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Adam Merrifield

a picture of me
I am a web designer, theme designer, professional photographer and internet personality. I make many pretty things and I write a lot of content for the internet.

I am one of those guys that, because of the industry I am in, need to be connected at all times. At any given moment you'll find me posting on a forum, updating with twitter, Digging things worthy of attention, uploading pictures, or tagging cool sites.

here i am

seyDoggy Systems:
This is home base, the corporate headquarters, the hub, if you will, seyDoggy.com.

seyDesign news:
these are the RapidWeaver related posts that originally appear in the seyDesign.com blog

Uploads from seyDoggy:
these are the pictures that I upload to flickr

Merrifield Photography:
as a professional photographer I my camera ready at Merrifield-Photography.com.

delicious.com/seydoggy:
these are the websites I want to share or revisit later on. I just tag them on delicious.com.

what i am

I am the owner and operator of seyDoggy Systems, a small theme, code and design outfit based in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. We primarily develop web based technologies but have begun to dabble in the desktop realm.

what i do

I code like a fool. I design like a fool. I am happiest when I can split my time between the two (though I tire of Photoshop faster then I do TextMate or Terminal), and somehow I have managed to etch out a living doing so.

Building a Micro Server – Part 2

(Missed part 1?)

EDITORS NOTE:

I started writing this quite some time ago. I’m not sure why I didn’t finished it, but I found it here, half written so I will finish what I started and and then maybe move on to other server related blog posts

Let cut straight to the part where I finally have all the parts to make a micro server (don’t get me started on UPS’ leave-it-at-the-door policy)…

For those of you who have built your own computers before this is likely nothing new. In fact, building a server, small or otherwise, is arguably easier since everything generally fits on one plane and finger contortions are not required.

For those of you who haven’t done this sort of thing before, don’t fret. If you can unscrew the battery cover on you kids favorite toy, then you are fully qualified to build a server.

Getting Started

Make yourself a comfortable work area. A kitchen table will do provided you cover it with adequate matting or a table cloth to prevent dings and scratches to the tables finish.

Ground yourself. This is kind of tricky at home but static shocks can do some serious damage to chips and boards. Ideally you want to be wearing a grounding strap that is connected to ground… but at home, occasionally touching the steel chassis of a toaster (cooled down) or microwave will help ensure you don’t hold a static charge. It can also help if you go barefoot as slippers and/or socks can build up excess static charges.

ram CPU and motherboard

Before opening any of the boxes you want to look them over and then look them over again. Check for damage, check for correct serial numbers, cross reference everything with your order… look over those boxes with a fine tooth comb because once you have broken those seals those products are yours for good. Most electronics dealers are pretty strict on their return policies.

Taking Stock

Once you’ve given the boxes the once-over, you need to open each box and double check its contents are intact and all accounted for. Check for damage on each of the components. Compare what’s in the box with what’s in the manual. Count all your cables and so forth.

taking stock of the server parts

You also need to find out what tools you should have handy. You shouldn’t really need anything more then a Phillips screw driver, but you might find a few pairs of pliers useful as well. Even having a small toolbox full of little tools nearby won’t hurt.

The Server Case

It’s the thing that your going to stuff the other things into, so it makes sense that we start there. Unbox your server chassis, and if you haven’t done so already, give it and all it’s parts a once over.

If all looks well then open the chassis and familiarize yourself with the surroundings. Be sure to read the manual first. It’s just a few screws, but still. Once removed, put the cover in a safe place. You won’t be needing it for a while.

inside the server chassis

On the inside you should see a power supply (or a place for one if it’s not integrated), a control panel, some bundles wires, ribbon, etc… that’s pretty much it. So let’s move on.

Mounting the Mother Board

Locate the mounting stanchions on base of the server chassis:
server chassis stanchions

Lower the motherboard into the case over these stanchions:
drop the mother borad in to the chassis

Position the motherboard carefully until the I/O lines up as it should:
position the mother board in the chassis

Locate the mounting holes so that they are directly over the stanchions:
mounting the mother board on the stanchions

Carefully screw the motherboard into place:
screw motherboard into place

Be sure to use all of the mounting points available to the motherboard.

Installing the CPU

Placing the CPU is likely the most critical part. There are a lot of pins you can mess up on both the chip itself and the socket that you are placing it into. So please do this with care, lining up the CPU in accordance with it’s keyed (nothced) placement:
place the CPU carefully

Next you want to close the cover (1) and lock it into place (2). Don’t force it. If it doesn’t feel right then make sure that it’s positioned properly.
close the cover and lock it into place

What’s next?

That’s all we’re going to cover for part 2. In part 3 we’ll cover installing the special CPU fan, RAM and the hard drive. In part 4 we’ll cover cable connections, powering the bus, booting and the BIOS.

In future posts I’ll cover installing Ubuntu Server, administration, ssh, web serving and file serving and tying it all in with a Mac.

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-09-05

  • Think I might read while the girls watch Astro Boy again. #
  • heading to Kiwanis for a swim. #
  • @sundog look at adam.merrifield.ca for a post about emptying a stuck trash bin. Written in the last month or so. in reply to sundog #
  • Couldn't ask for a better day at Kiwanis. Friends, kids, sun, water, food and drink. #
  • I was nearly by a wheel that came off a car. Scary. #
  • Anyone know where I can get a flange saver? #
  • Never mind, found them at Home Depot. #
  • ok, support is done. Time to go fix a toilet flange. wish me luck. #
  • Toilet flange is fixed. That was not a glamorous job. #
  • @jooliah at-a-girl #kwdm #thinklikeahacker in reply to jooliah #
  • seyDesign News: THEME UPDATE: cataLog r4 Renders Round Corners Natively http://bit.ly/94Y9XH #
  • Dark Star http://imdb.to/h5yPz RT @angrycelery: What's your favourite movie from the year you were born????? #ineedtoknow #
  • @commonthreadnat holy crap you're young! in reply to commonthreadnat #
  • @juicywebdesign common! 1980 would be a BREEZE! The Shinning! in reply to juicywebdesign #
  • Doctor Who might move to a split season for series 6! http://j.mp/bO2NTm #
  • Just reading the recommended lunch list on the school board website… What half baked crunchy granola hippy wrote that crap? (@mdenny) #
  • Break 1: whole grain cereal, seeds, chick peas. Break 2: whole wheat pita, vegetables, hummus. Rest of afternoon is spent on the toilet? #
  • @jaysonengland my kids would eat all of that stuff, but Chick peas, whole grain & wheat and seeds… they be shitting for a week. in reply to jaysonengland #
  • Aliens must have taken my children last night. Who r these happy, polite children in my keep this morning? #
  • Canon Develops 8″ x 8″ CMOS Image Sensor http://j.mp/9KRgd0 #
  • Huh? An actual job posting, specifically mentioning one of my products. #first4everything http://bit.ly/99hySo #
  • I think the job posting comes from this guy: @designgodme #
  • Is no sport sacred? #cricket #scandal http://bit.ly/cpyxS3 #
  • Compress JavaScript with PHP http://bit.ly/cb8FnM #

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Get All Active IP Addresses on the Network

I am writing this post for my own sanity and not for anything of great importance to anyone else. Every time I change my networking setup — as would be the case right now, in the midst of me moving into the new office — I always lose my server. I don’t lose it as in can’t physically find it, I just lose it on the network.

Each time this happens I go searching for the bash commands to aid in the finding of my server. I need the IP address for my server because I don’t use it like I would any other machine with a keyboard and monitor — I access the server with secure shell or ssh.

I keep thinking that I wrote this all down (or blogged about it) but that never seems to be the case, so here goes…

To find or discover all the active IP addresses (and their MAC addresses) on the network:

$ arp -a

Once I’ve found the IP I am after (i.e. 10.0.1.5 or 192.168.2.5) I am free to ssh into it with:

$ ssh username@10.0.1.5
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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-08-29

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-08-22

  • @millca lol, it wasn't the doughnut, it was the genoa salami she had on her sub. in reply to millca #
  • what I thought was going to be a relaxing Sunday, reading books, will now consist of helping friends move. :( #
  • @jaysonengland I should have been moving into my office Monday morning but I doubt it will be ready now. in reply to jaysonengland #
  • back from moving. family is off to feed a cat. cleaned house yesterday. too hot to cut lawn. so do I a) sleep or b) play xbox #
  • Sorry for my absence. Been trying to parse my support form over to the seyDesign2011 CMS. It's not going so well. #
  • hello again twitter. I missed you yesterday and today. Leaving my inbox for a weekend and a day was not wise. #
  • @joeworkman showing markup in CSS comments is a trick I have sworn by for years. in reply to joeworkman #
  • are captcha's worth spending the effort on anymore? #
  • getting ready to spend the day at the beach with the family. #selfemployed #awesome #
  • Gorgeous day at Grand Bend. http://yfrog.com/ccxrmj #
  • What a cute little beach bunny. http://yfrog.com/0s66syj #
  • Dinner on the patio at the beach. Nice. #
  • @_RWT_ it's fine to style the HTML tag. In fact it's the tag that I supposed to be styled for background… in reply to _RWT_ #
  • @_RWT_ but a render bug in Firefox made the practice of styling the body tag the standard. @elixirgraphics and I looked this all up recently in reply to _RWT_ #
  • @_RWT_ prior to that I thought it was risky too. :) in reply to _RWT_ #
  • Every trip to grand bend must end with a cone from the dairy dip. #
  • Home from the beach and freshly showered. Think I might hit the sack. #
  • trouble with international commerce… I get 2 many linkdin requests from ppl I don't know. #
  • still 16 spots left for #kwdm won't want to miss talks on docBook, drupal and How To Hack a Website http://bit.ly/br8q4R #
  • @edbrenner we'll be off to meet the teacher soon too. Youngest is set to start kindie this year. in reply to edbrenner #
  • seydesign2011 now has a well thought out support form. I <3 PHP #
  • heading out to a dinner party… with xbox in hand. my kind of dinner party. #
  • @yabdab re new office toy: but can you sit on the back deck with it? :) in reply to yabdab #
  • @yabdab lol in reply to yabdab #
  • seydesign2011 is rocking. not just on looks but the CMS as well. I wonder I'll be able to release this thing? September? November? #
  • @ENBdavies hope she's ok. happy anniversary. (@soma__ ) in reply to ENBdavies #
  • what is the highest definition option for my xbox 360. I feel HDMI is lacking. #
  • @Chronos I have the HDMI but I was wondering if there was a better option. Maybe I'm just picky. in reply to Chronos #
  • just watched Sabrina's Law Documentary. Makes you want to hug your kids. #
  • Rain brings out the worst in my gingers. #

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-08-15

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Apache mod_rewrite, PHP and OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard

Getting mod_rewrite to work on your mac (i.e. locally) can be a bit of a trick if you’ve never bothered to try before. This was the case with me just last week. I am in the process of rewriting my CMS for seyDesign which will rely heavily on $_GET queries. I still want users to be able to link to their favorite pages with easy-to-read and remember “flat” URL’s so I needed to be able rewrite links like this:

http://seydesign.com/index.php?page=themes&amp;product=123

…so that they appear in the users address bar like this:

http://seydesign.com/themes/Creami3/

The best way to do this is with the Apache module, mod_rewrite. I won’t get into how exactly to use it here, but you should be able to use mod_rewrite both on your remote server and on your local machine. For instance, the above two examples, when viewed from the localhost would look like this:

http://localhost/index.php?page=themes&amp;product=123

…which, for the viewer, converts to:

http://localhost/themes/Creami3/

Using mod_rewrite in MAMP, my preferred AMP stack for local development, was simple enough as MAMP is preconfigured to do so. But since I use MAMP for testing support cases, and since I knew that the new new seydesign build will be an on-going project, I decided to move it onto the built in web stack on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, to give it a permanent home I could access at any time.

The trouble for me arose when I tried to use mod_rewrite on the built in OS X web stack. It seems that the permission to use mod_rewrite, or at least to set the rules from .htaccess, are forbidden. In addition, PHP is disabled by default (I can’t very well write $_GET queries without PHP).

Every resource I found online had me editing the /etc/apache2/httpd.conf file, which is all well and good until Apple comes along and updates the Apache install.

A better approach, I feel, is to make any changes to the user config file and leave the default httpd.conf alone. So the first thing I did was open this file (replace username with your user name):

/etc/apache2/users/username.conf

By default, its content should look like this:

<Directory "/Users/username/Sites/">
    Options Indexes MultiViews
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

To get PHP running and mod_rewrite to work you need to make a few changes. For starters, if you notice in the /etc/apache2/httpd.conf file, this line is commented out:

# LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

So let’s add that to out own config file and uncomment it, so our username.conf file now looks like this:

LoadModule php5_module        libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

<Directory "/Users/username/Sites/">
    Options Indexes MultiViews
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

It will make our life easiest if we point to DocumentRoot our way as opposed to where the httpd.conf file points, /Library/WebServer/Documents. In my case, it’s /Users/username/Sites/build/seyDesign2011 but you can make it where ever you like. We also want to change our directory to match, so our username.conf file now looks like this:

LoadModule php5_module        libexec/apache2/libphp5.so
    
DocumentRoot "/Users/username/where/ever/you/like"

<Directory "/Users/username/where/ever/you/like">
    Options Indexes MultiViews
    AllowOverride None
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

To get mod_rewrite to work from .htaccess we need to do two more things; we need to add +FollowSymLinks or FollowSymLinks to our options and we need to change the AllowOverride setting to All.

Our username.conf file should now looks like this:

LoadModule php5_module        libexec/apache2/libphp5.so
    
DocumentRoot "/Users/username/where/ever/you/like"

<Directory "/Users/username/where/ever/you/like">
    Options Indexes MultiViews +FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride All
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
</Directory>

And that’s it. Once you have enabled web sharing in System Preferences > Sharing (or restarted apache from the command line, sudo apachectl restart), you are free to create your mod_rewrite rules to your hearts content from an .htaccess file served up on http://localhost/.

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Unstick the Stuck File in Finders Trash

Ever get a file stuck in the trash with no way to empty it? You know that message you get when you try and empty the trash:

Can’t complete the operation because the item “ABC.XYZ” is in use.

If you look for a solution online you are often told to hold the option key while selecting Finder > Empty Trash (⌥⇧⌘⌫), or just reboot. While the first option never works, the second option does but seriously, how practical is that?

So here are two terminal commands to help you a) track down what application is holding the files hostage or b) properly force the trash to empty.

This first command, where filename is the name and extension of the file being held hostage, shows you what app or process has it’s death grip on that file:

lsof | grep filename

The second command, should all else fail, allows you to perform a proper force-empty trash:

rm -rf ~/.Trash
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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-08-08

  • I suck at baking. I can cook curries, pull pork, BBQ chicken… I can cook anything. But I suck at baking. #
  • Heading to doon village. #
  • I haven't done the full on Doon village tour since I was a kid. I forgot how much I enjoyed it. #
  • Heading to Ontario Place. #
  • Awesome day at Ontario Place. http://yfrog.com/evjxmmj #
  • Splash park at Ontario Place was the perfect end to the day. #
  • day trips have kicked every ones butt. 4yo is miserable, 13yo and wife are sick as dogs. Just me and the 7yo who are up for anything. #
  • We were going to go see toy story 3 but mom and 13yo are too sick. 4yo is just being a monster. #
  • GiD3OUS updated to r2: http://www.seydesign.com/home/weblog/2010/08/04/theme-update-gid3ous-r2-improves-ie-compatibility/ #
  • went to see Toy Story 3. Pretty awesome. Kids had a blast. #
  • Being on holidays I missed all the commotion in downtown Kitchener with the broken water main. #
  • 13yo took the 7yo for a dinner date. They had subs, smoothies and a chocolate bar for dessert. Lol, cherish the moments. #
  • All 3 kids are are out playing in the sprinkler… In the rain? #
  • @edbrenner @_rwt_ :) I'm looking forward to grand kids just so I can send them hopped up on cake and ice cream. in reply to edbrenner #
  • Congrats to RIM for taking a catchup step in the right direction with BlackBerry Torch. It's hard to turn a ship that size. #
  • Its been a gorgeous afternoon at Kiwanis. http://yfrog.com/b9456irj #
  • Sun kissed freckles: http://flic.kr/p/8pQRzL #
  • 13yo is boarding the plane, heading home. It's been a great summer with him, but too short. His sisters will miss him a lot. So will I. #
  • Sons plane is getting ready to taxi out. #
  • Doctor confirmed that 4yo's fever was indeed high enough to elicit hallucinations. Good news, so she's not really seeing dead people. whew. #
  • @dancounsell the jobs reflection was brilliant, however unplanned it was. in reply to dancounsell #
  • @cutergecko she's a trooper. she had us all VERY worried at 4am though. we seriously thought she went off the deep end. in reply to cutergecko #
  • heading out for a birthday party soon. Thinking I might take the bus! How retro is that? #
  • Great food, great people, great time last night. Happy b-day @cutergecko. Hope you're not feeling too rough. #
  • @dsgnnetwork likewise! in reply to dsgnnetwork #
  • @benjaminbach likewise. hope I didn't bore anyone too much with talk of sick kids. :) in reply to benjaminbach #
  • jquery.com load REALLY slow for me atm. is it just me? #
  • @blakestevenson I like these two designs best: http://images.adam.merrifield.ca/my_favs-20100807-101641.jpg in reply to blakestevenson #
  • After 2 days of not eating, 4yo figured she needed a doughnut. Makes sense, fat, starch, sugar… Looking to kick start her metabolism? #
  • @joeworkman re tabulous, can I help? in reply to joeworkman #
  • @_RWT_ I got @joeworkman fixed up on the z-index/position thing with the pseudo :before/:after. in reply to _RWT_ #

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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-08-01

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