Ideas….

So I tired to make my blog appear in Google Buzz.  I tried the <link> tag that was described in the Google Buzz API Documentation.  No dice though.  I finally found instructions though.

Adding wordpress.com blog as connected site in Google Buzz

Works like a charm.  If you’re not a wordpress.com site you can add the <meta> tag by going to the theme editor and inserting the tag in the header.php file (assuming that the theme is created properly).

Yay!

So my dad listens to NPR like a fiend (its on from 6am until 6pm…maybe even later). And he LOVES Garrison Keillor (because really who doesn’t). So my dad sent me this snippet from the Writer’s Almanac:

So I wrote back to my dad:

They forgot to say that he created the first library school at Columbia, but forgot to ask the institution if that was alright.  He also had a desire to change the way the world spelled, so he consistently dropped unneeded letters from words (he was originally named Melville).  He also created the American Library Association and was subsequently kicked out for sexual harassment.  Finally he moved to upstate New York and created a colony.  He refused to allow in persons of color and jews.  One can assume from this that he was a bigot.

Basically Dewey was crazy, and would hate most of the librarians that are in the profession today.  So I suspect that’s why the occasion went largely unnoticed.

I decided that I wanted to create an EBS backed AMI on Amazon’s Cloud Computing platform.  I thought this would be REALLY hard.  I was completely wrong.

The first thing I did was start with an already existing EBS AMI. Right now there aren’t too many available but they are growing.  I chose an Ubuntu 9.04 image since I’m going to install a stack on it, and I’ve already done *most* of it before on Ubuntu.

A quick note: it is possible to create an EBS AMI from an S3 AMI, but I wasn’t able to figure that out (quickly).  Although I did find a script that will do this for you: http://gist.github.com/249915.

Next, I wanted to get the Ubuntu server prepared.  I needed to:

• install mysql — http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/ubuntu/install-mysql-server-5-on-ubuntu/
• install ruby on rails — http://www.hackido.com/2009/04/install-ruby-rails-on-ubuntu-904-jaunty.html (up to and including step 6)
• install zlib — http://www.techsww.com/tutorials/libraries/zlib/installation/installing_zlib_on_ubuntu_linux.php
• install blacklight — http://projectblacklight.org (includes solr and a number of gem dependencies)

I did all of this.  One thing I noticed, Blacklight requires me to use non-standard ports (ie not 22 and 80).  While the server was running, I went into the AWS console and opened ports for its associated security group.  The changes took effect immediately.  I definitely liked that.

Finally, I went in to the AWS Management Console and chose “Create Image (EBS AMI)”.

Then I filled in the information including a description of my image:

and voila! EBS backed AMI.  the one caveat is:

DON’T TERMINATE THE INSTANCE UNTIL THE NEW AMI HAS FINISHED BEING CREATED

because then you’ll loose all the work that you have just done.  doh!