Verizon LTE

For comparison, I went back and tested my iPhone again, now with a new 4G icon. The last time I did this, just about two years ago, I was about half a mile away from where I’m at now. Two years, and half a mile closer to Seattle, and I get this.

AT&T 4G

This is much better, but I’m in so close to Downtown Seattle that I was looking at Pike Place Market from the window of my office. For those not familiar, this is about as close to the heart of Seattle as you can be.

Now that the iPad has the same connectivity as I do at home, it’s a true take anywhere device. As an IT guy, I’m glad to be able to work anywhere (even though the iPad isn’t officially supported.)  I don’t think AT&T is quite there yet, but I expect my new Verizon LTE iPhone 5 will be.

The authenticity of host 'myfirsthost.work.cainmanor.com (10.256.33.106)' can't be established.
RSA key fingerprint is fc:40:7c:de:b8:ac:a2:f5:d4:11:d0:0e:b2:77:8a:63.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)? yes

To stop this prompt, we need to edit your ~/.ssh/config file. Add these two lines

StrictHostKeyChecking no
UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null

Setting your UserKnownHostsFile should only be a temporary fix. After you’ve pushed your keys, you should comment out both of those settings.

Your password is the next problem. We can solve that with sshpass. sshpass takes your password and passes it on when ssh ask for it. There are three ways to do it, all of them insecure. Read the man page and decide which of those you want to use. For my purposes I just put it on the command line – I’m on my personal machine with no other users, and only I know the passwords to the box. Don’t do this on a shared server.

Here is an example of how to push your public key one. Try it on a new server to make sure you get the results you expect.

sshpass -p 'MY_PASSWORD' ssh-copy-id gregc@new_host_with_no_keys

Now that we’ve got the prompts turned off, we’ll wrap a script around this. How you get the list of appropriate hostnames or IP’s is your business.

for X in `cat my_host_that_need_keys`
do
sshpass -p 'MY_PASSWORD' ssh-copy-id gregc@${X}
done

Happy Computing!!

In a nutshell, here is how I was able to do it:

cd /tmp
yum install pcre-devel
wget http://pecl.php.net/get/APC-3.1.9.tgz
tar -xvf APC-3.1.9.tgz
cd APC-3.1.9
phpize
whereis php-config
./configure –enable-apc –enable-apc-mmap –with-apxs –with-php config=/path/to/php-config
make
make install
echo "extension=apc.so" >> /etc/php.d/apc.ini
echo "apc.slam_defense=0" >> /etc/php.d/apc.ini
echo "apc.write_lock=1" >> /etc/php.d/apc.ini
service httpd restart

I also make these changes to my httpd.conf file

Timeout 40
KeepAlive On
MaxKeepAliveRequests 200
KeepAliveTimeout 2

It’s a giant USB drive you can use from anywhere, it’s a great way to keep backups, it’s a great way to share files and it’s free. After spending two hours and 15 minutes on the latest Dropbox promotion for 1 GB of extra space ( I was the 343rd finisher, which was about 15 minutes behind the winner), I thought there has to be a better way.  There is – Google Adwords.

Here’s how to max out your Dropbox referrals using Google Adwords.

1. Get a coupon for free Google Adwords credit.  Google for “google adwords promotional code.”  Under search tools, set your search to the last month or the last week. It might take a few searches, but eventually you’ll find it. Whatever you do, DO NOT PAY FOR A PROMOTIONAL CODE.  Finding the code was the hardest part, but eventually you’ll find one.
2. Once you have the voucher (it may take a few days), create your Google Adwords account.
3. Create your Ad Campaign.  I created one Campaign, with two different Ad Groups.  The most important step is to make sure you use your referral link (found here) instead of just putting in dropbox.com.  That’s where the magic happens.  When someone clicks on the dropbox.com link, they are clicking on on your referral link, which sends them to the dropbox signup page.
   

   The first, using just the keyword of “Dropbox”, was quite a bit more expensive and had a lower return. The CPC (Cost Per Click) of $.24, with 124 clicks out of 11,500 impressions (which means it was served on 11,500 pages, and clicked 124 times.) Not all of the clicks resulted in people actually signing up.

   The second ad was using the keyword of “Get Dropbox”, which had a CPC of $.13, but I got 64 clicks out of 1,418 impressions. The total cost for this ad was between 1/3rd and 1/4 the cost of the first ad.

4. Now all you need to do is sit back and watch the referrals roll in. Not all clicks go on to sign up, and not everybody that signs up installs the software, which is a necessary step in the process. Of the 188 clicks, 35 joined Dropbox, and 30 installed the software. If you were starting from zero, you’d need 32 people to sign up in order to get the complete 8GB.

There were a couple of things I would do differently. I set up a relatively low budget for the ads per day, which means they will only run a few times per day (for instance, if you have a $5 a day budget, and your ad is estimated to cost $.25 per click, it will only get, at max, 20 clicks a day.) The time those ads run will be spread out over the course of the day. It’s not bad, but there really wasn’t any reason to not just use your estimated budget at once. Be careful to not go over your budget, because those cost come out of your pocket.

sudo python setup.py install

Now we need to configure our first project, which we’ll call myBooks. Create the parent directory you want your project to live in.

mkdir ~/Django

Let’s create the first project

django-admin.py startproject myBooks

You’ll see a directory created underneath your Django directory called myBooks. (~/Django/myBooks) In that directory, you’ll see the following files…

__init__.py
manage.py
settings.py
urls.py

Start the built in web server. From the directory ~/Django/myBooks directory

python manage.py runserver

Which gives you this..

Django version 1.2.4, using settings 'myBooks.settings'
Development server is running at http://127.0.0.1:8000/
Quit the server with CONTROL-C.

If you point your web browser to http://127.0.0.1:8000/ you should see this basic getting started page

If you see that, all is good so far…

Now let’s configure Django to use sqlite as it’s database. All you need to do is edit the settings.py file in ~/Django/myBooks. You need to change ENGINE to the sqlite3 instance, and tell it where you want your database to live. You’ll create that database in the next step.

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3', # Add 'postgresql_psycopg2', 'postgresql', 'mysql', 'sqlite3' or 'oracle'.
        'NAME': '/Users/gregcain/Django/myBooks/myBooksDB',                      # Or path to database file if using sqlite3.
        'USER': '',                      # Not used with sqlite3.
        'PASSWORD': '',                  # Not used with sqlite3.
        'HOST': '',                      # Set to empty string for localhost. Not used with sqlite3.
        'PORT': '',                      # Set to empty string for default. Not used with sqlite3.
    }
}

Now create the database

python manage.py syncdb

You’ll be asked a few questions, including one to setup a super user.

Now that the database is created, let’s go in and see if it looks correct. To open a connection to the database

sqlite3 myBooksDB

and to see the schema

.schema

Happy Coding!!