Inanis.net

The Lego Carrier is coming along nicely now. I was really unhappy with the way the fighter flight pods looked, so I redesigned them. The new design makes the vessel look much more proportional side-to-side than it was, and gives it a more streamlined appearance. Will update pictures when I am a bit further along in the design, its still rough right now…

UPDATE: Pictures

I have been working on the Nova Carrier 3D Model quite a bit lately, and I have updated the piccies on the website to reflect that. I am learning a lot of stuff I didn’t learn years ago. Nice, high end techie outside-the-box-thinking kind of stuff while doing research into how to best implement this design. I think I am going to stick with my own instincts on most of it, borrowing and incorporating the new techniques into my own style. That way, I will be creating and implementing these techniques on my own instead of just copying someone else’s design.

Much, much more to do, so little time and computer resources to do it with.

Check it out.

Its official - the Lego Wiki box is up. I have been spending the last couple of days entering data for my vessels, working on article formating, creating new ideas… There is much more data to be input and I plan to keep going until the entire universe is in the system . . or the Wiki box dies from hardware failure… or a hacker. No worries, nothing mission critical there.

NOTE TO SELF: make sure to dump the database on a regular basis . . .

http://www.inanis.net/spid

After many hours of beating my head aganst hard objects because Ubuntu was being belligerent, I have my Lego Wiki software installed and running. I went with Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty, MediaWiki, and an old PIII 800Mhz box. As soon as I get the interface customized and the site locked down to only me (dont want wackjobs fu**ing with my universe), I will send the wiki public.

The OpenWiki software kinda sucks. I must admit that it was easy as hell to install. Since I already have a directory on the site dedicated to “full control” access, I was able to just pop the database file up there, edit the path to the database in the config file and upload the core code to another directory. Browse to the directory and -bling- OpenWiki is running. However, the software is insanely old and insanely crappy. MediaWiki makes OpenWiki look like a college course programming assignment. No apparent skinning capability, no user access control, horrible default layout, and an unintuitive user interface. It's out of the question for the kinds of projects for which I want a wiki. It can still be useful for some more basic stuff and it's SUPER easy to install, so I will keep it in mind for less intense projects.

So, I tried to install MediaWiki on my home Windows Server '03 development box (using IIS, not a WAMP thing) to see if I could use it for my Lego database and my Computer Museum on the inanis.net server, and it was an utter failure. They (the wiki people) weren't kidding when they said that MediaWiki doens't play nice with IIS, even when you do follow the directions. This means no Wiki running directly underneath my Windows web host, unless I can convince the host engineers to hack away at it until it's installed (unlikely).

Even if I do get them to get MediaWiki installed, I won't be able to have access to the database, because I don't have access to a console to dump the database out. This means that If I ever decide to move hosts or host my site at home, I won't be able to get at the data, and I will have to rebuild both databases from scratch. Ugh.

So, I am probably going to have to set up an Ubuntu 6.0.6 LTS LAMP server and either 1) run it with a DynDNS account from home -or- 2) co-locate it on a public IP at my host or at work and set up a subdomain like wiki.inanis.net.

Ubuntu is so awesome. MediaWiki installs on that in, oh, about 8 1/2 minutes. On top of that, I have experience getting Ubuntu LAMP running: I use it for some customized scripts for shatteredwindows.com and for a Tech Tricks Wiki for my job at work (no real link to the Tech Tricks I'm afraid. Can't let everyone know all my tricks: we call that job security).

*sigh*

Time to find a spare box and get out the old Ubuntu disc…

Well, it seems that if my hosting provider is willing to do some custom installation for me, then I can probably have a Wiki on their windows server.

What sucks about this entire wiki situation, is that because inanis.net is hosted on a windows box, the blog is a .NET application, and can't be moved to a linux box. I also don't feel like trying to hand convert all the blog entries, so the site will have to stay on windows. This means if I want wiki,  I need a seperate domain/ip address/server for it, or somehow get it on the windows server.

Anyways, Take a look here.

I also found that there is a wiki software called OpenWiki that runs natively on Windows servers. Might have to try that out! 

I have been contemplating setting up a wiki for my Lego Universe, however, I would need a linux box and a permanent IP address to do so. Don’t know if that’s in the cards, however it is something I will keep in mind and poke at bit by bit over time…