Upgrading servers today (and into the night). I’m so excited. Really.

Wouldn’t you be excited about a new server?

Business is humming along, and Drive Method is welcoming new customers regularly. I’m not quite ready to head off to some island and retire, but I am making some ground toward possibly not working from dawn to dusk and beyond…all the time.

Having said that, I do enjoy waking up everyday on a mission.

So, due to Drive Method’s continued growth, I have am currently migrating migrated my sites and all of our customer sites to a new, more powerful server at Media Temple. This will be a is significant performance increase for all hosted sites and a bit easier management of hosting resources for our customers.

I’ll post back up when I am done - which could be tomorrow.

Drive Method and our clients are now up on the new server, (mt) rocks!

Frogress

Install wget on Mac OSX Leopard

If you are like me and spend a great deal of time working in the Linux server enviroment, you have probably fallen in love with wget. Working with Mac OSX is great for productivity, and its beautiful, but wget is one tool I wish was built in. However, installing wget for use in Leopard is quite easy.

(This brief tutorial includes use of the terminal application. If you are not sure where to find terminal you are probably not very interested in this tutorial, but in any case, you can find it in Applications > Utilities.)

First, get the latest source code for wget here.

Probably, this downloaded the file into your Downloads directory, so you’ll need to change into that directory:

cd ~/downloads

Then, you’ll need to extract the archive, and change into the extracted directory:

tar xzf wget-latest.tar.gz

cd wget 1.xx.x

Configure and install (You will be prompted for your administrator password):

./configure

sudo make && sudo make install

Ok. We have wget installed in the /usr/local/bin directory, but we need to update our bash_profile. From terminal, type:

nano ~/.bash_profile

Add the following to the file: (If you are unfamiliar with the nano text editor, press ctrl x to exit and save the file.)

PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin; export PATH

Now, reload your profile:

~/.bash_profile

Congratulations, wget is ready to use!

Example use:

wget http://wordpress.org/latest.zip

For reference, I completed this tutorial on Mac OSX 10.5.6.

View Finder Location in Title Bar

Tired of not being sure the exact path of a file or directory when using the Finder? You can solve this easily.

Just open up the Terminal.app which is located in /Applications/Utilities/ directory, and type in a couple simple commands:

defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YES

hit Return, and then type:

killall Finder

and press Return once more. That’s it.

The first command sets the preference, the second command restarts the Finder to allows your preferences to be updated.

Open Finder Location in Terminal

Ah. This may seem so simple if you come from a Linux background. Following the logic of most Linux flavors, you should type into Terminal:

Finder /Users/Location

but have no fear, opening Finder to a specific location is just as easy:

Open /Users/Location

Simple. Just type Open followed by the directory location, and away you go.

Top Gear Races Ford Fiesta Against Corvette Through a Mall

…and storms a beach with Royal Marines.

This is why Top Gear is a fantastic show. Watch and enjoy.

I like the new Fiesta. I think I’ll take mine as shown - hold the water damage please.

Google Reader for Domains

I tend to use Google Apps for every domain that I manage or work with - the services up time is fantastic, the email spam protection is great, and the calendar is very useful. (I really like SMS reminders of my events, which I first used while being a 30Boxes user.) However, I have found it inconvenient to have to bounce back to my Gmail account to use Google Reader. Well, no more.

Even though Google does not list Google Reader for domains as a service, it is really easy to access. If you currently have Google Apps for your domain, just point your browser to http://reader.google.com/a/yourdomain.com, then sign in and enjoy.

As a side note: When your logged into Google Reader for your domain, you will notice that in the Apps menu in the upper left includes Photo - yep, that’s right, you can use your Google Apps email address and password to share photos with Picasa too. The direct URL is the same as it is for regular Gmail accounts: http://picasaweb.google.com.

Change Number of Smart Location Bar Suggestions

While Firefox 3 defaults to thinking that you want it to find 12 different URLs that are close to what you type in the address bar. I think this is excessive at best, but generally intrusive and unattractive.

Changing the quantity of URL suggestions is easy:

Just type “about:config” in your Firefox 3 address bar, then filter the list to find “browser.urlbar.maxRichResults”, and just change the Value field to a number of your choosing.

Enjoy.

2010 Ford Fiesta to Arrive in the United States in Early 2009

Attention Honda Fit and Toyota Yaris: You are about to have a real domestic challenger on your hands.

The 2010 Ford Fiesta is one of the first Ford vehicles from their European stable to arrive in the United States, and seemingly the first realistic product approach by any of the Detroit auto manufacturers. Not only will the Ford Fiesta likely be the highest quality lower cost Ford Motor Company product sold in the United States, but it should provide some fun driving dynamics and excellent economy.

It seems as though we are likely to only get the 1.6i Duratec engine stateside, although I could imagine the 1.4i arriving in the low spec. model, but probably no diesel. The European 1.6i engine delivers a combined fuel economy rating of 47.9mpg with an automatic transmission, and should have somewhere in the neighborhood of 120hp.

Technology-wise, the Ford Fiesta will include Microsoft SYNC for voice control of audio, climate, and communications devices that are BlueTooth enabled. The 2010 Ford Fiesta will also include a push to start button enabled by a wireless key and proximity enabled door locks (at least as an option).

Thankfully, Ford has also realized that some people who like to buy economical cars also care about a bit of luxury, and will be offering nice aluminum wheels, premium paint options, and a choice of three cloth and (my favorite) leather options.

Want to find out more? You can head over the 2010 Ford Fiesta microsite.