However, our development server is only accessible at the office, not at home over the web, unless you set up an SSH tunnel. This is a little bit cumbersome to do every time you just want a quick peek, so we used a simple solution to make ViewGit accessible over the web. Behind some HTTP Basic authentication of course.

First, login to your public webserver and set up a tunnel to your development webserver using SSH. I recommend setting up key-based authentication, so you don’t have to enter a password and you can easily daemonize it – the tunnel will disconnect every once in a while.

ssh -fNL 8666:sitename.example.local:80 username@dev.example.com

Replace sitename.example.local with your local web site hostname. Replace username@dev.example.com with the SSH login you would normally use.

The second step is to create a new vhost in Apache on your public webserver and set that hostname up as a tunnel. Let’s call it git.dev.example.com. Do this in the same way as you would add a regular domain to your web server. Then add a few extra lines to the vhost. In DirectAdmin you can easily add this in the admin panel under Custom HTTPD Configurations:

ProxyPass / http://localhost:8666/
RequestHeader set Host "sitename.example.local"
ProxyPreserveHost on
<Location />
	AuthUserFile /home/example/domains/git.dev.example.com/public_html/.htpasswd
	AuthName "ViewGit"
	AuthType Basic
	Require valid-user
</Location>

The first three lines set up the reverse proxy and direct the web requests to the right vhost on the tunneled development web server. The last six lines set up HTTP authentication. Using a .htaccess in your document root will not work, because of the ProxyPassReverse directive.

Enjoy your publicly accessible development site! :)

# RewriteEngine on (enable if you don't have it yet)
RewriteCond %{TIME_YEAR}%{TIME_MON}%{TIME_DAY} ^20120118$
RewriteCond %{TIME_HOUR} >7
RewriteCond %{TIME_HOUR} <20
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://reddit.com/r/sopa [L]

This will redirect any request, to your protest site of choice on Jan 18th, between 08:00 and 20:00 (local webserver time). Assuming Apache of course!

Fretting over having to update dozens of sites and apps with a set of meta tags to prevent Compatibility View, a better solution appeared. Why not serve this meta tag as a HTTP header? It works! Simply add the following lines to your Apache configuration (for instance apache2.conf or httpd.conf) and you’ll be permanently freed from users triggering IE7-mode on you…

<IfModule mod_setenvif.c>
  <IfModule mod_headers.c>
    BrowserMatch MSIE ie
    Header add X-UA-Compatible "IE=Edge,chrome=1" env=ie
  </IfModule>
</IfModule>

Make sure you have both modules installed and enabled. On Ubuntu simply fire off a2enmod headers to enable the headers module. As an added bonus, the above headers will trigger Google Chrome Frame as well, if available…

I couldn’t believe that Apple, a company focused on details, would have such an oversight in their audio drivers. Volume control without dithering? That’s crazy. But it was there, really.

Lo and behold, one day I check into Audio MIDI Setup and find out that my audio device is set to 2ch-24bit Integer, and that there is also a setting for 32bit Float. Why is it there, and does it make a difference? It turns out, that at 32bit Float the sound is dithered nicely when lowering the volume. Hurray!

But why is it set at this non-native setting at my machine? I guess it’s because over the years I never reinstalled OS X when getting a new machine. I always used the migration tools (working surprisingly well I might add), and never did a clean install. It must have taken this setting with me from the days of my old PowerBook, Core2Duo Alu MacBook Pro, into this Unibody one. Different sound interface, same setting, different sound.

Another mystery solved. Hope this post helps other people, anal about sound as me!

A quick patch-up solves things! Find HyperArch.py in your Mailman binaries dir and find the section which contains ARCHIVER_OBSCURES_EMAILADDRS. Change the try block into something like this:

if self.author == self.email:
    self.author = self.email = "EMAIL HIDDEN"
else:
    self.email = "EMAIL HIDDEN"

Easy-peasy. Recompile the .py file: py_compilefiles HyperArch.py. Then regenerate your list archives: YOURMAILMANDIR/bin/arch YOURLISTNAME. Done!

Be careful with apt-get update-ing your machine though… you will have to repatch.

Get the code: jQuery Winamp-style marquee.

Now it would be cool to do the same plugin, but then using CSS animation for hardware acceleration!

Take a look at the color mixer!

In PHP, it becomes a bit of a mess because of its multibyte Unicode handling. I noticed that most frameworks don’t take care of our fâncy European characters correctly, so I had to roll my own.

The following set of functions handle it, although mb_ereg will probably be deprecated soon. Bonus points for who converts this to use preg (with the /u modifier). Back when I wrote this most PHP installs weren’t precompiled with the correct PCRE lib.

Hope it helps someone!

highlight.php

Ingredients (serves 2)

• Whole spices: 1 tbsp. coriander seeds, 1 tbsp. cumin seeds, 1 tbsp. dried (birds-eye) chili peppers, 2 cloves, 6 cardemom seeds, touch of mace (optional), a few curry leaves (optional)
• Butter (real)
• Two onions, chopped
• Tin of chopped tomatoes (400ml)
• Half a garlic, chopped
• Tin of chickpeas (400g)
• 100 ml. of yoghurt
• 200 grams of washed fresh spinach

Preperation

1. Gently roast the coriander, cumin and chilies in a skillet on low fire. They are done when they become aromatic – but be sure to not overroast them, you’ll mostly get bitter tones out of them then. Cumin seeds tend to need a shorter time to toast so I add them a bit later. When done, grind them all up finely in a mortar and set aside. Put it through a sieve as needed to remove course bits.
2. Chop the onions and sauté them gently in a generous amount of (real) butter for about 5-10 minutes. Low heat. I use a cast iron Le Creuset round pot (love it)
3. Stir in the tomatoes, remaining whole spices and chopped garlic, raise the fire a bit and make it simmer.
4. Add ground spices, stir, then add chickpeas and simmer for 5 minutes.
5. Lower the heat and pour in the yoghurt. Bring to a simmer. Add salt to taste.
6. Stir in spinach leaves. They’ll rapidly turn deep green.

Serve with rice and enjoy!

Luckily NASA also provides a feed made for iPad & iPhone users. If you encapsulate that in a a HTML5 <video> tag you get a great experience (at least on Safari/Mac). Check it out – and enjoy. Combine with Soma FM’s Mission Control for maximum spaciness!