My Little Corner of the Net

Adding POP Accounts for Multi-Hosted Domains

Written by Kodiak on 03/21/2005 — 1 Comment

As many people know, I host my websites with a company called JaguarPC. JPC offers a “clients helping clients” forum, and given my background in both web development and system administration, I find myself answering a lot of peoples’ questions.

One nice feature of JPC is that they allow multihosting—or hosting of multiple websites on a single account. JPC uses the CPanel control panel system and CPanel introduced a way to create email accounts on multihosted domains a long time ago. JPC, unfortunately, hasn’t updated their CPanel skins to accomodate this enhancement, and it is one of the biggest complaints that people have. After a little digging I found a way to use Firefox’s Web Developer toolbar to get around the skin issue, which I posted to JPC’s message board.

A couple weeks later, Chris Batchelor (a.k.a. Galen at JPC) contacted me asking if I knew how to delete an account. There seems to be a bug in CPanel (or JPC’s implementation of it) that prevents deleting email accounts on multihosted domains. Again I got to work, and when I couldn’t figure it out using CPanel, I went to the filesystem and figured out where CPanel stores all of its email account info and I sent this to Galen.

This weekend I got another message from Galen. He liked my solution so much that he’s written a tutorial and asked for my permission to put my name on it (thanks, Galen!).

So, if you want to create email accounts for multihosted domains, check out Adding POP Accounts for Multi-Hosted Domains. Remember, of course that this is only an expreimental technique. If you use it and screw up your account it isn’t my fault, or Galen’s. And don’t expect your host to bail you out, either—after all, they aren’t supporting the feature you’re using. Some hosts might be nice and help you restore your site, but don’t expect it from them.

Posted in General, Websites

Golf Ball Determines Election in Monroe County Village

Written by Kodiak on 03/17/2005 — Leave a Comment

As reported today in the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, a golf ball decided the fate of two village board candidates in Honeoye Falls. Both candidates tied for second place in the race for two open seats. Since the village had no law in place for dealing with such an event, state law mandated that the winner be selected by lottery. Rather than drawing straws or tossing a coin, four golf balls were marked—two with a one and two with a two—and placed in a jar. The mayor then shook up the jar and pulled a number two ball, meaning a victory for the incumbent.

Posted in Rochester, Weird

Bowling for Soup

Written by Kodiak on 03/08/2005 — Leave a Comment

Have you ever loved a song you’ve heard on the radio for no apparent reason? That’s the way I feel right now for Bowling for Soup’s 1985. I have no idea why I like the song so much, other than the fact that it has a good beat and catchy lyrics. I suppose I can relate to it to some degree, although I was only eight years old in 1985 and, while I still like listening to some 80’s music now, I don’t think that I’m stuck in the 80’s. I don’t drive a yellow SUV, either (although I do drive a black version of the SUV that got the yellow SUV craze started).

The song has a cool video, too complete with parodies of 80’s icons Robert Palmer, George Michael, and Poison (who were they again?). I can’t figure out why I’m so hooked on this song! I like it so much I even cashed in a Pepsi iTunes credit to get it.

Maybe I should go seek professional help…

Posted in Cool, General, Weird

TRBL">Cascading Stylesheets: Keeping out of TRBL

Written by Kodiak on 03/01/2005 — Leave a Comment

If you’re a web developer, you probably started using Cascading Stylesheets a long time ago. If you haven’t, go get yourself a copy of one of Eric Meyer’s books (1, 2, 3, 4) and learn about them. They will make your HTML cleaner, make your pages smaller (so they load faster), and make your sites easier to maintain and update.

OK, now I’ll step down off my soapbox and get back to my original message.

One of the features of CSS is that you can often condense multiple statements into a single statement via shortcuts. To control the margins of a block element on your page you could specify each edge, which is easy to follow and pretty clean, but it takes four lines of code just to control a few pixels of space:

#someblockelement {
margin-top: 5px;
margin-right: 2px;
margin-bottom: 5px;
margin-left: 2px;
}

If you set a lot of elements’ margins (or padding, or …) this could add up to several hundred kilobytes of data. Therefore, the creators of the CSS specification came up with a shortcut:

#someblockelement {
margin: 5px 2px 5px 2px;
}

This is much more compact, but what does it mean? If you have no CSS experience, that line is meaningless. Even though I should know that they are set in a clockwise order, I could never remember which number went with which edge until now. Today, while helping a colleague figure out some CSS code, I had to go to my favorite CSS reference site to figure this out. Reading the description on the site I said aloud “top, right, bottom, left—T, R, B, L—trouble!”

I’ll never forget the order of these sides in a CSS definition again, and now neither will you.

Posted in General

Congrats Pats

Written by Kodiak on 02/07/2005 — Leave a Comment

This is definitely the year for Boston with back-to-back Super Bowl wins for the Patriots and a much-deserved World Series for the Sox. Even the Celtics are leading their division (and they only have a 50% average—pathetic!), and the Bruins have yet to lose a game (granted, no other NHL team has either).

I spent the night at Jerry’s place, eating way too much food—including some great BBQ ribs. Of course, just about every time the Pats scored I was either talking to somebody or not looking at a TV, so I missed most of the action. But I’m still happy about the outcome.

As for the commercials, there were several good ones, which I’ll probably post about later. My vote for worse commercial of the night, however, goes to a local law firm’s Asian village. I’m not Asian, but if I was I’d have been offended and my sentiment was shared by the rest of the party guests in the room. I’ll have to watch the local media to see if the community reacts at all.

Posted in Current Events, Massachusetts, Rochester, Sports
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