Blog

  • Motivation, Villainy, and Double Takes

    April 23, 2007

    In yesterday’s post procrastinating alone, I described how I was recovering from a less-than-productive weekend brought on by a feeling of depression. The key insight: I have been feeling rather alone in my endeavor to build things, and the resulting angst was dragging me down. It was difficult to admit that I, as someone who tries to be as independent and self-empowered as possible, was going through that spot of melancholy. But as many commenters pointed out, the blues, they happen and it’s part of life.

    One of the main takeaways from yesterday was my recognition that I needed to create relationships that went beyond mere contractual obligations. While I wasn’t exactly sure what this meant, today I had an interesting online experience with a couple of people I’ve never met in person. We’re not working together, but we’re sharing some collaborative thinking in one of my Basecamp areas. I noticed that there was an odd after-school clubhouse feel to the entire experience, which was both unexpected and delightful. This further reminded me of an old friend, sadly passed on, who I used to scheme with on a daily basis. We spent hours outlining grand dreams in great detail, combining our love for media with the desire to make cool experiences for people; it was that daily conversation that kept my energy at a high level.

    It’s been quite some time since I’ve felt that lightness of spirit, as opposed to the heaviness I had felt just 24 hours earlier. The funny thing was that the recent experience didn’t require tangible collaboration at all: It was enough just to scheme together.

    Perhaps this is the secret. Read onward.

    (more…)

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    DSri Seah

  • Procrastinating Alone

    April 22, 2007

    I was feeling very positive on Friday; Never before has my path seemed so clear, with so many things within my grasp. It was thus with great confidence I predicted a landmark productive weekend. The power I felt on Friday, however, began to resemble more a rolling blackout by Saturday, followed by grid failure as I slipped into total couch potato mode. What happened?

    (more…)

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    DSri Seah

  • Two Storytelling Links for One

    April 19, 2007

    Note to self: visit jwynia’s site more often. Not only is he always writing about empowered-geeky projects that I find interesting, but he also maintains a finely-curated collection of links. This Ira Glass on Storytelling post, for example, with video links to Ira Glass himself talking about his story process. The advice that Glass passes along about the talent gap—that depressing condition when one’s fine taste exceeding one’s craft—is priceless for creatives who are hitting that proverbial wall. /me raises hand.

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    DSri Seah

  • A Review of Tim Ferriss’ “The 4-Hour Work Week”

    April 18, 2007

    I had heard of The 4-Hour Work Week (T4HWW) at SXSW, where Tim Ferriss was presenting a panel on it. I was intrigued by the title (catchy!) but was skeptical; I passed on it to see something else. Then a couple weeks ago, I got a nice email from Ferriss offering to send me a copy of the book, no strings attached, because he suspected that we “shared some DNA”. Newly intrigued, I agreed. I’m certainly glad I did, because I think Ferriss has saved me two years of stumbling around in the dark by providing clarifying principles to steer my life by. I’ve had some of these insights myself, but I hadn’t been able to envision the logical culmination of change-producing action: the creation of a lifestyle that is both fulfilling and self-sustaining. What’s remarkable about the book is that it presents a multitude of subjects—goal setting, time management, business, marketing, and the pursuit of happiness—firmly within the context of what Ferriss calls lifestyle design. Why burn ourselves out, deferring our enjoyment of life, when we can redefine the rules of the game and live the life we want right now? It sounds ludicrous and maybe even irresponsible, but Ferriss argues that this reaction is merely a product of social conditioning and fear. We don’t need to play that game…we can beat it instead.

    T4HWW is a remarkably transparent guide to achieving that lifestyle you’ve always wanted but didn’t dare admit, rationally presented as a series of steps predicated on a fundamental rule: reality is negotiable…outside of science and law, all rules can be bent or broken. Amen, brother! What makes T4HWW more than the typical self-help book is that Ferriss also names the names of the outsourcers, services and brokers he’s used successfully in the past to build the foundation of his automatic income-producing engine. It’s all part of his meta-approach to planning and getting away with the ideal lifestyle…it’s like the perfect crime!

    (more…)

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    DSri Seah

  • Separate PHP Error Logs for Multiple Domains with Plesk

    April 15, 2007

    [UPDATE: Added instructions for Plesk 11 for (dv) 4.0 servers]

    I’ve put a few additional domains on my Media Temple (dv) 3.5, and it’s been great. One thing that was bugging me was not having an easy way to tell which domains were generating which scripting errors. When it was just my site, things were easy to follow, but with the addition of a BBS and a couple other WordPress installations, it was getting difficult to tell who was complaining about what.

    Solution for Plesk 8

    You can configure PHP to have a separate error log file for each VirtualHost definition. The trick is knowing exactly how to set it up, because you can’t touch the configuration directly without breaking Plesk.

    Every domain name on your (dv) has its own directory in /var/www/vhosts. A typical directory has the following top level directories:

    cgi-bin/
conf/
error_docs/
httpdocs/
httpsdocs/
...and so on

    You’ll want to create a vhost.conf file in the domain directory’s conf/ folder with the following lines:

    php_value error_log /path/to/error_log
php_flag display_errors off
php_value error_reporting 6143
php_flag log_errors on

    Change the first value to match your actual installation. After you’re done editing the vhost.conf file, test the configuration from the console with:

    apachectl configtest

    …or if you don’t have apachectl (as Plesk 8.6 doesn’t seem to)…

    /etc/init.d/httpd configtest

    And finally tell Plesk that you’ve made this change.

    /usr/local/psa/admin/bin/websrvmng -a

    You MAY have to tell Apache to restart afterwards. If you see a server connection error, it’s possible that your path-to-error log passed syntax check, but wasn’t writable. Restart it with apachectl restart or /etc/init.d/httpd restart.

    Solution for Plesk 11

    In 2012 I had to move from (dv) 3.5 to (dv) 4.0, which has a new version of Plesk and a different default PHP setup. Instead of using mod_php, it uses a FASTCGI version of php. The difference is that FastCGI PHP is persistent and therefore theoretically faster (though using more memory because of this) and PHP scripts run under the account user instead of the apache user. That’s great! However, it means that the vhost.conf approach for Plesk 8 doesn’t work, because FastCGI PHP uses a different configuration file.

    Thankfully, Plesk 11 provides a control-panel way of doing what I once did manually, obliviating the need to create a vhost.conf file. Go to your domain in Plesk, which will take you to the subscription page where you can edit stuff. Click the Websites & Domains tab and then Show Advanced Settings, followed by Website Scripting and Security.

    Next, look at the top of the screen and choose the PHP Settings tab. At the very bottom, there’s a place where you can enter additional directives. I entered the following (modify “yourdomain.com” for your needs):

    error_log = /var/www/vhosts/yourdomain.com/httpdocs/error_log/php_error.log
display_errors = Off
error_reporting = E_COMPILE_ERROR | E_ERROR | E_CORE_ERROR
log_errors = On

    Save, and then make sure that the directory (here, ‘error_log’) is writable by yourself, and it should work. I should note that I’m duplicating some of the options in the form (display_errors, log_errors, error_reporting); the only custom directive you need if you use the controls is error_log if you choose to be more considered in your approach.

    Web-Based PHP Error Log Browsing

    On my old host, FutureQuest, they had a nice built-in PHP Error Log viewer in the control panel. I thought it would be neat to make something similar, so I created a portable PHP script to help me monitor each domain separately.

    To try it out, first download the script, unzip it, and then copy the entire folder to some place on your webserver. Then, point your browser to the folder and follow the directions. You can also read the README.TXT file for directions. The script does some tests to make sure things are set up correctly, going so far as to insist that you password protect your directory. You can disable this check in the script directly, but you should probably do this to at least keep casual visitors from nosing around the sensitive parts of your server.

    » Download error_log.zip

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    DSri Seah