The Geekdom

It became necessary today to modify the default gw on one of our servers to route the server through a NAT subnet, as opposed to the network of the live IP for the box. At this point all is well.
I tossed together a quick php script that read the contents of an http address to achieve the goal of pulling geolocation coordinates from the yahoo geolocation API. This had been working flawlessly before the change. After the change however, the script began receiving HTTP timeouts. Hmm.

After hours of investigation my Admin partner in crime and I decided that it must be some sort of issue with our firewall. The odd thing was though, curl works flawlessly. So I modified my script to use the PHP curl library, and everything returned to working order.

I can only theorize that somehow fsockopen was either being blocked by our firewall, or was not passing proper information to the HTTP server to get a response back. Curl however negotiates the outbound connection properly and is able to retrieve the information.
If anyone has any clarification on this matter, I would greatly appreciate it. But in short, if your script using file_get_contents or fsockopen fails with the “failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! ” error, try using php curl lib.

I’ll write up another post with before and after examples soon.

For all the McDonald’s Toys that I’ve had in my life…

blah

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,505725,00.html

Wha huh?
I expected Metallica to hop on board with the Guitar Hero scene, I really did. Most of the rock legends had already done so, and why not? Its more money, and and when you’ve done nothing for years it is a good way to pop back into the limelight for a while. (I know they released an album, I wanst impressed, that was not metallica… lol) Anyway, so google brings me This and for the first time in years, I almost drooled over the announcement of a video game. Yes ladies and gentleman, The Beatles are making a comeback, in your living room.

Apparently due to release in September, The Beatles edition of Rock Band is said to take you and your lonely heart friends on a journey through beatlemania from the stage.

I heartily recommend this to anyone, site unseen. Go… be a Beatle, in your yellow submarine.

So, I was perusing the www the other day in-between calls and crises and I stumbled across some fantastic PS Tutorials. Specifically the Apple-esque background tutorial was something that really caught my eye. I have utilized photoshop for several years, from simple sign desgins and proofs to custom CD covers for a local DJ. I thoroughly enjoy allowing my creativity to ooze into something in photoshop. Some feel that following a tutorial is not creative, and that process in and of it self really isn’t creative. What tutorials provide for me is additional artillery in the arsenal of my creativity, and that is the key to being successful in the Phoshop world.
So, without further adue; the link:

http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/design/apple-inspiredphotoshop-tutorials/

Today I realized that I do not output enough information. My time is spent daily absorbing information, and I’m quite close to exploding I believe. My reasoning for this site is two-fold. My first reason is to keep the writer in me alive. The most important reason, however; is simply that sometimes I spend hours searching for something, and piecing together an answer to a question. I would like to share the fruits of that labor, so to hopefully assist others on their quest for said same information. Perhaps even to the end that the information I provide assists someone, and they contribute back with additional assistance later.

So kick back, and enjoy my blurbing. If something I write helps you, let me know. If you can expound upon my information, by all means do so. Should I become boring, poke me and tell me to get it in gear.

So, that being said… on to bigger and better things.