Thus, scriptNode! But before I really announced it or put it out there hardcore, I wanted it to have some substance: a few weeks worth of articles and maybe one really cool project. Well, today I finished that project: Spacius! A Space Adventure.

Spacius! is a game made entirely in JavaScript, except for the sound, which uses Scott Schiller’s exceptional Sound Manager 2 flash API. It doesn’t use anything complicated like canvas, which means it works great in every major browser. That’s quite a feat, I think, and I’m very proud of that.

What’s more deeply satisfying, though, is seeing Spacius! on the front page of Ajaxian. Very cool, and thanks Chris! Anyway, from here on out, nothing too technical will be on this blog; I’ll reserve that for useful articles on scriptNode.

Many a year ago, I was reading a video game magazine (I was probably a young teenager), quite possibly Nintendo Power but more likely EGM, because I actually had a subscription to that. Anyway, I saw the name Richter Belmont in the magazine, and for some reason, immediately loved it. For those unfamiliar with the name, he’s a character from one of my favorite video game franchises: Castlevania!

The name Richter in the real-world is probably more obviously associated with the Richter Scale, which is also another very cool reference. Those that know me well know I’m fascinated with natural disasters (tornados, earthquakes, and to a less natural extent, atomic bombs). Less interestingly, richter also means “judge” in German, which is neat (and like a good American, I have German blood in me).

It’s funny how my attachment to the name grew, because at first I thought it was pronounced “rich-tur”. When I found out it was actually pronounced “rick-tur”, I loved it even more! So over the years I plugged “richter” into various video games when they prompted me for a name, and sometimes people would see this and it kind of stuck. When the Internet was born and required handles, this was an obvious choice for me.

One of the problems with the Internet, however, is that it’s too damn popular. Richter is a relatively common name, and almost invariably taken, even by a site or service that’s not that popular. On a somewhat related note, I am known to troll idle in certain IRC chatrooms, where friends of mine will greet me in odd ways. One such derivative of my name was richtaur, which is basically a me-dinosaur (insert artist rendering here). And that’s where richtaur came from.

So, there is the (very verbose, sorry) history of my nickname/handle. I’m very happy to see that I’m the (as of this writing) 5th G result for richter and the 1st for richtaur! Nice! (Note: links removed because I think they killed my ranking.)

(Note: please don’t call me richter or richtaur in person. This is real life, people. I also hate the name Matthew. I understand that friends and relatives will always know and call me by Matt, and that’s fine, but I really prefer co-workers to call me Hack or Hackett. It’s not that I hate the name Matt that much, really, it’s just that I work with 10,000 other Matts. Thanks!)

Marge: Homer, has the weight loss tape reduced your appetite?
Homer: Ah, lamentably no. My gastronomic rapacity knows no satiety.

Hilarious, but lost on many people upon initial viewing.

Furthermore, as a web developer with a demand for standards, I find them irritating. If I want to type out something quickly (as in, say, this blog post), it defeats the purpose, because we all should be using this syntax:

<acronym title="JavaScript">JS</acronym>

… but it seems like a majority of web devs don’t. It’s a shame.

Next, there’s ambiguity. Here at Yahoo!, we use YML and YML, which are completely different (and right about now I’m betting you’re glad I actually use <acronym> because otherwise you wouldn’t know WTF). Notice a problem here? And then some people say explicitly Y-M-L, and others pronounce it “Yam-ul.” Confusing!

Lastly, there’s preference. I’ve noticed some people use BBIAB and others use BIAB. The difference is minimal, sure, but I’ve known some people that get really annoyed with that extra B in there. And me? Not only do I hate acronyms in general, but I get very irritated when people send “k” to me. I have a difficult time articulating exactly what bothers me so much about this, but I think it’s something along the lines of, “holy shit are you seriously so lazy you can’t put an ‘o’ in there to make yourself easily understood?!”

So acronyms have their place, sure, and sometimes are used quite well. But do not sacrifice being clearly understood for a few measly keystrokes. And once you’ve read this, please, don’t type “k” to me and expect me to still be courteous to you.

I mean, I recognize that I’m behind the times. I make no secret of that. Hell, I just recently started using del.icio.us. But I also sometimes stalk these lists of new software (and even attempt to contribute to them), and haven’t seen something I’d actually like to use in… well, maybe ever, because it turns out I haven’t been using any of them!

What’s it take for somebody to come up with a new killer app that I’ll use everyday? I think the last time this happened, it was YouTube, which I adore (also some of its less G-Rated ripoffs). Other offerings as of late have been maddeningly unoriginal or pointless, including MapJack — which is basically Google Street View with a different view? For fuck’s sake it even uses the Google Maps API! What is the point?

Here’s to looking forward to the next new idea…

Here’s my sexy new phone:

Pretty, yes? Maybe it’s not as shiny as iPhone, but I like it better in every way. Of course I’ve played with iPhone, and it just didn’t have some things I wanted:

1. Ability to attach pictures to text messages — this is a really basic feature I used constantly on my last phone and was really surprised iPhone couldn’t do.
2. Ability to (easily) swap out memory and batteries — I kept an extra battery for my last phone in my Yahoo! backpack and I can’t tell you how many times I used it.
3. Navigation — Seriously, using Google Maps for navigation is no good. Google Maps is probably the best thing the Internet has seen since Seanbaby, but it can’t do real-time 3d maps with GPS, sorry.
4. Full Qwerty KEYS — I gotta get my fingers on actual buttons. I couldn’t get used to the touch screen’s keyboard.
5. $$$!!! Not to mention that my phone was about 25% of the price.

(Please do not correct me on these. I asked people that own them and salespeople at Parrot. Also note the date of the post and note that I don’t give a fuck.)

One thing some folks said iPhone had over a BlackBerry was a decent browser (and they’re right, the default BB Browser is fugly). But two minutes and a free download later, and I’ve got decent CSS support, full images, and, really, one helluva browser. Well done, Opera! (Normally I badmouth any browser except Firefox, but a friend of Nintendo is a friend of mine… well let’s badmouth them a little anyway. Sell-outs!).

Furthermore, BlackBerry’s (BlackBerries? whatever) have fantastic and vibrant communities, and tons of folks who make awesome homegrown games for free!

iPhone is a clear success, and I’m not saying it’s going to fail (or even if that’s possible), but has an emerging new technology never fallen on its ass before? Hype is annoying and I tend to stay far, far away until said technology is quite mature (unless it’s from Nintendo).

So get off your elitist highhorses, douchebags. Some people really don’t want iPhones. They’re very cool, of course, but saying they’re “objectively better” is just as foolish as saying “Mac is better than PC.” Hard facts like processor speed, RAM and screen size are not debatable. The subtleties of software, user interface, features and community? Of course, stupids.

I dunno, maybe I’m just too oldschool. Maybe part of me really wants to be behind the times. Maybe I’m never trendy and make fun of trendy hipster losers because I’m jealous that I’m not one… Or this could just be me reading too much Maddox, but what the cocks is wrong with that?

Also, a special thanks to the best blog on the planet, Consumerist, for helping me ditch Verizon with no penalty. I’ll say it again: best blog ever.

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I’ve also put up an official blog to make it easy to track development and features, which will be plentiful. Make sure to check out the first post about the site launch and please let me know what you think. Even if you hate it, feedback is great.

So recently I acquired a dedicated server. Most services that I’ve seen will mostly certainly offer Linux, but usually not in distros that I’ve been crazy about: I hate RedHat, CentOS is a little odd, Gentoo is pretty good, and I don’t mind Debian. But Ubuntu (probably partially because of its rabid fanbase) has always made the most sense to me, and seems to have the most helpful users/admins and therefore documentation. It’s so easy to troubleshoot — all of your problems are just a web search away.

To my surprise and delight, the best value on a dedicated box also had the option of Ubuntu! After a single evening, I’ve got my webserver up and running everything I’ll be needing, plus some security checks for good measure. The following is a list of some of the issues that I ran into and how I solved them:

• Remove the CD Check

  This made me feel like I was back in 1998, having trouble with a Windows 98 install. I could use apt to search for packages, but when I tried to install, I was (obnoxiously) prompted for the Ubuntu CD. Kinda hard to put a CD in my server when it’s in Florida and I’m in California…

  To fix this, remove the cdrom option from the source list:

  
# Remove the ridiculous cd-rom check in apt-get (it's usually near the top)
sudo vim /etc/apt/sources.list


• Security: Prevent Root SSH

  Here’s a great security tip: do not allow root to login remotely. This might sound crazy to some people, but think about it from a security perspective. If somebody thinks they might know or be able to find out your password, that person will know to try it as the root user. Not only does the attacker already know the username to use, but if somebody gets in with root, you’re really up shit creek. So you want to remove the ability to remotely login as root:

  
# First: make sure the user account you use is in the sudoers file (very important so you don't lock yourself out of your own box)
export EDITOR=vim && visudo


# Add this line (at the bottom is fine)
yourusername ALL=(ALL) ALL


# Prevent root ssh
sudo vim /etc/ssh/sshd_config


# Find this line with "yes" and change it to:
PermitRootLogin no


# Restart your ssh daemon to see the changes.
sudo /etc/init.d/ssh restart


  If you try to login as root after this, you’ll get prompted for your password. It’ll always just look like you’ve got the wrong password — this is great because it doesn’t externally show what you’ve done — somebody could try to guess your root password all day and never be able to get in.

• Make Ubuntu a Webserver!

  I’d guess that most people running a Linux server just want a LAMP installation. In Ubuntu, setting one up is as easy as:

  
# Create a webserver!
sudo apt-get install apache2 php5 mysql-client-5.0 mysql-server-5.0 libapache2-mod-php5 php5-mysql


• PHP Command-Line Interface

  This probably shouldn’t be installed unless you really know what you’re doing. I run a lot of scripts to handle repetitive tasks for me, and since I’m not a fancy-pants Python user, I use PHP for the grunt work. Here’s how you setup PHP CLI:

  
# PHP CLI
sudo apt-get install php5-cli


• MySQL Login Problems?

  After the automatic installation of MySQL, I couldn’t help but notice that I wasn’t prompted for a root MySQL password. Shit! Sure enough, I was locked out. After a few searches, I came across the excellent MySQL documentation which helped out a lot. Here’s how I solved the issue on my server, though YMMV so try the link if this doesn’t work for you:

  
# Create a temporary SQL file to dump into MySQL
vim init.sql


# Paste this into the file:
SET PASSWORD FOR 'root'@'localhost' = PASSWORD('MyNewPassword');


# Stop MySQL
sudo /etc/init.d/mysql stop
sudo /etc/init.d/mysql start --init-file=init.sql


That’s all I’ve got — these took me quite a while to dig up so I thought I’d consolidate some of them here. I also made a ton of Apache changes and tried to make the server even more secure, but it’s so specific to my instance that it probably wouldn’t interest anyone.

I was going to write a little bit about the release, but I’m tired and I don’t feel like writing. I feel like sleeping.

(Also I really love this video’s thumbnail image.)