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Latest BlogI knew an old woman who swallowed a flyYes, the good old chain of events where something sounding simple starts and things take on a life of their own. I received an email a while back from Google letting me know that they were no longer going to allow authentication to their mail servers using an ID and password. This impacts the weekly email that is sent from this site and some other functions. Simple, just change to Oauth 2.0 and you're good, right?
In order to use Oauth 2.0 I need to update my mail program (PHPMailer) ...
... in order to use PHPMailer with Google, I need to implement SSL and turn on https with Apache ...
... in order to turn on https with Apache I needed to upgrade my entire stack (WAMP) because somehow the ssl_module on the version I had wasn't working. Assume it wasn't compiled right as there were several posts from folks having a similar problem ...
... upgrading is always fun as there's a bunch of functions that have depricated since I wrote my code, so that means re-writing a lot of the backend code for the site ...
... before installing and rewriting code, need to take a backup ... my NAS fried, so I had to get a new one ...
... ok, so I got a new super duper NAS and it came with loads of bells and whistles, so I did get quite sidetracked with that. It comes with a streaming functionality, so you can stream to it and it will record the stream and then restream out to any number of RTMP services. Right now I have it setup to stream out to Twitch, YouTube and Facebook. There's literally no reason for me to do this other than the fact that I can. And sometimes, that's the best reason of them all :) ...
... sidetracking done and back to the task at hand, backup website, installed new software, install composer to get new PHPMailer, install certbot so I can get SSL certificate from Let's Encrypt which is great as it provides free certificates and free is good, particularly to a project website like this that is not monetized ...
.. infrastructure in place, do some tidy up and recode parts of the website not working. Bit of a note here, there's still some, but it's not related to this. There's a flash plugin used on one page that I need to update when I get time, but where does one get time once you're a megastar streaming to absolutely nobody on three platforms?
All in all, a huge amount of fun as it's been a while since I've done anything with the site and even though visitors won't notice the difference, I do. See more blogs. | Championes Well if we're making a few changes to the home page, it makes sense to have something about Leicester City front and center. It's still crazy for me
to think that it's actually a reality that Leicester are the Premier League Champions. I don't think the city is going to forget this 2015/16 season
which has seen the impossible become a reality. Surely none of the minnow teams can compete with the big clubs. Well, guess again! So, what's next? If winning the Premier League was an impossibility, dare we dream about Europe next year? Maybe that's pushing it too far, but I
really hope the players have fun in Europe. Just being in the competition is an achievement, so take the time to enjoy it. One thing's for sure, all
the players deserve to enjoy it after this phenominal season. “The Countdown”
But what are we counting down? Is this the end of the world? The end of the website? Or something completely different? Only time will tell. Quite a lot of time right now
as this is a pretty long timer as far as timers go. We're in not rush though. Particularly if this is the end of something.
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Background
EastBayRag is pretty much a playground where I go to undertake little projects. A distraction from the general grind of daily life, scripting in PHP and
manipulating data in a MySQL database offers me something to focus on that takes all of my attention. It also gives me a great sense of satisfaction when I
create something and it works. In this world of self esteem, I have to say that I never cease to amaze myself.
The Webiste actually started as a small project to create something that I could control
that would enable me to share photos with the family and allow them
to easily view and download files (without having to order prints). After many late nights and beers it has blossomed
into a whole lot more. The photos are now geotagged and displayed on Google maps and there's lots of things to explore.
Initially I thought it would be a good idea to include some sort of blog
section within the site. That then grew into the thought that I could host blogs for other people so I drafted
my buddy "Mr O" from the UK to add content to the blog sites. Next came the idea of allowing other people to
interact so the fun stuff section was born with things like a
graffiti wall, quiz, caption competition and much more including breaking new ground to figure out how to use
javascript to get stuff to move about the screen and do things. All of this serves no purpose what-so-ever, but sometimes you
just gotta do things because ....
The links on the side will allow you to explore the site. There's a site map if you get lost which can be accessed from
the bottom of any page. So where does it all end? What's the ultimate end game? Well, never let it be said that I'm anything but transparent - if you're
interested, take a look at the EastBayRag (EBR) Business Plan.
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