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Over on Wordpress, I was asked if the book was… Written by Daniel Ruth on Sunday, 02 June 2024 16:41
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Utter Madness!
Written by Daniel Ruth
Owner of this website. See my bio page if you want to know more;)

I had a few vacation days free, so what did I decide to do? Upgrade my NAS's operating system! Yay! Or not.

It didn't go smoothly. A while ago I had to downgrade from Maria BD 10 to 5. I had thought it was an issue with symbols being forced to be used as passwords and Joomla not being able to handle it. Maria DB 5 didn't have that issue, so that is what I used. Nevertheless the new operating system for the NAS did not support Maria DB 5 so I buckled down and figured out how to upgrade it and then upgraded the NAS OS. It was educational but there was more documentation on how to get the settings right for operability with Joomla. I am no expert but I am now far more comfortable setting up the database than I was. So, while it was time-consuming, it wasn't too bad.

However, the upgrade of the NAS OS failed. The data wasn't lost but for awhile, I couldn't access it on the local network. Synology has a backdoor that allows it to connect to your NAS and reset or even re-install the operating system. I'm somewhat ambivalent about it but it saved my butt from having to just do a complete wipe and start from ground zero. I did lose all my settings though. So off I went to reconnect to the network, then the ISP/WAN settings. All the settings were wiped, including the SSL certs. This is an incredible PITA. Suddenly your own browser won't allow you to connect your website because it isn't trusted. No one else can get to your website either. Synology has software that will automatically generate a license but it is only for their own backdoor connection, not your alias domain. The method used for general certificates kept failing, stating the ports weren't open. They were.

So I go to another provider and find out that the CNAME method of verifying domain ownership isn't working. They offer email verification, so I dive deep into a rabbit hole to install a mail server, that I can't get to work. I actually know a lot more about mail servers than I ever did before! Apparently not enough to get it working though. The third option is pretty simple... FTP to your site and leave a text file at a specified location. It verifies you have access to the domain's server and you have your license. This was pretty easy and I should have just done this in the first place instead of being dazzled by the possibility of free custom e-mail addresses. Though I will figure it out someday. Yesss, my precious...

So I finally get my license and after some issues with HSTST, my website is declared safe. The world can rest easy. Of course, then I go onto my website and find out that several web pages won't load! Coincidentally it is the same pages that use the module 'Minifrontpage Pro". Tah Duh! It must be that module's fault!. Not so. Apparently, those pages also use a carousel module to display images and it got borked. Maybe from the newer PHP 8. It is an old module from about 15 years ago, so it seems possible. Anyway 'Minifrontpage Pro" isn't the guilty party and that's good! This module can be configured in several ways and one of them is a carousel display. So now it pulling double duty! I didn't reach that realization instantly. At first, I thought the template was having issues. It's old too. Then a filter problem with a zero return crashed it and I had to figure that out. It was a lovely time. You'd think a program that has been around for decades (with updates) would figure out how to gracefully handle errors, especially a simple filter where there are no results. Does Google crash if it can't find what you're looking for? No! It just blushes and looks shamefacedly at the ground!

Anyway, I am done for the moment with my 'tech spa experience' (TM). Everything is up to date... or as up-to-date as Synology will let it get (they are a few years behind the rest of the world. PHP 8 is NOT the newest version, nor is their Maria DB 10 the newest revision). I think the next big thing on the horizon is figuring out how to update to Joomla 4. One of my integral extensions, K2, is not compatible. The very thought of writing my website from scratch makes me nauseous. I dived deep into the rabbit hole that is "Community Builder" and since I haven't used it in years I would have to re-learn all the parts I set up (and then no one ever wanted or used). If I truly had to do that I think I would just leave that out. No one needs my integrated chat, messaging, forums, chat rooms, or all the other things that were cool... but useless. It's the Sunk Cost Fallacy. I spent so much time setting it up I can't bear to give it up even if it's truly useless.

Written on Wednesday, 10 May 2023 21:58 Be the first to comment! Read 162 times
Going Mad!
Written by Daniel Ruth
Owner of this website. See my bio page if you want to know more;)

In general, I enjoy fiddling around with Joomla and the website. There are times, however, when it is maddening. Last week the site went down. At first, I blamed the domain server for pointing to the wrong location. Then I figured it was the NAS box I use to host the site. I thought I had it nailed when I found it would not update the web location and synch with the domain server. I spent too much time trying to get it to talk to the Synology account to update the web location. Then I noticed that NAS box had lost its time sync. Again. It's' happened before and I suddenly get fake malware notifications as the system realizes that hackers have gotten into the system to change my computer's time... so evil... the notification goes away when I correct the time. Apparently, it can nuke my web page too. Talk about the domino effect. I really have no idea why my NAS box can't keep time. Maybe I should add an atomic clock;)

Written on Saturday, 02 October 2021 22:35 Be the first to comment! Read 304 times
Not Even Two Legs to Stand On
Written by Daniel Ruth
Owner of this website. See my bio page if you want to know more;)

I had some minor surgery on my foot about a week ago. Nothing serious, just an outpatient procedure. I have to stay off of it for a few weeks during recovery. My job has allowed me to work from home for the duration. Fortunately, I am allowed to walk enough to go to the bathroom and the kitchen but most of the time the foot should be up. My job has allowed me to work from home for the duration. My kids have still managed to step on every part of my foot except the part that has the surgery on it. Am I paranoid or are they really out to get me?

Written on Monday, 22 March 2021 21:34 Be the first to comment! Read 513 times
Can You Hear Me Now... again
Written by Daniel Ruth
Owner of this website. See my bio page if you want to know more;)

Can you feel the deja vue? I do! I published a blog with this name a few days ago. Then I had an issue with the permissions of the main config file and had to restore a backup. I am pretty sure that when the backup program reinstalls the system it re-sets the permission. Thus it's an easy way to avoid trying to fix the issue the hard way. I thought the backup was up to date but it was missing my latest post. So...this is mainly from memory. It should suffice.

So... I installed a lot of features into the web site. Community Builder you all know about, right? Of course, you did. Basically its a set of modules that allow you to put in a profile and connect to other people on the site. It's a neat little thing, I was vaguely hoping my gamer friends would use to organize their games, schedules and chat about the game. Usually, we send back and forth about 50 e-mails about the game between sessions and this seemed a decent way to communicate. One of them actually records the events and I have been posting his recap under his name (with his permission). It hasn't caught on yet but the dream hasn't died.

The base package is nice but it isn't configured, so it took a little work to massage it into place. It has the profile, blogs, and articles for the registrants and connects nicely with the site forum and IM modules. Then I got the addons such as Video and picture galleries able to add to the profiles and then there are the groups. Basically groups are clubs, hobbies or interests you join and can post blogs, galleries message boards and private forums. Then I got an instant messaging module to chat with other members logged in. I may have gone overboard but it was fun. there's a more detailed breakdown of the features and how to use them under the Community top menu

Finally, to the title reference... I fixed the Amazon blog reference that pointed to my website blog (as opposed to the Wordpress blog). So you can now hear that if you want. Though you might be hearing double on this post.

Written on Friday, 07 February 2020 02:11 Be the first to comment! Read 662 times
To the Pain!
Written by Daniel Ruth
Owner of this website. See my bio page if you want to know more;)

There's been an issue with the site for a while that forced it to use PHP 5.6. If you know what that means... Congratulations! Basically it is an old standard that hasn't been updated in ages. Think Windows 7. Initially, I thought that my Synology NAS just couldn't change to PHP7.3. Then I found out after chasing my tail for over a year that it actually had been (but I didn't think it had since there was no indicator but every time I changed it to the newer PHP version the site would go down. It was very confusing and frustrating and confusing.

As I was fiddling around with the webserver settings I read an article on how someone had fixed a similar issue in Wordpress by uninstalling WP in Synology and then restoring a copy of the installation without going through Synology's installer. So I uninstalled it but when I tried to re-install it through Akeeda I found Akeeba had lost permission to create folders. Oops. Okay, I tried to reinstall Joomla. Somehow the Synology installer had lost permission to install it. ?!?!? Next, I used Hyperbackup to reinstall the original Joomla setup but now I lost connection to the database even when I was in PHP 5.6. I went into PHPmyadmin and although I could see everything I didn't have permissions to make changes. It also forced me to add special character to my password.

So I fiddled around with the install since I still have no idea its the database. I mess things up but no big deal. I have Akeeba, right? Its permissions got fixed when I restored the install with Hyperbackup. But... it warns me that the database may not accept my special character... the very same one that MariaDB forced on me. The restore fails. Can't connect to the database. Well, now it has to be a database issue so I go into PHPMyAdmin and I can't even log in. I reset the passwords from the front of Maria and it still doesn't work. I uninstall Mariadb 10 and PHPMyAdmin and reinstall them and the same thing happens. So I install MariaDB 5 and PHPMyAdmin. I can't log in as a user but I can login as the root. I change the configuration.PHP to the root user and suddenly everything works. In PHP 5.6 AND 7.3.

So mostly fixed. I am not happy about using the root identity but I can't log into the user no matter how many times I change the password. I suppose I may work up the courage to reinstall MariaDB 10 again but...ugh.

Written on Monday, 27 January 2020 11:14 Be the first to comment! Read 673 times
To Go Where No Man Has Gone Before
Written by Daniel Ruth
Owner of this website. See my bio page if you want to know more;)

So RPGs have been a hobby for me for years. A cousin introduced me to the Palladium Fantasy RPG and the Palladium world in its various incarnations has been my favorite ever since. Today Palladium has an entire Megaverse of content but that old Fantasy RPG has its place in my heart. However, I moved and it's been hard to get a Rifts game going either as a player or a GM since then. Setting up a webcam and Skyping just didn't work. Years passed again. For a while I played various incarnations of D&D with my local friends in my new home. Every other week I'd troupe over to a friend's and we'd sit down at the table and roll some dice. But time passed, we got old, had kids, moved out of state and had various mid-life crises. We tried long-distance playing again. Again the webcam came out and failed. After some fumbling around we started to use an online gaming platform called Fantasy Grounds combined with Skype. It started out a bit clunky but after a few years the D&D ruleset and more specifically the 5e ruleset because very polished. It's endorsed by Wizards of the Coast, which seems very wise considering I have pretty much bought all the content at least twice so I could have the hard copy AND play online with the reference material.

And yet... and yet... what about the game system I actually gave a darn about? Well, Palladium is still coming out with content but without people to play with, I really haven't kept up. Every few years I would sit down with a serious face at my computer and Google up a storm trying to find some way to play Rifts online. Roll 20 had some online games but I had invested too much energy in Fantasy Grounds to redo it all in Roll 20. SO fast forward a few weeks ago. I sit down, do another search and I get a reference pop up. Someone named "Damned" had made a very flexible ruleset for Fantasy Grounds. It's not perfect but with a little bit of spit and polish, it may just work. I dug into the tutorials for extensions, stumbled around a bit in the xml and lua files and came up with a slight modification that I think will work with Fantasy Grounds and Damned's MoreCore ruleset. Fortunately, Damned is very responsive to questions. I feel a bit guilty for wasting his time but with his help, I have something I put together with an online tutorial on YouTube. I still don't actually have a campaign to play but it was fun to put together. If this interests you check out my Youtube tutorial!

Written on Wednesday, 27 November 2019 03:46 Be the first to comment! Read 792 times
The DiskStation Shuffle
Written by Daniel Ruth
Owner of this website. See my bio page if you want to know more;)

The DiskStation I had... died. I was even notified of the time of death since Synology tells me when my DiskStation is offline. This only really matters since I have this website on the darn thing. I only had it a year but I bought it used, so I was pretty worried when it went down. Amazingly Synology is pretty awesome when it comes to replacements as long as its within the warranty period. If your reading this you may have realized that it is now up and running. Everything was saved except the internet/network settings. Unfortunately every time I mess with those I want to throw the darn thing away. Entering various settings over and over until one finally works is one definition of hell. Finally, I switched two cables around and I was live. I guess I lack some basic understanding of the details;) Hopefully, it will be a few more years before it goes down again.

Written on Friday, 21 June 2019 21:27 Be the first to comment! Read 934 times
Better Late than Never, Right? Right?
Written by Daniel Ruth
Owner of this website. See my bio page if you want to know more;)

I was late. I completely missed my December publish date. I almost missed my revised date of late January but I barely made that one. All of these dates are self-inflicted so I suppose there is no harm. Moving into the new house has been a roller coaster. It required a huge change to my lifestyle, which I won't get into, but has generally been positive. Except on my writing schedule. It has definitely hit that harder than I thought. Back in June, I was writing very quickly. In fact, I had started two other projects (a children's book and a litRPG story)and had been making great progress on everything. My latest schedule hit was due to both my girls being sick and having a water leak (which turned out to be in the yard). The girls are actually easier to take care of when they are coughing and listless, except for keeping mommy and me up all night. The flipside is that since they are coughing on us I expect we'll be sick in about a week.

I haven't touched my website in several months, so I was worried that I would completely forget how to use it. Having worked with it for a few days I can thankfully say that it mostly came back. I even found that Goodreads has new widgets that allow your book reviews in Goodreads to be viewed on your website. That is more than Amazon allows. See my blog for a slightly more in-depth description of my tears of bitterness.

On the downside, I realized you can't blog directly in the Joomla editor because if you take too long you get logged out and you lose your blog/comments. Yes, this is my second attempt. If you are reading this and you want to leave a comment...remember to write in WordPad or something and THEN copy the test into the comment field. Just saying.

Of course since the last time I used Joomla it has started saying that PHP 5.6 is outdated and to switch to PHP7.2. I installed this and have been trying various tricks to get Joomla to use it. Unsuccessfully. Running a server on a Synology box has been fun and educational but it has moments of frustration.

Written on Monday, 28 January 2019 19:07 Be the first to comment! Read 1136 times
Growing Pains
Written by Daniel Ruth
Owner of this website. See my bio page if you want to know more;)

I moved to a rental house about two weeks ago. Talk about a real pain in the butt. Aside from the packing and unpacking and hauling stuff around in a truck having a Joomla website and NAS has been more of a pain than I thought. My new provider is AT&T. I moved in on a Wednesday and had internet service for about a day. During this time I wrestle to get the port forwarding to work. I thought it was a heat issue. The router was in the garage with a temperature of over 105 degrees F. AT&T came out about four days later and moved it inside. It was up for about a day. Four days later AT&T comes back out and changes all the wiring from the service connect to my house. Service is up for about a day and then crashes hard. Four days later AT&T comes out and changes the router and tracks the issue to the connectors at their service. I am finally up. Yay. It takes about a week to get the NAS and Joomla up due to some odd issues on the brand spanking new router they gave me. I feel like AI spent weeks playing wack a mole but everything seems to be working.

Written on Sunday, 26 August 2018 14:42 Be the first to comment! Read 1318 times
RSS Madness
Written by Daniel Ruth
Owner of this website. See my bio page if you want to know more;)

Just found out that this K2 Blog/commenting functionality has a RSS feed option. My pseudo dumb blog can now be a RSS. They grow up so fast. (sheds a tear) Seriously though I have been trying to get RSS feeds to show on the website. The free versions are really finicky and most feeds come out as errors. I would love to show Palladium news and Dresden news but I get errors with the ones I am using now (Simple RSS). The Wizards of the Coast RSS shows up nicely as do the pictures in it but not much else. Apparently, an extra space in the link can ruin the extensions day. I had RSS Factory once, which read everything but wouldn't process images. I had to roll back an installation to an earlier backup and when I tried to re-install it I got an error. The restoration left stuff in the table it didn't like;) I lost some nice extensions due to this error. OSMap, EasyFrontEndSEO, JCH Optimization. All of these get an error now when I install and choke without fully installing. I suppose the moral of the story is to uninstall the extra extensions and THEN restore. I had to restore the Joobla installation due to HD Videoshare acting up. It didn't work and my browser suddenly said my page wasn't secure even after I removed it. Ugh. Yendif Video is less feature rich but is easy to configure and doesn't freak out my security settings.

Written on Monday, 16 July 2018 22:18 Be the first to comment! Read 1200 times

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WordPress Blog Mirror

Sheperd

Thursday, 21 July 2022 05:33

I was contacted a couple of months ago by Sheperd: Discover the best books. They wanted to showcase a book I wrote. Naturally I accepted. I have been pretty horrible at marketing my book, so...

Power of the Pencil

Saturday, 01 January 2022 02:11

All the edits are in. Finally. Books 1-3 have been reviewed again and corrected. The Omnibus is also updated. Sigh. This part is possibly my least favorite part of writing. It's also probably the...

And For My Next Trick...

Sunday, 03 October 2021 06:37

One of my readers had some kind advice on marketing. I did go to Shadow Valley Press and looked at the information they had. Shadow Valley Press actually had an entire tutorial and pointed to a...

Distracted Drivings

Sunday, 10 January 2021 09:49

One of my readers asked a few questions. I responded via e-mail and later through the chat on my website (she was the first to ever use it.... whoot!), however I thought I should update everyone...

The Corona Virus Huddle

Sunday, 05 April 2020 17:56

Well, here we are 'Sheltering In Place". Wow. What a different world. I couldn't imagine this a year ago. I only had to stay at home for about two weeks before my business...

Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing

Monday, 13 January 2020 01:35

Well, the new year is here and a lot happened... yet so little. First of all before Christmas I was able to knock out a few chapters. I was hoping to keep some momentum going since it is...

Forked Process

Monday, 10 June 2019 07:24

A visitor to my blog had an interesting idea. There is a website called Royal Road. People go there to publish their stories in a chapter by chapter method. They get feedback and...

I Blinked Again

Sunday, 03 February 2019 21:39

When I first published my book (#1) in 2014 Indie reviews weren't really a thing. They may have existed but either I didn't find them or I simply don't remember them. With my second...

Ready, Set... Go!

Wednesday, 30 January 2019 02:00

I have just submitted the third book to the Amazon store! So its almost out. Of course, Amazon has to review the submitted content for horrible errors but they usually do that within a...

New Home Sweet Home

Thursday, 23 August 2018 22:26

Just moved into a new house about two weeks ago. What a huge endeavor. Every time I move I get determined to throw things out. Nothing was done during this time. A few weeks...

Perils and Plans

Tuesday, 19 June 2018 23:17

I have had a few questions from readers about how far along I am with book 3. I am about 3/5 done (unless it runs longer than expected). I am looking at a release around December. ...

This is a mirror of my Wordpress Blog. It has no direct way to comment to the Wordpress blog, although if you look to the far left you will see a site blog I have cludged together. It also does not list any of the comments or replies from my visitors in the main Wordpress blog. If you want to join in on the fun and frolicking head over to my active blog over at WordPress. Click the button below to go!