Group 42

AWStats is one of the more popular free open source statistics packages available. Dreamhost doesn't make it automatically available, you need to install it yourself. Dreamhost has a number of good wiki articles on installing AWStats, but they presuppose installing in a website subdirectory. In my case, I wanted a dedicated statistics website for displaying statistics from other websites.

The following are notes I made while installing AWStats. AWStats isn't intended for install exactly the way I did it, but this configuration does work. Ostensively I'm making them available so they will benefit others, but in reality I'm posting them here so I can find them again if I need them! :-)

The source information came from the Dreamhost wiki articles. These are listed in the Reference section at the end of this article.

This made me laugh, though it's also a cautionary tale. 'Ware your choice of domain name:

http://www.grupthink.com/topic/22

Finding out intermediate level audio recording information is time consuming and a little daunting! Having recently entered the world of podcasting for Mad About Movies I'm researching the gear needed for great audio. There's lots of basic information out there that goes something like: plug any old microphone into your computer and record with GarageBand or Audacity. And this works, to a point.

If you want to go to the next level, information gets a little harder to find. Take microphones. You can spend anywhere from $10 to $5000. How does a person with no experience know the appropriate amount to spend? If you have more than one person on your podcast you quickly conclude multiple microphones would be very nice. Again, options for mixing microphones start at $40 and go over $10,000. And when you've finally made a decision on the gear you think you want, where the heck is the best place to buy it in Canada?

What follows are my research results, so far. Turns out one of best sites, Transom, comes from the world of radio. If there's one thing I've learned after following Todd Maffin, radio people are just short of fanatical about sound!

A shout-out to the folks at Lullabot for their latest articles:

This month the Vancouver PHP Association and Vancouver League of Drupallers had a combined meeting. Mack Hardy of the Post Carbon Institution spoke on how the Post Carbon Institute was using Drupal to meet their organization's goals.

Mack has promised to post his slides, and hopefully there will also be a video of this presentation available. My summary forgoes the more involved details. Please check the slides for those.

Mack started with an overview of the Post Carbon Institute:

Have you heard about the initiative to provide a notebook/laptop computer for every child in the world? They're One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), and their stated goal is:

To provide children around the world with new opportunities to explore, experiment and express themselves..

If this sounds interesting, I recommend reading: Can the "$100 Laptop" Change the World?, by Laurie Rowell.

I think this project will change the world, maybe in the ways they predict, and definitely in ways they can't. The OLPC project is breaking away from the current market definition of what a notebook computer is, and how much you pay for it. Having a self-powered $100 computer will lead to a wave of first world application experiments, both software and hardware. Consider what experimenters have done with XBoxes, PDAs, and $100 broadband routers. Consider what a cheap, self-powered, grid-networked, semi-rugged notebook might do in a disaster relief situation, to name just one possible alternate application. At that price point, trying something out is very easy.

James Gosling, the head of the team that created the Java programming language and arguably it's biggest cheerleader, was named to the Order of Canada. Details in this CBC article: Java creator named to Order of Canada.

In other news, James Gosling is a Canadian!

I've done corporate IT internal customer support as a manager and front-liner (not everyone agrees with thinking of internal users as customers, while it's not a direct analog it's a useful frame-of-mind at times), and most recently front-line technical support for an enterprise product in the Education sector. Joel Spolsky's piece: Seven steps to remarkable customer service totally rings true on a number of levels.

The Drupal Dojo lessons are now listed in a nice table of contents style format: Dojo Lessons and Links at the groups.drupal.org (aka D.O.) site: groups.drupal.org/drupal-dojo.

I finally had a chance to read this essay Darren Barefoot linked to on his blog last week: