About me
I am a stereotypical technology geek that dabbles in some programming, photography, and I’m quite prone to collecting very random and in-depth knowledge (just do not call me a “walking encyclopedia”, it’s an insult to encyclopedias). Even though new, shiny things catch my attention, I tend to be a slight skeptic and will be fairly pessimistic. Friends of mine know that I can be both overly quiet and vocal at the same time… it amounts to what buttons have been pushed or subliminal keywords are spoken within earshot.
I am a firm believer in organized chaos and find it easier to be more organized in the digital world rather than in the analog world. Humor is what keeps me from being insane and sane at the same time; some find my humor to be too cranial or pun-tastic, though there are lines that I tend to cross without thinking about it.
All of these characteristics will show themselves in my writing and blog posts. You have been warned.
Behind the closedsrc.org name
When I decided to register a domain name for my site and e-mail addresses, the term “Open Source” was used all over the media, with (too) much of the focus on GNU/Linux. Being the person that I’m known to be, I decided to go with something along the line of “closed source”. Unfortunately, the “closedsource.org” domain was already registered, so I used the common abbreviation of source, “src”, and registered “closedsrc.org”.
Keep in mind that the choice of the domain name implies that I have a bias against the Open Source movement and all of the projects, communities and volunteers. In reality, I advocate the use of and deployment of Open Source software wherever and whenever it makes sense (you know, use the right tool for the right job?) I believe that Open Source software provides the necessary environments to foster innovation and growth of all software, while provides additional choice of viable software.
I have also volunteered for and contributed to various communities, with most of my focus on the FreeBSD operating system.
Site Design and Foundation
This is the fifth major version of this web site, each version introduced not only major changes in the code that the site is based on but also in the design of the site.
The first version of the site was built to be very simplistic and lightweight (due to limited connectivity and hardware), in which the focus was specifically on content.
The second version of the site improved on the design, with significant influences from Microsoft’s Pocket PC operating system and earlier versions of both Microsoft’s MSDN and Python project web sites. While the code was fairly lightweight, but the design was overly restrictive and did not fare very well with older or mobile web browsers. That version was also my first venture into following both the HTML 4.01 and CSS specifications.
The third version of the site was a significant overhaul for both the code base and the focus on designing a site that strictly followed the XHTML and CSS2 specifications, as well as a site design that would be accessible by everyone.
Unfortunately, trying to extend both the code base and the design took more time than I had available. I also wanted a code base that provided content management and would be extensible by using extensions and allowed me to focus on a lot more on writing content than code.
The next version of the site, which uses the Drupal content management system as the code base, along with several additional modules and a modified theme. By using Drupal, I can focus on writing content and make it easier to blog on a whim. With convenience comes at the expense of total control over the HTML or XHTML generated by the code, though maintaining a basic level of accessibility.
After several years of working with Drupal and getting frustrated with some of the bugs, nuances and inconsistencies, I have decided to switch over to WordPress.
Behind the Scenes
The iron that used to serve this web site is an HP/Compaq dc7700 desktop with a 1.86GHz Core 2 Duo processor, 2GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive. The system is nice and small, while producing very little noise and heat, which replaced another small and relatively energy efficient Compaq iPaq desktop. The site is now hosted on a RootBSD VPS due to limited DSL bandwidth at home.
The system runs the FreeBSD operating system, with the web serving handled by Apache and PHP. The MySQL database backend is hosted on a separate system that has processing power to spare.
Advertisements
While I do not run any web advertisements on my websites, some links to various products mentioned on this site that point to Amazon.com do contain an Amazon.com Associates ID. By using Amazon.com Associates, I get a small amount back on items purchased through such links. Any amount that I get is used to help pay for hosting and maintaining this site.
I have no immediate plans to incorporate graphical or text ads to this site, including product spots for Amazon.com Associates. The primary reason is to keep the design and aesthetics of this site as simple as possible, in which graphical ad spots would work against the design.
Tracking and Privacy
In order to get a better understanding of who visits this site and what kind of content people are interested in, the site incorporates code for Google Analytics and WordPress Stats. Previously, I used a combination of log parsers (such as AWStats) and Google Webmaster Tools, but it wasn’t enough to provide what happens once someone visits a page. Cookies are also used to provide some basic functionality, including the ability to preserve sessions.
I also use reCAPTCHA as a facility to reduce the amount of comment spam and bots from wreaking havoc.
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