More Scary Stuff in Appalachia

I'm sorry to report that I don't have a new local ghost story for this Halloween. You could revisit my old ones at Haunted Pocahontas County, if you're disappointed. However, I do have a couple of additions for my collection of "scare the tourists away" horror movies set in or around West Virginia. I hope to bundle these and make them available at Snowshoe Resort someday.

A few weeks ago, I caught Wicked Little Things on television. (The occasion was Zombie Day on the SciFi channel.) According to the IMDb synopsis, In 1913, in Carlton Mine, Addytown, Pennsylvania, the cruel owner of a mine uses poor children in the exploration and after an explosion, a group of children is buried alive. These zombified waifs haunt the woods and eat hapless teenagers who foolishly sneak off for illicit teenage fun. Of course, some unsuspecting city folk move to the woods, screams and bloodshed ensue, and a wise old woodsman explains that the zombie children will never rest until they eat the mine owner's grandson, who wants to open a ski resort.

Wicked Little Things has several bright spots--Ben Cross is the wise old woodsman, and the sets, costumes, and makeup produce some haunting effects. The little zombie waifs move through the woods like a pack of feral dogs, and the stylized sets recall spooky silent films.

Pocahontas Countians are bound to love a movie where the zombie waifs hunger for the flesh of a ski resort developer, and I think the coal fields of Pennsylvania qualify this movie for the Appalachian backcountry genre. At least one other viewer connected Wicked Little Things With Pick Axes to West Virginia.

There are five movies in the Pumpkinhead series, and the fifth one is called Pumpkinhead 4 - Blood Feud. (Don't ask me about the math.) Until this latest installment, the fictional locale has been unspecified, although the characters have generic "Southern accents," and the setting is vaguely rural. The presence of a sinister granny woman who will conjure a vengeance-exacting creature from her pumpkin patch on request has sent me looking for an Appalachian connection, but Blood Feud settles this question for me. The titular feud is between the Hatfields and McCoys, placing the whole series on the Kentucky--West Virginia border.

These gory, formulaic movies contain some things that interest me. One is Lance Henriksen, whose character dies in the original movie, but subsequently returns as a helpful ghost and plot explicator. Another is the moral message--that revenge is corrosive to everyone involved. In a genre that usually teaches us that teenage fun is deadly and girls trip whenever they run away from monsters, this is surprising sophistication.

If you wish to review, here are some other movies from my "scare the tourists" collection:

• We Are the Holler People
• Greenbrier Back Country: Here Be Cannibals
• Return of the Greenbrier Backcountry Cannibals
• The Mothman Prophecies

Snow Fruits and Snow Flowers

I am always entranced by incongruous snowfall. This week's snow washed away all the red-gold autumnal glow. The snow's gone and we had sunshine today, but the remaining leaves are pale. The pear tree has still not dropped its load of fruit.

Quite a few apple trees are still holding on to their fruits too.

Poor Rosebud!

Roses in the Snow

This has been a very strange fall here. My roses are particularly confused this morning.

OpenOffice Base With and Without MySQL

Here are some more useful links I've dug up in my search for tools to use in cataloging the Pocahontas County historic collections. In addition to using specially-written front-end programs for MySQL, I've found that Open Office can also interact with MySQL. Here are the references I found most useful for this project.

OpenOffice Base With and Without MySQL

• OpenOffice.org Base Primer from No Thick Manuals--Distilled and Wikified
• Database from the Open Office Wiki.
• Bringing data into OpenOffice 2.0's database. How to import big data sets.
• Exporting data from an OpenOffice.org Base database. A hack to make exporting data from Base work.
• Database access using OpenOffice.org Sample databases and references.

Mantis Portraiture

All summer, this mantis (or a series of sibs) watched over the house-building process. Earlier this month, I took some pictures, then turned her loose. The next day, we noticed her walking deliberately up edge of the roof. When she reached the peak she paused, facing out over the yard as if surveying her territory. She would have made a great gargoyle model. The hard frost we had this week probably was the end of her.

I had never noticed the red coloring on mantis mouthparts before. Lipstick on a mantis? It seems like that conceit is going around. Pit bulls and pigs are cute and cuddly compared to these creatures.

Archives and Digital Collections

Along with selecting, installing and testing archival databases, I've been trying to learn the archivist-lingo, so that I may understand the best ways to proceed with cataloging and digitizing the history-related collections around Pocahontas County. (Hence many hours in front of the computer screen, yet no blog posts.) Here are some of the things I've been reading lately.

Helpful Resources for Archive and Collection Management

• Local History and Small Archives: Chapter 10: Description from the State Library of Queensland. They have a site called Local History and Small Archives that presents training manuals, Internet Resources, and an Internet Resources Workbook.
• The Archivist's Toolkit from the Archives Association of British Columbia.
• Basic RAD Rules of Archival Description from the Saskatchewan Council for Archives and Archivists. Saves us buying that expensive book, at least for now!
• Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web by Daniel J. Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig. The complete text of their book available free on the Web!
• Encoded Archival Description: An Introduction and Overview by Daniel V. Pitti; complete text of an article on "EAD," an acronym regularly thrown around by us archivist-types.

Exemplar Archives

• Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections provides some digital access to papers and recordings. They also detail their holdings, and let you see their catalogs, which I have found very helpful in learning what information must be captured in the cataloging process.
• Smithsonian Institution Libraries Homepage
• Archives Unboxed and Revealed: A Guide to Understanding Archives from Archives of Ontario explains in "layman's terms" what an archive is. These are visually elegant pages, and they have many fascinating online exhibits.
• Hamilton, Ontario Public Library's Local History and Archives has a very nice Web site displaying several digital collections.
• Iowa Heritage Digital Collections: Welcome to the Iowa Heritage Digital Collections, an online repository of Iowa history and culture created by bringing together in digital form documents, images, maps, finding aids, interpretive and educational materials, and other media from collections held by a wide range of organizations throughout Iowa. This could be a model for a way to draw together the small collections of papers, artifacts, and historic buildings of Pocahontas County under a "digital roof."

More References

• Archives and Records Management Resources from the National Archives--pretty site; lots of linkrot.
• Digital Librarian: Archives and Manuscripts: a list of links
• Campus Case Studies, an electronic publication of the Society of American Archivists. Also see Standards for Archival Description: A Handbook. Much of this text refers to non-free publications from various archivists' organizations.
• Organizing a Local History Collection in a Small Public Library, abstract from The Hawthorn Press
• Smithsonian Folkways has updated and added much to their site since last I visited.

Roof, Doors, and Windows

The roof is on, and the house wrap, doors, and windows make it look like a solid structure. We will have to look at the home improvement store advertising until the hemlock siding is cut and ready for us. I hope that will be soon, but, like so many things, the lumber will be ready when it's ready.

Wordpress, MAMP, Drupal, LAMP--Linux Is Easier Than Mac

I was very taken with the idea of MAMP: One-click solution for setting up your personal webserver. MAMP is installed in the typical Mac fashion: very easily. MAMP will not compromise any existing Apache installation already running with your OS X. You can install Apache, PHP and MySQL without starting a script or having to change any configuration files! Furthermore, if MAMP is no longer needed, it is sufficient to delete the MAMP folder and everything returns to its original status (i.e. MAMP does not modify any of the "normal" OS X).

I really liked the idea that I could install a CMS, play around with it, and just dump the whole database and loalhost content if I messed it up. I thought it would be easiest to start out with Wordpress, rather than Drupal or one of the digital library CMS's, because so many people use Wordpress successfully. It must be easy, right?

Well, it didn't work that way. I installed MAMP successfully, I thought, but I couldn't get Wordpress to communicate with the MySQL database. Eventually, I gave up and turned to my Debian desktop, where I installed the usual LAMP setup. Drupal worked almost right "out of the box." The only problem I had was that I had an old version of Apache 1.3 installed, from my efforts to configure a network file system (NFS) back in March. Once I removed that and reinstalled Apache 2, it was a cinch to install Drupal on localhost.

This gave me an idea--I thought I had turned off all the network services in the Mac "System Preferences: Sharing" window, but when I poked around a bit more, I found "Apple Share" turned on. Once that was turned off, Wordpress installed easily on MAMP's localhost:8888 just as advertised. Here are a couple of resources that helped me with the Wordpress/MAMP install.

• Installing Wordpress Locally Using MAMP by Michael Doig, December 2005
• HowTo: Create a local environment using MAMP

So, it probably would have been easier to start with Drupal in the regular /var/www directory for localhost on the Mac. Here are the directions I found helpful for that process.

Guides to a "Full-blown" LAMP setup for Mac OSX Leopard

• Installing WordPress On Your Apple MacAn interesting but often overlooked feature of an Apple Mac is that it comes bundled with a fully functional copy of the Apache web server and PHP - the language of WordPress. Add a MySQL database server to the mix and you have a fully functional, but personal, web server where, like me, you can test your website and write and debug code without ever exposing it to public view.
• Leopard: How to Install Wordpress also details adding MySQL, turning on PHP5, installing your CMS of choice (Wordpress again), and running localhost.

The Meme of Unspectacular Facts

Sherry Chandler tagged me for the "six unspectacular things about you" meme. I actually still owe Sherry a post for the page 123 meme from February 25 of this year. In that meme, you were supposed to pick up the book nearest you, turn to page 123, find the fifth sentence, and post it. Sherry had high hopes for me, maybe some arcane local history book. In fact, the nearest book was How to Make Sewing Patterns by Donald H. McCunn. Page 123 of that book, "Gathered Sleeve Cap," had only four sentences. The next nearest books were four shelves of odd-sized books: music books, cookbooks, knitting books, sheet music, and pamphlets. Book after book either lacked page 123, or had no sentences there. At that time, I was substituting daily at the middle school, and by day's end, my supply of resourcefulness was utterly depleted.

I'm still feeling guilty about that activity, so I'd better get after the current meme. I suppose all facts about me are unspectacular, so it shouldn't be hard, eh?

1. I'm left-handed.
2. My earliest childhood memory is of a caterpillar.
3. I have always preferred tea to coffee.
4. I learned to read from the funny papers in the Des Moines Register.
5. My fingers are long and spatulate, but my thumbs are relatively short. This dashed my dreams of playing Irish or Cajun button accordion.
6. I have the same birthday as Katherine Anne Porter, she was born the same year as my maternal grandmother (two weeks earlier), and I lived for five years (1987-1992) in the town where she died (Silver Spring, MD). I knew none of this when I first read Pale Horse, Pale Rider in 1974, but I had a disturbing sense of deja vu about "Miranda."

I've never had any luck tagging anyone with a meme, so if no one's tagged you and this sounds like fun, go ahead and meme away. The meme terms & conditions are: "1. link the person who tagged you; 2. mention the rules on your blog; 3. list 6 unspectacular things about you: 4. tag 6 other bloggers by linking them."

Apache Server, MySQL, and PHP On Mac OS X

I have a Macintosh laptop to use for work now (Woo hoo!), so I need to get more comfortable with Unix-y things on OS X. Currently, I'm learning about databases and Web 2.0 on Debian Linux, then grabbing the laptop and trying to do the same thing there. Sometimes, everything works, sometimes it doesn't. Here are my relevant helpful links:

Apache Server, MySQL, and PHP On Mac OS X

• MySQL on Mac OS X
• Apache Web-Serving with Mac OS X: There's a powerful Apache web server built in to every Mac OS X computer. Kevin Hemenway shows you how to start serving web pages within minutes, then he gives you the tools for advanced techniques that seasoned system administrators use every day.
• Using Apache and PHP on Mac OS X from Dev Articles: Programming Help, Web Design Help, CSS Help.
• Configuring OS X for Web Development from Site Point, SitePoint is a fast growing online media company and information provider targeting the Web professional market, specifically Web Developers and Designers.
• Installing MySQL on Mac OS X: How to build your Mac into a Internet server using open source software.
• Working with PHP 5 in Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)
• living-e presents: MAMP The abbreviation MAMP stands for: Macintosh, Apache, Mysql and PHP. With just a few mouse-clicks, you can install Apache, PHP and MySQL for Mac OS X! MAMP installs a local server environment in a matter of seconds on your Mac OS X computer, be it PowerBook or iMac. Like similar packages from the Windows- and Linux-world, MAMP comes free of charge.

More Messages From the Kingdom of Vegetables

I picked the last cabbage from our garden for cole slaw last week. These red cabbages made small but tasty heads. It was the vivid color that sent me outside in mid-chop to take some pictures.

There's something a little hypnotic about the sliced cabbage pattern. My parrots are very fond of cabbage, but they were afraid of the red cabbage cores--they wouldn't even go in their cages until I removed the scary vegetables. What do you suppose the cabbage told the parrots?

Learning About PHP and MySQL

I've been trying to teach myself PHP (among other things) for my latest joblet. Terry attests to its empowering effect, and I do get giddy when I learn something new. Terry recommends Larry Ullman's PHP 6 and MySQL 5 for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual QuickPro Guide, and I will probably have to buy it, but I am profoundly cheap, and have limited book shelf space, so I'm trying to figure things out with free Web tutorials. My inevitable list of links follows.

PHP Tutorials and Advice

• PHP.net
• PHP Tutorial - Learn PHP from Tizag Tutorials.
• PHPBuilder.com "The best resource for PHP tutorials, templates, PHP manuals, content management systems, scripts, classes, and more.
• PHP 101: PHP For the Absolute Beginner from Zend Developer Zone.

MySQL Tutorials, Documentation, and Installation Tips

• MySQL Documentation from Sun Microsystems.
• How To Set Up A Debian Linux Database Server Using MySQL
• How To Install MySQL 4.1 And PHP4 On Debian Etch
• How To Set Up A Ubuntu/Debian LAMP Server
• How to install APACHE, MYSQL, PHP, and phpMyAdmin after installing Debian from Computer Tech Union
• How do I import delimited data into MySQL? and How can I export data in CSV or tab delimited format?
• The phpMyAdmin Project: Effective MySQL Management

Famous Wolf River Apples

Ever since I moved to Pocahontas County, people have been telling me about the old-time apple variety "Wolf River." This was once a popular variety, but most trees have died out. Apple fans say of them, "One apple, one pie." Last week, a neighbor brought us some Wolf River apples--the three red ones in the picture. The green apple is a normal-sized variety. I've been assured that these are smallish specimens. I really like the color and texture of the skin. I'll be cutting into these today, but I had to catch a picture of them first.

An End To Transparency

This is probably the last picture of the house as see-through structure. Now the roof tin will shut out the sky (especially the rain!), windproof wrap will stand in for the exterior walls, and the doors and windows will assume their intended positions.

Catnip

Some modest, late season catnip blossoms, to break up my lists of computer project resources. (And I have more...much more.)

Still More Digital Library Resources

I continue to shop around, kicking the tires on content management systems for Web sites and software for digital collections libraries. I'm planning to download Drupal (digital content management for Web sites) and experiment with it. As for Digital Collection management, I'm leaning strongly toward Archon, and have downloaded and started to play with it as a tool in managing the historical society's cataloging project.

However, all this shopping is a recursive project. As I've tried to understand the tools I've selected, I keep finding more tools that also deserve a look. The essay Drupal as a digital library content management system pointed me to these interesting applications:

• Greenstone Digital Library Software Greenstone is a suite of software for building and distributing digital library collections. It provides a new way of organizing information and publishing it on the Internet or on CD-ROM....The aim of the Greenstone software is to empower users, particularly in universities, libraries, and other public service institutions, to build their own digital libraries. It requires Apache; it also has some nice features only available on the Windows version....
• STREETPRINT.ORG, A growing community of public web archives powered by the Streetprint Engine. This package actually looks very nice, but there's no recent sign of life on the Web site, where the newest post on the forums is dated 2007.
• ContentDM from OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) is a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world's information and reducing information costs. You have to email to request a quote, and it seems Windows-centric. They say the server runs on UNIX platforms, but it doesn't sound like they've tested on Linux since kernel 2.4 came out.
• digitizationblog focuses on digitization and related activities (such as electronic publishing) in libraries, archives, and museums, and is intended to be a source of news relevant to people who manage and implement digitization projects. Even though there are several excellent sources of digitization news such as the DigiCULT Newsletter and RLG DigiNews (and this blog certainly isn't intended to replace them), there is a lack of space on the web where implementors can share ideas and useful pointers. digitizationblog is intended to fill part of this gap.
• Welcome to the WebAPP, Web Automated Perl Portal!: WebAPP is the most fully-featured, versatile, free and open-source, flat-file Perl portal script available today! Acronym for Web Automated Perl Portal, WebAPP is easily installed on virtually any UNIX-based server. WebAPP requires no SQL backend, no PHP, only a hosting environment offering support for Perl. This seems very attractive to me because I wouldn't have to learn much new stuff, and I could get Web sites up quickly, for me and for the library project. Also, it wouldn't be vulnerable to these spam SQL-insertion attacks that have been going around lately.

Digital Collections and Library Resources

Here are some links and references about libraries, digital archives, and software designed to store and share collections data. There is an immense amount of information about these topics, and this is just a sample of things I found that look promising for our county history project.

Case Studies: Library Archives and Web Sites

• Open Source Digital Image Management Took Us from Raging Rivers to Quiet Waters. This is a case study of a library with a fast-growing digital image collection. They were trapped between the under-powered proprietary database suite they'd been using and a pending university-wide move to a large, complex database system. As an interim measure, they adopted a MySQL database, and were very pleased with the results.
• Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki: created to be a one-stop shop for great ideas and information for all types of librarians. All over the world, librarians are developing successful programs and doing innovative things with technology that no one outside of their library knows about. There are lots of great blogs out there sharing information about the profession, but there is no one place where all of this information is collected and organized. That's what we're trying to do. Includes a section on Digitization, which points to a long pdf on local history, Local History in E-Books and on the Web : One library's experience as example and model by Don Litzer and Andy Barnett. (from the Spring 2004 Reference and Users Services Quarterly). A peer reviewed article analyzing the value and impact of digitized local historical documents.
• About ACVA: About the Project--Atlantic Canada Virtual Archives. Another case study, including nuts and bolts details about file types, formats, programs used.

Software Tools for Libraries

• Digital Library Construction Tools: Software from The British Columbia Digital Library. Definitive list of links with brief descriptions.
• Archon: The Simple Archival Information System. Hardly a simple system, Archon was developed at The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne, and is open source and free. Archon is a web-based tool for archivists and manuscript curators. It automatically publishes archival descriptive information and digital archival objects to a user-friendly website. With Archon, there is no need to encode a finding aid, input a catalog record, or program a stylesheet. Archon's powerful scripts will automatically make everything in the system searchable and browseable on your repository's website! Archon will simplify your workflow and save you time. Once you've input or edited information using some simple web forms, Archon automatically uploads the files, publishes the website, and generates EAD and MARC records.
• DLXS: Digital Library Extension Service. This is the software used by the University of West Virginia Library's Archives. Developed by the University of Michigan, DLXS has a free, "lite" version and a supported, for-pay version for "heavy-duty use."
• The Fedora Project: An Open-source Digital Object Repository Management System. This is the original publication of the Fedora project, describing it to other informatics specialists. Fedora is scalable for large, complex digital collections. The Library of Congress uses it, but smaller projects, like online encyclopedias of limited scope find it usable as well. For those interested in using Fedora, Fedora Commons provides sustainable technologies to create, manage, publish, share and preserve digital content as a basis for intellectual, organizational, scientific and cultural heritage by bringing two communities together. There's an active support community, quick download directions, and many users' online presentations are available for examination.
• Omeka is a web platform for publishing collections and exhibitions online. Designed for cultural institutions, enthusiasts, and educators, Omeka is easy to install and modify and facilitates community-building around collections and exhibits. Omeka is free and open source. System requirements include: Linux operating system; Apache server (with mod_rewrite enabled); Mysql 5.0 or greater; PHP 5.2.x or greater; ImageMagick
• How To Set Up A Debian Linux Database Server Using MySQL. Step by step directions from aboutDebian.com--If you decide this is what you want to do, this page tells you exactly how to set up MySQL.
• How to install MySQL on Ubuntu/Debian. Another approach to installing MySQL on Linux.
• The phpMyAdmin Project: phpMyAdmin is a tool written in PHP intended to handle the administration of MySQL over the Web. Currently it can create and drop databases, create/drop/alter tables, delete/edit/add fields, execute any SQL statement, manage keys on fields. This is the download and official documentation site.
• Organize Your Images in a MySQL Database- Tips for creation of a MySQL database with images. This article is written for individuals wanting to organize personal collections of digital images, but the basic information is applicable for any project.
• Managing websites using Unix--A CVS tutorial. Making and managing a Web site repository using command-line programs and shell scripts. Must try this!

Library Weblogs Addressing Digital Collections and Web Presence

• Library website design, search engine crawlers and SEO. This is an interesting weblog entry from Wouter Gerritsma, subject librarian at Wageningen UR Library.
• Library Web Chic: Resources for librarians who are interested in the application of web design and technologies in libraries
• iNode: The weblog of Digital Programs and Systems at George Mason University Libraries.
• The Stingy Scholar finds and lists free and open source educational materials.
• The Imaginary Journal of Poetic Economics: Imagine a world where anyone can instantly access all of the world's scholarly knowledge - as profound a change as the invention of the printing press. Technically, this is within reach. All that is needed is a little imagination, to reconsider the economics of scholarly communications from a poetic viewpoint. Lots of articles, links, and references.

Natural and Unnatural

To make up for recent computational excesses, here are more photos from Seneca State Forest the last week in July. I always prefer to use natural light for my pictures, but these are some dark hollers where the sun refuse to shine. The flash gives dramatic results, and I should learn to use it more effectively, but there's something special about the colors you see in the dim light.

New (To Me) CSS and HTML Tutorials

I'm hand-coding Web sites now, which means static (and faster loading) pages for the short term. Of course, nothing works the way I expect it to, so I've had to brush up on my HTML and CSS skills. Here are some of the free resources I've been using.

Web Design Tutorials and Resources

• W3 Schools Full Web Building Tutorials - All Free I've used a number of these tutorials, and found them excellent. The best thing about this site (other than the "Free" part) is how comprehensive the sets of tutorials are. This can replace a big, expensive bookshelf of computer books.
• Design Vitality Weblog: This blog is committed to being resourceful, and giving back to the community that made us good at what we do. We cover web design, graphic design and even a little bit of everything in between. Of particular interest is The Open Source Web Design Toolbox: 100 Web Design Template Sources, Tools and Resources, which lists their four favorite sources for Web templates and tools.
• HTML Dog: HTML and CSS Tutorials. And Stuff. Welcome to HTML Dog, the web designer's resource for everything HTML and CSS, the most common technologies used in making web pages.
• Dev Shed: Open Source Web Development Tutorials. Bunches of in-depth tutorials on all sorts of topics.
• Added Bytes' cheat sheets on CSS, PHP, MySQL, and lots more.
• Web Builder's Toolkit: tutorials on CSS, HTML, and a little bit of fancier stuff, like CGI and Javascript.
• Experiments in Web Programming from BrainJar.com: BrainJar.com features technical articles, tutorials and examples of programming for the web. It's not intended as a "cut and paste" site but rather a learning resource.
• Web Pages--CSS Tips and Tricks, along with advice on photo galleries and WordPress
• The Perfect Fluid Width Layout from CSS-Tricks. Just a nice sample layout that handles fluid-width columns using CSS. Download it and play with it.
• Mezzoblue, from the creator of CSS Zen Garden. Both sites are inspirations for attractive CSS design.

CSS Layouts: Fixed versus Fluid

• Fixed Layouts vs. Fluid Layouts- What is the Best for you? Not a tutorial as much as advice on choosing layout type.
• Fixed or fluid width? Elastic! A possible middle ground between fixed and fluid CSS designs.
• CSS Layouts: The Fixed. The Fluid. The Elastic from Mike Cherim. Another instructive comparison.
• Fluid vs. Fixed Web Sites: What's Right for You? Yet another comparison.

Web Editors and Tools in Linux

Another aspect of my recent Linux Geekfest has had me studying and trying out different "web development tools." My tool of choice for Web work has been Emacs, the One True Editor, but I'm looking at tracking some larger, more complex projects, and possibly training someone else to work on the Website someday. Strangely, I've never successfully converted anyone to the Church of Emacs, so it seems prudent to add some easier-to-adopt tools to my kit.

Several years ago, I used Bluefish Editor, (native to the Gnome desktop environment) but I became frustrated with all the mouse-clicking it required, and, after I discovered html-helper-mode for Emacs, I abandoned it. I did miss the colorful way it displayed html-markup, but I got over it.

Since then, I have switched from Gnome to KDE because I didn't like the new Gnome screensaver program. (I had originally adopted Gnome for an equally trivial reason, back in 2002.) The html-editor of choice for KDE is Quanta-Plus, so I thought I'd give it a whirl. In fact, because I have both Gnome and KDE desktops installed, I can use either Quanta-Plus or Bluefish, or both.

These editors do the same things equally well--I can't really say one is better than the other, but I have spent more time using Quanta Plus. Actually, I still write the html in Emacs, then open it in the fancy editor, check for errors, use the project management tools, and generally fine-tune the pages.

The tools I have found most useful are Firefox add-ons and extensions, and small utilities. Here is my list of favorites:

• Agave Colorscheme Designer: Agave is a very simple application for the GNOME desktop that allows you to generate a variety of color schemes from a single starting color. Really fun to play with, but also quite helpful. You can grab a color out of a photograph, and generate a color scheme to match it.
• Web Developer extension for Firefox adds a menu and a toolbar to the browser with various web developer tools. It is designed for Firefox, Flock and Seamonkey, and will run on any platform that these browsers support including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. This is really great. I've learned a lot by going to Web sites that I like the look of, and taking a look at the CSS to see how it works.
• Firebug. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page. It lets you see the CSS and HTML just as Web Developer does, but it also lets you "mess with it," change stuff and see what happens. Very cool!
• Web Development Tools on Linux. A clear, easy to understand description of many "tools" (programs) that make Web sites work these days.

Web Editors For Linux-Land

• html-helper-mode for Emacs. You need to apt-get install this after you've installed Emacs. It's quite the handy tool!
• Review: Quanta Plus
• Taking the Quanta Leap
• Bluefish Manual

Shopping For Content Management Systems

More Linux geekery: What tools to use in planning, developing, and maintaining my own Web site and the one I'm developing for a county historical preservation project? Should I have static Web pages? PHP and MySQL? Could I get by with Perl (which I already know how to use)?

I'm not very knowledgeable in Web 2.0 database driven stuff, but I'm going to need a photo gallery, thumbnails, and a database for the county Web site. That's why I've been reading up on "Content Management Systems." Here's a list of links showing what I've learned about so far.

• Drupal requires Apache, PHP, MySQL. Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Tens of thousands of people and organizations are using Drupal to power scores of different web sites.
• Joomla! is an award-winning content management system (CMS), which enables you to build Web sites and powerful online applications. Many aspects, including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made Joomla! the most popular Web site software available. Best of all, Joomla is an open source solution that is freely available to everyone. It requires mySQL and PHP, which most ISP's provide.
• Comparing Open Source CMSes: Joomla, Drupal and Plone. Another review of relative merits.
• Drupal vs Joomla! comparison on Drupal's General Discussion Forum. The consensus seems to be that Joomla! is easier to use out of the box, but Drupal is better in taxonomy, search engine optimization, and customizability.
• phpWebSite provides a complete web site content management system. Web-based administration allows for easy maintenance of interactive, community-driven web sites. phpWebSite's growing number of modules allow for easy site customization without the need for unwanted or unused features. Client output from phpWebSite is valid XHTML 1.0 and meets the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative requirements. Founded and hosted by the Web Technology Group at Appalachian State University, phpWebSite is developed by the phpWebSite Development Team, a network of developers from around the world. phpWebSite is free, open source software and is licensed under the GNU GPL and GNU LGPL.
• blosxom :: the zen of blogging: Blosxom (pronounced "blossom") is a lightweight yet feature-packed weblog application designed from the ground up with simplicity, usability, and interoperability in mind....Despite its tiny footprint, Blosxom doesn't skimp on features, sporting the lion's share of features one would find in any other Weblog application or full-blown content management and publishing system. Blosxom's plug-in architecture allows the core of Blosxom to remain small and sleek while providing room for extension and integration into different environments and uses....Blosxom is simple, straightforward, minimalist Perl affording even the dabbler an opportunity for experimentation and customization.
• WordPress. It's not just a blogging tool, WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless...
• Plone" Plone is a ready-to-run content management system that is built on the powerful and free Zope application server. Plone is easy to set up, extremely flexible, and provides you with a system for managing web content that is ideal for project groups, communities, web sites, extranets and intranets. Zope doesn't seem to be supported that widely by ISP's.
• PHPMYADMIN is a tool written in PHP intended to handle the administration of MySQL over the Web. Currently it can create and drop databases, create/drop/alter tables, delete/edit/add fields, execute any SQL statement, manage keys on fields.
• CMS Mini (very very small CMS): A small PHP application for manage content for small web sites. Not intended for a cooperative group of editors and rewiers: simply one editor can insert new contents, immediatly pubblished on web: "one task, one click"The editor can edit through a browser interface; sounds really nice, but it seems there are security vulnerabilities.

Coral Diving in Pocahontas County

Lest the weblog gets too Linux-geeky, here's another, different coral fungus from Seneca State Park.

Promising Linux Programs for Web Development

I've been spending most of my computer time lately on "web development" for a new project. One aspect of this has been selecting appropriate software. Lest I mislay this knowledge, I'm posting it here, in my virtual junk drawer. I'll be able to find it again, and you never know who might want to rummage through my collection of good junk someday.

There are many, many interesting Open Source tools for building and maintaining Web sites, and I've been making lists of things that might solve some of my problems. Here are some .deb packages (available from Debian sources) for programs new to me.

• iGal: igal is a quick and easy program for placing your images online with just one command-line. It generates a pretty good-looking set of W3-compliant static HTML slides even with its default settings. To try it out just run igal in a directory with jpg, gif or png files and check the output in a web browser. You can adjust the appearance of the image gallery with the many options listed below or (if you know a bit of HTML) by modifying the .indextemplate.html, .slidetemplate.html and igal.css files that appeared in your image directory.
• Imageindex...a digital photo gallery tool. Imageindex generates standards-compliant static HTML galleries of images (usually JPG photos, but can deal with images of just about any format).
• llgal - Command-line online gallery generator: llgal is an easy and fast on-line gallery generator based on iGal. Its primary goal is to NOT require any boring useless expensive feature in your webserver, such as PHP, JavaScript, SQL, ... Thus, llgal generates static web-pages.
• owl-dms: Owl is a multi user document repository (knowledgebase), document manager and/or document management system (DMS) written in PHP for publishing of files/documents onto the web for a corporation, small business, group of people, or just for yourself.
• sitemap: Makes an HTML site map from meta tags from other HTML pages. This Python script reads the META DESCRIPTION tags from all HTML files under a directory and generates a site map from them. It can be easily configured with a simple dotfile. The site map of catb.org, known to most Linux users, is an example of what this script can do.
• webmagic: WebMagick provides a means of easily putting image collections on the Web. It recurses through directory trees, building HTML pages and imagemap (GIF or JPEG) files to allow the user to navigate through collections of thumbnail images (somewhat similar to 'xv') and select the images to view with a mouse click.
• WordPress Web publishing platform--useful for many things besides blogs.
• www-mysql: a WWW interface for the TCX mySQL database www-mysql is a web interface for the mySQL database. SQL commands can be embedded into web pages; these are executed on the server by www-mysql and the resulting web page sent to the browser. All SQL commands and queries supported by mySQL can be used via www-mysql.

Corals In the Forest

Earlier this summer, we camped overnight at Seneca State Forest. (We don't have to leave the county to find cooler breezes.) I found some interesting fungi, including this little coral on a bed of moss. When I got home, I discovered that I had captured some tiny springtails as well. If I had been trying to get this chubby little collembolan in focus, I couldn't have done it, but here he is, a photographic bonus.

Burdock Bundles

Burdock is a powerful plant. It will grow where it wants, and you'll be hard-pressed to root it out. It will send out its stickery seed heads on any passing pedestrian, especially on wooly sheep. And if there is nothing else for it to grab, it will stick to itself and tumble through the woods!

Spinning Away the Troublesome Bits

While my vision was messed up last month by a string of migraines, I had a chance to do a little spinning. This is the "troublesome local fleece" I've been working on for the last year. The end of it is now in sight; I'm currently spinning the last dye batch. I'm trying something different with the unspinnable bits (burdock tangles, short cuts, neps) this time--I'm throwing them in the compost. Some people use bad fleeces as garden mulch, and my own experience shows me it rots away pretty quickly outdoors. Now, my compost has surprising bits of heliotrope and teal, and will soon have some deep rose. The acid dyes are chemically similar to food colorings, and I used food-grade vinegar as a fixative, so this shouldn't poison us when it goes on the garden.

The yarn-display case is this winter's growing wood pile. It's that time of year.

Rock Flipping Report 2008

Earlier this year, we dug a big hole in the ground, breaking through and turning over a layer of shale sandwiched between layers of clay. . Here are some fragments of that rock layer, hidden until recently. It won't be long before we cover them up again, but we'll never get them back the way they were.

In observance of International Rock Flipping Day, here's a list of links to rock flippers from around the world. There are all sorts of rocks, and all sorts of rock-flippers. I haven't read them all--yet!

Anticipatory posts (a selection)

Marcia Bonta — Rock-Flipping (summary of IRFD 2007)
fish without faces — the tanager and the scorpion (poem)
Fragments from Floyd — Today is Rock Flipping Day: Get Out There!
Going Like Sixty — International Rock Flipping Day: the First Sunday in September

* * *

Rock-Flipping Day Reports

Pohanginapete (Pohangina Valley, Aotearoa/New Zealand)
Blaugustine (London, England)
Nature Remains (Ohio, USA)
Pensacola Daily Photo (Florida, USA)
KatDoc’s World (Ohio, USA)
Notes from the Cloud Messenger (Ontario, Canada)
Brittle Road (Dallas, Texas)
Sherry Chandler (Kentucky, USA)
osage + orange (Illinois, USA)
Rock Paper Lizard (British Columbia, Canada)
The Crafty H (Virginia, USA)
Chicken Spaghetti (Connecticut, USA)
A Passion for Nature (New York, USA)
The Dog Geek (Virginia, USA)
Blue Ridge blog (North Carolina, USA)
Bug Girl’s Blog (Michigan, USA)
chatoyance (Austin, Texas)
Riverside Rambles (Missouri, USA)
Pines Above Snow(Maryland, USA)
Beth’s stories (Maine, USA)
A Honey of an Anklet (Virginia, USA)
Wanderin’ Weeta (British Columbia, Canada)
Fate, Felicity, or Fluke (Oregon, USA)
The Northwest Nature Nut (Oregon, USA)
Roundrock Journal (Missouri, USA)
The New Dharma Bums (California, USA)
The Marvelous in Nature (Ontario, Canada)
Via Negativa (Pennsylvania, USA)
Mrs. Gray’s class, Beatty-Warren Middle School (Pennsylvania, USA)
Cicero Sings (British Columbia, Canada)
Let’s Paint Nature (Illinois, USA)

Sleeping in the Heartland (Midwestern U.S.)

* * *

Photos

IRFD group on Flickr
IRFD gallery on Via Negativa

International Rock Flipping Day (Yesterday)

Yesterday was International Rock Flipping Day, and, close to sunset, I remembered to join the fun. Technical difficulties with my camera batteries postponed my report until today.

In contrast to last year, there was much more moisture in the ground, so this time I found a "fish worm." Last year, I found more interesting things on rocks and in rocks than under them. There is plenty of biodiversity within the rocks here on Droop Mountain, as you can see in these photos.

What's in the rocks is the Pocahontas County topic of the day, because, like much of Appalachian Pennsylvania and New York state, the Marcellus shale underlies us. There is renewed interest in drilling and extracting natural gas from this very deep layer, and speculators are contacting people here, offering to buy or lease mineral rights.

Our ridge lacks enough level ground to make drilling here feasible, so no one is trying to get us to sell anything; however, it concerns us because the extraction process for these deep gas deposits involves forcing vast quantities of water into and then out of the wells. Water is a limited resource, and disposal of the contaminated water can be a problem.

I've been reading as much as I can about the issue, and I have here my usual list of links in case you want to read further. Whether or not Pocahontas land owners decide to sell or lease, most of the mineral rights in our county are already controlled by forces outside the County. Monongahela National Forest is administered by the U.S. Forest Service, but the federal government only owns part of those mineral rights. Some of the early 20th century logging companies retained their mineral rights when they sold the government their land.

• Drilling deep to find natural gas by Brynn Kusick, July 23 in The Pocahontas Times
• Gas rush on in Pocahontas County by Brynn Kusik, July 17, 2008
• Water quality the issue in gas exploration
• Oil and Gas Accountability Project
• Appalachia tantalizes natural gas drillers from The USA Today, By Genaro C. Armas, Associated Press, February 3, 2008
• Frenzy to stake claims on U.S. natural gas prospects

Capitulum

The aster family's inflorescences are called "capitula." Sunflowers, daisies, dandilions--their "flowers" are really clusters of little flowers, each one making its own little seed, except for the "petals," ("ray flowers") which children use for divination. "He loves me, he loves me not...."

"Capitulum" is "little head" in Latin. (This innocent observation will probably attract all sorts of nasty spam.) After several weeks of learning about all sorts of new computer skills, my own head is very tired, and needs to spend more time among the late summer asters.

Sunflowers

This spring's cool, wet weather caused many of our garden seeds to rot in the ground. We replanted, but had some space left over. These sunflowers grew from the contents of our bird feeder.

Rafters, Part 1

Here's where we're stalled, with two thirds of the rafters up, roof tin stacked neatly to the side. We're waiting on more rafters from the sawmill.

Lycopersicomancy

Lycopersicomancy: Divination through tomatoes. It stands to reason that someone who tries to read messages in Tater Bug markings and mouse scratchings would stop and look at this tomato and wonder what it means.

This year, I tried an old-time tomato variety called "Cherokee Purple." We've been very pleased with the tomatoes, which are dark red with green shoulders. The only thing is, most of the plants produce double, triple, and I-don't-know-how-many fused tomatoes, growing in strange spirals.

A local character is supposed to have remarked, at the sight of something strange, "It's a sign. I don't know what it means, but it's a sign." That's the way I feel about these tomatoes. On one hand, perhaps they have predicted correctly a good tomato yield--blight-free, insect resistant plants and firm, juicy, dark-fleshed tomatoes--delicious fresh and excellent in sauces. On the other hand, they might foretell the End Times.

Whatever the message, I had to make up the term Lycopersicomancy. The Romans had no tomatoes, not for salads, sauces, or augury. It wasn't until long after Latin dropped out of daily use that Europeans named these American fruits lycopersicum, which means "wolf peach." When I checked spelling on the scientific name at the USDA Plants Database, I was surprised to discover that we're back to Linnaeus's name, Solanum lycopersicum L. Botany Photo of the Day explains (with taxonomic references):

The scientific name for the tomato in general use for over two hundred years was Lycopersicon esculentum. However, molecular studies in the past fifteen or so years have helped to shift the name back to the one originally assigned by Linnaeus, Solanum lycopersicon.

Something Overhead

The walls are up, both exterior and interior, and the ceiling beams are in place as well. It's easier now for me to visualize it as a house, with rooms and windows to look out. Quite exciting!

Good Clean Fun

With the walls going up, we realized we needed to run out and buy a bathtub, since tub-shower combinations are too big to go through doors. I really liked the packaging slogan!

Walls Going Up

The walls are going up. It's beginning to look a little bit like a house!

White Pine Subfloor

The subfloor is white pine. Such pretty white wood--it seems a shame to cover it up. Fortunately, I'll be able to go down to the cellar and look up at a section of it.

Floor Joists

There's been visible progress on the house. At last, something is happening above ground level.

Galluses and Coincidences

I learned a new word the other day in conversation: "galluses." A couple of questions later, I knew we were talking about suspenders for holding up one's britches, particularly when wearing a tool belt.

Here's the Wikipedia entry for Suspenders:

Suspenders or Galluses, known as Braces in British English, are elastic fabric straps worn over the shoulders to hold up trousers. The entire strap of braces may be elasticated, or only at attachment ends, with the most of the straps being of woven cloth with either a X-Back or Y-back crosspatch and leather end tabs. Braces typically attach to trousers with clips or, less commonly nowadays, with buttons. In British English the term suspenders or suspender belt refers to a garter belt, used to hold up stockings.

So here's another potentially embarrassing American English/British English confusion to add to "vests" and "knickers." An American gentleman, such as Larry King, looks dignified when he wears suspenders on his television show, while in Britian, a gentleman in suspenders is more likely to occur in a Benny Hill skit. But I digress.

Not three days after I learned the meaning of "galluses," I came across this passage in Collected Stories of William Faulkner:

There are other men among us now whose families are in want; men who, perhaps, would not work anyway, but who now, since the last few years, cannot find work. These all attain and hold to a certain respectability by acting as agents for the manufacturers of minor articles like soap and men's toilet accessories and kitchen objects, being seen constantly about the square and the streets carrying small black sample cases....

...."He's a man yet. Don't let hit fool you none because he claims he ain't strong enough to work. Maybe hit's because he ain't never wore his strength down toting around one of them little black satchels full of pink galluses and shaving soap...."

Devil's Darning Needles

I've been trying to identify this growth on a wild clematis, but without success. The orange scabby things remind me of the hawthorn fruits hijacked by a rust fungus, but the typical rusts that infest clematis are leaf-spots and small growths on leaves.

In my Web search, I did come across a new (to me) common name for Clematis virginiana L. from the USDA Plants Database: "Devil's Darning Needle." In my world, a Devil's Darning Needle is a dragonfly, and I seem to remember being told they would come and sew shut the lips of little children who asked too many questions. I'm not sure what Clematis virginiana L. is expected to sew up. I believe it is more commonly known as Virgin's Bower, and I cannot speculate on the origin of that name.

Fly Season

The apple tree by our house is a popular deer destination this time of year, and this poor fellow is a regular visitor. It's very stressful to be fly-bitten like this, and he stamps and twitches, jumps and runs in futile attempts to escape the torment. It's hard to enjoy your dinner like this.