Re: MonadLUG Notes, 12-Oct-1007: Ben Scott presents DNS and BIND
On 10/14/07, Ted Roche [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: He'd replaced the MagicPoint presentation with S5, and had a few technical issues with getting it to behave, but persevered. This turned out to mostly be the alternate theme I picked, which apparently is buggy. Switching back to the stock S5 theme fixed most of my problems (after I got home). I then went in and tweaked the stock S5 files to fix my other problems. I removed the image that was colliding with my technical text (the original reason I switched themes). I also modified the JavaScript to *not* advance on mouse-click, so I can use the mouse to highlight things during the presentation. Isn't open source wonderful? :-) I also took the opportunity to tweak the content. Every time I give this presentation, I learn of things I could improve, and make changes. Sometimes, the changes even turn out to be improvements. ;-) Finally, I have uploaded the changed/improved slides to the GNHLUG web site (the 2007 file): http://wiki.gnhlug.org/twiki2/bin/view/Www/PresentDNS Thanks to Ben for efforts above and beyond ... Oh, pshaw. All it was was a slightly long drive, something I'm used to (being a life-long NH resident). I was just caught unawares by exactly how long it was going to be. More than anything, I was unhappy because it meant I had to rush the presentation. But you're welcome. :) If you want me to come back and present a part II (i.e., actually setting up and configuring BIND, and writing zone files), I'd be willing. -- Ben ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: MonadLUG Notes, 12-Oct-1007: Ben Scott presents DNS and BIND
Ben Scott wrote: On 10/14/07, Ted Roche [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: He'd replaced the MagicPoint presentation with S5, and had a few technical issues with getting it to behave, but persevered. This turned out to mostly be the alternate theme I picked, which apparently is buggy. Switching back to the stock S5 theme fixed most of my problems (after I got home). I then went in and tweaked the stock S5 files to fix my other problems. I removed the image that was colliding with my technical text (the original reason I switched themes). I also modified the JavaScript to *not* advance on mouse-click, so I can use the mouse to highlight things during the presentation. Isn't open source wonderful? :-) I also took the opportunity to tweak the content. Every time I give this presentation, I learn of things I could improve, and make changes. Sometimes, the changes even turn out to be improvements. ;-) Finally, I have uploaded the changed/improved slides to the GNHLUG web site (the 2007 file): http://wiki.gnhlug.org/twiki2/bin/view/Www/PresentDNS I took a look at the slides, because I know you had some troubles with the way the layout looked and behaved, and I felt bad for recommending S5 if it gave you so much trouble, and I think I found the source of some of those problems: the main slide file has to be XHTML 1.0 Strict, which is really, really finicky about how things work. Tags have to be lower-case, all opened tags have to be closed, etc. Not too bad if your writing a system to generate code, but a pain in the neck in a situation like this where you're likely to write the file by hand in a text editor (or porting it from MagicPoint file format) So, instead of: pMain heading: ul liList item one ul liSub list item one liSub list item one /ul liList item two /ul You have to have: pMain heading:/p ul liList item one ul liSub list item one/li liSub list item one/li /ul/li !-- Note that this closes List Item One above, making the second list subsidiary to the first list item -- liList item two/li /ul (I *think* I got this right...) It's a pain in the neck to get code this way, and I use http://validator.w3.org to tell my when I've finally dotted every I and crossed every T, er, t. I did a quick run-though of the HTML file you supplied, and posted an update to the board. You may find it displays a little better. Hope this helps you the next time you give the presentation. Charlie, when are you going to have Ben back for Part II? I'm looking forward to it! -- Ted Roche Ted Roche Associates, LLC http://www.tedroche.com ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: MonadLUG Notes, 12-Oct-1007: Ben Scott presents DNS and BIND
Ted Roche wrote: I took a look at the slides, because I know you had some troubles with the way the layout looked and behaved, and I felt bad for recommending S5 if it gave you so much trouble, and I think I found the source of some of those problems: the main slide file has to be XHTML 1.0 Strict, which is really, really finicky about how things work. (I *think* I got this right...) It's a pain in the neck to get code this way, and I use http://validator.w3.org to tell my when I've finally dotted every I and crossed every T, er, t. So, is there a better way to author S5 than being really, really careful while writing XHTML by hand and using an XHTML validator a lot? I'm thinking about using S5 for an upcoming MerriLUG presentation but if it is a pain to author I might just stick with PowerPoint (yeah, PowerPoint on Mac OSX for a presentation on FOSS software (Python) to a Linux UG, spare me the comments...) Kent ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: MonadLUG Notes, 12-Oct-1007: Ben Scott presents DNS and BIND
On 10/24/07, Ted Roche [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... the main slide file has to be XHTML 1.0 Strict ... I'm not sure it does. Like I said, I found that switching back to the default theme (instead of the third-party theme I had found) seemed to fix most of the problems I had. It may be that, had I used pristine XHTML with the third-party theme, the third-party theme would have worked better. But I suspect the third-party theme just has old/inferior JavaScript. I noticed that it didn't auto-number the slides, either. The other part of my trouble was that I kept trying to click on the slide to highlight things, and S5 interprets that as Go to next slide. That was pure user error. But it was also easily fixed by removing the onClick hook from the JavaScript that drives the slide show. :) I did a quick run-though of the HTML file you supplied, and posted an update to the board. Well, thank you. It certainly doesn't hurt to have better markup! :) -- Ben ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: MonadLUG Notes, 12-Oct-1007: Ben Scott presents DNS and BIND
Ben Scott wrote: On 10/24/07, Ted Roche [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: ... the main slide file has to be XHTML 1.0 Strict ... I'm not sure it does. Like I said, I found that switching back to the default theme (instead of the third-party theme I had found) seemed to fix most of the problems I had. Okay, *I* am too finicky, it's true. It's either valid or it shouldn't have the header. But,... ... I only tweaked on the slideshow this morning because some of the layout was coming out wrong on my machine (FF 1.5 under FC6, with Liberation fonts as the default), text overlaid on top of other text, list items munged together. While I was at it, I thought I might as well make the document valid. I suspect it was the closing list-item tags that were the main source of problems. Everyone else's browser should have a different experience. Ah, the joy of the web... -- Ted Roche Ted Roche Associates, LLC http://www.tedroche.com ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: MonadLUG Notes, 12-Oct-1007: Ben Scott presents DNS and BIND
Kent Johnson wrote: So, is there a better way to author S5 than being really, really careful while writing XHTML by hand and using an XHTML validator a lot? I would think an editor that knows about XHTML so that it creates the /li when you create the li tag would help a lot. I mostly hand-code my HTML (I know, how last century!), so I'm used to it. I think Ben ran into so much trouble because he was working from an older batch of text and transmogrified it to HTML. Writing from scratch using the supplied templates eliminates most of the problems. I just validated the CSS slideshow I'm working up for next month, and it took a couple of tweak (adding slashes at the end of IMG tags, for example) to get it compliant. Still in beta, but visible at: http://www.tedroche.com/Present/2007/css/css.html I'm thinking about using S5 for an upcoming MerriLUG presentation but if it is a pain to author I might just stick with PowerPoint (yeah, PowerPoint on Mac OSX for a presentation on FOSS software (Python) to a Linux UG, spare me the comments...) The advantages I see to S5 is that you can post the content directly to a web site and viewers do not need special software to view it, it's lighter in terms of bandwidth, and more easily fed to the search engines. Failing this, perhaps OpenOffice.org Impress to develop the presentation and PDF output is second-best. But PowerPoint? PowerPoint kills, man. (Well, PowerPoint doesn't kill people. People using PowerPoint kill people. But, still...) P.S. You might take a look at Google Present if you've got a free Google Apps account. Similar in concept to S5. -- Ted Roche Ted Roche Associates, LLC http://www.tedroche.com ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: MonadLUG Notes, 12-Oct-1007: Ben Scott presents DNS and BIND
On Wed, 2007-10-24 at 10:03 -0400, Kent Johnson wrote: Ted Roche wrote: I took a look at the slides, because I know you had some troubles with the way the layout looked and behaved, and I felt bad for recommending S5 if it gave you so much trouble, and I think I found the source of some of those problems: the main slide file has to be XHTML 1.0 Strict, which is really, really finicky about how things work. (I *think* I got this right...) It's a pain in the neck to get code this way, and I use http://validator.w3.org to tell my when I've finally dotted every I and crossed every T, er, t. So, is there a better way to author S5 than being really, really careful while writing XHTML by hand and using an XHTML validator a lot? docutils includes support for s5 output: rst2s5 The docutils conventions are a bit more complicated than I'd really like, but most of the simple cases are fairly easy to master. I'm thinking about using S5 for an upcoming MerriLUG presentation but if it is a pain to author I might just stick with PowerPoint (yeah, PowerPoint on Mac OSX for a presentation on FOSS software (Python) to a Linux UG, spare me the comments...) Kent ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/ -- Lloyd Kvam Venix Corp DLSLUG/GNHLUG library http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=dlslug ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: MonadLUG Notes, 12-Oct-1007: Ben Scott presents DNS and BIND
Ted Roche wrote: I would think an editor that knows about XHTML so that it creates the /li when you create the li tag would help a lot. I mostly hand-code my HTML (I know, how last century!), so I'm used to it. Me too, actually; maybe I'm making too big of a deal out of it. Failing this, perhaps OpenOffice.org Impress to develop the presentation and PDF output is second-best. I have been uniformly un-Impressed with OO on Mac OSX. Writer is clunky, I have had problems interoperating with MS Word (and whatever you think of MS Word, sometimes that is a real requirement) and Calc is unusably slow even on a reasonably fast machine. Oh, and X11 doesn't integrate very well either. This is one reason I bought MS Office in the first place, it wasn't without some consideration of the alternatives. So I'm not that excited about trying Impress. But PowerPoint? PowerPoint kills, man. (Well, PowerPoint doesn't kill people. People using PowerPoint kill people. But, still...) ?? It doesn't help that I already have an older version of the presentation in PP... P.S. You might take a look at Google Present if you've got a free Google Apps account. Similar in concept to S5. OMG this is sweet! Imports .ppt files with styles! Looks like a winner. Kent ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: MonadLUG Notes, 12-Oct-1007: Ben Scott presents DNS and BIND
Ted Roche wrote: But PowerPoint? PowerPoint kills, man. (Well, PowerPoint doesn't kill people. People using PowerPoint kill people. But, still...) Kent Johnson wrote: ?? Sorry, ramblings of an old PowerPoint junkie. I once paid a lot of money to attend a conference taken over by M$ who subjected us to a day of Death by PowerPoint on a new application that was so unstable the only way they could demo it was in PowerPoint. Death by PowerPoint yields over a half-million hits on the Internet, which proves nothing these days. But Edward R. Tufte's essay on The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, (which I can leap up from my desk and lay my hands on instantly) is a must-read for everyone who wants to understand how to convey information. I also had the privilege of attending an Edward R. Tufte seminar where he reviewed the problem with thinking in slides and showed how the lack of good analytical skills was responsible for the destruction of the Challenger and the loss of lives. It was moving. Don't miss the chance to see him if you can. His essay then goes on to show the same fuzzy thinking, including PowerPoint slides, that lead to the Columbia disaster. That was criminal. So, sadly, Powerpoint kills. -- Ted Roche Ted Roche Associates, LLC http://www.tedroche.com ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: MonadLUG Notes, 12-Oct-1007: Ben Scott presents DNS and BIND
Kent Johnson wrote: I have been uniformly un-Impressed with OO on Mac OSX. Writer is clunky, I have had problems interoperating with MS Word (and whatever you think of MS Word, sometimes that is a real requirement) and Calc is unusably slow even on a reasonably fast machine. Oh, and X11 doesn't integrate very well either. This is one reason I bought MS Office in the first place, it wasn't without some consideration of the alternatives. So I'm not that excited about trying Impress. I use NeoOffice for OpenOffice on Mac OSX. It looks native and works well, in my experience. My experience with Impress vs. PowerPoint is limited as I don't personally use that class of tools at all. Some of my clients find Impress acceptable, but more than half do prefer PowerPoint. -- Dan Jenkins ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Rastech Inc., Bedford, NH, USA --- 1-603-206-9951 *** Technical Support Excellence for over a Quarter Century ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: MonadLUG Notes, 12-Oct-1007: Ben Scott presents DNS and BIND
On 10/24/07, Ted Roche [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But Edward R. Tufte's essay on The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint, (which I can leap up from my desk and lay my hands on instantly) is a must-read for everyone who wants to understand how to convey information. Going back on-topic for this thread: If you or anyone else have any feedback on my DNS presentation, I'd love to hear it. -- Ben ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: MonadLUG Notes, 12-Oct-1007: Ben Scott presents DNS and BIND
Kent Johnson [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: So, is there a better way to author S5 than being really, really careful while writing XHTML by hand and using an XHTML validator a lot? Use emacs: http://elpoint.sourceforge.net/ http://www.mew.org/~kazu/proj/goby/index.html.en I have no idea how well either of these modes work, but it's got to be better than hacking xhtml. If you insist upon hacking xhtml use emacs' nxhtml and nxml modes. Another simple solution would be to use emacs' muse-mode and publish the individual pages to html and/or paper for distribution. -- Seeya, Paul ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
Re: MonadLUG Notes, 12-Oct-1007: Ben Scott presents DNS and BIND
Ted Roche [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Ben had to find the Boy Scout meeting and the girls volleyball practices before finding us. One would have thought that Ben could have enlisted the aid of said Boy Scouts to assist... Unless, they *and* he were subsequently delayed at the *next* location :) -- Seeya, Paul ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
MonadLUG Notes, 12-Oct-1007: Ben Scott presents DNS and BIND
A great meeting Thursday night. Thirteen people made it to the October meeting of the Monadnock Area Linux User Group, held as usual at the SAU #1 offices in Peterborough on the second Thursday at 7 PM. Thanks to Ken for sponsoring us at the offices, and dealing diplomatically with the double-booking of the space. Ben had a little trouble finding the place, after a long, long drive from Dover. We forgot to mention in the driving directions which of the dozens of Use other door doors the meeting was held behind, so Ben had to find the Boy Scout meeting and the girls volleyball practices before finding us. Charlie promised to update the directions. Nonplussed by all of this, Ben gave a great presentation on DNS, reprising his pervious presentations. He'd replaced the MagicPoint presentation with S5, and had a few technical issues with getting it to behave, but persevered. I expect we'll see an update to the slides on: http://wiki.gnhlug.org/twiki2/bin/view/Www/PresentDNS But the other files there (bind configuration files, sample inside and external zone files, etc.) should be relevant. Ben gave a great overview of the Domain Name System and how it works from several client OSes, how the trail of DNS queries is processed, the structure of zone files, the structure of the BIND configuration files, and many of the common misconfigurations that lead to errors or just quiet failures. It was a meeting well worth attending. Thanks to Ben for efforts above and beyond, to Charlie for hosting and managing the meeting, and to Ken and the SAU#1 offices for providing the facilities. -- Ted Roche Ted Roche Associates, LLC http://www.tedroche.com ___ gnhlug-discuss mailing list gnhlug-discuss@mail.gnhlug.org http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss/
