General

Things that do not fall in any specific category.

Just for Testing

Something is wrong with the comments section on this site.

Ha! Hold My Brain; Be Still My Beating Heart – or – WordPress Heartbeat Troubles

Ha! Hold My Brain; Be Still My Beating Heart - or - WordPress Heartbeat Troubles

My Beating Heart .. Sir, this audacity! .. Oh, my heart, my beating heart! This unwarrantable presumption on the part of a common website! With credits to Gilbert & Sullivan – HMS Pinafore The WordPress Heartbeat was introduced in WP 3.6 to help users when editing Posts, Pages or doing other administrative functions.  When a web […]

Error establishing a database connection

Error establishing a database connection

That was the message when I went to my home page.  This site is implemented using WordPress.  Since I had not changed a thing, and as the site was working fine a couple of hours before this, a mild panic set in.  A quick check of the wp-config.php file and an SSH login to the […]

Website Analytics

Just a quick note.  We are testing Piwik as an Open Source alternative to Google Analytics. Why would anybody be interested in this?  Well for one, you can host the Piwik service on your own servers.  This allows for more easy customization, but it also ensures that the data you collect on the websites you […]

Upgrading WordPress

WordPress 3.2.1 Upgrade complete :). Also moved the site to a different physical host.  This is a good time to put in a plug for a new Texas Company I am associated with.  The company? M3PCS Incorporated. Now, so what does M3PCS do?  A number of things actually. Develop websites Re-design websites .. and re-launch. […]

Asterisk SIP Security – Vishing Attacks

Vishing Near the end of last year (December 2008), the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation warned of a variation of a new type of vishing attack. By exploiting a bug in the open-source Asterisk VoIP software, criminals have been able to use vulnerable Asterisk systems as their own personal auto-dialers and call potential victims directly. […]

Instant Messaging – IM @ Work

IM – Open Source In general I am not a fan of Instant Messaging (IM). That said, I am not unsympathetic to the benefits that can be realized, especially in a decentralized / virtualized work environment.  For any number of reasons I consider the public IM services such as AOL, MSN, Skype etc. more of a nuisance than […]

A Fresh Look for 2009

2009 will see the remake of the site.  We are using WordPress for this.  The previous incorporation was ‘hand-crafted’.  There is nothing wrong with that, however, it became clear that the site was getting somewhat stale. Over the last year we have seriously delved in virtualization, VPN setups, backup technology, additional VoIP offerings etc.  Since we […]