The all-in-one mashup web 2.0 website of
Mike Harrison aka "meuon"
Welcome

I'll put some marketing centrix buzzword complaint things here someday.
Until then, this is what it is.. Enjoy.


meuon
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Making an MS-SQL Admin Cry
Spent 30 minutes today showing an MS-SQL Admin the things you can do with MySQL from a Linux bash prompt with 'mysql','mysqladmin' and 'mysqldump'. especially when your PHP WebApp  uses a simple config file for it's configuration. Sure, the MS-Gui tools are "friendly" but they are limiting as well. He wants the best of both worlds, but didn't like my suggestion for learning Linux and porting his 20 server data smelter to a couple of Linux boxen.

btw: His real problem was 2 default routes of equal weight in a Server 2003 box. I would have figured that M$ would have fixed that by now.
It made his connections very flaky.
 
 

Meuon
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UtiliFlex Smart Metering
A few month ago I got started in an interesting rebirth/renewal/upgrade of an existing company, UtiliSol. That's now become a new business formed by Joe Gordon of UtiliSol and myself (GeekLabs) called UtiliFlex. Working with Joe's been a pleasant reminder of what it's like to work with a competent experienced professional with focus and a non-nonsense let's do business right attitude. It's stupid little things like UPS dropping off an Aeron chair for me, ordering two of gadget's it'd be nice to have one of as well as some fantastic work with clients, contracts, proposals.. good stuff for both parties.

We're coming out of the gate with a bang, some big projects in the works, and a pleasant surprise; we got nominated for the Chattanooga Technology Council's Early Innovator Award. The press and attention is both welcome, and distracting at the same time. The price of fame.

Anyway, this is also a time sink, While we've hired some talent for key parts, I've got to get and keep my head down on what we are now calling "Juice 2.0" - which is more than just software, it's a whole collection of systems working well together.

Nancy and I went out to a play last night.. and I turned down two projects bumping into people. It's an interesting world out there, why is it when you are busy, they come out of the woodwork, and when you -need- paying work, it's scarce. The Murphy's law of freelancing?
Well, I think my freelancing days are over for a while. :)
 

Meuon
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Proud Papa
The NFPA's web based learning system came online tonight on version 3.2 of "NextLMS", which is a  very comprehensive learning management system I built over the last 2 years. It is GAS based, or at least it started that way, Add a few thousand lines of JavaScript, several thousand lines of PHP, and a team of really good smart people editing and providing content and it makes quite a complete system. It's easily the biggest system I have coded by myself and I'm proud of it. Have the NFPA using it makes me feel good, brings me back to my Clinical and Plant Engineering days.
 

meuon
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Code
Widget

Widget at Work
Widget is a GAS (GeekLabs Application Starter) based website framework. It's essentially GAS with FCKeditor and a CSS menu.
It runs this website as well as some others like:

ewichattanooga.org - Executive Women Intl.

astd-chatt.org - American Society of Training and Development, Chattanooga

UtiliFlex.com - Prepaid Electricity Utility Payment / Metering

In some ways, it is "Yet another CMS (Content Management System)" . It is almost what happens  anytime you start working with PHP. I'm mentioning it because it's a good example of a GeekLabs philosophy that a good foundation can build many different kinds of systems, and it's useful partially because it is "not baked".  This makes it  easy to add special functions like membership directories and picture albums, or special content/article areas. While Widget is a wonderful tool, it's not the only thing we do at GeekLabs, but it's one of the few things that get seen by the general public. Most of our code and applications live behind the scenes, and range from Human Resources/eLearning applications with SCORM and AICC capabilities, to payment gateways and banking applications.

Widget is in constant development, is far from "polished" and someday I'll package it with a "README" file and post it as "Code" - but until then if you want a copy, send me an e-mail and I'll zip up the current version for you and e-mail it. We (GeekLabs) does not "sell" but we do make money modifying it and hosting things built with it for people.
 

admin
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Ubuntu
w32codecs

Making Ubuntu 7.10 / Ubuntu Studio Useful
Ubuntu 7.10 is an amazing thing. But they can't do some things "legally".  But you can... if you don't mind having things on your computer you theoretically should not have.

Let's start with the basics that are legal, but "not free open source programs" and then add the Microsoft specific codecs for  some DVD and other media playback  and lets do this all as root, type 'sudo -s' and become root. It saves some typing. and if you mess up you can always re-install.

If you feel lucky, cut and paste this into a file and run it as root:
apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras
echo deb http://packages.medibuntu.org/ gutsy free non-free >>/etc/apt/sources.list
wget -q http://packages.medibuntu.org/medibuntu-key.gpg -O- | apt-key add -
apt-get update
apt-get install libdvdcss2
apt-get install w32codecs
 
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