April 2003 Archives

I found this web page about 2 years ago. It has captured my imagination for some reason. I guess I have a yearning to take a long walk around an island. It would defenatly give me some time to think about things as well as where I want to go in this one life that we all have.

It seems to me that it would be a luxery these days to be able to take this long spiritual walk, or hike if you would rather see it that way. Either way you see it, the journey is going to last for 1300 Kilometer or 808 miles believe it or not! I don't know about you, but my knees might be a little weak to take this kind of treatment. Oh I forgot, this is about letting go of the pain and suffering that we are all caught up in.

Don Weiss, the author and henro, (pilgrim or 遍路) made this journey twice, once in the winter and once in the spring. It is traditional to walk the around the island by one's self in the winter and with a companion in the spring.

I have read in many places that most Westerners can not eat umeboshi. I however love these sour little red tasty treats. They are especially tasty in the morning with my gohan.

Marco Mancini

After doing a little 'netsurfing, as my wife says, I ran across this site that has some cool receipes and info on how to make your own umeboshi. If I had access to some ume I certainly would try to make my own choya. Oh whatch out for the engrish.

Umeboshi is also made using the red shiso plant. The red shiso is alos a tasty and healthy topping for rice. It also contains a lot of salt that is left over in the bottom of the shaker for some reason. Well anyways, please try it next time you have white Japanese rice!

You know when you have been missing Japanese resturants when you feel the need to see a representation of the item that you are ordering here in the states. I don't know that number of times that I have wondered what I was really ordering. I think resturants here should take the clue and get onboard with the plastic food. Check out Kristen's Japan: Video Saturdays. Kristen is really going all out with the videos on her blog. I am now feeling like I need to keep up with the Jones!

"Yoshiko caught him putting on his shoes in the living room. What a barbarian."

You know, I would be a man in the dog house if my wife caught me trying this at home.

I have read that the "no shoes in the house" culture rule dates back a couple of thousand years ago when japanese people lived in large houses with a seperated outside portion that they keep the animals in. As dirty as it sounds, it was done evidently to caputure the heat that they gave off.

So along comes the idea that your shoes are very icky from walking through the animal dung. Well know that I think about it, have you ever really looked at the floor in public restrooms? I don't think that we have come that far in two thousand years.

So you have decided to put the effort into setting up your own web server using MS Windows 2000 Server and IIS 5.0. Please don't ask me about Apache web server installs as I haven't used Apache before. Please visit their site for documentation and help. I will say that I have tried to install it and us it with MT, but I wasn't about to figure it out.

Apache is the most secure web server out there, but not the easiest to use because it has always had it roots in the unix/linux world. As you may have found out on your own, is that the documentation is a little vague, ok a lot vague. It is really set up to meet the needs of the majority of the users of Moveable Type, the user with a hosting company. So if you want to install and operate MT on your own you are going to have to take the bull by the horns and dive in and figure it out for yourself.

It took me a little over a week and a half of frustration and a lot of soul searching as well as many hours on the support forums looking for clues as to where I should be looking at when I had problems. You will find that a lot of people haven't touched a server OS, let alone set one up for web serving. This is the purpose of this document, to pass on some of my knowledge so you won't have to travel this lonely road yourself.

Jian Shuo Wang from China has a article on installing MT on MS Windows XP Pro and IIS 5.0, but I think that there is enough difference between MS Windows 2000 Server and MS Windows XP Pro to still be releavent. So ok, onward and upward!

1.) Computer system. (The system doesn't have to be the most beefy of machines. I am currently running a custome white box that I built 4 years ago. It is a AMD K6-3 450mhz with 256mb of memory and a 30gb drive.

2.) Microsoft Windows 2000 Server. (You should be able to get a copy for a reasonable price if you do some searching on the internet or go through an academic resaler if you qualify.)

3.) ActivePerl 5.6.1 build 635 (It can be downloaded from ActiveState for free. You will need to fillout a simple form before downloading.)

4.) Moveable Type 2.63 (It can be downloaded from Moveabletype.com. Since this is your first install you will need the full version with libraries.)

5.) Winzip 8.1 (Winzip can be downloaded from Winzip.com)

When you install Windows 2000 Server make sure that you choose to install IIS 5.0 as you navigate the install questions. If you didn't happen to choose to install IIS 5.0 when you installed the OS, it isn't to late. You can add it by navigating to: Start -> Settings -> Control Panel-> Add/Remove Programs Then click on Add/Remove Windows Componets. See below:







Then you need to click and put a check mark in the box next to the Internet Information Services (IIS). When you click on the box and new window will pop letting you choose individual componets of IIS 5.0. See Below:




I would suggest that if you are new to IIS, then you are better off with the K.I.S.S. plan. (I.E. Keep it simple, stupid. Not that I am say that you, the reader is ignorant, but this is a complex beast we are trying to tame here.)

I run only the componets that I absolutely need. For the other services like FTP ect, I use seperate server apps to keep security as tight as possible. It seems that there are enough holes in IIS to sink a ship as it is. So I am trying not to tempt fate.

Here is Micro$oft's instructions for setting up IIS 5.0

Micro$oft Knowledge Base article 308192: HOW TO: Configure Windows 2000 as a Web Server.

After you have rebooted after finishing the installation, you will need to install all the service packs and sercurity updates. Please take the time to do this and keep on top of them because some of these security issues are very serious and can leave your site 'hackable.'

On to Part 2 of the installation.

Well I kicked the code around yesterday and last night and I am thinking that the site is coming along nicely. What do you think? I hope to be able to set up my web cam also and have a pic posted on the site so people can see the 'hood that I live in.

Please check out Kut's blog. He has the cutest kid! Well I am wondering how he has time to keep his site up and spend time with the kid and also with work demands. Hey Kurt, can you spare some of your energy?

Please bare with me as I am moving things around on the site. As you may well know, I strive to have a perfect web presentence.... ya right!

So you have followed my directions or maybe you have a friend that has a web server and has given you access to it. You will need to install the following things to get Moveable Type up on it's feet:

1.) ActivePerl 5.6.1 build 635 (It can be downloaded from ActiveState for free. You will need to fillout a simple form before downloading.)

2.) Moveable Type 2.64 (It can be downloaded from Moveabletype.com. Since this is your first install you will need the full version with libraries.)

3.) Winzip 8.1 (Winzip can be downloaded from Winzip.com)

Follow the directions for setting up Active Perl. It is really simple to get it up and working correctly. Make sure you test perl at the command line to see if it is working correcly.

After you download Moveable type, unzip it to a folder on the desktop or some such to make it easier for you to work on and also you have have a backup copy for and unplanned event, God forbid.

Follow the directions on Moveable Type's web site to install Moveable Type.

According to the Moveable Type directions you are supposed to edit the following line to the path of your perl installation, but I didn't and it work fine. See below.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

Make sure that the path in Start\Settings\Control Panel\System is pointing to your perl and image magic as I have done below.

c:\imagemagick;C:\Perl\bin\;C:\Perl\bin\;C:\WINNT\system32;C:\WINNT;C:\WINNT\System32\Wbem;C:\Program Files\Symantec\pcAnywhere\;C:\php;c:\perl\site\lib\auto\Image\Magick

Next next part of the Moveable Type Directions that are confusing are the parts about configureing your MT.cfg, in particular the database set up.

Here is what my MT.cfg database section looks like:

ObjectDriver DBI::mysql
Database mov_typ
DBUser (Removed) <- you'll want to specifiy this user when you set up the database.

To be continued.....

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