Cody Taylor

Iddo Genuth writes “Scientists from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel and San Diego State University have observed an explosion of a star 50 times larger than the sun. In what they call a ‘first observation of its kind’ the scientists were able to notice that most of the star’s mass collapsed in on itself, resulting in a creation of a large black hole. While exploding stars, or ‘supernovae,’ aren’t unprecedented, this star, which lay about 200 million light years away from earth and was million times brighter than the Sun, has exploded as a supernova at a much earlier date than the one predicted by astronomers.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Quick htpasswd Protection Setup On Linux.

cody@taylor:~$  <--This is the prompt. You do not need to type this

In the console get into the directory that you wish to protect.

cody@taylor:~$ cd /var/www/protected

Get the full path to the directory if you don’t already know it.

cody@taylor:~$ pwd

Create the htaccess file and add the following lines.

cody@taylor:~$ vim .htaccess
AuthUserFile /var/www/protected/.htpasswd
AuthName "This Site"
AuthType Basic
Require valid-user

Next use the htpasswd linux command which should be in the most common distros.

cody@taylor:~$ htpasswd -c .htpasswd someguy
New password: 
Re-type new password:

Almost done. Now you need to set the permissions on the files we just created.

cody@taylor:~$ chmod 755 .htaccess .htpasswd

All good.

Linux / Unix Command: history

Linux Command Description
This command displays a list of the most recently executed commands on Linux and Unix workstations and servers.

For the impatient here is the proper syntax:

history
history [n]
history -c
history -d offset
history [-anrw] [filename]
history -ps arg

Here are the only real useful options for this very useful linux command.

-c will clear the history list.

history -c

will remove all entries in your history list.

-d will delete the command at the specified offset.

history -d 24

will remove the 24th entry. Each line is labeled so it’s easy to clean up after yourself if you don’t want your boss to easily find your blunder.

There are other arguments available but I’ve never had a use for them and you can always use the man pages to check up on them if you need to.

Sometimes the history file removes some entries in order to keep the list from taking to much space. This can be unpleasant when you’re looking for some nix command that you know you’ve executed but can’t remember the exact syntax of. To increase the size of the list you will need to edit your bash_profile in your home directory (That is, assuming you are using bash like most sane linux users). This can be done very easily :

Add these two lines to your .bash_profile. This will not take effect until your next login.

vi ~/.bash_profile
HISTSIZE=340
HISTFILESIZE=680

Assuming Steve Jobs returns in late June, as scheduled, his medical leave is approaching its halfway point. So how’s Apple doing in his absence? Very well, we’d say — almost as if he hadn’t left.

Is Your ISP One of Them?

Michael Oswald is a great digital artist from California. His skills brought him on the cover of Advanced Photoshop Magazine.

‘They’ have thousands of followers, they adorn themselves with Bio’s which are occasionally obscure but often that of a self proclaimed Guru …and of course you’ve never heard of them before. Should you follow them?

Linux is free, easy-to-use and is shedding its geeky image, thanks to fans who prefer it to Microsoft’s mighty operating systems. But is it for everyone? Jamie Merrill asks four rookies to put it to the test.

Getting an idea and inspiration is sometimes really hard and when you are planning to start your new web design project and you are curiously finding for a mind blowing web design inspiration so you don’t want to spend too much time and want to get start something as soon as you can.

Earlier this week Id Software released an iPhone port ofWolfenstein 3D as open source, but at the time it wasn’t in the AppStore for download. Wait no longer, it’s there!