LearnByDoingIT

  • openlivewriter-purpleheader

    Scott Hanselman blogs about the release of Open Live Writer which replaces Windows Live Writer (not updated since 2012) which despite its lack of maintenance is a very popular blogging platform, especially with the WordPress community.  Give it a try and see.

    ARE YOU AN EXISTING USER OF WINDOWS LIVE WRITER?

    We encourage you to install Open Live Writer and try it out! OLW will run side-by-side with your existing Windows Live Writer installation. Open Live Writer installs VERY quickly and updates itself automatically. Try it out! It’s early but it’s a start. Please bear with us as we work to improve Open Live Writer.

    if you do find bugs, please share your bugs at https://github.com/OpenLiveWriter/OpenLiveWriter/issuesand be specific about what’s not working. And please, be patient. We are doing this as volunteers – we are NOT representing Microsoft. Open Live Writer is no longer a Microsoft project, so while we will do our best to support you, let’s all try to support one another!

  • When I set up my Moodle Server, one of the things that I wanted to do was be able to send the emails to the students as well as logs and various system emails.

    Creating your Relay

    If you haven’t done so already, you need to install postfix first.

    # dnf install postfix

    Next you need to open the /etc/postfix/main.cf file in your favorite editor

    # i /etc/postfix/main.cf

    At the bottom, add the following lines:

    # sets gmail as relay
relayhost = [smtp.gmail.com]:587

# use tls
smtp_use_tls=yes

# use sasl when authenticating to foreign SMTP servers
smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes

# path to password map file
smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/sasl_passwd

# list of CAs to trust when verifying server certificate
smtp_tls_CAfile = /etc/ssl/certs/ca-ca-bundle.crt

# eliminates default security options which are incompatible with gmail
smtp_sasl_security_options =
    # To correct gmail rejecting your email with something similar to “530 5.7.0 Must issue a STARTTLS command first.” 
    smtp_tls_policy_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/tls_policy

    And you will need to create a tls_policy file in /etc/postfix that has the following line

    [smtp.gmail.com]:587 encrypt

    Then run postmap /etc/postfix/tls_policy to create the hash of the file.

    Next you’ll have to edit (or create) the sasl_passwd file that’s used in the postfix configuration above

    # vi /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd

    The format of this file is this:

    [smtp.gmail.com]:587 username:password

    After creating this file, you need to run the postmap command to create the hash of the password file and then make sure that postfix owns the files (as they are created by root originally).

    postmap /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd

    and

    chown postfix /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd*
    chown postfit /etc/postfix/tls-policy*

    Finally restart postfix using this command:

    systemctl restart postfix.service

    Testing your configurations

    If everything worked correctly, you should be able to test your mail setup by sending an email from the command line.  There are multiple methods for this, but I’ll show you two of them here.

    The first method uses the mail command. (you should be able to do this as either root or a regular user) youruser@emaildomain.com should be replaced with your intended recipient’s email address.

    mail -s “Subject: Test email from linux server” youruser@emaildomain.com

    The editor will open up, so you can type a message in the body. You’ll use CTRL+D or enter a “.” to exit this editor.

    Next, if you want to CC anyone, you can add their email addresses, and/or press CTRL+D to exit this portion.

    The email should send. Check your inbox (and spam folders) to see if it’s arrived. If not, you can check /var/log/maillog (or in /var/log/mail) to find out what’s wrong.

    My thanks to a number of sites, each of which provided me some of the information to get this done.  I merely cleaned it up to and pasted it together to work on Moodle with this version of Fedora.

  • From Techdows

    Chrome now features a fancy new bookmark manager and interface that’s all about thumbnails. If you’re not a fan, here is a flag you can switch to go back to the old interface.

    Getting the old interface back is easy:

    1. Head to chrome://flags/#enhanced-bookmarks-experiment
    2. Change the setting to “Disabled” and click “Relaunch Now”

    That’s it, when Chrome reopens, you’ll be back to the old view.

  • The following was on Carl Cheo’s site and included here in the event it moves.  Please respect the author and look at the original site and all the material there.

    Before choosing your first programming language, you should also check out this infographic on What Is Programming And What Do Programmers Do.

    So you want to learn programming. Maybe you have asked your developer friends for recommendations and get different answers. They explained with terms that you don’t understand (what is object-oriented?!). To help you to pick your first programming language to learn, here is an easy-to-understand infographic that recommends the best option, depending on your purpose and interest. Details such as learning difficulty, popularity, and average salary for each computer programming language are provided too.

    I have also compiled a list of best programming tools and resources for each programming language, to help you get started quickly.

    Special thanks to Prithviraj Udaya for allowing me to use his awesome The Lord of the Rings analogy on Quora.

    Note: A good programmer must know at least a few programming languages to learn different ways to approach problems. They continue to learn and grow as technology advances. This is just the beginning of your programming journey. Simply pick one and start coding now!

    Most good programmers do programming not because they expect to get paid or get adulation by the public, but because it is fun to program.

    – Linus Torvalds (creator of Linux)

     

    which-programming-language-should-i-learn-first-infographic

    Get the PDF version here.

  • NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — The Internet is celebrating a big birthday next week: The world’s oldest dot-com domain, symbolics.com, is turning 30 on Sunday.

    The first dot-com was purchased by a Massachusetts-based computer company Symbolics on March 15, 1985 — four years before the World Wide Web even existed. (Email and the Internet pre-date the Web).

    Symbolics was one of the original makers of computer workstations, and the company even got a mention in the movie "Jurassic Park." But the "Lisp" computer language that Symbolics developed eventually faded in popularity. Symbolics went belly-up and filed for bankruptcy in 1993.

    The company and its symbolics.com website continue to exist today. Symbolics maintains the Lisp operating system that is still used by some companies and government agencies, albeit in a very limited way.

    But in 2009, Symbolics got an unsolicited call from an entrepreneur named Aron Meystedt. He had built up a small domain name registry business called XF.com Investments, and he thought he’d take a shot in the dark by asking if symbolics.com might be up for sale.

    Meystedt said his call was perfectly timed: The company was looking to raise money to continue its operations. Symbolics transferred the domain name to Meystedt (he can’t share terms of the deal, since they were subject to a nondisclosure agreement), and the company moved its site (still the same since 2005) to symbolics-dks.com.

    So what to do with symbolics.com? Meystedt said it had been — and continues to be — a frequent topic among friends, family and colleagues.

    He quickly noticed that the site had been getting traffic without any advertising. Hundreds and sometimes thousands of people visit each day, and hundreds of thousands of clicks come into symbolics.com each year from curious Web browsers who happened to come across the fact that symbolics.com was the first dot-com.

    Meystedt thought there could be a revenue opportunity there. So he turned it into a kind of Internet history archive. A cartoonish city on the homepage reveals fast facts about the Internet and Worldwide Web when you click on buildings’ windows.

    To make money on his purchase, he allows companies to sell ads. Though he brought in some ad sales in the past (he says he’s unsure of the total amount), Meystedt has since taken a job that has put his symbolics.com hopes on the back burner.

    Meystedt is now director of auctioning off domain names at Heritage Auctions. He recently auctioned off classic.com for $172,500 and NL.com for $575,000. His XF.com Investments company also owns the rights to tablets.com and copier.com.

    Even though he isn’t getting to work on his symbolics.com passion project, he doubts that he’ll sell it. As a piece of Internet history, he says he is "very humbled" to be able to own it.