Ask MetaFilter posts by purephase

Help us name the tables in our 50's themed wedding!

purephase — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 15:53:26 -0800

Our wedding is 50's themed and we're trying to name the tables after popular 50's fads/icons/music etc. Unfortunately, browsing online and our own limited knowledge of the decade has brought up short on enough names. So far we have names like "The Car Hop", "Cadillac Lounge", "Sunset Boulevard", "Beatniks" but we need a lot more.

Any help would be appreciated!

Non-leather shoes in Edinburgh?

purephase — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 02:10:59 -0800

Decent non-leather shoes in Edinburgh? Arrived with a fairly uncomfortable pair and with all the walking I need to find something better. Vegetarian shoes seem fairly prominent in the UK (from an online ordering perspective) but are there any stores that carry them?

Decision: Train vs. Car hire in the UK.

purephase — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 17:22:23 -0800

Decision: Train vs. Car hire in the UK. As I'm coming from North America, my personal choice would be the train. I'd like to see the sights, not worry about parking, gas, or learning to drive on the opposite side of the street. However, the cost seems rather prohibitive ($400 CND for two people to travel from Edinburgh to London).

Reading Bryson's Notes From a Small Island it seems rather easy for someone to jump around by train on a whim. I realize that he probably has a Rail pass in order to do this but they're fairly expensive as well. A 4-day pass is $652 CND for two people and I'm not sure that 4 days will be enough. 8 days is far too long.

So, I'm looking at rental cars and they are a lot cheaper. I can get an automatic 4 door for less than $500 CND and it would offer a lot more flexibility in terms of where to go, how long it takes to get there etc.

It feels like I'm missing something though. The UK seems like such a train friendly place but the prices indicate otherwise. I'm basing the costs above on quotes from BritRail and easycar.

I would really like to do this by train! Any advice or assistance would be appreciated.

A brush-up on algorithms...

purephase — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 13:01:33 -0800

Imagine: You have an upcoming interview that will be heavily focused on algorithms (specifically computer language related but not a specific language). What resources would you turn to?

Can you bring a laptop with you when reporting for Jury Duty in Toronto?

purephase — Mon, 26 Feb 2007 15:37:35 -0800

Can you bring a laptop with you when reporting for Jury Duty in Toronto? I was checking through the FAQ's and I couldn't find any information about what is not allowed in the waiting areas. Normally, I wouldn't care and I would leave my work at home, but I have a rather pressing deadline and if there's a lot of waiting involved (and from what I've heard, there is) it would be nice to use the time to my advantage.

Failing that, if laptops are not allowed... how about a DS?

How do I force HTTPS in Tomcat (through Apache and mod_jk)?

purephase — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 15:56:41 -0800

I'm at my wit's end. I've been trying to configure tomcat (through apache 2 using mod_jk) to automatically re-direct all traffic to HTTPS from HTTP. More boring technical details to follow. Specifically, I'm trying to get CAS working. Tomcat is successfully serving-up the pages over HTTP and HTTPS and the application is working as expected. However, since this particular servlet handles user authentication I would like Tomcat to force HTTPS for all requests.

I have tried using isSecure() through JSP to redirect users but it simply puts the requests into an endless loop. I have tried the following configuration in the web.xml file (see Lukas Bradleys' answer) and it does force a redirect, but it uses the server hostname as the URL and not the proxied URL to the server (which means it doesn't work externally).

I've tried changing the hostname on the server but it continues to use the initial hostname which leads me to believe that this value is somewhere in the Tomcat configuration, but I cannot locate it.

So, is there an easier way to do this? Or, does anyone know where to look to modify that hostname to use the URL for the proxied site? Any assistance would be appreciated.

What's in a name... an IT department name.

purephase — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 21:44:15 -0800

IT Department naming conundrum. We've recently re-structured and in the shuffle a number of new positions, roles and responsibilities have been re-allocated to myself and my immediate staff. Help me come up with a name that adequately encompasses said changes and is recognizable in the industry. More details inside. We were a smaller group (5-6) that were largely responsible for a lot of the forward momentum that has drastically changed the IT environment at a large organization. Due to our overwhelming success (very unexpected initially) we've been swamped with both rapidly increased workload and a wealth of new hires.

This is good. However, the department that I manage is still a rag tag group of highly talented individuals and I have had a difficult time coming-up with a name that adequately encompasses our job responsibilities. These include:

- Network application administration (security, environmental control systems, financial/HR services, print management, backup systems etc.)
- Application development (middleware, intranet/internet web applications)
- Workstation management (deployment, inventory, centralized maintenance, and developing hardware/software standards for support)
- Database development, maintenance and administration.

Like I said, it's all over the map. We have Enterprise Application Administrators, Database Administrators, Web developers etc.

What would be a good department name that could encompass all these roles? Our sister department is Infrastructure and they are responsible for physical hardware deployment (servers, networking, wireless etc.)

Any assistance would be appreciated. Thanks.

Ion cleansing...

purephase — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 18:27:21 -0800

Help settle an argument: Ion Cleansing... bullshit or viable holistic practice? Personally, my bullshit-o-meter is off the chart given the junk science that is available online to explain the treatment. Unfortunately, I'm having a hard time finding any negative information about the treatment and, not to be deterred, I thought I'd ask here.

Here's a brief explanation of the process in case you're not familiar with it.

Track down an LCD television that supports media streaming over UPnP.

purephase — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 16:29:20 -0800

Does anyone recommend a specific LCD television that will allow streaming over UPnP from a media box, decode DivX, XViD, and other MPEG-4 video formats, and is available in North America (specifically Canada)? For a number of reasons (specifically space) I'm trying to do away with desktop workstations at home. I'm probably going to pick-up the new MacBook for the dual-boot capabilities and then a Linksys WRTSL54GS router.

Specifics of the router:
- Allows external storage to be shared amongst wired/wireless machines attached to said router. Buy a big Lacie drive and attach it to the USB ports and I've got a cheap NAS device.
- Offers streaming services to devices that support UPnP.
- With aftermarket firmware, wireless can be much more secure and (from what I hear) a lot of the bugs in the Linksys code have been resolved.

Problems:
- My television services (digital cable) are currently run through a dedicated workstation that also doubles as a media server (music, movies etc.).
- Unknown if any LCD televisions that are available in North America support media streaming over UPnP.

I've checked with a few stores and browsed around on the web, but I'm having a hard time tracking one down. So, as an added question -- Am I making this too complicated? It seems like a relatively straightforward plan, but outside advice is always welcome.

Stuck in table/form hell!

purephase — Mon, 29 May 2006 15:48:27 -0800

Tell me what web-forms really, really impress you. I'm stuck in "form-developer" block mode, and after muddling through mountains and mountains of layouts and best practises sites, I think I'm about to explode. The forms should be CSS only (no tables, unless there is tabular data involved) and valid XHTML (transitional is fine). Columnar, vertical, horizontal are all fine. Accessibility would be appreciated, but not necessary.

My current site is heavily form-based and currently using tables in order to get the column layout down. Unfortunately, the XHTML involved is messy as hell and very difficult to style consistently across the site.

I'm been trying to implement table-less forms for a few weeks now and it's been painful. I just need some inspiration (and, possibly, reasons to re-think the overall site layout). So, please send me some links to sites that really impress you (your own is fine).

(Obviously, ethics dictate that if I borrow any ideas/elements from these sites I will request permission from the developers. I would post links to my own site, but it's intranet only and not accessible to the outside world.)

Any assistance would be appreciated. Thanks.