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Sausage Sizzler - Annual Report

To receive this newsletter via email subscribe here. To manage your exisitng subscription (for example change of email address) please use Subscription Management. In Issue 40: Editorial November 6, 2002 Setting it all up : Setting up a local development environment Xara WebStyle 3 95/98/Me/2000/NT 4.0/XP US$63.95 Mailing List Program Recommendations Burnt out and frustrated TV Tuner Card Recommendations Evan Update

Editorial November 6, 2002

G'Day Sizzlers!

Well it has been just about one year since the staff purchased the Sausage name and HotDog product range from SMS (who had completed a reverse takeover of Sausage).
There has been a lot happen and I won't bore you all with it here. If you want to see what we have done go to the Web site at http://www.sausage.com/.

This week I asked Bram to give us all an update on his son. I have received quite a bit of email asking about how he is now and Bram was more than happy to write about the experience. As it is not Webmaster related I have put it as the final article this week.

You will see that I have reviewed Xara WebStyle 3 as this weeks SuperTool. I have to say Sausage has always liked the quality of Xara products. In the past we have resold one of their other products Xara 3D, and now we are proud to be reselling WebStyle 3. To help launch this new product plus to celebrate a year of Sausage Version 2.0 we are going to have a competition. Here are the details:

1. Take a look at the banner I created for Sausage in less than 5 minutes with Xara WebStyle 3:
http://www.sausage.com/misc/banners.html

2. Now if you would like to win a copy of WebStyle you will have to use it to create your own Sausage Banner. Use your own wording but you MUST use a WebStyle banner template.

3. Post your entry in the Sizzler Forums in this thread:
http://www.sizzlerforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1051

4. Wait for next weeks issue and I will announce the winner of a copy of Xara WebStyle 3 worth US$64.95.

NOTE: Judges decision will be final. Judges will be made up of Sausage Staff.

Finally I just had to share this email with you. As regular readers know I have been on a personal crusade against spam. I have tried everything, and Cloudmark SpamNet has to be the best thing I have found (it must be as nothing else is still on my system). As you will see Don persisted with it and now agrees with me!

----------------------------
Hi Nathan,

I complained before about your choice of spam filter but I was still willing to give it another shot.

SPAMnet didn't work when I first installed it, but yesterday I installed tried again with beta 7 and it's working like a charm. This morning I received 29 spam emails and it caught 24 -- that's better than the service my ISP offers with their MailGuard program connected to BrightMail, so I'm sold. Especially at the price.

Thanks very much for the tip.

Best regards,
Don
----------------------------

To close off I simply want to tell you to keep your eye on this months Sizzlers. There are going to be great specials and giveaways to celebrate our first year out on our own!


Keep on sizzling!

Nathan Allan
Sausage Sizzler Editor
editor@sausage.com

Gear Grinders

Setting it all up : Setting up a local development environment

Over the past few weeks I've gone over a bunch of topics, each related to setting up a development environment that can be located anywhere you have a LAN and a high-speed connection. I didn't learn it all once and I remember that some of the mistakes I made, big and small, took time for me to learn from.

This week, since I took off last week, I'd like to touch on 2 parts. Part 1 will be physically setting up the LAN. Part 2 will focus on Router Settings. For those of you with questions about which Linux distribution is best, or which modules to install, I'd suggest that you post those questions and I will direct much more experienced people than myself to help out with solid answers.

Part 1 : Setting up your Lan

My home LAN isn't much different than any office LAN I've had. At TodoBebe, we had a small amount of extra money, so when the phone system was wired, we had network cables wired. All the cables came to a central point in a storage/kitchen/network center. We had our DSL Modem / Router in there, which then went into our hub system. Viola! Shared connection! Anything plugged into a port on the LAN had high-speed Internet.

When I had to leave TodoBebe as a full time member, I brought A LOT of stuff home since we had no safe place to store. As the CTO, it was my duty. ;-)

Although my condo is larger than our office was, I have to share it with my wife and kids. Rather than taking over the living room, I was confined to having my desk in a corner of our oversized kitchen (Where I sit now) and putting whatever machines I could fit on shelves into our equally oversized front closet.

Between then and now, I have started and ended a design venture. At one point I had my main PC, a development machine, and 2 other PCs on my LAN. Since most were not needed, I sold them. I now have this PC; a second PC that is a general mail server (Catchall for TodoBebe) + file/print server + image library; and my development machine.

All three machines start out at my router. Recently I discussed my Linksys router. My DSL modem plugs into the WAN port of my router. DSL comes in next to this PC. With the other machines far away, I have a cable neatly going up the wall, into the ceiling, over the ceiling and down into the closet, there connecting to a little NetGear hub.

Networking? I'm not a network guru and know next to nothing about Windows Domains. I have what is essentially a Peer to Peer network using Windows 2000 Pro. I move files to and from my development server via FTP or Secure Shell (SSH).   The router's DHCP server hands out IP addresses and that's really about the whole story.

If you have specific questions, post them or e-mail me.


My Router Settings

I bet some of you are wondering how the hell you get the connection to pass through the router to your development machine. It's quite easy. 2 weeks ago I wrote about my Apache settings and how I have Name-based hosting working on the machine. Beyond simple.

The next trick is allowing traffic to pass through the router. Most routers these days come equipped with NAT or Network Address Translation. That essentially allows for all the PCs (up to 255) on the LAN to share one single inbound IP. AT the same time, it combines all the traffic from the inside, and allows it out. The "natural" bi-product it creates is a firewall. How can an external PC hack into the OS of a router with no OS? Really what's happening is it creates is a firewall. How can an external PC hack into the OS of a router with no OS? Really what's happening is the hacker's PC is sniffing for ports that just don't exist or must be opened manually.

That brings me to showing how my router is set up to allow for passage.

http://www.bramscolnick.com/Sausage/router.html

As a guide:

EXTERNAL PORT   DESCRIPTION / PROTOCOL
80              HTTP
22              SSH (Secure Shell)
21              FTP

Please note that all IPs are the development machine. In the list you'll see these internal IPs:

IP WHAT IT IS
100        Apache is set to serve Port 80 on IP .100
22, 21          The main IP for the machine is also the one used for connections.

In the list you'll see other ports, 2396 : 2398. For TodoBebe we use a web stats program entitled Wusage (www.boutell.com). For local testing, those are the ports I use and open. If Wusage isn't running, those ports don't work.

It's late and I'm tired.

Got questions? I've got answers.

http://www.sizzlerforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1040

Comments? Questions? Write to me. Bram

Xara WebStyle 3 95/98/Me/2000/NT 4.0/XP US$63.95

http://www.sausage.com/supertoolz/xarawebstyle3.html

At Sausage we cannot do it all. We cannot create ever application you will ever need. That is why we are going to start doing what we use to do, which is sell third party tools that we really think are up to scratch.

Over the coming months we will add to this array of products. The first however is Xara WebStyle 3. Note that I am truly writing this review without any bias. I played around with the product for hours and absolutely love it!


At a glance here is what you can do with it:

• Navigation Bars (with rollover code included)
• DHTML menus
• Photos
• Animated banner ads
• 2D headings
• 3D headings
• Buttons
• Bullets
• Dividers
• Logos
• Backgrounds
• Complete themes of web graphics for a turn key web site

The beauty of the product is that you do NOT need to be a graphic design expert to create a really nice site!

However regardless of whether you are a professional designer or a novice this program is definitely worth checking out! Note that we also have some demonstrations on our web site:
http://www.sausage.com/supertoolz/xarawebstyle3.html

Sizzler Spotlight

Mailing List Program Recommendations

Peter is looking for recommendations for mailing list management.

I have thrown in my own suggestion. Damian has noted what we use with Sausage Hosting. With a couple of other forum members throwing in their suggestions for good measure.

If you have a better suggestion please let us know!

http://www.sizzlerforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1019

Review by Nathan

Designed for Browsing

Burnt out and frustrated

Have any of you ever experienced a burn out? I don't mean getting high. I mean a psychological burn out. This past month has been one of the hardest ever in my life. Not only did I have some terrible family matters to deal with, but also I went and added a new career to my line of careers.

Many of you don't know that I have 2 degrees in design, one of which is in architecture. I graduated from Rhode Island School of Design with my second of two degrees back in 1993. Since then I've done what feels like a world of things. Besides having worked for architects and hating it, I spent 4+ years in import and export which later turned into product development and sourcing overseas (Asia). After that I co-founded a dot-com that's actually kicking some major butt! After that I co-founded a design company. (I had partners in both ventures. The CEO of the dot-com, one of 3 total partners, made some goofs and without much detail, the lead investor is now CEO and things are good. My design firm partner completely over sold himself as a sales person because he hardly ever sold. Laughably, he claimed to have turned down a high level marketing position.)

After those ventures, I decided it was time to reevaluate what the hell I was doing. I love to design, but I had customers that nickel and dime. I've had one recently that has nearly soured me on the whole business.   With my background in architecture and a desire to get into development (real estate), I picked up my license back in July and have been selling real estate for a little while.

It's a great thing to have for many reasons. With this being one of the many dreams to follow, this one has much promise. Additionally, I can afford to be selective about my design work since I will use my design services as both a creative release and some extra money.

For the past month I've found it almost drudgery to sit in front of my computer and design anything. I'm still part owner of TodoBebe (the dot-com) so I've had to design things recently. One thing was this ad (there's a typo in the mockup):

http://devel.todobebe.com/hw/Hispanic-Weekly.jpg

For myself, I just designed a new logo:

http://www.bramscolnick.com/Bram_logo.gif

There are times when I just want to stop doing anything and everything. Maybe your wondering where the tie in to design is. I'll tell you.

Feeling so bogged down with this and that, it's been near impossible to think clearly. The design work for TodoBebe is minimal lately. It's an ad here, a button there and mainly managing situations so the CEO can make business with our radio and TV shows, getting us ready for what I hope for is a sale. What really got to me was dealing with what felt like bullsh*t work from a client that obviously wanted free work.

It got to a point where they changed so many things that I told them I refused to do certain parts and would only do what was on the contract. They got nasty and told me to cancel the whole thing, give their money back. Since a contract existed, I laughed, and sent them a stern letter (certified return receipt), noting all the legal points on which they were wrong. A few days later they called back so nice, and friendly.

It doesn't matter. I've had more than just designer's block. It's more like I've boiled over and I don't want to do more. But then I get stuck because I love to create.

What's a guy to do? I've decided to put a lot of focus on real estate since it's a complete change of pace. As noted above, I'll be selective with my design work. At some point, mainly for an exercise, I'll create a site for my own work. In the meantime I get work by word of mouth and e-mail filled with links to previous work or with attached logo samples.

I hope this doesn't come off as whiny. The whole purpose of this was to set up why I feel the way I do. How do YOU feel? Have you been here? How have you gotten out of it?

http://www.sizzlerforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1041

Discuss with Bram

Sizzler Spotlight

TV Tuner Card Recommendations

Ok this is a blatant attempt to gather information for me. I figure I can do it once in a while!

I want to complete my wonder machine with a hook-up for cable TV and so I can capture video from my camcorder. Of course I want it all for as cheap as possible (no we are not wealthy at Sausage and I have to pay for this out of my own pocket).

Help me! Please? Who knows you may be the poster of the week and win a small prize!

http://www.sizzlerforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1048

Review by Nathan

Sizzler Spotlight

Evan Update

Many weeks ago (not many enough), my oldest son caught a cold. That cold, for whatever reason manifested into a quite severe case of childhood pneumonia. After a week of high fever, antibiotics that were not working (not to mention fear and frustration on our part) he woke up in the middle of the night scream as loud as he could. Each scream was followed by an even louder OWWWW!!

At 5am one Sunday too recently ago, we rushed to the hospital. Long story short, one Evan's lungs was badly stuck together from a severe pneumonia related bronchial infection. Essentially it was collapsed and unable to re-inflate because his chest cavity was filled with fluid.

That was a week of hell I wish to never go through again. It was heart breaking to see my little boy lying on a table; eyes wide open, staring at me, as a chest tube was inserted to drain the fluid. The worst part of all was that this sedative was strong enough to knock him, but from fear, he would not break eye contact with me.

I can't bear to go through all the details again but let me tell you the first 48 hours were scary. One dumb doctor decided to get dramatic and mention with confidence that surgery may be necessary. It turned out of course that it never was. I was already colorless, my wife even more so. Damn that doctor.

In any event, after a week in the hospital, Evan recovered pretty well. The pediatric attending physician said that Evan's case was the worst he's seen out of 100 cases. Likewise, his was the best recovery.

Evan is back in school after missing one month. He'd had a cold for a week +, then the hospital stay, then at home recovery for a week +. Things are mostly back to normal.

If I learned nothing else from this ordeal, I've learned that I'm truly a father, and damn, do I love my kids.   

Review by Bram

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