Cherokee Springs Secret

This has nothing to do with archives. It has everything to do with trusting those who claim to serve.

My wife and I have lived in Louisville for the past six years, but we used to live in the Cherokee Springs area of South Carolina. The area is between Spartanburg and Boiling Springs. We still have friends there, and we are still interested in the area. I still like the area, and I hate to see the people there taken advantage of by entities designed to serve them. That appears to be what’s happening according to a new blog, VoteCherokeeSprings.com. It appears, if the blogger is correct, that the Cherokee Springs Fire Board is trying to sneak in a new referendum in order to raise the property taxes by 7 mils. The referendum will not appear on the ballot for the general election. It will occur on a different date in order to hide its existence from the general public. Classy.

I used to vote at CSFD, and if I still did, I would oppose this type of thing vehemently. I detest property taxes anyway, but I really detest them when people work to sneak them in. If the blog above is the whole story, it sounds like someone (ie. WSPA, Spartanburg Herald Journal) really needs to ask some serious, public questions of Commissioner Easler — like this week!

Setting Focus in Rails with Prototype

Recently, I tried for a day to set focus on a field within a form that I had created for a Rails application. It was more difficult than you might think. So, here are my instructions for anyone else who may be trying to do this.

Rails usually comes packaged with several Javascript frameworks that can make life much easier. One of these, prototype, allows us to set focus on a field.

Here’s how you do it. In your application_helper.rb file, include the following lines:
def set_focus_to_id(id)
javascript_tag(”$(’#{id}’).focus()”);
end

In your layout either for the application or the controller, include this line in the meta section:
<%= javacript_include_tag "prototype" %>

If you wanted to include all the javascript libraries, you could include this line, but it hogs bandwidth:
<%= javacript_include_tag :defaults %>

In your rhtml file that contains the field you want to set focus on, include this line:
<%= set_focus_to_id 'password' %>
Note that your id is to be the id of the field you want to set focus on. If you are using this with a form, a fine place to insert the line is right after the end tag for the form.

That’s it. If you’ve done all that, you should have focus on the field.

HT: Wolfman

cap -A seems to be deprecated

This is just a FWIW in regards to Capistrano. Capistrano is a piece of software (a Ruby Gem, to be more specific) that I use to automatically deploy applications to web servers. I recently upgraded to version 2.1.0.

Previously, to set up an application under Capistrano, I would run the command cap -A .

That period at the end is part of the code.

In the new version of Capistrano, that seems to be deprecated. You now have to run capify .

So, now you know, and now I have a way to remember it.

Linux and Proliant ML350 G2

Just today, I was working on converting a Proliant ML350 G2 server from running Windows Server 2000 to a Linux distribution. I noticed several people had this same problem with various flavors of Linux, and I did not find a legitimate workaround that did not involve a noapic option. I was getting an error that involved this line: MP-BIOS bug: 8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC.

I did find a workaround. It’s not that creative. I went to the HP/Compaq website and ran all the BIOS and firmware updates. The install went through without issue after that.

bash: cap: command not found

This post is just an FYI for those trying to use Capistrano on Ubuntu Feisty and running into the same problem I had. I had trouble finding specific information on the topic, thus this post.

I recently tried to use Cap on Ubuntu, and it would not work. I already had ruby and gems installed, having installed them using apt-get. I installed capistrano using the gem install capistrano. I could run gem list and capistrano was installed. All of my other gems worked fine.

When I checked the status of Capistrano using cap -h, I go the error bash: cap: command not found. After doing some searching, I found out how to fix it. Open ~/.bashrc using your favorite text editor. At the end of the file, add these lines:

#The following sets the path for Capistrano
export PATH=$PATH:/var/lib/gems/1.8/bin

Save the file and reboot. Capistrano should work now.

More on Preserving Blogs

I just wanted to mention a couple of things in relation to preserving blogs. First, I wanted to thank Marty Duren, formerly of the influential Baptist blog SBCOutpost. Marty now blogs at ie:missional (I’m not sure what ie stands for, but I hope he’s not endorsing the web browser that dare not name it’s name.) Marty was taking down his SBCOutpost blog, and he graciously provided me with a full digital copy of the blog. I like to think of it as SBCOutpost 2.0, because Marty used to have a Blogger blog before he was converted to WordPress. SBCOutpost is now at version 3.0 as a collabroblog.

Second, I think I am getting closer to an answer on how to grab blogs and store them in a way that will ensure that their arrangement remains intact. I also think that I have a solution for how to ensure that various iterations are distinctly recorded. In other words, I believe that I will be able to do for blogs what the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine does for regular sites. Better yet, I believe I can do it with entirely free software. I also think that this solution can be used for other web resources. We will see how it turns out, but at this point I have reason to be very hopeful. At this point, I am more concerned with preservation than access. I need to preserve all these “wet blogs” before they dry up.

ALABI 2007–Session 2

On last Wednesday afternoon, we had session 2 of the ALABI meeting. What follows is my summary of the second session. But first, I want to mention to talk about the disaster preparedness forum that I forgot to mention in my last post.

Disaster Preparedness Forum

The forum involved Bill Sumners of the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives, and Jeff Griffin, the director of the library at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

ALABI 2007–Session 1

For those who have been waiting for reviews of the sessions, I apologize for the tardiness of this review of session 1. I have been pretty busy over the past week. I will try to get the others done as soon as I can. I am a very bad blogger.

This year’s meeting was not as well attended as last year’s but I think the members that attended really enjoyed it. The Campbellsville University community was very welcoming. The food was good, and the conference room in the new chapel was extremely well suited for the event. I especially enjoyed the tour of the library and special collections that Dr. John Burch, the university librarian, graciously provided for us.

Wet Blog Happenings

In my previous post on wet blogs (ie. Baptist blogs), I noted that I would be doing a series of posts dealing with preserving wet blogs (and blogs in general). I just wanted to point out a couple of people that seem to have similar concerns.

First, Marty Duren posted today about the relationship between blogs and traditional denominational media outlets. He argues that media outlets such as Baptist Press should be more open to publishing blogs and bloggers on their sites. Marty rightly recognizes the influences of blogs on denominational life.

Second, Timmy Brister, Owen Strachan, and Tony Kummer have developed a collaborative blog project called Said at Southern Seminary. The project aggregates blogs from many bloggers related to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and publishes content on a variety of issues. Appropriately enough, you can find out more about the project at its About page. While this project in no way guarantees the permanence of blogs or blog content, it demonstrates the concern of some bloggers for bringing together blogs related to a common object of love.

ALABI 2007–Part Deux

Yesterday’s meeting was pretty informative. I will post a more detailed report of all sessions sometime this afternoon. During the business meeting today, I will be presenting the report for the communications committee. Our report will propose some fairly major changes to the web site. If it passes, we will probably have constantly updating content on the site. Hopefully, more content can generate interest in the organization and can be a medium for encouraging the type of wider participation that I suggested yesterday.