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  • A crontab tutorial

    I’m reposting this because my referrer logs tell me someone out there keeps looking for it. Okay, here it is:

    There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot – Ecclesiastes 3 3:1-2.

    And for those of you who have various scripts on your server A time to issue a command interactive, a time to schedule a task. And if you have something, like a search engine index, that you want rebuilt late at night while no-one is online, then you definitely don’t want have to wake up, SSH/Telnet in, just to issue one command. Enter cron …

    cron is a *nix command for scheduling tasks for automatic execution. The operating system, which is running all the time, has several service processes associated with it, often called daemons. One of these bad boys just looks at the clock, then looks at a table … a crontable … and then executes any script/program scheduled for that point in time.

    Many host providers are now giving away cron for free, so long as you don’t abuse it. And while many of these same host providers are giving you control panels and online forms to enter the necessary parameters, such screens are often ubiquitous at best, usually with little or not help, clues or examples.

    And because unlike my wife, I’m not a *nix deity, I need to look up this stuff from time to time. So here is a link to a relatively straightforward and easy to read crontab tutorial. Schedule some time to give it a read why don’tcha ?

  • Lorem Ipsum == Check Your Title Bar

    Which web page title is more descriptive?

    1. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet
    2. First Presbyterian Church Natchitoches, La.

    While I suppose #1 may be attractive to some of our Catholic bretheren, I suspect most Presbyterian churches in Natchitoches would prefer #2. As I said in my June 21, 2002 article entitled “Lorem Ipsum Dolor” is a jumble from Cicero’s ‘de Finibus‘ long employed to display fonts and more recently, to test web pages … Which in this case, someone did without noticing what was between the <TITLE> tags.

    This is not good. Many search engines use the title tag as their primary key for storage and retreival. This is why so many “how to” sites say to be very descriptive with your page titles. I mean how many people do you know would look for a Presbyterian church on Natchitoches by entering “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet?” Which is ironic, because in Natchitoches there is a church web site that needs to re-evaluate their home page title. Equally ironic is that the webmaster ahs decided to offer links to the major search engines where one would normally expect a navigational menu for links within the site.

    I suppose I could go on, but the good people at 1st Pres. in Natchitoches didn’t ask for a review. That, and it appears that the example case may have been a situation where the web servant modified an example page that came with FrontPage 4.0, fake Latin and all. To which my instruction is, unless you have an iterpreter handy, then you don’t want your page speaking in tongues. This means remembering to check <TITLE> tags!

  • Antonín Dvo?ák Biblical Songs

    Back in May of 1998, I performed (sang) a concert of Antonín Dvo?ák’s Biblical Songs (Op. 99) using my computer as an accompanist. Here is the write-up that appeared on the program notes:

    Dvorák’s Biblical Songs were written in March of 1894, during his stay in the United States as the director of the National Conservatory located in New York City. There he advised young American composers to use the American folk idiom, especially Negro spirituals and certain Native American rhythms, as the basis for a body of new American music. It was during this time he was informed of the death of the famous conductor, and close personal friend, Hans von Bülow. Just a month earlier, Dvorák was grieved to hear that his father was near death, far away in Bohemia. As fate would have it, his father expired 2 days after the completion of Biblical Songs.

    Unlike many composers of his day, Dvorák did not console himself in excess. After all, he had dealt with death before. In November 13, 1877, after burying all three of his children in the space of two years, Dvorák completed the score to the Stabat Mater. Dvorák’s most famous choral work, is based on a 13th century Latin poem depicting Mary’s contemplation of the crucifixion of her Christ.

    This time, Dvorák would console himself in the Psalms. The resulting work , considered the finest of his song cycles, is none other than the ten Biblical Songs, opus 99.

    I became acquainted with these pieces in dealing with the grievous loss of some family members back in ’97 and ’98. I now revisit these pieces with the horrific news we received in an emergency room on the way back from our vacation that my wife and I have lost our second child, 12 weeks in the womb, due to a miscarriage. Please pray for me as my heart breaks. Mostly, I ask for you to pray for my wife as she now suffers painful emotions of the loss – for though I try to convince her she’s done nothing wrong – the evil one taunts her with guilt and doubt.

    Song
    MIDI File    		 Title Ref. Key Meter Tempo Measures Style Date
    (1894)
    * NOTE * These pieces were performed with by aiming the MIDI files at a Korg 03R/W – in other words, they’re likely to sound pretty ‘Twinkie‘ on your sound card unless you rework the instrumentations using a synthesizer/sound module like the Korg 03R/W.
    1 Clouds and Darkness Psalm 97 G 3/8 Andantino 55 ms. Through Composed March 13-15
    This singer takes on the characteristic of the
    a Shakespearean narrator, offering considerable and
    dramatic word painting. Standing in awe near the
    singed earth and melted mountains, the narrator
    describes the nature of God upon His Throne.
    2 Lord, Thou art my Refuge and Shield Psalm 119 G-Emi 4/4 Andante 26 ms modified strophic (A1 + codetta +
    A2 + codetta)    		 March 7
    Here, in a leider style reminiscent of Schubert,
    the singer calls upon the Lord to help the singer
    in  live righteously, though tempted by evil
    men, and embodied in a sinful host.
    3 Hear My Prayer, Oh Lord My God Psalm 55 Bb-B-Bb 3/4 Andante 62 ms. Through-Composed March 21-27
    With Brahms-like tertian and chromatic modulations,
    the singer portrays the role of the penitent.
    Drowning in a sea of despair, the singer floats his
    sighs and cries to the Lord; hoping later in the
    song to fly above them on the wings of eagles and
    ascend to the Peace of God.
    4 God is my Shepherd Psalm 23 B 4/4 Andante 32 ms. Rondo-like, or highly modified strophic
    (A1 + B1 + A2 +
    B2 + A3 + codetta)    		 March 15-16
    Through the and elegant simplicity of this piece,
    the singer portends the Peace of God that is poured
    upon those who offer an uncomplicated, child-like
    devotion to God that Christ commanded of us in
    Matthew 18:3.
    5 I Will Sing New Songs of Gladness Psalms 144 & 145 Ab 4/4 Resoluto, Maestoso 53 ms. modified strophic ternary (A1 +
    A2 + A3+ B + A4 +
    codetta)    		 March 21-24
    In the harmonic style of the Negro Spiritual, this
    piece joyfully bounces along with three static
    stanzas until it explodes in a flourish of intense
    chromaticism. Here the singer delivers eighteen
    different chromatic/enharmonic pitches in just six
    measures; which resolve back to the original key,
    in time for the emphatic delivery of the a
    triumphant, final strophe.
    6 Hear My Prayer, Oh Lord Psalms 61 & 63 D 4/4 Andante 41 ms. modified strophic ternary (A1 +
    A2 + B + A3)    		 March 13-20
    As is common with all man, the singer ‘s new joy is
    clouded with doubts and worries; causing the singer
    to cry out to God. However, unlike the third song,
    here the singer reveals a strong underlying hope
    that God will deliver the comfort and relief the
    singer so dearly desires.
    7 By The Waters of Babylon Psalm 137 Cmi-Eb 3/8 Andante 60 ms. modified strophic ternary (A1 +
    A2 + B + A3 + Coda)    		 March 5-8
    Again, the singer is the narrator, on this time in
    the style of Schubert’s Erlkonig. Here the singer
    complains of his tormentors, then mocks them, and
    then in defiance, vows never to crumble or cave-in
    to destructive demands.
    8 Turn Thee to Me Psalm 25 Abmi-Ab 3/8 Andante 38 ms. Modified Strophic (A1 + A2 +
    A3)    		 March 21-26
    Here the singer, exhausted and cried-out, an almost
    Brahm’s like nocturne starts harmonic uncertainty.
    Then seeing past his own torment, the singer
    confesses his sin, and asks the Lord into his life.
    In doing so, the piece lurches from minor to a
    Major key, and concludes in a joy brought out of a
    restored relationship with God.
    9 I Will Turn My Eyes up to The Mountains Psalm 121 F-Fmi-Ab 3/8 Andante con motto 45 ms. Through Composed March 5-8
    Forgiven, restored and comforted, the singer again
    engages in extensive word-painting as he reveals
    the loving-kindness of the Lord.
    10 Sing ye a Joyful Song Psalms 98 & 96 F 2/4 Allegro moderato 72 ms. Modified Strophic (A1 + A2 +
    A3 + Codetta)    		 March 13-14
    Having received the gift of God, the singer for the
    first time looks outward, and in doing so
    encourages everything under Heaven and Earth to
    sing joyful praises unto the Lord!

    I have also made available a page of the actual lyrics along with the copyright notice regarding the MIDI file performances.

    Forgive me now as I take a break from this site for a day or two to collect my thoughts and deal with my grief and attend to my wife.

  • Disabling the Right Click

    Please open your copy of ‘The Book‘ to pages 264 and 265. There you will see me disparaging those persons who break my browser by using Javascript to disable my right key click. You may also notice a link to a web service I wrote for Vincent’s site that gets around this stupidity.

    Any web servant who has taken the time to read Mark Pilgrim’s Dive Into Accessibility should understand the evils of breaking your user’s browsers by disabling various functions they expect. For example, I expect to be able to right click so I can open a new window. Yet there are those web servants out there who’s ego and/or paranoia are such that they just assume everyone who right clicks is out to steal. Well thank you very much for bearing a false testimony against your brother!

    What I personally find ironic is that most, if not all such sites are so poorly coded, it’s not even worth looking at the source or right-clicking the links using the SamSpade Safe Browser. Nor is it worth a second trip back to the site.

    About the only thing worse than this are those right-click nazis who also use the target= argument for their hyperlinks to throw open a new window – which inadvertently breaks the functionality of the back button.

    Not convinced? Perhaps an article entitled ‘Don’t Disable Right Click!‘ by Rosemarie Wise will change your mind.

  • Linux != Desktop != Failure

    This is old news to anyone who frequents Dave Winer’s or Doc Searl‘s weblogs … but Doc makes such a good point, that like a good batch of hummus, it bears repeating:
    The Doc Searls Weblog : Deconstructing desktops : Saturday, August 10, 2002.

    Basically the good Doc takes issues with people who claim Linux has failed as a desktop. His reasoning, simply because Linux isn’t a desktop. KDE and Gnome are desktops, but not Linux.

    He also astutely asserts that we’re comparing apples and oranges here. That one can no more write-off Linux as failure in the same way one shouldn’t classify tractor-trailers a bust because they’re not as popular as passenger cars.

    Doc’s article goes into much gorier detail, and is a good read for anyone considering moving their church/charity office platform to Linux who is being bamboozl’d by the frequent FUD surrounding this topic.

  • OpenOffice.org 1.01

    The church administrator’s job is a hard, and often thankless one. Often the task is assigned to someone who’s already working in a full-time function at the church, such as the youth pastor. Worse, yet, they have the unenviable task of being having to provide caviar service on a beans-n-franks budget. So the last thing they want to hear is that Microsoft Corp. is doing all sorts of fun things with their pricing and licensing structure for their Office product. Stuff that makes your already tight budget go OUCH!

    Well help may be on the way in a product known as the OpenOffice.org
    suite of software. Both an Open Sores product and a project, OpenOffice.org
    runs on multiple platforms. It includes the essential desktop applications, such as a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation manager, and drawing program (hmmm … no email or calendar program?). It also sports an interface that should be familiar to “similar” office suites. Of course, the real acid test is their claims of transparently working with with a variety of file formats, including those of Microsoft Office. They say the magic number is 90% … I for one hope so!

    Now mind you, I’m not some anti-Microsoft hating zealot like those found over at /. In fact, I’ve got some very nice things to say about .NET in the near future. However, the $400+ price tag and anti-piracy measures associated MS Office, along with the expense of an operating system and hardware to support it, makes the MS approach an exorbitantly expensive solution for a church needing to support 2 or 4 workstations. It may even make dealing with any OpenOffice.org incombatibilities or anomolies worthwhle. If not for a church, at least for the seminary student or missionary.

    So I’ve got this old Pentium II/266mmx. I’m about to make it my Linux development machine. I think though on one partition I’m going to install Lycoris and OpenOffice.org and see if I can’t make my church administrator’s day by walking into their office and suggestiong a solution that may save them as much as 1000 bucks per PC. And if not that, I’ve always had this dream of a study center for the teens – this indeed would be a way around Microsoft’s spin regarding the use of donated machines (e.g. naked PCs). We’ll see …

    In the meantime, here’s a bit more press on the topic, ironically via MSNBC.

  • GospelCom.Net Responds to my Open Letter

    In response to my Open Letter to Christian Media Outlets of July 24, 2002, I received the following response (note, the hyperlinks within the article are mine):

    Date: 7/25/2002
    From: JR Whitby
    To: Dean Peters
    Subject: BG [gospelcom.net #53868]
    Thanks for taking the time to write to us about the Bible Gateway. Dean, With the hundreds of messages we receive for the Bible Gateway each week, it’s nice to get encouraging messages about cool feature requests like this once in a while. ;-)The Bible Gateway does not currently offer the type of interface you’re suggesting, but it is something we’ve been researching for a while. We have been involved with a couple of the initial meetings for the Open Scriptural Information Standard (OSIS) [http://www.bibletechnologies.net/], and are continuing to follow the development of the schema [http://www.bibletechnologies.net/schemadoc.cfm]. We are honored to be working with organizations such as ABS and IBS that are helping lead the way for these standards. This type of work is consistent with the philosophy that’s driven the open source projects we’ve published in the past [http://oss.gospelcom.net/].

    Providing an XML interface is in our plans for the future, and is something we want to provide. We are working to make this type of syndication easier for site owners like yourself, while ensuring we meet the requirements and copyrights of the versions that have been provided to us from the various publishers. As resources become available, we will continue our development along these lines.

    Thanks again for the suggestions!

    Cordially,

    J.R. Whitby
    Vice President, Gospel Communications International
    Director, www.gospelcom.net
    The most popular Christian site on the Internet

    Well, it’s not the answer I wanted, but it sure was the nicest response I could have hoped for. And while I’m glad to see XML in discussion, I’m hoping they’ll realize that XML-based API need not be contingent on the rendering of their systems in XML. In other words, I’m hoping they shoot for an API in the short term, while working on documenting Christendom in XML in the long term.

    Still, a very nice response from a good ways up the food chain.
    Believe me, it IS appreciated!

  • Essential Unix FAQ

    Its Friday, so one thing useful and two things fun – I’ll leave it to you figure out which is which:

    I talk alot about Linux here, not because I’m some Bill Gate’s hating, anti-Microsoft Zealot, there are enough of those around already. Fact is, I’ve made a nice living writing code for my day job on various DOS and Windows-based systems. Though I still refuse to install XP I just don’t like the idea of having to “report in …” But I digress.

    I mention Linux muchly because it is the platform many of us use and abuse for our web sites. That and it is at least 35% geekier than any other operating system Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader
    out there. Which makes knowing it an essential skill if you really want to take control of your web site. Problem is that as I get older, I sometimes forget the command-line syntax. I’m fortunate to have a unix-chix wife who fills in most of the blanks, but there are times I’m embarassed to ask or admit I’m lost. Instead I’d rather drive around and find it the hard way. It’s a guy thing.

    So late the other night while the spousal unit was asleep, I got stuck and didn’t want to wake anyone by going upstairs to rattle through the umpteem million computer books holding up a corner of our house. What I really needed was a cheat sheet – I found one – courtesy of the good folks at the Montana State University – Bozeman. What they’re doing with UNIX up in Montana only our Lord knows. I’m just grateful to have it handy.

    Now where did I put that pocket protector ………….?