication pretty simple.

Auto Login with Active Directory

richard@deadmarshes.com (Richard York) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:34:40 UTC

A few people have wrote in to tell me about using authconfig to set-up Active Directory authentication. Well, I didn't know about authconfig, so I guess I went about it the hard way. All the web searching I did never turned up authconfig as a possibility. But, at least I know that much more about configuring active directory authentication on Linux. ;-)

My thoughts on the new IE8 rendering mode...

richard@deadmarshes.com (Richard York) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:33:11 UTC

It seems the IE team recently announced that IE8 will have a new rendering mode. This hasn't been controversial, or news in the slightest. ;-)

The solution to the IE8 rendering quandary is a compromise...

richard@deadmarshes.com (Richard York) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:33:32 UTC

One bit of news that I've found agreeable in the recent IE8 rendering switch debacle, is that IE8 will support the HTML 5 DOCTYPE without requiring the <meta /> tag switch. Finally, some sanity.

HTML 5 DOCTYPE

richard@deadmarshes.com (Richard York) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:34:01 UTC

So it turns out that IE8 will trigger "IE8 Standards Mode" for at least the HTML 5 DOCTYPE, and according to Chris Wilson "any unknown DOCTYPE".

This makes the proposal of the <meta /> element a little more palatable, but I still feel it isn't enough.

The IE8 Standards Default is Wrong, Wrong, Wrong!

richard@deadmarshes.com (Richard York) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:34:12 UTC

Kudos to the IE team for making the HTML5 DOCTYPE invoke "super, super" standards mode without the <meta /> element. Still unknown are the XML and XHTML MIME types, one can only assume those trigger super standards mode too.

Curses, foiled again!

richard@deadmarshes.com (Richard York) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:27:51 UTC

I've come, I've saw, I've done battle with the big blue "e"! Curse you Internet Explorer! Were you real, we'd have hunted you down and strung you from the gallows like the dog you are!

I will make you my bitch, if it's the last thing I do!

I Heart Webkit

richard@deadmarshes.com (Richard York) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:27:58 UTC

Let's all have a love-in for Webkit, the first browser to officially support the new W3C Selectors API.

A Shrink-to-fit Epic: You Too Can Make IE Your Bitch

richard@deadmarshes.com (Richard York) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:31:00 UTC

Yes, you too can make IE your bitch, if you're determined and crass enough.

Throw your sensibilities about logic and standards out the window, because you don't need them here.

Why I don't bother with em units anymore

richard@deadmarshes.com (Richard York) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:27:39 UTC

I used to think that "em" units were the bee's knees. The cat's meow. The way it should be done.

Then I encountered weird bugs and design glitches and spent hours trying to figure out how to fix them. IE 5.5 was a real bear to whip into submission. IE 6.0 has some trouble with em units too.

Satan Needs a New Winter Coat

richard@deadmarshes.com (Richard York) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:27:08 UTC

Temperatures plummeted to new record lows in hell today on the recent news of an about-face to IE8's standards mode default. If you haven't been living under a rock, I'm talking about the recent news that IE8 will, in fact, by default, act like IE8.

First Impressions of IE8 Beta 1

richard@deadmarshes.com (Richard York) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:57:31 UTC

It's pretty buggy. Lots of stuff coded purely to standards and not to a particular browser isn't rendering correctly. All in all though, that's expected, this is not the final product, they're still hammering away on some pretty big things.

OK, em Units Just Might Be Useful...

richard@deadmarshes.com (Richard York) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:26:52 UTC

A bit of an about-face in my thinking has taken place recently. A while back I wrote a blog post about how I think "em" units are worthless for their intended purpose, that is to say, scalable font design that can stretch or contract to accommodate changes to the font size.

Gzipping content may make Firefox unbearably slow

richard@deadmarshes.com (Richard York) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:26:46 UTC

I set out yesterday on an enormous task, to improve the performance of my PHP framework, Hierophant. I've been working on Hierophant since early 2005. One area that I never put much focus into was in the area of download and page load performance. It was always on the todo list, but kept getting pushed back for one reason or another. So yesterday I set out to patch this gaping hole in my framework's functionality.

Creating a Custom Downtime Message with mod_rewrite

richard@deadmarshes.com (Richard York) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:22:29 UTC

mod_rewrite is a very useful, and very complicated Apache module that lets you manipulate incoming requests. Uses for this module vary from redirecting content from one URL to another for the purpose of maintaing SEO and legacy URLs to simply making your URLs more readable and understandable, and not so weighed down with technical luggage, as it were.

A PHP Shell Script for Backups

richard@deadmarshes.com (Richard York) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:25:41 UTC

On Mac servers I love the advent of a neat feature called Time Machine. Time Machine does incremental backups without having to deal with 3rd-party software, or custom shell scripts like the one I'm about to show. Unfortunately, on the Linux side there's always some degree of elbow grease that's required. Which isn't to say you couldn't have Time Machine-like backups on Linux, you certainly can, it just takes a more concentrated technical effort, and you don't get the nifty GUI.

Using CoreImage to Resize and Change Formats on the Fly

richard@deadmarshes.com (Richard York) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:16:07 UTC

Over the course of the past year I've become a huge fan of Apple's Mac OS X on the server-side. Learning about and taking advantage of some cocoa programming fu, like CoreImage.

Of course, I'm primarily a PHP programmer, not that I couldn’t hack around in cocoa, I just haven't had much time to learn more about it.

First Impressions of IE 8 Beta 2

richard@deadmarshes.com (Richard York) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:16:41 UTC

It actually works! :-) Well done. Truly first class CSS support in Microsoft's browser. Renders complex CSS designs flawlessly out of the box. I, for one, am elated.