Long, long ago in a server many iterations away ...

I ran a Deus Ex map repository because, back in the day, there were none and I was a big fan of the game.

I haven't run this repo in years.  In fact, I don't think I have any of those files anymore, and I'm also pretty sure they're commonly available elsewhere.  Yet still to this day I get HTTP requests to deus-ex.tanabi.org.  Granted, these days it's usually spiders, but still ... kind of funny.

Anyway!  I have them now all on a 301 to www.tanabi.com ... so if you're looking for Deus Ex material...  Well this place looks promising!

http://www.planetdeusex.com/dx1/files/

And one day I will make something that will turn my links in blog entries clickable ... bleh :)

I've been with the web almost since day one.  I ran an NCSA httpd server back in the day, and like pretty much everybody went to Apache from that.

It's kind of a sad day that I've finally departed from Apache and am now using the lighttpd server.  However, I'm finding that my server is getting DOS'd by spiders of all things and my current hosting setup just doesn't have the memory to run a solid apache setup.

So far I'm pretty happy with lighttpd.  The memory footprint is CONSIDERABLY smaller -- I mean a LOT LOT smaller -- and it seems a lot snappier than Apache.  It was also relatively easy to configure; the configuration file format is very different from Apache's but it was well documented and I set it up quickly.

Also I like how the virtual hosts are.  It works like Apache's mod-vhost but Apache's mod-vhost is ... kind of annoying, using it seems to disable many of the features that make apache good.  You can't mix Apache vhosts and mod-vhost for example, and you can't mix a lot of other random things with mod-vhost.

What I don't like; I use Zend Framework for MOST of my projects and therefore I use ZF's rewrite rule in Apache.  This is easy to do with .htaccess in Apache.  Lighttp doesn't seem to have per-directory configuration like that (you CAN do it, I found some instructions, but it was way WAY more work than it was worth for my particular needs).  Thankfully, I think pretty much everything I have running is ZF; however if I ever want to use third party software on my system that could cause me problems later.

Also, I found that GET variables don't seem to work quite right with the re-write rule in lighttp and ZF.  Not sure what the underlying cause is, and I was only using it in one place (that I know of) so it was an easy convert ... but I suspect in the future I'll have some trouble there :P  I actually found a better rewrite rule which fixes this!  The rewrite rule I use now is:

url.rewrite-once = (
    ".*\?(.*)$" => "/index.php?$1",
    ".*\.(js|ico|gif|jpg|png|swf|css|html|php|mp3)$" => "$0",
    "" => "/index.php"
)

Which I got from ... Drat, a web site I no longer have the URL to it seems.  Sorry! :(

And I'm not sure what the implications of using fast-CGI instead of a built-in module are going to be.  But so far, so good!

Anyway, all in all, it's a positive thing with some caveats.  Though perhaps a little sad that I've finally changed webservers after all these years.  Please email me if you find any problems with the site!

Further edit: Remember!  If you had your PHP configuration variables in your .htaccess (like, say, to turn magic_quotes_gpc off) they will not longer be there when you make the switch.  Apparently I never built a php.ini for this server -- but I sure have one now!

Web spiders have been intermittently DOS-ing my web server, which seems to have been a misconfiguration that I (think) I have fixed.  I'll be keeping a closer eye on things, sorry if things have been down when you've been looking for them.

I was just admiring the number of journal entries I hvae that end in "More to come soon!"  Fun :)

As a little update ... I've finished my comic lister, at least in a rudimentary way.  I can make comic lists, I can add items to it, and it by and large works.  I need to do a few things before I can open it up to the public though:

• Registration probably needs email confirmation to avoid spam.
• Comics on the list need to be editable and deletable.
• More testing

Also, I want to add the ability to have private lists ... I'll probably make private lists as a for-pay thing, but it'll be really cheap (a one-time fee of $5 probably).  That is, if anyone actually wants it.  Could be I'm the only one who ever uses this thing.

All the PHP code is done, at least in a basic sense.  Adding and viewing entries works, though delete and edit would be nice at some point.  I just need to do a little javascript and then I can release this thing.