Diary of a Network Geek

The trials and tribulations of a Certified Novell Engineer who's been stranded in Houston, Texas.

2/22/2013

Two Random Blog Design Tools

Filed under: Fun Work,Ooo, shiny...,Red Herrings — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Hare which is terribly early in the morning or 6:11 am for you boring, normal people.
The moon is Waxing Gibbous

Are there really any websites that aren’t essentially blogs?

Okay, I know there are, but, considering that some people estimate about 1 out of every 5 sites runs WordPress, it amounts to the same thing.
In any case, these two tools I’m about to share can actually be useful to any website design.

First, there’s the graphic “place-holder” generator, lorempixel.
Using their tool, you can find and download “place holder” images that are generic, in either color or b&w, and the size you need…
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2/15/2013

Color Scheme Designer

Filed under: Art,Fun,Fun Work,Geek Work,GUI Center,Ooo, shiny... — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Tiger which is terribly early in the morning or 5:52 am for you boring, normal people.
The moon is Waxing Crescent

I am not a designer.

This may be painfully evident from the look and feel of this website, which, I did not code myself.  It is a WordPress-based website which, at best, I have “themed” myself, but with lots of help from code “borrowed” via Google and other sources.  In fact, there are so many code sources it would be hard to link to them all or list them all or thank them all.  It’s the way of the web, I’m…
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2/8/2013

Naming Your Systems

Filed under: Fun,Fun Work,Geek Work,Novell,The Network Geek at Home — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Hare which is terribly early in the morning or 6:15 am for you boring, normal people.
The moon is Waning Crescent

Naming kids is easy, but naming systems is hard!

And, no, I don’t mean giving your phone a pet name.

I have gone on at length in the past about the importance of naming systems.  It’s a big, big deal, especially if you ever have to go back and change any of those names!  Granted, it’s not as bad now as it was in the old days when you had to manually update dozens, or sometimes hundreds, of host files or configuration files, but, still, it’s a pretty big deal.  So, naming systems are often a topic of discussion, especially among hardcore network geeks.  I’ve been in more than one meeting about choosing a naming scheme that devolved into name calling.
So, there are many schools of thought on this.  One group of people think that the name should be meaningful, giving location and function information.  That’s a good idea, but it often results in names like HOUNOVFILESERV001.  (And, yes, that’s actually a name I used on a server once, for a company that no longer exists.  It stands for HOUston NOVell FILESERVer number 001.)  Sure, it tells you what you need to know, but they quickly become unwieldy to type and maintain.
Another group would say to name your servers, or routers, or what have you, after any group of things that will be easy to remember, like the names of the Seven Dwarves, or characters from the Dilbert cartoon, or, even, at one place I worked, the names of the old Space Shuttle fleet.  And, while I’m not a huge fan of that for many things at a business, it can be fun to ping a Cisco router named Elvis just to get the response “Elvis is alive”.  Certainly at home, I tend to favor a more fun approach using something light-hearted, like the names of cartoon characters or mythological beings or something similar.  But, my problem is always, which set of “things” to choose?

Well, the Naming Schemes Wiki solves that particular problem.  Yes, someone has started a wiki that gathers all the different naming schemes you all can think of in one place for your viewing pleasure.  And, in spite of any protests from your significant other, you can select, at your leisure, a naming scheme to use on your network that makes you smile.  (And, stop looking at me that way!  I know I’m not the only person in the world with a home network big enough or complicated enough to warrant having to choose a naming system for it!)  The maintainer also encourages you to add your own scheme, if, somehow, it’s been missed on this site.  Or, to add to any of the existing pages if you have something to contribute.

So there you have it!  All the endless naming possibilities for your home networking project this weekend!
Y’all have fun!

2/1/2013

Adding Style To Your Webpages

Filed under: Art,Fun,Fun Work,GUI Center,PERL — Posted by the Network Geek during the Hour of the Tiger which is terribly early in the morning or 5:23 am for you boring, normal people.
The moon is Waning Gibbous

I am NOT a designer or web programmer.

Sure, I’ve dabbled with Perl enough to be a Level 11 Perl Monk on Perlmonks.org, but I’m not really a programmer.  And I’m sure not a designer, either, even though I can appreciate really good design work.  In fact, my ex-wife used to say that I was from the “big orange button” school of design, because I was more interested in the technology behind the button you pushed on a website than making…
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