James Socol

How To

How to: Upgrade or Recompile PHP on RHEL5 (Outdated)

**Update: **This post is nearly two years old, and this is not how I would recommend upgrading PHP on RHEL, yet it continues to get traffic. If I can get my hands on a copy of RHEL, I’ll update this (or I might try using Fedora just to compare)

Games

Crysis

[](http://www.pspsps.tv/Crysis_screen2.jpg) Crysis. When I woke up and my video card was hiding under the desk, trembling and muttering something about Shader Model 4, I knew the [Crysis](http://www.crysisdemo.

Yahoo Pipes

Yahoo [Pipes](http://pipes.yahoo.com/ "Visit Yahoo Pipes and see for yourself.") is a tool that helps you build basic programs to parse data and do things with it.A very

Music

Amazon MP3s

On a whim, I just downloaded the Amazon MP3 Downloader [http://www.amazon.com/gp/dmusic/help/amd.html/ref=sv_dmusic_3/105-3917827-5309230] . My first "purchase"—a free example— was an Apples in Stereo track that may be some default or perhaps Amazon got it

fiction

Picofiction

Picofiction [http://picofiction.com/] is new project: telling stories in 140 characters. Picofiction is a combination of microfiction [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microfiction], text messaging and Twitter [http://twitter.com]. If you can write a story in a two-page spread, and tell the world what you’re doing

Technology Conference 2007

I will be running a workshop [http://ott.educ.msu.edu/ctt/techconf/workshops.asp] on web design for educators at the MSU [http://www.msu.edu/] College of Education’s Tech Conference 2007 [http://ott.educ.msu.edu/ctt/techconf/]. You can still sign up for the conference if

use semantics to guide design

 An example. For the longest time, I wondered how exactly people chose the layouts for gutters. Why did box X end up in the left gutter while box Y was on the right? Was it random

My Site

organization

Of course, as soon as I get around to doing the redesign, I decide I don’t quite like it. I’ve decided to reorganize this site and another one, to separate the blog/webzine-type sections and the professional/portfolio-type sections. The two will still be pretty closely

Reading Material

Reading Material: Anorexic Writing

Amber Simmons [http://www.breathlessnoon.com/] wrote a brilliant article on A List Apart [http://alistapart.com] on the importance of writing [http://www.alistapart.com/articles/revivinganorexicwebwriting] to web design. Amber is absolutely right: writing hasn’t just taken a back seat to design; design left writing in the

My Site

redesign!

So I finally got around to doing the redesign. I based this somewhat on WordPress’s site and default templates, because they were a great example of the style I wanted: a more web-professional look with a print-inspired feel. I’ve heard rumors and whispers that, while serif

Adapting Wikiddiction for Profit

Since it first broke onto the internet, Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org] has generated some of the most polarized articles, the harshest critiques and the staunchest support, that I have ever read. Most of these articles tend to focus on reliability or the perception of reliability, to borrow from Larry

Code

MySQL Subqueries

I often find it difficult to find tips and advice for doing relatively simple things in things like MySQL, Ruby, Python, etc. So, starting with this post, I will help fill that niche. Today’s topic is Using Subqueries to Simplify your SQL Queries. For this article, I’m using

Politics

Victims of Capitalism

In the spirit of the Victims of Communism [http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070612/pl_afp/ushistorycommunism_070612132212] memorial being unveiled in Washington, I think we should design and build a monument to the hundreds of millions—billions—of people who have died as a result of capitalism. It

photoshop

Photoshop Silkscreen Effect

I’m no Photoshop guru. In fact, I stink. I struggle to change the colors of the paintbrush and I once spent two hours trying to make an open circle blend propery. But inspired by my roommate’s recent Photoshop work and this tutorial [http://www.gomediazine.com/05/03/

No Checks: Cache!

The title is a horrible pun, but doesn’t doesn’t mean Internet Explorer 7 doesn’t ignore web designers and caches things it shouldn’t. I’m heading development of a small script to let users upload and vote on pictures of China, and at the end of the

local

Voodoo Lighthouse

Combine Metallica–era Metallica with a healthy blend of slightly more recent metal bands like Staind and Disturbed and you’ll basically have Voodoo Lighthouse. The only problem is all three of those bands were more creative. I saw these guys live at the Green River Café here in East

Life

Hoodies

So I did end up going to Urban Outfitters. I was about to blow almost $100 on a jacket and hoodie, but then the jacket rang up for 90% off. That’s right. 90%. I don’t think she typed in enough 9s, because it was sure supposed to be

Football

Crazy German!

Arsenal 2-1 Wigan. Good. Of course, true to this season’s form, the Gunners had to come back from a 0-1 deficit, but at least they won. Though with possibly the least class ever displayed in the Premiership. On a goal called back, Henry starts it off by

Life

Sushi

I love Sushi. Even more than that, I love being the type of person who eats sushi. One of the few local restaurants around here, completely independent, is a sushi place down the street called Q Sushi. It’s run by a family, I think they’re Korean but I’

Music

Modular

Modular has about 2 dozen artists, ranging from the relatively insufferable Jack Johnson to Gary Jules, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and NYPC. Check out some of their less well-known artists, they’re pretty good. Gary Jules almost sounds like a latter-day Boss. Think “Sinaloa Cowboys” but less depressing. You

local

Local/Indie

I find myself in an interesting position, music-wise. On the one hand, I don’t really have a radio in my car, all I can listen to is NPR and MMQ, the classic rock station. So I haven’t really heard a lot of new music lately. On the

May You Always

Happy New Year! [http://www.gadgetsonthego.net/rocco/mya.mp3] I doubt many people read this, but if you do, have a good January.

A Bleeding-Heart Christmas

Every year, it seems I have a different opinion on Christmas and the season. The past few years I have not, honestly, enjoyed it. The absurd level of commercialism as well as, paradoxically, the meaning of a supposedly Christian holiday, have combined with my general distaste for cold weather to

Design

There's a special place...

…in hell for designers and business-types who feel the need to put full-screen advertisements before the website. The same goes to those who put random ads in the way while navigating between two pages, though perhaps these do not end up quite as deep. I understand the motivation:

Code

CSS: Good; Everything Else: Bad

Images, flash, frames. These are the “traditional” methods for making a web site “more interesting” or “better looking.” But these hold-overs from the AOL era are the bane of bandwidth, text-only browsers, and non-visual users. HTML, of course, was originally written to define the structure of a